p. 4 | Modern Gnosticism

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 7, 1908

Modern Gnosticism

Some of the plainest teachings of the Scriptures were, in the early history of the church, spiritualized by religious teachers who knew more about heathen philosophy than about the simple gospel of Christ. This laid the foundation for the appearance later of the sect designated as Gnostics, whose influence was powerful in the perversion of the truth.

The same tendency to set aside historical facts, and to substitute a spiritual interpretation for the literal, is now shown among the advocates of the “New Theology.” Thus in a recent number of the Independent (New York), an editorial protests against that view of the resurrection which makes it “to many merely an event of the last day, a far-off, distant happening, truly marvelous, miraculous, and strange,” and says:—

In the New Testament, there is a more spiritual conception of the resurrection than that which the vision of Ezekiel so graphically embodies. Paul speaks of the resurrection in the past tense, and refers it to the experience of believers.

We are compelled to refer either to ignorance of the Scriptures, or to a deliberate purpose to pervert the record, such a half-truth as this statement concerning the teaching of the apostle Paul about the resurrection. Compare this with his own words:—

Shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenæus and Philetus; who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.

These words from Paul's second letter to Timothy, one of the latest writings of the New Testament, absolutely contradict the Independent's interpretation of Paul's teaching concerning the resurrection. The truth is that the apostle Paul set forth a spiritual resurrection as the experience of every one in union with Christ, and as sharers with him in his resurrection, but he also insisted in the plainest language upon the resurrection of the dead at the last day in these words:—

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. . . . Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

The only possible way in which the advocates of the “New Theology” can sustain their gnostic philosophy is by either repudiating or absolutely misinterpreting the plainest teaching of the Scriptures concerning the plan of salvation as centering in the incarnation, the death, the resurrection, the priesthood, and the second advent, of Christ.