The answer lies right before us: God's truth is dispensed in time. Christianity and Judaism have both been subject to the threat of Satanic influence. Now, they are both particularly vulnerable: the Jews for their successful search for a way to avoid their duty as bearers of the burden of God's Law (secular humanism); and the Christians for their willful attempt to substitute Christ's sacrifice for obedience to God's Law. Yes, the contemporary church is pre-Gnostic; for gnostics do not recognize Biblical revelation, but the church merely chooses which revelations to recognize and then only if they are "interpreted" to make them all simple and easy. The only revelation the gnostics embrace is the revelation of their own respective wills; for they have become one with God, you see. God is inside them and feeding them with occult wisdom. Christians are at sea because the Jews are at sea. Gnosticism was a Jewish heresy long before it became a Christian heresy. It claimed Christ, but it did not stem from Christ. It came with the controversies of the OT among the Jews and, at first, caused Christians to reaffirm the OT as the first dispensation, but the NT as a second dispensation. Until the Jews come back to the Torah and embrace once more their duty, the Christians will carry in their bosom a great weakness and will suffer from great confusion; for the OT is a loving God's advice for living a mortal existence in the world of His Creation and eating every day of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Without THAT knowledge, Christians are at sea, settling for pablum and calling it sanctified wine. The first question is: how is this new attack by heretics the same and how is it different from its appearance in the Early Church? The second question is: How did the Early Church successfully defend against heresy in those days and how may we successfully defend against it now? The third question is: Is this the first stage of the falling away of the world from its Creator that has been foretold and, therefore, a sign and a part of prophecy, or is it a war given to man that he might rediscover in waging it, a truer understanding of its meaning and of the paths to restore us all from apostacy? Both? Neither? Everything is at stake here, but knowing that produces only frustration when we are disarmed, dispersed, and untrained. What is God's Will in this? The snarling atheists, the vain agnostics, and the retro-pagans wander the realm like zombies in a shopping mall, while the gnostics sow the seeds of arrogance, hubris, and disobedience. I simply do not know. I don't know what I am to do nor how to do it. Where is our Irenaeus? Where is our Aquinas? Why do I know all of this, but am otherwise the most ignorant of men?

It is good to hear from you. I hope that you and your family enjoyed the Christmas season. Sharon and I certainly found much with which to be fond these past few weeks here, though the affliction of culture shock seems more paramount in my wife than myself and, even if in a small way only, may have darkened a bit of the charm. As for myself, I have been always a bit of a humbug in this season - perhaps in part from the lack of sunlight but perhaps even more so from the vague sense that the charms of the season are a thin veneer for a lot that is inauthentic and shallow. It is not that the Christmas season is any more inauthentic, than the various other times of the year. It is that it is celebrated with such solemnity, as if going to Disneyland and watching foul mouthed adults dressed as fairies and wizards is somehow a "religious," or at least "important," event, rather than just the escapism that it is. In a way, I sense that I am becoming ever less patient with what is phony, whether it be the "solemn" occasions of our time or just the contrived expressions of politeness with which I am all too often accustomed at cocktail parties here. A certain malaise sets in, when one is seldom, if ever, able to say or to do anything serious in this world. With respect to your comments below, I concur that the crisis in Christianity today is, as it must remain always, a crisis in Judaism. No matter how Saint Paul appeals to the Gentiles of his own time, by arguing that faith alone avails that for which circumcision is just a sign, our two faiths are forever of the same household. Saint Paul actually affirms as such, even in the same Epistle to the Romans were he most clearly espouses faith, though those who would turn brother against brother have twisted his comments to foment a familial war, that in the end can only burn that very household back to the dust. I am reminded here of what President Lincoln said about "a house divided." Our Civil War was not simply, or even in its deeper sense principally, a conflict between two geographical regions with different political cultures. It was at first a war between those who would keep together the Old and the New Testaments and those who, under a false guise of "liberty" and "states rights," tore the two Testaments apart