Background Info

I have always wanted to know more about the Gnostic Gospels. I hope to find more about these gospels to find if they are nuggets of truth or a first century fiction.

Gnostic-like beliefs persisted into the fourth century. Among the late manifestationswas Manichaeism, a dualistic cult that trapped Augustine in his pre-Christian life. Against ithe wrote many treatises, which are collected in The Anti-Manichaean Writings in the Ante-Nicene Fathers.TeachingsSince Gnosticism lacked a common authority, it encompassed a variety of beliefs.Central to many, if not most, were:1. a cosmic dualism between spirit and matter, good and evil;2. a distinction between a finite Old Testament God, Yahweh, who was equated withPlato’s Demiurge or Craftsman, and the transcendent God of the New Testament;3. view of creation as resulting from the fall of Sophia (Wisdom);4. identification of matter as evil;5. belief that most people are ignorant of their origins and condition;6. identification of sparks of divinity that are encapsulated in certain spiritual individuals;7. faith in a docetic Redeemer, who was not truly human and did not die on the cross. ThisRedeemer brought salvation in the form of a secret gnosis or knowledge that was com-municated by Christ after his resurrection.8. a goal of escaping the prison of the body, traversing the planetary spheres of hostiledemons, and being reunited with God;9. a salvation based not on faith or works, but upon special knowledge or gnosis of one’strue condition;10. a mixed view of morality Carpocrates urged his followers to engage in deliberate pro-miscuity. Epiphanes, his son, taught that licentiousness was God’s law. Most Gnostics,however, took a strongly ascetic view of sexual intercourse and marriage, contendingthat the creation of woman was the source of evil and procreation of children simplymultiplied the number of persons in bondage to the evil material world. Salvation ofwomen depended on their one day becoming men and returning to the conditions ofEden before Eve was created. Oddly enough, women were prominent in many Gnosticsects.11. interpretation of baptism and the Lord’s supper as spiritual symbols of the gnosis;12. view of the resurrection as spiritual, not physical. In the Nag Hammadi codices DeResurrectione affirms that:The Saviour swallowed up death.... For he laid aside the world that perishes.He changed himself into an incorruptible aeon and raised himself up, after he hadswallowed up the visible by the invisible, and he gave us the way to immortality….But if we are made manifest in this world wearing him, we are his beams and we
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are encompassed by him until our setting, which is our death in this life. We aredrawn upward by him like beams by the sun, without being held back by anything.This is the spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic together with thefleshly. [Malinine, 45]Gnosticism as an organized movement acknowledging its source all but died. The solesurviving remnant is in southwestern Iran. However many Gnostic teachings live on amongnew agers, existentialists, and Bible critics. The revival of interest in the Gospel of Thomasby the Jesus Seminar is a case in point. There is also a tendency, even among someevangelical scholars, to deny the physical nature of the resurrection. However, Gnosticismlives today in the New Age Movement in an extensive way.EvaluationGnosticism was thoroughly critiqued by the early church fathers, especially Irenaeus,Tertullian, Augustine, and Origen, though Origen bought into some of their views.SourcesAugustine, The Anti-Manichaean WritingsC. A. Evans, Nag Hammadi Texts and the BibleA. Frederick, et al., The Gnostic GospelsN. L. Geisler, The Battle for the ResurrectionR. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early ChristianityP. Jones, Spirit WarsM. Malinine, et al., De ResurrectionJ. M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in EnglishF. Seigert, et al., Nag-Hammadi-RegisterTertullian, Against the Valentinians_____, Five Books Against Marcion_____, On the Flesh of Christ_____, On the Resurrection of the FleshE. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism4TDGeisler0300

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