Is Gnosticism the ultimate christian religion?

Seriously, nearly every contradiction in the bible is corrected by Gnosticism, why isn't it more widespread?

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Because the jews won. And Ambrose of Milan was a fucking crypto.

GNOSTICISM IS NOT A RELIGION, NOR IS IT EQUIVALENT WITH CHRISTIANITY; GNOSTICISM IS A THEOLOGICAL MODALITY.

PLEASE STOP YELLING

Its a heretical fanfic nothing more

>St. Ambrose was a crypto jew

>Persecuted Jews (Alongside Arians and Pagans.)

What sort of insane logic are you using here m8

Found the Jew/Zionist.

>Fanfic

> Somehow makes more sense than the original thing

Wew lad.

Isn't Manichaeism a Gnostic religion?

Other Christologies may have addressed those problems better before they were put down as well. Manichaeism was popular in Gaul.

youtu.be/4OP4F5aPn-g
youtu.be/lJWT46cVRuM

>jew persecuting heretical jews
Wow that has never happened before. huh

Yeah although different from the Roman and Alexandrian strands.

Interesting, I heard it was popular amongst the steppe tribes as well?

Yeah it was founded in Persia by Mani and a lot of Uyghurs converted as well. It was probably harder to get Persians to convert due to Zoroastrian dominance.
Syriac was their primary literary language.

Paul was a Gnostic.

He basises his entire case on having secret revealed Gnosis that the messiah didn't tell his lesser followers. He believes the "resurrected Jesus" is a different entity than the one that James and his followers knew.

Based St. Paul.

Why do you guys cling onto these hipster religions? Just be a Christian/Muslim/Jew like everyone else is.

I might be wrong but if you're looking for a morally grey God/God beyond comprehension Judaism also offers it

It spurious that the texts look derived from canonical scripture. The same arguments for speculating this could and probably are applied to other canonical texts even.
With the Gnostics I'd say it's more a question of what the benefit was to their methods of applied spirituality which were suppressed by the forces of state orthodoxy.

When it comes to the value system Gnostism is very different than the 3 abrhamic.

The 3 abrhamics see God as something existing outside of them, something they plea to for help. It's a value system of weak people, weak people cannot solve their own problems so they want help from an outside force.

Gnostism see's God as, at least partially, existing inside you. You are your own God and thus the source of your own power and aid. It's a value system for the strong, strong people do need a "higher being" to fix their life for them and whipe their ass.

Kabbalah also has this value system as did many types of heretical Christianity which were popular with aristocratics and lords. Historically Gnosticism and Kabballah were popular with well to do people as well.

So the same Torah/Old testament god who is a completely arbitrary asshole

T. Ethnic Jew

Was raised in judaism, now am more of a spiritualist if anything.

Just find Gnosticism to be very interesting, have you ever read on it before calling it a "Hipster religion"?

If that's the bulk of your argument please leave.

>prohibitionism has always failed
really maketh thou think

Atheist here.

If I had to pick a religion and Buddhism/Shintoism wasn't a choice, I'd pick Gnosticism over the vanilla version.

At least it tries to explain the logical fallacies the mainstream religions have.

I mean serious. The longer God waits to come back for the second coming, more souls are created that will go to hell. What kind of a loving god does that. If you said its the Demiurge's fault then well that sort of makes sense.

>Gnostism see's God as, at least partially, existing inside you. You are your own God and thus the source of your own power and aid. It's a value system for the strong, strong people do need a "higher being" to fix their life for them and whipe their ass.

it sounds like a value system for idolators who don't understand the kind of being God really is.

