Hans Jonas' Construct Gnosticism Analysis and Critique

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Hans Jonas' Construct "Gnosticism": Analysis and Critique

Michael Waldstein

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2000,

pp. 341-372 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/earl.2000.0054

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WALDSTEIN/HANS JONAS CONSTRUCT GNOSTICISM 341

Journal of Early Christian Studies 8:3, 341372 2000 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Hans Jonas ConstructGnosticism:Analysis and Critique

MICHAEL WALDSTEIN

Hans Jonas influential account of Gnosticism as the expression of a unitarySpirit of Late Antiquity defined by Entweltlichung (acosmism) hasrecently come under strong attack by scholars who suggest that the categoryGnosticism should be dismantled and discarded. This debate calls for athorough critical analysis of Jonas construct Gnosticism. Jonas constructhas highly problematic roots, on the one hand, in Spenglers account ofArabian culture and, on the other hand, in the normative understanding ofde-objectivated existence (Entweltlichung) in the existential philosophy of the

early Heidegger. The principal defect of Jonas construct is that it tends tomisrepresent the actual history suggested by the Nag Hammadi texts. Thiscriticism can be exemplified by an examination of the Apocryphon of John,generally considered to be a paradigmatic Gnostic text.

1. INTRODUCTION

In the 1920s, the Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas, student and friend ofHeidegger and Bultmann, proposed an existential interpretation of Gnos-ticism as the expression of a unitary Spirit of Late Antiquity definedby Entweltlichung (acosmism).1 This interpretation has had a deep andlasting impact on scholarship. Scholars have tended to be skeptical aboutJonas neo-Hegelian view of a transindividual Spirit of Late Antiquity,

1. The present essay limits itself to Jonas analysis of Gnosticism in Gnosis undsptantiker Geist: Erster Teil, Die mythologische Gnosis, 3rd ed., FRLANT 33(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964); Gnosis und sptantiker Geist: ZweiterTeil, Von der Mythologie zur mystischen Philosophie: Erste und zweite Hlfte, 3rd

ed., ed. Kurt Rudolph to include for the first time Jonas discussion of Plotinus,FRLANT 159 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993).

Jonas later analysis of Gnosticism in The Gnostic Religion differs in some respectsfrom his earlier work, above all in its greater historical sense and more cautious use


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342 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

but the existential interpretation of Gnostic texts in terms ofEntweltlichunghas been widely accepted:

Only those who have labored to understand Gnosticism and its inner unityby examining the sources and who have despaired in the confusion ofimages and systems can truly appreciate the value of Jonas central idea. Itis not in the systems that one finds the unity. The unity lies deeper, namely,in the existential attitude of human beings who created the systems. Wecannot go back behind this insight! To this confession of complete assent toJonas main (hermeneutic) thesis we must add that we cannot adopt theIdealist framework in which the author understands existential posture. Forus, the subjects of existential posture are empirical human beings.2

Recently, however, Jonas construct has come under heavy attack.

Michael Williams urges scholars of Late Antiquity to jettison this con-struct entirely:

. . . (I)t is best to avoid imagining something called the Gnostic religionor even gnosticism. . . . (T)he texts in question are better understood assources from a variety of new religious movements. Modern treatments ofgnosticism often do, in fact, include some similar disclaimer acknowl-edging the multiplicity of phenomena involved, but the discourse normallymoves quickly to the enumeration of features that, it is claimed, really makeall these movements one thing, gnosticism. The result has been thepremature construction of a category that needs to be not simply renamedor redefined, but rather dismantled and replaced.3

Whether one agrees entirely with Williams or not, what is clearly neededis a close and critical look at Jonas construct Gnosticism.

Williams objections against this construct are not entirely new. Al-ready in 1936, two years after the publication of the first volume of

of existential interpretation; see Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message ofthe Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2nd rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon,1963); similar caution can be observed in Delimitation of the Gnostic PhenomenomTypological and Historical, in Ugo Bianchi, ed., Le Origini dello Gnosticismo(Leiden: Brill, 1967), 90104. For a presentation and critique of this later phase of

Jonas work, see Karen L. King, Translating History: Reframing Gnosticism inPostmodernity, in Christoph Elsas, ed., Tradition und Translation: Zum Problem derinterkulturellen bersetzbarkeit religiser Phnomene (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994),26477, esp. 26573.

2. Hans-Martin Schenke, Review of Hans Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist I,ThLZ 84 (1959): 81320, here 818.3. Michael A. Williams, RethinkingGnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling

a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 5.


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Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, Arthur Darby Nock launched a frontalattack:

J[onas]s real interest lies in an attempt to make a synthesis. He does thiswith concepts of Spengler and Heidegger. Frankly, I cannot understand whathe does in this direction. He is a metaphysician trying to shake off the yokeof history and to lead us to a higher level of comprehension; I am left in aterminological fog, and I know that I am not alone in this situation. Is nothis book an illustration of a fairly common dissatisfaction with the slowprogress and manifest limitations of linguistic and historical scholarship? Isit not in a sense a parallel to the movements which it seeks to present?4

The terminological fog has lifted. Bultmann, in whose seminar on JohnJonas work on Gnosticism first took shape, has been studied closely, ashas Jonas teacher Martin Heidegger, who also collaborated closely withBultmann. Existential interpretation has become a household word intheology.5 Although Nocks observation I am left in a terminologicalfog can no longer be accepted as a criticism, his other observations aredevastating enough.

1.1 Jonas Own Later Critique of His Early Work

The remarkable thing about Nocks critique is thatparticularly in its

final rhetorical question (Is Jonas interpretation not in a sense a parallelto Gnostic movements?)it anticipates Jonas own later critique of hisearly work. Jonas came to see that his own philosophical concern forEntweltlichung, that is, for liberation from objectivated being in favor ofauthentic existence in the decision of the moment, a concern he sharedwith Bultmann and Heidegger, lay at the foundations of his reading ofancient Gnostic texts. The Gnostics dimly anticipated the Entweltlichungwhich the early Jonas saw as the decisive achievement of an authenticexistence. Ultimately, according to Jonas, the Gnostics failed to achieve

complete and authentic Entweltlichung (see below). Still, they came re-markably close to the discoveries of existentialism. According to Bultmann,it is only in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of John and the

4. Arthur Darby Nock, Review of Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist I,Gnomon 12 (1936): 60512; reprinted in Nock, Essays on Religion and the AncientWorld, ed. Zeph Stewart, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972),

1:44451, here 444.5. For a detailed account of the principles of existential interpretation developed inthe triangle Bultmann-Heidegger-Jonas, see Michael Waldstein, The Foundations ofBultmanns Work, Communio 14 (1987): 11545.


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Pauline letters, that one finds the genuine breakthrough to Entweltlichungwhich the Gnostics longed for and which Heidegger articulated.6

When Jonas looked back at Gnosis und sptantiker Geisttwo decades

after its publication, he found that existential hermeneutic and Gnosti-cism had undergone a curious reversal in his mind.7 Existential interpreta-tion had allowed him to see Gnosticism in a thrilling new way:

It was the case of an adept who believed himself in possession of a key thatwould unlock every door: I came to this particular door, I tried the key, andlo! it fitted the lock, and the door opened wide. So the key had proved itsworth. Only later, after I had outgrown the belief in a universal key, did Ibegin to wonder why this one had in fact worked so well in this case. Had Ihappened with just the right kind of key upon the right kind of lock? If so,

whatwas there between Existentialism and Gnosticism which made thelatter open up at the touch of the former?8

When he first approached it in the early 1920s, Gnosticism had seemedfamiliar to Jonas: In retrospect I am inclined to believe that it was thethrill of this dimly felt affinity which had lured me into the Gnosticlabyrinth in the first place.9 By the early fifties the former lock had turnedinto a key and the former key into a lock to be opened. When unlocked bythe later Jonas with the ancient Gnostic key, modern existentialism showed

its true face: acosmic nihilism. To repudiate and overcome the acosmicnihilism of existential philosophythis became the main task to whichJonas dedicated himself in the last forty years of his life by developing aphilosophy of organic life and an ethics of responsibility for the techno-logical age.10 For the early Jonas, Gnostic texts were a dim but forcefulanticipation of existentialist philosophy, to be positively embraced asexamples, even if ultimately unsuccessful examples, of the philosophicalbreakthrough achieved by existentialism, particularly Heidegger. For thelater Jonas, modern existentialism was to be rejected as a symptom of

nihilism, as a modern parallel of the ancient nihilism found in the Gnostics.

6. See Waldstein, Foundations of Bultmanns Work, 13336.7. See Hans Jonas, Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism, Social Research 19

(1952): 43052; reprinted as Epilogue: Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,in Hans Jonas, Gnostic Religion, 32040. A German translation is included as anappendix to Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:35979.

