human
With some to-day, and with many more to-morrow, the burning question is, or will be--not how did a peculiarly silly and licentious heresy rise within the Church--but how did the Church rise out of the great Gnôstic movement, and how did the dynamic ideas of the Gnôsis become crystallised into Dogmas? I do not indicate a solution; I do not express an opinion. I call attention to a fact in the world of scholarship that will not be without its decided reaction upon the plain man. But the study of the ancient Gnôsis, and indeed of mysticism generally, has left another suggestion that seems laden with limitless possibilities. Let us first go back to what I said as to the communication of certain
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or
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under a sacramental veil. These processes were held to modify the nature of the person who submitted to them in a peculiar manner that was likened to the impress or
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of a seal upon wax. These seals or
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could not only be acquired through formal rites and by the laying on of the hands of a master, but also, I am disposed to believe, by a certain mode of study--I am developing the Gnôstic theory, not stating one of my own--namely, that of a highly symbolic literature. The objection of the Gnôstic to a plain statement of facts would probably be somewhat as follows:
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What you say is very good and true as far as it goes, but it is 'Pistis,' not Gnôsis; Faith, not Knowledge. You desire to be a changed man. Pistis will change you to a certain extent. I have nothing to say against it, but it will not change you in the radical way that Gnôsis does. If you went on to argue that your statement was reasonable and received admirable support from logic and philosophy, he would probably reply:
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Philosophy of the kind you mention is excellent, and forms a basis for Gnôsis which is not contrary to reason, though it is above it. Gnôsis is a rebirth by which you become a god, and then you will have no need to find out things by talking and discursive reasoning, for everything will be within yourself and you will know all things in a vital way, by an act of simple intuition in the end. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' If you tie yourself down to logic, you will not know the real things, the 'Things that are,' by getting inside them. Your knowledge will be external, superficial. Gnôsis, you may be surprised to learn, is not just 'knowing,' it is light _and_ 'life,' living and being as well. This must not be taken as an attacking reason; if you join our school you will have a stiff course of Plato. You ought to know the 'Things that are' from the ordinary point of view, from outside, before you approach them with the idea of getting inside them, and so raising them up within yourself as far-shining lives. Afterwards you will study in a new manner that will seem madness to the common-sensed; and a Divine Madness indeed it is, for it will lead you to the secret of the Cross.