The Gnostic Church - What If God Hadn't Died? (Alt. History)
I’ve been thinking a lot about the alternative history of what if Gnosticism had become the dominant way of thinking in the early Christian church. Apparently, it was a very dominant way of thinking for the first 150 years after Jesus’ death.
What makes Gnosticism cool:
Gnostics believe the material world was created by a flawed, lower being called the demiurge who is a lion-headed snake bodied selfish creature that we reference in the Old Testament as God, and that salvation comes through secret inner knowledge awakening the divine spark within, and that the serpent who tempted eve was a savior sent to liberate us from this God, as was Jesus.
As someone who grew up going to my Methodist church often, and being very enthusiastic about it until age 12 when I read the Bible and decided it was a work of fiction incompatible with my scientific beliefs which I was equally enthusiastic about, I thought that if gnosticism had been the dogma of the church I had grown up in, I would have been unable to so easily reject it.
This is the central thought on what would make this alternative timeline so cool. The idea that if the Renaissance and Enlightenment had come to a Gnostically dominated Europe, that scientific discovery would not have been quite so incompatible with church theology. After all, we could always say that all the false science reported in the Bible was a further attempt by the demiurge to delude us about the true nature of reality.
Side note: There is an interesting short story by Ted Chiang called Omphalos about an alternative history where the fossil record does prove young earth creationism, with a fun twist.
The pathway to this alternative timeline would’ve been most likely by having Gnostic Valentinus become bishop of Rome (a title that would go on to be Pope) around 140AD.
I am considering writing a little fictional scene from this world, but in the meantime i’m curious what others think about this alternative history.
One cool aspect from this alternative world is that the crucifixion of Christ would not be a central image in the Gnostic church, as they do not believe Jesus’ death was a sacrifice for our sins, as they did not believe we lived in sin, but rather in a state of attempted rescue from the material world.
Stained glass depictions of the Garden of Eden scene would not be one of an evil snake coming to lead us into sin and a lifetime of punishment, but rather our first steps towards liberation, similar to Neo taking the red pill. Imagine how different a church, full of stained glass, would be, if it was exalting us finding hidden secret knowledge about the true nature of material reality, rather than us being led into sin by seeking truth (a concept that never sat well with me as a child who loved knowledge). Would the rise of the Christian church be seen as the inflection point on our path to wisdom, rather than the sunset of the Roman empire and our descent into the dark ages?
How do you think a church which adopted Gnosticism in 150AD would’ve played out?