At the most recent Conclave of the Apostolic Johannite Church, the guest lecturer was renowned Gnosticism scholar Dr. Birger Pearson, author of Ancient Gnosticism and other gems.
To me, this seems evidence of a church – indeed a wider movement – continually challenging itself on its assumptions. Using research and consulting with the top authorities in the world to confront and verify and deepen our understanding of this rich and vastly complex scriptural legacy.
Of course many of the issues that keep my inbox full (monism/dualism, panentheism, a Pleroma that is in fact a Pleroma) were settled by scholarship in the 80s, and generally settling on the three-act-structure model (monist in origin, temporary and qualified dualism, yielding to synthesis and liberation), pre-Christian origins and "nothing whatsoever outside the Pleroma" which I've illustrated on this blog ad nauseam. But it's healthy to not just consult scholarship as a way of proof-texting or shoring up assumptions, but to actually break bread with researchers and wander through the subtleties and nuances that make this field so fascinating and rewarding.
We're none of us "neognostics" any more than 21st century Christians are "neochristians" or contemporary Jews are "neojews". We're looking (examining, pondering, questioning, theorizing, reinterpreting) critically at our roots, at the context of authorship and both personal and collective relevance, and using this knowledge to further our own spiritual maturation. Traditional academic scholarship is by no means the only valid way of looking at Gnostic scripture – art and liturgy, psychology and intuition help complete a picture that would otherwise be skeletal and possibly misleading – but it's a good idea to make sure periodically that we've got our Greek (and Coptic) right.
