Re: Gnostic Gospels are not Agnostic or Atheist

I am interested in learning more about the Gnostic Gospels.

Here are some historical accusations about Gnostics:

wo thousand years ago, the new religion called "Christianity" was in a state of primordial tumult. There was no "Bible" at this time - there were thousands of them, each collection of gospels and scriptures telling the story of human creation and salvation from some different point of view.

Various factions vied for the right to define Christianity to the public; as a consequence, the would- be Christian had many options. One of the most popular types of Christianity was "Gnosticism," a movement centered in Alexandria, Egypt, whose adherents claimed that salvation came not through faith, but through "gnosis" (Greek for "knowledge"). Humanity's "original sin," according to these early theologians, lay not having disobeyed "God, " but in having allowed him to trick us. Indeed, many scholars now believe that Jesus himself was probably gnostic!

"They consider themselves "mature," so that no one can be compared with them in the greatness of their gnosis, not even if you mention Peter or Paul or any of the other apostles.... They imagine that ... they themselves are wiser and more intelligent than the apostles."

(St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, pub. ~ A.D. 180)

Adam and Eve, the Gnostics Christians realized, hadn't so much been "created" by Jehovah as trapped by Him - and He is actually an evil space alien named Yaldabaoth. The "Bible" is His propaganda tool, a twisted record of human ignorance and defeat, and reality itself is the product of a vast, angelic conspiracy. God is the "Devil," the Earth is "Hell," and as long as we remain ignorant of our origins we are doomed to to remain stuck here on the planet's surface, shuttling through endless cycles of amnesia and reincarnation. Those who understand the machinery by which "God" and his "Angels" maintain this dimension are freed from it forever.

"That expression of Scripture, "Seek, and ye shall find,"they interpret as spoken with this view, that they should discover themselves to be above the Creator, styling themselves greater and better than God, and calling themselves spiritual, but the Creator animal; and [affirming] that for this reason they rise upwards above God..."

(IRENAEUS AGAINST HERESIES - BOOK IV: CHAP. XXX.--ABSURDITY OF THEIR STYLING THEMSELVES SPIRITUAL, WHILE THE DEMIURGE IS DECLARED TO BE ANIMAL)

More interested in spiritual things than in hierarchies, formulas and psychological arm-twisting, the Gnostics never became a true "church" in the earthly sense; small groups of people found the mysteries of the universe within themselves, spread the word, and that was that. Women could be "gnostic" as easily as men, and they chose speakers by lot. The gnostic agenda was one of invidual enlightenment, and their democratic practices reflected this fact.

"How frivolous, how worldly, how merely human it is, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as fits their faith! To begin with, it is uncertain who is [an official], and who a believer: they all have access equally, they listen equally, they pray equally - even pagans... They also share the kiss of peace with all who come, for they do not care... they [all] meet together to storm the citadel of the one only truth... All of them are arrogant... all offer you gnosis!"

(Tertullian, Catholic official, on the non-hierarchical nature of gnostic services, from Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels, p. 38, pub. A.D. 1979)

The spiritual teachings of the Gnostics Christians stood in sharp contrast to those of the emerging Catholic Church of Rome, an organization which seems in contrast to have been designed to control large groups of people through guilt and fear. By encouraging spiritual co-dependence through practices such as confession, the Church provided an almost painless way for the believer to surrender personal responsibility to a series of human authorities. The Gnostics criticized these human innovations bitterly, and the struggle between these two poles of the new religion lasted well into the third century.

"These heretical women - how audacious they are! They have no modesty; they are bold enough to teach, to engage in argumert, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and, it may be, even to baptize!"

(Tertullian, Catholic official, on gnostic suffrage,from Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels, p. 60, pub. A.D. 1979)

This was a situation exacerbated by the unique nature of Gnostics Christian scholarship, for while the Catholic Church attempted to streamline its' doctrines and shield its' members from threatening ideas, the Gnostics Christians promoted their "incomparable truth" with a vengeance. Drawing their theology from a vast pool of scriptures most of today's ignorant so-called "Christians" have never been allowed to learn about, the Gnostics Christians produced a complex body of knowledge which consistently outflanked Catholic theology both spiritually and intellectually.

