Have you investigated Gnostic Christianity?

[Chris OConnor]

Movie Nerd, please just quote actual relevant statement and not Robert's entire post. It becomes difficult to follow a discussion with quotes embedded within quotes or quotes of entire posts.

[Movie Nerd]

Movie Nerd, please just quote actual relevant statement and not Robert's entire post. It becomes difficult to follow a discussion with quotes embedded within quotes or quotes of entire posts.

Sorry about that.

[Gnostic Bishop]

I read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels a long time ago and thought it was one of the best books I'd ever read. However that was back when I was still a theist, doubt I'd enjoy it as much now, but who knows? Several other BookTalkers have recommended that book.

As a ex-theist, you might like that of almost all the Abrahamic cults, we do not discriminate against gays and women. If Gnostic Christianity ever catches on and people decide that misogynistic religions are immoral because they do not promote equality, we will thrive.

Things would look a lot differently if Constantine had not had hic new church decimate us.

Regards
DL

[Gnostic Bishop]

yeah i'm an old gnostic from way back (on wednesdays), not those queer weirdo pseudo-gnostics you get, i mean more the "gospel of thomas" type of thing.

eg.

(113) His disciples said to him, "When is the kingdom going to come?" <Jesus said>, "It is not by being waited for that it is going to come. They are not going to say, 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it."

i'm not really a gnostic at all in another sense but just the other day i heard someone describing an essential gnostic and i recognised a mirror image, i said to myself damn! i'm way more gnostic than i care to admit.

but again i stress, not that Nickelback Gnosticism, i mean old school, way way way back.

i believe if more people knew the old gnostic doctrine they would finally "get" the bible, it's metaphor not history.

there are few things that annoy me more than a fake gnostic

and of course you dont have to be a "gnostic" to be a gnostic... i knew a truck driver once, he didn't know his basilides from his valentinus but if you ever tried any BS on him he would look through you like glass, damn he knew

All a Gnostic Christian is from a secular POV, is a free thinking person.

Free thinkers recognize each other. We do not give our minds taboos.

Regards
DL

[DWill]

My impression (for what such a thing is worth) is that gnosticism is no refuge for the more rationally-minded. Taken as a whole, would it be fair to say that the writings known as gnostic and not given the imprimatur of the Church contain a bewildering variety of mystical and supernatural statements? There might be the advantage DL cites, of greater acceptance of diversity, but there could also be a drawback that limits the relevance of these writings in the 21st C.

[Gnostic Bishop]

ooooh and one of my favourite gnostic songs of all time

"the devil went down to georgia"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSljt0i3TI

what a metaphor!

We are one on this last.

My number 2. Not related to anything Gnostic from what I can see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08e9k-c91E8

Regards
DL

[Gnostic Bishop]

I read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels a long time ago and thought it was one of the best books I'd ever read. However that was back when I was still a theist, doubt I'd enjoy it as much now, but who knows? Several other BookTalkers have recommended that book.

Pagels is one of my favourite writers. I have my mum's copy of The Gnostic Gospels which I read back in 1982, and which set me on my quest to understand the relation between belief and knowledge in religion. Pagels is a highly rational and critical writer. She does not endorse supernatural claims, but does skirt around the problem of the Gnostic invention of Christ. I just bought her recent study of the Revelation.

My favourite Gnostic song is Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

Ms. Pagels is why I am a Gnostic Christian.

Regards
DL

[Gnostic Bishop]

I read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels a long time ago and thought it was one of the best books I'd ever read. However that was back when I was still a theist, doubt I'd enjoy it as much now, but who knows? Several other BookTalkers have recommended that book.

Pagels is one of my favourite writers. I have my mum's copy of The Gnostic Gospels which I read back in 1982, and which set me on my quest to understand the relation between belief and knowledge in religion. Pagels is a highly rational and critical writer. She does not endorse supernatural claims, but does skirt around the problem of the Gnostic invention of Christ. I just bought her recent study of the Revelation.

My favourite Gnostic song is Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

Their best line ever. We don't need no thought control.

Regards
DL

[Gnostic Bishop]

The early church that sprung up after Christ's ascension was practically communist; all possessions owned individually were sold and the money used to care for the needs of everyone in the group. No one was left out, and there was no sense of upper, middle and lower classes.

I wonder what the people in this early church would think of today's USA brand of Christianity, with all the talk of prosperity theology and shit.

I hear you.

Note how they were quick to kill off the one sect that remained Universalist. Christianity and Constantine decided that free thinking was not to be allowed. They tried to kill it for 1,000 years but it failed. Except for the Abrahamic cults. Christianity and Islam.

Regards
DL

[Gnostic Bishop]

The early church that sprung up after Christ's ascension was practically communist; all possessions owned individually were sold and the money used to care for the needs of everyone in the group. No one was left out, and there was no sense of upper, middle and lower classes.

I wonder what the people in this early church would think of today's USA brand of Christianity, with all the talk of prosperity theology and shit.

Don't take the Book of Acts at face value. It should be considered as fiction.

Saint Peter is presented as a Stalin-like demagogue. When Ananias refuses to give up his money Peter curses him and he dies. That is the totalitarian tyranny which results from the alleged primitive communism of the early church.

Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? ... What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God." When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.

Communists have a great facility with propaganda, concealing the fact that some are more equal than others, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm.

Acts is shoddy propaganda aimed to destroy memory of the Gnostic origins of the Christ Myth. The primitive communism of the pentecost community is presented as unsustainable against the need to mobilise an institutional hierarchy of orthodox bishops and priests.

That is not to defend prosperity theology, which is deeply unchristian, but rather to note that the context of ancient Gnostic thought contains more than meets the eye.

A good knowledge base.

Modern Gnostic Christians while recognizing that the ancient Gnostics saw a flat pyramidal hierarchy in heaven, only two levels, have discarded that for a more multi-levelled pyramid.

With evolution, we recognize that man will seek to be the fittest and will always compete and create multi-level demographic pyramids.

Regards
DL