The long controversy between heretics and mainstream Christianity led to the Roman emperor Constantine setting up the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This gathering of church leaders nailed down Christian belief as being in one male creator God responsible for everything that existed, one and only son of God born of a virgin offering salvation through resurrection, and a holy spirit to round out the Trinity. For those of us who have heard the Nicene Creed repeated many times, it may come as a surprise to find out that in the early Christian era, all of these basic beliefs were disputed, which is why the Creed had to be agreed on by bishops from the dominant regional factions within the Roman Church.
For Gnostics, the God of the standard Bible is a minor deity sometimes called the demiurge, a jealous male who merely pretended that there were no other gods. Polytheism had been standard practice in the Roman empire, of course.
Elaine Pagels, who obtained her doctorate from Harvard and was appointed chair of the religion department at Barnard College, Columbia University in the mid 1970’s, published a popular account of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1979. Her book ‘The Gnostic Gospels’ appeared at a time when second-wave feminism was still a thing. It made the case that the Gnostic sects had been in favour of sex equality, with women priests recorded in the early Church. This was not merely a case of equality in the workplace for religious employees, but a radical reshaping of what Christianity had meant since the time of Constantine.
In the third chapter of her book, Pagels pointed out that the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are relatively unusual in declaring that God is exclusively masculine. The Gnostics disagreed with mainstream Christians and each other on the subject of gender, as they did on many topics, with the Gospel of Thomas stating “…every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. Other Gnostics prayed to a dualistic Divine Father and Mother, while some insisted that the Holy Spirit must be feminine. The Gnostic text known as the ‘Secret Book’ stated “She became the Mother of everything, for she existed before them all, the mother-father”.
In the Gnostic ‘Apocalypse of Adam’, a parthenogenic goddess is the source of all human life: “She came to a high mountain and spent time seated there, so that she desired herself alone in order to become androgynous. She fulfilled her desire, and became pregnant by her desire…” Valentinius opined that this goddess called Wisdom, being a single parent, raised her demiurge offspring to manage the mess she previously made by bringing forth all living creatures in this one-sided manner. According to one Gnostic source, it was Wisdom that saved Noah and his family from the great flood caused by her bad-tempered son. In those days, the symbol of the rainbow had something to do with God, rather than Pride.
The ‘Trimorphic Protennoia’ discovered at Nag Hammadi contained words spoken by a divine feminine voice: “Now I have come a second time in the likeness of a female… I have revealed myself in the Thought in the likeness of my masculinity” and “I am androgynous. [I am both Mother and] Father, since [I copulate] with myself… [and with those who love] me…” A Gnostic poem called ‘Thunder, Perfect Mind’ contains another divine revelation in a feminine voice: “I am the whore, and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin.” This Gnostic goddess is sex-positive.
According to Pagels, notions of the divine feminine were driven out of official Christianity by the year 200 AD. With that shift in theology, women were also prevented from being priests in the official Roman church, possibly as a result of Greek Jews converting to the religion and bringing their orthodox traditions with them. Tertullian flamed an African Gnostic priestess he called “that viper”, stating: “It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer [the eucharist], nor to claim for herself a share in any masculine function – not to mention any priestly office.”
Some believers have taken the Gnostic idea of a self-made salvation to its logical conclusion. Jo Clifford’s one-transwoman play “The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven” has been performed in Calvinist Scotland, sexological ground zero Germany and liberation theology’s territory of Brazil since its debut in 2009. The play has been welcomed in actual cathedrals and churches in the USA, not just edgy arts venues. The show’s website promises that we may “Join Queen Jesus for a revolutionary queer ritual in which bread is shared, wine is drunk and familiar stories are reimagined by a transgender Jesus.”
While the transgender phenomenon has many facets – political, medical, social – talk of gendered souls imprisoned in human bodies is classic Gnostic heresy, and needs to be recognised as a supernatural claim. It’s hard enough being Jesus without being subject to the attentions of the gender clinic as well. Who knows how many of the advocates for invasive medical and surgical procedures on gender non-conforming people are motivated by self-affirmed religious belief?
Source: Is Gender a New Religion? Or a Very Old One?
