Was the apostle Paul a Gnostic? That's impossible to say from a historical perspective, but certainly many of the ancient Gnostics claimed him as one of their own.
An important Gnostic text, possibly (though there exists scholarly disagreement) of Valentinian origin, has been called The Prayer of the Apostle Paul. Found within the scripture collection found at Nag Hammadi, many scholars believe the prayer to have been composed around the beginning of the third century in Greek, from which it was translated into the (unfortunately incomplete) Coptic text we have today.
This post will specifically focus on four requests made by Paul within the text:
You are [my] mind:
bring me forth.
You are my treasury:
open for me.
You [are] my fullness:
accept me.
You are rest:
give me incomprehensible perfection.
The themes and concepts evoked by this petitionary prayer certainly align with a Gnostic Christian mindset from the ancient world, and quite possible a Valentinian one. We can easily imagine it being invoked as part of a liturgical church service. Let's explore these together, focusing on the call-and-response nature of the petition.
- You are my mind; bring me forth.
Mind, or Nous in Greek (which is preserved in the text despite the Coptic translation), is a particularly critical concept in Valentinian theology. Roughly, it's the concept of the first emanation of the Divine, the perfect and unadulterated first thought– reason itself, humanity itself.
This petition acknowledges that God is not only the source of uncorrupted reasoning, but the thing itself. It acknowledges that the petitioner is internalizing this divine reasoning, casting off corrupted and broken reasoning in favor of the Divine mind.
Thus, bring me forth is to say: I am a new creature. Bring me out of my corruption, out of my broken way of thinking and reasoning and seeing the world. I am there, I do not need to be created, but need to be brought out. See II Corinthians 5:17. - You are my treasury; open for me.
Gnostic texts frequently use the metaphor of a "treasury"; for example, chapter 86 of Pistis Sophia refers to the Treasury of the Light as the "region of the emanations". A treasury is a place to guard precious things.
Here, the Gnostic Paul here professes that his treasures are those of God, not of the world. And yet, what good is such treasure if it is locked away from the one it belongs to? Paul both aligns himself with God rather than this broken world, while pleading that God's gifts– knowledge, love, faith, etc.– be manifested in his life, not locked away in his heart. - You are my fullness; accept me.
God is our fullness, our Pleroma. God is the completion of the human psyche, the fulfillment of our purpose, the source and the emanations and the objective of our mind.
What do we need from God? It is to accept us. It is to say, "well done my good and faithful servant". It is for God to validate our dependence and reliance on him, to affirm the legitimacy of our existence, and to accept us into his light above the darkness of this world. - You are rest; give me incomprehensible perfection.
When we think of perfection, we tend to think of something exhausting. Something that consumes our energy and our willpower and our soul. When we read Christ say, "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," that might feel impossible.
And yet, God is rest. God is found in stillness. Perfection in God is not something to be achieved, to be worked on, to be strive for. It is not something to be understood. It is incomprehensible. We exist in it not when we strive to be as perfect as God, but when we exist in his rest.
This portion of the text encourages us to step back and assess who we are. Who God is. And how we relate to him.
As you wrestle with this Gnostic (likely Valentinian) text, what aspects of it resonate with you?