Platonism: The Foundation Stone of Western Gnosticism
Western Christianity (Catholicism), possessing as it does an Infallible Magisterium and the Papacy, provided a much greater resistance to Gnostic principles. It will be my purpose here, however, to prove that we are now in a stranglehold of Gnostic spirituality which far outstrips any which existed in the early centuries of the Church.
We could in fact run a sort of imaginary line down through the history of the Catholic Church (we will not here be dealing with Protestantism) separating Gnostic-tainted philosophy, theology, and spirituality from that which is truly Catholic. What this largely entails since the 13th century is a choice between Platonism and Thomism. But even before Thomas, this distinction between a spirituality which reaches upwards in imitation of Christ, as contrasted with that which seeks an illumination from within or below, is often starkly evident.
The History of Western Gnosticism is more complex than that of the East. It entails the unraveling down through the centuries of three fundamental intellectual aberrations, all of which are to be found in Plato.
The first of these consists in what is commonly called Platonic Idealism. The word "Idealism” is singularly appropriate since it denotes the fact that Plato taught that the Ideas of things are more real than the existing things themselves.
These Ideas exist ultimately in pure Forms which are completely separate from phenomena, but from which (somehow) the illusory shadow-land of our phenomenological world is derived. The penultimate Form is the Good, which is also the One from which all the other Forms are derived. In Plato’s Idealism we are therefore again confronted with the first principle of Gnosticism: the existence of an Absolute, completely separate and untouched by the world. There is no real explanation given by Plato for the decay away from the Ideal world (all men were once there – Plato definitely believed in the pre-existence of the human soul in complete union with this Ideal world) into the shadow-world of phenomena. Although there is some reference in Timaeus to the demiurge and to created gods, this is usually not considered something that can be taken seriously in Plato’s philosophy. We are left in other words with the same basic dilemma as exists in all forms of Gnosticism: how to account for a “decayed” world of finitude and phenomena somehow coming forth from an Absolute which is Infinitely perfect.
The second Gnostic principle integral to Plato’s philosophy is that Gnosis or “salvation” is not accomplished through receiving truth and grace from above, but is rather a Dialectical Process –an evolutionary process of uncovering that which is within. At this point we move from Plato’s metaphysics to his epistemology. The entire thrust of the Dialogues is upon revealing the dialectical process by which man is enabled to ascend from the delusional world of phenomena to the real world of Ideas. This obviously entails an ascent of gnosis.
As already mentioned, Plato believed that all men pre-existed in the real world of pure Forms or Ideas. Plato’s concept of gnosis is therefore established in the principle that all real knowledge is recollection (a process of “return”). The “ascent” to Gnosis is, consequently, a descent into remembering what man knew before he suffered a fall away into entrapment in a body and into the world of phenomena. This “recollection” is realized through a dialectical growth in knowledge ascending through four different levels: 1) the illusory world of phenomena; 2) knowledge of the physical sciences; 3) knowledge of mathematics; 4) all of this “dialectic” culminating in the final stage which is constituted as an intuitive, contemplative knowledge of the Pure Forms or Ideas.
In The Republic, Plato details the social engineering necessary in order that this evolutionary and hierarchical structure of gnosis might be reflected in an orderly society. All children are to be taken away from their parents in infancy and raised by the State. Depending upon abilities revealed in childhood, they are to be permanently assigned to one of the three classes , corresponding to the threefold structure of the human soul – rational, “spirited”, and appetitive. Even the elite – those who are born with the highest rational qualities to achieve such gnosis in this life – must be taken away from their homes in infancy and rigorously trained and elevated in knowledge through the four stages, this process hopefully culminating in true contemplation of the Ideas at about the age of 60, at which time they become worthy of the position of “philosopher-kings”. The vast majority of men never ascend above the first stage in this life, and of course those in stages 2 and 3 also do not reach true gnosis. Plato therefore believed in the transmigration of souls (reincarnation). In the Dialogue of Phaedo, Socrates even speculates that a villain in this life might come back as a wolf, or that a good citizen who never learned philosophy, but yet lived a disciplined life, might return as a bee, an ant, or a human being. The entire process to human fulfillment is thus to be seen as deeply embedded in evolutionary thinking concerning the ultimate destiny of the human soul.
The third principle, intimately tied to the second and providing the dynamic which leads to this dialectical, evolutionary growth in gnosis, is that of dialogue. All of Plato’s philosophical works come to us in the form of Dialogues. The Socratic Dialogue is maieutical. This term describes a teaching method based on the principal that truth and salvation is not something which is received from above, but rather must be born from something that is within man. The term is derived from the Greek word for obstetric. Truth is a birth accompanied by labor.
The essence of the Socratic method is therefore a dialectical dialogue in which opposing views are discussed on a specific issue in order to engage in a process of critical thinking which gives birth to a synthesis, which is constituted by an intuitive, contemplative gnosis of the Truth already existing within man. Presumably, all of this culminates in Gnosis of the One (the Good), this effecting the final Gnosis and liberation of the human soul.
It is characteristic of most Thomists that they see only Platonic Idealism, and not also the other two Platonic principles which I have mentioned above, as constituting the source of Gnostic thinking present in Catholic thought down through the centuries. This eviscerates our understanding of the depths of destruction inherent in Platonic thought, obscures our ability to perceive the three distinct expressions of Platonic Gnosticism as they present themselves in individual thinkers and movements, and undermines our ability to penetrate to the historical depths of our present crisis. As we shall see, it is in fact the merging of these three foundational aberrations in Catholic thought which culminates in Modernism, and the coming to fruition of Gnosticism in the West. This, in turn, is preparing the way for a merging of Catholic Gnosticism with that of the Eastern Orthodox, a union which, I believe, will facilitate the coming of Antichrist.
In The Republic Plato talks about the lost city of Atlantis. Atlantis, according to him, was a highly advanced society which was built on philosophical principles. It was ruled by a council of enlightened men who used mathematics to control the population and preserve order. Mysteriously, Atlantis was lost in the ocean.
Atlantis in fact represents rebellion against God and the society of man prior to the great flood. Atlantis being lost in the ocean is a symbol of the flood.
The modern world is called the New Atlantis (see Francis Bacon's the New Atlantis, written in Elizabethan England, where he essentially lays down the blueprints for the modern world, a society ruled by a priesthood of scientific experts who rule by knowlegde of nature's laws).
In other words, this idea of a society ruled by scientific knowledge, "gnosis", is very ancient. It has been passed down through the ages by the satanic cults that men like Plato and Francis Bacon were involved with. The Masons are the modern bearers of this ancient creed. It's the idea that man should be as God through knowledge, and should make up his own law and his own society without God. In other words, there's nothing knew under the sun. Feminism is witchcraft (some have gone so far as to call abortion a sacrament, which reveals the underlying demonic inspiration of Feminism).
Satan has been spreading this doctrine since the garden of Eden. He wants men to believe that they are sufficient to themselves and have no need of God's grace. Abortion is just one, a particularly abominable one, of the ways men have neglected divine and natural law to follow their own law, equipped with the power of science. Clinton has an ancient deep-seated belief of her own, the idea that man is his own God and can make paradise for himself through knowledge.
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