Redeeming Gnosis

Can gnosis be redeemed?

Today I began reading Richard Smoley’s Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism. Right away he sets up a tension that I don’t buy into: a conflict between the gnostics — those who have direct mystical experience — and the religionists, those who are the custodians of doctrine and dogma and therefore tend to be suspicious of gnosis. Oh, I suppose it’s a fair assessment of a real tension between those at the center of religious power, and those whose “power” (i.e., personal experience) lurks in the margins. Certainly, the history of world spirituality is littered with mystics, visionaries, buddhas, avatars, and anointed ones who have been attacked, silenced, or otherwise rejected by the religious establishment of their day. Some, like Origen, Meister Eckhart, Jeanne Guyon, and Eriugena, never manage to overcome that smear of heresy that is attached to their name. Others, like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Faustina Kowalska, were for a time condemned by religious authorities, but eventually came to be regarded as saints, exemplars of the spiritual life. And of course, there are the greatest figures of all, those whose radical experience of gnosis or enlightenment not only led to breaking free from old religious forms, but to establishing entirely new ways of faith: Gautama and Jesus are perhaps the most spectacular examples.

But does religion only exist to be a force from which each generation must liberate itself anew? I can’t accept that view, it demonizes religion, thereby creating yet another false duality. Religion stifles gnosis, yes; but perhaps religion also fosters it. And maybe that’s not all the religion stifles, or fosters. Maybe there really is more to all this than the quest for enlightenment.