by Terry 69 Replies latest jw friends
shanagirl - the gnostic gospels are written by Magicians who speak lies of Jesus Christ and mislead people into gnosticism!
Gnosticism - a big demon of the intellectual kind.
In the first three hundred years of the early church this was the key heresy that battled the truth of the Apostles and those people who look into the Gnostic Gospels are reading books founded on the false teachings and lies of the secret philosophical schemes of elite individuals who were the key antagonists of the Way.
ixthis, I understand the roll the Church has played in keeping Gnostic Christian writings out of the Bible.
Click here: The Secret Book of John (Apocryphon of John)
What is Gnosticism? Nag Hammadi Library Alphabetical Index
In the first century of the Christian era the term “Gnostic” came to denote a heterodox segment of the diverse new Christian community. Among early followers of Christ it appears there were groups who delineated themselves from the greater household of the Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and his message, but a "special witness" or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this experience or gnosis that set the true follower of Christ apart, so they asserted. Stephan Hoeller explains that these Christians held a "conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life."2
What the "authentic truths of existence" affirmed by the Gnostics were will be briefly reviewed below, but first a historical overview of the early Church might be useful. In the initial century and a half of Christianity -- the period when we find first mention of "Gnostic" Christians -- no single acceptable format of Christian thought had yet been defined. During this formative period Gnosticism was one of many currents moving within the deep waters of the new religion. The ultimate course Christianity, and Western culture with it, would take was undecided at this early moment. Gnosticism was one of the seminal influences shaping that destiny.
That Gnosticism was, at least briefly, in the mainstream of Christianity is witnessed by the fact that one of its most influential teachers, Valentinus, may have been in consideration during the mid-second century for election as the Bishop of Rome.3 Born in Alexandria around 100 C.E., Valentinus distinguished himself at an early age as an extraordinary teacher and leader in the highly educated and diverse Alexandrian Christian community. In mid-life he migrated from Alexandria to the Church's evolving capital, Rome, where he played an active role in the public affairs of the Church. A prime characteristic of Gnostics was their claim to be keepers of sacred traditions, gospels, rituals, and successions – esoteric matters for which many Christians were either not properly prepared or simply not inclined. Valentinus, true to this Gnostic predilection, apparently professed to have received a special apostolic sanction through Theudas, a disciple and initiate of the Apostle Paul, and to be a custodian of doctrines and rituals neglected by what would become Christian orthodoxy.4 Though an influential member of the Roman church in the mid-second century, by the end of his life Valentinus had been forced from the public eye and branded a heretic by the developing orthodoxy Church.
While the historical and theological details are far too complex for proper explication here, the tide of history can be said to have turned against Gnosticism in the middle of the second century. No Gnostic after Valentinus would ever come so near prominence in the greater Church. Gnosticism's emphasis on personal experience, its continuing revelations and production of new scripture, its asceticism and paradoxically contrasting libertine postures, were all met with increasing suspicion. By 180 C.E. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, was publishing his first attacks on Gnosticism as heresy, a labor that would be continued with increasing vehemence by the church Fathers throughout the next century.
Orthodoxy Christianity was deeply and profoundly influenced by its struggles with Gnosticism in the second and third centuries. Formulations of many central traditions in Christian theology came as reflections and shadows of this confrontation with the Gnosis.5 But by the end of the fourth century the struggle was essentially over: the evolving ecclesia had added the force of political correctness to dogmatic denunciation, and with this sword so-called "heresy" was painfully cut from the Christian body. Gnosticism as a Christian tradition was largely eradicated, its remaining teachers ostracized, and its sacred books destroyed. All that remained for students seeking to understand Gnosticism in later centuries were the denunciations and fragments preserved in the patristic heresiologies. Or at least so it seemed until the mid-twentieth century.
Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library
It was on a December day in the year of 1945, near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, that the course of Gnostic studies was radically renewed and forever changed. An Arab peasant, digging around a boulder in search of fertilizer for his fields, happened upon an old, rather large red earthenware jar. Hoping to have found a buried treasure, and with due hesitation and apprehension about the jinn who might attend such a hoard, he smashed the jar open. Inside he discovered no treasure and no genie, but instead books: more than a dozen old codices bound in golden brown leather.6 Little did he realize that he had found an extraordinary collection of ancient texts, manuscripts hidden a millennium and a half before -- probably by monks from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius seeking to preserve them from a destruction ordered by the church as part of its violent expunging of heterodoxy and heresy.