from one another and therefore corrupted the New Testament in particular into at best a pre-gnostic document. The judgments of God prevailed in that war, as it must be always, but like Israel in the time of the Judges our nation has descended from whatever righteousness it acquired in the fallen blood of those four years of turmoil. I suppose that, in consequence of having fallen away from Eden, we sons of Adam, who have been robbed of our innocence but, in turn, have gained the much greater gift of moral discernment and thus moral responsibility, can never know righteousness except as short-lived, partial, and born from strife. As God reminds us always, we shall be forced to earn our bread from the sweat of our brow, relearning the lessons forgotten, and rediscovering what is noble within us. In answer to your first question, fundamentally nothing is new about our contemporary bout with gnosticism. It cannot be otherwise, since the tenets of the heresy remain the same as when Adam presumed that he could know as God without remaining faithful to Him, and the fallen nature with which we have been afflicted since that time has not changed. Even if we are born again in Christ Jesus, we remain in our old bodies; and given that the Resurrected Christ Jesus still carries in his hands the wounds of His crucifixion, I suspect that the scars of our sins will remain, even when we too are resurrected. He did not warrant his wounds on the Cross but rather assumed them for us. We have warranted ours and, I suspect, as such shall carry the signs of them into eternity, as a sign of our praise for the God who redeems us from the wages of these sins, and as a reminder to ourselves of what we have gained in His Son. It may seem as if we are denying the full redemption offered by Christ Jesus, if in this manner we contend that we shall maintain the scars of our sins and shall need as such to be reminded of our past. Nevertheless, I would contend that, even when resurrected, we shall remain fundamentally men, that is perched somewhere between the Kingdoms of God and of Nature, and capable still of moral probity. We shall never be other than who we are - or else, the decisions and actions that we undertake in this fallen world have no actual and moral bearing to them. The gnostics suggest that, in some sort of esoteric redemption, the men who are so graced will cease to be men fundamentally. They will be gods, or at least in a state of grace that is decidedly more of the Kingdom of God than of Nature. The Jew who remains faithful to the Torah, and the Christian who keeps together the Old and the New in his fidelity to Christ Jesus, must know, however dimly, that men who are so graced will be still men, not gods, and not forgetting that they are forever as much of Nature as of God. In light of what has been revealed to us, and of what we know from nature, there cannot be in this struggle anything that is fundamentally new, because we cannot be other than men. There are differences, nevertheless, in how gnosticism has managed to permeate our times in comparison to its prior incarnations. As I mentioned in a recent email, gnosticism in more recent history has become adept in taking on the affectations of neo-paganism. This is very remarkable, since in substance the two are diametrical opposites. Gnosticism, in its various permutations, holds that there is no spiritual worth in matter, that God is so transcendent to creation that He is not the Creator, and that our "redemption" is in being freed from a bodily nature that is either illusory or intrinsically perverse. Paganism generally holds a pantheistic view, that spirit is indistinguishable from matter, that God is Nature and Nature is God, and that our "redemption" is in being able to master this deification of matter in order to achieve our desires, not in some esoteric, spiritual life in the future, but here and now, such as more rain, a better harvest, a fertile wife, and so forth. Given these respective tenets, historically gnosticism has been expressed in an esoteric, analytical manner, as a philosophical school with its own obscure writings and pretentiously smug, egg headed adherents - influential, to be sure, but no more ritualized than a dry lecture series offered at a local, Unitarian meeting hall. Paganism has been expressed in a very earthy, ritualized manner, as naked Wiccans dancing lasciviously around a fire somewhere, or as stones and crystals laid about within a sacred space in congruence with the stars in the black sky. There have been a few times in the past where gnosticism has deviated from this norm by taking on pagan-like affectations, as in the earthy, secret rites of the Cathars; and whenever that has happened, the gnostics have been able to arise as a popular movement. Today, we are witnessing the same, such as in the confluence of gnostic self-divination, and pagan mother earth religion, inspired by the Green Movement. This marriage of intrinsically opposite views, made possible because of the intellectual adaptability