Trouwborst 1

Luke Trouwborst

Prof. Coleman

ENG 120

3 May 2011

Walker Percy and the Search for Gnosis

Walker Percy tells us of modern man’s symptoms and sickness, but rarely his cure.

The symptoms are unique to the modern man. “The word boredom did not enter the

language until the eighteenth century,” Percy tells us in Lost in the Cosmos. “Why was there

no such word before the eighteenth century?” (70). Modern man, Percy argues, is experiencing

unique emotions like boredom, awkwardness, and chronic depression. For Percy, these brand

new emotions are symptoms of a modern sickness.

Today, the secular world maintains a relatively new view of the cosmos: a view that ex-

cludes any belief in God. For the atheist, the cosmos is a vast machine and impersonal cycle. Hu-

mans can touch and feel, codify and classify everything in this cosmos. There is no room for

anything supernatural, or anything that defies natural explanation. For Percy, the atheist cannot

accept the concept of God because he cannot completely understand it.

But this purely three-dimensional understanding of the world has consequences. Percy ar-

gues that our human “self,” the Christian “soul,” can never be classified scientifically or placed

in a filing cabinet. Our minds are bizarre arrangements of disconnected thoughts and images,

which alternately display rationality and irrationality. We cannot properly place this “self” in

this vast machine of nature. As a result, we feel isolated and alienated in our home, the cosmos.

The more we “know” about our surroundings, the more lonely we feel. Our self feels out of place

in the natural realm, because, Percy would argue, our self is by definition supernatural.

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Percy calls this sickness “the modern malaise.” His books often revolve around the prob-

lems of isolated men, from Lancelot Lamar to Binx Bolling to Thomas More.

But Percy leaves his reader hanging. His books obsess over the sickness without a clear

cure. Critics often assume that Percy, a devout Catholic, saw his church as the ultimate answer.

Yet Percy’s books often ridicule the church. In Love in the Ruins, Percy’s semi-apocalyptic

world includes deranged Catholic and Protestant churches. His American Catholic Church “em-

phasizes property rights and the integrity of neighborhoods...and plays the Star Spangled Banner

at elevation...the Dutch schismatics believe in relevance but not God.” (5). Percy seems to advo-

cate Christianity as the cure to a diseased man. But why can his books seem so hesitant?

Percy identified in the modern Christian thought the same “isolation of the self.” Percy

couldn’t advocate for a contaminated modern Christianity. This contamination Percy identifies is

a revived ancient gnosticism. Percy’s cure is a renewed commitment to the Lord’s Supper.

What, then, is gnosticism? This can be difficult to answer because gnostics sometimes

contradict each other. (Scholer 13). Yet gnostics were unified by several foundational principles.

Phillip Lee explains the most basic one:

For the gnostic Christian, ancient or modern, the simple faith (pistis) of the believer is not sufficient. Instead, there must be knowledge (gnosis)....the Church fathers tagged [them] with the derogatory name gnostics (gnostikoi), those who know...with the ironic implication ‘those who think they know something the rest of us do not know’ (3).

This saving knowledge was, for the gnostics, not tangible or easily accessible. The early gnostic

Sophia of Jesus Christ quotes Christ: “‘I want you to know that all men ...while they have

inquired about God...have not found him. But to you it is given to know; and whoever is worthy

of knowledge will receive it.’” The gnostics were by nature exclusive.

An elite sense of spiritual knowledge separated a gnostic from ordinary folk. The gnos-

tic’s knowledge was not tangible knowledge of God’s acts, its was an ethereal knowledge or a

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sense of some spiritual realm inside the “self”. Tangible knowledge and physical matter were, in

fact, all evil for the gnostic. As Scholer explains, “gnostics believed that humanity [has been]

trapped in the material world [and] human bodies” (14).

