Thanks for posting this. As to your point about people essentially outsourcing their morality to a doctrine or a "trusted" church leader, and essentially using church as a weekly drug to escape their pain for a few hours on Sunday morning, the reason for all this is people don't really know what it means to be Christlike. I've been digging into old patristic texts and as I was reading Origen something clicked. His Christology revolves around the first verses of John. In the beginning was the word. The logos.... thought...wisdom.....of God. The son of God is LITERALLY WISDOM. He is, cosmically, the eternal divine intelligence. Similarly Maximos the Confessor equates sin and death with ignorance and salvation with wisdom. Sure, Maximos disagreed with certain of Origen's theories like pre-existence of souls and so forth, but the common thread here is that to be Christlike, is to BECOME WISE. Because Christ IS WISDOM. "but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God...But it is due to Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption" I Cor 1:24, 30
I love this article. I have been struggling lately with the credibility of certain gnostic ideas. I feel like it's our duty to gain wisdom and knowledge, then I also feel like that also doesn't save us from anything. It makes us more vulnerable if we can't handle the truth so to speak.
Thanks for this article. I really needed to hear this - not the bit about the childish collective ritual of v00ting, but your quiet acquiescence to Gnostic sympathies.
After years of flirting with atheism, neo-Theosophy (New Age) nonsense, Daoism, and ultimately coming back to Christ, my fondness for certain aspects of Gnosticism have never left me. I've found the Truth of the Dao to be highly compatible with Christianity and most Churches either seem indifferent to it or, in the case of certain Eastern Orthodox priests, approving of it.
Not so with Gnosticism - you're a heretic at best, a Satanist at worst in the eyes of just about every organized Church under the Son for voicing an affinity for it. Maybe the Kingdom of God is, quite literally, within? Maybe there really is a demiurge that explains the duality of our montheistic God? How can we know? I pray to the Son now but have had prayers answered via miracle-tier synchronicity when I prayed to the nameless God in the past. What's up with that?
I still don't know how to square these circles but it's comforting to know that at least one person shares this seeming dichotomy.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. I don’t personally believe in the demiurge concept but I understand why people do. I think a re-realization of the literal reality of satanic forces makes for a better explanation of our scenario, and also that wrestling with the apparent contradictions between the God of the old testament and the God of the new is where you begin to get wisdom. To that end much of the church has lost a sense of the reality of evil, and are thus sitting ducks for evil spirits imo. Thank you again!
Thanks, too, for your reply! I agree with your assessment of dark principalities - to accept the Gnostic demiurge is to accept that the entirety of the material plane is evil and that's simply not true. Our bittersweet carbon existence is Fallen - the beauty of nature could never have come from malice.
It's sitting with that concept that's so important. Allowing yourself to ponder a theory like the demiurge, if only to better understand God's wrath. Spiritual spearfishing ;) As you note, not allowed in the Church.
Now the Gnostic concept of divine spark... that's one I'm still sitting with, much to the chagrin of some doctrinal Trinitarians. Please keep doing what you do, you're a fantastic writer and you're doing very important work here. God bless!
Perhaps Lenin's body is maintained because he was a materialist - i.e. he can only continue to exist as long as he has a physical representation in this world. Perhaps its that belief played out to its horrifying and sad conclusion.
Lenin once wrote a treatise called "Communism is Soviet Power and Electrification of the Nation" - something along those lines, at least. Like mummification, it's a sort of proto-Transhumanism.
Thanks for posting this. As to your point about people essentially outsourcing their morality to a doctrine or a "trusted" church leader, and essentially using church as a weekly drug to escape their pain for a few hours on Sunday morning, the reason for all this is people don't really know what it means to be Christlike. I've been digging into old patristic texts and as I was reading Origen something clicked. His Christology revolves around the first verses of John. In the beginning was the word. The logos.... thought...wisdom.....of God. The son of God is LITERALLY WISDOM. He is, cosmically, the eternal divine intelligence. Similarly Maximos the Confessor equates sin and death with ignorance and salvation with wisdom. Sure, Maximos disagreed with certain of Origen's theories like pre-existence of souls and so forth, but the common thread here is that to be Christlike, is to BECOME WISE. Because Christ IS WISDOM. "but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God...But it is due to Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption" I Cor 1:24, 30
I love this article. I have been struggling lately with the credibility of certain gnostic ideas. I feel like it's our duty to gain wisdom and knowledge, then I also feel like that also doesn't save us from anything. It makes us more vulnerable if we can't handle the truth so to speak.
Thanks for this article. I really needed to hear this - not the bit about the childish collective ritual of v00ting, but your quiet acquiescence to Gnostic sympathies.
After years of flirting with atheism, neo-Theosophy (New Age) nonsense, Daoism, and ultimately coming back to Christ, my fondness for certain aspects of Gnosticism have never left me. I've found the Truth of the Dao to be highly compatible with Christianity and most Churches either seem indifferent to it or, in the case of certain Eastern Orthodox priests, approving of it.
Not so with Gnosticism - you're a heretic at best, a Satanist at worst in the eyes of just about every organized Church under the Son for voicing an affinity for it. Maybe the Kingdom of God is, quite literally, within? Maybe there really is a demiurge that explains the duality of our montheistic God? How can we know? I pray to the Son now but have had prayers answered via miracle-tier synchronicity when I prayed to the nameless God in the past. What's up with that?
I still don't know how to square these circles but it's comforting to know that at least one person shares this seeming dichotomy.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. I don’t personally believe in the demiurge concept but I understand why people do. I think a re-realization of the literal reality of satanic forces makes for a better explanation of our scenario, and also that wrestling with the apparent contradictions between the God of the old testament and the God of the new is where you begin to get wisdom. To that end much of the church has lost a sense of the reality of evil, and are thus sitting ducks for evil spirits imo. Thank you again!
Thanks, too, for your reply! I agree with your assessment of dark principalities - to accept the Gnostic demiurge is to accept that the entirety of the material plane is evil and that's simply not true. Our bittersweet carbon existence is Fallen - the beauty of nature could never have come from malice.
It's sitting with that concept that's so important. Allowing yourself to ponder a theory like the demiurge, if only to better understand God's wrath. Spiritual spearfishing ;) As you note, not allowed in the Church.
Now the Gnostic concept of divine spark... that's one I'm still sitting with, much to the chagrin of some doctrinal Trinitarians. Please keep doing what you do, you're a fantastic writer and you're doing very important work here. God bless!
Perhaps Lenin's body is maintained because he was a materialist - i.e. he can only continue to exist as long as he has a physical representation in this world. Perhaps its that belief played out to its horrifying and sad conclusion.
Brilliant observation.
Lenin once wrote a treatise called "Communism is Soviet Power and Electrification of the Nation" - something along those lines, at least. Like mummification, it's a sort of proto-Transhumanism.