The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

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Irish1975
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by Irish1975 »

GakuseiDon wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 10:23 pm
Irish1975 wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 5:22 pm
…we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. However not all men have this knowledge.
Well, I actually used 1 Cor 8:4-7 to support my view. To paraphrase Paul from above": "There are many gods and many lords, but for us there is but One God and One Lord". Those other gods are being worshipped as gods. Does Paul think there are actually other gods? If so, what does he mean by "god"?
I think it is clear that Paul does not "think there are actually other gods." The paragraph cited above as a whole affirms his belief in only the one God. You say that he also affirms the existence of many other gods and lords--but he really doesn't! By using the expression λεγόμενοι θεοὶ, "so-called" gods, in the immediately preceding clause of the sentence in question, he makes it explicit that he is talking about worshipped idols, not beings that he would acknowledge to be gods. 1 Cor 10:18-22 (assuming this is the same Paul) specifically identifies such beings as demons.
Paul seems to follow the idea that the One God is the Creator God of the Jews and the creator of Adam.
We may be following different interpretative methodologies, because here you seem to be relying on a general notion of what the historical Paul believes (sc. that the One God is the Creator God of the Jews), and using that notion to constrain your reading of particular texts, with the added assumption that our texts are reliably authentic and integral.

I argue from the particular to the general. That is, I don't assume a historical Paul behind every verse of the authentic epistles. I don't know who wrote 2 Cor 4:4, or the larger fragment from 2:14 to 7:4, which seems to be a unity (although perhaps 6:14 to 7:1 doesn't belong with it). My working hypothesis these days is that there was an evolving Pauline school, which probably took its origins from the letters of a historical Paul, although it may be impossible to reconstruct his originals. So what we have is the scripture of "Paul," a relative unity.

Within that context, I see elements of demiurgism, intermingled with the redactions of the more Jewish-monotheistic Paul that you invoke (particularly in Romans).
Unless Paul is following a Zoroastrian belief of two equal but opposed Gods, how is calling a non-Creator demiurge a "god" any more valid than calling Satan a "god"?
I don't know what you mean by "valid"; that's a normative concept, and I'm just interested in what the words actually meant in the thought world of the person who wrote them.

A demiurge, by definition, is a creator god. But we should be careful about what assumptions we are putting onto Paul w/r/t ideas of creation. That's because he rarely talks about it. Even in 1 Cor 8:6, the reference to the Father ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα could admit of various belief systems, in addition to the anthropomorphic creation story in Genesis. In particular, I think some gnostics would have affirmed this way of speaking about the Father, even though they attributed the creation of the material cosmos to a subordinate deity or emanation or aeon.
It's not that "god of this age" can't mean a Gnostic Creator God, because obviously it can. It's that the rest of Paul's description negates the idea AFAICS.
What specifically does "the rest of Paul's description" refer to? And how does it negate the demiurgic reading? Appealing to canonical Paul's general Jewishness and general monotheism does not negate this reading, unless the possibility of diverse voices and theologies within the Pauline Corpus is ruled out in principle.
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Irish1975
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by Irish1975 »

I think the claim was made at some point that a reference to Satan in 2 Cor 4:4 was a "proto-orthodox" interpretation, but in fact Irenaeus refused to make this association (likewise Origen, apparently). He rejected the idea that Paul seriously used the expression ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου (the god of this age/world) at all.

Therefore neither would the Lord, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the apostles, have ever named as God, definitely and absolutely, him who was not God, unless he were truly God; nor would they have named any one in his own person Lord, except God the Father ruling over all, and His Son who has received dominion from His Father over all creation...(AH III.6.1)

When, however, the Scripture terms them [gods] which are no gods, it does not, as I have already remarked, declare them as gods in every sense, but with a certain addition and signification, by which they are shown to be no gods at all (AH III.6.3).

