The Universe is the Failure of Angels

      In the Genesis 1 account of creation, God allegedly stated, "Let us make humans in our image."  But who is us?  Isn't there just one God?  Who was he talking to?  Perhaps he was talking to angels.

      An apostolic man named Papias elaborated:

 

God gave some angels authority to arrange the cosmos, and He ordered them to use their authority well, but it came to pass that their arrangement was a failure.[1]

 

      Their arrangement was a failure – what does this mean?  Is the universe some sort of angelic science project gone haywire?  Just looking at the universe confirms the plausibility of such an opinion.  The universe is a wasteland of burning gas, empty space, and cold lifeless rock.  Most of it is either too cold for life, or too hot and fiery for life.  Only a very small portion of the universe is suitable for life at all.  It’s as if some angels said, "Let’s make something really really big, but who cares if it works."  Such is the universe we live in, and it fits Papias' description of a cosmic failure.

      But who was Papias, and why should we care what he said?  According to a 2^nd century source, "Papias was an ancient man, who listened to John, and he was a friend of Polycarp (John’s disciple),"[2] and another source says that he was the bishop of Hierapolis, a prominent town in Asia Minor.[3]  Moreover, Papias said about himself,

 

When people came who had ministered to the Apostles, I asked particular questions about what they said – what Andrew or Peter said, or what Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew, or any other of the Lord's disciples said, and what Aristion and Presbyter John the disciple of the Lord say.  I thought it was better to get my information from a living abiding voice than from books.[4]

 

Notice the present tense of say – what Aristion and John say – which implies they were still living abiding voices.  This means that Papias was alive when the last Apostles were still alive.  Since he got his information from Apostles, at a time before the New Testament had even been completed, his opinion about how the universe came about should carry some weight with regard to Christian belief.

      Additionally, Papias' statement appears to be corroborated by what Saint John himself says in the Bible, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away."[5]  If God made the first creation good in the beginning, as it says in Genesis 1, "God saw that it was good," then why does John say that this cosmos is going to pass away?  Why should we need a new heaven and a new earth if the first heaven and the first earth were created good?  On the other hand, if angels messed it up, then it makes sense that we need a new heaven and a new earth.  In this light, Papias’ statement can be understood like so:  The universe was created by angels, but the angels messed up, and so we need a new universe.  The natural logic of Papias' statement, when synchronized with John's statement in the Bible about a new heaven and a new earth, is perfectly harmonious.

      Others besides Papias also expressed this view.  Ancient Christian histories written by Irenaeus and Hippolytus, in the period of 175-235 AD, tell us of no less than six other Christian leaders – Menander, Carpocrates, Saturninus, Basilides, Cerinthus, and Simon Magus – who also believed that the cosmos was created by angels.[6]  These six all taught in the 1^st and/or early 2^nd centuries AD, and are therefore among the earliest Christian authorities.  Specifically, Basilides taught this:

 

Jesus was sent by the Father so that by his dispensation he might destroy the works of the angels who created the cosmos.[7] 

 

 

Matter is Despicable

      If the universe was a failure, as Papias and the others said, and if we take this to its logical conclusion, then the universe is worthless, and the matter within it is also despicable.  This opinion is well represented in the writings of the ancient Christians.  For example, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary quote Jesus as saying,

 

Matter caused a powerful emotion which stands against the way things should be, and this has disrupted the whole system.[8]

 

If you find the cosmos, you have only found a dead body.  And anyone who sees the cosmos as a dead body is superior to it.[9]

 

The cosmos and its matter are degraded elsewhere in the ancient Christian literature in the following terms:  "Matter was born from the depths of darkness,"[10] and "the cosmos came about with lies."[11]  The critics of this doctrine said about them, "They think matter began from ignorance, grief, fear, and bewilderment."[12]  These ideas also gave rise to a strong anti-materialist sentiment among early Christians, as they said, "Don't allow your material possessions to hold sway over you,"[13] and "unity eats matter with fire."[14]

 

Flesh is Despicable

      If we assume that matter is despicable, then it follows that flesh is also despicable, because flesh is made of matter.  Indeed, these ancient Christian sources assert exactly this, that flesh is despicable.

