The Gnostics and the Limitation of the Atonement
All ideas have their genesis. The same is true with the idea that Jesus / God doesn't want to save everyone.
This idea takes the form that Jesus was only sent by God to save the Elect. This isn't the Biblical definition of the Elect (which is the "whosoever" that will trust in Christ), it is the Calvinistic idea of the Elect which means people that God decided to save before their creation to proclaim His glory. The balance of humanity He decided to consign to hell (to pass over and not effectively save) also for the purpose of proclaiming His glory. Apparently some are to shine by grace, and others by the light of the fire that is never quenched. Neither group can do anything about it in the Calvinistic system because it is all God's doing and their will plays no part in it at all except to play by wrote the fate God has already assigned.
This view of salvation is actually very similar to how Allah describes himself in the Quran. It's one of the reasons that Jihadi scholars had to come up with a new form of inducement for recruits. In the Islamic writings, Allah explains that one can live a perfectly righteous life, but in the end he may send them to hell anyway on his own whim. Likewise, he may send to Paradise one who was less than perfectly righteous. Why? Because he can. He sees this as magnifying his "godness". Allah is very much about power, but not very much about love. The idea of "salvation" in the Quran is totally up to Allah's whim. Thus Jihadi scholars came up with the notion of dying while committing Jihad as a "guaranteed" way into Paradise. Prior to that scholarly idea there was no "guaranteed" way to be saved in Islam. You had to die to find out, and you had better hope Allah was feeling kindly towards you.
Of course the most well known Biblical text that would refute this (there are many others) is John 3:16: "For God so loved the world...". Theologies such as Calvinism that have a need to provide evidence for a limited atonement grab this verse and change the interpretation of the word "world" - kosmon (an inflected form of kosmos) from its clear meaning in Scripture to another possible definition. Now not all Calvinist scholars do this, but many do. I could compile a list but it's tiresome.
Kosmos has two definitions: it can mean the entire created order and/or its affairs and populace, or it can mean an adornment or decoration - such as the stars being the "adornment" of the heavens, down to something like an earring.
The context in John's writings, indeed all of Scripture, shows that kosmos here is used in its much more prevalent "universal" extent - meaning that God so loved His creation, the entire world of people, that He sent Jesus to die for them as a sacrifice for their sin. This gift must be accepted through repentance and trust (faith) or else it remains unused. That interpretation uses exegesis to determine the meaning. The specific type of Calvinistic interpretation mentioned above uses eisegesis. Exegesis means "lead out" meaning that the reader uses the words written and the author's deduced intent to discover what was meant. It involves language study (grammar, vocabulary, and history), historical studies, etc. Eisegesis is the opposite. That is when someone has an idea in their head and then reads that idea into something written and tries to get it to agree with what they already think. The first is the realm of scholars, the other of lawyers (think Liberals with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution).
That being said, want to hear something interesting about the genesis of this idea of a limited atonement? It certainly didn't start with Calvinism of any stripe, not by a long shot. Calvinism is relatively new. It goes way back in history to the early days of the church, but not from inside the church.
Upon study you'll find that this particular form of eisegeis goes all the way back to a man named Heracleon who lived around 175AD. He was a follower (and perhaps friend) of an early Gnostic heretic named Valentinus. He is mentioned by a small handful of the early fathers but is written about mostly by Origen (see ANF Origen 9.380).
Like the Calvinist scholars alluded to above, most all of the Gnostics that accepted some or all of the Christian writings had a need to try and find a limiting scope for the atonement. They had to because the idea that Divinity (the Ogdoad & Aeons to the Gnostics) had already marked some out for paradise and other for perdition was one of their bedrock beliefs and they weren't going to give it up. So when co-opting other writings (such as they did not only with Christianity but also with Judaism, paganism, and some really weird flavors of thought from ancient Persia), they had to find a way to make these new things squeeze into their mold. Their answer was the answer that people always use when they are building a man-made religion based on other's ideas: eisegesis.
