https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=qT-74FTjiJE
Alright, what is your opinion of Gnosticism? One of the problems with people who look at Gnosticism is that… Okay, if you read the book by St. Irenaeus on Gnosticism, it is actually called… I think it’s called something like for the overthrow… for the identification and overthrow of the so-called Gnostics. And the reason why they’re called so-called Gnostics is because the notion of Gnosis in Christianity is actually very important. It’s a very important aspect of Christianity. The difference between the Gnostics and the traditional Gnosis in Christianity is that Gnosis in Christianity is really in a manner what I talk about when I talk about symbolism. That is, Gnosis is viewed as a sexual union in the Bible, knowledge, like he knew his wife. It’s seen as this coming together of two realities. And if those who are reading Matthew’s book will see it in that manner too. It’s the joining of heaven and earth. That’s what Gnosis is. Knowledge is the two coming together in the traditional sense. And so in Christianity, that’s why we have this whole incarnational vision of the world. Christ is incarnate. He is the total joining of divinity and humanity. The total joining of meaning and in a person. Everything is joined together. That’s what Gnosis is in the Christian tradition. Whereas the Gnostics tended to view Gnosis in the Platonic sense as moving out of the cave. The world of manifestation is actually an illusion and a kind of lie. You have to transcend the manifestation so that you see the principles for themselves. Because of that, then their vision of Christ is that either there’s a separation between the logos of God and the human Jesus. That those two are separate and that the logos of God leads Jesus before his crucifixion. That type of thinking. Or you have this idea that Christ was a ghostly figure. That he wasn’t fully manifested. You have these images like his feet didn’t touch the ground. Or these types of images to say that Christ was not a fully incarnate being. Whereas in Christianity, it really is this notion of incarnation. So I think that Gnosis is… In Christianity, you do have this notion of transcending. You do have this notion of ascending the mountain. Of going up the ladder of principality. Let’s say moving towards the divine darkness. Removing the garments of skin. All of those images could be seen as akin to this notion of leaving the cave. But if you look at the final result of that, it’s always that in the end, we recover what we had removed. Let’s say so that as you move into the divine darkness, you find that everything was joined together. You see that in St. Maximus the Confessor. He talks about how as the spiritual person sees the logi, sees the spiritual reasons for things separate from the manifestations like the particularities, he sees that there’s no contradiction between the two. That they’re actually in full agreement with each other. When Moses enters into the divine darkness in St. Gregory of Nyssa, he encounters the pattern of the tabernacle. In the pattern of the tabernacle, he finds the garments of skin in the tabernacle. He removed his sandals at the base of the mountain to ascend the mountain. But once he enters into the highest point, then he finds that the whole mountain is actually inside that point. That the highest point of the hierarchy is actually not that which transcends the hierarchy, but that which contains the whole hierarchy. That’s one of the things maybe that’s kind of different between what I think and Jordan Peterson. We’ve actually talked about this. I think even online we’ve talked about this. It’s not that Christ transcends the hierarchy. It’s that Christ fills the hierarchy. The image of Christ is not just the image of the emperor or the image of the highly successful person. And even he’s not just the image of the person who accepts suffering, but he’s also an image of a criminal being crucified. He’s both the judge of all things. He’s the son of man. He has all this glorious imagery, but at the same time, he is the crucified criminal outside the city. You can see it in the opposition, in the story where Christ goes into the temple, clears out the temple, acts as this holy scourging fire which purifies everything. But then he’s taken outside the city and he’s crucified. So it’s like, bang, those two radical opposites just jam together. And Christ always manifests that fullness of the hierarchy where he’s both the top of the hierarchy and the bottom of the hierarchy at the same time. And then he says, the Alpha and the Omega, I am the beginning and the end. And he also says that those two things are related to each other, that there’s a connection between the beginning and the end. You see it in that snake eating its tail. All right. I find the Gospel of Thomas and the Pistis Sophia fascinating. Do you think these are worthy of study? And if so, do you have any other recommendation of things to look into based on my resonating with them? I think that the thing about the Gnostic Gospels and the thing about Gnosticism in general is that it’s not everything that the Gnostics say is wrong. There’s some of the things that the Gnostics say that are right and there’s some of the things that the Gnostics say that are problematic. And so that’s the thing about heresy. The thing about the notion of heresy is that it’s not… heretics don’t say all bad things, but there are some things that they say which lead you into problematic spaces. I would say that in Gnosticism in general, whether it be in the Pistis Sophia or other Gnostic texts, I think that the vision of the world as being bad in itself, the vision that the created world is bad, I think that that is anathema. I think that that is a serious problem and it leads to major major philosophical problems and major existential problems. So this idea of this notion of the hierarchy of the Aeons and that the lowest Aeon fell or co-mingled with something else and then that product of that was the God of the Bible and that the Bible created the world and that Yahweh then created the world in opposition to the Aeons. That type of thinking where the world is itself corrupt, is itself bad, is itself evil, I think that that is a very dangerous doctrine. And it’s definitely opposite to what Christians believe, which is that the world, although there is a fallen aspect of the world, the fallen aspect of the world is a barrier to seeing that in fact the world is full of meaning, that in fact the world is full of light and that those who are able to approach the mystery are able to experience the world as full of light. And we get these glimpses, I think, like we get these little glimpses that the world is full of meaning. But when you read the lives of the saints, you see that some of the saints live completely in a transfigured world. They live in a world that is ablaze, that is completely transformed by meaning and by the presence of God. So that’s why I think that something like the Pistis Sophia is problematic. you