You can self improve yourself, there isn't much in Christianity,Islam, or Judaism iirc that is against going to the gym or meditation, but to think that you, a human in a universe that is so huge and complex can compare yourself to God who created it is a bit silly imo

This tbqhfam

The second coming isn't a concept in Judaism as far as I am aware

It's not that we can become god. it's that all of us have stuck inside us a piece of the divine

What you call a "soul" is merely a remain of the divine trapped inside a prison of flesh by the demiurge

>Is Gnosticism the ultimate christian religion?
No, but it's an interesting interpretation on Christianity. Loved their theory of there being two Jesuses, a human one and a divine one and how the Demiurge believes itself to be the creator of the universe but isn't. It's rich lore also lends itself well to fiction such as in Xenogears and Xenosaga, much like Kabbalah in Eva.

Yet in Abrahamic orthodoxies things end up being idolised anyway. Gnostics might appeal to angels or aeons too but there seems to be less devotion to it than Christians with saints or God and are more like Buddhists being focused on personal transformation.

Deism and Pantheism are both superior

The Christian/Islamic/Jewish God is a pretty small entity, not very complex either. It's always whining and complaining which is something only weak things do. For me it would be absurd to regard this figure as admirable. I can only pity such a thing.

So thinking of myself as better than it is pretty easy. In short you worship the type of God you need, which is someone that can solve your problems for you because you feel helpless and weak. You don't see yourself as a God because you are powerless. If that's really what you need to get through the day than it's appropriate for you.

And since Gnostics identify the "self" as the soul it means they identify themself as divine. Two importaint things. First not everyone has a piece of divine, only the cool people are divine. Second not everyone's chunk of the divine is equal in size. There's an order of rank. Sort of like how some angels are higher ranked than others.

The whole thing is very anti-egalitarian.

>The whole thing is very anti-egalitarian.

Elaborate.

>The whole thing is very anti-egalitarian.
not much than the church desu

because most people aren't life-hating faggots.

> why isn't it more widespread?
Interesting question. On one hand because persecution and repression but also they failed to create enduring religious institutions and a social order.
But Manicheism was more widespread than christianity and islam, geographically.

...

Essentially you can measure how eglaterian something is by how many orders of rank there are. Both the beleivers and the heavily figures.

Christianity there is one God and one metaphysical plane he lives in there's no order of rank in the heavenly realm. For the believers there is only one rank. You are either a Christian or not. You can't be a 33rd degree Christian while another guy is only 1st degree. Everyone has the holy spirit, God loves everyone

Gnostism there are multiple gods/aeons, some are low than others, some are higher. There are many different metaphysical planes arranged by spirtual purity. Lesser deities cannot even enter the higher planes. Now as for the order of rank within the beleivers. There's big gap, you are all born with a piece of a deity and some people have more importaint pieces. That's where the idea of secret Gnosis comes in. Because people's souls are not equal only the people with very strong souls can handle the BIG divine truths. These big truths would crush the minds of the spirtually lesser.

In pretty much all Gnostic gospels there is one character in the story who Jesus identifies as the most spirtually strong. He often gives them private lessons and in one story tells them that if the other disciplies were to lesson in they would die. There is usually also another character who is the spirtually lowest that becomes jealous and spiteful. You rarely see stuff like that in the standard New Testament

So essentially some people can never ascend will others can go full ascended? Sounds kinda like a shitty deal desu.

The concept of the demiurge is the only aspect about Gnosticism I like, the rest is trash

>every contradiction in the Bible

Name one

The way real world is only the people with really good genes can fully ascend.

The only way to have "everyone ascend" is to be completely egalitarian. We are all equal. There is only one metaphysical plane. Let give an extreme case, the severely retarded, they would have to be seen as spiritually equal to the prophets and kings.

What's cool about about this anti-egalitarian thing, is that everyone has a place. Your spiritual place might not be part of the highest metaphysical realm but you have purpose and your divine spark is designed for that. That's how it is in the phsysical world too. A city needs people of all types from cops to bakers. The baker should not feel bad that will never ascend to being the chief of police, it's not his place.

>the rest is trash

Then you have shit tier taste

>Name one

Well the fact that the god in the OT and the NT seem like entirely different people? That amongst his inconsistent powers and attributes as well as his laws.

That sounds more interesting now that you put it that way.

