In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning, beloved of the Lord, in the gospel we have the list of 42 generations between Abraham and Jesus, which opens the door to a possible 42-point sermon. [Laughter] I take away the word “possible.” Even before I realized what the gospel reading was going to be, I had already resolved to speak with you today about what we’ll call the Gnostic impulse. For those of you who are new, this may sound strange; for those of you who have been with me for a while, it probably doesn’t sound strange at all. It might occur to someone to ask why in the world, why I would talk to you about Gnosticism on the last Sunday before Christmas.

My answer, I suppose, would be an appeal to the authority of the Church Fathers. For instance, if St. Irenaeus of Lyon, preaching to you today, there’s a very good chance that his sermon would be entitled, “The Gnostic Impulse.” I am confident on this point simply because Irenaeus thought about and wrote on this subject incessantly with respect to the mystery we’re about to celebrate, which is the Nativity of Christ. For some reason, rather, the Orthodox like Latin words like “nativity.“I would be much more disposed myself to say “birth.” Just a Kentucky thing, I suppose. I am persuaded that today, as Irenaeus was persuaded in the mid-second century, that the metaphysics of Gnosticism represents the major threat to the Gospel, and the abiding enemy of the Gospel, and in a more important way, the enemy to the doctrine of the Incarnation, the very essence of Christmas.

In a remarkable lecture at a Touchstone conference a couple of years ago—I presume it’s online someplace; I suspect we published it at Touchstone—Dr. Robert George examined the Gnostic roots of the more controversial subjects of the day. He did it with a very fine and penetrating study. I for one sat there, completely fascinated. Here’s a man who teaches at Princeton, the same faculty where Elaine Pagels teaches—just try to put those two ideas together in your head at one time. It was not Dr. George’s purpose to explore why, in the 21st century, Christians were obliged once again to deal with theories we thought had been put to rest centuries ago.

Now, Mom and I have celebrated our wedding anniversary this week. Was it 45 years, precious? Was that right? I’m not good in math. Seems like about two weeks. Mom and I have pronounced memories of the first year of our marriage, when we were less than half our current ages. We lived in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, that year. I remember the summers in Oconomowoc, sitting out on our back porch, wearing several sweaters, a jacket, and a hat, [Laughter] as the July winds came whipping off of the lake, pulling my jacket more tightly around me, against the summer winds of Wisconsin. We natives of Kentucky had never experienced such a thing. Wisconsin is a terrible place to live. [Laughter] It’s an awful place to live. I’d go to the grocery store and try to buy grits—one of your obvious major food groups—and all they had was instant grits. What an insult. I went to the butcher shop and asked for ham hocks. They had no idea what a ham hock was. I said, “It’s the thing you use with your green beans?” They didn’t know.

I sat out in the July cold for hours on end, reading, studying, and carefully annotating the extant works of Sr. Irenaeus of Lyon. He has always been my model for how to be a pastor of souls. Yet as I read his works I wondered over and over how any person in his right mind, any person with a trace of sanity between his ears, could take seriously the theories that Irenaeus took such great care to refute. I kept admiring the patience of this man. How can he read these authors? These authors are obviously deranged. No one today would take any ideas like this very seriously.

I had no idea in those days that I would eventually have my own conversations with these people. I never dreamed back then that I would attend, as I did this past summer, a lunch where a lady at the lunch, a professed Roman Catholic, told me that most of the social ills of the day would be cleaned up pretty quickly, if, she said, “You guys would stop calling God ‘Father.’ ” I had no idea that a month or so later I would be exchanging emails with Valentinus—actually, it was Valentinia, a lady slightly younger than me, here in the city—and listening to her dualistic speculations. This lady had actually read The Book of the Two Principles, the foundational text for the Albigensian heresy. I was talking to the last Albigensians, the most pronounced Gnostic movement of the Middle Ages. It was because of the Albigensians that the Dominicans were formed, to fight against the Albigensians.

I had no idea in those days that eventually Heraklion would have his own talk show on CNN. In my wildest fancy, I could hardly imagine that Basilides would sit beside me on an airplane only six days ago, and spout out two hours of gibberish about gender identity and the evils of patriarchy. The first question she asked me, when she saw me reading the psalms; the first question she asked me, after she found out I was an Orthodox Christian, was: Do you accept the Gnostic scriptures? She asked that very question: Do you accept the Gnostic scriptures? Once she asked that question, I knew what all the other questions were going to be. I identified every one of those questions ahead of time.