“If the world is evil,” we might ask the gnostic, “why did God create it?” Here the an-

cient gnostics ventured into the absurd. Gnostics saw “God the creator” as a lesser, evil god, sub-

ordinate to God the Father of Christ. Christ’s incarnation was a cheap magic illusion, as was his

death and resurrection. “‘But I [Christ] was not afflicted at all,’” The Second Treatise of

the Great Seth quotes Christ as saying. “‘I did not die in reality but in appearance...it was an-

other, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another upon whom they placed the

crown of thorns. I was rejoicing in height over...their error, their empty glory. And I was laugh-

ing at their ignorance’” (Scholer 16). In fact, as theologian Rudolf Bultmann explains, Christ’s

“descent into hell” was, for the gnostics, simply his coming down to earth or incarnation (Bult-

mann 175).

So for the gnostic, Christ never took on flesh. The believer or knower, they argued,

should strive after his example. The gnostic is seeking abstraction from the cosmos and anything

worldly, even gender. Scholer explains that the gnostics had a “goal of sexual renunciation...

[as]the Gospel of Thomas says, ‘every female who makes herself male will enter heaven's king-

dom.’ This most likely means, in context, that renouncing worldly, physical existence is what

prepares one for true salvation” (16).

Why would a modern writer like Walker Percy write about an ancient, long-dead reli-

gion? First we have to remember that gnosticism never declares itself a religion. Gnosticism al-

ways operates within the framework of Christianity. Christ warned of wolves in sheep’s clothing

(Matt 7:15). Gnostic “wolves” rarely shed the clothing of Christianity. As Bultmann reminds us,

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“gnosticism is only dealt with so far as it is a phenomenon within Christianity” (170).

Gnostics can masquerade as almost anything.

Percy rarely mentions “gnosticism” specifically. He tells us of the “peculiar gnosis of

trains,” for instance, in The Moviegoer (164). Percy used the word scarcely while still identi-

fying strains of gnosticism in the modern church.

We can see where the gnostic would fall in Percy’s “malaise.” Percy, in an interview be-

fore he died, defines the sickness as “the disease of abstraction...[and a] schism in conscious-

ness...the modern mind...abstracts [itself] from the world, from itself, and manages to lose touch

with reality” (Abadi-Nagy 73-74) The gnostic and the secular man reach the same abstraction

through different methods. The gnostic self-consciously tries to abstract himself from the cos-

mos. Inversely, the secular modern man becomes so caught up in the world that he becomes ab-

stracted from himself.

Gnosticism self-consciously attempts escape from the cosmos. And many of

Percy’s Christian characters have sought this escape. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than

in Love in the Ruins, where Thomas More reflects on his first wife, Doris:

My wife, who began life as a cheerful Episcopalian from Virginia, became a priestess of high places...books ruined her...she fell prey to Gnostic [!] pride...and developed a yearn-ing for esoteric doctrine...she wanted to leave the bad thing here and go away and make a fresh start...what I didn’t know was that I was for her part of the bad thing (62).

For a fascinating 10 pages, More goes on to argue with Doris over her escapist tendencies. “I’m

going in search of myself,” she tells him (63). She complains that their earthly relationship has

“no overtones...no nuances, no upper mansions...Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul”

(64). Doris threatens to physically leave More, yet she calls her escape a spiritual one:

‘Don’t leave,’ I say with soaring hopes.

‘I have to leave.’

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Then I made a mistake and asked her where she was going.

Again her eyes went away. ‘East of the sun and west of the moon.’

‘What crap.’

Doris tells More his “problem”: “You’re not a seeker after the truth, you think you have the

truth...I’m a seeker” (68). And then More realizes the heart of his wife and her “Gnostic pride”:

“Somewhere Doris had gotten the idea that love is spiritual...After that [she left], Doris went

spiritual [because] I...was coarse and disorderly. She took the high road and I took the low” (69).

Percy explains that the Christian can be just as abstracted as the secularist pagan. As

More treats an abstracted modern atheist, he suddenly identifies with this abstraction: “All at

once I could see how he lived his life: shuddering in orbit around the great globe, seeking some

way to get back. Don’t I know? We are two of a kind...winging it like Jupiter” (33). Both are ab-

stracted, but in two different ways. Percy continually describes More as a “bad Catholic,” even

when writing in the first person. He even subtitles the book as “Adventures of a Bad

Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World.”

