Facing Down the Gnostic Split

 KKBBSC’s Maiden Master’s of Divinity Class Discovers Why Christology Matters

“Gather up the fragments,” Jesus said, “so that nothing will be wasted.” One of the recent teaching excursions that I failed to report on was a month-long visit to KKBBSC’S new M Div program. The adjacent picture is the sum of the maiden KKBBSC’s M Div class ( If you wonder what it looks like to be 22 years old, just have a gaze). The School is located outside instead of inside the nearly 500 strong undergraduate school that meets in Mae La Camp for Karen refugees. I was asked to teach a course on the Christological struggles during the first 500 years of the church. I began with what most likely was the first Christological struggle that irrupted toward the end of the 1st Century addressed in the Epistle of 1st John. Here follows a brief sketch of my insight from 1st John. The following text communicates the essence of what I now believe is being redressed in 1st John.

FF Bruce, the renowned Scottish New Testament scholar, has shown convincingly, in my judgment, that 1st John is a passionate pushback against a contemporary named Cerinthus. History notes these two lived in the same locale. There is a story that claims that these two accidentally crossed each other’s paths in a Roman bathhouse whereabout hard glances were exchanged. The tension of these two was recorded and lived on in the ancient records that church historians mine. Moreover, Cerinthus’ teaching is also available to us, but admittedly, not firsthand but by his enemies. Cerinthus was infected with what I call the Gnostic Split. The gnostic split, as I am using it here, answers to a Greek view of the world and drives a wedge into reality, dividing its spiritual and material dimensions. The material realm is lowered to the valuation of waste. It is degraded and clings to us, dragging us downward. The material realm is that which forges chains that hold us captive. Matter, all material, chiefly the body, binds us, but the spiritual realm made accessible by way of elitist ‘truth’ or gnosis, i.e., experiential knowledge, and ascetic disciplines liberates us. Cerinthus’ teaching requires a radical revision of the common meaning of the Christian designation Jesus Christ.

Jesus and Christ are ultimately separated in Cerinthus’ teaching. Christ is heavenly, spiritual, divine, but Jesus is earthly, material, lowly. For three and half years from his Baptism onward to Good Friday, Jesus’, wholly identified with material bodily, transient existence, became a mere vessel for the divine Christ- spirit. There was no substantive union. At the cross, Jesus, identified as a human material bodily vessel, was finished and cast off. Christ as wholly spiritual, at the eve of the crucifixion, was fully liberated and ascended to heaven, never exposed to the suffering and ignominy of death on the cross. “Salvation” is complete at this point in Jesus’ short life because, at the eve of death, the material and the spiritual split and go their separate ways, one down and the other up. The vessel is tossed aside because it is material, and materiality has no lasting significance. The spirit now freed is absorbed back into God  (something like that).

There are key verses in this epistle that reveal John’s polemic against Cerinthus more than any others. These are found in chapter 4:2-3. The verses read as follows “ By this, you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, ³ and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world”. The ASV has an alternative reading, the term “confesses” in verse 3 is translated annulleth (If anyone annulleth or annuls this coming in the flesh). F F Bruce quotes the R A Knox translation which reads “no spirit which would disunite Jesus comes from God. ” The Knox translation is known for its precision, and rather than spoon-feeding the reader, it sometimes uses clumsy, but more accurate words, to convey the meaning. Disunites hits the nail on the head.

The issue in 1st John is not the same as that found in Matthew 16, where Jesus “asks who do men say that I am” and the disciples give all the wrong answers that people have come up with, and then, Jesus asks the disciples “who do you say that I am,” and Peter answers “you (Jesus) are the Christ the Son….” The question and affirmation of Jesus’ “Christ” ( i.e., messianic) identity in Matthew 16 and the question and answer of Jesus’ identity in I John are driven by two entirely different concerns. The former  (Matthew 16) is in the setting of Jesus’ identity early on when he came on the scene in Judea and Galilee – whether he was or was not the Messiah ( the Christ) promised by the Prophets. The latter has to do with whether Jesus is united or divided from the eternal Christ of God. Cerinthus is in captivity to the cultural view of reality that prevails in the ancient Greek world. But this is not the end of the problem, only the basis for understanding it. Cerenthus builds on the traditional Greek dualism of the day, his own unique Christological construction that complements and supports his ‘gospel’ – a unique gnostic experience whereby one progressively ascends to spiritual heights.  At the heart of the struggle addressed by John in this epistle is almost surely the Cerinthusian heresy. The divine Christ, which is viewed as heavenly and altogether spiritual, a Christ that descends from and then returns to God, is ultimately divided from the human, earthly material Jesus.

