I think so. The Hebrew name "Yeshua" (which when you mangle it through Greek into Latin and then into English becomes "Jesus") after all means "salvation", so I think it's a bit core.
Firstly, I'm drawn to ask what salvation might mean to a first century Jew. By the Second Temple period the People of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt and then exiled to and kept captive in Babylon, so I think that salvation always has a resonance of being saved from captivity or slavery. In Greek "soter" has the same resonance, but I think it also carries a sense of healing or making whole or well.
To stick with the paleo- & proto-Gnostic period, how about looking at the "Hymn of the Pearl" in which our hero is kept captive in "Egypt" by being lulled into unconsciousness and living as one of the sleepy Egyptians. He is saved by a letter from his parents and a visit from his brother, which wakes him up and begins his journey of return.
In the "Exegesis on the Soul", the soul leaves her father's house and falls among bad men in the marketplace and becomes the lover of many of them before crying out for salvation. She is assured that her bridegroom is coming and so she withdraws to her bridal chamber, draws in on herself and waits with gathered anticipation for His arrival.
Both (and I'm indebted to Andrew Philip Smith in his "Gnostic Writings on the Soul" for this interpretation) stories are often taken to refer to the salvation of the soul by its joining with the Spirit in the journey of return.
So. What are we saved from? From ignorance of our spiritual nature, from moment-by-moment forgetfulness of that same knowledge, from endlessly allowing our soul to be drawn out into mindless distraction rather than drawing it inward in the journey of return to unitive consciousness.
That, for me, is the place of Salvation in Gnostic Christianity.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
What does Salvation mean to you? Does the concept of salvation have a place in Gnostic Christianity?
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