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I've taken a break, part way through the Nag Hammadi Library, but as far as I've gotten I am unimpressed. Part of my reaction is the pain of wading through huge lists of arc hons (mostly, I gather, borrowed from Zoroastrianism); the unnecessary and pointless detail seems to be aimed at impressing novice recruits, but it doesn't seem to have any other purpose.
The main point appears to be that creation of a material universe is so inferior a concept that it cannot be blamed on God, because matter is inherently corruptible. So the Creator is thought to be an inferior being, and the true God a purely spiritual entity on a higher plane. Humanity has a bit of the spiritual in it and therefore people are capable of achieving that higher plane of existence, but they attain it by knowledge (nosies).
Knowledge of what? the answer appears to be: the heaps of mystic elevation compiled by the Gnostic writers.
By contrast, orthodox Christianity treats the material world itself as part of the intended creation and therefore of value, and regards faith as superior to knowledge. This is not the cocksure claim of personal rightness that some call faith, misreading Hebrews 11:1 (and, in practice, nearly indistinguishable from the nosies of the Gnostic teachings). Rather, it's the steadfast commitment to a relationship that constitutes faith in just about every other mention throughout the Bible.
The Gnosis is too brittle a concept for me; I don't believe that any human mind is capable of perfect knowledge. We aren't built for it. It's precisely the sort of unfounded claim to perfection that people often think is represented by faith.
For me, knowledge should be more like science: always admitting its limits, without which its scope cannot expand. Much of what we know today is tomorrow's garbage. Real faith is like that: it's about trusting a relationship in progress, as science (modern, post-Galileo science) is about sticking to the process.
I'm not embarrassed by the material. The fact that my mind operates (at least in this life, so far) because a chunk of specialized meat in my skull keeps working is the reality. So far, Gnosticism seems to me to be about ducking away from that reality.
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