Voegelin's antignosticism and the origins of totalitarianism. (Notes and Commentary)

 Arthur Versluis.

In the last half of the 20th century, a great deal has been learned about the religious phenomenon of late antiquity known as Gnosticism. (1) Prior to the extraordinary discovery of the Nag Hammadi library--a collection of Gnostic writings found in Egypt in clay jars in 1945--it was possible to hold to a single view, a caricature of Gnosticism, along the lines proposed by Hans Jonas. (2) By late 20th century, that simplistic characterization of Gnosticism (derived from its opponents of late antiquity, like Irenaeus and Epiphanius) as dualistic, anti-cosmic, pessimistic, and the like was largely discarded. Yet one still finds anachronistic and peculiar accounts of "Gnosticism" by Eric Voegelin and his followers that routinely claim "gnosis" as the origin of modern totalitarianism. This misinterpretation of Gnosticism amounts to a modern variant of heresiology.

Voegelin's best known account of "Gnosticism" is in a 1958 essay, though he had written about "Gnostic" politics or political movements many years earlier. One would expect that Voegelin was going to establish some concrete connection between science, politics and Gnosticism, the three subjects listed in the title of the essay--that he would define Gnosticism and then show how it emerges in today's science and politics. Drawing on the antignostic Irenaeus, in the introduction he briefly sketches the outlines of Gnosticism as the realization of "gnosis itself: knowledge." (3) He does not spell out what this knowledge is. Instead, he writes that the Gnostic's aim is "always destruction of the old world and passage to the new," and that gnosis is a "means of escaping the world." (4) At the end of this misleading characterization, Voegelin warns that self-salvation through knowledge has its own magic, and this magic is not harmless. The structure of being will not change because one finds it defective and runs away from it, he tells us, and further claims that the "Gnostic" attempt to destroy the world will not succeed, but will only increase social disorder.

Unpacking Voegelin's characterization of gnosis will show why it is so thoroughly misleading. He suggests that gnosis is just another form of ordinary knowledge. But "gnosis" refers to knowledge of God or, to put it another way, transcendence of the subject-object division. While "knowledge" presupposes a subject knowing an object, gnosis may be best characterized as the realization of inner union between individual consciousness and divine revelation. "Revelation" implies a "revealer," and Gnostic writings contain numerous references to a divine revealer: Christ. Gnosticism cannot be described as "self-salvation." Gnostic writings repeatedly stress divine revelation and the need for both human effort toward realizing gnosis, as well as the need for corresponding divine grace or angelic help. Most interesting of all is Voegelin's claim that the "Gnostic" seeks destruction of the old world, and that such "Gnostic" attempts are futile efforts to disturb the order of being and the social order.

But there is no evidence that Gnostics were engaged in anything of the kind. During the emergence of Christianity in late antiquity, Gnosticism represented a shift from Platonism or Hermetism in that, in the Nag Hammadi library writings, Gnostics often insisted on the decisive revelatory power of Christ, separating them from other contemporary religious traditions. Platonism and Hermetism are discussed in the Nag Hammadi collection, but there is no urge toward "world destruction" or even the deliberate disruption of the social order. Rather, there is an insistence on direct inner spiritual experience as opposed to worldly or social power. There are numerous instances of revelations, and some ethical admonitions, as well as what may be called "mystery sayings" like those of Christ in the Gospel of Thomas.

Voegelin's account of Gnosticism, which meanders from Plato to Marx to Nietzsche (with nary a mention, let alone a definition of gnosis or Gnosticism until he discusses Nietzsche), makes no sense: "In this `cruelty of the intellectual conscience' can be seen the movement of the spirit that in Nietzsche's gnosis corresponds functionally to the Platonic periagoge, the turning-around and opening of the soul. But in the Gnostic movement man remains shut off [!] from transcendent being. The will to power strikes against the wall of being, which has become a prison. It forces the spirit into a rhythm of deception and self-laceration." (5) Thus, without reference to anything authentically Gnostic, Voegelin claims that Nietzsche represents a "gnosis shut off" from transcendence. Further, he represents a "will to power" that leads to "deception," and all of this in turn leads to the pronouncement: "To rule means to be God; in order to be God, Gnostic man takes upon himself the torments of deception and self-laceration." (6) In all of this, "gnosis" and "Gnostic" are tossed in and misused. Gnosis here is described as being "shut off," when earlier Voegelin admitted that it meant "freedom" and "salvation."

