One of the words used to describe WoF teaching is “Gnostic”, suggesting that it’s nothing more than the modern equivalent of the second century heresy of Gnosticism.
The words “Gnostic” and “Gnosticism” are taken from the Greek word gnosis, which means “knowledge”. It’s where we get the word “agnostic”, which means “one who doesn’t know”, usually in reference to the existence of God.
Before we can determine if there’s any merit to the charge that WoF teaching is Gnostic we should first of all define what Gnosticism was (or is, since some still adhere to it). Let’s take the definition provided by a popular apologetics site when they weren’t busy attacking the WoF. They say that the Gnostics taught that
“The unknowable God was far too pure and perfect to have anything to do with the material universe which was considered evil. Therefore, God generated lesser divinities, or emenations. One of these emanations, Wisdom desired to know the unknowable God. Out of this erring desire the demiurge an evil god was formed and it was this evil god that created the universe. He along with archons kept the mortals in bondage in material matter and tried to prevent the pure spirit souls from ascending back to god after the death of the physical bodies. Since, according to the Gnostics, matter is evil, deliverance from material form was attainable only through special knowledge revealed by special Gnostic teachers. Christ was the divine redeemer who descended from the spiritual realm to reveal the knowledge necessary for this redemption. In conclusion, Gnosticism is dualistic. That is, it teaches there is a good and evil, spirit and matter, light and dark, etc. dualism in the universe.”
Heavy, huh? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard anybody in the WoF movement teaching anything remotely resembling this. If they were to start teaching this I’d tune them out and label them a heretic myself.
To be fair, the critics will focus on a couple of aspects of Gnosticism – secret knowledge and dualism – rather than the freaky evil god and the archons part. So let’s take a look at those two points.
1. Secret Knowledge – The secret knowledge of the Gnostics was necessary in order to attain deliverance from the material form (their definition of salvation) and ascending back to god. The critics hear WoF people talking about “revelation knowledge” and conclude that they’re talking about the same thing. They’re not.
“Revelation knowledge” was a term coined by E. W. Kenyon in his book Two Kinds of Knowledge, where he contrasted sense knowledge with revelation knowledge. What he was saying in essence was that sense knowledge goes by what the senses can detect, but revelation knowledge goes by faith in the truths revealed in the Word of God. A good example of sense knowledge would be Thomas, who needed to see and touch Jesus to believe that He was alive. A good example of revelation knowledge would be Abraham, who didn’t consider the age of his body (which would indicate that he was too old to father a child), but believed the promise of God that he was to become the father of multitudes through his wife Sarah. The only thing that this kind of revelation knowledge has in common with Gnosticism is the word “knowledge”.
The Bible talks a lot about knowledge, so simply using the word doesn’t make one a heretic. God said that His people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. (Hosea 4:6) Ephesians 4:13 says that we need to come into the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. We shouldn’t shy away from talking about knowledge just because a first century cult used the word.
The other way that the term “revelation knowledge” is used is in regard to visions, revelations, or illumination to scripture. Visions are perfectly scriptural. On the day of Pentecost Peter quoted the prophet Joel, saying that in the last days young men would see visions. (Acts 2:17) Paul talked about the gift of the Spirit called “the word of knowledge” in I Corinthians 12:8. Unless you’re a cessationist (one who rejects the belief in modern manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit) you shouldn’t have any problem with the idea of God revealing things to people, as long as the revelation is consistent with the canon of Scripture we already have. This kind of revelation knowledge is seen in the life of Peter, to whom Jesus said the Father had revealed Jesus’ identity as the Christ. (Mat. 16:17)
Regardless of which definition we’re talking about, both are biblical and neither are the secret knowledge of the Gnostics. Nobody in the WoF movement that I’m aware of teaches that secret knowledge or revelation knowledge is essential for salvation, other than the revelation that comes from hearing the gospel preached. To the contrary, getting saved is easy. You just confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead. (Rom. 10:9,10)
2. Dualism – According to the same apologetics group, dualism is seen in the Taoist concept of Yin and Yang. It’s the belief that there are two equal and opposite forces engaged in an eternal conflict. (Think “The Force” in Star Wars.) The Gnostic concept of dualism said that matter is evil and spirit is good. Nobody to my knowledge is saying that in the WoF world. To the contrary, there are evil spirits that we deal with every day who try to suppress the truth and oppress mankind. Most WoF teachers believe in casting out devils, which I believe would qualify as “spirit” and which are definitely bad. What we believe is that God is good and Satan is evil, and the two have their own kingdoms but Satan will eventually be cast into the lake of fire and God’s kingdom will never end. This is the biblical view which has been referred to as a modified form of moral dualism, but that’s about as close as you’ll come to finding anything “dualistic” in the WoF.
It’s been my experience that people who throw out terms like Gnosticism and don’t bother to define them or provide evidence to support their claims are usually just repeating what they’ve heard somebody else say. It’s like people calling somebody a Nazi because they believe in a reasonable amount of censorship. Unless you’re promoting nationalism and committing genocide I don’t think you qualify as a Nazi, and unless you’re promoting the idea that spirit is good and matter is evil because it was created by an evil god and we need to attain secret knowledge to escape the material world and make it to the original heaven then I don’t think you qualify as a Gnostic.