What is John doing in this letter by what he is saying? He is asserting the unity of Jesus and Christ over against Cerinthus’ who separated from these two. In Cerinthus’ model, the “fleshly” Jesus is separated from the Christ of God. In this epistle, John will have nothing to do with this separation but affirms Jesus Christ as the son of God (1 Jn 1:1-3). John cannot talk about Jesus apart from Christ and Christ apart from Jesus. He sinks his ax into the very root of this heretical tree from the very first words he writes in his epistle. He commences his letter by affirming the real materiality of Jesus Christ, calling him the “Word of Life” and “that Eternal Life” that was with the Father, which they “looked upon,” “saw with their own eyes” and “their hands handled.” The physicality and materiality of Jesus Christ are intentionally asserted by these first words and phrases that open the epistle. These words and phrases answer directly to his term “flesh” that I referenced in the preceding paragraph citing Jn 4:2-3. “Jesus Christ come in the flesh.” What is John doing by what he is saying? ‘Flesh’ refuses to surrender Christ over to pure spirituality but pulls Christ back into solidarity with physicality, materiality, and body-soul humanness, as such ‘flesh” always and forever insists on not merely Christ but Jesus Christ.

But why? And the answer that I gave and sought to demonstrate to the class was this: everything that the Christian religion and gospel have to give to us, everything wonderful, marvelous and so very precious and valuable, depends on and rests on this union Jesus & Christ. Or to state it in the negative as a warning, everything valuable and precious is lost when some form of the  ‘Cerinthusian’ gnostic split is put into play.

Here follows a terse attempt to unpack something of the significance of this insistence on the unity of Jesus & Christ versus a bifurcated Cerintusian Christ. Three intimately related levels of reflection come to mind. One is about ‘redemption’ cast by John as the gift of life eternal.  Secondly is the nature of spirituality – life-giving ferments in the soul. And thirdly, ethics come into the picture – walking in the light, i.e., walking according to righteousness versus walking in darkness. The original union asserted by John in refutation over against the disunion of Cerinthus exerts a decided influence informing and shaping the unique character of these three. In the following, I discuss each of these, but in truth, I have found it impossible to discuss one without bringing some aspect of the other two into the discussion.

Christology is not an isolated inquiry about the unique nature of Jesus Christ. It has everything to do with the distinctive Christian teaching about salvation, which John identifies as “life eternal.” According to John, this Life is given to us. It is not innately lodged within us as a spiritual dimension. “This is the record,” John states, “God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son” ( 1 Jn 5: 11-12). As such, salvation is not a progressive spiritual experience; instead, it is the gift of Life given to us in this peculiar place, in this union Jesus Christ, because in him, humanity’s sin was expiated or “propitiated.” God did this propitiating through his Son (4:10) because of this, the gates of Eternal Life open to us.

This changes everything. The believer ceases to look within herself to find the spiritual progress and life that eventually leads one upward to “God.” In Christian salvation, we do not progressively go up to God; God comes down to us, and in Christ Jesus, He takes humanity into himself, and there redeems humanity full stop. Via Jesus Christ, eternal life with God and others is entirely ours now, even though we do not yet tangibly possess it. Faith believes this good news and hope waits for it ( I Jn 3:1-3). Therefore in John’s teaching, spirituality is about living by faith – having something we cannot yet see, and it is about hope, i.e., waiting for something that graciously belongs to us now but is soon to be bestowed. Faith can be and often is a struggle; spirituality is not all peaches and cream. John writes in chapter 4, “This is the victory that overcomes the world even our faith.” Add to this, in 1 John, spirituality is about present Joy over the life given to us in Jesus Christ and fellowship with the Father and the Son who are the source of this gift and others who believe and are filled with joy and hope ( 1 Jn 1:1-5).

