Could gnosticism become a hot discussion point, at least in Catholic circles? Al Kresta last week did a segment on the new EWTN documentary, "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," about Saul Alinsky. The producers said that Alinsky was a gnostic.
A gnostic! Wow, I hadn't heard or read much about gnosticism since the 1990s, when I spent a large amount of time studying it through the works of Eric Voegelin and Norman Cohn's outstanding, The Pursuit of the Millennium. The reference prompted me to dust off my Voegelin, as well as an aborted book I started to write that focused on gnosticism. I'm greatly enjoying getting acquainted with these old intellectual haunts.
Especially since I think these haunts will explain to me (or re-explain, as it were) what all these disparate leftist trends have in common. I mean, what is the thread that connects, say, open borders, men in women's restrooms, LGBT marriage, Obamacare, extreme environmental activism, and this hell-bent certitude by the leftists that they know that X, Y, and Z are true, whereas people on the right are ignorant rubes that must be forced along the path to a better world?
The answer, I think, is gnosticism, and because George Soros is the high priest of modern gnosticism, you find his activist money behind the most disruptive causes.
"[T]he aim [of gnosticism] always is destruction of the old world and passage to the new. The instrument of salvation is gnosis itself--knowledge." Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism.
Expect gnosticism to become a recurring touchstone on TDE from this point forward.