As to their affirming that Paul said plainly in 2 Corinthians, "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not," and maintaining that there is indeed one god of this world, but another who is beyond all principality, and beginning, and power, we are not to blame if they, who give out that they do themselves know mysteries beyond God, know not how to read Paul. For if any one read the passage thus-according to Paul's custom, as I show elsewhere, and by many examples, that he uses transposition of words-"In whom God," then pointing it off, and making a slight interval, and at the same time read also the rest [of the sentence] in one [clause], "hath blinded the minds of them of this world that believe not," he shall find out the true [sense]; that it is contained in the expression, "God hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world." And this is shown by means of the little interval [between the clause]. For Paul does not say, "the God of this world," as if recognising any other beyond Him; but he confessed God as indeed God (AH III.7.1)...

This is a ridiculous theory of hyperbaton (transposition of natural word order for rhetorical effect) that does violence to the text, which no modern exegete would accept. But it is worth considering Irenaeus' motivations. He was bothered by a categorical unqualified reference in scripture to a god who was not the one true God. Nor could he embrace the contrary option of ascribing this reference to that one true God (which some have accepted).

Biblehub.com has some interesting comments.
John2
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by John2 »

Irish1975 wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 5:22 pm
John2 wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 3:18 pm As the Ascension of Isaiah 2:4 puts it (for example), "the angel of lawlessness, who is the ruler of this world, is Belial." Paul goes on to mention Belial in 2 Cor. 6:15-16.
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.
This text calls Belial an angel, not a god. It also calls him a “ruler” (i.e. archon); in the NT, that expression is hardly if ever the semantic equivalent of “god.”

It is also not clear what the mention of Belial in 2 Cor 6 implies about his possible identity with “the god of this aeon.” This text associates him with unbelief in Christ, and with idols. In a Pauline context, these associations imply a demon, not a god.

Do you think Paul knew Hebrew? I do, anyway (given that he was a Pharisee and advanced "in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries" and "extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers"). And the word for God in Hebrew (elohim) has the sense of "divine being" (god or angel). Maybe Paul (or Timothy, who co-authored 2 Cor.) preferred to use theos to describe Belial in Greek.

I think because it is "the god of this age" who "has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" in 2 Cor. 4:4, it has to pertain to what Paul says in 6:15 ("What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?"). Who makes people unbelievers? The "god of this world," aka Belial.
John2
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by John2 »

The Ascension of Isaiah goes on to describe Belial as a god that rules the world in 4:2-9.

2. After it is consummated, Beliar the great ruler, the king of this world, will descend, who hath ruled it since it came into being; yea, he will descent from his firmament in the likeness of a man, a lawless king, the slayer of his mother: who himself (even) this king.

3. Will persecute the plant which the Twelve Apostles of the Beloved have planted. Of the Twelve one will be delivered into his hands.

4. This ruler in the form of that king will come and there will come with him all the powers of this world, and they will hearken unto him in all that he desires.

5. And at his word the sun will rise at night and he will make the moon to appear at the sixth hour.

6. And all that he hath desired he will do in the world: he will do and speak like the Beloved and he will say: "I am God and before me there has been none."

7. And all the people in the world will believe in him.

8. And they will sacrifice to him and they will serve him saying: "This is God and beside him there is no other."
ABuddhist
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by ABuddhist »

John2 wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 3:36 pm The Ascension of Isaiah goes on to describe Belial as a god that rules the world in 4:2-9.

2. After it is consummated, Beliar the great ruler, the king of this world, will descend, who hath ruled it since it came into being; yea, he will descent from his firmament in the likeness of a man, a lawless king, the slayer of his mother: who himself (even) this king.

3. Will persecute the plant which the Twelve Apostles of the Beloved have planted. Of the Twelve one will be delivered into his hands.

4. This ruler in the form of that king will come and there will come with him all the powers of this world, and they will hearken unto him in all that he desires.

5. And at his word the sun will rise at night and he will make the moon to appear at the sixth hour.

6. And all that he hath desired he will do in the world: he will do and speak like the Beloved and he will say: "I am God and before me there has been none."

