Okay what I don't understand is that Gnosticism is supposed to be about certain knowledge about Christ right? Okay but the problem is that from what I am understanding of it is that Gnostics don't know who the ultimate god is? From what I'm understanding is that their is two Jehovah's and then there's the main god who they know nothing about. So are Gnostics Agnostic about who God is or what? Could anybody who is knowledgeable about Gnosticism help me out? I mean absolutely no offense to anybody at all particularly those who call themselves Gnostics.
You are thinking about it too much. The gnostic teaching is the hidden teaching. What is described as Christ is your true nature, This information will not help you, until you know it for yourself. Then you will laugh. A lot.
The Gnostic's believe that the world was created by an imperfect being, and that Christ came to save everyone from the creators screw-ups (in short).
Their spiritual emphasis is on transcending the physical world, but without the need to organized religion, they believe in deeper spirituality obtained through introspection.
Gnosticism is an occult salvationALystem, stressing gnosis as essential, viewing matter as evil, and variously combining ideas derived from mythology, ancient Greek philosophy, ancient religions and eventually from Christianity.
It is spiritual knowledge gained by self-illumination.
Uncle Al can explain it to you but Uncle Al cannot understand it for you: a diverse, synergistic religious movement consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect spirit, the demure, who is frequently identified with the Abrahamic God.
Gnosticism: Scientology plus the United Church of Canada.
Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
I'm not gnostic myself, I am non-denominational and chose to be spiritual and nothing else. But, I do know that the gnostic belief has some good ideas. They believe in one God but that God has a male and also a female, a father God, and a Mother God. Which when you think about it, it would make sense since we have male and female of all species right? They believe that the mother God can help to change your destiny if you ask her for her help in it. They believe in reincarnation, and at least we do know one more very important thing; that they were around when Jesus walked the earth and the Christian sect wasn't! Christianity came about 300 years after his death. And I believe also that not one Gnostic believer ever killed another who didn't believe in his faith. So points go more towards the Gnostic versus the Christians- when the truth is laid out on the table.
"Their Role: They believed that they alone truly understood Christ's message, and that other streams of thought within Christianity had misinterpreted Jesus' mission and sayings.
Gnosis: Knowledge to them was not an intellectual exercise; it was not a passive understanding of some aspect of spirituality. Rather, knowledge had a redeeming and liberating function that helped the individual break free of bondage to the world.
Deity: The Supreme Father God or Supreme God of Truth is remote from human affairs; he is unknowable and undetectable by human senses. She/he created a series of supernatural but finite beings called Aeons. One of these was Sophia, a virgin, who in turn gave birth to an defective, inferior Creator-God, also known as the Demiurge. (Demiurge means "public craftsman" in Greek.) This lower God is sometimes called Yaldabaoth or Ialdabaoth Jaldabaoth -- from Aramaic words meaning "begetter of the Heavens." This is Jehovah, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). He is portrayed as the creator of the earth and its life forms. He is viewed by Gnostics as fundamentally evil, jealous, rigid, lacking in compassion, and prone to genocide. The Demiurge "thinks that he is supreme. His pride and incompetence have resulted in the sorry state of the world as we know it, and in the blind and ignorant condition of most of mankind. ..."
Gnosticism, a widespread religious and philosophical movement that polluted the faith of some believers, was on the move. Gnostics believed that spiritual things are good and that all matter is evil. Reasoning that all flesh is evil, they rejected marriage and procreation, claiming that Satan originated these.
Some of them believed that since only that which pertains to the spirit is good, it does not matter what a man does with his physical body. Such viewpoints resulted in extreme life-styles, either asceticism or fleshly indulgence.
The Gnostic claim that salvation came only from mystical Gnosticism, or self-knowledge, left no room for the truth of God?s Word.
imagine....making God fit..because after all God is more or less insisted by the definition others have placed and forced mankind and society to accept.
further imagine, people realizing that most of what is conceived as God is a lie. Imagine people defending that lie based on their theologies, wars, fighting and so forth to enforce their "absolute" definition of what God is...
Gnostics are those on the outside wanting to make an absolute statement about GOD and show the world how authentic their lie is...
There is something amazing, wonderful and absolutely unknown about life, this universe and how we are what we are...too many people have spent WayAuoo much time focusing on what they believe it is..making that the "truth" and gnostics are no different..mainly because they still subscribe to the definiton of a god or gods based upon something they have never had nor anyone else has had first hand experience of.
Then there is faith and the attestation from all the people who say they have felt GOD....this only reinforces the concept that all this stuff about GOD must be true..because people feel it.
Gnosticism is basically defining this nature of feeling and validation. They are defining a lie and an untruth, insisting that it is real above and beyond all things.....
In the end though, a lie is a lie is a lie. No matter how sacred you make it.
Why does Gnosticism not make sense to me?
