The Beginning
First, it is important to note while Gnosticism has been widely discussed and debated. Scholars have never come to an agreement on what its dogmatic beliefs are—its beliefs have changed with the times. Most of the information known about Gnosticism has come from the writings of the church father Irenaeus and numerous lasting myths. Moreover, it can also be seen through some of Origen’s writings that he had a Gnostic vision and may have been one of the leading causes for its appearance in the church. He gave form to an allegorical process of understanding scripture. Andrew Miller states that Origen “distinguished in [scripture] a threefold sense — the literal, the moral, and the mystical — answering respectively to the body soul,
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While there are countless versions of Gnostic theology, the majority state that Gnosticism began as a belief of a dualistic universe. Quoting the author and professor Tim Cooper:
According to Gnostic myth, there is, above all, the unknowable divine being who is pure spirit… he gave birth to a slightly lesser level of beings who are called emanations or aeons. They in turn gave birth to another level of created beings, who gave birth in their turn, and so on. The world in which we live was not created by the divine being, but by a much lesser emanation who was flawed, incompetent and evil. His creation was an aberration, a mistake. He is the reason for the mess we are in, since he created us and the universe in which we live… If spirit is good and matter is evil, then the goal of the Gnostic is for the soul to escape the body. This can only be achieved through secret
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Being the world was created by a lower God, tainted with evil by war, from pre-existing matter, all matter was therefore evil—to include the human body. Consequently, Christ the Savior came from the highest God to defeat the lesser God, conquering his evil world and bringing it back into order for those who believed and had the gift of knowledge. This belief was stemmed from the thought that a good God could not create an evil world; therefore, the creator of earth must have been an evil God—who they stated was the Jewish God Yahweh. Thus, the only way to achieve salvation was by getting this special knowledge of the Gods and living in the correct order that Jesus
In the Bible, God, sacrifices his only son, a respectable, revered "heavenly" figure, allowing Jesus to live amongst sinful people. In human form, Jesus treats the common people's illnesses and performs miracles to help them; above all, he cares for them and loves them. Jesus is selfless, endlessly devoting himself to helping and serving others, and ensuring that they will have a better life by showing them "the way" to God. Jesus sacrifices his life in heaven to come to Earth and help his people.
The traditional Christian answer to why God allowed the death of Christ is for the absolution of humanity’s sin. However, this begs the question, as an omnipotent God why was it necess...
The central teachings of traditional Christianity teachings were created to assure that man could work out his salvation. Therefore, making man responsible for finding his way to God, so that he could have a personal relationship with his Savior through Jesus the Son of God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2017). Jesus Christ attracted followers who eventually took his teachings throughout the Roman world and beyond. Jesus, who was born to Mary and Joseph in Judea teaching methods placed him in conflict with prevailing Jewish beliefs and authorities; nevertheless, Jesus message inspired a small group of followers, who believed he was the Messiah (Matthews et al., 2014). However, the meaning of Jesus’s
In The Unfolding Drama of The Bible, Anderson says, “The new heaven and the new earth”(83). As Jesus died for man and woman he restored the perfect world. By Jesus doing so one can receive everlasting life in heaven. Being saved by grace through faith allows for anyone to be saved. One is not saved by his works man and woman are saved by their faith alone. To wrap up the Bible Jesus died for humans everlasting life in heaven by believing and trusting in him.
Gnostics and Proto-Orthodox Christians became quite the bitter rivals towards the end of the 2nd century and onward. Their views were polar opposites; this included their creations myths, which couldn’t have been more different. Although some elements overlapped, the differences between these two religions vastly outnumbered the similarities. Each religion interpreted scripture differently, and each side genuinely believed they had the correct views on god(s), religion, and the ultimate truth. Each religion had many creation stories, but the two most popular ones were within The Book of Genesis for Proto-Orthodox Christians, and The Secret Book of John for Gnostics. These stories, or myths, were the basic foundations for each religion, and offered various explanations of how the world and mankind came to be. The Secret Book of John is one of the most famous and well-known Gnostic texts. It was found in the Nag Hammadi Library, which was discovered in Egypt. The Book of Genesis is a part of the Christian Old Testament Bible. Both texts were equally influential and meant a great deal to each religion. The creation stories of Proto-Orthodox Christians and Gnostics shaped a number of their most important beliefs, especially the belief of how suffering lead to salvation.
means that Jesus died for a reason and that was to free us from sin.
