Eric Voegelin.pdf - Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft

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fundamental: as a — or better the — saving insight acquired
by the elite, gnostic wisdom is immune to questioning and
exhibits a certainty that philosophical reflection after the
manner of Plato could never possess, because the latter is a
knowledge of the extent of human ignorance in relation to the
divine ground. As Voegelin wrote in the opening pages of
Israel and Revelation 63 , the equivalence of the knower and the
partner „precludes knowledge of the whole“, and „ignorance
of the whole“ precludes knowledge of the part.
Voegelin on Gnosticism in The Ecumenic Age
In 1974, Voegelin published his long-awaited volume four of
Order and History. One might have expected a sustained
analysis of gnosticism in this work, whose time period even
the cautious scholars at the Messina conference agreed covers
the period of the rise of gnosticism. Although such a sustained
analysis is not forthcoming, nonetheless Voegelin’s comments
add considerably to what we know from his earlier works
already examined. Even more important for our purposes,
there is a specific reference to a link between gnosticism and
the violence of totalitarian dictatorships in our time.
In the important Introduction there are some pages on whether
the author of the Gospel of John may be considered gnostic.
Voegelin’s answer is no, but that he sees traces of gnosticism
in some of the anti-cosmic formulations in John. Furthermore,
Voegelin describes the epiphany of Christ as a destabilizing
event working both for and against the recovery of the Order
of Being. It is worth quoting what he finds to have been the
central „fallacy“ at gnosticism’s core: