1,320 words
Igor Shafarevich
The Socialist Phenomenon
New York: Harper & Row, 1980
In his landmark 1980 work The Socialist Phenomenon (first published in Russian in 1975), mathematician Igor Shafarevich recounts dozens of socialist doctrines throughout history to demonstrate how their common features, even among those from many centuries ago, can still be found in the repressive socialist states of the day. It’s a fascinating survey revealing how ancient philosophers, Medieval Christian heretics, and Enlightenment thinkers all came up with eerily similar socialistic ideas. These include the complete rejection of existing social and political orders, the abolition of family and private property, mandatory public education of children, equality among the sexes, communal husbands and wives, and above all else, an unadulterated hostility toward outsiders.
Shafarevich reminds us in his Preface that Karl Marx believed an ultimate socialist victory would be worth fifty years of civil war. Similarly, Mao Tse-Tung “was willing to accept the loss of half of humanity in a nuclear war for the sake of establishing a socialist structure in the world.” Thus, this is an important topic, and one that Shafarevich covers comprehensively.
While reading the chapter on the violent Christian heresies from the Medieval period, however, especially as they relate to Gnosticism, I noticed a parallel with today’s transgender movement, which is currently working its way through various Christian churches. Yes, parallels can also be drawn between these heresies and Bolshevism, but this connection is quite obvious and well known. Linking the collective farms and property seizures of the early Soviet period to the communal property mandate of the eleventh-century Cathars and fourteenth-century Free Spirits isn’t exactly a stretch, and not merely in an ideological sense:
The uprising against the Pope in Umbria, in the 1320s, serves as a vivid example of the influence the sect had on social life. The teachings of the Free Spirits were widespread among the nobility of this region and became the ideology of the anti-Papal party. In the struggle against the Pope and the urban communes, the doctrine justified the application of all means and the rejection of mercy of any kind. The entire populations of captured towns were slaughtered, including women and children. The head of the uprising, Count Montefeltro, and his followers prided themselves on plundering churches and violating nuns. Their supreme deity was Satan.
Most of these heresies were Christian in nature, of course, unlike the anti-Christian and atheistic Bolsheviks centuries later. The level to which this or that particular heresy was in fact Christian is beside the point in The Socialist Phenomenon, yet I believe that if we examine this issue further, we may find in the Gnostic heresies the theological antecedents to the current movement to marry transgenderism with mainstream Christianity. And if history is any guide, perhaps we can have an inkling as to how this will all turn out in the end.
The Gnostic heresies from the second century — namely, the Carpocratians of Alexandria — chose a fundamentally different worldview from mainstream Christianity’s, both then and now. For the Christians, Creation is the work of God and therefore good. Inequality is baked into the theological cake, so to speak, with tribal, sex, and master-slave distinctions spelled out early in holy scripture. Evil originates when man turns away from God, as Adam and Eve did in Genesis. Only by accepting Christ as God’s incarnate son — and following his teachings — can Man return to God and find salvation.
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The Gnostics, however, believed in Man’s inherent goodness. Evil appears as a result of the unequal circumstances in which Man so often finds himself: a world created by a wicked Demiurge. Gnosis is the understanding that this unjust material realm must be overcome through spiritual inquiry and collective effort. In a sense, history can be measured as Mankind’s progress toward this state of gnosis.
I’m sure it’s debatable as to the extent to which the many Christian heresies throughout history were indeed Gnostic in nature, but Shafarevich offers a few very tempting examples. The Cathars believed in a good God who is the creator of the spiritual world (as reflected in the New Testament), and a wicked God (Satan) who created the material world (as reflected in the Old Testament). Their hatred of the Catholic Church stemmed from the Church’s encroachment on secular power during the time of the Emperor Constantine.
The Free Spirits believed that in overcoming the wickedness of the world, men identify with God and are therefore without sin — which means anything they do is permitted. Centuries later, the Taborite heretics predicted a day of retribution against the “dominion of evil” in which the wealthy and powerful will be burned and thrashed without mercy. The Anabaptists, the Ranters, and other heretical sects preached a similar dualistic perspective which harkened back to the days of the Gnostics.
