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Their Christianity was a ‘Gnosis’, a ‘knowledge’ of the divine mysteries and a sermon. Their leader was the Word who teaches and not the god-man who suffers.
Like Plato’s Saving God, he saved by the Truth, neither by expiation nor martyrdom.
Catharism went so far as suppressing the cross of the suffering, taking away the crucified and veiling Calvary with a cloud.
As Gnostics, the Cathars had been led to that negation by their philosophical concept of the origin of all things.
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Reason has never been able to explain the simultaneous coexistence of the infinite and the finite, of God and the world. If the Spirit is Being, Matter is nothingness. If the Spirit is Goodness, Matter is Evil, that is to say, non-being. As God is the infinite Being, flesh is only a shadow, the world an appearance, destiny a grim, but phantasmagoric drama !
Hence, ideas which deeply modified their theology, their morals, their cult and their behaviour. It does suffice to note that :
The Cathar Christ was not a man;
His body was bright and ethereal;
He did not physically suffer on the cross;
He was not really crucified on Calvary just as the Lamb is not really sacrificed on the celestial altar of the Apocalypse. |
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