More than any of these accomplishments, however, it was the discovery Sopra 1945, in Egypt, of a large collection of Coptic Gnostic codices, now known as the Nag Hammadi Collection, or the Nag Hammadi Library. This collection contains works of the Valentinian School, as well as of many earlier and contemporaneous sects, and sheds much needed light on the nature and structure of what to this day is still called, with some reservations, the Gnostic Religion.
is problematic, since it is attested for only some of the traditions conventionally treated as gnostic, and its connotations are ambiguous. Whereas some researchers argue that the term gnostic
A human being captured by its animal desires, mistakenly claims autonomy and independence from the "higher God", thus resembling the lower deity Durante classical gnostic traditions. However, since the goal is not to abandon the created world, but just to free oneself from lower desires, it can be disputed whether this can still be Gnostic, but rather a completion of the message of Muhammad.[189]
However, according to Islam and unlike most Gnostic sects, not rejection of this world but performing good deeds leads to Paradise. According to the Islamic belief in tawhid ("unification of God"), there was voto negativo room for a lower deity such as the demiurge.[188] According to Islam, both good and evil alla maniera di from one God, a position especially opposed by the Manichaeans. Ibn al-Muqaffa', a Manichaean apologist who later converted to Islam, depicted the Abrahamic God as a demonic entity who "fights with humans and boasts about His victories" and "sitting on a throne, from which He can descend".
Gnostic writings flourished among certain Christian groups in the Mediterranean world around the second century, when the Fathers of the early Church denounced them as heresy.[3] Efforts to destroy these texts proved largely successful, resulting Sopra the survival of very little writing by Gnostic theologians.[4] Nonetheless, early Gnostic teachers such as Valentinus saw their beliefs as aligned with Christianity. Sopra the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ is seen as a divine being which has taken human form Per mezzo di order to lead humanity back to recognition of its own divine nature.
belief that the source of all evil is material or bodily existence. Indeed, Basilides goes so far as to assert that sin is the direct outcome of bodily existence, and that human suffering is the punishment either for actual sins committed, or even just for the general inclination to sin, which arises from the bodily impulses (cf. Fragments F and G). In an adaptation of Stoic ethical categories, Basilides declares that faith (
For Valentinus, then, the individual who is predestined for salvation is also predestined for a sort of divine stewardship that involves an active hand Durante history, and not a mere repose with God, or even a blissful existence of loving creation, as Basilides held. Like Paul, Valentinus demanded that his hearers recognize their createdness. However, unlike Paul, they recognized their creator as the “Ineffable Parent,” and not as the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. The task of Christian hermeneutics after Valentinus was to prove the continuity of the Old and New Testament. Durante this regard, as well as in the general spirituality of his teaching—not to mention his primitive trinitarian doctrine—Valentinus had an incalculable impact on the development of Christianity.
A wisdom tradition gnostic principles, gnosticism hylics, gnosticism psychic, gnosticism pneumatic, gnosis article, gnosis spirituality, gnostic spirituality, gnosticism and spirituality, gnostic blog, gnosis and religion developed, Con which Jesus' sayings were interpreted as pointers to an esoteric wisdom, Per mezzo di which the soul could be divinized through identification with wisdom.
The most severe persecution was that of Diocletian. It lasted only a few years and at first centered on Manicheans, whose faith ironically had branched D'avanguardia from Gnosticism. (Its founder, Mani, had Durante all likelihood started out as an Elkasaite, and that sect leaned Per the direction of Gnosticism.) After its first year, Christianity became included Durante this persecution. But even then, it wasn’t as pervasive or thorough as has been imagined.
The end of Diocletian’s persecution and then his reign, brought out conflicts over this. People had been killed, or martyred, while others had taken what was seen as a cowardly and profane route, and given the Romans what they’d asked for. Christian congregations around the Empire were torn over it. Con northern Africa the conflict grew into an outright schism (i.e. Donatism). Con other places it manifested Per other ways. But generally, since the Gnostic sects and their adherents had quanto out of it with fewer losses, “literalist” Christians’ existing hard feelings toward them intensified.
If their critics are reliable the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly Durante their notion of a lesser, Satanic, creator god), though they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effective salvific force.[verification needed]
I.8.9 and I.1.7). Unlike Plotinus, however, who leaves the World-Soul or active part of the Demiurge safely beyond the affective cosmic realm, Numenius posits a Demiurge that is both transcendent and immanent, and arrives at a doctrine of a cosmos that, even on the highest level—the level of the celestial bodies—is not devoid of evil influence, since even the Demiurge, the highest cosmic deity, is infected by the tainting influence of Matter.
His writings appeal to egalitarianism and inclusion; slaves and freemen could be Christian, and so too could men and women. Everyone was welcome, according to “literalist” Christianity. All human beings, ultimately, were required
Fragment D). When one turns to the greater hierarchy of Being, there results a “creation of good things” (Fragment C, translation modified). Love and personal creation—the begetting of the Good—are the final result of Basilides’ vaguely dialectical system, and for this reason it is one of the most important early expressions of a truly Christian, if not “orthodox,” philosophy.