When transgender people join churches as individuals, it is a mundane event. I can see no reason why a priest or minister should treat such a person any differently than anyone else they serve. But when transgender activists attempt to make an entire religion more accepting of transgenderism — as if such a thing should be celebrated — then sooner or later theological arguments must be made to justify transgenderism if it is going to remain a permanent part of the religion. And this must go beyond all the platitudes about tolerance and inclusion one finds on church websites, such as this and this.
I argue that transgender Christians will eventually syllogize their way back to Gnosticism in order to justify their identities as both transsexuals and Christians. Leaving aside any medical explanation for gender dysphoria — if there is any at all — only two theological explanations can exist for this purported disorder: Either the Demiurge was at it again, corrupting the material world to inflict the evil of inequality upon innocent souls, or God made one doozy of a mistake divvying out X and Y chromosomes. Since no monotheistic religion will cop to a fallible God, only the former option becomes viable.
This is when transsexuals will do what the Gnostics have always done: Collectivize and take the spiritual journey back to the one true God (or state of gnosis). A millennium ago, people did this by renouncing family and property and jumping on the spousal merry-go-round. Today they do it through a regimen of hormones and gender reassignment surgery. Such medical intervention brings transsexuals, in their eyes, back to their true selves as intended by God.
We can conclude only one thing from this: Any Christian church that celebrates transgenderism as a positive good must be considered a heretical sect — at least according to the Catholic Church. Transgender Christians place themselves intractably against the material world and existing social structure by denying what mainstream Christians would see as an act of God, i.e. the determination of a person’s sex at conception. Transsexuals feel they must overcome the fate God has decided for them, which puts Man on the same level as God. And as the Free Spirits and other Gnostic heresies taught us, once that happens, all sorts of atrocities can and will be justified.
While our current Pope has toed the line against transgenderism, it doesn’t seem like he is ready to drop the H-bomb on it just yet. Perhaps this is because transgender activists have yet to take over the leadership of individual churches and turn them into proselytizing machines for transsexuals. Or perhaps Pope Francis, anti-white Lefty that he is, simply lacks the will and would prefer to kick the can down the road for the next Pope to deal with.
In any event, it should be clear that transgender Christians can resort only to a form of Gnosticism in order to justify their place in Christianity. Since the Gnostics were considered heretics, so must they. And given how violent and murderous many of the heretical descendants of Gnosticism became during the Middle Ages, the sooner this heretic label comes, the better.
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16 comments
Another excellent article Mr. Quinn,
However, I find this sentence troubling.
“When transgender people join churches as individuals, it is a mundane event. I can see no reason why a priest or minister should treat such a person any differently than anyone else they serve.”
If one can join, all can join. No real Christian Minister should ever allow any of these perverts in. If one can join, all can join. These perverts should find another way to worship God than corrupting traditional Cristian Churches.
‘Gnostic’ is a broad term that can be applied to many beliefs, usually comporting an antinomian rejection of the Old Testament (at the peril of antisemitism(*)). Sexual libertinism may or may not be ‘Gnostic’: the perfecti of the Cathars were famously ascetic, whereas the sect of Carpocrates, to the extent that it is more than a figment of Irenaeus, sought to sin that all things might be fulfilled in their so doing. It is the latter who have captured the imaginations of writers from Hesse to Borges, yet one suspects most ‘Gnostics’ down the ages were as dull in their carnal predilections as they were daring in their theology.
(*) A superb example, in some ways recalling the genesis of Christianity, being the 18th Century Polish-Lithuanian Frankists, an heretical sect, Jewish in origin.
Transgenderism is certainly a Gnostic or Gnostic-friendly doctrine. Elaine Pagels and others of the NYRB-crowd tried to make the Gnostics heroes of feminism, but they accepted the “equality” of women only in the sense that women could, if they tried hard enough, “acquire a male mind.”
