Gnosticism: The Enduring Heresy and Menace to Western Civilization

The subject of Gnosticism is one of the most important and impactful areas of study in world history, with tremendous consequences both ancient and modern few non-initiates can fathom.  It has fascinated a wide range of dedicated scholars with which LRC readers are familiar.  Here is a recommended Anti-Gnostic reading list.

Over two years ago I sat and reflected very hard after almost fifty years of intense thought, observation and reading about politics what the Left was really all about. I wanted to go beyond the superficial labels and rhetoric to the ultimate ontological reality — that which deals with the nature of being.

Leftists, ultimately can be traced back to ancient pagans, particularly the Gnostics, who did not believe the Universe was created by a transcendent Other (which we call God). They are in total revolt and total denial of the very facts of Creatology and Cosmology. Like their Gnostic forebears, they hate the material creation of the Universe by this “God” (whom the Gnostics called the Demiurge.)

This is most profoundly found in the writing of Karl Marx, who was a militant atheist who hated and was envious of “God” for creating the Universe. Marx, in his unfathomable, maniacal megalomania, wanted to destroy “God” and the world in which he lived and recreate a new world in his image.

From the seductive serpent in the Garden of Eden to Marx and his delusional followers, the essential message of the Left to humanity is believe in and follow us in our path of destruction and “You shall be as gods,” and create an athesied paradise of a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. This is the goal of the neopagan pantheist Religious Left and its syncretistic, egalitarian vision of a Sophianic Millennium — the deification of humanity.

Murray Rothbard’s Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist, recognizes all this and is therefore the most definitive analysis and destructive weapon against the ideas of Marx and the Left. Rothbard traces the malevolent historic legacy of the Left as no one before. Particular note his brilliant discussion of Reabsorption Theology.

Christianity and the West have been at war for hundreds of years with a succession of gnostic political religions and mass movements seeking to impose brutal elite rule and mastery of their subject peoples. These sinister efforts have been responsible for untold death, destruction, and misery. Over one hundred million persons alone perished in the 20th Century as a result of these murderous totalitarian regimes.

The study of the construction of pseudo-secular gnostic religions has been one of the principal obsessions of my life since I heard Gerhart Niemeyer of Notre Dame lecture on it in 1975 at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Western Summer School at Thomas Aquinas College. Niemeyer was a keen student of Eric Voegelin on these matters, as was Murray Rothbard.

I believe understanding this 2000 year battle between orthodox Roman Catholic Christianity and Gnosticism is the ultimate key to unlocking the history of the previous two millennia.

This is the penultimate menace that Western Civilization, and especially the United States, faces today. This is what has motivated the destructive riotous mobs of thugs and looters in the streets, the craven willfully ignorant “cancel culture” corporatists, the seditious professoriat in court academia, and the prestitutes in the establishment regime media.

Americans are incurably “spiritual,” but this spirituality expresses itself in ways that are incompatible with biblical Christianity. It expresses itself in ways that are essentially Gnostic. The American church has not been immune to the influence of this American Gnosticism. In this message, Dr. Peter Jones compares this private, mystical, and inward religious mentality with the corporate, doctrinal, and visible faith of orthodox Christianity.

Peter Jones holds an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a ThM from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is Director of truthXchange, and Adjunct Professor of New Testament, as well as Scholar in Residence at Westminster Seminary California.

Dr. Jones grew up in Liverpool, England and was a childhood friend of John Lennon (yes THAT John Lennon). For seventeen years, he was Professor of New Testament in Aix-en-Provence France at the Faculté de Théologie Réformée. While there, he wrote La deuxième épître de Paul aux Corinthiens (Paris: Edifac, 1992), a commentary on 2 Corinthians. While in France, he was actively involved in church-planting and served as the president of the board of a newly formed Christian school. In 1991, he returned to the United States, where he taught New Testament at Westminster Seminary until December, 2002. He is now Director of truthXchange (www.truthxchange.com), a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Christians understand the rise of neo-pagan spirituality.

He has written The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back (1992) Spirit Wars (1997), Gospel Truth/Pagan Lies (1999), Capturing the Pagan Mind (2003), Cracking DaVinci’s Code (2004, co-author, James Garlow), Stolen Identity (2006), The God of Sex (2006), and One or Two (2010).

Bishop Robert Barron is an American prelate of the Catholic Church serving as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is the founder of the Catholic ministerial organization Word on Fire, and was the host of the TV series Catholicism, an award-winning documentary about the Catholic faith which aired on PBS. Previously, he served as rector at Mundelein Seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Barron has published numerous books, essays, and articles on theology and spirituality. He is a religion correspondent for NBC and has also appeared on Fox News, CNN, and EWTN. Barron’s website, WordOnFire.org, is viewed by millions of people each year. As one of the world’s most followed Catholics on social media, he has been informally called the “bishop of social media” and the “bishop of the Internet”. As of July 2020, his regular YouTube videos have been viewed over 50 million times, he has over 3 million followers on Facebook, 260,000 on Instagram, and 166,000 on Twitter In addition, the Bishop has been invited to speak about religion at the headquarters of Amazon, Facebook, and Google (the belly of the Beast).

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9:37 pm on December 29, 2020