What is Esoteric Christianity?

Here we find the disciples under similar circumstances seeking instruction in the significance of the parable of the sower and others. "When he was alone they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parables." It is interesting to see that others besides the twelve apostles were desirous of being taught, and none of them were denied. And while this teaching may be regarded as exclusive, esoteric, and committed in this manner to these chosen witnesses in order that after the Lord's ascension it might be promulgated throughout the world, the general truth is important that the ways of God are made known in the hush of the sanctuary rather than in the noise of the camp. The impending destruction of the cities of the plain was imparted, not to Lot in the bustling streets of Sodom, but, to Abraham in the quiet of a torrid noontide at his own tent door. David in the wilderness with his sheep, not Eliab in the camp of Saul, learned the mind of God about Goliath. So it was that not to the surging crowds by the Galilaean lake, but to the disciples who came to Him as He was alone in the house, the Prophet of Jehovah revealed the truth concerning the peculiar character of the coming kingdom.

One of the first attacks came from a sect called Gnostics, their name derived from the Greek word, Gnosis, knowledge. They denied that the Lord had a true human body. They taught that He was an apparition, appearing in the likeness of a man, that He suffered on the cross in appearance only, and not in reality. They professed that they knew. Their attitude is described thus:

Such was the doctrine and attitude of Gnosticism. We see it reproduced in principle in all esoteric cults, whose adherents pride themselves upon being in the know, and despise and hold as of no account all outside their ranks. This spirit is their sufficient condemnation. The doctrines of the Christian faith are plainly set forth for all to know. It is written of the little children in the family of God,

173 But this by the bye. That Alexandrian theology was philosophical, and corrupted by philosophy, is certain: Clement, the great Alexandrian teacher, does not conceal it. He says in his Stromata (ed. Potter 1, 319, line 35), speaking of the nourishment of souls, the peace in the word, and the life which is of God; he adds, "For souls have their own nourishment, some growing in knowledge and intelligence, some fed according to the Grecian philosophy, of which, as in the case of nuts, all is not edible." In lib. 7, 2 (1831, 2), "the word teaches all, some as friends, some as faithful servants, some as servants; he is the teacher who instructs the man of knowledge (the Gnostic) in mysteries (this is the esoteric teaching for a few), the faithful by good hopes, and the hard-hearted by corrective discipline and sensible (aesthetic) powers." And afterwards: "He, the Word, it is who gives philosophy to the Greeks by inferior angels; for the angels, by a divine and ancient ordinance, are distributed by nations, but the doctrine of believers is the Lord's part, insisting on the divine care of all." So in book 6, 8 (773), "All things useful to life are given by the Word, but philosophy more especially to the Greeks was given to them as a special covenant, to be as a foundation of philosophy according to Christ." And in book 1, 6 (p. 337) he makes the sower of the parable to have come thus from above from the foundation of the world. What this philosophy was he tells us (338): "Philosophy, I say not the Stoic, not the Platonic, nor the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but whatever things are said rightly by each of these sects, teaching righteousness with pious intelligence; this, as a whole, I call eclectic philosophy." The law, he says elsewhere, was for the Jews, philosophy for the Greeks, till Christ came (6, 17, p. 823), the whole chapter being a long discourse on this subject, each receiving it according to their deserts.

I am fully satisfied that the East was the origin of much more of all this than we are aware of, corrected partially in these Alexandrian Fathers by Christianity, and already in Plato (and, I suppose, Pythagoras) by Grecian habits of thought. The root of it was, that there was a supreme unknown God who dwelt in the depths of silence, and could have no connection with matter. Hence emanations and the Demiurge, an inferior creator, resulting in Gnosticism — the plague of the early church. Platonism, with its emanated demons and the Alexandrian philosophy, divides into the Christian and heathen parties, Clement giving his perfect Christian the name of Gnostic. Early there was a Jewish party, whom Philo represents. In all Logos was an inferior being, though divine. It resulted, in another form, in Arianism, the doctrine more or less of the Alexandrian ante-Nicene Fathers (not of Irenaeus), combated by Athanasius when it came formally to a head in Arius. Thus it was that Dr. Newman came to be called an Arian. He had imbibed a delight in these ante-Nicene statements. Hence, too, arose asceticism. Matter held, as Plato teaches, the soul down as a nail to the earth; it was to be mortified. Asceticism began in the Alexandrian church, partly indeed by persons who fled in the Decian persecution. Hence forbidding to marry, not that people might be more devoted, but as evil for the Gnostic.

67 But Dr. Milner cites other Fathers, and it will be useful in many respects to refer to them. The fact is, they argued as it suited them at the moment. When heretics pressed scripture, they flew to tradition, not at first as containing distinct truth, but as a witness of the truth of what they alleged was scriptural — a use we have seen to be impossible now, because the churches they appealed to, the apostolic churches, have disappeared, or are hostile to Rome. But, besides, these citations will give us the worth of the Fathers' reasonings, and how they contradict, not each other merely, but themselves. Dr. Milner passes by, he tells us, Clement of Alexandria; he was right in doing so for his cause. Clement resists the Gnostics, or men of knowledge, who infested the church, saying that ordinary Christians had elements, but that the secret full doctrine of Christianity was in their blasphemies. Tertullian met this by shewing that the apostles had taught all publicly (Tert., de Praescriptione 22, and following).

