A Gnostic Book of Hours: Keys to Inner Wisdom. - book reviews

Christian Century, Nov 8, 1995 by Robert A. Segal

By June Singer: HarperSanFrancisco, 164 pp., $20.00.

IN A RECENT article on "Jungians and Gnostics" in the journal First things (October 1994), psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover denounced the contemporary world for its "pagan" proclivities--its materialism, libertinism, amorality and self-centeredness. Satinover took as his chief example of a modern pagan Carl Jung, through whom he linked paganism to Gnosticism. Satinover claimed that in its striving for wholeness Gnosticism accommodates matter as well as spirit and accepts human evil as well as good. In seeking to transcend conventional morality, Gnosticism relativizes morality. Finally, in postulating a divine spark within human beings, Gnosticism makes humanity the center of the cosmos.

This condemnation of Gnosticism as materialistic, promiscuous, relativistic and anthropocentric is preposterous. Ancient Gnosticism, which emerged in the first centuries A.D., rejects matter as irremediably evil and abhors sex as the most egregious form of indulgence in matter. Though Gnosticism pits conventional morality (pagan no less than Christian) against its own ethic, it does not spurn morality altogether. On the contrary, Gnostics pride themselves on a more rigorous morality than thai preached by any of their ancient rivals. Finally, Gnosticism maintains that the spark of knowledge resides in an elite, not in aH humanity, and is to be cultivated at the expense of the merely human side of the personality.

Satinover's invocation of the term "Gnostic" to damn the modern world is hardly original. "Gnostic" has become a buzzword used either to castigate or laud contemporary society. But it is often not clear what is designated by the use of the term.

Until the 20th century, Gnosticism was regarded as an obscure Christian heresy which had died out millennia ago. Today nearly all scholars acknowledge that Gnosticism antedated Christianity and influenced it, and that there were pagan and Jewish Gnostics. Instead of being considered a variant of other religions, Gnosticism is now often taken as an ancient religion in its own right.

Gnostics espouse a radical, irreconcilable dualism composed of immateriality, seen as divine and wholly good, and of matter, considered wholly evil. For Gnostics, the predicament is that pieces or sparks of immateriality have fallen into matter: human souls are trapped in bodies. (In tripartite rather than dualistic varieties of Gnosticism, the immaterial spirit lies trapped in the soul as well as the body.) Because the spark is not merely trapped but hidden, liberation requires the revelation of one's divinity. Salvation for the individual means the extrication of the spark from the body and its return to its immaterial home. Salvation for the cosmos means the return of all sparks. The aim is to terminate any connection between immateriality and matter.

In applying the term to current developments, contemporary thinkers identify Gnosticism with the belief that human beings are alienated either from their true selves or from the world. Neither the true self nor the world need be immaterial. Indeed, there need be no fixed self or any world beyond the material one. There certainly need be no god. Contemporary Gnosticism apparently need not even involve the cosmos. The dualism can be between parts of the personality, between nations or between classes. The dualism need not even be antagonistic.

The thinkers most credited with the application of the label "Gnostic" to modernity have paralleled but not equated the ancient outlook with the modem one. They have often been concerned with the differences as well as the similarities between the two.

THE PHILOSOPHER Hans Jonas was the first to compare ancient Gnosticism math modem existentialism (Gnosticism and Modem Nihilism, 1952). For Jonas, the central tenet of both is the entrapment of human beings in a world at odds with their true nature. Jonas emphasizes that the two outlooks are far from identical. In Gnosticism the world is demonic and hostile; in existentialism it is impersonal and indifferent. In Gnosticism one is presently separated from one's true self-, in existentialism one has no fixed nature. In Gnosticism the alienation is surmountable; in existentialism it is not. Still, the Gnostic conception of the human condition is for Jonas as unremittingly dour as the existentialist one.

Jonas employs the term "Gnostic" neither to applaud nor to denounce but simply to pinpoint one central aspect of modernity. By contrast, the political philosopher Eric Voegelin uses the term to condemn modernity. For him, modern Gnosticism encompasses movements as diverse as "progressivism, positivism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism, and national socialism." In The New Science of Politics (1952) he goes so far as to define modernity as "the growth of gnosticism." Modem individuals and movements share six characteristics that Voegelin calls "the gnostic attitude": dissatisfaction with the world; confidence that the ills of the world stem from the way it is organized; certainty that amelioration is possible; the assumption that improvement must "evolve historically"; the belief that human beings can change the world; and the conviction that knowledge--gnosis--is the key to change (Science, Politics and Gnosticism [1968]).