In discussing Hegel, Voegelin also brands him a "Gnostic," and then offers the following: "Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of being the Gnostic constructs his system. The building of systems is a Gnostic form of reasoning, not a philosophical one." (7) The subsequent tautology goes: Gnostics reputedly had systems; Hegel had a system; therefore Hegel is a Gnostic, and further, all system-builders are Gnostics. Why does Voegelin claim that "gnosis desires dominion over being"? Did he not write earlier that the Gnostic seeks to escape the world, and shortly after that of the Gnostic's will to destroy it? And does not all of this disregard gnosis as inner spiritual revelation and union with the divine? The problem here is that Voegelin's work has an entirely different agenda. (8)

To understand this agenda, consider the obvious clues scattered throughout Voegelin's work. Elsewhere he claims that the entire Reformation movement and the whole of modernity must be "understood as the successful invasion of Western institutions by Gnostic movements." (9) "This revolutionary eruption of the Gnostic movements ... is so vast in dimensions that no survey even of its general characteristics can be attempted in the present lectures." (10) Voegelin goes on to offer a brief sketch of Richard Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, an overview of 16th century Puritanism, and concludes that Puritanism as a whole was Gnostic. Given the hostility of Calvin and of Calvinism in general to mysticism, let alone Gnostic thought, one can only conclude that in Voegelin's view, Calvin and Calvinism (and the entire Reformation movement) were Gnostic even in the midst of their hostility to Gnosticism. Ironically, this is precisely the kind of rhetorical inversion that Voegelin attributes to none other than--Gnosticism. (11)

Voegelin extends his condemnation of Gnosticism not only to Hegel and Protestantism, but beyond it to virtually the entire modern world. "By Gnostic movements we mean such movements as progressivism, positivism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism, and national socialism." (12) But the ubiquity of Gnosticism is the logical conclusion only if one believes, as Voegelin does, that "all Gnostic movements are involved in the project of abolishing the constitution of being, with its origin in divine transcendent being, and replacing it with a world-immanent order of being, the perfection of which lies in the realm of human action." (13) Such a definition stretches "Gnosticism" so far as to include any effort at social reform.

Voegelin corresponded for many years with Alfred Schutz, to whom on January 1, 1953, he wrote concerning his views on Christianity. In this revealing letter, Voegelin elaborates on his distinction between "essential Christianity" and what he construes to be "the gnosis of historical eschatology." (14) "The sectarian movements and certain trends within Protestantism insist that eschatological Christianity is the essential one, while what I call essential Christianity is for them the corruption of Christianity by the Catholic Church." If this were not clear enough, Voegelin, near the end of his letter, says it directly: "this essential Christianity can be identified with Catholicism." (15) The gist of all this is clear: Protestants and modernity are Gnostic; except in certain cases, Catholicism is not.

Here, the larger picture begins to emerge, which is not exactly what Voegelin had in mind. In this letter and in much of his later work, Voegelin confuses Gnosticism and "historical eschatology" or millennialism. But Gnosticism is opposed to an historicist view of Christianity. Has anyone who has studied the history of gnosis failed to recognize the clear division between those who espouse "horizontal" historical faith (pistis), on the one hand, and those who espouse gnosis ("vertical" realization), on the other? This division is at the very heart of many Gnostic writings. Indeed, in the Gospel of Thomas, Christ directly tells his disciples that they seek him somewhere else (historically or "horizontally"), when the truth is right there before them in the "vertical" present moment. One finds this kind of assertion also in the Gospel of Philip and other Nag Hammadi texts. (16)

Why would Voegelin invest Gnosticism with exactly the historicizing characteristics to which Gnostics are most opposed? Where did this Christian tradition of historical eschatology originate? Within Catholicism, Voegelin frequently cites Joachim of Fiore, the medieval Calabrian abbot, who envisioned history as unfolding in three successive ages: that of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Joachim anticipated a "third age" in the immediate future. This millennialism is a theme implicit in Christianity as a whole, and has generated many millennialist perspectives. But it could also be argued that this millennialist tendency is precisely a result of the loss of gnosis ("vertical" direct spiritual realization for oneself) as a possibility within Catholicism. The rejection of an orthodox gnosis (even that represented by St. Clement of Alexandria) and the emergence of a Catholic hierarchic social structure with an emphasis on historical faith and the mediating power of the Church--this is the origin of "historical eschatology."

