Resistance is NOT futile!
Mar. 21st, 2004 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentia"Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12
I have commented on this passage before, but it is extremely important to the Gnostic Christian tradition. Also, I note, my views on this passage have matured somewhat.
The Epistle to the Ephesians is generally believed now to have been written not by Paul but at some point between 100 and 130 CE; I believe that this and several other passages in Ephesians demonstrate that it was redacted by a Gnostic (if not actually written by one).
The forces of worldly oppression were called archons (rulers), which word was actually used in the passage above. In the Gnostic mythology, humans are shown as struggling against malevolent ruling powers from whose realm Christ seeks to liberate us; but to me this is but one minor facet of what this passage truly represents.
Earlier forms of Gnosticism, like the Jewish prophetic and Christian traditions from which it was born, were concerned with the welfare of the lower classes. Its later variations, like Christianity, were clearly more concerned with the pursuits of people with more comfortable lifestyles. So when examining the later forms of Gnosticism, it is hard sometimes to see the extent to which it was truly a movement of political, religious, and economic radicalism.
Caricaturing the Lord honored in the Temple in Jerusalem was an indication of extreme disenfranchisement. This caricature was later to be seized upon by thinkers whose motivation was possibly anti-Semitic (such as Marcion) so it is extremely important to discern the motivation behind a given Gnostic text. Some of them were indeed anti-Semitic; others were a direct product of the highly various Jewish community of late antiquity.
In the minds of the early Gnostics, the agents of fate, the archons, were in collusion with the ruling elite. It is not a mistake that they referred to these agents as "the rulers." The struggle to end political, religious, and economic oppression was the same struggle as the mystical struggle against the agents of fate, who determine the course of our lives and who assert that we have no choice but to go along with the master plan.
Similarly, to speak out against injustice was to spit in the eye of fate.
The Gnostics saw the Serpent as the spirit of wisdom who liberated them from the false garden established by the archons to keep us trapped, which we might compare to the tapestry of illusion woven by Mara, or to the Matrix, both illusions designed to keep us ensnared and distracted and so deprive us of living up to our full potential.
They equated this with the message of Jesus, one who had spoken out against their oppression at the hands of the wealthy, the priestly class, and the Roman regime. The resurrection of Jesus by the Father (whether it was literal or metaphorical) signified that the Father so strongly approved of Jesus' program that he rejected the actions of fate and even the ultimate fate of death.
To rise up in this way is to say to fate, I reject the injustice that you have set in my path. The cosmos does not have to be ordered this way, because the Root of All sent instructors to show us the way!
I have often spoken of God, or the Root of All, as akin to a potential field. Potential is that whereby events happen; during an event, potential energy is transferred into kinetic, thermal, electromagnetic, or other forms of energy. I think of the cosmos as working in the same fashion -- the divine creating the potential that allows all things to exist or happen. If the divine is potential, then surely it is good and right that each of us should attempt to fulfill our potential to the utmost.
Economic or political or religious oppression keeps us from living up to our fullest potential.
I have commented on this passage before, but it is extremely important to the Gnostic Christian tradition. Also, I note, my views on this passage have matured somewhat.
The Epistle to the Ephesians is generally believed now to have been written not by Paul but at some point between 100 and 130 CE; I believe that this and several other passages in Ephesians demonstrate that it was redacted by a Gnostic (if not actually written by one).
The forces of worldly oppression were called archons (rulers), which word was actually used in the passage above. In the Gnostic mythology, humans are shown as struggling against malevolent ruling powers from whose realm Christ seeks to liberate us; but to me this is but one minor facet of what this passage truly represents.
Earlier forms of Gnosticism, like the Jewish prophetic and Christian traditions from which it was born, were concerned with the welfare of the lower classes. Its later variations, like Christianity, were clearly more concerned with the pursuits of people with more comfortable lifestyles. So when examining the later forms of Gnosticism, it is hard sometimes to see the extent to which it was truly a movement of political, religious, and economic radicalism.
Caricaturing the Lord honored in the Temple in Jerusalem was an indication of extreme disenfranchisement. This caricature was later to be seized upon by thinkers whose motivation was possibly anti-Semitic (such as Marcion) so it is extremely important to discern the motivation behind a given Gnostic text. Some of them were indeed anti-Semitic; others were a direct product of the highly various Jewish community of late antiquity.
In the minds of the early Gnostics, the agents of fate, the archons, were in collusion with the ruling elite. It is not a mistake that they referred to these agents as "the rulers." The struggle to end political, religious, and economic oppression was the same struggle as the mystical struggle against the agents of fate, who determine the course of our lives and who assert that we have no choice but to go along with the master plan.
Similarly, to speak out against injustice was to spit in the eye of fate.
The Gnostics saw the Serpent as the spirit of wisdom who liberated them from the false garden established by the archons to keep us trapped, which we might compare to the tapestry of illusion woven by Mara, or to the Matrix, both illusions designed to keep us ensnared and distracted and so deprive us of living up to our full potential.
They equated this with the message of Jesus, one who had spoken out against their oppression at the hands of the wealthy, the priestly class, and the Roman regime. The resurrection of Jesus by the Father (whether it was literal or metaphorical) signified that the Father so strongly approved of Jesus' program that he rejected the actions of fate and even the ultimate fate of death.
To rise up in this way is to say to fate, I reject the injustice that you have set in my path. The cosmos does not have to be ordered this way, because the Root of All sent instructors to show us the way!
I have often spoken of God, or the Root of All, as akin to a potential field. Potential is that whereby events happen; during an event, potential energy is transferred into kinetic, thermal, electromagnetic, or other forms of energy. I think of the cosmos as working in the same fashion -- the divine creating the potential that allows all things to exist or happen. If the divine is potential, then surely it is good and right that each of us should attempt to fulfill our potential to the utmost.
Economic or political or religious oppression keeps us from living up to our fullest potential.
