The Gnostic Temptation in the Catholic Church

Gnosticism is rife in American Christianity to­day. Philip Lee, in his Against the Protestant Gnostics, argues that it is endemic in the Protestant churches, and Donna Steichen, in her Ungodly Rage, has shown how pervasive it is becom­ing in Catholic life. We are once again faced with the same dividing line that emerged between the Gnostics and orthodox Christianity in the second and third centuries. The question is the same now as then: Does the Church offer salvific truth and grace, or can we do away with that, and instead just rely on knowledge gleaned from myth, psychology, and per­sonal experience? This in turn is related to the signifi­cance of the Resurrection for our salvation: Is it sim­ply illustrative of human possibilities, as the Gnostics of old thought, or is it a unique event that reveals on what our salvation rests?

Harold Bloom, in his recent book The American Religion, suggests that there is a form of Gnostic reli­gion that is intrinsic to American culture. It empha­sizes the priority of information for salvation, the in­nate divinity of the individual self, and emotional ex­periences of transcendence. He sees this “religion” as pervading every Christian denomination in the coun­try, including Catholicism. If he is right, then we are witnessing a battle in the Catholic Church between authentic Catholicism and this pervasive religious attitude, which, if not uniquely American, is something that American culture most clearly exemplifies.

The essence of Gnosticism is the emphasis on knowledge as the key to salvation. Salvation comes through information about who we are, what our potential is, what prevents us from realizing it. As Bloom observed, Americans are “obsessed with infor­mation,” Gnosticism “was (and is) a kind of informa­tion theory,” and the biblical account of creation and the Fall, which Gnostics reject, “concerned matter and energy,” whereas Gnosticism “is all information.”

Gnosticism is also bound up with a “technol­ogy” of salvation. It is concerned with the “effective mechanics” for releasing humans from constraints. We as a culture are obsessed with gaining such effec­tive knowledge. We believe that through correct in­formation and effective techniques we can escape any evil. Witness the enormous faith we place in educa­tion to defeat all our current social evils, from drug addiction to teen pregnancy. Witness the faith we place in psychology to give the necessary information about ourselves and others that will enable us to re­late “effectively” to them.