More explains, fittingly, to himself, why he is a bad Catholic: “Why can’t I...love myself

less, and my God and my fellow man more?...I live a solitary life” (22). This idea of loving the

self is at the very heart of gnostic thought. German writer Thomas Mann called the gnostic vision

a “narcissistic picture, full of tragic charm” (Lee, 27). Bultmann explains that for the gnostic,

since “all knowledge serves as knowledge of self...by his vision, he [the gnostic] is transformed

from man into God” (Lee, 27).

More’s second wife, Ellen, is just slightly better than More’s first. Ellen represents a

more practical, relatable gnosticism. Ellen, like Doris, finds her salvation internally, but through

spiritualized virtue, not retreat. Percy explains:

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Ellen, though she is a churchgoer, does not believe in God. Rather does she believe in the Golden Rule and doing right...She doesn’t need God. What does God have to do with be-ing honest, hard-working, chaste, upright, unselfish, etcetera?...I [More] believe in God...but don’t do right...Between the two of us we might have saved Christianity. In-stead we lost it (148).

Ellen’s virtue is not earthy or practical. It does not help the poor, redeem or “fix” the evil in the

world. It is a way to transcend the evil cosmos. Thus, Ellen resists “earthy” Christianity. Her hus-

band analyzes her “Presbyterian mistrust of things, things getting mixed up in religion...What

do these things, articles, to do with doing right?...she mistrusts...sacraments, articles, bread,

wine, salt, oil, water, ashes” (376).

More’s mother is a “Catholic gnostic...her gift is for seeing signs...with clairvoyant pow-

ers ...of business and politics” (169).

While Thomas More is a bad Catholic seeking a cure, Lancelot Lamar, protagonist of

Percy’s Lancelot, has far greater gnostic tendencies. Lamar denies original sin, saying that it is

“not something man did to God but something God did to man, so monstrous that to this day

man cannot understand”(222). As Percy scholar Cleanth Brooks explains, “Lance believes both

tenets of gnosticism-that man is not responsible for evil and that his salvation is depends on his

own efforts” (Stratagems for Being, 271). Lamar calls this gnostic tenet the “great secret of

life” (222).

Percy’s characters struggle with gnostic ideas about the nature of man and his relation to

creation. Why, though, would Percy insert gnostics into his novels? Are these just interesting

character coincidences, accidents to the essence of Percy’s intent in writing?

Not at all. Percy wrestled with gnosticism as a reality in the modern Christian church.

Percy’s protagonist in Love in the Ruins, Thomas More, creates a device called the “lap-

someter,” with the hope of “bridging the dread chasm that has rent the soul of Western

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man”(181). This chasm is created in the church when we foster a wholly spiritual religion, a

Christianity that avoids Ellen’s dreaded things. As Lee explains, More creates the lapsometer

“longing for the day when the American man who walks in a gnostic can walk out as a Chris-

tian” (Lee 133).

Philosopher Eric Voeglin influenced Percy’s view of the gnostics. In an interview with

Ashley Brown in 1967, Percy mentioned works by Eric Voegelin that he’d read (13). Voeglin

wrote The New Science of Politics, Order and History, and Science, Politics and

Gnosticism, all with the theme of how gnosticism has been revived today. Voegelin defined

gnosticism as “a type of thinking that claims absolute cognitive mastery of reality...relying...on a

claim to gnosis, gnosticism considers its knowledge not subject to criticism” (Webb 282).

Lancelot Lamar’s delusions of grandeur clearly fit Voegelin’s definition.

Percy expert Cleanth Brooks, though unaware that Percy had ever read or knew of

Voegelin, could not help but notice how similar the two were. Brooks notes “significant paral-

lels” between Percy and Voegelin in his speculative essay “Walker Percy and the Modern Gnos-

tics” (261). Later scholars such as Lewis Lawson have affirmed these similarities (Lawson 196).

Percy’s novels also specifically attack modern gnostic philosophers. William Dowie has

noted Percy’s distaste for German writer Hermann Hesse (64). Throughout Love in the Ruins,

Percy takes potshots at Hesse’s work, without mentioning specifically what Hesse wrote (209,

69, 67). Thomas More’s second wife Doris quotes Hesse while leaving More.

