DeConick A.D

263
THE PI OF POLITICS
at the beginning of the first century CE. There was no common Gnostic
religion in antiquity, but there were Gnostics—religious people who
adopted a Gnostic metaphysical orientation that inverted the way they
“did” religion.
This new orientation valued the human being as something more than
a mortal creature fashioned by God to do his bidding. The human being
is understood to be substantially connected to a divine source that transcends
creation. Because of this, the human being is perceived to be bigger
and more powerful than the conventional gods who oversee creation.
Knowledge of this divine source, gnosis, depends on a direct link with the
transcendent God, along with the inspired rereading of religious scriptures
and a pluralistic quest in which truth is built from a wide variety of
religious traditions, philosophical wisdom, and scientific understanding.
At the heart of this new orientation, then, is transgression. It is a countercultural
worldview that flips the conventional upside down. The true
human is not mortal but immortal. The true God is not to be found
among the Gods we worship in synagogues, churches, and temples. The
true God can’t be known by reason or thought but must be experienced
directly. Scriptures contain meaning beyond the traditional—even meaning
antagonistic to the traditional.
This transgression, which is the heart of Gnostic spirituality, is not
explained by dubbing it a perversion or a fabrication. Transgression is
far more complex than either of these alternatives allow. Transgression
is about crossing boundaries and shifting territories. It is about limits
that are ever on the move. We only really know that transgression has
happened by observing the reactions people have to it. Transgression
becomes transgression when “orthodoxy” and “heresy,” “rightness” and
“wrongness” become fixed, when certain values get attached to certain
differences, and with them the scarlet A .
Breaching Norms
Back in the day, I remember being impressed by a simple demonstration
mentioned by my college sociology professor. Sociologists call the demonstration
“breaching,” because the aim is to examine people’s reactions
to breaches or violations of behavior that we generally accept as common