Clement took another course. He says that Christ spoke in parables in order not to be understood by ordinary Christians, but that there were christian Gnostics, who by temperance, a human thing, and desiring and laborious, and prudence, a divine thing, arrived at Gnosis, and thus had got higher truths and intelligence to understand what was concealed from vulgar eyes. This was to be received according to the ecclesiastical rule, and the ecclesiastical rule is the consent and harmony, both of the law and the prophets, with the covenant delivered during the Lord's presence. (Clem. Alex., Potter 2, 802, 3; Strom. 6.) His principle is bad, but his appeal is to the scriptures. Nor is Clement, after all, very famous for orthodoxy. He was saturated with Alexandrian Platonism, and was thoroughly sound neither on the divinity nor on the humanity of the Lord. I do not make a heretic of him, but, to say the least, he uses very awkward language, so that the famous Romanist doctor, Petau, charges him plainly with not speaking in an orthodox way.

It is not of man. Christ is divine "wisdom" for us: God has made foolish the wisdom of this world, but "we speak wisdom among them that are perfect." He has "abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will." (See Eph. 1:8-10.) The divine revelation of all God's thoughts and intentions is in Christ; "the wisdom of God in a mystery," which word means what only the initiated understand: as in Freemasonry, I do not know anything about it because I am not initiated.

These secret counsels of God are called in Scripture mysteries. We mean by a mystery something inexplicable, beyond our understandings. In the language of the New Testament, however, a mystery is simply a secret revealed only to initiated persons — such, for example, as the secret sign of the "Freemasons." God, then, had reserved a secret to be communicated to us — a secret which He had not made known even to the most favoured recipient of His thoughts in past ages. How sweet to see this! It is the privilege of the children to know the secrets of the family — of the wife to share the innermost thoughts of her husband's heart. God has adopted us as His children; Christ has purchased us as His bride; and the secrets, hidden even from the most honoured of his servants and friends, are now breathed into the ear and heart of that Church which is bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh.

The word mystery is not used in Scripture in. relation to what is mysterious, as men speak, but rather to present some distinctive truth that God has disclosed for our understanding. What is contained in the mysteries of the New Testament, and there are a number of them, is for the enlightenment of the saints, but only those with faith can profit by these divine unveilings; only the faithful are initiated into their truths; only those who have the Spirit of God have the capacity and the power to lay hold of the mind of God thus revealed. God desires to bring you and me into His secrets: do we desire to know them?

Again, the mystery is no longer "hid in God;" it is divulged. You must always bear this in mind when you read about the mystery, that it is now revealed and nothing left in the dark. The secret is set forth in the light of God, and the simplest Christian is expected to receive it. So Christ said to His disciples, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." All other mysteries of God are given to be known in a similar way. Can words more completely dissipate the prevalent idea that mystery means something incomprehensible, which piety dares not to pry into — at least while here on earth in time? By the Lord and the Spirit acting through the apostles in the N.T. the mysteries of God are given for us to receive and understand and enjoy them.

Many mysteries are spoken of in Scripture, mostly the revelations of God for the enlightenment of His people. The divine mysteries are found in the Holy Scriptures for all to read, but the very language that unveils God’s secrets to His people hides them from the men of the world. Profound natural wisdom is not the key to open the secrets of God, nor can religious education communicate to the natural intelligence what lies in the mind of God. Only those who have the divine nature as born of God, and who have the Holy Spirit to teach them, can apprehend what God has disclosed in His word for His people.

Now, as there was the mystery concerning the Gentile monarchies, so, the Lord said, there was a mystery concerning that kingdom which, according to Daniel 2:44 the God of heaven would establish, never to be destroyed. This mystery He set out in His teaching by parables, thereby concealing from the multitude for the time being the meaning which He afterwards revealed to His apostles. For He said, "Unto you is given [to know] the mystery of the kingdom of God; but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables; that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not understand." He thus added a solemn warning to the people. Upon the nation at large the sentence of judicial blindness would fall, as Isaiah had prophesied (Isa. 6:9-10). For the Light of the world was among them, yet they refused to see light in His light; hence darkness would come among and upon them, and even as He was speaking, the truth as to God's provision in view of their rebellion was veiled from their eyes in parables.

Just what was signified by the mystery of the kingdom will appear in the interpretation of the parables that the Lord Himself gave. The altered character of the kingdom consequent upon the rejection of the Anointed One and the absence of the King is delineated most fully and categorically in the series of parables recorded in Matt. 13. Here we only emphasize the essential element of mystery in the Scriptural sense, viz., not that which in itself is difficult of understanding, but rather that which in both its communication and its reception is dependent upon divine revelation, and, as must necessarily follow, that which is only made known to a selected few who are fitted to receive it.