Gnosticism vs. Catholicism

I'm also reading through Henry Chadwick's classic The Early Church, which frequently makes reference to the early controversies between the leaders of the Church (going straight back to the apostles and writers of Scripture) and the various Gnostic heresies--that is, those sects which preach salvation through hidden knowledge, or gnosis. And various is the right word for them--they diverge and multiply as the heads of the Hydra!

In the context of the previous posts on Masonry, and reflecting on the traditionally antagonistic relationship between Christianity and Masonry, I was struck rather forcibly by the realization that Gnosticism is truly the one constant opponent of Christianity throughout history, or at the very least, the one strong alternative system offered the Christian at every age. There's always the basic temptations, of course, and any number of ways to damn your soul without going in for esoteric speculation, but really, in terms of serious, long term religious competitors, the Gnostic offer has paralleled the Christian from the earliest days of out history.

There's something incredibly Biblical about this--almost a literal actualization in the world of the two trees in the Garden of Eden. God presented mankind with a garden full of good things, of which man was free to partake. The two trees specifically mentioned in the second creation account (cf. Genesis 2:9) are the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Interestingly, the tree of life is not forbidden to them by God. That tree is among the trees of the garden permitted to them.

Many people find the prohibition of the tree of knowledge an incredible act--he's holding them back! Why on earth would God forbid them from knowing the difference between good and evil? And yet we have much the same understanding today: some sorts of knowledge ought not be had. There are books we wish we hadn't read, images we wish we hadn't seen, thoughts we wish had never crept into our minds in the middle of the night. There are some things that ought never to be known.

Indeed, since evil is the privation of the good, to know evil (especially in the deep sense of knowing indicated throughout the Bible) seems like a very foul thing indeed. But look again at what we are faced with: the two trees, one with the fruit of life, and the other with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent speaks to the woman, calling her to taste of the fruit of the forbidden tree "and become like God." Funny thing, though--when God speaks his name at the request of Moses, he does not name himself "I am who knows." He says, "I am who am." His self identification is the one who is, the one who lives. He is the God of the living, not the dead. And the consequence of eating of the forbidden fruit was death.

In knowing good and evil, somehow Adam and Eve knew less. They became less wise--they hid from the omnipotent. They attempted to avoid blame. They lost their way, and drew all their children after them. What if Eve had repudiated the serpent, and gone to the tree of life, and eaten of that instead? In much the same spirit--what if people reject the poison pill of gnosis, of secret wisdom, of that inexpressible sense of self satisfied pride of being among the elite, the Inner Circle, as Lewis called it, of the Knowing Ones? What if they instead turned towards the tree of life, the Cross, on which hung the fruit of life, which we must eat if we are to have life within us? What if we walked with the New Eve, the Lady of Sorrow, to the foot of the tree where the serpent was crushed and a new garden, the Church, was planted to feed and save the world?