Problem of evil basically. Its a real problem and apologetics is for dumb people who just want theto desperately cling to the low-hanging fruit. The other problem is Biblical inerrancy is thoroughly untenable. The other other problem is that the old testament kind of a bunch of crap.

>believing in soul and spirit

>unquestionable cosmic despotism is better than spiritual meritocracy where anyone is eligible for promotion or demotion based on their actions

Wow Christians really are commies

It is interesting. Knowing who you are is incredibly spiritually fulfilling. Realizing the vast size of spiritual ranks and their different functions and roles is a nessiary starting part. If you believe there is only one spiritual rank than there's no room for you as an individual, you are just trying to fit into a mold and will be unsatisfied when you realize you are not made for that.

The thing is finding out who you are is not easy preciously because you are an individual. The only person who can really answer the question is you, the religious texts and practices are just there to point you in the right direction. They cover the general ideas, the basic outlines. But all the details are going to come from your inner world: feelings, instincts, sudden flashes of thoughts, dreams, visions, overwhelming sensations. Exactly how you get 'inside' there is going to vary. You aren't alone though, if you look around in your mind enough you'll figure that out.

that is basically the only common thread though.

Nah. Communism is 1 leader and everyone is equal before him. There is no promotions but if you piss off the great leader you go to the gulag. That's standard Christianity. The demiurge is the Great leader, hell is the gulag, and you are citizen #84315, equal to all other citizens.

Gnosticism you aren't equal but you aren't a mass produced clay doll.

>unquestionable cosmic despotism
The higher ranked deities rarely bother with human affairs. We really don't know much about them. For example, Abraxas in some versions created both the evil demiurge and the good deity that fights him at the same time for reasons that are beyond human understanding.

I think we're talking at cross purposes. I meant orthodox Christians

The more i read about this shit the more interesting it becomes, I swear if I wasn't atheist I'd be a gnostic.

Gnosticism sidesteps the Problem of Evil brilliantly unlike the Abradhamic faiths

>Because people's souls are not equal only the people with very strong souls can handle the BIG divine truths. These big truths would crush the minds of the spirtually lesser.
Way to miss the point. The whole point about everyone having the divine spark means everyone can reach gnosis on their own but some people are always gonna fall behind. It is meritocratic as fuck

Sidestep:
2
: to avoid an issue or decision.

>this is a good thing

>mentions Kabbalah
>doesn't get digits

If I were weaker my faith would be shaken.

And then you notice the thread number.

Trips confirm gnosticism as the true christian modality

And Kabbalism. Can we combine the two?

My post says yes..

Of course. They are both syncretic.

Go with CG Jung. If you want you can interprete the entire metaphysical map as a model of the human mind.

In a way it already is.

So this is clearly a based thread: can someone explain the differences between modern and classical deism to me? Is it essentially the same as the transition from classical to modern physics?

From what I have read of their history they were related, Gnostism seems to have came first and influenced Kabbalah. Kabbalah basicly unfucks the Old Testament in the same way the Gnostics unfucked the New Testament.

There is a similar story about shattered divine sparks that must be united. Also it has the multi-tiered metaphysical. But rather than having multiple deities each with their own realm, God himself is split into several realms. Also it involves higher knowledge which fills in the plot holes of the Old Testament. Basically every piece of text has two readings, the original reading which tells you only the simple version and the Kabbalah version which is spiritually higher.

It's not as popular as Gnostism because you basically need to know Hebrew to do the higher type of reading.

Also some cool lore. In Genesis god is described as speaking theings into existence. The hebrew word for this type of speaking has 7 characters. In Kabbalah those 7 characters are actually super-powered angels that reality-warp things. They are collectivily called the Sephiroth and they have a major part in Kabbalah. In general there's a lot more lore to the angels.

Poor choice of words on my part. What I meant is that Abradhamic faiths often have to say "Yes but" to proposition 2 with theology and shit. Whereas gnostics avoid this by immediately rejecting the first one. I don't think many modern atheists would see that coming

There are no contradictions in the Bible you Proxy Protestant. Eat shit, nihilist.
t. retard that doesn't understand Christianity
>fallacies are bad
Of course you're an atheist, O intellectual giant!

