Gnostic Education
Why are today’s students often taught to hate the United States?
Phyllis Schlafly sketches the aims of too many teachers’ colleges who train our teachers (Teaching “Social Justice” in Schools).
Those aims are the ones notoriously espoused by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Senator Obama’s friends and co-workers in the Chicago schools project funded by the Annenberg Foundation.
Social justice is a doctrine of the secular religion of socialism. And as Eric Voegelin demonstrated, socialism is a variety of modern-day gnosticism.
Voegelin in his 1959 Science, Politics & Gnosticism describes the salient characteristics of gnosticism, all of which apply to the doctrines of American liberalism and the concept of social justice as attainment of atheistic social perfection. These gnostic characteristics correspond closely to the attitudes described in Phyllis Schlafly’s article.
They also are the underlying foundation of Senator Obama’s appeal to dissatisfaction with American society and his message that he is the one possessed of special knowledge that can bring us together and create a near perfect world.
First, the gnostic liberal is dissatisfied with the world as he finds it. He rejects the evidence of history that there always will be strife, wars, inequalities in ability and station, and some degree of poverty. And he is confident that he has the knowledge (gnosis) to make things perfect, which he defines as equality in all things.
Second, the gnostic-liberal attributes the problems of human life to poor organization of the economic and political realms. Evil and hardship must therefore arise from some identifiable source (capitalism? ownership of private property?) that deforms the proper structure of society.
Third, the gnostic-liberal has a deep faith that earthly salvation from the world’s tribulations is attainable, a trait markedly evident in the theoretical models of Soviet Russia and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, as well as in the campaign rhetoric of Senator Obama.
Fourth, the gnostic-liberal believes that this salvation is attainable through the process of history (which , of course, he uniquely understands). Auguste Comte’s 1820s gnosis was his discovery of the “immutable law of history,†according to which there are three ages of human social development, the third stage in the 19th century being the new scientific, socialistic age into which only knowledgeable intellectuals could lead the masses.Â
The same three-phase philosophy of history reappears in Hegel and Marx. Note that Hitler’s National Socialism was consciously called the Third Reich to identify it with the gnostic millennium of earthly harmony and peace.
Note also that the nature of gnosis is that its secret knowledge is available and comprehensible only to a select few. This has always implied in socialism a vulnerability to dictatorial concentration of power in the collectivized state. In Italy and Germany of the 1920s and 1930s it was expressed as the Leader Principle – Il Duce and Der Fuhrer. Senator Obama is notoriously self-identified as The One in whom human hopes and aspirations are to be realized.
Fifth, the gnostic-liberal believes that, having discovered the secret meaning of history, he can implement and control the process of history by political and economic means, i. e., via socialism.Â
And, finally, the gnostic-liberal’s core belief is that salvation, the perfection of social relations and human conduct, is attainable via human action, here on earth. This is the source of Lenin’s mystical concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat that would bring peace and harmony to the people and would lead to a gradual withering away of formal government, leaving the Soviet people living in a modern Garden of Eden – from each according to ability, to each according to need.
We see the manifestation of this mystical, gnostic vision every day in liberal politicians’ belief that individuals are incapable of fending for themselves, that only the national political state can do the job. There is always something wrong with society and always a politician confident that one more set of regulations or one more welfare-state program will make everything OK.Â
People want to believe that a body of secret knowledge will free them from Christianity’s stern admonitions to work hard, save for a rainy day, abjure hedonism, and recognize that perfection of human life is impossible in the earthly realm. It’s so much easier to eat, drink, be merry, and let the government take care of us.
Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.
His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/
Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com
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Thomas E. Brewton, who maintains this blog, had the great good fortune in the middle 1950s at Louisiana State University to study under two of the 20th century's great minds: Eric Voegelin in political science, and Walter Berns in Constitutional law. These two professors opened the door of education to a glimpse of Western civilization and of American political and social thought as they had been before socialism was unconstitutionally established as the official national religion of the United States in 1933. | More from Thomas Brewton
Stumble It!
It’s not quite as simple as that. Mike has made some statements that are true of “some” Gnostics. However, Gnosticism is just as variable as Christianity.
I do wish to take exception to the last statement, however, where this was said: “Gnosticism is considered a Heresy in the Christian tradition…”. That may be true if you narrow your scope of this statement to “Orthodox Christianity” or “Roman Catholicism”; But as for myself, I am a “Gnostic Christian” so (obviously) there are at least “some of us” in the “Christian Tradition” that do not consider Gnostics to be Heretics!
But then again, some of my best friends self-identify as Heretics, so I don’t consider the label to be a libel ;>)
Ref The Problem of Evil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_problem_of_evil
To whit: Why does Evil exist? If God is such a Good and All Powerful Being, then why does He allow the existence of Suffering?
Catholics and other Christians propose that Suffering is a personal heroic Sacrifice that livings beings must make in order for God’s long-term Plan to unfold properly.
Gnostics, in contrast, propose that God has a Dual Nature, and that He/It is somehow divided against Itself in an eternal and pointless contest between subjective Forces. Thus the difference between poetic concepts like Good and Evil are ultimately relative and therefore illusory.
Gnosticism is a kind of halfway house for pagans, where the belief in naturalistic Gods (eg., the Greek Pantheon) can be boiled down to a Hopeless Two Forces, incapable of synthesizing into rational Intention.
Gnosticism is considered a Heresy in the Christian tradition because it explicitly denies that God could have a singular Identity or Intention.
From the article above, it is readily apparent to this Gnostic that neither the author of the article nor Mr. Voegelin have demonstrated any real understanding of what Gnosticism is. The notion that it is “secret knowledge for the select few” is a gross misrepresentation. It is an esoteric knowledge that very few are inclined to pursue. That, and that alone, is the reason for it being “uncommon”.
We have not seen you in our churches, nor even in our discussion groups, where you will see very little in the way of politics.
That there are individuals claiming to be Gnostic involved in both conservative and liberal politics, we do not deny. There are many pseudo Gnostic organizations and “churches” also.
The nature of Gnosis is not knowledge of the head, but of the heart, and is readily available to anybody who wishes to study it in the Parables in the Gospel of Matthew. I have no wish to attempt give you a lesson in something as deep as Gnostic theology, but some honest research past the rantings of Irenaeus might shed some honest light on the Christian Gnostic church.
Gnosis is not political, nor social, nor is it the rantings of individuals claiming to be a new prophet. It is as highly personal as any of the parables.