Quotes About Gnosticism

Gnosticism does not need the structure of a church to function. It is therefore, a threat to the existence of many denominations.

To understand these Alien Parasites, where they come from and what their intentions are, the reader must explore the teachings of Gnosticism. The Gnostics are a group of wise adepts who understand the mysteries and secrets of the universe.

Gnostics are not bound by a Catechism or a Bible. Gnosticism is ultimately your relationship to the Divine and no one has the right to tell you that your personal experience is right or wrong.

Gnosticism, as we refer to it here, is not primarily a system of beliefs based on the set of writings found at Nag Hammadi or on the teachings of various groups during the early centuries of Christianity. They are the secret teachings of wisdom passed down through the ages.

Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius's treatise against the Gnostics?" he asked in a low clear voice. The young assistant looked gravely back. "Not for sale, I'm afraid," he said. "Nor, if it comes to that, the Gnostic treatises against St. Ignatius." "Quite," Anthony answered.

Yaldaboath is a monster spawned by Sophia who fell from the Pleroma," Fat said. "He imagines he's the only god but he's wrong. There's something the matter with him; he can't see. He creates our world but because he's blind he botches the job. The real God sees down from far above and in his pity sets to work to save us. Fragments of light from the Pleroma are—

It is not Docetism (in the strict sense) which is the characteristic of gnostic Christology, but the two-nature doctrine, i.e. the distinction between Jesus and Christ, or the doctrine that the redeemer as redeemer did not become man" (162).

Basically, if you move away from materialistic optimism but without embracing Judaism or Christianity, you are quite likely to end up with some kind of Gnosticism.

Ultimately, the so-called 'gnostic gospels' would be a denial of what Jesus and the church believed about God himself and what the canonical gospels are inviting the rest of the world, ourselves included, to believe about God. The canonical gospels are saying, in form and overall substance, that the word 'God' properly belongs to the creator God, the God of Israel, the God who has kept his promises to creation and to Israel and has done so in this way.

The alternative teaching of the Gnostics had proposed that one should replace the very Jewish message of God's kingdom on earth as in heaven by a very non-Jewish message about a "kingdom" that turned out to be a new form of self-help spirituality. The

Ancient Greek culture was permeated by philosophies such as Gnosticism and neo-Platonism that regarded the material realm as the realm of death, decay, and destruction. Gnosticism taught that the world was so evil that it could not be the creation of the highest, supreme deity but must be the handiwork of an evil sub-deity.

In their original historical context, these verses were astonishing. In the ancient world, virtually all the major "isms"—Platonism, neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Hindu pantheism—taught a low view of the material world. In these philosophies, salvation was conceived as a complete break between matter and spirit, a flight from the physical world. To make that break, adherents adopted a regimen of asceticism to suppress bodily urges and desires.

Eroticism and Gnosticism are the individual's recourse against the anonymity of mass society.

Gnosticism and Christianity start from the same point, but go in different directions. From the same definition of the human condition, Christianity infers that man is a creature, while the Gnostic infers he is a god.