No they aren't, they're meme cults for pseud atheists.

>Gnosticism sidesteps the Problem of Evil brilliantly unlike the Abradhamic faiths
False, this 'problem' is no/problem in Christianity. Stop speaking on things you do not understnad.

What would be the liturgy, theology, and so on, of a Zen-Gnostic syncretic religion as suggested by Dan Simmons in the Hyperion Cantos?


Note that I'm not asking for how the religion presents itself in that book, only for you to extrapolate what a syncretic religion of the two (Zen Buddhism and Valentinian Gnosticism in this instance) would behave like and what similarities exist between the two?

Then enlighten us Oh pool of knowledge!

You christian fundamentalists are the bane of every good religion threas i swear.

Go back to worshipping your demiur-I mean god and let the grown ones talk.

You're fucking 19 at the oldest. All you cultists are.

>fundamentalists
yeah maaaan THOSE FUCKING CHRISTIANS ARE SO STUPID THATS WHY I BELIEVE THIS MEME. PRAISE KEK!

And by your posting style you're 13, explain why the hell you hold your position pertaining to this topic at hand and help improve the discussion or get out.

>improve the discussion
Why?

I'm 29, stop stroking yourself you /r/edditor.

>Le kek

You're the one bringing that frogposter garbage into the conversation in the first place, here we are having a good and serious discussion on a fascinating topic, either contribute or sort yourself out as i said earlier.

Never actually been to reddit, just really interested on the topic at hand, now could you please explain your reasoning or y'know, just leave

I am bringing up frogposter garbage because you were a fucking frogposter. Gnosticism is not interesting. Good and serious discussion is horsepiss. You're jerking eachother off over your nonsense.
Why would I do that, nihilist?

Where did anybody ever bring frogposting into this discussion, you are conflating things.

Also if you're not gonna add your point to the discussion why even stay anyways?

Also this word you use, nihilist... I don't think it means what you think it means, or else you wouldnt be associating it with gnosticism at all.

Nihilism means a lack of meaning and spirituality which is diametrically opposed to gnosticism, which is the search for ultimate meaning.

Going to get this thread back on topic, ignore the cringy posters.

An interesting piece of Gnostic literature is the poem of the pear, which describes the state of the soul and how it ascends (the divine spark), the pearl itself is a metaphor for the Gnostic soul.

The poem describes the supreme as having a great crown adorned with a pearl at the top. However it falls off and enters the material world. It enters a deep well which is guarded by a dragon. God tasks his son with retrieving the pearl. He sends him out with bags loaded with supplies because it will be a long journey. However when he leaves his father and enters the material world he loses his memory and forgets who he was and what his mission was. He spends decades wandering and living a mundane life. Than he receives a message from his father and remembers why he came into this world. He dives into the water, kills the dragon, and retrieves the pearl. Only after doing this and reclaiming his soul can can he return to his father.

The amnesia represents the state of spirtual ignorance. He is so ignorant he doesn't even know he has forgotten. The wandering represents a life concerned only with petty pleasures. The water represents the inner universe: the collective unconscious. The dragon may represent the demi-urge or the secret guilts, shames, or other repressed shadow emotions.

>the nihilist denies his nihilism
classic
>cringe
Fucking psychobabble children. Platonists belong in the trash.

I really have no reason to believe you aren't a troll anymore, do you think shouting words like "nihilism" makes you sound smart?

Tha is a pretty interesting poem, and pretty representative of man's struggle for the divine and the role of christ

Post more user, atleast someone here wants to keep this great thread working.

>anybody i dont like is a troll
You are a nihilist because you hate life and hate existence. You are a nihilist because you are a Platonist. You fell for a Platonist cult. You fell for psychobabble from turds like Jung. You read something and see it as ridiculous allegory because such a vague position is less offensive than a concrete one.

