--Hannah Arendt
"Jesus said, `Blessed are those alone and chosen, for you will find
the kingdom. For you are from it, and to it you will return'" (Gos.
Thom. 49).
In our Yahoo chat room the other day, someone asked me about this
verse, and generally what it means to talk about "the chosen"
or "the elect" in a Gnostic context. This concept has been another
of the many subjects through which Christianity has attempted to
denigrate Gnosticism, in this case by suggesting that we Gnostics
believe that only a certain (small) class of people are capable of
gnosis, creating a kind of fundamental soteriological hierarchy. In
other words, this would mean that being "chosen" would be a kind of
volitional and constitutive act, presumably by God, without which
one cannot enter through the gate of knowledge.
There may indeed have been some Gnostics in the past who believed
this, and who suggested that initiates into their religious groups
could only be drawn from a very small "gnosis-capable" part of the
human population, so to speak. However, the earliest articulations
of Gnosticism, and pre-Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas,
suggest in contrast a radically inclusive version of "the chosen," a
version that is flowering again today in our neo-classical Gnostic
Renaissance. I would like to take a few minutes here to suggest the
outlines of this understanding, which I hope may be helpful for you
in considering the history and theology of Gnosticism, and your own
personal spiritual outlook.
While the limited, exclusive theory of "the chosen" is attributed to
Gnostics by mainstream Christians, it actually is far more clearly a
part of THEIR religious traditions. The notion of predestination,
in particular, has made this idea of "divine election" profoundly
volitional in its metaphysical origins and constitutive in its
metaphysical effects on human beings. What many do not realize is
that a fairly robust form of predestination continues to be
theologically present in the belief systems of many denominations
that no longer emphasize it publicly, such as the Catholic Church –
in the case of Catholicism, as recently as the Council of Trent that
followed the Protestant Reformation, a Catholic doctrine of
predestination was solemnly affirmed. I say this only in passing to
provide you another example of the many inconsistencies in Christian
denunciations of Gnosticism – although, as I have said before, we
should not expect to find any consistency, because Christian polemic
against Gnosticism is not fundamentally concerned with being either
rational or coherent, but rather with foisting off on Gnosticism all
the difficulties, repressions, and forms of guilt that have
accumulated over the centuries in the massive social and cultural
edifice that calls itself the Christian church.
Now, on to the contrasting INCLUSIVE theory of "the chosen." What
in fact does it mean to be chosen or set apart? Is this setting
apart purely self-referential, or does it have an object? In other
words, are we just chosen, or are we chosen FOR something? This is
the key distinction that allows us to make sense of the whole
concept. When we embark on the path of gnosis, we are responding to
the basic call of the spirit within us, and the spirit beyond us
that ultimately is God. Because of this response, we are chosen by
God and set apart to be as it were the avatars of the spirit in the
world. As we move forward toward enlightenment, we have more and
more responsibility for the actualization of our own spirits but
also for true spiritual compassion of those all around us. We
are "the chosen" not indeed as if those around us are incapable of
gnosis, but in fact to be the instruments by which their gnosis can
come about as well! This is, of course, not at all the same as the
mainstream Christian notion of conversion, because that is about
dominating the other, about forcing the other into your own
prefabricated "truth." Being called and chosen, we are to form a
kind of sacred river, flowing through the world with what looks to
those outside to be passivity and even surrender, but gently picking
up the salt of the spirit as it were on our way to the sea.
So, the idea of a certain "chosen" group does not necessarily mean
in any way that other individuals are incapable of gnosis, for it
seems certain that other human beings, who share the basic
experiences of life with us, must have those experiences rooted in
the same kind of spiritual nature. Rather, being chosen, or
constituting an "elect," is in many ways a practical description,
since most of the people around us, fully capable of gnosis as they
are, are held back by many painful and frightening things from
taking those first steps that set us apart at the very beginning.
This point is made clear by another saying from the Gospel of
Thomas, which is included in the canonical New Testament as
well: "Jesus said, `The harvest is great but the laborers are few.
Beseech the Lord, therefore, to send out laborers to the harvest'"
(73).
Look around you: how great is this harvest, how ripe the fruit of
human beings standing just on the front porch of enlightenment,
ready to take that first step through the door! How late the time
is, my dear friends, and how quickly the sands of time are falling;
look at the darkness descending and the blood-red sun sinking low on
the horizon, as our world is weighed down ever more by the pain of
violence and hatred. How many sit in the lingering twilight,
yearning for the night to come – for the pain of living in this
world without joining in the life of the spirit has become
unbearable without drugs, and distractions, and addictions that ease
the pain.
We have been called to be those laborers, to be those shepherds, to
live not only for ourselves, but for all. To be chosen is to be set
apart as a gift to others, not to be elevated above others. Pride
is extinguished in love, and the ultimate love leads us to the
sacrifice of the bodhisattva, to the sacrifice of Christ. While the
light is still with us, before the clock strikes the closing of the
day, let us seek love and the fruits of love. For truly "there is
light within a person of light, and that person lights up the whole
world" (Gos Thom. 24).
In Christ and Sophia,
Matthew