Another way to look at this is that “gnosticism” and what became what we know as “orthodox” Christianity are two versions of the same doctrine, one more stringent, and perhaps more logically consistent, that the other. There’s little practical difference btw
In both cases sin/evil is equated with involvement with the world (think of the preacher’s use of “worldly”) and salvation is or requires turning away from the world. No meat, no job, no money, no sex, no children, no marriage, no military service or allegiance to the government at all, etc. This is a viable doctrine if the Second Coming and the End of the World is at hand, but as this fail to materialize, the doctrine begins to make accommodations with the world. You can see this process in Acts/Epistles, as time goes on, from “all things in common” and “call no man Father” and “I would all men were like me (celibate)” to “Slaves obey your masters” and “Bishops must be married to only one woman”; notice how “brotherhood” and celibacy is replaced by the sacrament of marriage, officiated by celibate priests honored as “Father.”
To some, like today’s Bro. Stair, whom I have written about many times here, this is blasphemy, backsliding, compromise with the Devil, etc. To the rest of us, this is normal religion (cf. “normies” in a Dissident context).
To revert to the “male mind,” when Christianity mutated into its non-gnostic form, this also changed: women could no longer “acquire the male mind” but instead were to be submissive to their fathers or husbands, and above all, be quiet in church (a clear rejection of Gnostic female prophetesses, who might “corrupt” the orthodox congregations).
Do understand that there is no point beyond all redemption. Some trannies are going to church for that purpose. I wholeheartedly agree, however, that no church should bend its theology to accommodate them
GnosTIC
HereTIC
You know what THE Tick would say?
“Gnostic transgendered villains, knock off all that heresy!!!
Last Easter I was planning on attending an Anglican service but circumstances had me running too late to make it, against my better judgement I stopped in a local Episcopal parish that I knew was quite liberal and had a female rector. I think God’s hand was at work for I saw just how far my former denomination has fallen. The priestess’ sermon literally analogized Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning to the act of transistioning from the sex you were assigned at birth to the true sex God meant you to be.
I now pray regularly to God for His judgement on this wickedness.
Shafarevich was both great scholar and great man (and Gumilyov in his sphere was too), but the West knows only Dugin.
I’ve started to feel like ‘Gnostic’ is a dumping ground for all the Christian ideas that Christians don’t want to own up to. But, in the end, gnosis is a part of every religion in one way or another. There is a revelation to a human and that revelation becomes the basis for a community and when the community exceeds the boundaries of a ‘cult’ it becomes a ‘religion’. In the end, it is in the interest of those who benefit from the dead weight of dying faiths to try to stop time by stopping gnosis. They seem to, in the long run, fail, but not without much suffering.
Dualism and denial of the value of the actual lived world is baked into Christianity. All that the so-called ‘Gnostic Christians’ do is amplify certain tendencies that exist at the root of the faith.
As for socialism and gnosticism having connection, patterns of resistance to current forms are going to be similar if the current forms are the same. What’s really changed in human relations since the first priests took control of the first granaries? It wasn’t ‘socialism’ that drove the US to fight the most deadly wars of its history, was it?
There is a desire to project one’s own flaws and errors and obsessions onto others as a kind of magical warding of self-understanding.
Every Christian is a Gnostic waiting to happen.
The Cathars certainly were Gnostics, since the teachings were nearly the same. Somehow someone must have been keeping the flame alive during the Dark Ages.
Anyway, those who want to shoehorn radical gender theory onto Christianity are barking up the wrong tree. There are some bizarre schisms from the past that do have some passing similarity. In the present instance, though, it doesn’t seem that they’re going the route of Gnostic theology. I doubt that they give a tin-plated hoot about any sort of theology whatsoever. The unbreakable rule is that religion has to give way whenever it conflicts in the slightest with their cummies or their moldy leftist opinions. It’s a sugar-coated iteration of ultracalvinism in which God approves of whatever they like and makes no demands on them because He thinks exactly the way they do. At that point, it’s no longer a church, but a political party with a plastic halo. It’s a little strange they pretend to have a religion at all.
Lot of gnostics are far more conservative than their Christian counterparts. Think Buddhist monk like. It’s the material, physical world they seem to want to rise above.. Spiritual growth. Enlightment. Why on earth would they want a sex change or transgenderism?
