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If Helen Pagel's research (as seen above) is reliable, then the Gnostics were fairly exclusive. They would not have allowed themselves to be included in the Christian section, preferring not to recognize it. A modern Gnostic, however might be different from that, maybe more like a Baha'i.Orthodox writers described the church in concrete terms, because they accept the status quo; that is, they affirmed that the actual community of those gathered for worship was "the church." Gnostic Christians dissented. Confronted with those in the churches whom they considered ignorant, arrogant, or self-interested, they refused to agree that the whole community of believers, without further qualification, constituted "the church." Dividing from the majority over such issues as the value of martyrdom, they intended to discriminate between the mass of believers and those who truly had gnosis, between what they called the imitation, or the counterfeit, and the true church.
--taken from Whose Church is the True Church? from The Gnostic Gospels by Helen Pagels
This historian is speaking about a time shortly after the Hellenization of most of Christianity, and at this time the Catholics have adopted the previously Gnostic notion of exclusion. They specify a gnosis by which members will be judged: 1. creeds 2. canon 3. bishops This change in the body of believers was not accomplished without a lot of feuding and spat words for several centuries, so it appears that the venom between the schools of various kinds of believers actually drove a powerful mutation in them making it hard to know who or what is gnostic. Maybe modern Christians are gnostic?The Catholic or mainstream church refused to accept the Gnostic speculations and practices might make it possible for Christianity to adopt the existing syncretistic religious system of the state, in which all and everything had a place. On the contrary, it defended its belief by laying down clear standards (Greek kanon) of what is Christian. There are above all three regulative norms which to the present day are meant to mark out the Catholic church over against heretical or schismatic movements.
--take from II A Persecuted Minority Endures in The Catholic Church: A Short History by Hans Kung
So the subject of what Gnostic Christianity is and what it was both strike a nerve with Christiany. It is like Tolkien's lost ring. Everybody wants to control it, but nobody can touch it. It has to do with the question of exclusion.Both the Apocryphal texts and the products of Gnosticism, which have survived only in small percentage and mainly in oriental languages are being researched today with much zeal and care, so that little by little the real image of the spiritual life of primitive Christianity in its totality is uncovered.
--taken from Part IV, section One, ss11 Canons, Hymns, Martyrologies, Apocrypha, Gnostic Texts in Greek Orthodox Patrology by Panagiotes K. Chrestou
I'm sorry for how the questions asked, i feel it sounds kind of ignorant, but why isn't gnosticism a sub set of the Christianity dir? What is and isn't Gnosticism? Whats is it I hear about battling the demiurge?
I'm sorry for how the questions asked, i feel it sounds kind of ignorant, but why isn't gnosticism a sub set of the Christianity dir?
What is and isn't Gnosticism?
Whats is it I hear about battling the demiurge?
I wouldn't mind seeing a subforum for Christian Gnosticism. But then the regular Gnosticism forum doesn't see much activity these days. There are other forms of gnosticism that are not connected to Christianity.I'm sorry for how the questions asked, i feel it sounds kind of ignorant, but why isn't gnosticism a sub set of the Christianity dir? What is and isn't Gnosticism? Whats is it I hear about battling the demiurge?
I agree with these comments, because Gnostics or rather real Christians are individuals. While Christianity is for all who will receive it, it is received by each individual individually through the inner knowledge of the Spirit, this is the sacred knowledge of the Christ.Gnosticism is right now an individual's faith, but not a communal faith aside from where the individuals meet (if they do). So right now, if this is where many of us meet, we are ReligiousForum Gnostics, different from the now-defunct PalmTreeGarden Gnostics, for example.
Gnosticism includes many different religions and ideas. There's many works written by people all around the world throughout history. Gnosticism is still being written today. There is no one text that is accepted as the sole authority of Gnosticism. Gnosticism is personal knowledge that the soul must attain in order to rise to it's height. Gnosticism even includes scriptures from other religions. Anything that is knowledgeable to truth belongs to Gnosticism. In some of gnostic teaching there is a demiurge or creator of creation. This person is not necessarily evil, however, he is not exactly good. Creation is a reflection of the Light. The light revealed creation through its manifestation. The battle with the demiurge is about creation returning to the light. As we must all return to the light. It really isn't a battle in the sense that creation can overcome the light. Creation becomes the light within an eternal process.I'm sorry for how the questions asked, i feel it sounds kind of ignorant, but why isn't gnosticism a sub set of the Christianity dir? What is and isn't Gnosticism? Whats is it I hear about battling the demiurge?
