I am more familiar with contemporary forms of gnosticism than the Docetic heresies St. Paul warned against. I think there is a great degree of gnosticism still within the mainstream church, both liberal and conservative branches. A good book on this is Philip Lee's Against the Protestant Gnostics.
I am also interested in gnosticism in modern secular Judaism, especially as it manifests itself in arts (as I am an artist). There is not much material on this because religion is a taboo subject for academic writing in arts, but there are some interesting authors dealing with the subject including Donald Kuspit.
Salvation is a gift from God. It is not from works so no one can boast. Gnosticism which holds that salvation is attained through knowledge is contrary to the teachings of Christ and therefore heretical.
I think it is an amazing religion which allows us to be at ease with absolute knowledge of God's love. It also is easy to understand because it is not illogical or contradicting from one day to the next. Life is about so much more than we are seeing and the silly part is that true happiness is so much easier to achieve with the Divine spirit with such natural easy to obtain emotions ...love and understanding/respect for the uniqueness that make us who we are.
We just did a Bible Study and learned that Gnosticism means false teachings. Jesus and his disciples were traveling around trying to get people back on track. False leaders were trying to teach things that were leading people away from the truth; away from the truth that meant people were not going to go to heaven because of the wrong things being taught, sort of like cults.
I know that there are cults still today and since these cults go against what God's Word says about salvation, I don't like them and plan on staying away from them.
Well, it is true that God wants us to seek him out.
"Ask and you will receive, knock and the door will be opened".
"Seek me and you will find me, when you seek me will all your heart"
But if God really wanted to reach out to his creation he wouldn't have kept things secret, why would Jesus tell us to go out to all the word.
Why would God hold people responsible for not choosing Him but then he hid information from them.
Why would Jesus be in a major area of the world, couldn't have come to someone in Greenland if it was only supposed to be to a few people?
Well, if you are referring to the Gnostic gospels, they are certainly interesting. I think we would all be better off if we keep an open mind, but are there things that the Gnostics knew or practiced that have been lost over the centuries? Who knows.
If you simply refer to gnosticism in the context of requiring a knowledge in order to believe in something, we all have to start with faith, but as we build our faith, those things that used to require faith become knowledge and in my opinion a sort of gnostic understanding.
I am not going to spend too much time trying to sort through ancient texts, but I think they also show how the Bible we have today may not necessarily be complete. I know that the texts commonly referred to were written AD, but the question would still remain, what traditions were they based on if any and how old were those traditions? Where did they come from?
I like the part about seeing divinity in yourself and trying to transcend the petty conflicts of mundane life. The Gnostic Christ is a good model for our actions and our attitude toward life. But the fundamental idea that all matter is "corrupt" and that everything we can sense in the world is essentially evil and untrustworthy is too pessimistic. It isolates people from their communities and can easily lead them down metaphysical dead ends. It is one thing to meditate to develop an inner spiritual life. It is quite another to hide from the world in fear and mistrust.
"Gnosticism (from Greek nosies, knowledge) is a term created by modern scholars to describe a diverse, synergistic religious movement, especially in the first centuries C.E. Gnostics believed in nosies, the knowledge of God enabled by secret teachings."
Here we see the first major problem with Gnosticism. All that we know about God was revealed through the scriptures. When Jesus taught his disciples, He always did so in the open and never promoted secret knowledge. The problem with secret knowledge is that no one can confirm whether or not it was true - it was kind of like saying something in a university paper without citing your sources - and if the professor asks, you just say it was a secret knowledge given to you directly by God - he would just have to say, "Oh!" and give you an A. Doesn't work like that!
The early Christians insisted that every doctrine be backed up by multiple apostolic sources. That is how, for example, the Church determined which books should be included in the canon of Scripture, by tracing them back to their sources and authenticating them! (They looked at each book, how many copies of it were in existence and which churches were using them - they also looked for continuity and tracing it back to an apostolic Church was really beneficial for the process!)
"Some Gnostics considered themselves Christian, identifying Jesus as the divine spirit incarnated to bring nosies to humanity. However, Gnosticism's dualism placed it in stark contrast to Orthodox Christian non-dualistic teaching, and Gnostics were labeled heretics."
This dualism was a very nefarious breed - they believed in a good god and an evil god - one was the god of the material world and one was the god of the spiritual - totally antithetic to Christian belief! As a consequence, some practiced fasting like the early Christians. Gnostics however, did it not to purify the body, but to destroy the flesh. This was against the teaching of Christ as he took flesh and thereby sanctified it! Other Gnostics gorged themselves with sex and food, thinking the body was of no use and so could be treated however one wanted.
"Other Gnostics were not even nominally Christian, and several Gnostic texts appear to have no Christian element at all. Still others were certainly devout mystic ascetics who worshiped Jesus and lived in their own unique ways according to His teachings. Simon Magus is believed by some Christians as being the founder of Gnosticism."
"Gnostics taught that humans were divine souls trapped in a material world created by an evil spirit, the demiurge. In order to free oneself from the evil, material world, one needed gnosis, or spiritual knowledge. Initiates were instructed in secret teachings to help them achieve gnosis. God was depicted as a pleroma composed of multiple manifestations."
And so you have it, Gnosticism was completely and utterly rejected by the early Church for all these reasons. There is one God and He is good. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and God Himself, one of the Holy Trinity and sanctified the flesh by His sacrifice. God does not hide knowledge of Himself, but revealed Himself to us. The body is good and is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
So my view: I am a Christian and reject the very basis of Gnosticism as being not of God and as being false belief or heresy!
Christians: What are your views of Gnosticism?
