AGAINST THE PROTESTANT GNOSTICS This page intentionally left blank AGAINST THE PROTESTANT GNOSTICS Philip J. Lee OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Oxford To Roberta Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1987 by Oxford University Press First published in 1987 by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1993. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-m-Publication Data Lee, PhilipJ. Against the Protestant Gnostics. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Gnosticism. 2. Protestantism—20th century. I. Title. BT1390.L35 1986 280'.4 85-48304 ISBN 0-19-504067-8 ISBN 0-19-508436-5 (PBK.) Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (Toronto: Canadian Bible Society, 1952, 1971) unless otherwise indicated. Quotations from Irenaeus, Against Heresies, are from the translation edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, American Edition, Vol. 1: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, revised and arranged by A. Cleveland Coxe (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977), except when other translations are indicated. Quotations from Calvin's Institutes are from the two-volume translation by Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1953), except when other translations are indicated. Excerpts from Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy. Copyright © 1971 by Walker Percy. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. Excerpts from "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening" from Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine by Tom Wolfe. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroiix, Inc. Thomas Wolfe, excerpted from Look Homeward Angel. Copyright 1929 Charles Scribner's Sons; copy- right renewed © 1957 Edward C. Aswell and/or Fred W. Wolfe. Reprinted with the permission of Charles Scnbncr's Sons. From The Tomorrow-Tamer and Other Stories—"The Merchant of Heaven" by Margaret Lawrence. Used by permission of the Canadian Publishers, McClelland and Stewart Limited. The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Excerpts from Faust (Part One) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by George Madison Priest, copyright © 1963, reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. 3 5 7 () S 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of Americ on ,u ui free paper Excerpts from The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, copyright © 1946, reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc. Copyright 1944 by E. E. Cummings. Reprinted from his volume Complete Poems 1913-1962 by permis- sion of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Excerpts from Louisa May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Atcott. Copyright © 1977 by Martha Saxton. First published by Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted by permission of Wallace & Sheil Agency, Inc. Excerpts from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Copyright 1929 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; copyright © renewed 1957 by Mary L. Hampson. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company. The lines from "Corsons Inlet" from Collected Poems, \95\~\91\, by A. R. Ammons, are reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1972 by A. R. Ammons. The lines from "For Harold Bloom" from Sphere, The Form of Motion, by A. R. Ammons, are reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1974 by A. R. Ammons. This page intentionally left blank Foreword At once perceptive and learned, cogently argued and critically dis- cerning, thoughtful and thought-provoking, witty and wide-ranging in scope, these chapters invite, indeed, evoke the reader's determina- tion to see the analysis through to the end. That so solidly re- searched, clearly focused and challenging an exposition and interpre- tation of a theological thesis—and its implications for the faith and life of the members of churches today—should have emerged from the reflections, vocational commitment and extensive experience of the preacher and pastor of a demanding congregation of Christian believers in—of all places—Saint John, New Brunswick, is rare enough. The sustained level of its competence is doubly rare! "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? . Come and see" (John 1:46). A serious and engaging theological work from the midst of the complexities and claims of parish life is remarkable enough. That such a work should come to us from "north of the border" can only be welcomed as a foretaste of cultural and religious reciprocity long overdue. As the title suggests, Philip Lee's thesis and its themes are evoked by the classical exposition and criticism of gnosticism written by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in Gaul, toward the end of the second century C.E. The cardinal gnostic heresies then were: promise of salva- tion by knowledge rather than by faith; stress upon secret or hidden, as against open and available, revelation; disregard and devaluation of nature in favor of the pure, free and unencumbered spirit; and concen- tration upon the radical individuality of the self. Consequently, gnos- tic pursuit and piety were escapist, elitist and syncretistic. Lee gives contemporary v;':ality to these themes and their consequences for pi- ety, values anJ culture and subjects them to searching criticism by way of central and vivid contrasts to orthodox Protestant convictions, for example, the good creation over against an alienated humanity; knowl- v i i Foreword edge of the mighty acts of God and knowledge that saves; salvation through pilgrimage and through escape; the believing community and the knowing self; ordinary people and the spiritual elite; and particular- ity and selective syncretism. The thesis is steadily adhered to and extensively documented with citations and allusions. Lee draws upon basic Protestant theological sources; upon formative theological writings of the eighteenth, nine- teenth and twentieth centuries, upon nineteenth- and twentieth- century poets and novelists, and upon the ways in which the faith and life of Protestantism in America, from Puritanism to revivalism and religious syncretism, have been affected and gnostically trans- formed. The bearers of these transformations cover the spectrum from the great to the not-so-great: in theology, Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance; in literature, Herman Melville and Walker Percy; and in social and political theory, Max Weber and Tom Wolfe. All these, and not a few others, have been used, misused and abused by fundamentalists, evangelicals and liberals in different but ultimately consensual ways, as the creative meaning and power of Protestant orthodoxy have fallen into disarray. This book is a penetrating and provocative assessment of the promise and denouement of Protestant orthodoxy. Lee has sounded a call for a root renewal and redirection of the parish reality and structure of the community of believers to be a regenerative leaven in the churches of North America and in North American culture and society. He does not hesitate to challenge established thinkers and widely accepted values and truisms that currently mark the interpene- tration of religion and culture, economics and politics in North Amer- ica. No one is spared; no volatile issue is passed over. The relentless probing of these pages leads to decisive judgments about the shape of the liturgy and the trivialization of Christian nurture, about prayer and justice, and about what ought to be done and what left undone in matters such as: ordination and church discipline; psychiatric counsel- ing and the Human Potential movement; ecology and nuclear weap- ons; normative and variant sexuality; marriage, procreation and the family; greed and poverty; and society and self. The author of these pages does not shrink from the risk of being dismissed or disregarded as a purveyor of antiquated nostrums that not only have been over- taken by events but have contributed more than a little to bringing about the very events he now proposes to overtake. The integrity and radicalness with which he calls into question the wisdom of the wise and the commitments of the foolish are ventured in obedience c < /1 Foreword to the Protestant vision of the place and purpose of the world of time and space and things, of the nature and destiny of people, and of the freedom, responsibility and fulfillment promised and given to "the earth and all the inhabitants thereof" (Ps. 75:3), whom God has called "out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2:9). At a time when theology, preaching and participation in the life of a community of believers have become as devoid of meaning and as syncretistic "as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Cor 13:1), these pages are as instructive and illuminating as they are astringent. They ask for neither concurrence nor