Gnostic judaism

I suggested at the end of the last post that judaizing and gnosticizing heresies may not be so different. This opinion is supported by JB Lightfoot's analysis of the letters of Ignatius, which condemn both docetic heretics and judaizing ones, and do so in a way that suggests Ignatius saw them as two sides of the same heresy.

Lightfoot specifically analyzes the passages in the letters to the Magnesians and Philadelphians where Ignatius attacks the Jews.

To the Magnesians, for instance, he warns against "heterodoxies and antiquated fables" and says that "if to the present hour we live in the observance of Judaic rites, we confess that we have not received grace." Lightfoot hears echoes of 1 Timothy 1:4, 4:7, and Titus 1:14 here, and concludes that "a closely allied form of Gnostic Judaism is suggested, which taught by myths or fables . . . the genealogy of angelic beings or emanations, which were intended to bridge over the chasm between God and the World."

In the letter to the Philadelphians, Ignatius first denounces Judaism, and then turns to stress the flesh of Jesus, His cross and passion, a sign that the heretics he opposes were denying these things. Lightfoot again finds evidence that "their Judaism was Docetic or Gnostic."

In general, he conclueds that Ignatius's letters "illustrate the truth, which is sufficiently confirmed from other quarters, that the earliest forms of Christian Gnosticism were Judaic." He sees the cross as a particular stumbling block that would trip Jews over into doceticism: "This Docetic view of Christ's humanity would appeal to popular Judaism - the Judaism of the Scribes and Pharisees - only so far as it related to the passion. A suffering Christ was a stumbling-block in the way of popular Messianic conceptions."

One part of the connection of Judaizing and gnosticism appears to be this: God did indeed act through mediating beings under the old covenant. They delivered the law, and when Yahweh appeared in the OT, He appeared as an Angel. Judaizing is basically a denial of historical progress, an arrested adolescence that refuses to die to childhood and accept adulthood. Judaizers of the first century wanted to stay in the world of mediating angels; they didn't want to grow into the awesome reality that God had come to humanity as a man.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, June 09, 2007 at 10:49 AM

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