Gnosticism
Superpower07
30-04-2004, 21:47
This is supposedly the religion which predated the Catholic Church. Can anybody tell me a little more about it?
Conticeo
30-04-2004, 21:54
Actually, the Roman Catholic Church claims its founder as Peter the Apostle and so considers itself having a beginning not long after the crucifixion of Jesus. At any rate, Gnosticism believes that salvation comes through knowledge, as opposed to the Christian doctrine of salvation through faith and that such is a free gift from God. For more info, go here:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/gnostic.htm
Collaboration
30-04-2004, 22:02
It's claimed by anti-Christians that gnosticism predates Christianity but it doesn't.
There are some early precursors, but the versions from which Christians supposedly "stole" ideas came later.
The stealing went the other direction.
Gnostics are like new-age gurus. Pay them for expensive seminars and they will teach you the secret knowledge to let you master your situation and enter the seventh heaven.
It's about money, and elitism.
The Great Leveller
30-04-2004, 22:14
I don't think that gnosticism exists simply to make money. Of course a few do use for that, but everything can be turned to make a buck. There have been plenty of gnostics that have had not interest in money.
Rehochipe
30-04-2004, 22:41
There were Gnostic-like traditions floating around the Mediterranean well before Christianity - a lot of the Greek schools of philosophy were deeply into the understanding of transcendent knowledge as the best way of life, and they undeniably influenced Christian thought in general and the Gnostics in particular. Wikipedia has a pretty substantial reference on 'em : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
Berkylvania
30-04-2004, 22:42
Gnosticism's origins are as sketchy as the Pauline Church, but it was never so much an organized religious movement as more a philosophical approach to religious practice. Christian Gnostics separated the evil God of this world, the God outlined in the Old Testament, from a higher, more trancendental God as outline by Jesus in the New Testament and viewed the corporeal world as an evil temptation created by evil powers trying to trap the spiritual soul in an evil physical body.