      They also assert that the creator of the human species was the chief of the angels who created the world, and that he was a fool.  This chief is commonly called the "demiurge."  The ancient sources also assert that there is a power, or multiple powers, above the demiurge, and that the higher power(s) have bestowed upon humans some element of true divinity.  Thus, our fleshly biology was created by the foolish demiurge and his blundering angels, but our spirit is made of something better.  The scriptures found at Nag Hammadi also provide quotes to this effect:

 

The demiurge said to his angels, "Let us create a human in the image of God and in our image,"[15]

 

The demiurge created humans partly in his image and partly in the image of those (aeons) that existed before him.[16]

 

The Logos secretly formed humanity indirectly through the demiurge and his angels… thus humanity is a cross of things on the good hand and things on the sinister hand.[17]

 

Seven she-male angels ejaculated into Mother Earth's belly button, and since then, the seven angels molded humans into flesh like their flesh, but also made them in the image of a man (Christ) they had seen (from above).[18]

 

The archons and powers "have trapped us in flesh."[19]

 

The cosmos is the result of a screw up.  The creator tried to create it eternally incorruptible, but he failed, because the cosmos has never been incorruptible.  Moreover, neither was the creator.[20]

 

Angels and demons worked to create a natural human, but it did not move for a long time.[21]

 

This last quote sounds a lot like evolution – it took us "a long time" to move, which can be interpreted to mean that it took a long time for us to rise above lower life forms. 

      There is also some evidence that Jesus Christ was aware of the fact that the earth is extremely old, as science has concluded, for according to The Apocryphon of James, Jesus said to the disciples,

 

Think about the time in which the cosmos existed before you and the time in which it will exist after you.[22]

     

      Taken together, these passages paint a picture of cosmic origins that is in tension with Genesis 1. 

      They also give us a literal understanding of Jesus Christ's statement that we must be "born again."  If God made flesh in the beginning and "saw that it was good," as Genesis 1 says, then we are already good, and so what is the point in being born again?  On the other hand, if flesh was created evil, by the hand of the wicked demiurge and his blundering perverted angels, then the need to be "born again" makes much more sense, and we can take his words literally at face value, as he himself advised,

 

Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God… for that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit; so don't think too hard about my statement that you must be born again.[23]

 

      Christians who did not agree with these ideas nevertheless admitted that they existed from a very early date.  The late 2^nd century and early 3^rd century saw a flourishing of Christian literature, which, among other things, included extremely verbose and detailed explanations of what the "heretics" believed.  Among these Christian historians were Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, and most notably Irenaeus. 

      Hippoylutus and Irenaeus described the beliefs of a Christian leader named Saturninus as follows:  Based in Antioch, the oldest Christian community outside of Palestine, Saturninus asserted that the phrase in Genesis 1:26 "Let us make man in our image," was not really God talking, but actually the angels conversing with each other on how they would create humans – hence the plural "us."[24]  Although Irenaeus and Hippolytus criticized this doctrine, Saturninus actually taught it a century before these two, and was therefore closer to the apostolic age than were his critics.

      The ancient Christian sources also assert that the demiurge and his angels try to control humans through fear.  They pseudepigraphically "quote" Adam, who is made to say,

 

We were like immortal angels, and we were superior to the god who created us… but then we saw the god who created us, and we were scared, so we became his slaves.[25]

 

Gnostic Genesis

      Who were these Christians that proposed such strange ideas?  In 1945, an extraordinary find was made in the sands of Egypt at a place called Nag Hammadi.  Thirteen codices from the 4^th century AD were found, which contained 52 early Christian scriptures previously unknown to us.  Although the actual manuscripts dated only to the 4^th century, they were copies of scriptures that were written in even more ancient times.  We know because sources from the 2^nd century refer to certain titles by name.  They were gospels, treatises, and secret revelations.  They were written by followers of a certain type of ancient Christianity – the broad category of so-called "heretics" called "Gnostics." 

      The Gnostics were important because they were the earliest and largest group of Christians to challenge the creationists.  The Gnostics held that Jesus revealed mysteries known only to a few close associates, and that these mysteries were obscured by the more ignorant of Jesus' disciples.  In support of this teaching, we may point to the Bible itself, wherein Jesus said, "It is given to you to have gnosis concerning the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it has not been given."[26]  This quote from Jesus carries an undeniably Gnostic taste to it, for it confirms that hidden mysteries are a legitimate institution of the Christian faith.

      The Gnostic and creationist factions disagreed sharply on the subject of origins.  Gnostics believed that the universe was a pathetic mistake, because it was created by the foolish demiurge and his blundering angels.  On the other hand, creationists accepted the literal truth of Genesis 1, and therefore maintained that the universe was created by a perfect God. 

      The creationists eventually came to dominate the Catholic establishment; and, upon gaining an even firmer grip as a result of the Biblicist tendencies of the Protestant Reformation, the creationist theory on origins has maintained itself as the dominant view among Christians for the past 1,800 years. 

