Christianity and Gnosticism

[white pegasus]

sky- I do not have a problem-Honza-it doesn't matter-

Im literally laughing out loud right now as I read your response sky-I have no problem nor an issue-all is well.carry on.lol

[Nowayout]

The one who has the last laugh laughs the best, I guess.

Maybe the demiurge has a wildcard yet to play.


Anyway, jumping in a little late, a bit about me, God if you like.

I was raised Christain, a Roman Catholic, I became a novice Trappist monk for a year because I am a mystic at heart. God within... I get it.

The cloistered life, that was just too much for me but I have all the respect in the world for anyone who can cut that way of life.

So became an Orthodox Christian for many years, I love their liturgies and devotion to the holy Theotokos.. I get it.

But then always striving for the truth I stumbled upon the Gnostics this year and I'm very moved by this Christian way?

Been very moved by this community... http://www.apostolicgnosis.org/advent-sunday.html

I even had conversations with a Priest there and was instructed to read the books " The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels, and "Gnosticism new light on the ancient traditions of inner knowing" by Stephan A Hoeller, all good reading.

The Christian Gnostics were persecuted by the emperor Constantine when he established the Christian church as the state religion for reasons already posted. The Gnostics were frowned upon by many other Christian factions because they said the Christian martyrs where fools before the time of Constantine in emperor Nero's day, they maintained it was more important to find God within than to have your life destroyed for blind faith?

Anyway, I like this little youtube take on Gnosticism by Ted Nottingham.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annota...&v=lE5MFF2UNB4

Anway... I am that I am.

Oh.... and I'm in love with Sophia.

[Nowayout]

Looking at it all and a picture is worth a thousand words.

Life is a mystery beyond our rather simplistic understanding.

But who knows what doors will soon be opened....

[django]

Originally Posted by Nowayout

The one who has the last laugh laughs the best, I guess.

Maybe the demiurge has a wildcard yet to play.


Anyway, jumping in a little late, a bit about me, God if you like.

I was raised Christain, a Roman Catholic, I became a novice Trappist monk for a year because I am a mystic at heart. God within... I get it.

The cloistered life, that was just too much for me but I have all the respect in the world for anyone who can cut that way of life.

So became an Orthodox Christian for many years, I love their liturgies and devotion to the holy Theotokos.. I get it.

But then always striving for the truth I stumbled upon the Gnostics this year and I'm very moved by this Christian way?

Been very moved by this community... http://www.apostolicgnosis.org/advent-sunday.html

I even had conversations with a Priest there and was instructed to read the books " The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels, and "Gnosticism new light on the ancient traditions of inner knowing" by Stephan A Hoeller, all good reading.

The Christian Gnostics were persecuted by the emperor Constantine when he established the Christian church as the state religion for reasons already posted. The Gnostics were frowned upon by many other Christian factions because they said the Christian martyrs where fools before the time of Constantine in emperor Nero's day, they maintained it was more important to find God within than to have your life destroyed for blind faith?

Anyway, I like this little youtube take on Gnosticism by Ted Nottingham.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annota...&v=lE5MFF2UNB4

Anway... I am that I am.

Oh.... and I'm in love with Sophia.

Do you believe that Jesus said what he is claimed to have said in the gnostic literature? Do you believe he was a 'gnostic'?

[VinceField]

Watch this to learn the truth about Gnosticism and its relationship with Christianity https://youtu.be/pDyl1qrpj_Q

[Nowayout]

Originally Posted by django

Do you believe that Jesus said what he is claimed to have said in the gnostic literature? Do you believe he was a 'gnostic'?

I have been listening to this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQUHXfqR6I the gospel of Thomas, and I personly feel drawn to it. It resonates within me.

The texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt have been studied by Christian scholars and I believe have been considered authentic for the time period.

Are these truly the words of the Christ? How can we know without a doubt? Don't forget that the only things Jesus actually wrote were in the sand...

The gospels of Mark, Mathew, Luke, and John... where they the "actual words" of the Christ.?

Was Jesus a Gnostic? Gnosis relates to knowledge, especially esoteric mystical knowledge. So in that sense, yes.

[Nowayout]

Originally Posted by VinceField

Watch this to learn the truth about Gnosticism and its relationship with Christianity https://youtu.be/pDyl1qrpj_Q

Hey, that's 6 hours I don't have to spare.. I know very little about the DaVinci codes... so much to work through.

Anyway, I have read much on the Gnostic topic already from good sources, I'm rather convinced of what I have studied thus far.

But life is full of new revelations, I once thought the Orthodox Chruch was the best representation of Christianity that I could find, I now have seen other Possibilities.

Anyway, what do we need to do to be saved? Is that not what this is all about? Does salvation flow from the Christ alone? Is salvation not a matter or disposition of the heart? I pray and I meditate on this daily. I don't agree with the fundamentalistic Christain thinking that it's only through confessing Jesus as Lord that one is saved.

We find God within our hearts and in the world.

Anyway, forgive my ramblings, the truth is out there. It must be, regardless of all the views.

I have felt Gods grace as tranquility, peace, love, and light. And I have seen the same wisdom in many other good people, all types from all walks of life.

Pick a path... the top of the mountain is over there I guess.

[django]

Originally Posted by Nowayout

I have been listening to this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQUHXfqR6I the gospel of Thomas, and I personly feel drawn to it. It resonates within me.

The texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt have been studied by Christian scholars and I believe have been considered authentic for the time period.