Hesse was a gnostic. His novels were full of gnostic symbolism. In his novel Steppen-

wolf, Hesse’s character Hermine mirrors the gnostic symbol Sophia, a prostitute representing

wisdom and knowledge. Note here the gnostic tendency to turn Old Testament imagery on its

head. Solomon’s proverbs frequently portray wisdom as standing outside the prostitute’s door,

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preventing entry from unsuspecting youths. Hermine and Sophia personify wisdom, as an allur-

ing prostitute. Dutch theologian Gilles Quispel argues that Hesse’s character Hermine is a more

powerful gnostic symbol than even Sophia was (Quispel, 245). “Hesse somehow sensed that

Hermine was a gnostic symbol,” he argues. Even more striking is Hesse’s novel Demian,where

protagonist Emil Sinclair seeks and eventually obtains realization of self by seeking the ancient

gnostic deity Abraxes.

Hesse used Abraxes in imitation of his mentor, Carl Jung. Abraxes, according to Jung,

was the true God the father of Christ, who fought against the God of the Old Testament to bring

his people knowledge and release from the world. Jung refers to gnostic ideals of Abraxes and

Pleroma in his rambling Seven Sermons to the Dead. Psychologist Harold Coward calls Jung

“simply a gnostic in modern psychological dress” (477). Gilles Quispel, Jung’s classmate, recalls

in his essay “How Jung became a Gnostic” that “Jung realized that his God needed man to be-

come conscious. And then he...became a full-fledged Gnostic” (50). This idea that “God needs

man” points at the heart of gnosticism, Percy’s “Gnostic pride.”The gnostic desperately reaches

for salvation through himself, through his own knowledge, prowess, and outstretched arm. The

gnostic will not allow Christ to save him because he needs the satisfaction of saving himself.

If Percy disliked Hesse, he hated Jung. In Lost in the Cosmos, after a fascinating 200

page ramble, Percy lays out the modern malaise and the Christian answer side by side, by show-

ing the reader two isolated colonies. The first, the “modern malaise” camp, is run by “Jungian

self-analysis,” where leader Aristarchus Jones puts the colony through “group sessions in self-

knowledge” (256). “Self-Knowledge” is Jung’s gnosticism. It preaches salvation through inter-

nalized knowledge, an esoteric self-realization. The malaise camp “Captain” names his child af-

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ter Jung (249). Percy criticizes Jung as a “transcender...transcendence has its own...impoverish-

ment” (125).

We’ve established that Percy disliked gnosticism. We’ve established that he attacked

strands of gnosticism in his novels. We have yet to understand, though, precisely why Percy saw

gnosticism as a concrete modern problem in the church. And its still unclear how Percy would

solve the “modern malaise” of abstraction.

“Jungian psychology has had a formidable influence on American Protestantism,” Phillip

Lee argues in Against the Protestant Gnostics (147). Lee, working from Percy and hundreds of

other sources, systematically deals with Percy’s “Gnostic pride” in the church today. The church,

Lee generally argues, often equates “salvation” with gnosis.

Lee and Percy particularly identify three gnostic tendencies that church today struggles

with: individualism, elitism and abstraction.

First, individualism. Percy’s characters are so often left alone with themselves. This is to

be expected from a gnostic Christian. The gnostic Christian finds transcendence through himself,

running from the cosmos back to the self. This means that he will find the gnosis that saves. We

use the term “personal relationship” to describe our Christianity sometimes. If taken too far,

“personal relationship” can become narcissism.

The Bible often describes the church as the Bride of Christ (Rev 21:2, Eph. 5:21-32 et

al.). The gnostic Christian sees himself as the Bride of Christ. George Whitfield preached that

Christ offers to each “Sinner...to make them Flesh of his Flesh...Come then...Let this be the day

of your Espousal..he is your lawful husband [emphasis added]” (Greven 137). Puritan pastor

Ebenezer Frothingham argues that the “Nature of Practice in Religion, on Obedience to God...

[requires] for every Person to act singly, as in the sight of God only...to bring all saints

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together...and yet have no dependence one upon another [emphasis added]” (Greven 147-48).