      How did the creationists come to dominate the church?  The early church used the word "Catholic" to describe itself,[27] after the Greek words cata-holic, meaning "with respect for the entirety."  The name was fitting, because they respected the entirety of scripture and tradition, and attempted to reconcile the various scriptures and traditions as best they could.  This respect for all scripture and tradition led them to include Genesis 1.  The Catholics called the Gnostics "heretics" after the word haeresis which means "to select only a part," because the Gnostics selected some parts of scripture and tradition but excluded other parts. 

      This fundamental difference in how to view scripture and tradition was the root cause of their differing opinions and eventual schism.  The cata-holic paradigm caused the acceptance of Genesis 1, but haeresis provided a basis for excluding it.  Each system of epistemology has its good points and bad points.  The good thing about haeresis is that it allows us to exclude the parts of scripture that are demonstratably false.  The cata-holic system has trouble doing that.  But the good thing about the cata-holic paradigm is that it analyzes all data across all centuries, thus providing a uniquely balanced perspective.  Haeresis has trouble doing that, because heretics often exclude certain doctrines based merely on political pressures, cultural trends, and personal preferences – without giving consideration to everything that has been revealed to the Prophets.  As Catholic apologist Gary Wills put it,

 

The orthodox excluded a few heretics only because the latter had excluded whole chunks of history, large bodies of believers, and vast amounts of Jewish and Christian writing.  In this context, the orthodox were the includers, the heretics were the excluders.[28]

 

Yet the great irony was that many among the cata-holics committed haeresis when in the late 2^nd century they began excluding those who questioned creationism.  Thankfully, the Paraclete has reversed this error.

 

 

The Apostolic Authority of Gnosticism

      For a generation or two after the Apostles, both Gnostics and creationists apparently existed together in the same churches.  This is borne out by the fact that some of the earliest Christians demonstrated a mixture of both Gnostic and Orthodox-Catholic beliefs – notably Papias, who accepted the Gnostic version of creation, yet otherwise seems to have subscribed to the opinions of the Orthodox-Catholic faction, for he was never labeled a heretic by the ancient Orthodox-Catholic historians who had read his writings.  Papias was also the bishop of Hierapolis, a community which had apparently been under the jurisdiction of the Apostle Philip before him. 

      Moreover, a careful examination of Paul's New Testament letters reveals that the Apostle Paul himself held a mixture of both Gnostic and Orthodox-Catholic opinions, as we shall see shortly.  The Gnostics held the Apostles in high regard.  The texts found at Nag Hammadi include titles named after the Apostles Peter, Paul, James, John, Philip, and Thomas. 

      The texts found at Nag Hammadi also demonstrate that the Gnostics accepted much if not all of the four Biblical gospels – for they quote Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John frequently.  Examples include:

 

The shepherd left the 99 sheep to look for the one that got lost.[29]

 

Nobody comes to me unless the Father selects them, and I will resurrect them on the last day.[30]

 

Any plant that my heavenly father did not plant will be uprooted.[31]

 

The yeast of the Pharisees.[32]

 

The ax is already placed against the root of the trees.[33]

 

Blessed are those who hear although they have not seen.[34]

 

You cannot know God except through Christ.[35]

 

Hell opens wide and the way to destruction is broad.  So accept

Christ, who is the narrow path.[36]

 

They do not enter, nor do they allow those who are entering to gain access.[37]

 

      Especially striking are the number of parallels between The Gospel of Thomas and the overlapping parts of Luke and Matthew, which are so numerous that space does not permit to list them all here.  A careful analysis indicates that The Gospel of Thomas was not actually quoting Luke and Matthew.  Rather, it was quoting from an earlier source, Quelle, from which all three are independently derived. 

      There are also striking parallels between the resurrection account found in Luke and that found in the Gnostic scripture entitled The Letter to Peter and Philip.

 

Gnostic Paul

      In addition to the gospels, the Gnostics loved Paul, and they clearly claimed him as one of their own.  They even named two Nag Hammadi texts after Paul – The Prayer of the Apostle Paul and The Apocalypse of Paul.  In the Nag Hammadi texts they quoted Paul several times.  Here are some examples:

 

(Jesus was) the first fruits to eternal life.[38]

 

Paul wrote the Corinthians saying, "I told you in the letter not to keep company with the sexually immoral."[39]

 

There is no man or woman, slave or free person, circumcision or uncircumcision, angel or human, but Christ is in all.[40]

 

Do you think John Calvin was the first to teach predestination?  Think again.  Some Gnostics believed in predestination,[41] and they quoted Paul to prove it, just as Calvin did:

 

As the Apostle said, "We are the elect; we are saved, because we are predestined from the beginning."[42]

 