Satan and Lucifer are derived from the Christian Satan and Lucifer. 'Gnostics, so called' as Irenaeus described them were just competing versions of Christianity and possibly beliefs he took to be competing Christianities. 'Gnostics' and 'Gnosticism' are Christian ideas. Absent Christianity they wouldn't exist, Irenaeus' geographical location, in Lyon at the far end of the Med from the location of most of these ideas, is important. Orthodoxy remains comfortable with the idea of Gnosis. Reading the texts that have been recovered and what can be reconstructed from the hostile polemic of Irenaeus and Hippolytus it is clear there was no Gnostic religion as such. The main exasperation with Valentinians for instance was that they accepted everything that the proto-Orthodox believed but said the proto-Orthodox had not understood the nuances. The heresiarchs were trying to force a wide variety of disparate beliefs into one and seeing things through the lense of their own Christianity. We can see now, reading recoverd early Christian writings for ourselves that the heresiarchs were mistaken. But what must be remembered is that we have lost the context for these writings and that we continually fall back on the mistaken context ad narrative imposed in the second century. We cannot even be sure that recovered writings with the same or similar names as those attested millenia ago are actually the same writings. What must also be remembered is that these writings removed from a monastic library that had previously been seen as acceptable Christian writings. We should remember that when it was intact this library would have included the gospels now accepted as cannonical; such works as Hermas, Didache and Barnabas; Jewish works such as Jubilees, and 3 and 4 Maccabees; and many others. It was just the library of an ordinary Christian monastery before people with access to the state killing machine tookover the religion and decreed what was acceptable and what wasn't. Albigenses and Bogomils have some relation to these earlier beliefs, that is obvious; but they are essentially Mediaeval phenomomena. The same can be said for modern gnosticisms; they may be based upon and orientated towards the earlier writings but their context, their sitz em leben, is modern. Too much has been lost beyond recovery; they cannot be any other.Not all forms of Gnosticism are Christian. There are Gnostic Luciferians and Gnostic Satanists. I view myself as a Gnostic but would feel out of place if this was in the Christian DIR. I try to add some spice by representing LHP Gnosticism.
Regardless of how it started, Gnosticism is now not solely Christian.Satan and Lucifer are derived from the Christian Satan and Lucifer. 'Gnostics, so called' as Irenaeus described them were just competing versions of Christianity and possibly beliefs he took to be competing Christianities. 'Gnostics' and 'Gnosticism' are Christian ideas. Absent Christianity they wouldn't exist, Irenaeus' geographical location, in Lyon at the far end of the Med from the location of most of these ideas, is important. Orthodoxy remains comfortable with the idea of Gnosis. Reading the texts that have been recovered and what can be reconstructed from the hostile polemic of Irenaeus and Hippolytus it is clear there was no Gnostic religion as such. The main exasperation with Valentinians for instance was that they accepted everything that the proto-Orthodox believed but said the proto-Orthodox had not understood the nuances. The heresiarchs were trying to force a wide variety of disparate beliefs into one and seeing things through the lense of their own Christianity. We can see now, reading recoverd early Christian writings for ourselves that the heresiarchs were mistaken. But what must be remembered is that we have lost the context for these writings and that we continually fall back on the mistaken context ad narrative imposed in the second century. We cannot even be sure that recovered writings with the same or similar names as those attested millenia ago are actually the same writings. What must also be remembered is that these writings removed from a monastic library that had previously been seen as acceptable Christian writings. We should remember that when it was intact this library would have included the gospels now accepted as cannonical; such works as Hermas, Didache and Barnabas; Jewish works such as Jubilees, and 3 and 4 Maccabees; and many others. It was just the library of an ordinary Christian monastery before people with access to the state killing machine tookover the religion and decreed what was acceptable and what wasn't. Albigenses and Bogomils have some relation to these earlier beliefs, that is obvious; but they are essentially Mediaeval phenomomena. The same can be said for modern gnosticisms; they may be based upon and orientated towards the earlier writings but their context, their sitz em leben, is modern. Too much has been lost beyond recovery; they cannot be any other.
Apart from LDS these are all Chalcedonian Christianities. The differences between Valentinians and Sethians were far wider. No one can come up with an acceptable definition of the ancient phenomena. See King, What is Gnosticism? and Williams Rethinking Gnosticism. From an outsider perspective and from the declarations of their writings it is what Christianity was at the time: very diverse. Also at the time we are talking about Christianity blurred into Judaism and Hellenistic religions. "Gnosticism" (if there was such a thing) is now not solely Christian because Christianity became much more narrowly defined and because Gnosticism is a modern (re)definition.On the one hand, I think this is reason that Christian Gnosticism should have a name, if we are to lump them together (Sethians, Valentinians, etc).
But this also happened with Christianity. Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Mormon, etc. etc.
I'm sorry for how the questions asked, i feel it sounds kind of ignorant, but why isn't gnosticism a sub set of the Christianity dir? What is and isn't Gnosticism? Whats is it I hear about battling the demiurge?
I'm sorry for how the questions asked, i feel it sounds kind of ignorant, but why isn't gnosticism a sub set of the Christianity dir? What is and isn't Gnosticism? Whats is it I hear about battling the demiurge?
I'm sorry for how the questions asked, i feel it sounds kind of ignorant, but why isn't gnosticism a sub set of the Christianity dir? What is and isn't Gnosticism? Whats is it I hear about battling the demiurge?