Is there Gnosticism in The Matrix?
Some might argue that this movie represents a gnostic form of Christianity. Gnosticism was a Christian heresy strongly condemned by the Apostle John in I John. The physical world, its attractions, its temptations, were for the gnostic repulsive; he wanted to escape from the physical world. Before death, how does one do that? Gnostics believed in knowledge as salvation. Knowledge is not the key to salvation, but it is a part. The knowledge of Christ, the knowledge of the need one has for a savior, the knowledge of God’s power to save and His authority to forgive, etc. All this knowledge is key to our faith and our salvation. Gnosticism was different. Gnosticism held to an idea that if we just realized that what we’re living in is not real, then we will live above “the real.” The gnostics sometimes even denied that Christ died or that he had lived in a human body; he just appeared as a specter and seemed to live in a body. And he didn’t really die; he just moved on to the spiritual world to which he belonged. All rank falsehoods that completely undermine the Christian faith. In the movie, Morpheus speaks of “the desert of the real,” and Neo is told by a child who can bend spoons with his mind to try to believe the truth, that there is no spoon.