8. Jonas, Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism, 321, emphasis by the author.9. Jonas, Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism, 320, emphasis by the author.10. See the retrospect offered by Jonas in a lecture delivered nine months before his

death: Hans Jonas, Philosophie: Rckschau und Vorschau am Ende des Jahrhunderts(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993). Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward aPhilosophical Biology (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1966); Hans Jonas, TheImperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).


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The transformation of Jonas relation to Jewish theological traditions,particularly a positive reception of the teaching on creation found in theHebrew Scriptures and rabbinical tradition, was part of this development.

In the context of the dramatic events surrounding the involvement of hisrevered teacher Heidegger in the Nazi regime, his flight from Germany asa Jew endangered by the regime, the death of his mother in Auschwitz andhis return to Germany as an infantry officer of the Allied Forces, Jonasbegan to see the existentialism of the early Heidegger and the parallelacosmism of Gnostic texts as metaphysical anti-Semitism.11

Although Jonas reversed key and lock and shifted from a fundamen-tally positive evaluation of Gnosticism to a negative one, one may wonderwhether this critique of his earlier work was radical enough. Did the thrill

of affinity with Gnostic texts felt by the young and enthusiastic student ofHeidegger allow him to do justice to ancient Gnostic texts? Did theprofound revulsion against Gnostic texts felt by the later Jewish philoso-pher of nature and human responsibility allow him to improve his read-ing? Despite the reversal and the greater historical sensitivity of the laterJonas, the basic outlines of his interpretation remained the same.

1.2. Preliminary Overview of Jonas Interpretation

Jonas analyzes Gnostic texts to identify the central existential principlethat expresses or objectivates itself in them. He finds this principle inEntweltlichung. Gnostic Entweltlichung is a radical and revolutionaryattitude of anticosmism; it is an attitude which negates, ultimately, alldefinite and ordered being and all definite moral norms. In this respect,Jonas claims, Gnosticism is the polar opposite of the Spirit of Antiquity:

While the religion of Antiquity was an apotheosis of what exists (dasGegebene) the Gnostic religion sought to break this sacrum and its entirehierarchy and to gain a point of view outside and against all that exists (das

Gegebene). And just as knowability is an essential characteristic of thecosmic God (Weltgott) which belongs to him because of his connection witheverything that exists . . . , even so unknowability is an essential attributeof the transcendent God. . . . His negativity was conceived as a launching-pad for absolutely denying all positivity of the world, the entire claim of theworlds existence, all worth and definitive value of existing being (dasSeiende) as such.12

11. Hans Jonas, Response to G. Quispels Gnosticism and the New Testament,in Philip Hyatt, ed., The Bible and Modern Scholarship: Papers Read at the 100thMeeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, December 2830 (Nashville: Abingdon,1965), 27993, here 288.

12. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:248.


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The nihilist existential posture which lies at the heart of Gnosticism isnot merely an attitude of the individuals who happen to have composedparticular Gnostic texts. It is the attitude, Jonas claims, of a transindividual

and transgenerational Spirit, the Spirit of Late Antiquity, which is thetrue author of Gnostic texts:

. . . the task of the hermeneutic return is to find the real author, namelyhistorical existence understood as a totality (das geschichtlicheGesamtdasein) which reached beyond individuals and generations toproduce this expression (Auslegung) of itselfof what is most essential toitand preserved itself for an entire epoch of history as the only mode ofbeing which was at that epochs disposal, often perhaps in only latent formor congealed in convention, but always open to being actualized. Only this

subject of the history of Spirit (geistesgeschichtliches Subjekt) is whatphilosophical hermeneutics looks for.13

Schenke summarizes Jonas position on this point as follows:

The subject of existential posture for Jonas is by no means an empiricalhuman being or a group of empirical human beings, but something that liesbehind them, a sort of intelligible Self that has not yet been split intoempirical selves. This Self is not located in empty space, as it were, but istied to empirical human beings and it is influenced by the history of the

human race in the formation of its posture. However, it is free from thecausal fabric of the world and can act into that fabric from the outside, asit were.14

The texts which scholars had classified as Gnostic already before Jonasare for Jonas privileged windows into the very heart of the Spirit of LateAntiquity. Yet the extension of this same Gnostic Spirit is considerablywider: it includes almost all of the epochs religious phenomena, Judaism,specifically in its rabbinic form, being one of the few exceptions:

The extent of the Gnostic sphere . . . (comprises) in the West . . . theHellenistic mystery cults, especially Mithraism, the Hermetic writings and,in the speculative sphere, the philosophy of Late Antiquity, especiallyNeoplatonism; in the East (it comprises), in much more powerful andoriginal form, the apocalyptic and eschatological movements, the greatGnostic systems, the newly founded religions all the way down toManicheism; and finally, across East and West, (it comprises) EarlyChristianity together with its heresies, especially Marcionism.15

13. Hans Jonas, Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem: Eine philosophische

Studie zum pelagianischen Streit(1930; 2nd ed. revised and expanded with introduc-tion by James Robinson, Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965), 84.

14. Schenke, Review of Hans Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist I, 815.15. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:80.


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2. JONAS HISTORICAL HYPOTHESISADOPTED FROM SPENGLER

Jonas category Gnosticism is shaped by two main principles: (1) by anoverarching historical hypothesis about the Spirit of Late Antiquityadopted from Spengler and (2) by a set of hermeneutic principles govern-ing what he calls existential interpretation.

2.1. Spengler on Arabian Culture, Particularly Early Christianity

Jonas himself states that he owes the substance of his historical hypoth-esis on Gnosticism to the discussion of Arabian Culture in the influen-tial Decline of the Westby Oswald Spengler.16 When one turns to this

discussion one finds that Spengler discusses neither Gnosticism in particu-lar nor the culture of the Arabs in general, but a cultural organism definedby Magian religion (Magian from the Magi), which came to itsflowering in Early Christianity.17

Spengler saw one of the principal achievements of his Decline of theWestin

. . . the Copernican discovery in the historical sphere . . . (that there is) nosort of privileged position to the Classical or to the Western Culture asagainst the Cultures of India, Babylon, China, Egypt, the Arabs, Mexicoseparate worlds of dynamic being which in point of mass count for just asmuch in the general picture of history as the Classical, while frequentlysurpassing it in point of spiritual greatness and soaring power.18

Each of the eight cultures mentioned in this text, Spengler argues, is adistinct organism which preserves its own identity as it passes through aregular and thus predictable pattern of spring, summer, fall, and winter.19

16. See Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:7074. Spengler (18801936) wasa high school teacher of natural science and mathematics in Hamburg. In 1912 heresigned and dedicated himself to writing The Decline of the West, the first volume ofwhich was completed before the beginning of World War I (1914). Published in 1917,before Germanys defeat became clear, it contained the detailed table of contents ofVolume 2; Volume 2 appeared in 1922; see Anton Koktanek, Oswald Spengler inseiner Zeit(Mnchen: C. H. Beck, 1968), 14449.

17. See Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einerMorphologie der Weltgeschichte, 33rd rev. ed., 2 vols. (Mnchen: C. H. Beck, 1922;1st ed. 1917), 2:227398; English translation: Oswald Spengler, The Decline of theWest, 2 vols., tr. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: A. Knopf, 192628), 2:189

323. Atkinsons translation has been occasionally revised in the quotes below.18. Spengler, Decline of the West, 1:18.19. See the table of four chronologically overlapping cultures (Indian, Ancient,

Arabian, and Western) at the end of volume 1 in the English translation.


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Borrowing terms developed by Goethe in his morphology of plants,Spengler attempts to develop a morphology of cultures in which visiblehistory is expression, sign, souldom (Seelentum) that has become form.20

The precise ontological status of the souldoms that define distinctcultures remains unclear. Some of Spenglers descriptions are reminiscentof Aristotelian biological language and suggest distinct ensouled sub-stances like plants developing toward maturity.21 According to Spenglersfriend and Jonas teacher Eduard Spranger, Spenglers conception of cul-tures as organisms derives ultimately from Schelling.22

Particularly important to Spengler in the list of eight cultures quotedabove is Arabian Culture. It is the principal means by which Spenglerattempts to break what he sees as the Ptolemaic system of history

operative in the conventional division of history into Ancient, Medieval,and ModernEurope being tacitly assumed as the center.23 ThisEurocentric triad of historical periods, Spengler argues, should be re-placed by a triad of chronologically overlapping cultures with distinctgeographic origins and extensions.24 The first, Classical Culture had itsspringtime in Greece and Italy from the late second millennium b.c.edown to Hesiod, and its winter among the Roman Stoics of the secondcentury C.E. The second, Arabian Culture, first appeared in Persian

and Jewish religion after Cyrus,25

experienced its springtime in EarlyChristianity, extended into the West, and found its winter in fatalisticIslam after 1000 C.E. The third, Western Culture, had its springtime inthe Germanic Catholicism of the ninth to the twelfth centuries and itswinter in the ethical socialism of nineteenth-century Europe, reaching

20. Spengler, Decline of the West, 1:6. Atkinsons translation avoids the neologism,Seelentum: visible history is the expression, sign and embodiment of soul. Soul

is, in fact, the term more frequently used by Spengler.21. See Alfred Baeumler, Kulturmorphologie und Philosophie, in Anton M.Koktanek, ed., Spengler Studien: Festgabe fr Manfred Schrter zum 85. Geburtstag(Mnchen: C. H. Beck, 1965), 99124, here 11014; Baeumler shows that Spenglersontology of cultures is far from being reflectedly and responsibly thought through.