How the Nag Hammadi manuscripts eventually passed into scholarly hands is a fascinating story too lengthy to relate here. But today, now over fifty years since being unearthed and more than two decades after final translation and publication in English as The Nag Hammadi Library, 7 their importance has become astoundingly clear: These thirteen papyrus codices containing fifty-two sacred texts are representatives of the long lost "Gnostic Gospels", a last extant testament of what orthodox Christianity perceived to be its most dangerous and insidious challenge, the feared opponent that the Church Fathers had reviled under many different names, but most commonly as Gnosticism. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts has fundamentally revised our understanding of both Gnosticism and the early Christian church.
Overview of Gnostic Teachings
What was it that these "knowers" knew? What made them such dangerous heretics? The complexities of Gnosticism are legion, making any generalizations wisely suspect. While several systems for defining and categorizing Gnosticism have been proposed over the years, none has gained any general acceptance.8 So with advance warning that this is most certainly not a definitive summary of Gnosticism and its many permutations, we will outline just four elements generally agreed to be characteristic of Gnostic thought.
The first essential characteristic of Gnosticism was introduced above: Gnosticism asserts that "direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings," and that the attainment of such knowledge is the supreme achievement of human life. Gnosis is not a rational, propositional, logical understanding, but a knowing acquired by experience. The Gnostics were not much interested in dogma or coherent, rational theology -- a fact that makes the study of Gnosticism particularly difficult for individuals with "bookkeeper mentalities. One simply cannot cipher up Gnosticism into syllogistic dogmatic affirmations. The Gnostics cherished the ongoing force of divine revelation--Gnosis was the creative experience of revelation, a rushing progression of understanding, and not a static creed. Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychologist and a life-long student of Gnosticism in its various historical permutations, affirms,
…We find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and individual knowledge. This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of man's affinity with the gods....
In his study, The American Religion, noted literary critic Harold Bloom suggests a second characteristic of Gnosticism that might help us conceptually circumscribe its mysterious heart. Gnosticism, says Bloom, "is a knowing, by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the self, and [this] knowledge leads to freedom...."9 Primary among all the revelatory perceptions a Gnostic might reach was the profound awakening that came with knowledge that something within him was uncreated. The Gnostics called this "uncreated self" the divine seed, the pearl, the spark of knowing: consciousness, intelligence, light. And this seed of intellect was the self-same substance of God. It was man's authentic reality, the glory of humankind and divinity alike. If woman or man truly came to gnosis of this spark, she understood that she was truly free: Not contingent, not a conception of sin, not a flawed crust of flesh, but the stuff of God, and the conduit of God's immanent realization. There was always a paradoxical cognizance of duality in experiencing this "self-within-a-self". How could it not be paradoxical: By all rational perception, man clearly was not God, and yet in essential truth, was Godly. This conundrum was a Gnostic mystery, and its knowing was their treasure.
The creator god, the one who claimed in evolving orthodox dogma to have made man, and to own him, the god who would have man contingent upon him, born ex nihilo by his will, was a lying demon and not God at all. Gnostics called him by many deprecatory names: "Saklas", the fool; "Ialdebaoth", the blind god; and "Demiurge", the architect or lesser creative force.
Theodotus, a Gnostic teacher writing in Asia Minor between 140 and 160 C.E., explained that the sacred strength of gnosis reveals "who we were, what we have become, where we have been cast out of, where we are bound for, what we have been purified of, what generation and regeneration are."10 "Yet", the eminent scholar of Gnosticism, Elaine Pagels, comments in exegesis, "to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis.... Self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical." 11
The Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gnostic texts found preserved in the Nag Hammadi Library, gives these words of the living Jesus:
Jesus said, `I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out.... 12
He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.' 13
He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: What a remarkably heretical image! The Gospel of Thomas in its entirety is an extraordinary scripture. Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University notes that though ultimately this Gospel was condemned and destroyed by the evolving orthodox church, it may be as old or older than the four canonical gospels preserved, and even have served as a source document to them.14
This brings us to the third prominent element in our brief summary of Gnosticism: its reverence for texts and scriptures unaccepted by the orthodox fold. Gnostic experience was mythopoetic: in story and metaphor, and perhaps also in ritual enactments, Gnosticism sought expression of subtle, visionary insights inexpressible by rational proposition or dogmatic affirmation. For the Gnostics, revelation was the nature of Gnosis. Irritated by their profusion of "inspired texts" and myths, Ireneaus complains in his classic second century refutation of Gnosticism, that “…every one of them generates something new, day by day, according to his ability; for no one is deemed perfect, who does not develop...some mighty fiction.”16
The fourth characteristic that we might delineate to understand classical Gnosticism is the most difficult of the four to succinctly untangle, and also one of the most disturbing to subsequent orthodox theology. This is the image of God as a dyad or duality. While affirming the ultimate unity and integrity of the Divine, Gnosticism noted in its experiential encounter with the numinous, contrasting manifestations and qualities.
