The Gnostic wing of Christianity, if it can even be called that today, has quite a few differences to Christianity and Catholicism.
If the old Gnostic Christians were here, they would hardly recognize what has happened to the original Orthodox Catholic Church or it’s various offshoots in Protestantism or Islam. The Gnostic Christian Jesus would have a fit and would be quite disappointed I think. I know that this Gnostic Christian is.
The two main differences that moved the old Christians to kill Gnostic Christians and burn their scriptures was literalism in reading scriptures and the fact that the Gnostic version of Jesus was a Universalist.
That Gnostic Christian Jesus, and the Gnostic Christians of that flavor, (there are likely as many Gnostic sects as Christian sects), sees a spark of God in all people including women and gays. That fact, to me, makes Gnostic Christianity a more desirable denomination of Christianity than all the rest.
If a religion cannot abide with equality of the sexes then to my mind it is not a just religion and is not worthy of the support of moral people. Inequality is an immoral position and most of the Abrahamic cults are of that immoral persuasion.
As the superior Catholic theology, it is my hope that Gnostic Christianity will eventually bury the non-egalitarian and immoral Christian cults as their members recognize that equality is the right moral system for all to live under.
If you have investigated Gnostic Christianity, do you agree that from a moral POV, they are the superior Christian theology thanks to equality and Universalism?
My friends and I have a game we play, who can come up with the most gnostic term for God such as
Father of YW
Baal of Zion
The Lord Sanctus
Suffice to say it can get a bit ridiculous but we keep it between ourselves, kinda the rule when it comes to Gnosticism- all this stuff that don’t really need to be known.
What can be know as fact is more important than what can only be known as speculation.
Gnostic Christians seek facts about God the way Jesus said we should seek. Christians have become idol worshippers of their immoral Godinabook.
Simms above just loves to deny women and gays equality so much that he will not consider another Christian tradition that gives equality to all. He loves to hate too much methinks.
Authorities on the original Gnostic beliefs are Elaine Pagals and Hans Jonas. Of the two, Jonas does the most thorough research. Pagels’ research seems to be about the Gnostic Scriptures found at Nag Hammadi–The Gospels of Mary of Magdala , of Judas, of Thomas, etc., etc. Other than these sources, the most we know about the gnostics appears in Irenaeus’ refutations of their beliefs.
There will have to be some re-learning from all as the modern form of Gnostic Christianity defines itself for this age.
We know a lot more now than when Christians murdered us and burned our scriptures.
Many, even literalist Christians, are recognizing that all religions are myth based and that scriptures should not be read literally.
That aside, what are your thoughts on our Universality and full equality for women and gays as compared to what most religions do. They mostly all deny those groups equality.
I think Gnosticism, like so many spiritual movements, begins with “Everything those mainstream people think is wrong”, creating a void that can be filled with whatever the individual Gnostic wants to fill it with. It’s texts are deliberately vague and of dubious origins, and the way it interprets other Scriptures is similarly incomplete and…reaching.
Are you saying that the mainstream is right in discriminating and denigrating women and gays and that a religion that does not is only pandering to them?
Are you so fond of the status quo and the denial of equality to those groups that you would not promote Gnostic Christianity?
Druids, Wiccans, Gnostics–there are so many of these “new” religious movements around these days. Most adherents of these “new age” religions have little or no idea about how these religions came to be. It’s an old name placed on a new idea. IMHO, most of these are simply reactionary movements as Ucci suggests. They are a bastardization of their original sources, just as Christianity has turned out to be.
Or do you think that any of our 2 and 3,000 year old misogynistic religions are worthy and should not change?
Here, in Gnostic Christianity, you have one that is already up to modern standards and you do not seem to think it worthy.
If you do not promote the new and better then the old crap will continue to reign. Until secularism kills them that is and that may not be that far away.
This would be an example of what I’m talking about. Gnosticism doesn’t say a thing about gays. What it does, though, is have a very loose, non-specific and hard to interpret set of moral teachings. Moreover, there’s not exactly any Gnostic churches in the area, so there’s no priest to tell you you’re doing Gnosticism wrong. So what does Gnosticism teach about the gays in the end? Why, whatever Greatest I am wants it to teach! And if you change your opinion about homosexuality in a few years, Gnosticism will teach that too!
So you're comparing a blank in which you can write whatever you desire, to an actual set of teachings, some of which people in any given generation are bound to disagree with.
So it's not about pandering to women and gays. Gnosticism doesn't pander because it's stone cold dead. It just sits there, defenseless from you ripping chunks out of it that you find tasty, or making claims about it that just aren't so. A mainstream will always say something you don't like because it [i]says something[/i].
And yeah, since you've raised the question several times, I think there's plenty of room in the moral landscape for a variety of opinions on women and gays, not just whatever the ultra-hip 21st century Western kids are saying. I am rolling my eyes over here that you're seriously saying a religion must be false because it doesn't agree with some political movement that sprang into existence in the 1980's and could vanish just as quick.
When we say we all have a spark of God within us, that includes us all.
And yes, you will not find too much written thanks to Christianity but we know what our hearts have written on them and that is why the inconsistency you imagine in our morals are not there.
But don’t support Gnosticism and it’s equality if your moral sense does not see the morality of it.
The rightousness of God is a kind of sharing along with equality. There is equality in the heaven which is stretched out in all directions and contains the entire earth in its circle. The night reveals all the stars equally. The light of the sun, which is the cause of the daytime and the father of light, God pours out from above upon the earth in equal measure to all who have power to see. For all see alike, since here is no distinction between rich and poor, people and governor, stupid and clever, female and male, free men and slaves. Even the irrational animals are not accorded any different treatment; but in just the same way God pours out from above sunlight equally upon all the animals. He establishes his justice to both good and bad by seeing that none is able to get more than his share and to deprive his neighbor, so that he has twice the light his neighbor has.
God began, so to speak, as owner, shall we say, of the whole of what was. He then began to create and everything that is emanated from him. Right?
The bible says that God cannot backslide.
You have souls emanating from God who are somehow less than perfect in God’s eyes and should be discriminated against. How can that be since they come directly from him and scriptures say that everything God creates is created perfect?
That’s it? That’s the fortune-cookie one-liner that leads you to believe that Gnosticism supports whatever it is you personally believe about women and gays?
I don’t know if I’m a Gnostic, or hold to anything Gnostic, but I’m all for equality of women and gays ; equality of all God’s littl’ chil’n.
Okay, the link you offered speaks of the inclusion of women (Sophia - Mother of God). But how about Gnostic inclusion of gays? Got supporting doc, from Nag Hammadi Library perchance, fer that?
Great quote, or writing. Thanks.
But who says “Gods do not discriminate against Goddesses.” ? Gods can do whatever they want … and even if it’s wrong it’s right.