Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-10-03 Gnosis


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Request details
That a third-party explain Wikipedia's NPOV policy to the User. That a third-party ask the User to remove his link to Eric Voegelin.

Who are the involved parties?
and myself

What's going on?
The article, Gnosis, is about spiritual knowledge (the meaning of the word gnosis) as it is understood in two different spiritual traditions of the Eastern mediterranean. One of these traditions is Orthodox Christianity and the other is a tradition that is today called 'Gnosticism', an umbrella term for several traditions united by a common theological perspective (see article Gnosticism). Gnosticism has existed throughout Egypt, the Near East, Persia and Iraq from a time before the Christian era.

During the early history of Christianity the church was in conflict with the Gnostic sects (because they were so popular) and there was a veritable propaganda war on both sides. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire the gnostic sects were persecuted and their writings were destroyed. For many centuries what passed as knowledge about the gnostic sects was largely anti-gnostic propaganda from the church. During the course of the twentieth century scholars began to try to see gnosticism within its own terms and not as the church wished to present it, namely, as simply erroneous heresy. One of the pioneering scholars in this was Hans Jonas (a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City) whose book, The Gnostic Religion, was the most widely read general work on gnosticism from the late fifties to the early nineteen eighties.

The dispute for which I am requesting arbitration is that the above editor, User: LoveMonkey, (with whom I am in dispute) a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, has been consistently attempting to write this article from one perspective, namely, that of Eastern Orthodoxy. As such, his contributions have tried to diminish the integrity and authenticity of the spiritual knowledge of gnosticism as against the 'true' and correct knowledge of Orthodox Christianity. This is against Wikipedia's NPOV policy and is disrupting my organised efforts to develop the article in a balanced way. Things came to a head when I posted a section ('Gnosis according to Hans Jonas'; see article) from Jonas' book called 'The Nature of Gnostic Knowledge'. The User:LoveMonkey then posted under the title of this section a link to Eric Voegelin, a man who has tried in his writings to associate Gnosticism with Nazism. My contention is that even if the editor wishes to create a link to Eric Voegelin this is not the place to do it. This article is about the concept and use of the word gnosis not any supposed relationship between gnostic theology and political ideology. Each time I removed the offending link he replaced it without even attempting to give an explanation. I requested that he at least explain why he was putting the link there. His excuse is that Voegelin wrote Jonas a letter (that is what the link is actually to) but when you read that letter you will see that it has absolutely nothing to do with this article.

What would you like to change about that?
Please explain to the User that Wikpedia operates an NPOV policy and that articles must represent a worldwide perspective and not one of a particular creed. Please explain that the link to Eric Voegelin does not belong in the section 'Gnosis according to Hans Jonas' and therefore should be removed.