Eric Voegelin and the ‘Gnostic' Temptation - by Ron Dart

Voegelin is a lodestar to thinking men who seek a restoration of political science on the classic and Christian basis.

- Anthony Harrigan    

Modest doubt is a beacon of the wise.

- Shakespare   

When I was doing my undergraduate studies in the 1970s, I was quite fortunate to be able to take courses on traditional reads of Gnosticism in the early church and revisionist reads of Gnosticism. The traditional approach to Gnosticism was that it distorted the more integrated and wholistic Jewish-Christian tradition by either idealizing spirit and denigrating matter (the former good, the latter evil) or subordinating matter to spirit. The healthy integration of spirit-soul-matter that Christian theology inherited from Plato-Aristotle and the Jewish Prophetic traditions was dimmed and thinned out by the Gnostics (crude and subtle types).

The revisionist approach to the gnostic tendencies in the 1^st-4^th centuries CE as embodied in someone like Elaine Pagels (who was on the avante garde cutting edge of revisionist Gnosticism in the 1970s) took the opposite approach to the Gnostics. Pagels and tribe took the position that the Gnostics were at the forefront of speculative theology, feminism, anti-hierarchy, spirituality versus theology, and dynamic community versus dead institutions. Needless to say, the negative and positive approaches had and have their blind spots, but, for the purpose of this essay, something significant was missing in the analysis.

The Greek word “gnosis” means knowledge, and for the Gnostics, “gnosis” was seen as a higher, more enlightened notion of knowledge about the Ultimate, God or the Divine. The lower level of creedal theology and “pistis” (faith) lacked the in depth wisdom way of “gnosis”. The point to note here is that “gnosis” offered certainty, clarity and assured insights that were of a higher order than the lower levels of knowledge and faith. It is this claim to certainty that needs to be pondered further. The need for clear and distinct ideas, for certainty rather than mystery on the faith journey has a certain appeal to it.  Which is higher, though, when we think and speak and claim to experience and interpret God? -- “gnosis” or “pistis”? The temptation to uncritically genuflect to “gnosis” can create serious consequences.

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was, perhaps, one of the most significant political philosophers and theologians of the 20^th century----few are the theologians that read Voegelin---he is mostly studied as a political philosopher----Voegelin had a depth and breadth in his reading and writing that few have-- many theologians are the weaker for the fact they know not Voegelin. Voegelin was quite interested in the way “gnosis” was used in a religious and political way---remember that “gnosis” has significant overlap with the need for certainty. The publication of Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics: An Introduction in 1952 was a plough to soul book -- Voegelin challenged the dominance of science as a new “gnosis” but, equally important, pondered how the notion of “gnosis” had played a significant role in shaping theology and politics.

The New Science of Politics (chapters 4-6) unpacked, in a meticulous and thoughtful way, how the gnostic need for certainty played itself out in four phases of western religious and political thought. The first phase was in the thinking of the Medieval Franciscan friar, Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202 CE). Joachim argued that the Hebrew tradition, as embodied in the Christian Old Testament, reflected the age of the Father, just as the classical-early Medieval phase incarnated the age of the Son (Jesus Christ). But, Joachim, argued, the age of the Spirit had now dawned and those who understood this aright, would and could live in the fullness of such a period of history. Joachim (and the spiritual Franciscans who followed him) was sure and certain that he understand better and finer than others how God’s Spirit was infusing history --those who differed with him merely illustrated their blindness and deafness to the Holy Spirit—such circular reasoning was at the heart and core of Joachim’s “gnosis”. Voegelin further argued that when Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) launched the bloody Puritan revolution in England in the 17^th century, he (and those who followed him) was committed to the pure reading of the Bible and its application to the public square. It was the puritans who truly knew how the Bible should be interpreted and those who dared to differ with them were compromisers and defilers of the truth -- again, we can see how the “gnostic” need for certainty trumps any sense of mystery, ambiguity or uncertainty. Joachim and Cromwell lived at different times, the former being Roman Catholic, the latter puritan protestant, but both were committed to the “gnostic” need for certainty that brooked no opposition. I might add that we find the same dilemma at work in Luther’s clash with Erasmus (the former a “Gnostic” in the Voegelinian sense, the latter a classical Christian humanist). Voegelin pitted Richard Hooker (the judicious Anglican of the late 16^th century) against the “gnostic” English Puritans (some who anticipated Cromwell).         

Voegelin continued his tracking of the “gnostic” way and worldview as history unfolded. Religion did decline in the 17th-18^th centuries as wave after wave of secularism emerged, but the “gnostic” way of thinking persisted. The leaders of the French Revolution were convinced they were on the winning and just side of history and those who dared oppose them (or who belonged to the wrong class) were often beheaded-again the “gnostic” dualism won the day only at this phase in history dressed in secular garments. Voegelin continued to track the addiction to the “gnostic” ethos in the Communist Revolution of 1917 and afterwards. Again, we can see how there were those who were in the know, those who truly understood the unfolding of history (secularized Joachim) and those who dared to differ with them (who did not understand the truth of the proletariat revolution)----the “gnostic” need for certainty ever dominated the day.

Voegelin, to his credit, has lifted the meaning and significance of “gnosticism” to a new and higher level than those who merely restrict the meaning of the word to a more spiritual level as worked out in the early centuries of the church. I find it significant, though, that Voegelin ends The New Science of Politics by suggesting that, at their best, the American and English democratic traditions are opponents of the “gnostic” temptation. And yet, the USA was founded on such “gnostic” myths as manifest destiny, the puritan quest for the New Jerusalem and  latter day American exceptionalism----the need for the “gnostic” myth can be subtle and crude, but the meaning of the “gnostic” way persists.

The real cure for such an illness and disease is, as Shakespeare rightly notes, modest doubt (it being the beacon of the wise). 

Ron Dart