7. And all the people in the world will believe in him.

8. And they will sacrifice to him and they will serve him saying: "This is God and beside him there is no other."
With all due respect, the passage that you quote does not describe Beliar as a god, but rather as "the great ruler, the king of this world", who will proclaim himself to be the only god. That presumably is a major distinction for strict monotheists.
John2
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by John2 »

ABuddhist wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 3:40 pm
With all due respect, the passage that you quote does not describe Beliar as a god, but rather as "the great ruler, the king of this world", who will proclaim himself to be the only god. That presumably is a major distinction for strict monotheists.

I appreciate the distinction, but to me this presents Belial the same way that Paul does "the god of this world" in 2 Cor. 4:4, as a divine entity that causes problems in the world.
rgprice
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by rgprice »

There is another thing to consider as well. We know that AoI has been Christianized. I have seen several people in this thread or other related ones mention that it was a common view among Christians that Satan was a ruler of the world or that the material would needed to come to an end. But the point is, did this view come from "Gnosticism"?

I increasingly think it is likely that Jesus worship as we know it all descends from Gnostic elements. Whether the original layer of Pauline writings was Gnostic or not, I think that "Christianity" as it existed in the early 2nd century was all, or nearly all, Gnostic in nature. The proto-orthodox seem to have been monotheistic God-fearers who were more aligned with traditional Judaism. They took what they found in "Gnostic Christianity" and revised it to make it more compatible with Jewish monotheism, either consciously or inadvertently.

A major part of this process was "converting" the Gnostic demiurge/Jewish God into Satan.

I still have yet to see any non-Gnostic Jewish examples that call of the destruction of the material world. From everything I've seen, even among Jews who talked about the rule of Belair, they talked about cleaning the earth, i.e. God's Creation, of Belair and his minions, not destroying the earth. It seems to me that the destruction of the material world only makes sense in a Gnostic framework, where the material world is not viewed as the creation of the Highest God. Even though later Christians held this view, it seems that they held this view because they inherited it from the Gnostics.

So I would think that destruction of the material world and freeing our souls to live with God in heaven, is a distinct marker of Gnostic origins. The identification of a "god of this world" goes hand in hand with that. This world is rejected because it is the world of an evil god, not the world of the Highest God. I will grant that Belair was sometimes referred to as a "lord of this world" even among non-Gnostic Jews, but again, those non-Gnostic Jews wanted to rid the world of Belair, not see the world come to and end.
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Irish1975
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by Irish1975 »

John2 wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 2:29 pm Do you think Paul knew Hebrew?
No I don't.
Maybe Paul (or Timothy, who co-authored 2 Cor.) preferred to use theos to describe Belial in Greek.
You’re not offering a hypothesis/explanation why Paul would describe Belial (or Satan) as a god, if he didn’t believe he was a god but rather a demon. The language is categorical. See the quotation above from Irenaeus, a fluent speaker in Koine Greek not much removed in time, who actually considers Paul’s language to be "blasphemy" and "calumny," i.e. on the part of the gnostics who supposedly misread him.
I think because it is "the god of this age" who "has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" in 2 Cor. 4:4, it has to pertain to what Paul says in 6:15 ("What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?"). Who makes people unbelievers? The "god of this world," aka Belial.
In Pauline thought, it does not require a "god" for there to be unbelievers. Demons, natural ignorance (Rom 10:14), etc.

2 Corinthians 3:13-16 comes immediately before our text, and has far more similarities. The parallel between the god of the Old Covenant, and the god of this aeon, is exact, and indeed for Paul the aeon of the Law, this present evil aeon (Gal 1), the aeon of the rulers that is passing away (1 Cor 2), are all one and the same. The effect of both the Law and of the corrupt rulers of this aeon is blindness, hardness of heart, unbelief, condemnation.

