Correctly Defining Gnosis
The Congress of Messina, meeting in 1966, made a huge mistake by defining “gnosis” as “knowledge of the divine mysteries reserved for an elite.”[1] Following their lead, many have continued to repeat this mistake. Gnosis, writes Elaine Pagels, “is not primarily rational knowledge.” Rather, it is “an intuitive process of knowing.”[2] It is, in the words of Bentley Layton, a “personal acquaintance with an object.”[3] In other words, gnosis is a mystical experience. As such, it is ineffable, that is, it is “more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.”[4] It is not the knowledge of anything, it is rather a direct encounter with God. But, gnosis also has a noetic quality. As William James rightly states, “Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge.”[5] They produce intuitions, a knowing beyond knowing. Two others things about gnosis. First, such experiences cannot be sustained for long. And s