just asking because my church of christ friend says you cannot be both.
You will find as you re-search that it was the christianized gnostics that literally destroyed the mystic gnostics and it's writings. The christians were later the ones who did the persecuting, not the other way around.
Are you refering to the Romanized Christians or a different group? Based on what I've read, the orthodox church destroyed much of the early Gnostic literature after the council of Niceane. There was, for instance, a library where thousands of scrolls were burned.
just asking because my church of christ friend says you cannot be both.
Enishi,"The Jesus Mysteries" covers much of what you are intrested in but not familiar with. There is MUCH to know about Christianity and it's early formation, as well as the NT and how it came to be.
Thanks, I'll check it out, although I have read in some reviews that the authors lean toward sensationalism.
just asking because my church of christ friend says you cannot be both.
I'm not sure if I am understanding you correctly. Are you saying that the Apostle Paul didn't believe in the earthly Jesus?
It would have been very hard for Paul to formulate his doctrines and found Roman Christianity if he didn't believe in an earthly Jesus. I've never been entirely sure what to think of Paul. He did say some good things in his writings (though I've heard that even that was plagarized from other sources), but on the other hand many of his teachings seem to conflict with Jesus and his disciples.
This article, written by an Essene, raises some interesting point about the contradictions between Jesus and Paul, though the author is a bit out there even for my taste.
just asking because my church of christ friend says you cannot be both.
thought in order for one to call themself a "Christian", one had to believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that he died for the sins of mankind. Am I wrong?
Many Orthodox Christians would agree with you. They would deny my claims to be being a Christian, but that's all right. Christianity is just a word, it doesn't matter whether I call myself a Christian or a pagan. To me, being a Christian means following the teachings of Jesus, not just putting faith in him. I have faith in the example he showed, and his teachings on love and returning to the Pleroma. There is no need to believe in the historical person of Jesus in order escape the judgements of an angry tribal god, we were never under any sort of eternal condemnation to begin with. Gnostics do believe that Jesus was the son of God, or One with the Father, however it is something that all gnostics aim to one day achieve.
Do Gnostics call themselves "Christians" even though it appears as though they don't believe in the same "Christ" as the Jesus Christ of the Bible?
Well, there are Gnostics and then there are Gnostics. Not all of them are the same, Gnosticism existed before the events in the Gospels. Many Gnostics did not personally follow Jesus, although they did agree with his teachings. Christian Gnostics, such as myself, do believe that there was a teacher named Yeshua, though the description of his life in the Gospels may not all be literally true. Many Gnostic sects held a dualistic notion of reality. They believed that matter is evil and only spirit is good, which IMO is a horrible mistranslation of what Yeshua was trying to say.
Do people who believe in a "spiritual heavenly Jesus", believe that Jesus ever walked the earth?
Many mystics do believe that there was a teacher, or a group of teachers, in ancient Palestine around whom the story of the Gospels was developed, that he became an incarnation of the Logos, performed various miracles and was executed. However, it is the essence of the heavenly Christ that is most important, not the person of Jesus. Whether or not the events of the Gospel literally happned is quite beside the point.
The early esoteric Christians, wanting to bring about change within the corrupt, legalistic Jewish religion were trying to transmit the knowledge of the many Greek mystery schools that existed at that time. They could have chosen the example of the master Yeshua, one of the foremost among them, and used him as an allegorical example of the deep concepts they were trying to express to the Jewish people. The story of Jesus's suffering on the cross actually has a strong pantheistic theme, basically that we are part of God, God suffers along with us, and it is through suffering that we are purified.
The heavenly Christ is not confined to the historical Jesus, it is our higher self/inner angel that is within all of us. By dwelling in love, the inner Christ fills the heart of the believer and changes them from within. This is what the scriptures mean by being washed clean in the blood of the lamb. This can happen to people of any religious background, even atheists, though they may different ways of describing it.
Part of the reason I choose mysticism as my current understanding is becuase the esoteric path has been held by thousands of groups over thousands of years, with a very high level of consistency. Buddhism, Gnosticism, Essenes, Taoism, Hinduism and Shamanism have all held very similar beliefs which can be backed up through personal experience. The same cannot be said of the orthodoc monotheistic religions.
just asking because my church of christ friend says you cannot be both.
I suppose you could call me a panentheist evolutionist.
There are in fact ones who claim to be CHRISTIANS......and were called christians by others.....who did not believe in a HISTORICAL Jesus. These were actually very early christians called the 'gnostic' christians.......which were followed by LITERALIST christians who believed in an earthly historical Jesus, wheras, the former only viewed him as a spiritual heavenly Jesus.Actually, we Gnostics do believe there was an enlightened teacher named Yeshua who became the Christ. We just don't believe he was God incarnate, or that he needed to be sacrificed to atone for some 'original sin' (a doctrine that was invented almost entirely by Paul, who never even meet Jesus)
well, i sunk low on this one and basically told my best friend that she is stupid to for one second believe what the christian tv channel "evolution professor" says about the "facts".
first i said there is no such thing as an evolution professor.
she continually said she wasn't evolved from apes.
Hi Panda, here's a website of a Christian evolutionist I found.
i came across this on a different board.
i haven't taken the time yet to read it, but its being "heralded" by a christian as a debate in which a christian minister won via logic over a minister-turned-athiest on the topic "does god exist".
i'm curious how sound the arguments are, and with some of the sharp minds around here, if an argument is faulty, i'm counting on it being discussed.. http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=cbb686d85bd2e5fa727074241ddc0181&threadid=7709.
Why is there something instead of nothing? Hell I don't know. Life is so strange. The more I search for answers, the more unanswerable the questions seem.
I agree quite a bit with this thought.
There probably isn't any ultimate answer, at least not one that can be expressed in words. The more we try to understand reality, the more infinite and complex it becomes.
i came across this on a different board.
i haven't taken the time yet to read it, but its being "heralded" by a christian as a debate in which a christian minister won via logic over a minister-turned-athiest on the topic "does god exist".
i'm curious how sound the arguments are, and with some of the sharp minds around here, if an argument is faulty, i'm counting on it being discussed.. http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=cbb686d85bd2e5fa727074241ddc0181&threadid=7709.
I believe quite strongly that God exists, and that our lives could not have come about by accident.
However, I no longer believe in an all-powerful anthromorphic creator deity, which is what most people usually mean when they use the word God. God is infinite, and beyond any concepts of personal being (or impersonal being as well for that matter).
hey guys,.
alrighty.
enjoying being single.. right now i have a "worldy" girlfriend (note the quotes " ").. but there's this incredibly beautiful jw girl that has shown interest in me.. (i'm not df or da, just not going to meetings.
I can sort of understand where you're coming from, I've meet witness girls who made me want to remain a good dub, no matter what the cost. Still, most of that was just the hormones talking. Unless this girl is interested in you partly because you got in trouble with the org., it's probably not a good idea.
Second of all, you should consider your girlfriends feelings first before you even suggest breaking up with her for another girl. If you dump her just because you found someone with better looks, not only will it be cruel but it will probably backfire on you eventually.
i voted today in our provincial election.
i am no longer a voting virgin.
i was always told that voting in an election was casting a ballot for satan's old system of things.
Good job. RunningMan. I've been planning to vote as well when the next presidential election comes around.