I was sitting there, over and over again in my mind, saying, “Deus in adjutorium meum intende; Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina,” the first line of Psalm 69: “O Lord, hurry up and give me some help!” [Laughter] “O Lord, get a move on and assist me! Festina, hurry up!” Because I knew what all the questions were coming, and I’m invoking the Holy Spirit. When we finally finished the thing, we finally got to Chicago—not a minute too soon for my patience—she said, “I’ve certainly enjoyed this conversation.” [Laughter] I put a guard, as the psalmist says, a guard about my mouth; a door before my lips—because what I wanted to say was, “I’m glad one of us did.” [Laughter]

I have reached the point where I know where the conversation is going. Gnosticism is everywhere in our society, everywhere. Most people have no idea that they’re Gnostics. That’s one of the things about being stupid: you don’t really know that you are. Now, how did this happen? There are a bunch of reasons why this happened. I’m sure, for example, that the ground was prepared for a resurgence of Gnosticism, simply because of the wholesale denial of creation, beginning with Darwin, but, see, even Darwin himself is more the symptom than the cause. Once the doctrine of creation was challenged, and God the Father was no longer responsible for creation, you’re already well on the way toward Gnosticism.

Arguably, the most important among these causes is something that happened in December of 1945. During December of 1945, a couple of Egyptian farmers were digging for fertilizer around some caves in a place called Jabal al-Ṭārif. They discovered a large earthenware vessel containing a large number of papyri manuscripts inscribed in Coptic. This was the discovery of what is now known as the Nag Hammadi library. When I was a young student starting in more serious biblical studies, one of the first things I was obliged to buy, since I do not read Coptic, having wasted my life in frivolities and dissipation, I got an English translation of the Nag Hammadi library. Why? For the same reason that Patton read Rommel’s book on tanks, the same reason.

These texts, lost for more than 1500 years and presumed to have disappeared forever, over the next few years dramatically altered the entire scholarly landscape of every major university in the world, not just in theology, not just in biblical studies, but in sociology, in literature, in history, in philosophy. Academics now held in their hands the very same text, the same that the heretics that Irenaeus and Church Fathers had taken great care to refute. Why were those texts hidden in an earthenware vessel near caves, about 20 miles from Nag Hammadi? Because of one of the paschal letters of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, in which he listed what are the proper apostolic writings; he said the others don’t count. And the Church went out and made a stab at trying to burn all the Coptic they could. By the way, Christians have been book-burners from the beginning. Look in the book of Acts. I’m not taking sides on that question; I just point out that they do. Other people burn books, too, that I’m less thrilled about.

Today almost three-quarters of a century later, the sympathetic study of Gnosticism is found throughout the academic world. No matter how leisured a person may be, there is no way to keep current with Gnostic publications: whole journals are devoted to the study of Gnosticism; departments in universities and seminaries devoted to Gnosticism; encyclopedias of Gnosticism. Just go online and just, say, Google “Elaine Pagels,” and just look through the lists of all the books she’s written. They’re all about Gnosticism: The Gnostic Gospels, The Gnostic Call, and so forth.

Now, the discovery of some Coptic manuscripts would not have done this by itself unless there was something in man’s sinful state that went in a Gnostic direction, and that’s what I’m calling the Gnostic impulse. One sees it. For example, 1927, Herman Hesse published Der Steppenwolf, a thoroughly Gnostic work with the two principles of good and evil at war with one another. You get that in The Glass Bead Game; you get that all through Herman Hesse, for example, back well before World War II.

I’m going to talk to you this morning about the manifestations of Gnosticism. What sort of outline would we give for this? Actually, we’re going to have three points. It’s something rather curious. These three points correspond to the three propositional theses of the Nicene Creed. It’s an interesting thing about the Nicene Creed. You’ve got me going on this in Sunday school. The Nicene Creed as we have it is directed against Arius, but if you actually look at the composition of the Creed, only a few of those lines seem to be directed against Arius: “begotten, not made”; “God from God, light from light”; “of one being with the Father”—those are directed against Arius. But, you see, they did not create the Nicene Creed wholecloth in Nicaea. There were earlier creeds that formed the basis for the Nicene Creed. Those creeds were not written against Arius; they were written against Gnosticism. There’s nothing, for example, in the teaching of Arius that would oblige us to say, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” See, that’s there because of Gnosticism. And that’ll be point one.