But their favorite Pauline quote of all, because it exemplified their opinion that all matter and flesh is evil, comes from Corinthians:

 

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.[43]

 

Irenaeus, a 2^nd century creationist and opponent of the Gnostics, testified that the Gnostics depended heavily on this passage as a proof text:

 

That "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" – This passage is used by all the heretics in order to substantiate the lunacy with which they annoy us.[44]

 

The Gnostics also liked Paul because he used a lot of the same vocabulary they did – words like aeons for elements, pleroma for fullness, Sophia for the female side of divinity, apocryphon for hidden mysteries, as well as various words to distinguish between categories of heavenly entities such as archons and cosmocrators – for the Gnostics did not simplify things with generic terms like "angel" or "demon;" rather, they conceptualized complex systems and hierarchies within the heavenly realm.  Hence, they liked Paul, and quoted him,

 

As he (Paul) said, "We struggle not against flesh and blood but against the cosmocrators of darkness and evil spirits."[45]

 

The Apostle spoke of the "principalities of darkness," and admonished us that "we struggle not against flesh and blood, but against the princes of the universe and evil spirits."[46]

 

      Paul's letters are priceless and impossible for historians to ignore, because together with Mark and Quelle they constitute the absolute earliest sources for studying and determining the roots of the Christian movement.  They date to the mid 1^st century.  If one wants to understand early Christianity, Paul cannot be ignored.

      The beliefs of most Gnostics were as follows:  There exist high above us generations of primordial elements called aeons, the primordial male aeon being the Father, and the primordial female being called Sige.  After many generations of aeons, a derived female aeon named Sophia accidentally gave birth to the demiurge.  The demiurge fashioned angels that are called archons, who live in the air, and these archons were the blundering fools who created the universe.  Therefore, we have become hopelessly removed from the aeons and are ignorant of them.  This ignorance keeps us in bondage to the demiurge and to his archons.  Christ came as the pleroma of the aeons, which means the "fullness" of the "primordial elements," in order to save us from this foolish system. 

      Paul’s New Testament letters, when left un-translated in the Greek, often seem to take for granted the truth of these beliefs.  For example, Paul says in the New Testament:

 

When we were children, we were in bondage under the elements of the cosmos.  But when the pleroma of the time was come,

God sent forth his Son.[47]

 

To bring the pleroma of God's word, a mysterious hidden secret from generations of aeons, now made known to the saints.[48]

 

We preach that Jesus Christ is the revelation of a mystery, who was hidden in Sige since the times of the aeons.[49]

 

We tell of Sophia, of those who are perfect, yet not the Sophia of this aeon, nor the archons of this aeon who amount to nothing.  We tell of the Sophia of God, in a mysterious apocryphon, whom God determined from before the aeons, for our glory, and the archons of this aeon were ignorant of her.[50]

 

You walked in the way of the aeon of this cosmos, in the way of the powerful archon of the air.[51]

 

Generations of aeons and aeons.[52]

 

In him (Christ) is contained the pleroma of divinity in bodily form… who is over all archons and authorities… and having neutralized the archons and authorities, he exposed and defeated them.[53]

 

The pleroma was happy to live within him, and to redeem everything to him.[54]

 

Jesus Christ's Uncle and Cousin

      But is there any smoking gun which clearly links Jesus Christ to the Gnostic opinion?  Maybe.  For centuries, an alleged letter of Saint Paul called 3^rd Corinthians existed in the Bible of the Armenian Church.  3^rd Corinthians should not be dismissed lightly, for the Armenian Church is the most ancient national Christian establishment, existing even before Constantine's conversion.  3^rd Corinthians was also accepted by the early Syrian Church, which is arguably even more ancient.  The letter is prefaced with a statement from the Christians at Corinth.  Here is an excerpt:

 

Two men named Simon and Cleobius have come to Corinth, and they are destroying a lot of people’s faith with bad ideas… They teach that humans are not made by God… (and) that God did not make the world, but rather angels made it.[55]

 

      But who were Simon and Cleobius?  And why should we care what they said?  Cleobius may have been the uncle of Jesus Christ.  He is mentioned in the Biblical gospels twice, where his name is spelled variously as Cleopas and Cleofas.[56]  He is also mentioned in the histories, under the name Clopas.  He had a son named Symeon, or possibly Simon, the cousin of Jesus.  We can deduce this from the writings of the mid 2^nd century Christian historian Hegesippus, who wrote:

 

Upon the martyrdom of James the Righteous, who suffered for the cause like the Lord did, the son of his uncle Clopas, named Symeon, was nominated bishop.  Because he (Symeon) was the Lord’s cousin, everybody agreed that he should be the second (bishop of Jerusalem).[57]

 

Could Jesus’ cousin Symeon and uncle Clopas be the Simon and Cleobius of 3^rd Corinthians?  If so, what a revelation!  Jesus’ own relatives denied God’s role as creator!  Instead, they believed blundering angels created the universe in error.  However, Hegesippus mentions another Simon and another Cleobius in the same passage, and so the identification is uncertain, and must remain only a theory.

