I agree that there is a lot of “counter-Gnosticism” found by many Catholics today. One of the reasons I started this series was that I wanted to deal with that very fact. But because I began to feel that most people would not be familiar with Gnosticism and its traces throughout the centuries, it would be difficult to make all the connections.

Also — and I think most theologians would agree — not all of Gnosticism is in error. I am not trying to make that argument. There is a lot the Gnostics brought up which needed to be dealt with; I don’t always think their solutions are valid — sometimes they are completely erroneous, sometimes they are only partial truths. So, as you will see, I am consistently pointing out how Vladimir Solovyov is himself highly influenced by the Gnostics (he admitted it himself; he made an explicit study of the Sophia texts!), on the other hand, he is a major influence in my own theological reflections. I am a Sophiologist as well — although I incorporate the more developed forms of Florensky and Bulgakov — into a very inter-religious format when I engage my own Sophiological thoughts.

Your discussion of Balthasar has some merit: I think Balthasar on many points is onto something and rightfully deserves his mantle of “great,” but he does often write things which make me go “huh?” His discussion of Buddhism is always the case — but it is quite understandable and forgiveable. But in this passage you quoted, I would be clear that Balthasar is not thinking of “rape,” though I can see how it could sound like it out of context. The question is always one of free will: how does Christ woo us while we still have a corrupted free will — to give validity to our will and yet to the work of real love? And bridal mysticism goes back to Song of Songs, and is often a reflection of anyone, including men, in relation to God. I too find such theological discussion, or “the priest, in the role of Christ, is the male therefore can’t be married” discussions invalid (being Byzantine where we have married priests, you can see how I would strongly disagree with that symbolism).

But I do think the issue of women priests is a different, and diffifcult issue; the discussion as you said can become very gnostic-like — and from people on both sides of the debate. Gender is more than an accident, otherwise the Gnostics are right. But what this means is something I think we are all still discovering. I’ve said before to my friends that I think “Sophiological” investigations can help begin to sort things out here… but I am not there yet (and not sure if it will ever be in my theological work, since I have many other concerns I want to work with, especially inter-religious comparative theological themes).

As for neo-paganism, I follow with CS Lewis: would it were so, would that the world would become more pagan. Then things could slowly come back on track!

“Mary said to them, ‘Let St. Bernard leave us, for men are not worthy of life’ But Jesus said ‘I myself shall lead him in order to make him female, so that he may become a bride resembling you females, for every man who makes himself female will enter the kingdom of heaven’”

With one hand everything is given to women, with another hand it is taken away. Men can appropriate all the female, “bridal” symbolism to themselves, despite being men. since symbolising the “bride in the nave” does not require the possession of an actual female body, but women cannot appropriate the male, “groomal” symbolism, since symbolising the “groom in the sanctuary at the altar” requires possession of an actual male body. (Although it is never specified what constitutes a male body: just as well, as there are, I believe, human beings who can have an XY chromosome, but appear physically female: luckily none of these individuals has, as far as we know, ever expressed a calling to holy orders!)

All waffling on about “the unique vocation of women” is completely meaningless if everything that is identified as specifically feminine can then be symbolically appropriated by men, but not vice versa. The actual, as opposed to symbolic, female body is, qua female, never grounds for inclusion, only exclusion, and cannot be fully taken up into the sacramental economy, since by being excluded from holy orders, there is thus something irreducibly irredeemable about it that cannot be transformed into Christ-likeness.

I fear that in reaction against the revival of both Gnosticism and neo-pagan pantheism (“I am all that is, ever was, and ever shall be, and no mortal has ever lifted my veil”) the Church has inadvertently created a counter-Gnosticism of its own, in which God is inherently “male”, and the creation is inherently “female”, and as such women are no longer made in the image of God, but only in the image of creation responding to God. What’s worse, by defining “maleness” as activity, donativity, control, domination, speech, power etc, and “femaleness” as passivity, receptivity, submission, silence, powerlessness etc., it forces upon us a very unpleasant theological Hobson’s Choice. Either the inherently “male” characteristics of God pertain only to the economy of salvation, thus violating Rahner’s rule and postulating a deus absconditus who is not disclosed in the economy, or they pertain to the immanent as well as the economic Trinity, thus making the world eternal, and the fourth member of a Holy Quaternity, since an eternal subject must have an eternal object, and thus the goal of the economy, namely theosis, is already achieved from all eternity, thus rendering the economy pointless!

It also leads to a resurgence of neo-pagan hieros gamos modes of thought, in which the redemptive process is imagined in highly sexual terms, not least in von Balthasar, in that infamous passage in Heart of the World in which he imagines Christ practically raping his reluctant Bride (“Never has Woman made such desperate resistance!”) and elsewhere where he explicity likens the Passion of Christ on Calvary to penile ejaculation! All very Enuma Elish, but utterly alien to the authentic orthodox vision of “ontological peace” which set all such things aside. If for no other reason than the psychological consequences of this sort of model for clergy and laity alike, these sorts of things have got to be addressed! Unfortunately this is an issue where even the most elegant and eloquent defenders of unrepentantly classical Catholicism (one thinks, over this side of the pond, of that one man Dominican publishing house Aidan Nichols OP) end up talking utter tosh!

No, I have not read it. My Gnostic studies have been reading primary texts (Nag Hammadi), the classics written against it (Irenaeus, Clement, etc) and systematic works which addressed its claims (Aquinas, Balthasar, etc). There is always more one could read, of course.