22. See Koktanek, Spengler in seiner Zeit, 315. Manfred Schrter, editor of theworks of Schelling, was one of Spenglers closest associates. In 1922/23 Jonas studiedwith Spranger at the University of Berlin; see Lebenslauf, in Hans Jonas, DerBegriff der Gnosis (Teildruck) (Sonderdruck aus Gnosis und sptantiker Geist;FRLANT 30; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1930; Gttingen: Hubert, 1930),53. Spengler does not appear to make use of Hegels notion of Spirit which

underlies the development of nations or cultures, eventually to merge into one.23. See Spengler, Decline of the West, 1:18.24. See the table at the end of volume 1 of the English translation.25. Spengler, Decline of the West, 1:18.


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into Spenglers own time. Hence the title of the book in which Spengleradvances this thesis: The Decline of the West.

Spengler considers the identification of Arabian Culture his own

personal achievement and contribution to historical scholarship.26 Jonasagrees with him:

We owe to him (Spengler) the constitution of an as yet unnamed entity (hecalls it Arabian culture) as the one bearer of that plethora of disparateexpressions. We thus owe to him also the unification of these expressionsbeyond all possibilities of material classificationinto a unity which, whentruly exploited, offers scholarship a new unified field of interpretation.27

Part of the reason why this distinctive culture was overlooked, Spengler

argues, is that it cast itself in forms inherited from Classical Culture,producing deceptive pseudomorphoses:

In a rock-stratum are embedded crystals of a mineral. Clefts and cracksopen up, water filters in, and the crystals are gradually washed out so thatin due course only their hollow mould remains. Then come volcanicoutbursts which explode the mountain; molten masses pour in, stiffen andcrystallize in their turn. But these are not free to do so in their own specialforms. They must fill up the spaces that they find available. Thus there arisedistorted forms, crystals whose inner structure contradicts their external

shape, stones of one kind presenting the appearance of stones of anotherkind. The mineralogists call this phenomenonpseudomorphosis.28

The new cultural lava of Arabian Culture that filled the hollow shapesof its predecessors, particularly Classical Culture, was a strange excite-ment which seized the Near East around the time of Cyrus: The Ma-gian soul was awakened.29 The defining characteristic of this soul was,at one and the same time, the birth of the Self and of a cosmic anxiety(Weltangst) . . . a deathly anxiety.30 The final time was approaching;

he was to come to establish a new order; the present period of evil andsuffering was to be overcome by a decisive victory of the good. All butthe shallower souls trembled before revelations, miracles, glimpses intothe foundation of things. Men now lived and thought only in apocalyptic

26. See Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:42.27. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:74.28. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:189, emphasis by the author.29. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:212.

30. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:21213. Spengler dedicates an entire chapter,entitled The Magian Soul, to this topic, with particular attention to the manner inwhich astrology, metaphysical trichotomy (body-soul-spirit), and the redeemer mytharise within the symbolic world of the Magian Soul; ibid., 23361.


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images.31 The deities of Classical Culture were local.32 The God ofMagian religion, by contrast, was one, since he was rooted in a cosmicanxiety detached from all local numina.

A particularly pure form of Arabian Culture arose, probably in the firstcentury b.c.e., in Mandean circles.33 It was from this pure Mandeanseedbed that the religion sprang in which Arabian Culture found itsspringtime, namely, Early Christianity. Spengler works with a then cuttingedge of historical critical New Testament scholarship developed in theHistory of Religions School, particularly Reitzenstein and Bousset:34 Jesusbecame one of the disciples of a Mandean preacher, John the Baptist.Thenceforth the apocalyptic, and in particular the Mandean, thought-world filled his whole being.35 He began to preach the imminent arrival

of the Mandean redeemer . . . who himself must be redeemed.36 Thisproclamation of the Last Things was the exclusive content of his teaching.

Religion is metaphysic and nothing elseCredo quia absurdum.. . .He was no moralizer . . . Moralizing is Nineteenth Century Enlightenment,humane Philistinism. To ascribe social purposes to Jesus is a blasphemy . . . .His teachingwas the proclamation, nothing but the proclamation, ofthose Last Things with whose images he was constantly filled, the dawn ofthe New Age, the advent of heavenly envoys, the last judgment, a newheaven and a new earth. Any other conception of religion was never inJesus. . . . Religion is, first and last, metaphysic, other-worldliness(Jenseitigkeit). . . .37

It is noteworthy that, in his early work on John, Bultmann adopts thesame set of hypotheses developed by the History of Religions School.38 As

31. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:213. This mode of viewing the world, Spenglerargues, is rooted in a shared perception of space and time as Cave or Cavernspace and time. The idea of the Cave or Cavern, which lies at the root of Arabian

culture, implies a limited dark space in which persons are confined, a space penetratedfrom the outside by mysterious light. Spengler unfolds the idea of Cavern space andtime in Decline of the West, 2:23342.

32. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:200201. Spengler admits that Classical Greekphilosophy anticipates the nongeographic, universalist character of Magian religion.Though the latter thought of Athens reached somewhat more general ideas of Godand his service, it was philosophy and not religion that it achieved; it appealed onlyto a few thinkers and had not the slightest effect on the feeling of the nationthat is,the polis (ibid.).

33. See Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:214.34. See Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:214.

35. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:214.36. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:214.37. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:217, emphasis by the author.38. See Waldstein, Foundations of Bultmanns Work, 13335.


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pointed out above, it was in Bultmanns seminar on John that Jonas firstarticulated his concept of Gnosticism.

A decisive step occurred when Jesus began to see himselfas the Mandean

redeemer and decided to reveal this identity in Jerusalem.39 It was as theepitome of Magian religion, as the utterly otherworldly one, that he stoodbefore Pilate, heard Pilates question, What is truth? and located himselfwith precision, My kingdom is not of this world!a scene appallinglydistinct and overwhelming in its symbolism, such as the worlds historyhad never before and has never since looked at.40

Jesus friends and disciples were annihilated in their inner life (innerlichvernichtet) after the death of their master. The story of his resurrectionfell thus into an open, receptive space:

The impression of this (story) on such souls and in such a time can never bemore than partially echoed in the sensibilities of late human beings. Itmeant the actual fulfillment of all Apocalyptic of that Magian Springtimethe end of the present aeon marked by the ascension of the redeemedRedeemer, the second Adam, the Saoshyant, Enosh, Barnasha, or whateverother name one could attach to Him, into the light-realm of theFather. . . . As the risen one he became for his disciples a figure withinApocalyptic itself and, what was more, he became the most important andmost definitive such figure.41

Christianity remains the center of Spenglers further account of Ara-bian Culture as he traces its urbanization and its pseudomorphosis inGreek concepts, artistic expressions, and institutions to its inner comple-tion and termination under Justinian.42 Apart from the brief descriptionof Mandean religion as the epitome of Arabian Culture, Spengler doesnot discuss Gnosticism in great detail. Fairly typical of the broad brushwith which he paints branches of Gnosticism is the following list, contained

39. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:215.40. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:216.41. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:218, emphasis added. Spengler expresses a

certain disappointment in this transformation of Jesus the preacher into the preachedJesus: His teachings, as they had flowed from his mild and noble naturehis innerfeeling of the relation between God and man and of the high meaning of the times,which had been exhaustively comprised in and defined by the one word lovefellinto the background and their place was taken by the doctrine about him (ibid.,emphasis by the author).

42. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:21961. Islam, which Spengler calls thePuritanism of the whole group of Early Magian Religions (ibid., 260) . . . issignificant only as a piece of outward religious history. The inner history of theMagian religion ends with Justinians time (ibid., 261).