of gnosticism, has spread exponentially the conceits of both. There is another difference - one that has allowed for gnosticism to be even more popular in our times than what had been possible by the prior, short-lived marriages of gnosticism and paganism. I am referring here to those technology advances, not only in the communication technologies that underlay much of what passes for entertainment today, but in the various technologies that have been born from our pure sciences, such as the recent developments in space travel and medicine. The communication technologies in particular have tended to blur the distinctions between reality and illusion. As an escape, I think that this is fine, even if boring over time. Disneyland, after all, is harmless fun in its first day. After a weekend of dancing princesses and CGI amplified rides, the sane man will want to go somewhere else, and even his children will be pouting more than smiling at the soft fantasies occupying their sight and touch. As a way of life, from the incursion of social media websites into our home and work places, to the emergence of CGI amplified, three dimensional films, tv shows, and even telephones (IBM announcing that a "hologram phone" will be on the marketplace within a few years), people are finding it increasingly difficult to discern fact from fantasy; or, to be more precise, they are discerning that all facts are really just shades of fantasy, that a truth is indistinguishable from a sophistic argument. In terms of the advances born from the pure sciences, while laudable in themselves, they tend to reinforce our first conceit - namely, the conceit that we are gods, not to be contained by the powers of nature, nor even by the final snares of death. What are men to think of themselves when they hear from "credible" news reports recently that, if medicine continues to advance as projected for another century, we may by that time be able to prolong our life span to a thousand years? Should we be all that surprised if, in the back of their minds, they presume that death will fall by the wayside, not by the redemption offered by God Himself, but by the spirited intelligence of an elite few? In answer to your second question, the Catholic Church was able to subdue gnosticism - or at least forced it to be thought and practiced in the catacombs once reserved for the saints of the faith - because her Bishops were competent in exercising a common discipline, first in terms of ecclesiastical authority, but then ultimately in terms of the canon. As you know, there were traces of gnostic heresy as early as the Pauline Churches. We see evidence of his refutation of these false tenets in his later letters. The Gospel of John is usually thought of as an anti-Jewish text; and there is no doubt that the falling away of the Christians from their Jewish brothers in the years after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD provided the cultural and political background to his rendition of the Gospel. Still, more presciently today, the Gospel of John includes subtle but effective attacks on the gnostics, as when John, for example, very consciously focuses on Christ Jesus as the unique "Light" of this world (thus tying the Spirit to a particular Man in history and denying that esoteric "light" of knowledge that underlies the gnostic view of self-divination). Soon thereafter, Ignatius of Antioch very clearly attacks the gnostics for breeding ill discipline within the Churches. By the middle of the second century, the gnostic invasion is well underway; and the orthodox Christians are much more concerned with the probability of being torn asunder from within, than by those periodic persecutions imposed upon them by politically motivated Governors and Emperors. In order to clean out their own house, most of the Bishops went along with Irenaeus, first in agreeing upon the canon of the New Testament (thus rejecting formally the gnostic Gospels which in fact had never been accepted informally but which were making the rounds among the rank and file), and then in issuing specific decrees against the gnostics. They cleaned house, because they were against the ropes and could not rely upon the State to be of any help in this internal matter. In other words, they consolidated from a position of vulnerability to the various enemies within and without the Body of Christ. Interestingly, gnosticism proved very capable in rearing its many heads from the proverbial catacombs, whenever the Catholic Church was in such a strong position politically, that the Bishops did not feel much compulsion to consolidate their theological views and to reaffirm their ecclesiastical authority. For example, the Cathars emerged upon the scene at the very height of medieval Christendom. In part, as stated, this happened because the Church had become lax. In part, this happened because the Church, in becoming overly politicized due to its temporal powers at the time, failed to provide many of her rank and file a sense of an authentic, pure