The earthiness of Jesus Christ described in Chapter one ( verses 1-5), and also by the term flesh (“Jesus Christ came in the flesh“) flies in the face of Cerinthus’ spirituality. Abstract ‘flesh’ from this equation, i.e., abstract Jesus coming in the flesh and one “hellenizes” eternal life, i.e., reshapes it after a Greek versus a Hebrew understanding of reality. Salvation becomes the absorption of spirit (with a small s) into the divine Spirit, completed at the eve of one’s death.  In the gnostic split, all material form, ultimately all fleshliness, earthiness, all historical particularity vanishes, all psycho-somatic identity disappears.

The ‘Jesus Christ’ kind of redemption unites heaven and earth, the material with the Spiritual, God, and humanity (real humanity). Material this side of the incarnation, this side of the union of Jesus & Christ, is in the grip of redemption. It cannot be negated, amputated, subjugated, nor separated from the spiritual. Heaven and earth cannot be sundered. ‘Creation,’ incarnation, the resurrection of the body, life eternal, the future of the earth, particular human identity – the I, the self, the ego all hinge on the affirmation asserted in John 4:2 & 3.

During one’s life, according to Cerinthus, the object is, of course, to live on a higher spiritual level and suppress the material level. In this way, the complete split or separation that is consummated at the eve of death is reflected in one’s ‘ethics’ before death. The more spiritual a person (so-called spiritual), and the less entangled with material bodily existence, the closer one is to the divine spiritual essence, which is her destiny. The imminent onset or approach of death completes this. Jesus’ significance, according to Cerinthus’ logic, is that he took spiritual existence further than any other. He is our example. He ‘saves’ because he is a forerunner, a path breaker, the exemplar of this spiritual way bar none.

Cerinthus has, by all deductions, constructed a spiritual ladder from the earthly historical material realm to heaven. Every round goes higher higher –  at the eve of death, the final release of the spirit occurs. At this point, it returns to its destiny in God. But the old Apostle John ( maybe ninety years old by the time he delivered this epistle) asks us to step off the gnostic spiritual escalator and turn out to our sisters and brothers who are in need of deploying acts of love that deliver relief. “Love not in word and in tongue but in deed and in truth,” he admonishes in this epistle. “This phrase “in deed and in truth” is anti gnostic to its core. The ethic of love, rather than going up higher and higher, goes down to earth lower and lower where one meets and serves others by putting love into action. Love is historical, incarnational, earthy. And it is empowered not merely by will or by one’s nobility (as if love was a stable moral compass lodged in human nature), nor is love adequately empowered and sustained merely by the existence of a commandment or an imperative. Ultimately by God alone, love is generated. God is the embodiment of love (“God is love” 1 Jn 4:8). God makes Godself known by love, that is to state, God makes himself known by deed and action, by material, by bodily solidarity with humanity in need. Jesus Christ, coming, living, ministering, suffering, and dying on the cross in time and place is the concreteness of God’s love turned out to serve and help humans in real need (4:9&10). The ethic of love derives from discovering that one is on the receiving end of this love. This divine love made manifest and delivered in Jesus Christ empowers human love. When doing good( i.e., ethics) is disconnected from the receiving of divine love (i.e., spirituality), it is in danger of losing its strength and depth. Sever the human delivery of love to others from the divine delivery of love to each of us, and the ethic of love begins to short circuit, atrophy, and drain off into sentimentality. This is what I believe happened to Cerenthus. Cerinthus’ Christianity morphed into a spirituality that ascends higher and higher above the earth until it ceased to intersect human need and suffering.

The unprovable metaphysics that speaks of a God who sends his only Son to do things for us we could not do for ourselves, resulting in life eternal offends modern rationality just as it did ancient Greek rationality. But this is the mainspring, the wheel of love that turns every other wheel. It is this invisible divine source that ultimately empowers the radical nature of agape love, the radical turning out toward another in need requiring the downsizing and lowering of the self to that of a servant to others whether high and low by society’s standards. Where this divine wheel is not turning in a person’s life, one’s compassion and care for others are in real danger of growing hard and dry. For sure, Jesus said I have others who are not of this fold, but this is what Christian believes – “the Love of God has shed abroad in our heart via the Holy Spirit”(Romans 5:1), and once they’re in the heart, it lubricates the ethic of love. Even so, we must work out what God works in (Philippians 2:12&13), i.e., we must make real choices in time and place and roll up our sleeves and take action.

End Notes