A Beggar At The Table

I know. It’s been a long time coming. I just needed the spark to get back at my writing. And that spark came in a pleasant, if desperately erroneous read, The Beliefnet Guide to Gnosticism and Other Vanished Christianities. I picked up this book for $4 at a local bookstore because I thought I saw some names of heretics I had not yet known. So I would like to fill in some of my gaps in the Ante-Nicene period using some of the people and heresies listed in this book, beginning with Carpocrates.

Please note that I’m not going to use the book as a primary source; it spends far too much time fawning over heretics, as its title would suggest. But it was good for getting my dander up! Having said that, on with the hunt.

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Carpocrates has the honour of being one of the more interesting of the heretics. He is viewed as a ’saint’ by those who hold to modern Gnosticism. He is from very early times. Both Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria have a lot to say against Carpocrates, which would put him likely in the middle second century, part of the main wave of Gnosticism. His was a very logical theology, given his presuppositions. His presuppositions were more Platonic than Christian, and they lead him to an interesting place.

Basically, in the words of Irenaeus,

Carpocrates, again, and his followers maintain that the world and the things which are therein were created by angels greatly inferior to the unbegotten Father. They also hold that Jesus was the son of Joseph, and was just like other men, with the exception that he differed from them in this respect, that inasmuch as his soul was steadfast and pure, he perfectly remembered those things which he had witnessed within the sphere of the unbegotten God. On this account, a power descended upon him from the Father, that by means of it he might escape from the creators of the world; and they say that it, after passing through them all, and remaining in all points free, ascended again to him, and to the powers, which in the same way embraced like things to itself.

Salvation is about remembering the perfect sphere of the unbegotten God and so freeing yourself from this inferior mortal realm. This “remembering” is kind of like Plato and his teaching of anamnesis. Jesus had this memory from the start and was thus the model for us to follow. But unlike Him, we don’t have that perfect memory. We need to be freed from our mortal chains and liberated into eternity. Part of this freeing comes about from realizing that you are part of a fallen, broken creation. According to Irenaeus, who seems to have done his legwork on this one,

They affirm that for this reason Jesus spoke the following parable:–”Whilst thou art with thine adversary in the way, give all diligence, that thou mayest be delivered from him, lest he give thee up to the judge, and the judge surrender thee to the officer, and he cast thee into prison. Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt not go out thence until thou pay the very last farthing.” They also declare the “adversary” is one of those angels who are in the world, whom they call the Devil, maintaining that he was formed for this purpose, that he might lead those souls which have perished from the world to the Supreme Ruler. They describe him also as being chief among the makers of the world, and maintain that he delivers such souls [as have been mentioned] to another angel, who ministers to him, that he may shut them up in other bodies; for they declare that the body is “the prison.” Again, they interpret these expressions, “Thou shalt not go out thence until thou pay the very last farthing,” as meaning that no one can escape from the power of those angels who made the world, but that he must pass from body to body, until he has experience of every kind of action which can be practised in this world, and when nothing is longer wanting to him, then his liberated soul should soar upwards to that God who is above the angels, the makers of the world. In this way also all souls are saved, whether their own which, guarding against all delay, participate in all sorts of actions during one incarnation, or those, again, who, by passing from body to body, are set free, on fulfilling and accomplishing what is requisite in every form of life into which they are sent, so that at length they shall no longer be [shut in the body].

The soul transmigrates from body to body to make sure it pays every penny of evil to its jailer, the devil, according to the Carpocratians. As you can imagine, this sort of teaching would lead to pretty virulent antinomianism–or to be more precise anomianism and libertinism. They basically had no law other than to experience every possible thing under heaven so that they could pay off the debt of being captive to the devil and the creating angels. What makes this a “Christian heresy” in any way is that they looked to Jesus as being the great example of the soul in tune with God. Sadly, they didn’t heed His words in any meaningful way. Also, their doctrine of creation by lesser, fallen beings aligns well with the Gnostic views of Valentinus, Marcion, and other such heretics.

As such, it doesn’t take much insight to see that while this group of heretics may have had “the most fun” from a worldly standpoint–this here is a hedonist’s dream religion!–it was also completely antithetical to Christianity as Christ himself presents it in the Gospels. It is little wonder to me that modern Gnosticism sees Carpocrates as one of their major figures. He is an attractive figure in our me-first age, as he teaches a doctrine of going for the gusto and getting all you can out of life. Those seeking self-discipline need look elsewhere! But Jesus came to fulfil the Law, not abolish it (Matthew 5:17), and His perfect death paid for our freedom from the bondage of the devil. We don’t have to sin to the extreme (or, conversely, be perfect) in order to accomplish our own freedom, because it doesn’t work that way. God has already given us freedom through Christ’s death on the cross. Sin is a reality in the life of a Christian (Romans 7) until the Parousia but it is not a goal to be sought out!

Verse for the Commemoration of Carpocrates, Arch-Heretic
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Carpocrates
No hypocrite, he’s
Fully into doing every sin there is to do
In order to release the prisoned soul into eternity–sad but true.