Is it possible Valentinus and his crew (or any of the other Gnostic leaders) were perhaps the "real" Christians and the fathers we know about were the real heretics? That is easily answered when one looks at their other beliefs. I studied Gnosticism for several years. Their different philosophies have some strong common threads but all of them are like falling down a wormhole while very high on LSD (or so I hear).
Here is a sampling of the beliefs of the Valentinians as they were called (and I warned you Gnosticism is weird, so hang on):
The Gnostics believed, much like Plato and his "Allegory of the Cave", that there is a spiritual world and a physical world. The things we see in the physical world were brought about by a multitude of beings from the spiritual world. These spiritual beings were pure idea, pure thought. They originated from the Ogdoad which at various times was held to be a group of eight (8) gods and goddesses, to the more abstract idea of "the depth or silence of produndity".
These spiritual beings, the Aeons, were really emanations from deity (the Ogdoad) to bring about the created order. The issue was that the spiritual could never truly interact with the physical. The spiritual was seen as "good", the physical as "bad". So in most Gnostic systems there were many "waves" of these emanations that brought about more and more physical creation. Each "wave" of Aeons and their respective creative efforts brought things more and more away from the spiritual and closer to the physical. But the idea was that in order to do this, the Aeons and their works had to be increasingly corrupted, "bad", with each wave.
Thus the idea that deity created evil. That idea is NEVER found in the OT or NT scriptures. Isaiah 45:7 is misunderstood by people who aren't educated and don't understand Hebraic Parallelism. That's a story for another time.
It was also believed by the Gnostics that deity had decided to create some physical people in a way that they would be saved no matter what, and others that they would be doomed no matter what. Since the physical was "bad", they were all in need of this salvation (a rising to the spiritual realm) but deity denied it from most while granting it to others. This "grace" wasn't based upon the people in question or their actions. It was determined by whether or not they were "called".
Thus the idea that divinity "predestined" some to paradise and some to perdition by fiat irrespective of their own will. That idea is also NOT FOUND in the OT or NT. It is read into it but cannot be read out from it.
Now check this out:
They believed that Sophia (Greek for wisdom) was the youngest of the Aeons. Seeing what deity had done in "birthing" the other Aeons, she sought to emulate those actions by trying to give birth herself without sexual intercourse. She fails and only begats an abortion. It is "physical", but without form. Having failed in her task as an Aeon (to bring about the physical with form) she is cast out of the group of Aeons (called the Pleroma) and falls down to the physical creation in banishment.
The Gnostics saw themselves as the children of Sophia, thus their attempts to gain wisdom and their hard focus on various types of education. They prided themselves on being "scholarly". When the Gnostics encountered the Christian scriptures, they usually equated their Aeon Sophia with the Holy Spirit. That was one part of the salvation puzzle for them, but there was another partner spirit.
That partner spirit of the opposite sex (male) they saw in Christ. In some forms of Gnosticism they were brother and sister, but in the earliest forms Christ was "birthed" from Sophia on a later attempt, but as a higher being than she. Consequently, being more "spiritual" and thus incompatible with the physical, he rose up out of the physical to the spiritual realm and left Sophia behind.
This is where the Valentinians found another of their heresies: that the "real" Christ wasn't born a man in Bethlehem. Instead, that was just a physical container and the "real" Christ came down on him in the form of a dove at his baptism. Then, before the crucifixion the "real" Christ left the container and rose back to the father leaving just the hollow shell of a man to die upon the tree. Because in their view the "real" Christ being perfectly Spiritual could never suffer and die, he had to depart before Calvary. Heresy in its every conception.
There are many other ideas they held, but this small sampling should suffice to show that in no way were these Gnostics Christian. They were pagans who latched on to other "holy" writings in an effort to show that their truths existed among other groups but were misinterpreted. They did this to gain credibility with those that they would seek to indoctrinate.
But suffice it to say, the idea of a limited atonement was never found in the first few centuries of the church, but only outside of it with groups that were blatantly heretical.
What does that say for something like Calvinism? I'll leave you to judge, but the news isn't good. And in fact, the news gets worse the deeper you dive into the five points of Calvinism and compare them to ancient heretical beliefs. That too is a story for another time.
