Reading Paul
Paul the Gnostic
So now we are ready to consider Paul’s thoughts. First, let’s consider the main elements of Jewish Gnosticism and how it relates to wisdom or “Sophia.” Gnosticism held that the world was created by a demiurge, the malformed offspring of Sophia (wisdom). The Demiurge is the ruler of this material world often with Sophia enthroned alongside him. Depending on the version, Sophia created the demiurge in an attempt to be as the Supreme Aeon. So we have this dualistic world: the demiurge and the Supreme Aeon. Within this world, Sophia plays a dual, ambivalent role: she is on the one hand responsible for the evil material world and on the other hand the source of wisdom from the Supreme Aeon (see McRae, Novum Testamentum, 1971).
Earlier, I posted 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 and proclaimed it to be the bedrock of Paul’s thinking. Metacrock countered saying that Paul specifically rejected wisdom in 1 Cor 2:6:
1 Cor 2:6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
Metacrock’s error here was failing to recognize the ambivalent nature of Sophia, both as agent of the material world and as agent of the Supreme God. In 1 Cor 2:6, Paul explicitly references that:”We do, however, speak of Sophia among the mature” (or in some translations, ‘perfected’). Then “Not of Sophia of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.” This exactly and precisely reflects Jewish Gnostic thought of the times. Note that the ‘rulers of this age’ are the evil elemental spirits, agents of the Demiurge:
“However, it appears to us that these names have been indiscriminately used by Paul to designate the cosmic powers. Besides them there are also "OS0L 7oXXoi" and "xupmo ToXXoA" (I Cor. viii 5), "aocv 6votoca votaocC6irvoq" (Eph. i 21), and "erzoupavoc" and "MysWoc" and "xoraXocovLc" (Phil. ii Io). Finally, some of their names with cosmic bearings are "xootpoxp'Tops; TOU C7XOTOU TOToou" (Eph. vi 12), "a'roloa" (Gal. iv 3, 9; Col. ii 8, 20), and "'dpXovTzo zo ax6O0ou TOUTou" (I Cor. ii 6-8). These designations seemingly correspond to the Johannine title for the supreme demonic being…”(Lee, Novum Testamentum, 1971)[emphasis added]
“All this suggests that St. Paul did not think about earthly kings and authorities, but rather about spiritual entities located somewhere in space, the ambivalent spiritual powers behind the earthly authorities.” (Quispel, Vigiliae Christianae, 1965)
Quispel adds “behind the earthly authorities” but I think that presumes too much that the crucifixion is an actual event. In fact, in Romans 13 Paul refers to the governing authorities as agents of the Supreme God, not the Demiurge (I have argued this elsewhere and for the sake of space, I won’t do so here). So I agree with Quispel up to “spiritual powers” period.
So having set aside Metacrock’s objection, let’s look at the rest of 1 Cor 2:6-10:
1 Cor 2:6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"— 10but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
Again in 2:8, ‘none of the rulers of this age’ refers to the evil elemental spirits as I documented above with the Quispel and Lee quotes. (A sidenote on Quispel: he believes Gnosticism is a late development and a Christian heresy. If this analysis of Paul is correct, that would be decisive against Quispel.)
Note that in 1 Cor 2:10 the source of the revelation is the Spirit, not an earthly ministry of Jesus. Who is this Spirit? The Spirit is most often in Gnosticism associated with Sophia. So it is Sophia who has revealed the gospel to Paul, the “secret wisdom” of the Supreme God, hidden through the ages, and now revealed through Sophia.
Note also the similar passage in the Gospel of Thomas:
“I will give you what eye has not seen, and what ear has not heard, what has not been touched, and what has not arisen in the heart of man.”
(Albeit the source of this saying is Isaiah 64:4, however, it clearly resonated with Christian Gnostics.)
It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly Gnostic passage than 1 Cor 2:6-10.
If you read Paul from this perspective, you find that his thinking is grounded in Gnosticism. Another parallel to Gnosticism (parallel? it is Gnosticism!) is Paul’s reference to different levels of understanding his Gospel (don’t confuse Paul’s gospel with THE Gospels, they are separate things!). Paul, like the Gnostics, referred to different levels of understanding God’s revealed secret mystery:
1 Cor 2:14The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
16"For who has known the mind of the Lord
that he may instruct him?"But we have the mind of Christ.
“Man without the spirit” is reference to the lowest level of understanding the hylic or Psychic. Those with the Spirit are the Pnuematic they are the “spiritual man”, The Spirit has blown the pneuma (revelation) into them.
