Part 2 Christian Cavemen The controversy over Carpocrates didn’t end with St. Irenaeus. St. Clement accuses the mischievous mystic of stealing a copy of “The Secret Gospel of Mark” from the Church library in Alexandria and adapting it to suit his “blasphemous and carnal” teachings. [5.] St. Clement doesn’t tell us what these teachings were, but since Carpocrates was an enthusiastic student of Platonic philosophy we can probably take an educated guess. “Secret Mark” has Jesus spending the night in a cave showing “the Kingdom of God” to a man He raised from the dead. Similarly, Plato’s “cave” myth compares ordinary waking life to imprisonment in a dark tunnel filled with flickering shadows, a pit we can only escape with the help of philosophy. Carpocrates probably combined the myth of “Plato’s Cave” with the teachings of “Secret Mark” and adapted them to an initiation ritual intended to lead his students to the eternal world outside the cave. Return to the Garden of Eden
God, Epiphanes argued, has provided sunlight and plant life – indeed, the whole planet – for our common use and enjoyment. In a world of such abundance, why would theft or jealousy even exist? These vices arose, Epiphanes concluded, when blind, ignorant men perverted God’s gifts by greedily insisting on private ownership. Given God’s limitless generosity, why did so many Christians insist on keeping their food, animals and land locked up, not to mention their wives? By selfishly refusing to share the benefits of matrimony with their fellow believers, weren’t they spiting the same God who blessed us with strong sexual drives and desires in the first place? Epiphanes had a novel response to the stifling traditions which had so provoked his father: When God told His chosen not to swap wives He must have been joking.
Sabotaging the Matrix Epiphanes’ subversive reading of Mosaic Law was shared by the Cainites, a mysterious second-century Christian group who took their name from Abel’s homicidal brother. The Cainites were not escapists like the Carpocratians or reformers like Epiphanes; instead we might describe them as saboteurs. Like many other Gnostic Christian groups, the Cainites believed the Earth we inhabit was a sort of cosmic prison or zoo, a labyrinth for the souls of the fallen and the lost ruled over by an incompetent and insane Demiurge. This Demiurge was identified with Yahweh, the wrathful creator god of Genesis. His mother was Sophia, the hidden Goddess of Wisdom. The Cainites rejected the diabolical Demiurge, looking instead to Sophia (the “superior power”) for guidance and protection. Like Yahweh, Sophia had chosen people of her own; through Cain, Judas, the Sodomites, and all of the other outcasts of the Old Testament, she worked tirelessly to undermine Yahweh’s authority. The Cainites were “strong” antinomians who treated sinning as a religious duty. Through the systematic violation of Yahweh’s moral laws, they sought to undo the actual physical laws (e.g., gravity, friction) which make life on Earth possible. The Cainites invoked angels while sinning for assistance, not forgiveness – in short, they were trying to sabotage the Matrix:
With their audacious pursuit of unspeakable acts, the Cainites seem to have anticipated the pessimistic neo-Platonism of Jean Baudrillard, the French postmodernist whose concept of simulation has so influenced contemporary science fiction: For example: it would be interesting to see whether the repressive apparatus would not react more violently to a simulated hold-up than to a real one? For the latter only upsets the order of things, the right of property, whereas the other… suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing more than a simulation. [8.] In a simulated world, neither crime nor punishment can exist in any meaningful way – how could they, when victims, police and money are all just different aspects of the same illusion? Conclusion The antinomian legacy is wreathed in paradox. What little we know about these rebellious holy men comes only from the reports of their enemies. What most Christians called “sins” the antinomian Gnostic called initiations – no wonder their message so horrified the establishment! Does might make right? Does power corrupt? Is pleasure a crime? Do the same rules apply equally to everyone? Are some laws higher than the laws of man? In a world where conventional morality defines civilian deaths as “collateral damage”, prejudice as a “family value”, and pregnancy as an “epidemic,” we may find ourselves agreeing with Bataille’s poignant plea for collective awakening when he writes:
Where nothing is true and everything is permitted, the antinomian becomes the only moralist worth listening to. Perhaps these ancient heretics still have something to teach us today after all.
© Copyright 2005 by New Dawn Magazine. This article first appeared in New Dawn No. 85 (July-August 2004). For further information visit www.newdawnmagazine.com
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Carpocrates’ goal was to escape from the universe; his son Epiphanes sought to reform it instead. A teenage prodigy whose radical views on marriage and property have influenced generations of Christian freethinkers, Epiphanes set out his philosophy in a revolutionary essay called “On Righteousness and Justice.”
The antinomian path asks difficult questions. Can we make ourselves pure by wallowing in impurity? What is pure? What is impure? What is sin? What is not? 