This idea takes the form that Jesus was only sent by God to save the Elect. This isn't the Biblical definition of the Elect (which is the "whosoever" that will trust in Christ), it is the Calvinistic idea of the Elect which means people that God decided to save before their creation to proclaim His glory. The balance of humanity He decided to consign to hell (to pass over and not effectively save) also for the purpose of proclaiming His glory. Apparently some are to shine by grace, and others by the light of the fire that is never quenched. Neither group can do anything about it in the Calvinistic system because it is all God's doing and their will plays no part in it at all except to play by wrote the fate God has already assigned.
This view of salvation is actually very similar to how Allah describes himself in the Quran. It's one of the reasons that Jihadi scholars had to come up with a new form of inducement for recruits. In the Islamic writings, Allah explains that one can live a perfectly righteous life, but in the end he may send them to hell anyway on his own whim. Likewise, he may send to Paradise one who was less than perfectly righteous. Why? Because he can. He sees this as magnifying his "godness". Allah is very much about power, but not very much about love. The idea of "salvation" in the Quran is totally up to Allah's whim. Thus Jihadi scholars came up with the notion of dying while committing Jihad as a "guaranteed" way into Paradise. Prior to that scholarly idea there was no "guaranteed" way to be saved in Islam. You had to die to find out, and you had better hope Allah was feeling kindly towards you.
Of course the most well known Biblical text that would refute this (there are many others) is John 3:16: "For God so loved the world...". Theologies such as Calvinism that have a need to provide evidence for a limited atonement grab this verse and change the interpretation of the word "world" - kosmon (an inflected form of kosmos) from its clear meaning in Scripture to another possible definition. Now not all Calvinist scholars do this, but many do. I could compile a list but it's tiresome.
Kosmos has two definitions: it can mean the entire created order and/or its affairs and populace, or it can mean an adornment or decoration - such as the stars being the "adornment" of the heavens, down to something like an earring.
The context in John's writings, indeed all of Scripture, shows that kosmos here is used in its much more prevalent "universal" extent - meaning that God so loved His creation, the entire world of people, that He sent Jesus to die for them as a sacrifice for their sin. This gift must be accepted through repentance and trust (faith) or else it remains unused. That interpretation uses exegesis to determine the meaning. The specific type of Calvinistic interpretation mentioned above uses eisegesis. Exegesis means "lead out" meaning that the reader uses the words written and the author's deduced intent to discover what was meant. It involves language study (grammar, vocabulary, and history), historical studies, etc. Eisegesis is the opposite. That is when someone has an idea in their head and then reads that idea into something written and tries to get it to agree with what they already think. The first is the realm of scholars, the other of lawyers (think Liberals with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution).
That being said, want to hear something interesting about the genesis of this idea of a limited atonement? It certainly didn't start with Calvinism of any stripe, not by a long shot. Calvinism is relatively new. It goes way back in history to the early days of the church, but not from inside the church.
Upon study you'll find that this particular form of eisegeis goes all the way back to a man named Heracleon who lived around 175AD. He was a follower (and perhaps friend) of an early Gnostic heretic named Valentinus. He is mentioned by a small handful of the early fathers but is written about mostly by Origen (see ANF Origen 9.380).
Like the Calvinist scholars alluded to above, most all of the Gnostics that accepted some or all of the Christian writings had a need to try and find a limiting scope for the atonement. They had to because the idea that Divinity (the Ogdoad & Aeons to the Gnostics) had already marked some out for paradise and other for perdition was one of their bedrock beliefs and they weren't going to give it up. So when co-opting other writings (such as they did not only with Christianity but also with Judaism, paganism, and some really weird flavors of thought from ancient Persia), they had to find a way to make these new things squeeze into their mold. Their answer was the answer that people always use when they are building a man-made religion based on other's ideas: eisegesis.