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in his account of Magian scholasticism, the second phase of the spring-time of Arabian Culture:

Early Scholasticism . . . comprises Gnosis (Gnosis) in the widest possiblesense, namely, the great vision: the author of John, Valentinus, Bardesanesand Marcion, the Apologists and the earliest Fathers up to Irenaeus andTertullian, the last Tannaim up to Rabbi Jehuda, the completer of theMishna, and, in Alexandria, the Neopythagoreans and Hermetics. . . .High Scholasticism begins with Neoplatonism, with Clement and Origen,the first Amoraim, and the creators of the newer Avesta under Areshir(226241) and Sapor I, and, above all, the Mazdaist high priestTanvasar.43

The central role played by Christianity in Spenglers account of Ara-

bian Culture is not accidental. Spengler himself explains it as follows:

The incomparable element by which Early Christianity lifts itself beyond allreligions of this rich early period is the figure of Jesus. In all the greatcreations of those years there is nothing which can be set beside it. Tameand empty all the legends and holy adventures of Mithras, Attis, and Osirismust have seemed to anyone reading or listening to the still recent story ofJesus sufferingsthe last journey to Jerusalem, the last anxious supper, thehours of despair in Gethsemane, and the death on the cross. Here was nomatter of philosophy. Jesus utterances . . . are those of a child in the midst

of an alien, aged, and sick world.44

2.2. Jonas Adaptation of Spengler

As one moves from Spengler to Jonas, two striking differences immedi-ately become clear. One of them is a matter of terminology, the other ofsubject matter. What Spengler calls Arabian Culture shaped by Ma-gian Religion, Jonas calls Gnosticism (Gnosis or, at times, Gnos-tizismus) shaped by the Spirit of Late Antiquity; and while Spengler

turns his attention mainly to Early Christianity as the principal repre-sentative of Magian religion, Jonas sidesteps Christianity.45

It is well worth considering carefully the reasons that led Jonas not todiscuss Christianity, even though Christianity is one of the primary ex-amples of Gnosticism:

43. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:250.

44. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:212.45. The one exception to Jonas restraint vis--vis Christianity is his study of

Origens de Principiis in volume 2 ofGnosis und sptantiker Geist. See Jonas, Gnosisund sptantiker Geist, 2:171223.


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Despite the fact that the literature of the New Testament belongs into thissphere (i.e., of Gnosticism), we wish to complete our investigationsessentially without it. We do so, first, because we do not wish to take uponourselves the entire burden of the issues specific to it; second, because itsspecial position, both in idea and in fact, does not release it as a mere pieceof evidence for something more generalas long as one has not inde-pendently drawn from the pagan half of the evidence that by which thepagan half can be brought to bear on the Christian half. Theapplication of the results achieved by us outside the New Testament tothe New Testament and its historical understanding is a task by itself whichwe do not set for ourselves.46

As for the two halves of the complete sphere called Gnosticism, thepagan half and the Christian half, the Christian half is perhaps the moreimportant hemisphere of our sphere.47 To make the point unmistakablyclear, Jonas classifies Early Christianity as a whole, not only particularmovements within it, as Gnostic. The Gnostic Spirit of Late Antiquityexpresses itself in the New Testament and other Early Christian literatureas a whole.

Although Jonas chooses not to discuss Early Christianity as an exampleof Gnosticism, he shares much common ground with Spengler. There isonly one disagreement with Spengler which Jonas explicitly mentions:

We do not share his principle of a complete causal isolation of thedistinct unified Cultures from the universal historical process with itsmanifold determinations.48 Jonas lists four main achievements which headopts from Spenglers discussion of Arabian Culture.

First: With the morphological intuition of a genius Spengler was thefirst to recognize a new organizing principle which expressed itself in theprofusion of Oriental/Hellenistic syncretism around the turn of the ages.Earlier research had seen much of this material as late and decadentremnants of Classical Antiquity and Oriental traditions, externally mixed

into bastardized forms. Spengler, by contrast, saw a new independentprinciple which organized this material from within.49

Second: Spengler recognized the universal determinative efficacy of thisorganizing principle as a genuine total principle, a new existential postureand interpretation of existence (in his terminology: a new cultural Soul)

46. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:82, emphasis added. Bultmann was tointegrate the Christian half of the Gnostic sphere, particularly in his studies on the

Gnostic roots of John.47. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:88.48. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:73.49. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:73.


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which truly dominated the age and which was able to appear in externalforms hitherto considered unrelated from an external genealogical pointof view.50

Third: By introducing the concept of pseudomorphosis into intellec-tual history, Spengler was able to grasp the tragic relation between thenew organizing principle and powerful old forms, particularly the all-powerful culture of the Greeks from which it had to borrow its concep-tual language.51

Fourth: With a sure hand he grasped the eschatological myth of theredeemed Redeemer as the center of (the new cultures) content.52

Jonas adopts Spenglers geographical hypothesis that Arabian Cultureoriginated in the East and penetrated into the West partly disguised in

pseudomorphosis. In a radical sense we owe to Spengler the insight thatthe West does not really count in the origin and the original reality of thisnew Spirit . . . .53

The literature which Jonas chooses for his first and fundamental ac-count of Gnosticism is, in fact, the literature Spengler considers the purestexpression of the Magian Soul, namely, the Mandean literature. Accord-ing to Spengler,

United at the root (of Mandean religion) one finds all the features of the

great prophetic religions and of the entire treasury of the most profoundglimpses and visions which had been collected since then in apocalypses. OfClassical thought and feeling not a breath reached this world at the depthsof Magian (religion).54

According to Jonas,

It (the Mandean literature) is the most oriental and popularwhichmeans, at the same time, the most immediateexpression of the life of theGnostic soul (gnostischen Seelenlebens). In this (literature) the proper

essence of Gnosticism (Eigenwesen der Gnosis) manifests itself in the purestform in which it can possibly appear, in the greatest possible removal of allpseudomorphosis. It is the optimal manifestation of that essence.55

Elaborating Spenglers geographical hypothesis, Jonas argues that theEast around the turn of the ages, in sharp contrast to the West, was filledwith overflowing vitality. All in all, we see the East on the attack and one

50. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:7374.

51. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:74.52. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:74.53. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:70.54. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:214.55. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:95.


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can speak of a great offensive of Eastern humanity, launched with apowerful sense of self.56

In describing the content of this attack, Jonas partly follows Spengler,

but uses a new set of concepts developed in the triangle of Jonas, Bultmann,and Heidegger. According to Spengler, the defining feature of the Ma-gian Soul was, at one and the same time, the birth of the Self and of acosmic anxiety (Weltangst) . . . a deathly anxiety.57 According to Jonasthe defining feature is a tremendous existential insecurity (Daseins-Unsicherheit), cosmic anxiety (Welt-Angst), anxiety over the world andthe self.58 Projected from this anxiety, the world shone back . . . at theAsian of that period in its terrifying hostility and strangeness.59 To thedegree in which it was a sphere of awareness at the disposal of the person,

even the self was experienced as the expression of hostile powers and itmust be left behind through redemption.60 The agent of this redemptionis a transcendent power of escape from, or negation of, the world(jenseitige Macht der Entweltlichung) which is not simply at the disposalof the self, but occurs in a redemptive event.61

The life of the Gnostic soul is thus a life which leads inexorably intonothingness. The existential fear of losing oneself to the world gives riseto compulsive self-annihilation which finds its highest expression in the

Gnostic notion of God.The entire paradox of anxiety unfolds here: tremendous is the anxiety ofexistence (Dasein) that it might lose itself and fall prey to the cosmos; andtremendous, at the same time, is the compulsion of self-abandonment, ofself-annihilation, in order to be rid of oneself, in order to break the bane ofviolent cosmic annihilation by self-imposed free annihilation: death mustlead to life. The substantial principle of this redemptive annihilation of thesoul is pneumain the end, viewed in relation to the cosmos as a whole, itis God.62 . . . (T)his means that the Gnostic concept of God is in the firstplace, even more so than the Gnostic concept of the world, a nihilistconcept: God = the nothingness of the world. However, making somethingpositive out of this negative (concept) in somegivenness of transcendencethat can be experiencedthis is the goal of all mystical exaltation inGnosticism (Gnostizismus), in short, the goal of all absolutegnosis theou.God is thus posited negativity.63

56. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:72.57. Spengler, Decline of the West, 2:21213.58. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:143.

59. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:144.60. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:145, emphasis by the author.61. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:145.62. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:14546, emphasis by the author.63. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:15051.


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As it arose in the East, Jonas argues, the Gnostic existential posture wasthe product of powerful vitality, in some cases even of a royal attitude.64

It did not emerge in a social matrix of alienation or oppression, though

the surviving evidence is too fragmentary to allow certainty.65 In the Westthe Gnostic existential posture took on a different political and culturalmeaning. In contrast to the East, the West around the turn of the ages wasa declining world and, as the new acosmic religion grew into its slowdeath, it functioned as a powerful expression and reinforcement of po-litical and cultural decay.66 The socially oppressed and marginalized, espe-cially slaves and the poor, who were mere objects of power, were receptiveto the Gnostic Spirit because in the new order they became kings, abso-lute subjects.67 Upper classes were similarly receptive because they had

been cut adrift by the destruction of the regional political processes of thepolis and the concentration of political power in the hands of Rome. Inspelling out this social and cultural meaning of Gnosticism in the West,Jonas deploys motifs familiar from Nietzsches analysis of Christianity.

