Of the Way

“Throughout history, the Christian Church has had to guard against the heresy of gnosticism.  Gnosticism is not an ordinary heresy, because it does not manifest itself as a set of defined beliefs.  Rather, gnosticism is a tendency: the tendency to replace the historic facts of Christianity with philosophical ideas.  Gnosticism is the tendency to de-historicize and de-physicalize the Christian religion.  Gnosticism transforms history into ideology and facts into philosophy.  Gnosticism tends to see religion as man’s reflections about God and reality instead of as God’s revelation of Himself and His Word to man.  As a tendency, Gnosticism has always plagued the Church, and it is alive and well today, openly in “liberalism,” and in a more concealed fashion, in “evangelicalism.”

-James Jordan, Creation in Six Days, Canon Press, 1999, p. 71, emphasis original

Note: Chapter 4 “Gnosticism Versus History” should be required reading for every Protestant.  Protestantism went dangerously gnostic in the nineteenth century, and we’re still trying to recover.  See my earlier comments from my review of Holiness by Ryle.