What if the Orthodox Church didn't reject Gnosticism—but refined it?Explore how Eastern Christianity inherited mystical fire, reshaped it into doctrine, and stayed closer to Gnosis than the West ever dared.
Hi Alana — not yet, but I’ve been circling around them like a monk who just spotted a scorpion in his sandal. The Desert Fathers are wild — part mystic, part survivalist, part accidental therapist. I’ve got plans to dive into folks like Evagrius and Abba Anthony soon, especially how their battles with the “logismoi” echo what Mary Magdalene names in her gospel as the powers that must be named and overcome. It’s all connected — desert silence, inner demons, visionary clarity. Stay tuned.
Love this, my friend. I've been drawn to study gnosticism recently. It's one of those things where I am like...oh yeah, I guess I am kind of a heretic now. So I should probably revisit some of the foundational heresies to see what truths were being snuffed out in the name of alignment. As a Mystic Christian myself, I love how you laid this out.
Well first, you point to several of the saints thought’s similarities with Gnosticism but you really overstretch the similarities between Gnosticism and orthodoxy. Also, the church accepts that saints can be wrong on individual points and still be saints!
This is why we have the structure of the church that allows for correction from error. Further, fathers are entitled to their own opinions.
For example, the church never adopted the opinion that married couples should only have sex 3 times a month because that is the only time the woman is fertile as dogma, but multiple fathers have said this is what they believe.
This is one example among many, and demonstrates how the church actually establishes its dogma to keep its the members on the right path, and is not an authoritarian structure that just squashes all freedom.
Second, you paint st. Basil’s actions as if they were born out of a desire control rather than a real need for correction. Isolated monasticism leads to prelest in most people.
We have hundreds of accounts of orthodox Christians monks and even saints suffering prelest before being corrected by the structure of the monastery.
Likewise, most people don’t actually want to be a desert dweller in a cave, but they want to experience the spiritual gifts. This is a recipe for delusion too.
The church is there to help and guide us, not to control us.
Every orthodox person I know has a real relationship with God. and all of them know that the church is a necessary structure that deepens that relationship.
Acting as if one can only have a pure relationship with God if it unmediated by the church is very silly, and something many people fall into because 1) either they’ve experienced having a bad priest/church community or/and 2) they are too prideful to recognize that they *need* the church.
Appreciate you weighing in, but I notice you didn’t actually refute the core claim of the article: that Eastern Orthodoxy bears more resemblance to Gnosticism than to Western Christianity in certain foundational ways—especially in its cosmology, anthropology, and emphasis on inner transformation. Instead, you redirected the convo to “saints can be wrong” (which, sure, thanks?), marital sex schedules (not in the article), and monastery obedience as a hedge against prelest.
I get it—structure can help. But structure isn’t holiness. Empire has structure. So does your HOA. So did the pharisees, come to think of it.
And the emphasis on external obedience over inner gnosis sounds eerily familiar. If your thinking has been shaped by Seraphim Rose—and granted, that’s just a suspicion—it would explain the wariness toward direct mystical experience. The man practically made it his mission to pathologize anything that didn’t come with a bishop’s stamp. His toll house theology? It’s spiritual TSA: fear-based, bureaucratic, and mostly cobbled together from 10th-century ghost stories.
And while no one’s accusing Rose himself, the fact that his hermitage co-founder fell into a sex scandal does cast a shadow over the whole “obedience protects from delusion” narrative. If your theological fortress can’t keep out basic corruption, maybe don’t pitch it as a failproof defense against pride.
Prelest isn’t cured by control. It’s healed by self-knowledge, humility, and unmediated encounter with the divine—the very things Gnostic-leaning Christianity held sacred before institutional religion turned the medicine cabinet into a locked reliquary.
Some of us didn’t leave Orthodoxy out of arrogance. We left because we saw theosis reduced to a loyalty program. And if Orthodoxy still claims to be the hospital of the soul, it might want to stop shaming those who found healing outside the waiting room.