Phrases such as the slave revolt in morals, ressentiment and declininglife will always be justified from a psychological and social point of viewas ways of characterizing the sorts of causes at work in the Western worldin favor of the new principle of existence. But these sorts of causes were

operative, at root, only in the Western world, and they explain itsreceptivity to the new Eastern ideas. The Western world only received thenew Word (and transformed it into its own possibilities); it did not utterit. In its paralysis it was incapable of doing so.68

3. JONAS HERMENEUTIC PRINCIPLES

Jonas historical hypothesis on Gnosticism and his hermeneutic principlesare closely interrelated. It is when seen in the light of his hermeneutic

principles that the religious history of Late Antiquity configures itself ashe sees it. And it is in this configuration of history that the hermeneuticprinciples yield the interpretation of Gnostic texts which he adopts. Thetwo aspects are fully intelligible only as a single organic whole.

Jonas formulated his hermeneutic principles in two essays first pub-lished in 1930, ber die hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas (On the

64. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:72.65. See Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:68.

66. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:69.67. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:69.68. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:70; compare, for example, the first

essay in Nietzsches Genealogy of Morals.


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Hermeneutic Structure of Dogma) and Zum Problem der Objektivationund ihres Formwandels (On the Problem of Objectivation and its Permu-tations).69 The two essays complement each other: the first lays out

general principles; the second develops them as they apply to Gnosticism.

3.1. The Hermeneutic Structure of Dogma (1930)

In Hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas, Jonas reflects on the meaningof dogmas in general, exemplified in the various dogmas debated betweenAugustine and his Pelagian opponents. He begins his argument with adefinition of dogma.

In their external form dogmas are sentences characterized by the rational

structure of declarative (theoretical) subject-predicate sentences and, assuch, they set the content of their declaration into the realm of objects(Objektivitten) linked among each other in a comprehensive fabric oflogical connections. They are non-dialectical object-sentences. The objects(are) entities and events open to intuition (anschaulich) set in order in auniformly objective horizon of reality. . . . They belong to a certain kind ofrationality, namely, world-conceptuality. . . . (L)ike all objects that are opento intuition and can be univocally (eindeutig) named, these formations ofintuition (Anschauungsgebilde) are necessarily open to the grasp of a non-dialectic, object-related concept which rationally arrests (fixiert) them.70

One should note that in this definition of dogma, Jonas operates with aNeo-Kantian understanding of object-rationality. The two salient fea-tures of this understanding are clearly spelled out. First, the objects of thehuman mind about which statements are made are open to intuition(Anschauung, anschaulich). Second, they are set within a comprehensivefabric of rational connections so as to constitute a rationally organizedworld of objects.71

69. The first essay was published as an appendix to Jonas, Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem, 8089. The second essay was written as the introduc-tion to Jonas dissertation under the direction of Heidegger (completed in 1928). Thedissertation was partially published in 1930 as Der Begriff der Gnosis, already as anoffprint from the as yet unpublished Gnosis und sptantiker Geist. It appearedsubstantially unaltered in 1954 as the introduction to Gnosis und sptantiker GeistII. For further details on the publication history of these two essays, see James M.Robinson, Introduction to Hans Jonas, Augustin und das paulinische Freiheits-

problem,15 n. 16.70. Hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas, 8081.71. Both points are denied by those who give an important place to analogy in the

language of metaphysics and theology, e.g., the tradition that goes back to ThomasAquinas; see, for example, Ralph M. McInerny, Studies in Analogy (The Hague:M. Nijhoff, 1968); David B. Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1973).


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Such an objective world, Jonas continues, is not the primary given. Theprimary given is, rather, human existence (Dasein) urged on by itself andwishing to project, express and interpret (auslegen) itself.72 Jonas plays

here with a fruitful multiplicity of meanings in the German sich auslegen:in its will to interpret itself (sich auslegen), human existence places itselfoutside itself or projects itself (sich auslegen) as an objective world, therebyexpressing or symbolizing itself (sich auslegen) for itself.73 Again, animportant Neo-Kantian premise should be noted. There is no pre-existingobjective world subsequently discovered by human perception andreason. Rather, the human mind gives rise to the object-world accordingto the minds own patterns.

As the product of such self-objectivation the objective world is not

ultimately intelligible in itself. In some of its aspects it is produced accord-ing to the pattern of object-rationality and is thus open to scientificanalysis, which finds the universal and necessary mathematical laws ofnature, and to historical research, which finds a fabric of interdepen-dent beings, causes, events, developments, etc. However, as soon as meta-physical problems are raised, any objective worlds lack of internal intelli-gibility becomes evident. For example, the attempt to reconcile humanfree will and divine foreknowledge is a hopeless and fruitless venture.74

Jonas is here echoing Kants thesis that the use of reason for classicalmetaphysical arguments (e.g., proofs of the existence of God and theimmortality of the soul) leads reason to contradictions, to the antino-mies of pure reason, that cannot be resolved on the level of thosearguments. Reason oversteps its bounds and must be called back to itstrue purpose.75

What is worse, the preoccupation with problems arising within object-rationality leads human existence away from itself. Having symbolizeditself by projecting itself in objectivations, human existence must return

through these objectivations to itself in order to interpret itself. In de-scribing the negative aspect of this hermeneutic return or retrieval Jonasuses the concept demythologize in what is the first published use of aword which came to play such an important role in New Testamentscholarship.

All of this springs from an inescapable fundamental structure of Spirit assuch. That Spirit interprets itself in objective formulas and symbols, that it

72. Jonas, Hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas, 81.73. Compare Hegels play on the triple meaning of aufheben.74. Jonas, Hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas, 8283.75. See Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 432ff.


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is symbol-oriented (symbolistisch), is both most essential to it and mostdangerous for it. In order to come to itself, it follows its own nature andtakes this detour through symbols, in whose enticing tangle of problems ittends to lose itself, far from the origin preserved in these symbols, inasmuchas it takes as absolute what is merely representational. It is only in a longreversal of such formation, after traversing the entire detour, that ademythologizedconsciousness is capable of a conceptual approach to theoriginal phenomena hidden under such disguise.76

It is important to note that the problem of myth brought into focus byJonas in this text is not the problem of myth as fictional story or fable, aproblem that could be overcome by a more responsible and critical formof religious discourse. The problem of myth is equally present in critical

metaphysical language. In the essential respect, that of objectivation,myth and dogma are equivalent. The phrase demythologized conscious-ness is in this respect equivalent to dedogmatized consciousness or,more generally, deobjectivated consciousness.77

What does the interpreter find once the deceptive screen of objectivityhas been pierced? In answering this question, Jonas uses both the lan-guage of existentialism (Dasein) and that of Hegels philosophy of history(Geist).

What is found in this return, what is left after the destruction (of theobjective aspect) as the existential foundation, need not be understood asthe individual-biographical fact of Augustine, for example, or some otherauthor. In the symbolical and rational detachment provided by dogma, thepurely symbolic-conceptual formula can be discussed on the level of thestrictest theoretical stringency without any existential realization of theoriginal phenomena: a particular author, and even an entire generation,need not have experienced these phenomena. It follows that the task of thehermeneutic return is to find the real author (den eigentlichen Autor),namely historical existence understood as a totality (das geschichtliche

Gesamtdasein) which reached beyond individuals and generations toproduce this expression (Auslegung) of itselfof what is most essential toitand preserved itself for an entire epoch of history as the only mode ofbeing which was at that epochs disposal, often perhaps in only latent formor congealed in convention, but always open to being actualized. Only this

76. Jonas, Hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas, 82, emphasis added. On thepivotal importance of this passage in the history of New Testament scholarship, seeRobinson, Introduction to Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem, 1415.

77. Friedrich Gogarten . . . has shown that the problem of the subject-objectschema in the history of culture is the finally decisive background of the debate (ondemythologizing) (Robinson, Introduction to Augustin und das paulinische Frei-heitsproblem, 19 and n. 25).


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subject of the history of Spirit (geistesgeschichtliches Subjekt) is whatphilosophical hermeneutics looks for.78

One should particularly note two points in this text. First, what the

interpreter finds in the existential interpretation of texts is an existentialevent or tendency as the ultimate root of the object-world configured in thetext. Second, the interpreter finds this existential root in a collective sub-ject, Gesamtdasein or Geist. The mode of being possible for a given histori-cal period (Weise . . . des Seinknnens) is offered by, and therefore alsostrictly circumscribed by, that periods Spirit.79 The first aspect of existen-tial interpretation was made famous by Bultmanns interpretation of theNew Testament and it tends to be the only aspect of Jonas hermeneuticswhich is highlighted by New Testament scholars.80 The second aspect is noless important. The reader meets the word Geist already as the last andmost important word in the title of Jonas Gnosis und sptantiker Geist.

