DeConick A.D

261
THE PI OF POLITICS
of his brain appear to be changing their configuration, surfacing above his
ear in this odd pointed formation. We now wonder whether Max really
has stumbled across the secret of the universe and it is rewiring his brain
into something new.
In Aranofsky’s film, all such musings about Max are true. He is the boy
who was transformed by the vision of the sun, whose mind cannot handle
the absolute knowledge it received. Throughout his life he is plagued by
horribly debilitating migraines and visions, as his brain tries to contain the
information and keep it unconscious. But after Max consciously recalls the
magic 216-digit number, his brain structures visibly morph and everything
goes to hell. Max becomes the stereotypical crazed Gnostic, the dangerous
heretic who wants to weld the power of absolute truth for himself.
Madness for Sure
Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons is frustrated with Marcus and all the rest of
the Gnostics. He is tired of it all. The craziness. The lies. The blasphemy.
Something has to be done to stop the insubordination, to control the
situation. Things have gotten out of hand. Marcus’s church has appeal;
this can’t be denied. He is crafty with his theatrics and emotional antics,
attracting unsuspecting Christians into his fold at an alarming rate. But
oh, the agony of it all! The man is out of his mind. People are being deceived,
dragged into the very depth of his madness, crossing the line of
sanity and truth.
Irenaeus takes up his pen. He feels that he needs to draw the lines, to
explain to other Christians how the “so-called” Gnostics have cut across
the borders, how they have transgressed the good faith, the Christian
truth.
What are the lines that define the faith, that hedge in the truth? According
to Irenaeus, the truth is delineated by one fact and one fact alone:
that the God the Christians worship is YHWH, the biblical Creator. The
Gnostic teaching that the biblical Creator is an ignorant and evil deity
is nothing less than blasphemy. There is no Good God, no Father of
Jesus beyond YHWH. Such an opinion is not Christian but anti-Christian.
These Gnostic blasphemers drag people into an abyss of madness with
their violation of the faith. At all costs, they must be stopped (Irenaeus,
Against the Heresies 1.pref.1).