2 Cor 3:13-16
οὐ καθάπερ Μωϋσῆς ἐτίθει κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου. ἀλλ’ ἐπωρώθη τὰ νοήματα αὐτῶν. ἄχρι γὰρ τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας τὸ αὐτὸ κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναγνώσει τῆς παλαιᾶς διαθήκης μένει, μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον ὅτι ἐν Χριστῷ καταργεῖται· ἀλλ’ ἕως σήμερον ἡνίκα ἂν ἀναγινώσκηται Μωϋσῆς, κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὴν καρδίαν αὐτῶν κεῖται· ἡνίκα δὲ ἐὰν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα.
2 Cor 1-4
Διὰ τοῦτο, ἔχοντες τὴν διακονίαν ταύτην καθὼς ἠλεήθημεν, οὐκ ἐγκακοῦμεν ἀλλ’ ἀπειπάμεθα τὰ κρυπτὰ τῆς αἰσχύνης, μὴ περιπατοῦντες ἐν πανουργίᾳ μηδὲ δολοῦντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ ἀλλὰ τῇ φανερώσει τῆς ἀληθείας συνιστάνοντες ἑαυτοὺς πρὸς πᾶσαν συνείδησιν ἀνθρώπων ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ. εἰ δὲ καὶ ἔστιν κεκαλυμμένον τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἡμῶν, ἐν τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις ἐστὶν κεκαλυμμένον, ἐν οἷς ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου ἐτύφλωσεν τὰ νοήματα τῶν ἀπίστων εἰς τὸ μὴ αὐγάσαι τὸν φωτισμὸν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τῆς δόξης τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ.
[But we] are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Like a good rhetorician, this author repeats a single them (veiling) over and over in order to unify his argument. The theme of veiling, hiddenness, ignorance, unbelief w/r/t the Mosaic Law, over against the splendor, glory, light, truth, honesty, etc. of the gospel of Christ, is unmistakable and persistent across chapters 3 and 4; it is all one argument. Now, it's true that "unbelievers" for Paul are both Jew and Gentile; but there is no actual shift in chapter 4 away from the followers of Moses, and exclusively towards the heathen. Indeed, τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ in 4:2 can only be a reference to the Jewish scripture. So although all unbelievers of this aeon are embraced in chapter 4, the god of Moses has not been left behind. We see in Galatians 4:1-11 this same tendency in Paul to put Torah Judaism and pagan ignorance of the true God on the same level, i.e. unbelief and destruction.

Admittedly, this author (as redacted) is coy. But he states clearly that the god of Moses blinds people, and the god of this world blinds people. The natural inference is that they are one and the same.
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Irish1975
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by Irish1975 »

I see Paul awaiting judgment of the present world, and yearning to put off his own body and be with Christ, and lamenting the law of sin and death in his body, arguing against the logic of the flesh, and so forth. But what I don't see is Paul talking about the destruction of the creation, the material world.
rgprice
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Re: The "Gnosticism" of 2 Corinthians

Post by rgprice »

@Irish1975 Well stated regarding Moses, etc. As for destruction of the Creation, yes, I agree that isn't espoused in these passages.

But again I was to reiterate that all we can really do here is note what exists in portions of text. It should be clear now that the Pauline letters are not a unity, and that identifying the "original layer" may be impossible. We can't say if 2 Cor 3-4 "authentic Paul" or if it is a Marcionite interpolation. It should be clear that it isn't a proto-orthodox interpolation. The 2 Cor 3-4 clearly has Marcionite elements, that, as you say, Irenaeus and other church father struggled with.

My supposition is that the orthodox Pauline letters are derived from the Marcionite letters, and whoever revised Marcion's Apostolikon simply missed a few things (as they also did when they revised Marcion's Gospel into GLuke). My current working view is that sometime between around 130 and 170, someone or some small group took Marcion's scriptures and derived Luke, Acts, and the orthodox Pauline letters from them, which then became the foundation for the orthodox New Testament. In the process, a few bits like this were overlooked, either just by accident or because the editor didn't see them as problematic.
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