Have you written anything on the Desert Fathers? If so where would I find it? Thank you for your work.
Hi Alana — not yet, but I’ve been circling around them like a monk who just spotted a scorpion in his sandal. The Desert Fathers are wild — part mystic, part survivalist, part accidental therapist. I’ve got plans to dive into folks like Evagrius and Abba Anthony soon, especially how their battles with the “logismoi” echo what Mary Magdalene names in her gospel as the powers that must be named and overcome. It’s all connected — desert silence, inner demons, visionary clarity. Stay tuned.
—Virgin Monk Boy
Love this, my friend. I've been drawn to study gnosticism recently. It's one of those things where I am like...oh yeah, I guess I am kind of a heretic now. So I should probably revisit some of the foundational heresies to see what truths were being snuffed out in the name of alignment. As a Mystic Christian myself, I love how you laid this out.
Well first, you point to several of the saints thought’s similarities with Gnosticism but you really overstretch the similarities between Gnosticism and orthodoxy. Also, the church accepts that saints can be wrong on individual points and still be saints!
This is why we have the structure of the church that allows for correction from error. Further, fathers are entitled to their own opinions.
For example, the church never adopted the opinion that married couples should only have sex 3 times a month because that is the only time the woman is fertile as dogma, but multiple fathers have said this is what they believe.
This is one example among many, and demonstrates how the church actually establishes its dogma to keep its the members on the right path, and is not an authoritarian structure that just squashes all freedom.
Second, you paint st. Basil’s actions as if they were born out of a desire control rather than a real need for correction. Isolated monasticism leads to prelest in most people.
We have hundreds of accounts of orthodox Christians monks and even saints suffering prelest before being corrected by the structure of the monastery.
Likewise, most people don’t actually want to be a desert dweller in a cave, but they want to experience the spiritual gifts. This is a recipe for delusion too.
The church is there to help and guide us, not to control us.
Every orthodox person I know has a real relationship with God. and all of them know that the church is a necessary structure that deepens that relationship.
Acting as if one can only have a pure relationship with God if it unmediated by the church is very silly, and something many people fall into because 1) either they’ve experienced having a bad priest/church community or/and 2) they are too prideful to recognize that they *need* the church.
Laura,
Appreciate you weighing in, but I notice you didn’t actually refute the core claim of the article: that Eastern Orthodoxy bears more resemblance to Gnosticism than to Western Christianity in certain foundational ways—especially in its cosmology, anthropology, and emphasis on inner transformation. Instead, you redirected the convo to “saints can be wrong” (which, sure, thanks?), marital sex schedules (not in the article), and monastery obedience as a hedge against prelest.
I get it—structure can help. But structure isn’t holiness. Empire has structure. So does your HOA. So did the pharisees, come to think of it.
And the emphasis on external obedience over inner gnosis sounds eerily familiar. If your thinking has been shaped by Seraphim Rose—and granted, that’s just a suspicion—it would explain the wariness toward direct mystical experience. The man practically made it his mission to pathologize anything that didn’t come with a bishop’s stamp. His toll house theology? It’s spiritual TSA: fear-based, bureaucratic, and mostly cobbled together from 10th-century ghost stories.
And while no one’s accusing Rose himself, the fact that his hermitage co-founder fell into a sex scandal does cast a shadow over the whole “obedience protects from delusion” narrative. If your theological fortress can’t keep out basic corruption, maybe don’t pitch it as a failproof defense against pride.
Prelest isn’t cured by control. It’s healed by self-knowledge, humility, and unmediated encounter with the divine—the very things Gnostic-leaning Christianity held sacred before institutional religion turned the medicine cabinet into a locked reliquary.
Some of us didn’t leave Orthodoxy out of arrogance. We left because we saw theosis reduced to a loyalty program. And if Orthodoxy still claims to be the hospital of the soul, it might want to stop shaming those who found healing outside the waiting room.
With scandalous grace and unapologetic clarity,
Virgin Monk Boy