Early Gnostics, and Gnostics of all kinds, insist that individuals must seek direct inner spiritual realization (gnosis). This is not to say that such traditions necessarily imply anarchy or total individualism, only a simple communal organization not unlike that of Jesus and his disciples. This is evident not just in the relatively small early Gnostic groups, but also in more recent Gnostic traditions like the Christian theosophy of Jacob Bohme. (17) Such groups exist in order to help individuals find spiritual realization; they do not have worldly or historical aims; their aims are "vertical." When this Gnostic impulse is absent, there is the "horizontal" and historical-eschatological development of a corporate, hierarchic Church structure that actively opposes and, even for a considerable length of time, by way of the Inquisition, persecutes and murders those who espouse some form of gnosis.

If Voegelin is falsely accusing Gnostics of the very thing (historicism) typical of what he terms Catholicism's "essential Christianity," a different possibility emerges. What if Voegelin's attacks on Gnosticism were a rhetorical deception to disguise the true origins of totalitarianism? Early as well as subsequent Gnostics are the dissidents within Christianity. They are the ones willing to stand alone and even die in defense of their beliefs. Historically, they are the victims. Where does one find the totalization of society in a corporate body that expels or murders its dissidents? Could the Inquisition be a real predecessor of modern totalitarianism?

Such an analysis is not unprecedented. Alain de Benoist locates the origin of totalitarianism in monotheism, in the totalizing God who will have no other gods before him, and who commands the Jews to kill their enemies, to put the inhabitants of that city where people serve other gods "to the sword, destroying it utterly, all who are in it and its cattle ... Burn the city and all its spoil." (18) One need not go so far in indicting monotheism, yet it must be acknowledged that there is a real tension between one perspective that insists on dogmatic formulations based on historical eschatology resulting in the murder of dissidents, and another that champions direct spiritual realization. This opposition is implicit within Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheism from antiquity to the present. This is what Voegelin's work disguises by confusing Gnosticism with historicist millennialism.

From this viewpoint, Voegelin's work has an entirely different set of implications. His account of the emergence of modern totalitarianism suddenly suggests that fascism and communism have their origins in prior doctrinal systems enforced on pain of torture and murder, that the roots of the Marxist or fascist historical faith in a future state that justifies almost any means to achieve it, including mass murder, must be located in historicist-eschatological Christianity. Who represents what Voegelin calls the "cruelty of the intellectual conscience" and the will to "domination": the Inquisitor torturing and murdering a female Gnostic like Marguerite of Porete or the victim? Here, it is clear why he blames Gnostics, since he embraced an "essential Christianity" substantially identical with Catholicism. Instead of looking to historicist Christianity for the origins of totalitarianism, Voegelin blames the victims: the Gnostics, who represent the dissident opposition to totalitarianism.

As it turns out, the attribution of virtually everything bad in the modern world to "Gnosticism" has an interesting genealogy. Voegelin is only one branch on a fairly large family tree. Generally, this account began with Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), who explained the history of religion as an Hegelian Gnostic phenomenon developing in a dialectical evolutionary movement toward unity with the Godhead. (19) Baur's Tubingen school of Protestantism eventually turned out to be an extreme form of anti-supernaturalism. Baur saw Gnosticism in antiquity through Hegelian goggles, thus forging a link between Gnosticism and Hegel that later Voegelinians could use, even if the rest of Baur's work was discarded. (20) Harking back to Baur is convenient in that he was an Hegelian at the time.

The next major branch on this tree is Hans Jonas, who also saw gnosticism through peculiar lenses; in his case, those of early 20th century existentialism. Jonas defined gnosticism as a dualistic, world-rejecting phenomenon. He depicted gnosticism--with its emphasis on the gnostic mythology of the ignorant demiurge, the malevolent archons, the fallen Sophia, and the effort of the gnostic seeker to reach the kingdom of light--as a form visible in the Nag Hammadi library in such works as "The Gospel of Philip" and even more clearly, "The Hypostasis of the Archons." This form of "classical gnosticism" is only one of many different currents. Yet late 20th century Voegelinians' efforts to justify Voegelin's bizarre political renderings of gnosis and gnosticism rely almost exclusively on Jonas' outdated account of "classical gnosticism." (21)