The theme with which Jonas is fundamentally concerned is the objectivationofGeist: the fact that Geistis realized in history only in a mode of beingother than and alien to its own mode of being; the fact that Geistisconstituted in a dynamic historical movement passing through various levels(Stufen) and changing forms (Formwandels) of objectivation; the fact thatGeistcomes to its fulfillment only through the dialectical movement of

thought which destroys the alien original objective mode of being evenwhile it recovers in a new level of conceptuality that which was onto-logically fundamental to the original objectivation. Objectivation is thus theontological concept which designates being in the mode of expression ormanifestation of historical actualization; it is distinct from being in itself oras itself.81

78. Hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas, 84; cf. Gnosis und sptantiker Geist,1:1213; see Roger A. Johnson, The Origins of Demythologizing: Philosophy andHistoriography in the Theology of Rudolph Bultmann, SHR 28 (Leiden: Brill, 1974),

22728.79. The singular Spirit must not be pressed too far. Jonas sees Plotinus, forexample, as a philosopher in whom the Spirit of Classical Antiquity and the GnosticSpirit interpenetrate. We cannot expect to see Plotinus suddenly as fundamentallyGnostic. His Hellenistic impulse is too strong for that. It is enough to see . . . theinterpenetration of two foundational impulsesthe clash is in the end unresolved andirresolvableas the historical destiny (das geschichtlich Schicksalshafte) of this spirit(i.e., Plotinus) (Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:4).

80. This is the tendency, for example, of Robinsons introduction to Augustin unddas paulinische Freiheitsproblem. It is also the tendency of the rich three-volumecollection of essays and discussions on hermeneutical issues raised by Bultmann,

Heidegger, and Jonas, New Frontiers in Theology: Discussions among German andAmerican Theologians, ed. James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr. (New York:Harper & Row, 196367); The Late Heidegger and Theology (1964); The NewHermeneutic (1964); Theology as History (1967).

81. Johnson, Origins of Demythologizing, 216.


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3.2. The Problem of Objectivation and its Permutations (1928)

Jonas second hermeneutic essay plays a pivotal role in the two volumesofGnosis und sptantiker Geist. The first volume makes its way from

Gnostic myths to the underlying Geist and its existential posture ortendency. Yet it reaches the Spirit of Late Antiquity only as that Spiritobjectivates itself in Gnostic myth. The second volume shows how theGnostic Spirit objectivates itself also in other forms, above all in mysticalphilosophy and ascetic spirituality. The two volumes, Jonas remarks, areseparated by an inner threshold or transition implied in the two parts ofthe title, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist.82 Reflection on crossing thisthreshold between Gnostic myth and the Spirit of Late Antiquity is thetask Jonas sets for himself in the introductory essay, On the Problem ofObjectivation and its Permutations.

An important chronological point should be noted: volume two wasthe first volume to be written by Jonas; it is substantially his dissertationwritten under Heidegger. Volume one came later. In the development ofhis work, Jonas thus crossed the threshold from volume two to volumeone.

. . . (M)y doctoral dissertation, Der Begriff der Gnosis, . . . made onlypassing references to the whole mythological area of the second century,

and concentrated mainly on third and fourth century sptantikesthinking. However, for future publication, I had to write a historicalintroduction to the dissertation on the mythological Gnosis of the secondcentury, which I more and more realized presented the real flesh-and-bloodform of what appeared in such a spiritualized conceptually rarefied form inthe later mystical thinkers who tried to stay as much as possible within theGreek tradition. That introduction, once the dissertation itself lay behindme, grew into the first volume of Gnosis und sptantiker Geist.83

The order of argument in the actual book Gnosis und sptantiker Geist

is the opposite. Jonas crosses the threshold from mythological Gnosticismto mystical philosophy and ascetic practice. He begins his argument bypointing to the result reached in volume one.

The investigation up to this point focused on the mythological material andits result was the elaboration of a foundational myth (Grundmythos) whichcontains the authentically (eigentlich) Gnostic element. The goal of theinvestigation was not to return from the complex mythological formationsto the heterogeneous mythic materials contained in them, but to THE self-generated (autogen) and unitary foundational myth.84

82. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:1.83. Jonas, Retrospective View, 7.84. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:1; emphasis by the author.


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A particularly clear articulation of this foundational myth and themanner of its self-generation from its own existential ground is found atthe beginning of the third and final chapter ofGnosis und sptantiker

Geist I.85 The chapter as a whole is dedicated to an analysis of the variousGnostic systems. Before he plunges into the bewildering empirical diver-sity of these systems, Jonas offers a condensed survey of the self-generationof Gnostic myth.

The generative existential principle, the true content of Gnosticism,Jonas recapitulates, is escape from, or negation of, the world (Entwelt-lichung). Entweltlichung is an eschatological posture which unites initself a volitional gaze into the future, i.e., futurity (Zuknftigkeit), and acognitive gaze at the now, i.e., presence (Gegenwart).86 The self wills its

own freedom from the world (future Entweltlichung) as it recognizesitself as trapped in the world (present Verweltlichung). The distinctivecontribution of Gnostic myth lies in a projection of these two dimensionsinto the past. How did the selfs entrapment in the world (Verweltlichungas a past event) come about? By answering this question Gnostic mythobjectivates Entweltlichungin the form of a story.

If the Gnostic content is Entweltlichung, Gnostic myth is the story of theVerweltlichungof being, a story of the past which can throw light on the

given Now and reveal the possibility and meaning of the future asWiederentweltlichung, return to freedom from the world.87

As the story is told, it accomplishes what it signifies. It is the call bywhich those trapped in the sleep ofVerweltlichungachieve the wakingconsciousness that orients them towards Entweltlichung. The telling ofGnostic myth is thus the turning point of its own story.

In explaining the construction of Gnostic myth as story from the uni-tary principle Entweltlichung, Jonas elaborates a set of seven transitional

patterns which he calls schemata.88

85. Chapter Four was added in the third edition (1964) to integrate some of theNag Hammadi evidence.

86. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:258.87. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:258.88. The concept schema appears to be adapted from Kant, Kritik der reinen

Vernunft, B176187. In Kant, the transcendental schemata are patterns of transition

which allow concrete objects of sensory experience to be constituted as instances ofparticular concepts of pure reason, e.g., particular substances as instances of theconcept substance. In Jonas the schemata are patterns of transition which allowconcrete elements of story to be constituted as objectivations ofEntweltlichung.


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. . . the distance of the world from God (the schema of distance); theenclosure of the world (the schema of the dwelling-place or cavern); theimprisonment of human beings in the world (the schema far down orhere); the experience of being lost (the schema of the labyrinth or ofmultiplicity); the self which does not belong to the world (the schema ofnegativity or point-like isolation); God as utterly above the world (theschema high up or outside or there)in addition, orientations ofmovement implied in all these schemata and constitutive of their unity: fall,sinking, loss of the origin and the reversal of all these in an inverse process(the schema of movement down and up or of becoming distant andreturning).89

The seven schemata in this list form a system that tends toward what Jonas calls the foundational Gnostic myth. Any attempt to tell thefoundational myth moves, of course, beyond the foundation into anactual specimen of Gnostic myth. The foundational myth can only begrasped in its transitional role from the system of schemata to a specimenof Gnostic myth.

Having recapitulated the results reached by Gnosis und sptantikerGeist I, the essay Zum Problem der Objektivation und ihres Form-wandels takes four steps to cross the threshold from the Gnostic Spiritas it objectivates itself in myth to the same Spirit as it objectivates itself in

mystical philosophy and ascetic spirituality. In taking these four stepsJonas guides his reflection by a normative question: Do human beingstruly come to understand their existential posture through its objectivations,thus reaching an authentic mode of existence? Or do they, on the con-trary, lose themselves in the realm of the objective, thus falling into aninauthentic mode of existence?90 In answering this normative questionJonas concludes that the objectivations of the Spirit of Late Antiquity inmystical philosophy and ascetic spirituality are more radically and au-thentically Gnostic than its objectivations in Gnostic myth.

1. General Reflection on Myth as a Form of Objectivation. Humanexistence, Jonas argues in the first step, necessarily objectivates itself in aworld and it does so, at least in part, according to the patterns ofobject-rationality. In telling myths, however, human subjectivity comesinto play once again by resubjectifying this objective world. According to

89. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:259. This system of schemata resembles

Spenglers constructive principle of Arabian culture, the sense of space as cave orcavern. Jonas account is considerably more sophisticated.