Concrete ones such as what? Christianity? Ha don't make me laugh kiddo, i can respect christians when they are open to debate but you clearly are just a basement dwelling turd with no insight whatsoever.

And no i dont hate life, and neither does gnosticism, gnostics want to trancend material life in search for spiritual knowledge for this puts them as closer to the divine. They do see ge material workd as broken and imperfect creations of the demiurge, a petty being with delusions of grandeur, but it is possible for us, greater sparks of the divine to escape this imperfect world into a bigger and greater existence within god through KNOWLEDGE a thing it appears you sorely lack.

>anybody i dont like is le stupid!
Gnostic delusion at its finest.
Platonists belong on a pyre.

>IM SMART UR DUMB HAHA

>pic related

Link to the poem?

I wont even bother responding to this, you're definitely either a troll, a fundamentalist or mentally retarded, the last two ones are the same thing anyway.

You're the only one behaving like that.

Platonists need to be insulted.
>anybodu i dont like is this thing i dont like! im not a nihilist! im enlightened n shieet!

Are you a christfag? Christianity and Gnosticism have influences from Neo-Platoism, taking some elements here and there. Tbh Christianity is a bit like Jewish mythos with a Platonic face and Gnosticism is the inverse.

>You're jerking eachother off over your nonsense.

Coming from a christcuck?

ZoZ

>be fundie American s/his/poster
>enter into a hread
>it's not about Christianity
>screech autistically

gnosis.org/library/hymnpearl.htm

Another thing I would recommend is the Gospel of Thomas, it's one that site too. It is the most philosophic text I've ever encountered in Christianity. The first 3 aphorisms alone surpass the entire sum of the new testament by eons.

I will tell you how I read it as I have seen many people give stupid comments on it. First skim the early aphorisms. By special attention to how it uses the word "living" and it's opposite "dead" and the attitude towards the body and the soul. Than after you do that a few times read some of the commentaries on there by actual ancient text historians. They should demystify a lot of it. Than read it in small intervals over the course of several days.

As a test to see how well you 'get it' read the last aphorism. You can tell someone who doesn't know a thing but how absurd that one sounds to them. Once you 'get it' than it's perfectly sensable.

I'll throw out an easy to get one.

>Jesus said, "There was a rich person who had a great deal of money. He said, 'I shall invest my money so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouses with produce, that I may lack nothing.' These were the things he was thinking in his heart, but that very night he died. Anyone here with two ears had better listen!"

This shows the lowest type of materialism. The man already has money and what does he do with it? He doesn't even enjoy it because all he does is reinvest it. That's also where his thoughts are. In short he wasted his life and lacked everything. One key to notice here is that the material world is not inheretly evil, it only becomes evil when your mind is so focused on it that it neglects the inner world.

Arent Mandaean gnostics still a thing on the middle east? It's sad we dont see much talk about them desu.

They are, but their historical homeland is in iraq, so theyre going extinct.

Is Gnosis by Kurt Rudolph a good intro to gnosticism?

Islam has mostly stomped them out/ incorporated them into itself.

Read the Corpus Hermeticum, it is one of the oldest texts regarding Gnosticism and served as an influence for an uncountable amount of religious leaders and inventors. Apparently Isaac Newton spent a great deal studying it.

hermetics.org/pdf/anotherhermeticum.pdf

There is no contradictions in the Old Covenant and the 'new' one is a hoax.
In fact there is no Christianity, just a decadent, easy to digest for peasants version of Judaism.

And before you present Muhammadism, no, it is not even a religion, but a cult, just like Mormonism.

Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.

>thread about any other belief than abrahamic garbage
>all three show up to proselytize and arrogantly declare themselves to be superior

>expecting willing cuckolds of the demiurge to behave with humility

o i m laffin

>gnosticism
>not abrahamic
based retard

>Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life
>so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven
Nah that's just shallow misogyny, not deep at all.

trips confirmed.

gnosticism is new Veeky Forums religion.

fuck off christcuck