Did the Gnostics Care About Christ?
Posted by Kushana Torumekia at 9/4/2011 4:33 PM 
Categories: Gospel of the Savior, Old Testament
Tags: Jesus Christ Christianity Gnosticism Gnostics Bible Hebrew Bible Old Testament Gospel of the Savior Gospel of Judas Gospel of Thomas
Categories: Gospel of the Savior, Old Testament
Tags: Jesus Christ Christianity Gnosticism Gnostics Bible Hebrew Bible Old Testament Gospel of the Savior Gospel of Judas Gospel of Thomas
A central interest in the death of Christ was not universal even among the branches of early Christianity (see Dr. Bart Ehman's <a href='http://www.powells.com/partner/36168/biblio/9780195182491?p_ti' title='More info about this book at powells.com' rel='powells-9780195182491'>Lost Christianities</a> for a glimpse of that world): only the types of Christianity which won out sociologically and politically to become the ancestors of all contemporary forms of Christianity put together the idea of atonement in quite the way that modern Christianities hold to. One must not put what is normal in the present back on to the past: the past will almost always be different.
There were many Gnostic schools, each with their own theology. In turn these individual theologies changed over time. For example, Sethian Gnosticism was sometimes very Christianized: at other times in its development it was not. Its interest in the death of Christ varies accordingly. (Dr. John Turner made a nice pattern out the Sethian texts we knew of — then the <a href='http://www.powells.com/partner/36168/biblio/9781426200427?p_ti' title='More info about this book at powells.com' rel='powells-9781426200427'>The Gospel of Judas</a> made it untenable.)
Of all the ancient Gnostic texts, the one with the most interest in the life and teachings of Christ (the <a href='http://www.powells.com/partner/36168/biblio/9780944344118?p_ti' title='More info about this book at powells.com' rel='powells-9780944344118'>Gospel of Thomas</a>
scarcely refers to Jesus' death (its brief allusion 'to bearing one's cross' is not necessarily biographical: this was already a proverb before the time of Christianity. (Crucifixions were historical and contemporary realities: Romans did not need the death of a small-time Jewish rabble rouser (so minor that the contemporary historian Josephus does not give him the column-inches of other Jewish religious and political leaders who gathered crowds around them) to understand the idea of 'carrying one's cross'.)
scarcely refers to Jesus' death (its brief allusion 'to bearing one's cross' is not necessarily biographical: this was already a proverb before the time of Christianity. (Crucifixions were historical and contemporary realities: Romans did not need the death of a small-time Jewish rabble rouser (so minor that the contemporary historian Josephus does not give him the column-inches of other Jewish religious and political leaders who gathered crowds around them) to understand the idea of 'carrying one's cross'.)Aside from the Gospel of Thomas (and perhaps the Dialogue of the Savior), most Gnostic texts (and schools) had very little ongoing interest in the death of Christ (and little interest in the life and preaching of Christ): for nearly every school of ancient Gnosticism Christ was an avatar, if you will, something that was never human nor part of time. (Exactly what varied with each Gnostic school.) The Gnostic texts which do mention the cross do so in the same funhouse mirror way that Gnostic texts interpret the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible: even after you read them it is difficult to sort out when they are making a joke, when they are basing something on a pun or an interpretation of a pub (sometimes even a pun in Aramaic), when they are being serious, and whether they are mocking another school of Gnosticism or Christianity (or not talking about any particular competing religion).
Christ was not the Anointed in Gnosticism: depending of which Gnostic school you consult (and at which point in its development) Christ is Seth from the Book of Genesis, or Christ is God, or Christ is a pagan wisdom teacher in a lightly Christianized guise. The ideas in Gnosticism are so unlike the ideas in early Christianities that most current scholars reject the theory that Gnosticism developed out of Christianity: one cannot draw a direct line between any two forms of the two religions and account for Gnosticism as it appears in its own texts (even allowing for Gnosticism as a willful distortion of Christianity, as Irenaeus would have it.) Scholars spent a century trying to make that work: the great majority of them now look for a different (and usually older) origin for Gnosticism.
Christ was very important to some Gnostics at the times when Gnosticism was interested in Christianity (for some Gnostic schools that was all the time, for other Gnostic schools it was not). When Gnostics did speak of Christ he was always an emissary of God (or God, himself), a representative of cosmic goodness and a bringer of otherworldly enlightenment. (I cannot think of any Gnostic school which made Christ a villain or mocked Christ the way some Gnostic movements mocked the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible portrayal of God.)
-Kushana
So theologically speaking, WHY did Christ die? What was the purpose from a theological perspective?
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Dear Bill,
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