In "The Gnostic Paul," Scripture Scholar Elaine Pagels presents a "Gnostic Exegisis
of the Pauline Letters" from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The central
thrust of the book is that in the early Christian church Paul and his followers had
to deal with two different types of persons having remarkable different spiritualities
and cognitive capabilities. The first group, which the Apostle Paul describes as
"psychics," are perhaps not psychics in the sense that we understand that term
today, that is, persons with clairvoyant or clairaudient abilities, instead, they
seem to be personality types who, consistent with depth psychologist Carl Jungs
work and the Myers Briggs Personality Test, have dominantly sensate personality
types. These type of persons, according to the Apostle Paul, are bound by the
law of the Pseudo-God, the Demiurge. They lack the ability to see into or
experience a world of intellectual and spiritual depth. The psychics, however,
are to contrasted with the "pneumatics." The pneumatics, it would seem,
correspond to "intuitive types," as described in Jungian Psychology, and the
Myers Briggs Test. The pneumatics, because they have greater intellectual and
spiritual depth, are not bound by the law in the same way that the psychics are.
They seemingly live by a higher law. Perhaps, using the work of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, one could say that the pneumatics are bound by Divine Law (ethical law) and the psychics are bound by natural law (moral law). This is an excellent book,
and can be read by one who does not have a background in scripture scholarship.