In years gone by, November was the month most closely associated with death. The month, which Ted Hughes appropriately describes as the ‘month of the drowned dog’, opened, having remembered All Saints, with the Commemoration of All Souls, the black draped catafalque in the aisle, the three Masses, and a hymnody recalling death’s pains and anguishes. Think of the words of the popular hymn, O turn to Jesus, Mother, turn, in which it was recalled that those who died,

... have fought a gallant fight;
In death’s cold aims they persevered;
and, after life’s uncheery night.
The arbour of their rest is neared.

Death was cold; death was pain and loss; sickness unto death was struggle.

Now, it seems, we have possessed death, we have brought it close and made it our own, not to be feared and fled from, but friendly and familiar. The theology of death has come of age and now faces death with that anticipatory resoluteness of which Heidegger speaks. Thanatology speaks the language of ontology. Subjectivity, formerly snuffed out in death, now appropriates, as integral to its own life, death, and reasserts its mastery. Mature in Christian faith, we have authentically managed to appropriate what otherwise we would rather forget. What I would like to suggest in this article is that this repatriation of death into life, rather than yielding death’s meaning, actually leads to a situation in which, as Blanchot says, we have lost death, and obscured its significance.

There still appears to be a firm view in the minds of many people that science and religion are somehow inescapably opposed to one another. On the one hand (such a view might allege), to be a scientist means that one can’t take religion seriously: on the other, to be a religious believer one has to sit light to many of the findings of science, either quietly ignoring them or perhaps even flatly denying their validity. Anyone saying that modern science and Christianity are quite compatible is often looked at askance, as though either his or her science, or his or her theology, or both, must be suspect. However, a growing number of theologians are now writing about the theological implications of science; and, in addition, some scientists are also providing more or less explicit comments on the theological implications of their work.

This should not surprise us. In his recent book Art and the Beauty of God, Bishop Richard Harries makes the remark that ‘All works of art, whatever their content, have a spiritual dimension,’ in that they can provide us with comfort or solace. It is surely also true that all the sciences necessarily have a theological dimension, in that they all investigate one aspect or another of the material universe, and, Christians believe, that universe is itself, in some sense, the creation of God. We ought therefore to expect to discover something about the Creator in our analysis of the creation, whether we conclude, at one extreme, with the deists, that God somehow initiated the Big Bang and then abandoned the cosmos to get on with it; or whether we conclude, at the other extreme, that the universe may be regarded as being so intimately connected with its originator that it is reasonable to call it in some sense the Body of God.

Saint Paul (2 Cor. 3:6) is often quoted in support of a position of leniency, though some would say laxity, with regard to the precepts of the law, whether it be those of the state or those of the church. Or he may be cited in support of an anti-literalist, anti-fundamentalist interpretation of scripture generally. But what is wrong, exactly, with that aspect of fundamentalism, or that approach to church rules, that can be characterized as literalism? Consider two instances in which literalism is decried. First, a parish priest “proves” that scripture is not to be taken literally by relating the story of Abraham, Isaac and the attempted or would-be sacrifice of the son by the father. He explains that, since we know that God is loving and could not have commanded such a sacrifice, we can be sure that this story is not literally true, but must have some other significance: it must be symbolic or allegorical, or is possibly intended only to be thought-provoking. To take it literally is to fail to understand the goodness and love of God. Second, a parishioner wonders whether attendance at mass late on Saturday afternoon falls within the period when Saturday evening observance stands good for Sunday, fulfilling the weekly obligation. She is considered to have misunderstood, through too literal a conception of rules, the nature of the duty to attend mass once a week. There are of course different forms of literalism, but my plea below is for tolerance of what they have in common: a straightforward acceptance, when possible, of the letter.

The abundant variations of Gnosticism in the second and third centuries A.D. testify both to its popularity and to the threat that it posed to the early Christian church. This threat is all the more evident in that some forms of Gnosticism were espoused by men, for example Valentinus and Basilides, who considered themselves faithful Christians. Yet, as is well known, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and other Church Fathers believed that Gnosticism was radically inimical to the authentic Christian gospel as professed by “the Great Church”. I wish to argue here that many contemporary theologians, who equally profess to be Christians, have proposed soteriological theories which are at their heart Gnostic, and constitute an equally grave threat to the integrity of the gospel today.

Before examining instances of what I consider contemporary variants of Gnostic soteriology, I will briefly state what I believe to be at the heart of the ancient Gnostic systems. I am not so much interested in the particular details of the various Gnostic Schools, but rather I want to highlight what exactly it is that gnosis consisted of for the Gnostics. What is it that the Pneumatikoi knew which brought them salvation?

The various Gnostic Schools taught elaborate cosmological systems or schemes. These were normally composed of the utterly transcendent and, often, unknowable good God, followed by the assorted lesser aeons of spirits (such as, Sige, Ennoia, Nous, Logos, Zoe, Pneuma, Sophia, angels, etc., depending on the Gnostic school). These made up the Pleroma and filled the infinite void between the transcendent God and the world of matter.