Paul’s Followers
It is interesting to note that early Christian Gnostics cited Paul as the founder and sage of their movement. Today’s orthodoxy maintains that Paul was not a Gnostic, Metacrock scoffs at the idea, but to the gnostic Marcion, Paul was the one true apostle. In fact, Paul’s letters probably survive today because of Marcion. Marcion was the first to collect together writings and call them a Gospel, the Gospel of the Lord or the Evangelicon. This was in the early second century and it is the first attempt to create a cannon. Marcion’s cannon included a version of the Gospel of Luke and the letters of Paul. Valentinius, the great gnostic sage of the mid-second century also traced his philosophy to Paul:
(from Wikipedia for ease since I am running out of time):
Alexandrian followers said that Valentinus was a follower of Theudas and that Theudas in turn was a follower of St. Paul of Tarsus. Valentinus said that Theudas imparted to him the secret wisdom that Paul had taught privately to his inner circle, which Paul publicly referred to in connection with his visionary encounter with the risen Christ (Romans 16:251 Corinthians 2:7 2 Corinthians 12:2-4[[/SIZE]Acts 9:9-10)when he received the secret teaching from him. Such esoteric teachings were becoming downplayed in Rome after the mid-2nd century.
So it is ironic that now orthodox Christians like Metacrock (and he is orthodox!) want to make you believe that there is no connection between Paul and gnosticism. But it isn’t out of character for the orthodox to do so: In fact, the challenge of Marcion is what propelled the Church to create Luke/Acts in which the apostleship of Paul is downplayed (in Acts, Paul cannot be called an apostle due to the definition of an apostle: one had to witness the resurrection). Our Gospel of Luke is a rewrite of Marcion’s Gospel of the Lord (Marcion has priority here, but for space and time I won’t go into the arguments). Also, it is from this time period that the Pastorals which explicitly depict Paul as anti-gnostic first appear (first reference Irenaeus around 190). The anti-gnostic Paul tracts are all a response to the gnosticism of Paul in his authentic letters.
Since I have gone on about this long enough, I will leave it to you to read Paul on your own. I hope you will do so with an open mind, because otherwise, you can’t understand what I am saying here.
So now we are ready to consider Paul’s thoughts. First, let’s consider the main elements of Jewish Gnosticism and how it relates to wisdom or “Sophia.” Gnosticism held that the world was created by a demiurge, the malformed offspring of Sophia (wisdom). The Demiurge is the ruler of this material world often with Sophia enthroned alongside him. Depending on the version, Sophia created the demiurge in an attempt to be as the Supreme Aeon. So we have this dualistic world: the demiurge and the Supreme Aeon. Within this world, Sophia plays a dual, ambivalent role: she is on the one hand responsible for the evil material world and on the other hand the source of wisdom from the Supreme Aeon (see McRae, Novum Testamentum, 1971).
Earlier, I posted 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 and proclaimed it to be the bedrock of Paul’s thinking. Metacrock countered saying that Paul specifically rejected wisdom in 1 Cor 2:6:
1 Cor 2:6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
Metacrock’s error here was failing to recognize the ambivalent nature of Sophia, both as agent of the material world and as agent of the Supreme God. In 1 Cor 2:6, Paul explicitly references that:”We do, however, speak of Sophia among the mature” (or in some translations, ‘perfected’). Then “Not of Sophia of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.” This exactly and precisely reflects Jewish Gnostic thought of the times. Note that the ‘rulers of this age’ are the evil elemental spirits, agents of the Demiurge:
“However, it appears to us that these names have been indiscriminately used by Paul to designate the cosmic powers. Besides them there are also "OS0L 7oXXoi" and "xupmo ToXXoA" (I Cor. viii 5), "aocv 6votoca votaocC6irvoq" (Eph. i 21), and "erzoupavoc" and "MysWoc" and "xoraXocovLc" (Phil. ii Io). Finally, some of their names with cosmic bearings are "xootpoxp'Tops; TOU C7XOTOU TOToou" (Eph. vi 12), "a'roloa" (Gal. iv 3, 9; Col. ii 8, 20), and "'dpXovTzo zo ax6O0ou TOUTou" (I Cor. ii 6-8). These designations seemingly correspond to the Johannine title for the supreme demonic being…”(Lee, Novum Testamentum, 1971)[emphasis added]
“All this suggests that St. Paul did not think about earthly kings and authorities, but rather about spiritual entities located somewhere in space, the ambivalent spiritual powers behind the earthly authorities.” (Quispel, Vigiliae Christianae, 1965)
Quispel adds “behind the earthly authorities” but I think that presumes too much that the crucifixion is an actual event. In fact, in Romans 13 Paul refers to the governing authorities as agents of the Supreme God, not the Demiurge (I have argued this elsewhere and for the sake of space, I won’t do so here). So I agree with Quispel up to “spiritual powers” period.