      Concerning the family of Jesus, Joseph was much older than Mary, and had several children from another woman before their marriage.[58]  These children were the "brothers of Jesus" mentioned in the gospels, although they were technically step-brothers.  Among them were James, who became the first pastor/bishop of the church in Jerusalem,[59] and Jude, whose grandchildren successfully argued the case of the Christians before the Roman Emperor Domitian, resulting in the release of John from the mines of Patmos, where he had written Revelation.[60]

      Because the step brothers were older, Jesus was both the youngest sibling in the family, and he was also the firstborn from Mary's womb.  That Jesus was both the youngest sibling and the firstborn of the womb is an unusual paradox, especially in light of the Old Testament, for in the Old Testament, it is the younger sibling that receives blessings, and it is the firstborn that receives sanctification.  David, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and probably also Abraham and Shem were the younger siblings of their families, and they received greater blessings than their brothers.[61]  As for the firstborn, the most ancient part of the Old Testament, the Yahwist Narrative, says, "All that opens the womb is mine… so redeem all your firstborn sons."[62]

      Thus we gain a mystery concerning the Prophetic nature of Christ's incarnation.  Jesus Christ achieved both blessing and sanctification under the Law.  This is a most unusual paradox, for seldom is the firstborn of a womb also the youngest sibling in a family, and therefore this event on account of its rarity and paradox constitutes a fingerprint of the divine plan.

      As for the notion that the "brothers of Jesus" were merely cousins, this invention became popular in the 5^th century – yet long before then, Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Archelaus & Manes, Eusebius, and even the gospels themselves had all testified that they were brothers, and nowhere imply they were cousins.[63] 

      Jesus' actual cousins were James and John the sons of Zebedee, for Joseph had a sister named Salome, who married Zebedee, and their sons were the famous Apostles.  It is even recorded that Salome personally examined Saint Mary's vagina, and certified that she was indeed still a virgin, even after she gave birth to Jesus.[64]  Joseph's brother was Cleopas,[65] the same Cleopas who saw the resurrected Christ on the road to Emmaus,[66] and who is mentioned above regarding 3^rd Corinthians.

     

Dating 3^rd Corinthians Via Thecla

      3^rd Corinthians was written before 200 AD.  We know this because it is attached to a greater work called The Acts of Paul, which also includes Thecla.  Tertullian testified about Thecla in 200 AD:

 

In Asia, the elder who invented that writing (Thecla, not 3^rd Corinthians) as if he were increasing Paul’s fame by his own doing, after being convicted, and confessing that he had done it because he loved Paul, was defrocked from the clergy.[67]

 

The text Tertullian referred to was Thecla, which is attached to 3^rd Corinthians.  Although Tertullian says Thecla was a forgery, he remains silent concerning 3^rd Corinthians and the rest of The Acts of Paul, to which Thecla was attached.  Thecla is an erotic satire that makes a mockery of romance while endorsing celibacy.  Much like a romance novel, the story builds sexual tension between a beautiful young Christian woman named Thecla and Saint Paul the Apostle by means of a typical love triangle.  Whatever chance the two had together is squashed when Paul tells her that he won't let her accompany him on his missionary journeys "for fear of fornication."  In the story, Thecla is pictured naked frequently.  She is nearly burned at the stake while naked, she fights wild animals while naked, and she unwillingly participates in the sport of bull riding while naked – the bulls having hot irons tied to their genitals.  Despite all this, she remains a virgin and retires as a celibate nun in the capacity of an evangelist.[68]  The story is an example of how early Christian literature is often both prudish and R-rated at the same time, with the intent to shock-jock the comparatively libertine Roman culture.  This was also a common practice among such early Christians as Saturninus, Marcion, Tatian, Valentinus, the Naas, and those who followed the Gospel of Thomas – these used suggestive and/or crude sexual content along with anti-sex interpretations of the Gospel for the purpose of teaching prudish doctrines.[69]

      The date of 3^rd Corinthians is thus established, by its attachment to Thecla, to be well within the most ancient, pre-Nicene, period of Christian history, and therefore its mention of anti-creationist views among even those who might have been close relatives of Jesus Christ deserves serious consideration.