An apologist for Voegelin's political misuse of Gnosticism, Stephen McKnight, seeks to justify this misuse by extending it to the whole of Western esotericism, beginning with the prisca theologia of the Renaissance. He notes that recent scholarship "diminishes the status of ancient Gnosticism as the primary source of modern epistemological and political disorder.... Moreover ... Voegelin was already acknowledging problems with a unilinear emphasis on Gnosticism and encouraging the exploration of other esoteric traditions like magic, alchemy, and Renaissance neoplatonism." (22) Rather than simply attacking Gnosticism, McKnight seeks to extend the field of "heresiology" to magic, alchemy, Ficino--whatever can be roped in as a purported "source of modern epistemological and political disorder." In discussing a lecture Voegelin delivered in 1971, in which it becomes clear that he had begun to realize that his account of Gnosticism was untenable, McKnight quotes Voegelin's reflections on his earlier works on Gnosticism. There he emphasized "the dogmaticization which sets [in] whenever a book is published, [which was] perhaps more dangerous with regard to this subject [Gnosticism] ... Because immediately the problem of gnosis as characteristic of modern political ideas ... was absolutized, and every day I get questions of this kind: is, for instance, the Russian government a Gnostic government? Of course things are not that simple--gnosis is one element in the modern compound, but there are other elements ... for instance, the apocalyptic traditions and Neoplatonic experiences and symbolizations." (23) In other words, by 1971 Voegelin had realized that modern scholarship did not agree with his idiosyncratic perspective, so he sought to expand his witchhunt for the sources of the evils of modernity among Renaissance Neoplatonists, practitioners of magic and alchemy, and the like. But by this time the Voegelinian misuse of "Gnostic" had ossified into political dogma, and even he could not stop it. Furthermore, he still held to his basic thesis that esotericism was to blame for the ills of modernity.

Here one should consider these authors' emphasis on "order" and fear of "disorder": it is precisely the kind of totalitarian thinking that one finds in the communist and, to a lesser extent, in the fascist state. In the totalitarian state, there is no room for dissidence: the dissident is the source of "disorder," and must be imprisoned, tortured, or killed. This is the logic of the Inquisition, which also sought to impose social and religious order at all costs, including human life. (24) Voegelinians do not hesitate to take this fetish for order and rejection of dissidence to its extreme. Sebba elaborates what is implicit in McKnight's account: "The gnosis of the Gnostic is agnoia, ignorance of the truth. But it is not innocent ignorance: he wills the untruth, although he knows the troth. But why then does he will the Evil? Why is there Evil at all? ... The history of ancient Gnosticism has become the history of the discord." (25) This makes absolutely no sense--except if the author sees himself as a modern Irenaeus: a heresy-hunter. Here the idea of imposed order is contraposed to the Gnostic, who is now openly identified with "Evil." Not just evil, but capitalized evil--evil incarnate, opposed to the One Troth of the historical Church or of the totalitarian state. In their hatred for the least sign of the esoteric, Voegelinians reveal themselves to be akin to the very totalitarianism whose origins they purport to be exposing.

But not all antignostics are so direct in their demonization of Gnosticism. Another development should be mentioned here: Cyril O'Regan's work. His perspective is more an outgrowth of "hyper-intellectualism": the hyper-theoretical manifestations of the "linguistic turn" in literary theory and philosophy. In Gnostic Apocalypse, O'Regan spends almost no time demonstrating that Jacob Bohme is a Valentinian Gnostic, and almost all his time constructing his own abstract linguistic-rhetorical edifice, using such terms as "Valentinian narrative grammar" and "deformations of Valentinian grammar." (26) He claims that "Bohme's visionary discourse constitutes a metalepsis of the biblical narrative, in that its six-stage narrative of divine becoming disfigures every single episode of the biblical narrative, as interpreted in and by the standard pre-Reformation and Reformation theological traditions." (27) Bohme's work shows "how apocalyptic Neoplatonism and the Kabbalah can live together in a master discourse that displays Valentinian transgressive properties." (28) But there is no evidence that any of these specific historical traditions actually appear in Bohme's work. The key word is "transgressive": Bohme is made out to be a "Valentinian," and therefore "transgressive" of order represented by the projected unity of the whole of "pre-Reformation and Reformation theological tradition" (29)

On the next page, the Bohmean "mode of thinking is dismissed as "irredeemably past." In O'Regan's view, Bohme represents "an impossible hope for a form of knowledge--perhaps any form of knowledge--that would escape the hegemony of an all-controlling rationality." (30) According to O'Regan, it is impossible for Bohme's thought to be meaningful today or in the future--it merely represents a "deranging of biblical narrative" that is somehow "parasitic," just like he thinks Valentinianism was. Gnostics are "pneumapathological." (31) The ponderous prose here has an underlying agenda that is very much akin to Voegelin's: it is something like the unidimensional totalitarianism Herbert Marcuse discussed in One-Dimensional Man. What is clear in these works is a concerted effort to dismiss and, beyond that, to annihilate all that they construe as Gnostic. They are a kind of hegemonic near-totalitarianism that can be traced back to the antignostic rhetoric of the early Church Fathers like Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Irenaeus.

