DeConick A.D

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THE PI OF POLITICS
financially committed as well. In most if not all Gnostic groups, members
were promised more and more perfect knowledge with each passing year.
In some really shrewd groups, this promise continued to unfold until the
deathbed, when the last words of hidden wisdom were whispered into the
ears of the dying person.
One of the strategies that most bothered Irenaeus was the willingness
of some Gnostic groups to appear to be Apostolic Catholic by using the
same liturgies in their rituals and catechisms. Converts were confused;
they wanted to know why the Apostolic Catholics shunned other groups
that promoted stuff that looked the same (Irenaeus, Against the Heresies
3.15.2). The Roman philosopher Celsus actually interacted with the Ophians,
who told him they were Christians. Celsus accepts this at face value
and Origen, the Apostolic Catholic teacher from Alexandria, has to turn
himself inside out to convince us otherwise.
Tough Competition
So, with all of these successful marketing techniques, why did the competition
play into the hands of Apostolic Catholics? Here we come to the
crux of the problem. To understand transgression is to understand whose
norms are being violated and which behaviors the violated group defines
as transgressive. Transgression is always about power and its inequalities.
By virtue of their influence, certain people in societies have more power.
People who access and control political, economic, or social resources
such as the media are more successful at defining what is normal and
what is abnormal than those who are less influential in these arenas. And
it is most often the case that those with power will find those with less
power to be abnormal and will demand harsh sanctions against their transgressive
actions (Clinard and Meier 2008, 11–12, 76–83; Franzese 2009,
88–101). Systems of social control that aggressively sanction and punish
transgression tend to identify an act against the interests of the people in
power as a transgression. Transgression becomes transgression because the
behavior violates the standards of the powerful in society, who are able to
enforce negative sanctions that discourage future violations.
When transgression is linked to negative sanctions and punishments,
those in power must persuade the public of the legitimacy of their stan-