In many of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts God is imaged as a dyad of masculine and feminine elements. Though their language is specifically Christian, Gnostic sources often use sexual symbolism to describe God. Prof. Pagels explains,
One group of gnostic sources claims to have received a secret tradition from Jesus through James and through Mary Magdalene [who the Gnostics revered as consort to Jesus]. Members of this group prayed to both the divine Father and Mother:
`From Thee, Father, and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, Parents of the divine being, and thou, dweller in heaven, humanity, of the mighty name...'17
Several trends within Gnosticism saw in God a union of two disparate natures, a union well imaged with sexual symbolism. Gnostics honored the feminine nature and, in reflection, Elaine Pagels has argued that Christian Gnostic women enjoyed a far greater degree of social and ecclesiastical equality than their orthodox sisters. Jesus himself, taught some Gnostics, had prefigured this mystic relationship: His most beloved disciple had been a woman, Mary Magdalene, his consort. The Gospel of Philip relates,
"...the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended... They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us? the Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as I love her?"18
The most mysterious and sacred of all Gnostic rituals may have played upon this perception of God as "duality seeking unity." The Gospel of Philip (which in its entirety might be read as a commentary on Gnostic ritual) relates that the Lord established five great sacraments or mysteries: "a baptism and a chrism, and a eucharist, and a redemption, and a bridal chamber."19 Whether this ultimate sacrament of the bridal chamber was a ritual enacted by a man and women, an allegorical term for a mystical experience, or a union of both, we do not know. Only hints are given in Gnostic texts about what this sacrament might be:
Christ came to rectify the separation...and join the two components; and to give life unto those who had died by separation and join them together. Now a woman joins with her husband in the bridal [chamber], and those who have joined in the bridal [chamber] will not reseparate.20
We are left with our poetic imaginations to consider what this might mean. Though Orthodox polemicists frequently accused Gnostics of unorthodox sexual behavior, exactly how these ideas and images played out in human affairs remains historically uncertain.
Classical Christian Gnosticism was lost to the Western world during the fourth and fifth centuries. But the Gnostic world view -- with its comprehension of humankind's true uncreated nature and inherent affinity with God; its affirmation of interior individual experience granting certain knowledge; and its awareness of demiurgic forces binding human consciousness -- was not so easily extinguished. These Gnostic perceptions continued in various forms to course through Western culture though perforce often by occult paths. Gnosticism was and is today a tradition perpetually reborn in the gnosis kardia of humankind, a tradition eternally alive within those “who have ears to hear” its call.
“Gnosis” and “Gnosticism” are still rather arcane terms, though in the last two decades they have been increasingly encountered in the vocabulary of contemporary society. The word Gnosis derives from Greek and connotes "knowledge" or the "act of knowing". On first hearing, it is sometimes confused with another more common term of the same root but opposite sense: agnostic, literally "not knowing”. The Greek language differentiates between rational, propositional knowledge, and a distinct form of knowing obtained by experience or perception. It is this latter knowledge gained from interior comprehension and personal experience that constitutes gnosis.1
I'm a gnostic. My beliefs are based on my direct experience. Most believers prefer to get everything handed down to them by others, who got it from others, who got it from others, who got it from others, who got it from others, etc, until the original source has faded totally in the fog of time. Now, tell me, which makes more sense.
S
Demons can be as small as Smurfs or as large as the Na'vi of Avatar. But either way they are always blue.
The sky is blue. Maybe, there's a big one floating up there, on the day side of the planet.
S
shanagirl, while I empathise with your desire to post a gnostic apologetic can you link that entire post you wrote and link it directly back to the topic of demons?
