Which Came First, the Orthodoxy or the Heresy?:
In the second century Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyones in 180 AD, wrote a work entitled Adversus Haereses – Against Heresies. Chapter XXXI:1-3 of this text is subtitled Doctrines of the Cainites and states:
…They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas…They also hold, like Carpocrates, that men cannot be saved until they have gone through all kinds of experience. An angel, they maintain, attends them in every one of their sinful and abominable actions, and urges them to venture on audacity and incur pollution…And they maintain that this is ‘perfect knowledge,’ without shrinking to rush into such actions as it is not lawful even to name…They have now been fully exposed; and simply to exhibit their sentiments, is to obtain a victory over them.
The Cainites claimed to have descended from Cain, made heroes of the Biblical villains, and considered the God of the Bible as an absolutely evil being who was to be defeated by the death of Jesus which would, apparently, bring about the end of the worship of this evil Biblical God.
The title Cainite is such an inflammatory term that it is perhaps only rivaled by Judas Priests (the name of a heavy metal band). Yet, it is understandable why they would refer to themselves as Cainites since they believed that matter, such as physical bodies, is evil while spirit is good. Therefore, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel was a righteous act since Cain liberated Abel from the evil of his physical body and freed him into the spirit realm. Thus, we can likewise understand why Judas is their hero for he also liberated Jesus from the evil of his physical body and freed him into the spirit realm.
The Naassenes or Ophites the word “snake” as derived from Hebrew and Greek paid obeisance to the serpent/satan of the Genesis Garden of Eden. Certain kinds of Gnosticism, as that taught by Marcion, signed their own proverbial death warrants by practicing extreme asceticism. Their revulsion of the material/physical world was such that they gave up marriage and childbearing in order to not perpetuate the creation of the inferior God of the Bible. Moreover, the Gnostics sometimes referred to the supreme spirit realm God as Sophia and to the false god of the Bible as Hystera. They believed that Eve had conceived Cain from Sophia and Abel from Hystera. Thus, Cain was demonstrating the supremacy of Sophia over Hystera by killing Abel.
The National Geographic Society (hereinafter NGS) states that Gnostics:
In this interpretation the Crucifixion, enabled by the betrayal, is necessary not so much for the forgiveness of human sins, but to free Christ’s divine self from its mortal cloak.1
Marvin Meyer of Chapman University states:
He will at last get rid of his material, physical flesh, thereby liberating the real Christ, the divine being inside.”2
The fact that The Gospel of Judas was rejected by the early church proves their care for protecting the original text of scripture, it proves their careful handling of the traditional teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, it shows us why and how the text of the New Testament has been passed on to us with such an astonishing level of reliability. Orthodoxy allows us to identify heresy and heresy strengthens orthodoxy. This is because it is deviance that leads a community to come to terms with what it really believes, why it believes it and the setting up of standards, boundaries or canonicity. Some people seem to think that Christianity has no right to establish and defend its orthodoxy. As if it had no right to maintain its core teachings and respond to and ward off faulty teachings.
It is interesting to note the sorts of things that fascinate some people. On the one hand The New York Times (hereinafter NYT) quotes Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton who specializes in studies of the Gnostics, as making a point about how we are just now starting to lean about early Christian diversity:
These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion and demonstrating how diverse – and fascinating – the early Christian movement really was.3
Meanwhile, the NGS states:
Irenaeus had plenty of heresies to contend with.4
Which is something that has been known since at least 180 AD when Irenaeus was Bishop of Lyons. Yet, let us not suppose that early Christianity was a shotgun blast that went in a hundred directions at once. Like any other world-view it had its orthodox-majority core as well as its tektites. Also, do note that Prof. Elaine Pagels has been thoroughly discredited in many fronts even though she is known for her erudite insights into the very heart of theology, as seen in one particularly elucidating comment,
The people who loved, circulated and wrote down these gospels did not think they were heretics.5
This seems reasonable enough and is quite accurate-the Gnostic writings are in fact, orthodox. They portray orthodox Gnostic doctrine but not orthodox Christian doctrine. However, we suspect that Pagel had no such lucidity about the matter in mind. In fact, please meet the real Pagel and her methods by reading The Pagels Imposture.
Whatever diversity did exit in early Christianity it was not due to the Gnostic gospels. These were written from 150 to 400 years AD. Furthermore, why were they considered heretical? Due to the very fact that orthodoxy identified them for precisely what they were-late dated forgeries. Also note worthy is the fact that Christians were originally know as the way and not one of the ways. It is also fascinating to note that it seems as if in the view of skeptical/liberals Christians are either blind faithed sheep who mindlessly follow one single set of teachings or else are so varied in their beliefs that they have no unifying doctrines and certainly no right to say who a Christian is and is not.
The NYT referred to Irenaeus as “a hunter of heretics,”6 and the NGS referred to “the outrage of Bishop Irenaeus,” and to “Irenaeus’s hostility,” moreover, referring to him as “the angry bishop,” who “attacked,” Gnosticism and launched “a scathing attack on the mystical Gnosticism,” by means of a “fierce denunciation.”7
As far as I can tell no one is responding to Irenaeus’ arguments nor to his counterarguments against heretics. It seems that he is being besmirched in an ad hominem manner simply for having the audacity to defend his faith and respond to those who were deviating from it. He is being vilified for speaking out against the heroes of liberals and skeptics i.e., anyone and anything that contradicts the Bible and the Judeo-Christian faith as a whole.
In an article entitled, “Gospel of Judas Written – Prior to A.D. 180,” the NGS stated,
The Gospel of Judas predates the A.D. 180 publication of St. Irenaeus’ Against Heresies…Its existence has long been known, primarily because of surviving anti-heretical works that denounce its tenets.8
Please do note that there is no direct proof that the “Gospel of Judas” mentioned by Irenaeus is the same one known to us today by that same name. It very well could be, since he claims that it was written by a sect of Gnostics etc., but the real connection is the title.
Ultimately, it was Gnostics themselves that did themselves in and not the oppression of the mean and nasty orthodox Christians. The message of Christianity is to be openly shared with the world. The message of Gnosticism was a guarded secret reserved for a select few. The secrecy of mystery religions is what brought them to ruin-they literally excluded themselves from growth.
The same can be said for all of the Gnostic writings:
1-They are all virtually devoid of manuscript evidence.
2-They are mostly dated by their quotations in the writings of others.
3-Some do not even exist outside of citations i.e., they are represented by exactly zero manuscripts.
4-The manuscripts we do have are very decrepit fragments peppered with missing text.