90. For the first explicit formulation of this alternative, see Jonas, Gnosis undsptantiker Geist, 2:13.


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the patterns of object-rationality, there are no uncanny or terrifyingbeings in the world: there are only material objects in causal interactionas grasped by natural science; fear and terror are exclusively matters of

the human subject.91 In constructing uncanny or terrifying objects,myth resubjectivizes the objective world.92 The normative question canbe posed here. Does human existence truly understand itself when itmeets itself in this objective and resubjectivized manner in a mythicworld? Existential movements or processes of which human beings aredimly aware are transferred to the objective world before they are knownin their own existential character. The original existential wellsprings arethus not fully retrieved, but are covered by a layer of alienation (ber-fremdung).

Since these (i.e., objects) are in the most comprehensive ontological sensethat which is in its very nature foreign to human existence (das wesenhaftDaseinsfremde), we call this transfer (of the subjective into a world)berfremdung.93

2. Gnostic Myth as Objectivation. The problem of berfremdung isparticularly acute in the case of Gnostic myth. Gnostics are aware oftheir disastrous bondage to their world. Yet, by objectifying this aware-

ness in myths, they fall again into bondage to a world, their own mythicworld.

Absorption into a world (Verweltlichung) of the tendency of escape fromthe world (Entweltlichungstendenz) is a paradox; and yet, it is a true fact ofhuman existence.94

3. The Concepts of Gnosis. In the remaining two steps of his argument, Jonas unfolds the implications of the second point by listing variousforms of Gnosis to which the existential principle ofEntweltlichunggaverise in Late Antiquity. The most immediate form of Gnosis is thatclaimed by Gnostic myth as a story which explains the process ofVer-

91. Jonas roots in Neo-Kantian understandings of object-rationality are particu-larly clear at this point. Here lies the sharpest contrast to his later concern to developa philosophy of living organisms.

92. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:5 and n. 1. While the objectivation ofhuman existence according to patterns of object-rationality is an ontologicalfeature of human existence, rooted in the inalienable structure of the subject,

resubjectifying the world is merely an ontic process, contingent on particularcircumstances.

93. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:9.94. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:13.


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weltlichungand points in the direction of Entweltlichung.95 A secondand more specific concept of Gnosis is already implicit in the first. TheGnosis which defines Gnosticism is savingGnosis. Having committed its

concern for Entweltlichung to an objective world narrated in myth, theGnostics existence now allows itself to be shaped by the objects repre-sented by this myth. The normative question arises again:

For the structure of any possible action of human existence it is not amatter of indifference whether, in its own view, it moves within a system ofsuch objects and sets them in effective motion in relation to itself orwhether its action is guided by a true understanding in which humanexistence grasps itself.96

4. The Four Practical Concepts of Gnosis. In the fourth and last step ofhis argument, Jonas divides the more specific sense of Gnosis, namely,saving or praxis-oriented knowledge, into four kinds. And he arrangesthe four kinds in two pairs which are hierarchically set off against eachother by the normative criterion of existential authenticity.

(i) The Gnosis which defines Gnosticism can be understood as technical-instrumental knowledge which enables the knower to find the path throughthe heavenly spheres, to utter the appropriate passwords at the appropri-

ate time, etc.97

(ii) Gnosis can be understood as sacramental practice or any other formof knowledge able to set objective causes in motion so as to bring theGnostic toward the eschaton ofEntweltlichung.98

When viewed in the light of the criterion of authenticity, these twoforms of Gnosis can be seen as defective. Human existence abandonsitself to the objectivations of myth instead of truly understanding itself.Entweltlichung succumbs to Verweltlichung. There are two forms ofGnosis, however, in which the subject to some degree reclaims the exis-

tential possibilities which it gave to its objective mythic world. Thesetwo forms of Gnosis (iii and iv) are the subject matter of Gnosis undsptantiker Geist II.

(iii) The human self can anticipate the eschaton of its Entweltlichungina form of Gnosis which consists in the experience of mystical ecstasy.

The negative character which allows this (inner state of the subject) to becounted as the eschaton is the momentary real extinction for the subject of

95. See Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:1416.96. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:18.97. See Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:1920.98. See Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:2021.


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the world and all that is cosmic (des Welthaften). In positive terms, owingto its character as an experience at the outermost limit of existence, it isinterpreted as immediategnosis theou, i.e., as immediate being with God,which cancels the creaturely distance and lets the self itself be divine(Selber-Gttlichsein). . . . The existential analysis and the conceptual self-understanding of this form of Gnosticism is one of the two great themes ofour investigations below.99

(iv) A more permanent but gradual reclaiming of the eschaton from itsmythic objectivation occurs in ascetic practice, in the increasing purifica-tion of the subject from its entanglement in the world. Gnostic myth tellsthe tale of a fall of spiritual being through various layers into the finalentrapment of matter; and it tells of an ascent in which the layers of

entrapment are shed, one by one. In ascetic practice, the existential pos-ture that stands behind this tale is reclaimed as a possibility of the subject,as a true Gnosis of life.

The objective removal of parts of the soul in (the ascent through) thecosmic spheres is replaced by an existentially realized cancellation of variousfunctions of entanglement in the worlda progressively reduced realizationof existence in the world. We find here a type of virtue (arete) which formsa structural whole with the culminations (of mystical ecstasy). This asceticor cathartic concept of virtue, which has Gnosis as its goal, is the other

main theme of our investigations below.100

Both of these forms of Gnosticism developed their own conceptualaccount of themselves in the metaphysical systems of Middle- and Neo-Platonism and in the teachings of ascetic spirituality. These conceptualaccounts do not, as such, depend upon Gnostic myth. Conceptual mys-tical philosophy and Gnostic myth do not need to know anything of eachother.101 Nevertheless, it is appropriate to classify mystical philosophyand ascetic spirituality as forms of Gnosticism. Jonas offers three argu-

ments for this conclusion.First, mystical philosophy and ascetic spirituality arise from the same

existential principle which lies at the heart of all Gnostic myth, Ent-weltlichung.

Second, they presuppose the foundational Gnostic myth as a necessarycomponent in the development of their own concepts, even though they

99. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:21.100. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:22.101. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:22.


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do not unfold the foundational myth in the form of story.102 In themetaphysical schema of emanation and decline we rediscover Gnosticmyth in depersonalized and conceptualized (logisierter) form.103

Third, they are even more essentially and properly Gnostic than mytho-logical Gnosticism because they reclaim the existential principle ofEnt-weltlichungfrom the objectivation of myth.104

Jonas adds a caveatat the very end of his argument. The sphere of theobjective continues to dominate even the two purer forms of Gnosticism.Not only do they depend upon the foundational Gnostic myth in articu-lating their conceptual self-understanding. In more subtle ways than myth,they too succumb to Verweltlichung. Mystical philosophy does so byanticipating Entweltlichung in the psychological state of ecstasy. As a

psychological state, such ecstasy is an objective datum of the world andthus falls short of radical Entweltlichung. Ascetic spirituality does so bypositing a gradual ascent of logically ordered detachments with a perma-nent Self conceived as the substratum of its own progress, again anobjectivation which absorbs the Self into a world. Both forms of Gnosti-cism thus fall into reifying the human existential movement (Verding-lichung der Daseinsbewegung).105 Neither of them finds the way back tothe direct understanding of freedom from the world (Entweltlichung)

which the existentialism of Bultmann and Heidegger as well as theirstudent and colleague Jonas requires.

4. OVERVIEW

This final caveat shows that Jonas approach to Gnostic texts is verymuch an engaged approach in which his own early existentialist philo-sophical position functions as a criterion for Sachkritik. Gnosticism,Jonas observes, brought an unheard-of new orientation which we have

inherited through various intermediaries.106 We owe to Gnosticism. . . the new discovery of the Self which showed the Selfs incommensu-rability with all world-nature. . . . The Self is discoveredthrough a breakwith the world.107 In this perspective one can see what Gnosticism (der

102. See Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:2223.103. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:3.104. See Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:22.

105. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 2:23.106. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:172, emphasis added.107. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:170, emphasis added.


