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 second, they cannot be produced on demand. They are initiated by God. They are an act of grace, which we can prepare for but never cause.

We must distinguish between the mysteria, or “mystic secrets” reserved for the initiated, and gnosis, which is the experience of God. The mystic secrets are secrets told only to those ready for them (Matt 13:11; 1911; Luke 8:10; John 6:65; 1 Cor 2:7). These are truths spoken by ordinary means, but they require spiritual illumination to understand (1 Cor 2:14). Gnosis is the experience of God, not knowledge about God. It is meeting God in the inner chambers of the heart. It is gaining God-consciousness.

So the “knowledge of the divine mysteries reserved for an elite” refers to mysteria, or mystic secrets. While gnosis is the mystical experience or awareness of the Divine presence. Gnosis is a close encounter of the Divine Kind. It is when God manifests himself to the spirit of the person. Gnosis is not knowledge about, but “acquaintance with” God.

References

1. As quoted by Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, translated by Anthony Alcock, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992, 143.
2. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, New York: Vintage Books, 1979, xix.
3. Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, second edition, Yale University Press, 2023, 9.
4. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York: Penguin Books, 1985, 380.
5. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 380.