"[They] put forth their own compositions, while boasting that they have more gospels than there really are . . . They really have no gospel which is not full of blasphemy. For what they have published . . . is totally unlike what has been handed down to us from the apostles."

(St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, BOOK III, CHAP. XI--PROOFS IN CONTINUATION, EXTRACTED FROM ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. THE GOSPELS ARE FOUR IN NUMBER, NEITHER MORE NOR LESS. MYSTIC REASONS FOR THIS)

Where the Catholic Church taught obedience, the Gnostics Christians taught inquiry; where the Church taught sin, the Gnostics Christians taught freedom. In the Gnostic Christians the Catholic Church had a mirror image, an identical twin which contradicted it in almost every way possible.

"...they deny Christ's birth of a virgin, and say that his flesh was not true flesh, but false, that his passion accordingly was mere pretence, and his resurrection null. They speak evil of the partriarchs and the prophets. They say that the law, given by God's servant Moses, was not given by the true God, but by the Prince of Darkness. They consider all souls, not only of men, but even of beasts, to be of the substance of God, and altogether parts of God..."

(St. Augustine, St. Augustine's Letters Against the Manicheans, from Willis Barnstone's The Other Bible, p.683, pub. 1984)

Even more upsetting to the Catholic Church then these religious innovations was the Gnostic's strategy of passive resistance to Roman rule; at a time when Christianity was still illegal, the Gnostic Christians discouraged martyrdom, preferring to lie than die.

"Now we are in the midst of an intense heat, the very dogstar of persecution... the fire and the sword have tried some Christians, and the beasts have tried others; others are in prison, longing for martyrdoms which they have tasted already, having been beaten by clubs and tortured ...We ourselves, having been appointed for pursuit, are like hares being hemmed in from a distance - and the heretics go about as usual !"

(Tertullian, Scorpiace)

Though such pragmatism seems sensible today, it outraged the founders of the early Catholic Church, who badly needed the publicity. Indeed, Gnostic opposition to martyrdom was not an isolated ethical stance, but sprang from the deep-seated Gnostic conviction that the emerging earthly Church was itself a product of error, and its members the deluded dupes of an imposter god.

"They call [us] "unspiritual," "common," and "ecclesiastic." ...Because we do not accept their monstrous allegations, they say that we go on living in the hebomad [the lower regions], as if we could not lift our minds to the things on high, nor understand the things that are above."

(Iranaeus, Catholic official, on the gnostic claim that Catholics had an inferior understanding of the cosmos, from Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels, p. 43, pub. A.D. 1979)

Views such as these made Gnostic Christians a frequent target of the increasingly powerful Catholic Church; by the time "mainstream" Christianity became the official faith of the Roman emperor, the ironic die of history had been cast. Gnostic Christians were driven underground, libraries were ransacked and burned, and the Church separated itself from its' twin forever.

"Let those persons who blaspheme the Creator...as [do]... all the falsely so-called "gnostics," be recognized as agents of Satan... Through their agency Satan even now... has been seen to speak against God, that God who has prepared eternal fire for every kind of apostasy."

(Iranaeus, Catholic official, on the gnostic claim that the creator god of the OT was an ignorant impostor, from Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels, p. 44, pub. A.D. 1979)

Shorn of its' irreverent other half, the newly confident church set about expanding. The past two thousand years of bloody human history bear eloquent testimony to the cost at which this crippled giant has acheived its' dominance. It's' time to take another look.

The Gnostic Friends Network has returned, and we're here to set the record straight.

"Had Alexandria triumphed and not Rome, the extravagant and muddled stories that I have summarized here would be coherent, majestic, and perfectly ordinary."

(Jorge Luis Borges, on the Gnostics)

http://www.enemies.com/html/about/mission_statement.html

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