Which Christian scholars consider the gnostic texts to be authentic? From what I have read they are believed to be gnostic interpretations of the meaning of Jesus. I did read recently that both the gospels of John and Thomas were interpretations of the meaning of Jesus found in the synoptics:

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Thomas is just a name on a list, but John turns him into the one who never gets it. In Chapter 14, when Jesus says he's departing, Thomas says, "We don't know where you're going. How can we know the way?" And Jesus says the famous words: "I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me." So get that, Thomas: except through me.

In Matthew and Luke, after Jesus' Resurrection, he appears to all the disciples except Judas Iscariot. But in John's gospel, Thomas isn't there. So his legitimacy as a teacher is completely undermined.

And when the apostles tell Thomas that they saw Jesus, he doesn't believe it. Thomas is pictured as not having faith. So Jesus comes back and tells Thomas not to be faithless. In John's Doubting Thomas story, Thomas is converted to John's point of view.

These are really dueling gospels. They are different understandings of the teachings of Jesus at the end of the first century.

Both John and Thomas are interpretations...

Any other gnostic text will be written later again than these two, and are further riffing on a gnostic theme, and introducing new gnostic ideas. Gnostics were renowned for using biblical names as authors on their late authored texts that were 'mystically' received or imagined.

Originally Posted by Nowayout

Are these truly the words of the Christ? How can we know without a doubt? Don't forget that the only things Jesus actually wrote were in the sand...

The gospels of Mark, Mathew, Luke, and John... where they the "actual words" of the Christ.?

Was Jesus a Gnostic? Gnosis relates to knowledge, especially esoteric mystical knowledge. So in that sense, yes.

[django]

Originally Posted by VinceField

Watch this to learn the truth about Gnosticism and its relationship with Christianity https://youtu.be/pDyl1qrpj_Q

This is a great resource thanks for posting the link Vince.

"In gnosticism Adam has the divine spark, Eve doesn't. Eve is less than Adam, she is less than divine, to a gnostic." At 21 minutes in.

Yahweh according to gnosticism was birthed by Sophia who is the lowest of the Aeons, Yahweh creates the earth and Adam, and creating Adam is recognised as a mistake by Sophia, who then feels sorry for Adam and places the divine spark of the True God in him. Adam can then follow this divine spark within him to reunite with the Aeons and God.

"Gnosticism has Jesus as a created being [the highest Aeon in fact] who is above the God of the old testament [Yahweh] who is bad... the earth was created evil."

[Nowayout]

Adam and Eve.. they are a myth or an allegory pointing at a truth, the way the human condition began. Same goes for the Demiurge, Sophia, the fall from the pleroma. This is the Gnostic view as alegory.. it's not historical facts from what I have read. The Orthodox Church also believes Adam and Eve were an allegory.

Where is Heaven, give me the location and how do I get there

All words, revelations, and ideas trying to conceptualize the un-conceptual.

So to try to make concrete arguments about these "allegories" seems rather silly to me.

The God of the old testament, what a vile, vengeful, un-loving tyrannical Demiurge?

Jesus used allegory and parables all the time in his teachings. But for the astute among his apostles, there were the hidden revelations. The gnosis...

I like this Gnostic Creed...

Gnostic Creed (circa 1900)
By Louis-Sophrone Fugairon (Tau Sophronius)

We believe in the Divine Proarch the eternal Porpator, infinite, almighty, which has passed from power to act in one perfect Being, One God and triple.

In one first tridyname, the Father, originator and attractor of all visible and invisible beings.

In a second tridyname, the son, the divine logos manifested as Christos, intellectual and physical light, true God like the Father and consubstantial with him, without whom nothing was made.

Who concentrated himself on earth in the person of Jesus, superior spirit who came down for us, where he united himself to a soul and body similar to our own in the bosom (breast) of Mariam.

Who was manifested in Jesus from the moment of his baptism to that of his passion.

Who spoke to us through his mouth and taught us the very holy gnosis and the holy life, in order to deliver us from the slavery of the Demiurge and of his earthly Archon, to thus enable our return into the pneumatic world our homeland, as he himself returned there after his death.

We believe in a third tridyname, love, which proceeds from the father in parallel with the son and manifests as the pneuma-hagion (the Holy Ghost).

Who gives Love with Life, who puts us on the path of truth and holiness, who unifies all beings, who is adored and glorified with the Father and the son;

We believe in a pneumatic universe, an immense Church of spirits, as old as God himself which is anterior to the hylic universe, but from which a colony came to habitate the perisphere of our globe, and from which men descended as spirits.

We confess the two Baptisms and the three other Mysteries for the purification and transmutation of man.

We await on earth the establishment of the kingdom of heaven and the reestablishment of man to his primitive state.

And in the end, the reappearance of the dead with Jesus, the head of the Earthly Church; the ascension and reintegration of this assembly in heaven; the dissolution of the spirits which are refractory to all conversion, as the same time as the dissolution of the hylic universe, the work of the Demiurge. Amen.

The Holy Supreme Synod :
+ J. BRICAUD + SOPHRONIUS.
Bishops and Primates.

The Members of the High Synod :
+ JEAN BAPTISTE, Bishop of Russia,
+ B. CLÉMENT, Bishop of the United-States of America.
Voting Deacon: MARCEL COTTE.
Voting Deaconess: HOUDJA IIETZEL.

And even then I have some reservations about all these dogmatic posturings, however love, light, harmony, peace, goodwill, etc. this I can hold.

That is the way of the true Christos. The Cosmic Christ! I hear him well!

Anyway, it's in you... and out there, go find it.

Gnosis...