Is it possible Valentinus and his crew (or any of the other Gnostic leaders) were perhaps the "real" Christians and the fathers we know about were the real heretics? That is easily answered when one looks at their other beliefs. I studied Gnosticism for several years. Their different philosophies have some strong common threads but all of them are like falling down a wormhole while very high on LSD (or so I hear).
Here is a sampling of the beliefs of the Valentinians as they were called (and I warned you Gnosticism is weird, so hang on):
The Gnostics believed, much like Plato and his "Allegory of the Cave", that there is a spiritual world and a physical world. The things we see in the physical world were brought about by a multitude of beings from the spiritual world. These spiritual beings were pure idea, pure thought. They originated from the Ogdoad which at various times was held to be a group of eight (8) gods and goddesses, to the more abstract idea of "the depth or silence of produndity".
These spiritual beings, the Aeons, were really emanations from deity (the Ogdoad) to bring about the created order. The issue was that the spiritual could never truly interact with the physical. The spiritual was seen as "good", the physical as "bad". So in most Gnostic systems there were many "waves" of these emanations that brought about more and more physical creation. Each "wave" of Aeons and their respective creative efforts brought things more and more away from the spiritual and closer to the physical. But the idea was that in order to do this, the Aeons and their works had to be increasingly corrupted, "bad", with each wave.
Thus the idea that deity created evil. That idea is NEVER found in the OT or NT scriptures. Isaiah 45:7 is misunderstood by people who aren't educated and don't understand Hebraic Parallelism. That's a story for another time.
It was also believed by the Gnostics that deity had decided to create some physical people in a way that they would be saved no matter what, and others that they would be doomed no matter what. Since the physical was "bad", they were all in need of this salvation (a rising to the spiritual realm) but deity denied it from most while granting it to others. This "grace" wasn't based upon the people in question or their actions. It was determined by whether or not they were "called".
Thus the idea that divinity "predestined" some to paradise and some to perdition by fiat irrespective of their own will. That idea is also NOT FOUND in the OT or NT. It is read into it but cannot be read out from it.
Now check this out:
They believed that Sophia (Greek for wisdom) was the youngest of the Aeons. Seeing what deity had done in "birthing" the other Aeons, she sought to emulate those actions by trying to give birth herself without sexual intercourse. She fails and only begats an abortion. It is "physical", but without form. Having failed in her task as an Aeon (to bring about the physical with form) she is cast out of the group of Aeons (called the Pleroma) and falls down to the physical creation in banishment.
The Gnostics saw themselves as the children of Sophia, thus their attempts to gain wisdom and their hard focus on various types of education. They prided themselves on being "scholarly". When the Gnostics encountered the Christian scriptures, they usually equated their Aeon Sophia with the Holy Spirit. That was one part of the salvation puzzle for them, but there was another partner spirit.
That partner spirit of the opposite sex (male) they saw in Christ. In some forms of Gnosticism they were brother and sister, but in the earliest forms Christ was "birthed" from Sophia on a later attempt, but as a higher being than she. Consequently, being more "spiritual" and thus incompatible with the physical, he rose up out of the physical to the spiritual realm and left Sophia behind.
This is where the Valentinians found another of their heresies: that the "real" Christ wasn't born a man in Bethlehem. Instead, that was just a physical container and the "real" Christ came down on him in the form of a dove at his baptism. Then, before the crucifixion the "real" Christ left the container and rose back to the father leaving just the hollow shell of a man to die upon the tree. Because in their view the "real" Christ being perfectly Spiritual could never suffer and die, he had to depart before Calvary. Heresy in its every conception.
There are many other ideas they held, but this small sampling should suffice to show that in no way were these Gnostics Christian. They were pagans who latched on to other "holy" writings in an effort to show that their truths existed among other groups but were misinterpreted. They did this to gain credibility with those that they would seek to indoctrinate.
But suffice it to say, the idea of a limited atonement was never found in the first few centuries of the church, but only outside of it with groups that were blatantly heretical.
What does that say for something like Calvinism? I'll leave you to judge, but the news isn't good. And in fact, the news gets worse the deeper you dive into the five points of Calvinism and compare them to ancient heretical beliefs. That too is a story for another time.
Comments