Gnosticism, or The Return of Simon the Magician

It may strike some as a paradox that a science fiction writer, who pens space operas about optimistic futures filled with shining technological marvels, should at the same time voice such discontent with the modern day, and yearn for days of yore. How can a man so delighted with the miracles of aerospatial engineering and biotechnology, television and motor cars and flush toilets, have his heart at home in the Middle Ages?

My answer is that the miracles of modern technology were not created ex nihilo by Thomas Edison, but were the outgrowth of medieval developments in logic and natural philosophy, the institutions of the university. The Middle Ages had as vibrant an intellectual life as that of Ancient Athens. In any case, it is not the technology of the Modern Age I find disquieting about it, it is the theology.

No doubt that answer strikes the modern ear as odd. Surely we have no theology any longer? Surely we have developed and advanced to the point where we can ignore every problem raised and answered by that science?

No. Every era and every man has some sort of theological and philosophical and metaphysical stance that informs his world view. Those who do not have an articulate stance have an inarticulate one. Those who do not ponder the issues merely accept uncritically, even unconsciously, the popular conceptions or misconceptions.

What I dislike about the Modern Age is that the modern theological stance of the postchristian world is a prechristian heresy called Gnosticism.

So it is not the modern things about the modern age I like. Those modern things, the science and logic, come from the Middle Ages when Christianity was in flower, from Albertus Magnus and William of Occam and Roger Bacon and from Saint Thomas Aquinas. The ancient things, this oldest and creepiest of heresies, the teachings of Simon the Magician, come from the dead, pagan mystery cult called Gnosticism. So it is not the modern things about the modern age I dislike; it is the long-dead things from the darkness before Christianity.

Since there are authors and stories I greatly admire who are openly Gnostic, such as AEGYPT by John Crowley and VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by David Lindsay, as well as work greatly admired who are tacitly Gnostic, such as DARK CITY directed by Alex Proyas, or THE SHADOW MEN by A.E. van Vogt, and personal friends of long standing acquaintance who are, or toy with being, Gnostics, it behooves me to voice the source of my discontent with this heresy. I attempt no rigorous logical debunking: what follows is nothing more than list of the problems Gnosticism raises which I think insurmountable.

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