Following the 2003 publication of Dan Brown’s publishing phenomenon, The Da Vinci Code,
there has been a renaissance of interest in the ancient heresy of
Gnosticism. This ancient heresy has exerted its tentacles deep into the
fabric of contemporary life, even influencing the church in many
unhelpful ways. (To read about some of the ways that Gnostic ideas have
infiltrated the church, see my article, ‘Eight Gnostic Myths You May Have Imbibed’.)
At
the heart of the Gnostic heresy was the notion that the material world
is bad. If the fundamental antithesis for Christianity was between
good and evil, for the Gnostics the fundamental antithesis was between
the physical and the spiritual. The material world is bad, they argued,
precisely because it is physical. True spirituality involves escape
from this world. Whereas the Christian tradition taught that redemption
history culminates in the resurrection of the body, Gnostics believed
that the goal of salvation was eternal disembodiment.
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