Why is Gnosticism described as a type of religious dualism? Why is Gnosticism incompa

Why is Gnosticism described as a type of religious dualism? Why is Gnosticism incompatible with orthodox Christianity?


Hello I am taking a christian religion class and I was asked this question. I am really confuse about it. Please help me.


Thank you very much!

well from what i know Orthodox Christianity doesn't agree with Gnosticism because they often have different views on what happened to Jesus and his teachings. Gnosticism has a more mystical approach to things and orthodox doesn't like it.
for example: Gnostics believe Jesus survived the Crucifixion and that he wasn't literally god but he was just like an ascended master.

Dualism looks at the human as sort of a ghost in a machine. Our bodies and our souls are two different entities. Spirit is good, body is bad. This flies in the face of scripture which states that everything God created is good. Orthodox Christianity teaches that the body and soul are one entity, one person.

By the way, the most serious implication of the body/soul/ dualistic teaching is that Jesus wouldn't dare inhabit a real body since, in their view, material (a body) is bad. Therefore, they teach that Jesus wasn't really human, He just looked like one of us. Orthodox Christians believe that Jesus was truly God AND truly man.

Gnosticism is a distortion and perversion of the Gospel; nothing more and nothing less.




Edited by: Erwin L. Lueker, Luther Poellot, Paul Jackson
?Concordia Publishing House, 2000, All rights Reserved. Reproduced with Permission




Gnosticism

(from Gk. nosies, ?knowledge?). 1. Syncretistic movement with roots in Prue-Christian times; flowered in 2d?3d c. AD; continued to the 7Th c.; involved occult lore, magic watchwords, and secret names; claimed to have a divinely-given secret message that held the key for a higher life.

2. The beginnings of gnosticism may be found in the fusion of religious beliefs and cultures that arose as a result of Persian power and the conquests of Alexander III (the Great; 356?323 BC; king of Macedonia 336). Scholars do not agree as to what makes religious symbols ?gnostic.? Elements of gnosticism have been traced to Gk. Philis., movements in Judaism, Hellenism, Orphic cults. and religious thought in such countries as Babylonia, Iran, Egypt, and India. Some, on the basis of such literature as the Dead* Sea Scrolls and Jewish apocalyptic writing, regard Judaism as a channel through which gnosticism entered the Graeco-Roman world.

3. In contrast to the rational insight of the classical mind, the basic theme of gnosticism was redemption from the material world (matter considered evil; ordered cosmos had malevolent purpose) and escape into a world of freedom, thus achieving the liberty implied in human spirit. The soul, escaping from matter, is to be reunited with the Palermo, or fullness, of God.

4. While this redemption took place through initiations, rites, mysteries, magic (each sect having its own peculiarities), the more speculative adherents needed philosophical basis. Hence the dualism* inherent in the doctrine of redemption was expanded (supreme God?demure; good-evil; light-darkness; cosmic fall-historic fall; spirit-matter; Palermo-hysterema) and synthesized in the good God.

5. The following reflects elements of gnosticism in Christian times: God is pure abstraction, a fathomless abyss. From Him emanate divine potencies (aeons) which in their totality constitute the pleroma (fullness, ideal world of light opposed to kenoma, or emptiness of matter). Sophia (wisdom) disturbed the harmony of the pleroma and fell into the formless chaos beyond (hysterema). Through matter sophia gave birth to a demiurge (identified with the OT Jehovah). Redemption takes place through the restoration of the harmony of the pleroma and rescue of the seeds of divine light scattered in darkness. This is done by the most perfect aeon (Soter), who entered Jesus at baptism and left Him before Calvary. Christ accomplishes His work by teaching knowledge (gnosis), which is received only by a select few (pneumatikoi, spirituals). The next class of men (psychikoi, psychics) must be content with faith; the lowest (hylics, material) are preoccupied with worldly cares. (See also par. 7 g below.) The ethical system tried to overcome flesh (matter) and developed into both strict asceticism* and extreme libertinism.

6. Some recent studies see relationship bet. gnosticism, nihilism,* and existentialism.*

7. a. Simon* Magus.

b. Cerinthus (ca. 100). Active at Ephesus; reputed opponent of John (Jn; 1 Jn); no writings survive; accounts in patristics vague and contradictory.

c. Saturninus (Satornilus; 2d c.). Said to have been a disciple of Menander (see par. a); flourished in Antioch, Syria (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, I, xxiv).

d. Elkesaites promulgated their doctrine (all receive forgiveness of sins who accept their form of baptism and receive their doctrines) in the trans-Jordanic regions ca. 101; teachings still influential in Arab. in 10th c.

e. Basilides (2d c.). Allegedly claimed to be a disciple of the apostle Matthias and of Glaucias, an interpreter of Peter; perhaps a disciple of Menander; divergent accounts of his theories are in Clement* of Alexandria, Epiphanius,* Eusebius* of Caesarea, Hippolytus,* Irenaeus,* and Origen.* His system, variously explained, holds that God did not directly create the world; Christ* Jesus human in appearance only; Simon of Cyrene died in His stead on the cross. Isidorus (2d c.) was a son or disciple of Basilides.

f. Carpocrates (2d c.). Alexandrian; antinomian (see Antinomianism); followers called Carpocratians. His son Epiphanes (2d c.) wrote De iustitia advocating communism (Clement* of Alexandria, Stromata, III, ii).

g. Valentinus (2d c.). B. Egypt; educ. Alexandria; at Rome ca. 138?ca. 160. It is hard to glean facts from the few details (often inconsistent) of his life preserved by ancients. Followers formed 2 schools, It. and Oriental, with divergent tendencies. Distinguished a phenomenal and spiritual (pleroma) sphere. In the latter there are emanations including the Holy Spirit and Christ, who united with the man Jesus. One aeon, Sophia, fell into passion and disgrace and caused emission of matter which Demiurg