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Gnostizismus) truly is, namely, a cosmic turning-pointof the Spirit (eineWeltwende des Geistes).108 The true heir of this cosmic turning pointwho completes what Gnosticism began is existential philosophy. It is only

in existential philosophy that the final breakthrough to freedom from theworld, to an authentic self-understanding of human existence, is achieved.Two decades after the publication ofGnosis und sptantiker Geist, Jonaswas to unfold this close connection between his (former) existential phi-losophy and his interpretation of Gnosticism.109

Jonas hermeneutic principles converge on a single task, namely, re-trieving the self-understanding of human existence from its objectivations.The self-understanding characteristic of Gnosticism is the tendency ofEntweltlichung, acosmism, negation of the world, liberation from the

world, escape from the world. This self-understanding is situated at sucha depth in human existence that it affects all perception of the Self and allperception of the world from the very roots of consciousness to the lastdetails. Jonas finds this self-understanding most clearly objectivated intexts which scholarship before him classified as Gnostic. Yet, given thedepth at which he sees the Gnostic self-understanding situated in humanbeings, it is not surprising that he extends the term Gnostic to phenom-ena not previously classified as Gnostic in the scholarly mainstream, such

as the whole of Early Christianity with all its heresies and the philosophyof Plotinus.This extension of Gnostic is aided by Jonas Neo-Hegelian under-

standing of Spirit and its role in world history. The ultimate truesubject of existential self-understanding is a transindividual and trans-generational Spirit. This Spirit extends its influence over individuals andgenerations by providing for them the particular mode of self-understanding open to them. There is a multiplicity of such Spirits andthey partly overlap or interpenetrate, as the Spirit of Greek Antiquity and

the Gnostic Spirit interpenetrate in Plotinus. Nevertheless, large blocks ofculture can be distinguished by the Spirits that are operative in them.Here lies the point of convergence between Jonas and Spengler, a conver-gence due to their shared roots in German Idealism: Jonas in Hegel,Spengler in Schelling.

In this way Jonas historical hypothesis of Gnosticism as the Spirit ofLate Antiquity and his hermeneutic principle of retrieving that Spiritsexistential self-understanding form an organic whole. It is when seen in

108. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:171, emphasis added.109. Jonas, Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism, 21134; the biographical

situation of this essay is discussed in Jonas, Retrospective View, 1315.


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the light of Jonas existential interpretation that the religious history ofLate Antiquity configures itself as the history of the Gnostic Spirit. And itis in this configuration of religious history that Gnostic texts yield Jonas

understanding of them as privileged windows into the heart of the Spiritof Late Antiquity.

Jonas construct Gnosticism came to play an important role in NewTestament studies, particularly in the Bultmann school. In his foreword tothe first volume ofGnosis und sptantiker GeistBultmann writes,

For years I have been dedicating a large part of my work to the study ofGnosticism. There is not one among the investigations in this fieldand it iswell known that there are excellent onesfrom which I have learned asmuch for a true understanding of Gnosticism as a phenomenon ofintellectual history. In fact, it was here that the significance of Gnosticismwas for the first time disclosed to me in its full extent. Although the workstands in the continuity of research, it is here, it seems to me, that the placeof Gnosticism in the history of Late Antiquity has truly been recognized forthe first time. It becomes clear what significance Gnosticism had in thehistory of Late Antiquity, in the shift of the Wests understanding of theworld from Antiquity to Christianity.110

Precisely because it has been so formative, Jonas work can neither betaken for granted nor ignored, but must be critically reappropriated asthe evidence from Nag Hammadi is analyzed. What Schenke wrote in1959 is even truer today:

Works like Jonas are typical for the end of a period of research. And we,who stand at the beginning of a new epoch of research on Gnosticism inwhich everything has become fluid again, in which old problems await freshexamination and a multitude of new problems come into view, do well tolet the content and ideas of Jonas book pass before our eyes and to raisethe question which of his thoughts we must adopt as inalienable insights in

the new phase of research and which we are unable to accept.

111

5. TOWARDS A CRITIQUE

The reception of Jonas construct Gnosticism has been selective in twomain respects. First, scholars of Late Antiquity have tended to see hisconstruct only in the literature discussed in the first volume ofGnosis undsptantiker Geist, not in the whole of Jonas Late Antiquity, which isidentical with Spenglers Arabian Culture. In particular, with the

110. Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist, 1:vi, emphasis added111. Schenke, Review of Hans Jonas, Gnosis und sptantiker Geist I, 814.


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exception of the Bultmann school, they have not applied Jonas conceptof Gnosticism to Early Christianity as a whole. Second, again with theexception of the Bultmann school, they have tended to mute the intense

mirroring between historiography and existential philosophy characteris-tic of Jonas work. These two implicit criticisms shake the two mainpillars on which Jonas construct rests.

Yet a more radical critique is necessary. Jonas theses are fascinating intheir insightful soaring above the details of earth. But they tend to misrep-resent the actual history suggested by the texts from Nag Hammadi. Inthis respect there is surely much merit in Williams plea for dismantlingthe category Gnosticism as inherited from Jonas. Williams summarizesa widely held version of Jonas Gnosticism as follows,

. . . we are told that gnostic demiurgical myths can be distinguished fromothers because gnostics had an attitude. They had an attitude ofprotest or of revolt, an anticosmic attitude. This attitude allegedlyshowed up in the way gnostics treated scripture (they are alleged to havereversed all its values), viewed the material cosmos (they supposedlyrejected it), took an interest in society at large (they didnt, we are told),felt about their own bodies (they hated them). These revolutionaries aresupposed to have lacked any serious ethical concern, and to have beendriven instead by their attitude toward their cosmic environment to one of

two characteristically gnostic forms of behavior: fanatical asceticrenunciation of sex and other bodily comforts and pleasures, or the exactopposite, unbridled debauchery and lawbreaking. Gnostics, it is asserted,had no worries about their own ultimate salvation, since they understoodthemselves to be automatically saved because of their inner divine nature.With salvation predetermined for them because of their nature, ethics wereirrelevant.112

All seven points listed in this sketch of Gnosticism turn out to befalse or at least problematic when one attempts to apply them to what is

surely one of the most important Gnostic texts, the Apocryphon of John(AJ).113

(1) Anti-cosmic attitude: The AJ is decidedly not shaped by an anticosmicattitude in Jonas sense. Quite to the contrary, it is pervaded by a dis-tinctly cosmic piety in which a well-ordered Hellenistic Jewish heavenly

112. Williams, RethinkingGnosticism, 45.

113. The text of the AJ is cited by synopsis double-page and line number inMichael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse, The Apocryphon of John: Synopsis of NagHammadi Codices II,1; III,1; and IV,1 with BG 8502,2, NHMS 33 (Leiden: Brill,1995).


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114. See Michael Waldstein, The Primal Triad in the Apocryphon of John, in John D. Turner and Anne McGuire, eds., The Nag Hammadi Library After FiftyYears: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration(Leiden: Brill, 1996), 15487.

court, peopled by an orderly gradation of Middle-Platonic hypostasesengaged in Jewish liturgical acts of glorification, represents the apex oflife.114 It is important to insist on this point: the most fundamental ele-

ment of Jonas construct Gnosticism on which all other aspects of thisconstruct depend, namely Entweltlichung, is not verified in the AJ.

(2) Reversal of Jewish Scripture: In its rereading Genesis 17, the AJpresupposes that Genesis is inspired by the God of Israel, i.e., by thedemiurge Yaldabaoth. It is the book in which the demiurge himself tellsthrough Moses what he himself did in creating the world, just as he alsospeaks through the prophet Isaiah (AJ 59.19). Since he is the creator, hisversion of the creation story is illuminating and even authoritative; butsince he is an evil and partly ignorant creator, his version is incomplete

and at times deceptive. From the perspective of higher knowledge, the AJcompletes the account and clears up deceptions, Not as Moses said . . .(see AJ 35.35, 59.13, 61.2, 76.16). In its overall thrust, the AJ is notsimply anti-Jewish, but preserves many distinctive features of Jewishreligious traditions.

(3) Rejection of the material cosmos: The AJs material cosmos is betterthan its creator. Without realizing it, Yaldabaoth patterned his worldafter the beautiful astronomical system of the upper world of light (see AJ

27.1, 8, 33.15, 18). Although matter as such is evil, the material cosmosmirrors a higher beauty.(4) Lack of interest in surrounding society: One of the aims of the

intellectuals behind the AJ was probably to reduce tension with theirMiddle-Platonic intellectual milieu. At any rate, the metaphysics of the AJmoves in the mainstream of Middle Platonism.

(5) Hatred of the body: The shape of the human body is divine, al-though its substance is evil (see AJ 37.1338.19).

(6) Ethical indifference: Salvation depends both on the spirit of life and

on good works (see AJ 68.173.2).(7) Elitist in-group assurance of salvation by nature: All human

beings have the spirit of life in them and can be saved (see AJ 70.7). Thereis no in-group. The phrase race of Seth is equivalent to humanitykat exochen. Salvation can be lost by apostasy from knowledge (see AJ73.314).


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Close analysis shows that the Apocryphon of John is not an expressionof a broad Spirit of Late Antiquity characterized by Entweltlichung.It is a very particular and in many respects idiosyncratic eddy in the broad

stream of Hellenistic Judaism.115

Michael Waldstein is President and Professor of New Testament at theInterna

Hans Jonas' Construct Gnosticism Analysis and Critique

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