Material Girls and Boys
creation, incarnation, Gnosticism, and the arts

by Tim Gallant

One of the earliest and most dangerous heresies to threaten the Christian Church was Gnosticism. The term "gnostic" referred to one reputedly enlightened with wisdom (cf Greek gnosis = "wisdom"). While Gnosticism did not appear in full form until the second century, aspects of it can be traced to antecedent roots in earlier Greek philosophy.

Although Gnosticism, narrowly considered, was opposed ably by early Christian thinkers, its dualism has been a recurring plague which the Church has had to battle throughout the ensuing centuries.

Gnosticism's distinctive contribution was its view of the radical antithesis between matter and spirit. That which is material is unspiritual; this unspirituality is frequently construed as evil. This view bears some debt to Plato's notion that behind the material world, which is in fact illusory, is the world of Forms - immaterial realities upon which the things we see are based. And running in the other direction, this dualism would later be developed by cults and sects such as the Manichees and Cathars.

Gnosticism's two roads

In terms of practical implications, Gnosticism worked itself out along two divergent paths, which we will label ascetic Gnosticism and antinomian Gnosticism.

Ascetic Gnosticism runs with the matter-is-evil philosophy by seeking to transcend the bodily (material realm) as far as possible. This means disengagement from anything "earthly." This could be taken to tremendous extremes, where not only pleasurable things were proscribed - such as excellent food and wine, marital sex, and so on - but also basic necessities. Gnosticism of this type was usually marked by excessive fasting, and even attempts to go as long as possible without using the toilet.

Antinomian Gnosticism takes the implications of its radical dualism in the opposite direction. Whereas ascetic Gnosticism attempts to escape the material world, antinomian Gnosticism recognizes the impossibility of such a task. The unspirituality of the material realm is not treated as problematic, but rather as without consequence. Therefore, whatever one does in the body doesn't matter; hence, anything goes - sexual immorality, whatever.

The orthodox antidote to Gnosticism

From the beginning, Church apologists appealed to the creation and the Incarnation to oppose Gnosticism. It is God Himself who created the material world, and He called it "good." Furthermore, He reaffirmed this valuation by sending His Son to be incarnate as an embodied Man. Biblical redemption is not configured as an escape from the material world, but as the liberation of the creation - embodied and material as it is.

It is no accident that the Gnostics developed their own "scriptures" and canon; the sixty-six books universally accepted by the orthodox Church are too clearly "material" for them. Indeed, the notorious Marcion, who rejected the Old Testament and edited the New with a chainsaw, was himself a Gnostic (and probably the most well-known to us). For Marcion and those like him, any God who would create material things was not good, but evil.

Gnosticism's heirs and the arts

While we don't encounter a lot of actual Gnosticism in the Church, something a lot like its dualistic philosophy remains with us, in both its forms.

We have those who echo ascetic Gnosticism by demeaning the arts as "unspiritual," unworthy of Christian attention. Such folk see no value in reading or writing great literature, creating or viewing masterpiece paintings, and so on. Christianity is about "the spiritual," which is opposed to aesthetic, material concerns. We must answer this viewpoint in the same fashion that the ancient Church answered its Gnostic forebears: The God who created the material universe and incarnated His Son is the Lord of the arts. He is the progenitor of beauty and aesthetics, and imitating Him is truly spiritual activity.

But on the other side of the coin, we have the modern "antinomian Gnostics." This can be discerned in the notion that there are no aesthetic norms. Musicians are sometimes the most guilty of this approach. They feel free to use whatever genre the world does, because it's "the heart that matters" and "as long as you get the message right, it doesn't matter how you say it."

This too is Gnosticism. It doesn't ignore our embodiedness - our "enculturedness," if you will - but it does ignore its significance. The fact that we are embodied, enculturated beings has practical significance for what we do and how we do it.

The approach of "only the heart matters" and the grand divorce between message and presentation are belied quickly upon a little reflection. Imagine - well, at least, suppose - that a young woman goes around teaching on sexual purity to high school students. Now suppose that she is scantily clad, and her presentation is done while engaging in sensual gyrations. Would we really be willing to say that "only the heart matters" and her manner of presentation is indifferent, and therefore what she is doing is good?

I suspect not, and that's because, when push comes to shove, we do realize that there are norms of appropriateness.

Now, that was obviously a very extreme example, offered to demonstrate a principle: our embodiedness implies presentational norms. Because the embodied realm within which we were created is not evil, not merely an illusion, but veritable reality, how things are done is supremely important.

And this is no less true of the arts, no matter how we may wish to make them a purely subjective issue of personal taste.

As a person who creates rock music, it may be surprising for some to hear me say this, but the fact is inescapable: It is entirely possible for some things to be done in the name of art (whether we are speaking of music or the other arts) which are not in fact art - or at least, not good art. And the lyrical content of a work of art is not automatic justification of that work.

If we to counter practical Gnosticism in our day, we must return to the creational and incarnational basis of the Christian response. There has always been development and ebb and flow in culture, but the end of the twentieth century has conferred upon us a vicious addiction to what is "hip," with a built-in obsolescence factor of a few short years. The result is a never-ending stream of successive "modern" movements, perhaps most pronounced in the area of music. And this has become a breeding ground for novelty, and the less depth, the better.

Contrary to the ascetic Gnostics of our day, there is nothing evil about rock music itself. It isn't intrinsically "worldly" to cultivate a musical style that is popular outside the Church.

But contrary to the antinomian Gnostics of our day, art is not a neutral vehicle. All communication is embodied, and the decision to embody a message within a particular art form is not merely an abstractly presentational decision; it is a communicational decision. A properly creational understanding of art (and, for that matter, of who we are as human beings) will entail being judicious in how we employ the various forms of art available to us.

To put a bit of flesh on this, I recently watched a DVD of Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth concert in Australia, and I was struck why critics in the 1970s so frequently charged progressive rock as "pretentious." The problem wasn't that there was anything wrong with the music, but that it often didn't fit. In this case, Wakeman's grandiose production and performance was paired with a lame and overblown story - and truth be told, Journey to the Centre of the Earth was materially more substantial than a lot of its rivals. As so often with progressive rock, the music was so epic and grandiose that it sometimes sounded like parody when one considered what it was about.

Now, my point here is that what we are frequently experiencing with Christian music today is the inverse of that. We have a grand message - the grandest story of them all - and yet, because we refuse to be reflective about the embodied character of our art, we miscommunicate at a very fundamental level. If progressive rock was often pretentious, contemporary Christian music is frequently trivial and trivializing.

We still need to fight Gnosticism. Let's start with our art.