All of this would be amusing and a little sad, were it not for the fact that this antignosticism has both a following and consequences. In Buddhism, one can find something different: a range of perspectives and a general consensus within a tolerance of alternative, but related views. This is very close to the more pluralistic perspectives one finds within Gnosticism, as evidenced by the range of works in the Nag Hammadi Library, and for that matter within the pluralism of Western Gnostic traditions. But Western Christianity developed an apparatus to crush dissent, to annihilate a plurality of views, to obliterate those who espoused a Gnostic path to spiritual realization. This apparatus has its roots in early Christian efforts to establish an orthodoxy based on historical faith, an orthodoxy framed by exclusion and attack, an orthodoxy framed by those who hated the Gnostic traditions that emphasized inner spiritual realization.

Out of this ancient antignostic orthodoxy, whose adherents so feared direct spiritual realization, emerged the panoply of antignosticism of the Middle Ages, when witchhunts and the burning of heretics took place under the oppressive apparatus of the Inquisition. The same dynamic of anti-dissidence, of enforced adherence to overarching rationalized dogma, is replicated in modern totalitarianism. But whereas even in the Middle Ages one was comparatively free so long as one's Gnostic inclinations did not come to the attention of the Inquisitors, today totalitarianism can reach into every aspect of society and lay its deadening hand on not only the outward aspects of freedom, but on what and how one thinks. That is what is implied by O'Regan's pronouncement that today it is impossible to follow Bohme, i.e., Gnostic life is closed to man. The conclusions to be drawn here are different than those drawn by Voegelinism. What is the historical origin of the straggle to make real on earth the millennial or utopian reality envisioned in an historical future, the willingness to kill those who dare to disagree with an imposed social order? No doubt, these are also simply human tendencies, the worst human tendencies, since they have resulted in millions of dead bodies. But an historical lineage could also be traced from Christian millennialism-apocalypticism to secularized Hegelian evolutionism, and from that to Marx' effort to imagine a future utopian society. From Marx, it was not long to Lenin and Stalin, to Hitler and to the elimination of those who are seen as "parasitic," and finally, to a totalized society where dissent is intolerable if society is to reach the millennial future imagined to be just around the next bend. The genealogy of antignosticism is complex, but there is where the origins of totalitarianism are to be found.

(1.) Here one should be aware of the conventional distinction between the generic terms "gnosis" (direct realization of spiritual truth for oneself) and "Gnostic" (those who realize spiritual troth or union--a term that can apply not only to Christians, but also to, e.g., Muslims and Buddhists), and the specific terms Gnosticism and Gnostic, which are generally taken to refer to the Christian religious currents of late antiquity that later became demonized by what came to be known as orthodox Christianity. For an analysis of the subject in another context, see Wouter Hanegraaf, "On the Construction of `Esoteric Traditions'" in Antoine Faivre and Wouter Hanegraaff, eds., Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), pp. 11-62, esp. p. 36, where Hanegraaff quotes Hans Blumenberg. In Sakularisierung und Selbstbehauptung [(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985), p. 144], Blumenberg writes that "When someone says that modernity would be better labeled `the Gnostic era,' he recalls to memory the enemy from the beginning [der Urfiend], who did not come from outside but sat at the very root of Christianity's origin." Hanegraaff adds, "That is well-formulated," and concludes that "heresiological propaganda" did not cease with the Enlightenment, but continued in secular form in the "conspiracy" and "disease": interpretations of esotericism like Voegelin's. In brief, Hanegraaff's article in many respects confirms the thesis of this one.

(2.) Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1963).

(3.) Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago: Regnery, 1958), p. 11.

(4.) Ibid., p. 12.

(5.) Ibid., p. 30.

(6.) Ibid.

(7.) Ibid., p. 43.