Perhaps you should start a different thread and we and others can discuss there, gnosticism? Perhaps we can understand the relationship between Orthodoxy and early (1st and 2nd century) gnosticism right here?
Gnosticism originates as a pagan Persian/Hellenist fusion along the borders of the two cultural groups. Since it posited a single Creator and a tension between "physical" and "spiritual" realms, it does not have a hard time worming its way into early Christian communities. It can be attractive! Since, it contrasts a sinful "flesh" world vs. a pure "spirit" world. It gives a very simple and beautiful narrative to everything. It allows us to not have to worry about messy questions regarding the Incarnation.
However, it cannot be reconciled with certain fundamentals of Christianity.
In Gnosticism, the material world is inherently bad.
Thus, whatever being created physical reality must also be inherently bad, or at the very least inherently ignorant. Thus, the God of the Old Testament is either not the Father or the Son is greater than the Father, since the Creator (demiurge) is a lesser being than is the Savior. In other words, if the Father "saw it was good" when He created the world, then the Father is less than the Son, since no being who understands that anything physical cannot be good would think that the world was good. However, if the Son and "the Father are one", then the Father cannot have been the being that created the world. Thus, Marcion felt it was necessary to exclude the Old Testament and give a very highly censored version of Scripture to his followers.
However, Marcion and his like always met opposition from the body of the Church.
There was no "gnostic origin" of Christianity.
Gnosticism was created later by heretics and those who follow gnosticism and its preachings promote heresy.
-----
PS. The thing that differentiates true Christian gnosis of The Way of Christ oand the "gnosis" of gnosticism is that in Orthodox Christian gnosis there is always an emphasis on the practice of the virtues and obedience to the commandments of God.
PSS. To clarify: Marcion is not a representative of 'Gnosticism' in a classical sense.
When we consider that religious dogma is based on irrational beliefs in supernatural phenomena such as god(s), the soul, spirits, demons and angels, heaven and hell, creation, etc., we must ask ourselves: What does such mythology have to do with sound ethical principles? Why should acceptance of these vacuous concepts be a prerequisite for morality? Religious belief systems are human inventions. So-called "sacred" scriptures were written by human beings. To declare with ostensible certainty that the Bible or the Coran or the Bhagavad-Gita is the word of some god is just a pious lie. The fact that some people sincerely believe in the sacredness of scripture does not make the idea any less absurd.
Even modern religious tendencies which prefer a very metaphorical interpretation of traditional dogma remain ultimately founded on supernatural principles such as the belief in an omnipotent creator transcending time and space. Every theist is essentially a creationist in the generic sense of the term, even if he or she places that creation billions of years in the past.
Yes, and you are right ...
When a mans moral decision making is divided in his heart from the Fabric of Life then man has ceased to be a living Gospel, and has become an idea -- a set of beliefs, a system, a philosophy.
It is not his breath, as it ought to be; it is something to which he subscribes; and so it can be treated like anything else to which one subscribes, with more or less seriousness, with more or less attention - but ultimately as something external and that is "Religion".
So I agree with you but I would take it one step further in that this is a serious problem. Our society is raising people who feel they can "be" without the Gospel infusing their every decision - moral or otherwise - and so we are fostering religions that are not rightly shaping our hearts and perhaps only our minds; and maybe not even that.
What is needed is a renewed awareness of living the Gospel, that brings the faith in to the bones of every human being.
This is very much in line with what the Fathers tell us; if Christianity really is 'the life in Christ', then it is a life, the life - The Way and so it must be lived, and made the whole substance of one's being.
"To measure is to know." -- Lord Kelvin
shanagirl, while I empathise with your desire to post a gnostic apologetic can you link that entire post you wrote and link it directly back to the topic of demons?
Perhaps you should start a different thread and we and others can discuss there, gnosticism? Perhaps we can understand the relationship between Orthodoxy and early (1st and 2nd century) gnosticism right here?
Well, ixthis, but threads wander, don't they? In the same way that conversations do. Isn't that part of the joy of a forum such as this?
PS, added after posting:
hanagirl - the gnostic gospels are written by Magicians who speak lies of Jesus Christ and mislead people into gnosticism!
Gnosticism - a big demon of the intellectual kind.
That's a sweeping statement. Sounds like doctrine. Gnosticism was there from the very early years. Elements of it are at least worthy of consideration, if nothing else.
