Faith

[Greatest I am]

This is what DL says of his own beliefs, in another strand....

the only God you can ever know is the good you find within yourself. It's your ideal of God and of the Jesus or Christ mind. That is quite different from me or someone thinking they are the traditional creator God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else. Both Jesus and the Christ in these myths are for equality.

Nothing remotely Christian in all that, as you can see. His Gnosticism completely submerges the allegedly "Christian" element, which consists of co-opted terms without doctrine, reasons or understanding from the Scriptures he (allegedly) quotes.

If this is truly expressive of his view, then I don't think we need take his claim to be anything "Christian" any more seriously than we'd take his claim to being a tin of spam.

My beliefs are pure Christian. Just not the Christian you have been taught because the churches do not teach the truth nor what the Jesus theology is all about.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human and a brethren to Jesus.

Regards
DL

This is really starting to sound like Joseph Campbell's interpretation of Mythology as restated by religion.

It is quite close except that he did not see any value in the esoteric parts of the myths we both know to be myths.

He should have read more Freud.

If you understand this clip then you will see that his methods for enlightenment are quite close to what Gnostic Christianity preaches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx4IlppSgU

He and I both recognize that God was created for men and not men for a God.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

Oddly enough, if you had to peg Gnosticism to one or another religious tradition, it has far more compatibility with Hinduism or Buddhism than to any of the Western monotheisms. And it really has no fit at all with Christianity or Judaism -- except for that superficial reference to a quasi-Christian vocabulary of terms.

I suggest you study on the Jewish Divine Council. You will see Gnostic Christianity well expressed in those concepts.

Constantine's Christians did not follow the older Jewish thinking the way we true Catholics of that day did. We remained Universalist while Constantine's bunch chose to kill descent instead of seeking God.

Christians chose to idol worship while we did not.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

God's love wins over even the hardest of hearts.

It certainly has that ring of niceness in it...but what about freedom, then? Is there really any genuine possibility of choosing to love or not to love God?

Or are the UltraCalvinists essentially right: that God...whether in the short term or the long...simply bulldozes our wills and makes us do the right thing? And if that's how it plays out, what do we mean when we talk about our "loving" God? For ultimately, then, we then have no contribution to make to the relationship; it's no longer a two-sided assent of "lovers," but rather the one-sided control of the Divine Despot, our "love" being merely an illusion of choice.

Or is there another way to see that?

No, I simply take it that, given an eternity, all souls will come to recognize truth, and that God, being who God is, is willing to wait an eternity for that rather than close off the possibility of reconciliation. I'm not saying it doesn't have its problems, but they strike me as no insurmountable than the notion that a loving God would sentence someone to an eternity of punishment for a lifetime's worth of decisions.

Especially when we are all products of our environment and our choices have been mostly programmed in us by those within our environment.

This speaks to Universalism in that God would have to punish many for creating each of us as we are.

If a Universalist God decided to punish, he would have to punish all of us as we all contribute to both the good and evil done by others in this world.

We are all in this together, alone.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

Well, what concerns me is this. It sounds like what you're saying is that the Universalist God will not brook the resisting of his will, and will not respect the will of any person; so if you don't "come around" in the present age, he either steamrollers your will as soon as you're dead and deprives you of your individuality, or else sets out on a protracted program to torture you into compliance in some sort of Purgatory.

But how else could he achieve universal salvation? It's not as though God could use the same methods He uses right now, such as inviting us freely and achieving justice by taking our punishment on Himself -- he'd have to ignore justice, force wills to obey, or torture until our wills broke. And in all cases, our will is just unimportant, it seems to me, and nothing resembling justice is achieved.

So I'm wondering if there's another way to think about it that I'm not seeing.

Yes. By recognizing that God is not a creator God and has no choice in how the universe works any more than you and I have.

Man has defined our mythical God as having way more power than our real God has. Our real God being just a universal or cosmic consciousness.

Regards
DL

[Immanuel Can]

Put this together...

You can only have Gnostic Christianity and it's superior morals by reversing most of the Christian morality.

...with this...

My beliefs are pure Christian. Just not the Christian you have been taught because the churches do not teach the truth nor what the Jesus theology is all about.

...and you have the picture on Gnosticism. Not "Christian" in any sense that either a Christian nor a well-informed secular observer would recognize, but the Christian language taken over and used for very, very different purposes.

Like I said, as Christian as a tin of spam.

[Greatest I am]

Put this together...

You can only have Gnostic Christianity and it's superior morals by reversing most of the Christian morality.

...with this...

My beliefs are pure Christian. Just not the Christian you have been taught because the churches do not teach the truth nor what the Jesus theology is all about.

...and you have the picture on Gnosticism. Not "Christian" in any sense that either a Christian nor a well-informed secular observer would recognize, but the Christian language taken over and used for very, very different purposes.

Like I said, as Christian as a tin of spam.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

This is the main part of what I talk about.

Sure looks Christian but as I said, it is not what the church teaches.

Try not to be such a fool.

Regards
DL

[Immanuel Can]

I'm quite serious, actually.

Gnosticism, as you define it, has the following traits:

1) Reverses most of what Christianity believes.

2) Is not the Christianity taught in any church (or presumably by any existing informal Christian group or denomination either).

3) Is, by your demonstrations, premised on your strategy of isolating proof-texts from their context and co-opting their meaning to align with the pre-existing beliefs of non-Christian Gnosticism, rather than on any strategy of being moderated by the text yourself.