(8.) Voegelin's work is irrelevant to the study of Gnosticism. As Gregor Sebba wrote, "nowhere in the thousands of scholarly papers, books, and reviews [is there] any evidence that Voegelin's early and later work on Gnosticism has even been noticed. There is good reason for that." See Gregor Sebba, "History, Modernity, and Gnosticism," in The Philosophy of Order: Essays on History, Consciousness and Politics, ed. by Peter Opitz and Gregor Sebba, (Stuttgart: Klett, 1981), p. 190.

(9.) Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 134.

(10.) Ibid.,pp. 134-135.

(11.) Philip J. Lee took up Voegelin's argument in Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), where he discusses how "Gnostic" Calvinism is, how the US Founding Fathers make "awesome Gnostics," and how modern Protestantism has to purge itself of this growing menace.

(12.) Eric Voegelin, "Ersatz Religion," in Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Chicago: Regnery, 1968), p. 83. For a critique of the claim that practically any movement is Gnostic, see Ioan P. Couliano's "The Gnostic Revenge: Gnosticism and Romantic Literature," in Gnosis und Politik (Munich: W. Fink, 1984), p. 290.

(13.) Ibid., p. 100.

(14.) See The Philosophy of Order, op. cit., p. 452.

(15.) Ibid., p. 456. Curiously, he mentions Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa (certainly Gnostics within the Catholic tradition), but because they do not correspond to his peculiar political definition of Gnosticism, he does not directly attack them.

(16.) See, e.g., Gospel of Philip, 86; Gospel of Thomas, 113; Dialogue of the Savior, 137-138.

(17.) See Arthur Versluis, Wisdom's Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), esp. Chapter XVIII, "Theosophy and Gnosticism."

(18.) See Alain de Benoist, L 'Europe Paienne (Paris: Seghers, 1980); Comment peut-on etre paienne? (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981). See also his dialogue with Thomas Molnar in L'Eclipse du sacre (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1986), pp. 129-177. See also Deuteronomy 13.

(19.) Ferdinand Christian Baur, Die christliche Gnosis, oder die christliche Religions-Philosophie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Tubingen: 1835), p. 21ff.

(20.) Sebba, "History, Modernity, and Gnosticism," op. cit., p. 192. An earlier and more extensive analysis of gnosticism can be found in Gottfried Arnold's Unparteiische Kirchen-und-Ketzerhistorie (1700), which is somewhat unsuitable for Voegelinism, since it is sympathetic to gnosticism.

(21.) Ibid., pp. 195ff. According to Sebba, Jonas holds "a special position." This is so, even though Jonas' depiction of Gnosticism has long been superseded by the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library and other research.

(22.) Stephen McKnight, "Voegelin's Challenge to Modernity's Claim to be Scientific and Secular," in The Politics of the Soul, ed. by Glenn Hughs (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 186.

(23.) See Stephen McKnight, "Gnosticism and Modernity: Voegelin's Reconsiderations in 1971," 2001 APSA Panel Paper, available online at http://www.pro.harvard.edu/ papers/091/091007/McKnightSt.pdf. See also Stefan Rossbach, "`Gnosis' in Eric Voegelin's Philosophy," at http://www.pro.harvard.edu/papers/091/091007/RossbachSt.pdf.

(24.) This obsession with order haunts not only Voegelin's work, but that of his followers as well. It leads McKnight to attribute strange things to Gnostics, as when he claims that "the Gnostic regards the search for innerworldly fulfillment as a sign of ignorance (agnoia), not gnosis." Ibid., p. 202

(25.) See The Philosophy of Order, op. cit., p. 241.

(26.) Cyril O'Regan, Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Bohme's Haunted Narrative (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 1, 231 and 299. Historical details get almost no play at all: on the first page (and throughout the book) the names of major figures are misspelled. Jane Leade, founder of the Philadelphian Society, becomes "Jean Lead"; and Swedenborg becomes "Swendenborg." O'Regan does not even seem to be aware of an extensive treatment of Bohmean theosophy published by his own publisher. See Versluis, Wisdom's Children, op. cit.

(27.) O'Regan, Gnostic Apocalypse, op. cit., p. 24

(28.) Ibid., p. 23.

(29.) Ibid., p. 212. This author can generate all kinds of jargon. In a single line one reads about "apocalyptic inscription, apocalyptic distention, narrative deconstitution of negative theology," all part of a self-described "sophisticated conceptual apparatus of general constructs." All of this apparatus "amounts to taking a machine gun to swat a fly."

(30.) Ibid., p. 213.

(31.) Ibid., p. 14.