Commentary. The early Church Fathers, most of whom were fanatics with an axe to grind…

El día de ayer comencé la lectura de un librito cuyo título es por demás atractivo: The Gnostics. The first Christian heretics.

Escrito por Sean Matin, este libro ofrece una visión más o menos bien documentada sobre el gnosticismo, sin preocuparse en demasía por los aspectos más áridos de su tema, y en cambio, sí resaltando los elementos más sórdidos, y que debieran tratarse con un mínimo de cuidado.

Apenas en las primeras páginas, el polemista enconado hace su aparición, en un párrafo por demás cuestionable:

Despite the writings of the early Church Fathers, most of whom were fanatics with an axe to grind, the term ‘Gnostic’ was not universally used by Gnostic teachers such as Valentinus and Marcion, who usually simply referred to themselves as Christians, nor by Church apologists such as Tertullian and Irenaeus, who often called them simply ‘heretics’. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the Gnostics themselves were comprised of diverse groups which did not have a uniform set of beliefs; indeed, diversity is one of the hallmarks of Gnosticism. Furthermore, not all Gnostics were Christian – some were Jews, some Pagan.
Modern scholarship is divided over what is actually meant by the term ‘Gnosticism’. In 1966, a colloquium of scholars met at Messina in Italy to establish exactly what is meant by Gnosticism and gnosis. They concluded that Gnosticism refers to the religious systems developed in the early centuries of the Common Era, while gnosis is the attaining of knowledge. One could therefore have gnosis, but not be a Gnostic. (For the present book, we will try to adhere to the Messina definitions.) The political theorist Eric Voegelin further muddied the waters when he attempted to define Gnosticism as being derived from a general feeling of alienation and disconnectedness with society. As a result, he detected Gnosticism in Marxism, Communism and Nazism, all of which, according to Voegelin, were movements which wanted to bring about apocalypse (he dubbed it ‘immanentising the eschaton’).
Gnostic tendencies have since been spotted in a wide variety of writers, thinkers, political and spiritual movements, and also across the spectrum of popular culture, from Hollywood movies to computer games and comics. This bewilderingly diverse group includes the likes of not only Jung, but also William Blake, Goethe, Herman Melville, Albert Camus, Hegel, Nietzsche, WB Yeats, Franz Kafka, Existentialists, all manner of Theosophists, Jack Kerouac, Philip K Dick, computer games such as the Xenosaga series, comics such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Alan Moore’s Promethea and movies such as The Truman Show and the Matrix trilogy.

Martin, The Gnostics. The first Christian Heretics, pp. 15-17.  2006.

Dejando de lado ese tono sensacionalista, ávido de publicidad y reconocimiento, hay un punto a favor que este libro tiene de manera indudable: obliga al lector a repensar por completo su visión de la Iglesia, y en cuanto tal, ofrece la posibilidad de indicar un sendero de estudio e investigación por demás válido, que quienquiera que esté interesado en el tema podrá sortear, tomando sus propios riesgos y obteniendo también sus propias conclusiones.

La visión panorámica -si bien afectada por ese afán de polémica- de la Historia de la Iglesia de los primeros tiempos, resalta de una manera práctica y también continua los altibajos que adolece dicho periodo histórico. Y sin dudar en llamar a Pablo ‘verdadero fundador del cristianismo’ o al mismo Pablo ‘el primer hereje cristiano’, el autor también repasa los testimonios más importantes sobre el tema, en este libro de divulgación que involuntariamente resulta estar muy bien formado, aunque la argumentación general no se atreve a sacar las últimas conclusiones de semejantes tramas.

Un libro por demás interesante, que puede leerse como una curiosidad, y de la que, escudriñando atentamente, puede obtenerse y sin duda alguna, un gran provecho.

México, Frontera Norte. 9 de Noviembre de 2011.