This is because, as Emerson later writes, the spiritually awake “are never so fit for friendship, as

when they have quitted mankind and taken themselves to friend” (Parrington 377-378).

Modern Christian individualism is hard to miss. The modern Christian is always and ev-

erywhere tempted to save himself by himself. The modern gnostic, Karen Horney explains,

keeps reiterating the word “should” with amazing frequency. He keeps telling us what he should have felt, thought, done. He is at bottom as convinced of his inherent perfection as the naively ‘narcissistic’ person, and portrays it by the belief that he actually could be perfect if only he were more strict with himself, more controlled, more alert, more cir-cumspect (98).

In other words, he could be perfect if he had the gnosis. The religious life is here transformed

into a search for personal perfection within the self.

Reinhold Niebuhr writes in The Nature and Destiny of Man that “this development of the

autonomous individual” actually “destroys the Christian basis of individuality”(59). Ultimately

for Niebuhr, this gnostic individualism leads to “loss of self” (66).

Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos is a thorough discussion of “loss of self.” His first dozen

chapters deal with how the modern isolated self copes with, well, itself. He describes the modern

self in chapter titles alone as impoverished, promiscuous, fearful, bored, misplaced, envious, and

nowhere. Percy, to be sure, points to modern “everydayness” as a cause of lost self, especially in

The Moviegoer. Yet, as we see in Lost in the Cosmos, Percy also recognizes the distinctly Chris-

tian way of isolating the individual through “Gnostic pride.” Characters like Doris take salvation

into their own hands. Doris seeks to “make herself whole” (66).

Individualistic redemption leads to elitism. Iraneus writes that the gnostics called “us” (in

this case, everyone other than them, the enlightened) “‘unspiritual,’ ‘common,’ and ‘ecclesias-

tic’”(Pagels 43). This is understandable. If one self has found gnosis and another has not, we

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must assume that the soul with gnosis is fundamentally a better one. We see this in the gnostic

image of Christ “rejoicing in height over [the Jew’s] error...and laughing at their ignorance” (Sc-

holer 16). This arrogance can be found in modern Christian lingo. “We are informed that certain

athletes, movie stars, and...presidents are ‘born again’ Christians,” Lee notes. “To say ‘I am a

born again Christian,’ is to ask others not to confuse you with the pseudo-Christians” (164).

The principal mark of the “born again” is having a mystical experience. This experience,

being slapped in the face by the gnosis, separates the riffraff from the elect. Thus, the enlight-

ened Christian has made himself a fundamentally better and smarter homo sapiens. Nineteenth

century pastor Henry Ward Beecher applied this belief: “no man in this land suffers from

poverty...unless it be his sin” (Mead 159). As he later preached (unashamedly), “our churches are

largely for the mutual assurance of [the] prosperous...and not for the upbuilding of the great un-

derclass of humanity” (162). Thus we can see evangelicals reaching out to the rich and avoiding

poor neighborhoods. Why waste your time getting hands dirty over the inferior, less spiritual

men? Forgotten in “Gnostic pride” is Matthew 5:45-47: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and

the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you,

what reward will you get?...If you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than

others?”

Percy’s “American Catholic Church” (the A.C.C) in Love in the Ruins represents this cul-

tural elitism. It emphasizes the “integrity of neighborhoods” (5). The A.C.C.’s Monsignor

Schleipkopf lectures his parish: “Lazarus was not a poor man...he lived comfortably...our Lord

was not a social reformer...nor are we obliged to [be social reformers]” (173). In his prayer, the

Monsignor prays for “our brothers in Christ and fellow property owners in Latin America.” (174)

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Church father Iraneus attacks gnostic elitism in his Adversus Haereses (Against Here-

sies):

They consider themselves ‘mature,’ so that no one can be compared with them in the greatness of their gnosis, not even Peter or Paul or any of the other apostles...They imag-ine that they themselves have discovered more...that they themselves are wiser and more intelligent (Pagels 21).

The gnostics have, in their mind, surpassed the apostles.

Lastly, the modern church has abstracted the gospel. Spiritual knowledge is superior to

simple faith. This leaves the simple Christian utterly confused by an abstract Christianity. Puritan

poet Emily Dickinson, for instance, can no longer find God.

