Journey Through James and 1 2 3 JohnSample

Proto-Gnosticism: Behind the Text

The real difference between Apostolic Christianity and the emerging heresies of Proto-Gnosticism (like Docetism) has something to do with the meaning of “knowledge” and “ignorance.”

Gnosticism

The knowledge described in the Gospel of John is relational: it’s about knowing God personally through intimacy with the persons of the Trinity. Knowledge in the Bible is never really “conceptual”; it’s not really about ideas but about intimacy and likeness to God. We can see this in the prophets:

“They bend their tongue like their bow;

Lies and not truth prevail in the land;

For they proceed from evil to evil,

And they do not know Me,” declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 9:3 (NASB)

The Gospel of John offers something similar:

The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.

John 17:22-26 (NASB)

Sin & Ignorance

Christian knowledge is inseparable from living like Christ. John leaves no margin for the idea that spiritual insight could ever be disconnected from practice, or that Christian practice could ever be disconnected from the person of Christ. The focus on sin as a type of ignorance makes a connection that would be at odds with Gnostic spirituality.