DeConick A.D

110
PAUL AND GNOSTIC DOGMA
Emergent Christianity
Gnostic spirituality knows no bounds when it comes to the religious interface.
When Gnostic spirituality met Greek philosophy within the Egyptian
religious buffer at the beginning of the Common Era, Hermetism
erupted. When Gnostic spirituality merged with the Jewish Bible, Sethian
ism came online. With Simon Magus, Gnostic spirituality blended with
a local Samaritan cult, and the universalist Gnostic movement known as
Simonianism was born. What happened when Gnostic spirituality interfaced
with nascent Christianity?
The story of nascent Christianity is not as straightforward as the book
of Acts in the New Testament would have us think. The other New Testament
literature, including Paul’s letters, tells us that the early development
of Christianity was not a romantic tale of the Apostolic Catholic church
with a single message about Jesus that was altered disingenuously over
time by Gnostics and other heretics. Rather, at its core, emergent Christianity
was diverse, a kaleidoscopic new religion with competing expressions—the
Apostolic Catholic was only one of them.
How could this be? Imagine what it must have been like after Jesus’s
death for the people whose lives he had touched. Different people may
have been inspired by their own personal memories of Jesus to evangelize
and share his teachings. These evangelists may have agreed with other
evangelists, or not. Many would have been lone wolves, doing their own
thing, with no formal ties to anyone but themselves and their God.
We don’t have much information about these early days, aside from a
few references like the one in the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus’ disciples
encounter a man they don’t know, who is casting out demons in Jesus’
name. Jesus tells his disciples to leave the man alone, that he is filled with
power and should not be stopped. He reminds his disciples that whoever
is able to do such things in his name is a friend, not a foe (Mark 9:38–41).
The other reference we have to this type of informal enthusiastic Jesus
devotion is found in the book of Acts, where we are told about Apollos,
a native Jew from Alexandria, who brought his version of Jesus devotion
to Ephesus. His was a scripture-based program that focused on messianic
prophecies, which Apollos thought applied to Jesus. His main targets
were other Jews, whom he hoped to convince of Jesus’ messiahship. Like