Gnostic anthropology: The contempt for the body

Abstract

This article explores the topic of the body in Valentinian Gnosticism by situating bodies in the context of the rupture with the Pleroma. It examines the concept of the body, beginning with a conceptual analysis of it within the framework of contempt for the body, and culminating in the text’s central discussion of a re-semantized androgyny. It is argued that this re-educates bodies in Gnosticism, Catholicism, and Costa Rican Neo-Pentecostalism. It also does so within the framework of Platonism, which is key—especially in Timaeus, Symposium, and Phaedo. From this arise Gnostic ideas about the human being as a model within the communal structure of the Great Church. Likewise, Neo-Pentecostalism, in its view of the body, emphasizes sin as a category that reveals human frailty within the framework of an anthropological pessimism—very much in the Gnostic style—that renders humans incapable of intervening in their own salvation. In short, the degradation of sexuality stigmatizes the body and serves as a pretext for using it as a political tool to control sexual emancipation (abortion and sexual and reproductive health, for example) on the Costa Rican political agenda.