So having set aside Metacrock’s objection, let’s look at the rest of 1 Cor 2:6-10:
1 Cor 2:6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"— 10but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
Again in 2:8, ‘none of the rulers of this age’ refers to the evil elemental spirits as I documented above with the Quispel and Lee quotes. (A sidenote on Quispel: he believes Gnosticism is a late development and a Christian heresy. If this analysis of Paul is correct, that would be decisive against Quispel.)
Note that in 1 Cor 2:10 the source of the revelation is the Spirit, not an earthly ministry of Jesus. Who is this Spirit? The Spirit is most often in Gnosticism associated with Sophia. So it is Sophia who has revealed the gospel to Paul, the “secret wisdom” of the Supreme God, hidden through the ages, and now revealed through Sophia.
Note also the similar passage in the Gospel of Thomas:
“I will give you what eye has not seen, and what ear has not heard, what has not been touched, and what has not arisen in the heart of man.”
(Albeit the source of this saying is Isaiah 64:4, however, it clearly resonated with Christian Gnostics.)
It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly Gnostic passage than 1 Cor 2:6-10.
If you read Paul from this perspective, you find that his thinking is grounded in Gnosticism. Another parallel to Gnosticism (parallel? it is Gnosticism!) is Paul’s reference to different levels of understanding his Gospel (don’t confuse Paul’s gospel with THE Gospels, they are separate things!). Paul, like the Gnostics, referred to different levels of understanding God’s revealed secret mystery:
1 Cor 2:14The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
16"For who has known the mind of the Lord
that he may instruct him?"But we have the mind of Christ.
“Man without the spirit” is reference to the lowest level of understanding the hylic or Psychic. Those with the Spirit are the Pnuematic they are the “spiritual man”, The Spirit has blown the pneuma (revelation) into them.
Paul’s Followers
It is interesting to note that early Christian Gnostics cited Paul as the founder and sage of their movement. Today’s orthodoxy maintains that Paul was not a Gnostic, Metacrock scoffs at the idea, but to the gnostic Marcion, Paul was the one true apostle. In fact, Paul’s letters probably survive today because of Marcion. Marcion was the first to collect together writings and call them a Gospel, the Gospel of the Lord or the Evangelicon. This was in the early second century and it is the first attempt to create a cannon. Marcion’s cannon included a version of the Gospel of Luke and the letters of Paul. Valentinius, the great gnostic sage of the mid-second century also traced his philosophy to Paul:
(from Wikipedia for ease since I am running out of time):
Alexandrian followers said that Valentinus was a follower of Theudas and that Theudas in turn was a follower of St. Paul of Tarsus. Valentinus said that Theudas imparted to him the secret wisdom that Paul had taught privately to his inner circle, which Paul publicly referred to in connection with his visionary encounter with the risen Christ (Romans 16:251 Corinthians 2:7 2 Corinthians 12:2-4[[/SIZE]Acts 9:9-10)when he received the secret teaching from him. Such esoteric teachings were becoming downplayed in Rome after the mid-2nd century.
So it is ironic that now orthodox Christians like Metacrock (and he is orthodox!) want to make you believe that there is no connection between Paul and gnosticism. But it isn’t out of character for the orthodox to do so: In fact, the challenge of Marcion is what propelled the Church to create Luke/Acts in which the apostleship of Paul is downplayed (in Acts, Paul cannot be called an apostle due to the definition of an apostle: one had to witness the resurrection)
Since I have gone on about this long enough, I will leave it to you to read Paul on your own. I hope you will do so with an open mind, because otherwise, you can’t understand what I am saying here.
__________________
"What they will say is this, that such being his
disposition the just man will have to endure the lash,
the rack, chains, the branding iron in his eyes, and
finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will
be crucified." Plato, 4th century BCE
"What they will say is this, that such being his
disposition the just man will have to endure the lash,
the rack, chains, the branding iron in his eyes, and
finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will
be crucified." Plato, 4th century BCE
Last edited by grog225; 13 Hours Ago at 08:21 AM.
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After 700 years the Laurel will return still evergreen!! Pierre Valdo (perfecti solitary, Hermitage de Montségur, France).
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