Gnosticism vs Christianity

Christians know it is not all up to them.
Gnostics try so very hard to reach their personal enlightenment.

Gnostics will ascend (leave the planet) at the end days,
bye bye
Christians will inherit it and live in the new world.

you confuse gnostics with newagers, if you would trouble yourself with reading any gnostic text you'll see that not only they relied solely on True Heavens and its messengers when talking about escaping from this world, but that they were also perfectly aware that as beings of this world they should worship rulers of this world, up to a certain point of course

New-agers are a populist outcome of gnosticism.
Same basic dogmas.
And that is another difference - Christians do not worship any rulers.

No offense, but you need to do a lot more research on this subject.

What specifically do you disagree with?

Labels...ppfftttt....

Kind of misleading, no?

Truly, Gnosticism says that you suffer and bear the sins of your fruits.

Think on that.

Nothing specific. Just your premise is all.

I'm not an expert but as far as I know beliefs like this one were only popular among adherents of Valentinianism, i.e. Valentinians believed that after the end times most humans will stay on Earth, their memory of celestial error will be wiped out, memory of archonts and Demiurgos about celestial error will also be wiped out, Demiurgos will be raised to the 8th sky and he will live with humans and his creation in perfect harmony at the threshold of Heavens.
Other gnostic churches were believing whether that humans who will not make it will just be annihilated or that this world will be kept until last soul escapes from it.

Gnosticism = salvation through knowledge (will never work)

Christianity = salvation through Jesus Christ (always works)

'Sins of my fruits'...

Aren't fruits what you get from not sinning, but from practising the virtues?

Labels are on cornflakes packets, pronouns are part of grammar to enable discussion.

Yet this is what you're doing.

Believing in worldly Religions = gives you that warm fuzzy comfort inside (always does)

By 'Demiurgos' do you mean God?

By definition - anyone proclaiming that they are not Gnostic are therefore Agnostic! Seems to me that there are a lot of agnostic Christians out there!!

I like your K.I.S.S principles :)

Being Christian is not a label to me, but I know most Gnostics shy away from calling themselves that which they are.

Your paradigm of reality needs to expand 1000 fold. You know nothing of Gnostics other that what the RCC has told you.

This isn't a matter of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. This is a matter of knowing yourself.

I will now bow out of this thread. The answers you seek are within yourself.

"To understand Gnosticism, said Hans Jonas, one needs something very much like a musical ear. Such a Gnostic "musical ear" is not come by easily. One person who seemingly possesses it is Professor Clark Emery of the University of Miami. In a small work on William Blake, Emery summarizes twelve points on which Gnostics tended to agree. Nowhere in the current literature have I found anything else so concise and accurate in describing the normative characteristics of the Gnostic mythos. Hence I shall present it here as a suggested collection of criteria that one might apply in determining what Gnosticism is. The following characteristics may be considered normative for all Gnostic teachers and groups in the era of classical Gnosticism; thus one who adheres to some or all of them today might properly be called a Gnostic:

The Gnostics posited an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality.
As a result of the precosmic division the universe was created. This was done by a leader possessing inferior spiritual powers and who often resembled the Old Testament Jehovah.
A female emanation of God was involved in the cosmic creation (albeit in a much more positive role than the leader).
In the cosmos, space and time have a malevolent character and may be personified as demonic beings separating man from God.
For man, the universe is a vast prison. He is enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by such moral laws as the Mosaic code.
Mankind may be personified as Adam, who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality.
Within each natural man is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each man, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction.
What effects the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge.
Before the awakening, men undergo troubled dreams.
Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition but through revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not information but a modification of the sensate being.
The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event.
Since the effort is to restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead, active rebellion against the moral law of the Old Testament is enjoined upon every man."


[link to gnosis.org]

I suppose, for you. Considering my perspective, no.

Fruit of thy loins.

You know... like,

Sorry if its troublesome, I was a gnostic, and the 'RCC' hasn't told me anything, though I'm learning more about that now.
Thanks for your input (I know I like a good argument).

Last Edited by #KK# on 11/05/2012 08:56 PM

You're talking about having children?

Yeah, I agree we all bear the fruits of what we put into our children, the beliefs we hold get transposed onto them,
whether we talk about it openly or not.

Last Edited by #KK# on 11/06/2012 07:20 PM

Here's what I think is going on with Gnosticism and Christianity.

Well before Moses and when he wrote the Torah, there was a guy called Hermes Trismegistus, some even say he was Enoch.

Hermes wrote a lot of books about God after some deep meditation and a lot of it is remarkable because it really sounds like God. Anyway, much of what Hermes wrote established the basis of gnosticism.

Then the Jews came and monotheism came about, which I suspect is the same God Hermes wrote about, because the writing descriptions are very similar.

Fast forward to around 30 AD when Yeshua preached the "good news." I believe he told his disciples about the truth of God and who God is and the truth of the Father from who he, Yeshua, had came from, but the God of the Old Testament and the Father from who Yeshua had come from are not the same. Anyway, these secret writings by Yeshua's disciples (like the Apocryphon of John) were unfortunately labeled as gnostic, which put them with the writings of Hermes.

This is a misclassification because Hermes wrote about a monotheistic God, and the Jews as well, but the secret writings of the disciples describe this God as the demiurge. In Hermes writings he is called "Poimandres" the "Man Shepherd." In the Secret Writings of the disciples they they talk about a being as an archon named Yaldabaoth who says he is God.

I think the God who Hermes wrote about, who fits the description of God in the Old Testament, is the same being Yeshua describes as the one (Yaldabaoth) who says he's God, a jealous God, a God that is only he and there is no other, a God who forms the light and creates darkness.

Either way, I don't think today's Christianity tells the whole picture and that it has been mostly institutionalized, codified and organized as a religion that puts people at risk.

This is correct.

I believe this is true and this is what Yeshua taught his disciples, that everyone must really know themselves.

Yeshua railed against the hypocrisy of the people who ran the establishment.

Hypocrisy is borne out of self ignorance to the self and it's sure to get one the brimstone treatment.

Gnostics ceased to exist more than thousand years ago, I have no idea why you say you were gnostic but I guess that you were most likely bored teenager fantasizing random "spiritual" stuff out of few wikipedia entries.

OP, you are clearly misinformed and I would recommend that you read what other after you have written.

No one else can save you. You are the only one with that power.

Salvation from your fears comes from Knowledge Of Self (Awareness).

No one and no force external to you can save you from your fears.

Isn't this why the bible teaches you to 'know thyself' and that the 'kingdom of heaven is within'???

Where did the message turn into salvation from mere belief/acceptance of Jesus? Oh yeah, when the churches came along. : (