The early critics of the Christian faith were especially offended by the doctrine of creation. That was one of the hardest doctrines for the Greco-Roman world to come to grips with: Creation, creation from nothingness, by a God who calls himself Father. That was so offensive. The other day, when this lady on a certain subject—which I won’t tell you what it was, but you maybe could give it a guess—she said, “The Bible doesn’t say anything about that.” So I opened my Bible, held it over to her and said, “Start there and read about six or seven verses.” She read and she says, “That is so offensive!” [Laughter] I said, “Darling, you asked the question! Please, leave me alone. I didn’t write those lines!” Anyway, the Greco-Roman world of the time, as the world right now, is offended by the notion of creation. And there are Orthodox Christians—I see them every once in a while—who say, “Well, you know, we can reconcile creationism with Darwinism.” They haven’t even studied one line of philosophy. That’s the principle of non-contradiction. Things are put there on purpose, or they weren’t put there on purpose. Either the bird flies because it has wings, or it has wings in order to fly. There’s no middle ground in there at all. The molars were designed for chewing, or they just happen to chew—there’s no middle ground in there at all.

The Christian faith believes that God the Father is the Source of all created reality. We are radically patriarchal, where the Arche, the Principle of all things is the Pater, the personal Father. That’s why we believe in the goodness of creation. That’s why we believe in the goodness of biology. This lady I was talking to the other day, and Gnosticism in general, has no use whatsoever for biology. Biology is malleable. There is no such thing as sex; there’s only gender. There’s only gender, and you see even Christians dropping the word “sex” and using the word “gender.” You’ve already given away half the real estate when you do that. The Gnostics are into radical dualism. There’s a spirit and there’s matter. It’s the two-sources theory. The goodness and evil are there from the beginning.

Point two, the second article of the Creed: “I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” If paternity is offensive, what shall we say of lordship? In the Gnostic gospels, Jesus is not God’s eternal Son. He’s not the very Word in whose Being all things were made—creation. The world formed by the devar Adonai, by the word of God. Who is Jesus, if you have only the Gnostic gospels; who is he? Well, in the words of the lady beside me on the plane the other day, Jesus was “a real cool dude.” I had no idea even how to respond to such a blasphemy. I do know that the Roman government was very reluctant to crucify real cool dudes. You either had to be something more or something less than that.

When Jesus declared, for instance, that he and the Father are one, when he informs that he is the Way and the Truth and the Life—all these assertions—Jesus of Nazareth forces himself upon the conscience of every human being who ever lived. That’s the significance of what we’re about to celebrate midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday. The radical nature of these claims implies that their validity concerns the very being of God, and hence the meaning of human existence. If these assertions are true, then the only God is the God revealed on Sinai, revealed in the Exodus, and revealed in his glory on the face of his Son.

I mentioned last night at vespers that I have absolutely no use for monotheism, the notion that there’s one God. I don’t see any point in having one God if you’ve got the wrong one; I see no point in it at all. When Jesus addressed God, as he does, for example, in Matthew 11, “I give thanks unto thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,” that’s the God whom Jesus knows. Every competitive religion is idol worship. What, after all, is idolatry but the worship of false gods—and that’s the problem with Gnosticism. It’s not that it’s polytheistic—it’s necessarily polytheistic—but that all the gods are wrong. Truly if Jesus of Nazareth is who he says he is, then he is history’s only safeguard against idolatry. It is either Jesus or the idols. There’s no other option.

Thirdly: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Now, the Council of Nicaea stopped there, but we go on. In 381 we add the rest of the whole thing: “...the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.” One of the most disturbing things I’ve noticed when people have substitutes for God… A few years ago he was called “the higher power.” I was always bothered by that, “the higher power.” In other words, I’m a source of power, but there’s a higher power. There’s no quantitative relationship between me and God; in fact, there’s no qualitative relationship between me and God. God is God, and I’m me, you know. Just read Martin Buber, for crying out loud. What I’ve noticed is that the higher power has now become my higher power. That is a change; that’s a significant change, the way people talk.

On the plane the other day, I got a lot of that “my higher power.” Here’s part of the conversation I think very important to share with you. I said, “Aren’t you just imagining things?” She says, “No, my higher power really exists, and it has authority over me.” She was in touch with a higher power that had authority over her, and it was not the true God. It was a higher power talking to her. Now that is absolutely demonic, and that is scary. The biblical God, the God revealed in the Exodus, the God revealed on Sinai, the God revealed in the prophets, the God revealed in Jesus and the Church is not a higher power. In fact, God’s Son become man to deliver us from these higher powers that are described in the epistle to the Ephesians: “those spirits of darkness in the high places.” The proper way to treat a higher power is to curse it and then flee.

In the mystery of Christmas, beloved in the Lord, we are set free from the powers of darkness. God’s Son became man in order to deliver us from the powers of darkness, and God has in mind to translate us from darkness into the glorious inheritance of the saints in light, in joyful songs the angels will sing on high. Amen.