Still Running Off at the Keyboard

DOES IGNATIUS PRESS PROMOTE GNOSTICISM ?

Over at Renew America there is an editorial by Steve Kellmeyer criticizing Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel's book THE DA VINCI HOAX. Kellmeyer writes:

"Gnosticism: The Religion of the Code"

That's Chapter 1 of Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel's book, The Da Vinci Hoax. While the book has been a moderately competent debunk of Dan Brown's novel, there has always been one aspect of it that has been in error, and it is admirably laid out in the title to chapter 1. Gnosticism has absolutely nothing to do with the Da Vinci Code.

"Nothing"??

If the idea that Christ married Mary Magdalene and sired children, the main theme of TDVC, did not come from Gnosticism, where exactly does Kellmeyer propose that it comes from? But wait a moment...he doesn't propose a source for this idea. He merely argues that Olson and Miesel are wrong. I beg to disagree.

Gnosticism, unlike Catholicism, is not monolithic. What one Gnostic believes, another rejects, and there is no central clarifying authority. Gnostic beliefs can directly oppose other Gnostic beliefs, and sometimes do; and their adherents find this perfectly acceptable. Gnostic truth is pluriform. That is the nature of the heresy. Kellmeyer does not delineate which particular Gnostic beliefs he lumps into his category of "Gnosticism." He does not indicate what specific beliefs of the Gnostics he thinks Olson and Miesel failed to defend.

But perhaps what Kellmeyer fails to understand is the nature of Gnosticism itself. Today we would call the source of Gnosticism channeling. Contact with disembodied spirits. Spirits--especially fallen spirits--are notoriously deceptive. To suggest that Gnostic doctrine is uniform would be to deny that it is Gnostic. Each Gnostic discovers what he believes for himself. The first example of Gnostic doctrine can be read in the Book of Genesis which describes the activities of the snake in the Garden of Eden. Gnostic speculation goes back to the very foundation of the world.

Some sources place the belief that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus within the Albigensian Heresy, a 13th Century Gnostic heresy. That source is discussed by Ed Conroy in an article at the Southern Cross Review website, a reprint from its first appearance in "National Catholic Reporter", July 15, 2005.

Another source of information on Gnosticism is HIDDEN GOSPELS: HOW THE SEARCH FOR JESUS LOST ITS WAY, by Philip Jenkins. According to Jenkins

One striking story...occurs in the [Gnostic - ct] Gospel of Philip , where we read in a mutilated passage that "[Jesus] loved [Mary Magdalen] more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples [were offended]. They said to him 'Why do you love her more than all of us?" Mary is Jesus' "consort" or "companion," using a Greek word that indicates a sexual relationship. Jesus is actually described having sexual intercourse in another still lost work, the Great Questions of Mary, a text described with horror by the fourth-century writer Epiphanius: in this instance, the woman involved is not exactly Mary but a figure created from her body. (HIDDEN GOSPELS, 2001, p. 137)

The Gopspel of Philip is a document that is part of the archeological discovery at Nag Hammadi. It is an important Gnostic gospel.

Ean Begg associates the cult of the Black Virgin, which he believes has Gnostic components, with Mary Magdalene:

Historically, the Black Virgin cult seems to point in the direction of two alternatives in particular. One, the alternative Church of Mary Magdalene, James, Zacchaeus, Gnosticism, Cathars, Templars and alchemists....It contains much of the wisdom of the old religions as well as certain new phenomena that reached consciousness in the twelfth century, such as the Holy Grail and courtly love. If guilt by association is an admissible form of evidence--and it is all we have--then the Black Virgin can by no means be absolved of associating with some strange companions belonging to the alternative Church. ...

As my researches continued, it became increasingly obvious that the cult of the Black Virgin and the history of the Merovingian blood-line were inextricably linked. (THE CULT OF THE BLACK VIRGIN, 1985, pg. 145)

The Merovingian bloodline, the Holy Grail, is the subject of Chapter 60 in TDVC.

Margaret Starbird associated Mary Magdalene with the Holy Grail as well in her book THE WOMAN WITH THE ALABASTER JAR: MARY MAGDALEN AND THE HOLY GRAIL, 1993. The third chapter is devoted to "The Blood Royal and the Vine." Under the subheading "The Secret Marriage" Starbird writes: "I have come to suspect that Jesus had a secret dynastic marriage with Mary of Bethany..."

A Llewellyn Journal article titled "Jesus & Mary Magdalene: The Sacred Marriage in Gnosticism" also presents Mary Magdalene as the Holy Grail.

One of the foremost voices on contemporary Gnosticism is Stephan A. Hoeller, Bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church. In GNOSTICISM: NEW LIGHT ON THE ANCIENT TRADITION OF INNER KNOWING, 2002, he writes:

Of all the Gnostic sacraments, the most mysterious and least known is the mystery of the Bridal Chamber. (p. 87)

Jesus, the paradigm of the individuated ego, the archetype of wholeness, has revealed in his being the union of the two in one. As an archetype and prototype, he exemplifies the ideal androgyne in whom the union of the syzygies has been accomplished. His followers must follow his example and also become whole by absorbing into themselves their opposite sexual image. Men must become united with their female selves, and until they do so, they can experience the opposite sexual image only vicariously in a woman; women must be married to their "heavenly bridegrooms," their masculine internal opposite, in a similar fashion. Thus, the sacrament of the Bridal Chamber is in fact an initiation signifying individuation; the grand symbol of the restoration of the Pleroma, or wholeness; the hieros gamos, or "sacred marriage," of the opposites within; and thus the attainment to the true and ultimage gnosis. (pp. 87-88)

Dan Brown presents the hieros gamos ritual in Chapter 74 of TDVC. He writes:

Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis--knowledge of the divine. (p. 308)

What you saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Hieros Gamos ritual is not a perversion. It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony. (p. 309)

Then there is the matter of the Shekinah.

Brown writes:

Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses--or hierodules--with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. (TDVC p. 309)

Bishop Stephan Hoeller writes:

It is in the esoteric Judaism of the Kabbalah that one encounters a close approximation to Sophia in the greatly revered figure of the Shekinah, the feminine spiritual presence in the Sephira Malkuth. Present-day scholars like the late and great Gershom Scholem have referred to the Kabbalists as Jewish Gnostics, and thus it is not surprising that the Gnostic Sophia found a home in their midst. (GNOSTICISM, p. 50-51)

Kellmeyer would like us to believe that Carl Olson

and Ignatius have been promulgating information on a heresy that the Da Vinci Code never even refers to. Two years of Ignatius' hype concerning this straw-man argument undoubtedly played no small role in the rising interest in Gnosticism.

Can the man actually be serious?

To suggest, as Kellmeyer does in his article at Renew America, that

the word "Gnostic" never appears in the Da Vinci Code. Certainly none of its ideas are present in the Code.

is remarkably naive. While Brown may not use the word "Gnostic", there is no doubt that the book's theme is patently Gnostic. Further, to suggest that Olson and Miesel have created the current excitment over Gnosticism by their book THE DA VINCI HOAX, when the same ideas Brown presented are available in many other and currently popular sources, such as Margaret Starbird's THE WOMAN WITH THE ALABASTER JAR, Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh's HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, the writings of Ean Begg, and the works of other Masonic authors, prompts me to place a caution mark next to Kellmeyer's name, but does not for a moment cast any doubt on the work of Olson and Miesel or Ignatius Press.

Perhaps Renew America could benefit from the services of an editor!

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UPDATE

Carl Olson has written a response to Kellmeyer.

Here is the post on the Insight Scoop blog that started this whole thing.