Freddy, do you actually read my posts before you answer them? Your own religious beliefs may tell you that Gnostics were not Christians, but in the years fairly soon after Jesus' death, there were followers of all kinds. It took hundreds of years of infighting for there to be any consensus at all about who was, or was not, a Christian. Did you really read this passage from my post? I could find many, many more like it. And, incidentally, why would the Gospel of Thomas, which is simply quotes from Jesus with no parables or other additional material, be considered Gnostic, not Christian? Logically, if Jesus is speaking, would it not be Christian? And if not, why did the Gnostics bother to gather the information?
Which Council of Nicea are you talking about? Nice was, and is, a very nice place for a meeting!!! ;^) The fact that there would be a serious discussion of what was REAL Christian belief, and what was not, supports my point about squirmishes in the several hundred years after Jesus' death, during which time the Gnostics were slaughtered in large numbers. How religious and everything!!!
What the "authentic truths of existence" affirmed by the Gnostics were will be briefly
reviewed below. But a historical overview of the early Church might first be useful. In
the
initial decades of the Christian church--the period when we find first mention of
"Gnostic"
Christians--no orthodoxy, or single acceptable format of Christian thought, had yet been
defined. During this first century of Christianity modern scholarship suggests Gnosticism
was of many currents sweeping the deep waters of the new religion. The ultimate course
Christianity, and Western culture with it, would take was undecided at that early
moment;
Gnosticism was one of forces forming that destiny.
That Gnosticism was, at least briefly, in the mainstream of Christianity is witnessed by
the
fact that one of the most prominent and influential early Gnostic teachers, Valentinus,
may
have been in consideration during the mid-second century for election as the Bishop of
Rome.3 Valentinus serves well as a model of the Gnostic teacher. Born in Alexandria
around A.D. 100, Valentinus had rapidly distinguished himself as an extraordinary
teacher
and leader in the highly educated and diverse Alexandrian Christian community. In the
middle of his life, around A.D. 140, he migrated from Alexandria to the Church's
evolving
capital, Rome, where he played an active role in the public life of the Church. A prime
characteristic of the Gnostics was their propensity for claiming to be keepers of secret
teachings, gospels, traditions, rituals, and successions within the Church -- sacred
matters
for which many Christians were (in Gnostic opinion) simply either not prepared or not
properly inclined. Valentinus, true to this Gnostic penchant, professed a special
apostolic
sanction. He maintained he had been personally initiated by one Theudas, a disciple and
initiate of the Apostle Paul, and that he possessed knowledge of teachings and perhaps
rituals which were being forgotten by the developing opposition that became Christian
orthodoxy.4 Though an influential member of the Roman church in the mid-second
century, by the end of his life some twenty years later he had been forced from the
public
eye and branded a heretic. |