At least to pray is left, is left.O Jesus! in the airI know not which thy chamber is, --I 'm knocking everywhere.Thou stirrest earthquake in the South,And maelstrom in the sea;Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth,Hast thou no arm for me? (234)

“‘Knocking everywhere’ but nowhere in particular, [Dickinson] makes the frightful discovery

that grace is nowhere,” Phillip Lee remarks. “The gnosticized Jesus ‘In the Air,’ now discon-

nected with his Church and sacraments, will not or cannot help” (179). Just as gnosis is abstract,

Christ and his salvation, for the gnostic, become abstract. The gnostic refuses to be saved by any-

thing physical or tangible.

We see this, to be sure, in Percy’s work. More’s second wife Ellen is scandalized by

things getting involved in religion. Doris is full of “mournful spirituality.” She calls physical

things like marriage “collapsed morality.” “Our obligation,” she says, “is to be true to ourselves

and and to relate this to [spiritual growth]...the law of life” (66).

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What, then, is Percy’s answer to all this “Gnostic pride,” this abstraction from the Cos-

mos? Thomas More fights this gnosticism by fighting its abstraction. William Dowie observes

that

it is only through the particular again-love of Ellen, his lapsometer research-that More comes to feel at one with the world. After the upheaval he is much poorer than before; but wealth is irrelevant. It is only through the experience of Communion that he feels rec-onciled with God. This is why he is so hard on Hermann Hesse and esoteric religion and spiritualism (64) [emphasis added].

More himself explains it best.

What she [Doris] didn't understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the angels, that it took nothing less than touching the thread off the misty interstates and eating Christ himself to make me mortal man again and let me inhabit my own flesh and love her in the morning (241-242).

More solves the modern malaise through the ordinary, the obscene. In his personal Bible, Percy

heavily underlined John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We

have seen his glory.” He drew a line pointing from “word” to “flesh” (Wilson 199). Christ did

not just come to earth bringing gnosis, Christ dwelt among us. Percy again underlines John 6:53:

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (208).

Percy advocates the Church and particularly the sacraments as the solution to the Christian lost

in the cosmos. The sacraments ground Thomas More.

The best of times were after mass on summer evenings when Samantha and I would walk home in violet dusk, we having received Communion and I rejoicing afterwards...remem-bering what Christ he [Christ] promised me for eating him, that I would life in me, and I did, feeling so good that I’d sing and cut the fool all the way home like King David be-fore the Ark (12).

Phillip Lee explains why Communion equalizes the Christian church. “If working class and poor

people are welcomed by the liturgy of the word and the simple Sacraments, they will gradually

come to feel that they are respected members of the family...class blindness will be healed.” As

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Lee adds, recognizing “ordinary Christians” as “the real heroes of the faith” was central to Ira-

neus’ critique of the gnostics. This view, of course, “seems scandalous to those who understand

Christianity in terms of separating themselves from ordinary people” (265).

Paul sums up this humility in 1 Corinthians 8:1. “Knowledge [gnosis] puffs up, but love

[agape] builds up.” How, then, do we transition from gnosis to agape, placed as we are in the

privileged United States? Moses tells us that we fight pride with remembrance.

Take care [when you are blessed] lest you...forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilder-ness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:11-18).

We fight pride through remembrance of God’s physical acts throughout history. For the New

Testament Christian, this is done through remembrance of Christ. This is ultimately Percy’s solu-

tion: remembering Christ through the Lord’s Supper. Christ commands us at the supper to “do

this in remembrance” of him, the word become flesh (Luke 22:19).

Of course, Christ’s sacrifice can cover the sins of the Christian full of Percy’s “Gnostic

pride.” Percy closes Lost in the Cosmos with a reminder that humans, even Christians, are ex-

pected to get themselves in trouble. “If you’re a big enough fool to climb a tree and like a cat

refuse to come down, then someone who loves you has to make as big of a fool of himself to res-

cue you” (254).

Percy warns the modern Christian of a revived gnosticism with remarkable clarity and

compassion. The fractured modern church would do well to listen.

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