Johannes wrote:
One matter of substance on which I'm opposed to her is the way that she attacks the very category of "Gnosticism". As we both know, this is the oldest academic ploy in the book - you tug on the loose threads of a category until it unravels in your hands and meaning disappears amidst free-floating diversity. You end up proving that there's actually no such thing as Protestantism, or feminism, or Britishness, or whatever. It's a cheap grad student trick. Yes, well done, now can you start the actual scholarship, please?
Ah, yes. That has been a fashionable strategy for a while. It caught my fancy in grad school. But extreme skepticism provides very little payoff in the long run. I have no dog in this fight, but I tend to think Gnosticism was a real phenomenon. Really I am taken with the existence of many strands of ancient Christianity that fell by the wayside more or less. The Didache is fascinating. Origen’s fall from theological favor. Simon Magus. Adoption theology. So many fascinating byways of Christianity over the centuries.