He was a man who “provided the perfect atoning sacrifice for the sins of all mankind, thus making the crucifix, or cross, one of the defining symbols of Christianity” (Fairchild). Jesus was pinned on a cross and took on the burden of sins of the world in order to relieve humanity of all suffering. Although Jesus experienced momentous amounts of agony during this process, he was successful in appeasing the suffering of the Christian community, ultimately resulting in a positive outcome of relief for future generations of people. The well-being of one was sacrificed for the progression of many, making a reasonable case for the justification of Jesus’s actions. Suffering is not all bad the way that we perceive it to be and the amount that we suffer is largely based on our own emotional will to endure pain and seek personal and communal benefit from our own agony. Jesus can be said to have tolerated an unimaginable quantity of emotional suffering through displacing the sins of the world onto himself. On the other hand, his will to withstand this suffering and reasons backing his sacrifice diminished the pain that he underwent. Humans suffer so that we can improve our own lives and utilize our experiences to prevent the suffering of others who have not yet taken part in the misery that we
Gnosticism is defined by Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary as the thought and practice especially of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries distinguished by the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis. (King pg. 5) After reading several books, you will realize that Gnosticism is a really difficult term to define and most people have not been successful with coming up with a definition that fits what Gnosticism really is. Gnostics believed that there was no physical resurrection of Jesus Christ and that there was no way that such a good God would create evil so they believed that Jesus was adopted or transcended by God. Gnosis comes from the Greek word meaning knowledge which explains why most Gnostics believe that true salvation comes from some sort of special knowledge.
"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."(New Revised Standard Version, John 1:14) As the only son of God in the Christian theology, Jesus Christ was tasked with a multitude of trials, and horrors the common man would have rebuked and refused to undertake. However, as a demi-god born of the divine Christian deity and the mortal, virgin Mary, Jesus was not the average mortal man.
According to agnostics, there is absolutely no proof of a God and thus, “God” could actually be an existence fabricated from myths. In addition, it is believed that the universe is both ethereal and uncaused by any higher power; it is simply “just there”. Take the Big Bang Theory for example, agnostics claim the universe essentially sprang into existence all on its own and life is merely a series of random processes. Likewise, one could easily ask the question, if God created the universe then who created God? However, some may argue that deism is the most accurate worldview since it is most rationally correct. Many scientists today are actually discovering reasons to believe a God does exist but does not intervene in our daily lives. Philosopher, Antony Flew, was known for being a famous atheist that later took on the deist approach because of how modern science is beginning to “prove” the existence of a creator. Both agnostics and deists agree that there are explanations for mundane happenings and mystical occurrences are merely coincidental. Similarly, if there is a supposedly good God, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Why does he not
I will divide this paper in a few key points. The first is what Gnosticism is. The second is the
In the days of Christ’s life on this earth, believers did not have access to the Bible in its entirety as we know and are familiar with today. Believers in this ancient time period only had access to the Old Testament. However, through their access to the Old Testament, believers were provided a foundation for New Testament times. This foundation provided New Testament believers with the Lord’s established principles of right and wrong they were expected to follow. In addition, the Old Testament is overflowing with accounts of people whose lives exemplified the future life of Christ on this earth. These pictures allowed the Israelite nation to begin to have an understanding of why Christ needed to come as their Messiah and the work He needed to do on earth. Finally, there are common themes that are interwoven throughout the entire Old Testament. Three of these themes: transgression, redemption, and consummation point to the purpose of Christ’s atoning death on the cross. These themes portray God’s work both in the lives of Old Testament believers, but they also foreshadow God’s desire and plan for believers in New Testament times and beyond.
Gnosticism, which was viewed as a threat to early Christian beliefs can be defined as the “thought and practice especially of various cults of late pre Christian and early Christian centuries distinguished by the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis (King, p.5).” Besides the dictionary’s condensed definition summarizing Gnosticism, “Gnosticism” is a much more complex belief composed of numerous myths defining humans and God and viewed as an ancient Christian heresy. Gnosticism is rather a term invented in the early modern period to aid in defining the boundaries of normative Christianity. Yet, it has been mistakenly come to be thought of as a distinctive Christian heresy or seen as a religion in its own right (King, p.1)
For centuries now Christians have claimed to possess the special revelation of an omnipotent, loving Deity who is sovereign over all of His creation. This special revelation is in written form and is what has come to be known as The Bible which consists of two books. The first book is the Hebrew Scriptures, written by prophets in a time that was before Christ, and the second book is the New Testament, which was written by Apostles and disciples of the risen Lord after His ascension. It is well documented that Christians in the context of the early first century were used to viewing a set of writings as being not only authoritative, but divinely inspired. The fact that there were certain books out in the public that were written by followers of Jesus and recognized as being just as authoritative as the Hebrew Scriptures was never under debate. The disagreement between some groups of Christians and Gnostics centered on which exact group of books were divinely inspired and which were not. The debate also took place over the way we can know for sure what God would have us include in a book of divinely inspired writings. This ultimately led to the formation of the Biblical canon in the next centuries. Some may ask, “Isn’t Jesus really the only thing that we can and should call God’s Word?” and “Isn’t the Bible just a man made collection of writings all centered on the same thing, Jesus Christ?” This paper summarizes some of the evidences for the Old and New Testament canon’s accuracy in choosing God breathed, authoritative writings and then reflects on the wide ranging
Throughout history, Christianity has been molded, hardened, melted, refined and shaped into the different sects that are witnessed today. While many different controversies and thinkers have influenced Christianity, Gnosticism contains the supreme importance in influencing Christianity. The Gnostic Conflict influenced church history into the culture it is today by spurring much of the intellectual foundations of faith by making claims in the subordinationism of the trinity and the incarnation of Christ, as well as producing some of the first sects in Christianity through Marion. By claiming that there are lesser and higher divinities in the universe, this set the tone for much of the arguments made for subordinationism in the upcoming centuries.