Lecture I

Now you know that the doctrine which is outmoded today but which in the early centuries sought to preserve the threefold division of man and the cosmos was Gnosticism.[^4] In later centuries Gnosticism was proscribed and finally suppressed so that it disappeared completely. I do not say that it ought to have survived; I simply wish to register the historical fact that Gnosticism held promise of a spiritual conception of a Mystery of Golgotha and was ultimately suppressed. Events now took a strange turn. Roman traditionalism was increasingly influenced by Christianity and the further this influence penetrated the less Rome understood its relationship to the “spiritual man”, and certain gnostic Christians gave increasing offence by continuing to speak of body, soul and spirit. In circles where Catholic Christianity had become the official religion there were repeated attempts to suppress the idea of the spirit. They felt that all reference co the spirit should be ignored, otherwise the old ideas of the tripartite division of man might revive again. So matters pursued their course. When we make a careful study of the early Christian centuries we find that many problems that are usually accounted for in other ways are seen in their true light when we realize that, as Christianity fell increasingly under the influence of Rome, the avowed object of Rome was progressively to eliminate the idea of the spirit. When we recognize that Western Christianity had of necessity to dethrone the spirit, innumerable questions of conscience and of epistomology are resolved. And this development ultimately led to the eighth Ecumenical Council of 869.[^5] This Council laid down a dogma according to which it was contrary to Christianity to speak of body, soul and spirit, but truly Christian to speak of man as consisting of body and soul alone. The actual wording may not have been quite so explicit, but was later interpreted in this way. At first the Council simply stated that man possessed an intellectual soul and a spiritual soul. This formula was coined to avoid any reference to the spirit as a special entity, for the avowed object of the Council was to suppress all knowledge of the spirit.