Gnosis
It’s ironic, all this talk about the Da Vinci Code and Gnostic texts like the Gospel of Judas. The germ of Gnosticism was a belief in the importance of possessing “secret knowledge.” As I understand it, Gnostics stressed that knowing — and particularly knowing what other people did not — was the path to salvation. It’s easy to see why that view was rejected as heretical by the apostolic tradition. For that tradition stresses, first, that we know only in part and see only through a darkened glass, and second, that knowledge cannot hold a candle to the priority of love.
Yet here’s the irony: the incredible amount of popular interest in Gnosticism seems to drink from the same cup that the Gnostics themselves emptied to the dregs. The allure of the Da Vinci Code is the allure of the conspiracy, the allure of secret knowledge, the allure of the mystery cult. If Christians feel compelled to protest the movie, they could best do so not by picketing or going on hunger strikes, but simply by repeating the injunction of St. John: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
