A Biblical Defense of Gnosticism

Obviously, I am not going to defend the early heresy of Gnosticism. That ancient movement held that the material world was not truly real, that it was an illusion. The inevitable theological fallout of that position was the denial that Jesus bodily rose from the grave. It was condemned as a heresy then, and it remains a heresy today.

Yet there is a particular concept that has come along with Gnosticism that I think gets misapplied to Christians and to biblical theology today: the notion of secret knowledge.

The historical Gnostics possessed an elaborate myth concerning the creation of the world. It was a remarkably complex story, and whenever someone became initiated into a Gnostic sect, they were given this esoteric cosmological account. That transmission constituted their secret knowledge.

Ever since then, whenever someone reads the Bible or offers an interpretation of reality that seems fanciful—or whenever someone points out a deeper layer of meaning that sits beneath what is prima facie on the surface of the text, such as a subtle piece of symbolism or biblical typology—people will castigate it. You will frequently hear folks dismiss it by saying, “Well, that’s kind of Gnostic. That sounds like secret knowledge. You just want to claim some special status by knowing things others don’t.” And so the reading gets immediately dismissed.

I think that dismissal is completely mistaken, because in a very real sense, all knowledge is secret knowledge.

The Hidden Architecture of the World

What do I mean by that? Simply this: before you know something, you don’t know it. Knowledge does not simply present itself immediately to your mind. You have to go out into the world and actively find it out. You have to read a book, or you have to conduct experiments on the physical world. Knowledge is not merely lying out in the open on the surface.

It is not as though truth is just casually sitting here, completely accessible without any effort. When you reflect on it, it is genuinely surprising how God has created the cosmos, specifically in the way He has deliberately hidden the truths of the world.

There is a famous quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of a ruse.” God has indeed hidden deep secrets within the fabric of creation.

Take Einstein’s own discovery: $E = mc^2$. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. That equation describes an objective structure of our universe. It expresses the real, fundamental relationship between foundational forces. Yet it took humanity thousands of years, along with an immense amount of trial and error, to finally figure it out. That principle was hidden in the world the entire time. It was not written on the bark of a tree for someone to casually read. God shows; He does not merely tell. Occasionally He tells, but far more often, He shows.

Another illustration I like to return to often is the fascinating way God has structured the created world into distinct layers or strata. Consider physics, chemistry, and biology. Each of these represents a different stratum of reality. Each layer possesses its own intelligible, internal structure, and each is intimately related to the levels directly above and below it.

Yet in and of itself, each stratum operates as its own distinct world, effectively hidden from the next. Just because you possess an exhaustive knowledge of biology does not mean you understand chemistry. And just because you grasp chemistry does not mean you automatically understand physics. These are interpenetrating yet distinct domains of reality, and their workings are hidden from one another. It is remarkable to observe how thoroughly God has built hiddenness into creation.

The Glory of Kings to Search Out a Matter

Turning to the Scriptures, we find this exact theme stated explicitly. There are the familiar texts, such as Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children.” But we can see this dynamic at work even outside of those explicit declarations.

Consider the overarching structural progression in the book of Proverbs. There are two massive collections of Solomon’s proverbs in that book. In the very first collection, the opening verse begins with what sounds like a simple ethical observation:

A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
(Proverbs 10:1)

When you read that, you think, “Okay, that makes immediate sense. If you act righteously, your father is pleased; if you act foolishly, your mother grieves.” It feels like a straightforward, self-evident moral axiom.

Yet as you move through the book toward the second major Solomonic collection, the tone shifts dramatically. The very first proverb of that second collection opens like this:

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.
(Proverbs 25:2)

That should stop you in your tracks. Earlier in the book, we were dealing with simple, practical truisms about a son bringing joy to his parents. But as the book develops and the proverbs grow in complexity, Solomon suddenly declares that God deliberately conceals things, and that your royal vocation is to search them out.

Many people assume Proverbs is merely a handbook of simple moral slogans meant for young children. It contains those, certainly. But as the book matures, it reveals something far deeper: all true knowledge is initially hidden, and pursuing it is a great journey of discovery. As Aristotle famously opened his Metaphysics: all men by nature desire to know.

Growing Into the Image of God

This naturally leads us to ask: why? Why did God choose to structure reality this way? It did not have to be like this. God could have simply implanted all necessary knowledge directly into our minds and souls from the start. He could have written everything out plainly and explicitly, leaving nothing to be uncovered.

One central reason is that God is working to mature us into full manhood, to use the apostle Paul’s terminology. We are designed to grow up into the full, mature image of God. And He accomplishes that maturation precisely through this arduous journey of knowledge and discovery.

God desires for us to work with the created world just as He worked with it in the beginning. In the opening chapter of Genesis, God performed immense creative labor. He separated elements, gathered things together, formed structures, and evaluated the work each day, calling it good. He took raw potential and continually brought greater order, beauty, and excellence out of it.

Then He declared His intention to create humanity in the image of God. What does being the image of God actually mean? That is a profound question with many dimensions, but at the very least, it means doing what God spent those first six days doing: actively engaging with the world, ordering it, cultivating it, and making it better. It means discovering the latent truth and hidden wisdom embedded deep within creation.

So yes, in this sense, all knowledge is secret knowledge before it is uncovered. The critical question is never whether an insight is hidden, but whether that hidden knowledge is actually true. God has designed us to attain truth through faithful labor—one of the earliest vocations He ever gave us. It is an enthralling, thrilling task, inviting us to step into the world on a lifelong journey of discovery.

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