faith. There is an innate desire for authenticity and purity - especially one of a strongly ritualized expression - in the religious realm of life. The Catholic Church, with all of her ornate Masses and pageants, remained sufficiently ritualistic; but she ceased among many to be authentic and, given the base confluence of Church and State at the time, she certainly was not pure. As such, the Cathars became for many a "protest vote" against the rampant problems within the Catholic Church. It is telling that, while various Popes issued Bulls against the Cathars (and other similar gnostic movements), these groups did not fall to the wayside until after the Protestant Reformation had swept away the very worst of the excesses of the Catholic Church. Thus, while we can and should see gnosticism as both a cause and a result of various secular movements, like philosophical modernism within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and fascism in the twentieth century, we should also see it as a reaction against the excesses of the Church. Yes, gnosticism pre-dates Christ Jesus and the Church that He inspired; but, since the Edict of Milan, its many heads have re-emerged from time to time within the West in a symbiotic reaction to the Church. It is an intellectualized and, at times, ritualized reaction to the Church, as much as it is an esoteric school that stands on its own. As such, its fate is now tied to ours, if only because the very historicity of Christ Jesus and what the Church says about Him, namely that He is now and forever the Incarnate God, stands as the foil to their tenet of self-divination through a purely spiritual redemption. The Church can do without gnosticism. I am not so certain that, given the years of animosity between the two faiths, gnosticism can do without the Church. As such, the best way for the Church to combat gnosticism today is to consolidate her own views with respect to the Apostolic faith and order and to offer a very clear, compelling, and consistent refutation of gnosticism. Rather than trying to hobble together what little is left of the Edict of Milan, where the Church stood as the Chaplain to a State that in turn sustained its own authority by remaining the "defenders" of the Church (i.e. European Kings generally being crowned by the Popes, as contrasted by Napoleon manifesting the imminent demise of Christendom by crowning himself and his wife), the Church should embrace her return to the catacombs - a return which, at this point, cannot be avoided anyway - and stand instead in dialectical opposition to the modern, Western states and the gnostic faith which underlies them. This status as dialectical opponent can be the rallying cry for a consolidation of both ecclesiastical authority and theological doctrine, thus bringing about the strong ecumenism of Christian denominations that cannot but be fostered in adversity. As the Church stands in clear contrast to a Western, gnostic culture that is increasingly bankrupt morally - as the states sustaining that culture are bankrupt politically and economically - she will regain her numbers. People intrinsically want what is authentic and pure. As the gnostic conceit then is shown in comparison to be phony and shallow, people will turn back to the visceral faith of their Apostolic Fathers. I believe that, if Hitler had won the European wars and therefore had consolidated the Continent into a "Greater Germany," and if in his twilight years he had gone ahead with his elaborate infrastructure plans (finishing off the "Final Solution" of Jews and other groups designated as "non-Aryan" threats to the state, and then literally building his "vision" of a new, modern, urbane life, complete with stately temples to the Reich and solemn memorials to the Munich revolution), by now his Third Reich would resemble more or less the European Union. There would be little of the pageantry identified with the "early years." Lest another Fuhrer arise, charismatic types would be shunned in favor of colorless bureaucratic types - much akin to the "leaders" of the states of the European Union today. The youth would find the Nazi pablum - now whitewashed enough to ignore the squeamish, bloody undercurrent of the "Final Solution" and various other policies of the "early years" - to be out dated and shallow. As the pigeons found more to admire with the Fuhrer statue in Munich than the everyday people, the sheer shallowness of the gnostic horror state, which Hitler had inspired but for which he could no longer stand as "Oracle in Chief," would call to mind the masculine, authentic verities of their pre-Nazi roots, of a time when men believed sincerely in an Incarnate God, rather than insincerely in a dead Caesar figure being propped up today by colorless, corrupt, party men. The moral of this fictitious account is clear: allow the gnostics to rule the world; and, in time, people will scramble back to the pews, where a real, meaningful faith is preached and practiced, in contrast to the many elaborate "visions" and "five year plans" offered by the state. The "pews" of course will be found in catacombs, where the gnostic apparatchiks will have relegated them; but they will be there, and people of various stripes will find them. The Church grew in the face of the Caesars; the Church is going to grow again in the face of the Gnostics, so long as only a remnant remains that will keep the flame of a Church Faithful and Triumphant. In answer to your third question, the war against gnosticism is an inevitable result of falling out of innocence and into moral responsibility. It is our Cross to bear, if we are to remain as He wills - namely, as men perched between the Kingdoms of God and of Nature. As we are of the Kingdom of God, we may imagine ourselves to be God. As we are of the Kingdom of Nature, we may hate the fact that we too are embodied souls in a created world. Since both conceits are possible, gnosticism will remain the Siren call, no matter whatever victories we may accomplish against its tenets at any given time. Abraham Lincoln knew as such. Even as he acknowledged that the war against those who would "divide the house" must be truly waged, he also saw that, no matter the outcome, its consequences would not last. Another generation would have another war to fight. Upon this specific ground the woolly mammoth once had stood, more majestic than the other creatures of its time, and now it was no more than a distant memory - and, in times to come, not even that much. We cannot - and, in all humility, should not - hope for more than that in our own struggle with gnosticism. We must fight, even as we know that we are powerless. We must endure, even as we know that God alone may rid the world of its snare and, even more disheartening, that He is never going to do so, lest man lose his capacity for moral responsibility and return to the innocence of his brief time in Eden. God wills us to be Men; therefore, gnosticism will remain, lurking behind the curtain as the seduction to be other than what we are. On another note, I sent you an email shortly before Christmas in response to an email from you, in which you argued that God must contain in Himself both being and becomingness. I concurred with your point and offered my own comment on how that is possible. My thought was of a decidedly Thomist view, as I recall. Anyway, I just wanted to know if you received my email. If not, then I shall be happy to resend it.

I received your email of December 14. With my very large family abounding about me, I have had little time to devote to thinking through your response. In any case, such matters constitute a dialogue which is more than conversational and demands more serious attention than a mere philosophic dialectic. We are faced with the dilemma of prophecy; for the prophet speaks with the voice of a dispensational God, but does not himself necessarily comprehend what that voice teaches or imparts. As neither of us, it seems, is a prophet, we are in the pit beneath Socrates's pit. In any case, I must think on this matter more. Aquinas was protecting the Church by forging a Catholic accommodation with classical philosophy; but that alliance has always been precarious; for there is no clear point of connection between God and Man if God is Being and Man is Becoming and if human reason is merely a testament to human ignorance and the limitations of being an "image." If Imago Dei provides no human capacity to see truly any part of God in observation and reflection, then faith can have no meaning; for faith is necessarily faith in something which can be related to observation and reflection. Let me put this a different way: Do we actually constrict the Glory of God by making Him immovable? Is God's immovability a philosophic tactic or a revealed truth? Is there a mobility in God which is excited by the Creation and, in particular, by the Creation of Man? I know you have provided answers to such questions in your communication; but, as I am admitted, I am a slow, but certain learner. Please be patient with me while I turn this over and over again. I will put your teachings together with greater care in time to the object of changing my questions; for it is in the precision and quality of the questions of the learner that he illustrates his progress in such matters as these. As to your culture "shock" (which is misnamed because it doesn't strike like a lightning bolt, but rather creeps up on you, taking many paths to trouble your mind and body), be aware that you are feeling its effects because YOU ARE ADAPTING to your new environment. You will not know this fully until you return to California, when you will experience a second bout of adaptation, or rather, readaptation to a culture that you expected to be refit as a perfectly sized glove, but find is surprisingly alien. Civilization is almost everything, demonstrating that there is no such thing as a citizen of the world. Men are particular in their natures. Politics truly matters. I value these exchanges far more than may easily be comprehended.