Thus it does not represent any view that what ordinary people call "Christians" hold to. Catholics wouldn't agree with you. Protestants wouldn't agree with you. In fact, no significant or generally-recognized category of Christian would agree with you. So even the word "Christian" you're merely coopting (i.e. misrepresenting) for your own purposes, rather than respecting any existing definition.

Now, I do understand your contention that you think of your gnostic group as, so to speak, 'more Christian than the Christians,' ; but that also puts you outside of everything anyone else would call "Christian," so you needn't be surprised if Christians agree with you and say you are a reversal of what they believe and a denial of all their theological commitments.

So the label "non-Christian" for gnostic doctrine is thoroughly warranted, from any conventional Christian perspective.

[Greatest I am]

I'm quite serious, actually.

Gnosticism, as you define it, has the following traits:

1) Reverses most of what Christianity believes.

2) Is not the Christianity taught in any church (or presumably by any existing informal Christian group or denomination either).

3) Is, by your demonstrations, premised on your strategy of isolating proof-texts from their context and co-opting their meaning to align with the pre-existing beliefs of non-Christian Gnosticism, rather than on any strategy of being moderated by the text yourself.

Thus it does not represent any view that what ordinary people call "Christians" hold to. Catholics wouldn't agree with you. Protestants wouldn't agree with you. In fact, no significant or generally-recognized category of Christian would agree with you. So even the word "Christian" you're merely coopting (i.e. misrepresenting) for your own purposes, rather than respecting any existing definition.

Now, I do understand your contention that you think of your gnostic group as, so to speak, 'more Christian than the Christians,' ; but that also puts you outside of everything anyone else would call "Christian," so you needn't be surprised if Christians agree with you and say you are a reversal of what they believe and a denial of all their theological commitments.

So the label "non-Christian" for gnostic doctrine is thoroughly warranted, from any conventional Christian perspective.

Are the quotes I gave a part of Christian doctrine or not?

Said of Gnostic Christian versus Christian reading practices.

“Both read the Bible day and night; but you read black where I read white.”
William Blake.

I would take this further and advise you to read any scriptures from as many POV as is within you. Question everything including yourself.

The bible, if read as a book of wisdom, does have much wisdom though.

You just have to read it the way Gnostics do and revers a lot of the Christian morals.

Christians call evil good while Gnostic Christians call evil, evil.

I E. Gnostic Christians think that bible God, the demiurge to us, is quite immoral for thinking that torturing King David’s baby for 6 days before finally killing it is quite evil while Christians think that a good form of justice.

Regards
DL

[Immanuel Can]

Are the quotes I gave a part of Christian doctrine or not?

The quotes don't mean what the Gnostics would like to make them mean. This happens because Gnostics don't read the context. They just pinch out individual verses and bend them to the Gnostic doctrines.

So no: the words are from Christian doctrine, but you make the meaning not of Christian doctrine.

I would take this further and advise you to read any scriptures from as many POV as is within you. Question everything including yourself.

Gnostics are too trusting of the fantasies of their own minds, and to undisciplined by the text. And if I "question everything," then I also question Gnosticism.

And when I do, I find it sadly lacking. In fact, I've probably read more of the seminal Gnostic texts than you have, and I'll bet there are some ways in which you do not know your own beliefs as well as I do, actually.

So I've given Gnosticism a hearing...I just don't hear much worth listening to. It's not Christianity, by any reasonable definition, for sure;.

[ReliStuPhD]

It's not Christianity, by any reasonable definition, for sure;.

I think this is largely correct. Gnostic Christianity is an historical phenomenon. Insofar as one reason for the early councils was to declare Gnostic interpretations as heretical, the church effectively defined Christianity out from under the feet of the Gnostic.

[raw_thought]

Jesus was a Gnostic. His place and time was familiar with Greek philosophy, Buddhism etc. Jesus was primarily Jewish. However he co-opted other views.
Unfortunately, Roman elite Christians (interested in bureaucracy) interpreted Christ's message in bureaucratic language. God-Jesus- King-Lords- peasants. In other words facilitating a sociological world view. Jesus preached GOD IS Within You! (Luke 17:21 and ye are Gods). That had to be suppressd. Constantine when he wanted a universal religion went with those that favored bureaucracy.
In other words a slaves version of what Christ taught rather that what God taught, see me in you! Christianity is not about being a slave (conventional Christianity ).It is about the freedom and grace of seeing God!

[raw_thought]

See the OP! That is conventional Christianity. Stupid isnt it? I prefer what Christ taught. Not a bureaucratic nightmare.

[raw_thought]

Basically Immanuel is saying," believe in my version of God or he will torture you for eternity." That has been the propaganda technique used by conventional Christians for centuries to sell their brand of faith.

Well yes, that would be AaB, but I don't see that that's what I.C. is doing here. It seems to me he's simply stating the sonsequences of disbelief (as he understands them), much like I would state the consequences of misbelief in a stoplight camera (e.g. if you don't believe its there and then run the light, look to your mail for a ticket in a few weeks). As I understand it, he's not saying "believe or you will be punished" but "one of the consequences of your disblief will be x." That seems like a fine distinction, but I feel it's an important one.

(For my part, I'm just a theist at this point, but even when I was an Christian, the existence of Hell was never the reason one should believe.)

I'm confused.
So he says that I should agree with him because eventually his version of God will send me to hell is not the fallacy of an appeal to force? I am definitely confused!

[Immanuel Can]

Jesus was a Gnostic.

No one who had any idea at all about the Biblical Jesus Christ would think this was true.

I am definitely confused!

Yes, definitely.