While there may very well be the rare statistic. I’m not seeing any real correlation here. I don’t think you’ve made your case at all. Be like Buddhist monks becoming transgenders.
I found both this essay and many of the comments difficult to grasp. I especially failed to follow the reasoning here:
Leaving aside any medical explanation for gender dysphoria — if there is any at all — only two theological explanations can exist for this purported disorder: Either the Demiurge was at it again, corrupting the material world to inflict the evil of inequality upon innocent souls, or God made one doozy of a mistake divvying out X and Y chromosomes.
Is Quinn implicitly alleging that the Church denies the reality of mental illness? The theocons at First Things admirably reject transgenderism, and they do so on this basis, as well as that transgender ideology is another tool in the Left’s anti-Christian arsenal. What is meant by a “theological explanation”? Theologians (except some fundamentalists) do not deny biology, or science more broadly.
OTOH, I would enjoy a longer discussion of the Shafarevich book itself. I first heard of it in the 80s, but have never read it, nor seen it referred to in many decades. What inspired Quinn to delve into it now, so long after it was written, and the Cold War ended?
Hi Lord Shang.
If any church defines transgenderism as a mental disorder, then they are correctly not resorting to theological arguments to define it as normal and good. However, since so many transgender people really want to be part of Christianity (as opposed to members of other progressive movements like Antfia) and many churches seems eager to accept them, then sooner or later a theological doctrine will have to appear to defend this action. If you approach this from the perspective that a transgender person isn’t mentally ill, then the 2 options I outline above become relevant. How do you explain a woman being born in a man’s body or vice versa without claiming that our infallible God made a mistake? The Gnostic reasoning in this case becomes a prime alternative.
I’m drawn these days to Shafarevich because Solzhenitsyn speaks very highly of him. Brilliant mathematician who was a Soviet dissident and a person very savvy on the JQ. I recently reviewed Shafarevich’s Russophobia for TOO:
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2022/05/26/on-russophobia-and-anti-semitism/
Shafarevich as thinker, as scholar and political writer was much bigger and stronger than Solzhenitsyn, who was rather novelist.
But Shafarevich is someway one-sided, he in his book wrote only about Jewish writers as “Russophobians”. However in the real life most russophobians are not Jews, but Western Europeans and their proxies in the “ruling elite” of Russia. Some Yanov or Shragin or any other Jewish professor or writer could write something bad about Russians and Russia, but nothing more. And “Russian” Tsar Peter I has called Russians “half-animals”, and murdered thousands of them, but nobody calls him Russophobian, they call him “the Great”. The West was and is hostile to Russians, since the 9th century, when Russia was colonized and enslaved by “Varyagians”, and this Western hostility is of much more importance, than all those empty words of some relatively unknown Jewish scholars.
Lev Gumilyov called gnostics antisystem and chimaera.
He wrote:
“Among the Manicheans, the world is not a creation worthy of love, but the result of a catastrophe and is subject to destruction. This teaching is very consistent, and that is why it caused disgust wherever it was preached – in Rome, Iran and China. The Romans were shocked by the intolerance of the Manicheans and their abstruse natural philosophy, claiming to amend natural science; Persians and Arabs – by their godlessness and lies, not only permitted, but directly prescribed by the Manichaean “faithfuls” as a means of combating matter; Chinese – by the prohibition of the family and the exhaustion of the flesh through asceticism and collective depravity, in order to cause in themselves disgust for life, Buddhists – by the cruelty towards people and animals, which the Manichaeans considered “evil”, i.e. disagreeing with their teachings”.
“Was it possible to explain to a shepherd, an illiterate brave warrior (Gumilyov speaks here about Türkic-Mongolian warriors of Cingizkaan and Cinzizids), that his native fragrant Steppe, beloved wife and cheerful children are a terrible evil that must be renounced? Could he hate his strong hands, pulling a tight bow to the ear, and his war horse (argymak), which carried him to victories over enemies? Could he imagine the abstraction of the struggle of the Fiery Radiance with the Raging Darkness?”
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