DeConick A.D

269
THE PI OF POLITICS
When the King Becomes a Dog
Apostolic Catholic leaders consider the Gnostic interface with scripture
criminal. What makes their interpretations criminal? In the first place,
Gnostics understand certain biblical passages to reveal the existence of the
supreme God. The Gnostic Christians are charged with falsely perceiving
ambiguities in the scripture, disjuncture and fault lines, which they then
press into service, understanding them to reveal the hidden supreme God
beneath the surface of the text.
Irenaeus says the particular testimonies they point out are very convincing
to people who have little previous knowledge of how scripture is
supposed to be read. So Gnostics are able to use these scriptures effectively
to lead gullible people away from the truth that the biblical God is
the one almighty Father and Creator (Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 1.3.6,
1.6.1, 1.19.1–2, 1.20.2, 3.6.5, 3.7.1–2).
Second, Gnostics adapt and accommodate from biblical texts anything
they can use as evidence of their own complex, underlying scriptural systems
(1.1.3, 1.3.6, 1.20.2). This goes for the Gospels and the letters of
Paul as well as the Law and the Prophets (1.3.6, 1.8.1; see Pagels 1975).
Gnostic readers are known to provide elaborate allegorical interpretations
of Jesus’ parables that coincide with their own idiosyncratic mythologies
and religious narratives, explaining that the scriptures point to the
wonderful, unspeakable mysteries of the Gnostics (Irenaeus, Against the
Heresies 1.1.3). Gnostic readers also tend to disregard the sequence of passages,
rearranging verses to suit their version of truth. Irenaeus compares
this interpretative practice to a person who takes a portrait of a king and
breaks it into pieces. The person rearranges the pieces into a picture of a
dog, and then says that this was the original intention of the artist. When
they do this, they deceive many people who have no prior knowledge of
the king’s portrait (1.6.1).
Irenaeus maintains that Gnostics do not read scripture as the original
authors intended it, and he is particularly worried about this in terms of
the Gospel of John, which seems to be on the chopping block (Irenaeus,
Against the Heresies 3.11.1; 4.41.1–3). Irenaeus insists that the original author
proclaims that there is only one God, the Almighty, and one Jesus
Christ, the Only Begotten, by whom all things were made. Gnostics such
as Cerinthus and the Valentinians transgress the text, reading it as if it