Great CT Article Quote | NT Wright, Postmodern Evangelism & Gnosticism

What do you make of the popularity of this stuff?

The Gnostic conspiracy theory says that orthodoxy hushed up the really exciting thing and promoted this boring sterile thing with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And of course there’s a great lie underneath that. In the second and third centuries, the people being thrown to the lions and burned at the stake and sawed in two were not the ones reading Thomas and Judas and the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary. They were the ones reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Because the empire is perfectly happy with Gnosticism. Gnosticism poses no threat to the empire. Whereas Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John do. It’s the church’s shame that in the last 200 years, the church has muzzled Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and turned them into instruments of a controlling, sterile orthodoxy. But the texts themselves are explosive.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/january/22.38.html 

No Tag

1 comment.

Sophia Sadek
Comment on January 5th, 2007.

Thanks for the posting.

I beg to disagree that ancient Gnosticism posed no threat to imperial Rome. One of the Roman protagonists, Plotinus, wrote about the subversive nature of Gnosticism.

It may be the case that the orthodox suffered more at the hands of pre-Constantine Rome than did the Gnostics. After the Nicene Council, however, it was the heretics who were martyred by the orthodox. In fact, the body count is probably greater on the side of heresy than it is on the side of orthodoxy.

Also, the “controlling, sterile orthodoxy” goes back much farther than the past two centuries. It was alive and well in the fourth century.

Leave a comment

Names and email addresses are required (email addresses aren't displayed), url's are optional.

Comments may contain the following xhtml tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>