Critics to Gnosticism

There are things i may have said on other pages on this link:

https://telegra.ph/Why-do-I-believe-Christianity-to-be-the-only-and-true-religion-09-25

That i wouldn't repeat here.

PAGES:

2, 3;

An important note is that: Gnosticism is not a formalized religion, and so, its belief spreads in a wider spectrum. From Gnostic people that believe Cain is (in parts) good, for the ones that believe Jesus was just spiritual and not real human and etc; there is a huge variety of Gnosticism and so there is no limit for it, since, it lacks formalized core ideas. Anything you think of with the "pieces of Gnosticism" can be considered and accepted as Gnostic. The point of Gnosticism is not about what is established, but by what we discover, it is Gnosis, not only in terms of spiritual knowledge, but also by the knowledge we gather in the world that develops better experiences for more Gnosis.

With that in mind, to criticize Gnosticism, we need to take in mind that anything we say may be simple refuted by this point: "but Gnosis don't have formalized tenets, and this is not the Gnosis i follow". At the same time, everything we believe can be said: "but this is also Gnosis, because we have dynamic beliefs and if something proved true is real, then it is real and we accept it as real".

And so, i think it is simple easier to deal with my Critics to Gnosticism from certain line of thoughts historically shared and accepted as mainline in Gnosticism, something one can bat an eye and say "this is Gnosticism".

This page is W.I.P and does not address all the major Gnostic beliefs.

It is important that we start with an hierarchy of Gnostic concepts to address main points that are normally generally agreed in all types of Gnosticism.

So i made sections called: "MAIN", "MID" and "SMALL POINTS".

For each, i'm going to address points in Gnosticism that i consider, in my own ranking system, of most generally agreeable by Gnostic people themselves.

In short, in the section "MAIN", it will address points that are the most agreeable points from Gnostics in general, even if there is exceptions. "MID" will address points that have schisms between Gnostics, but it affects all Gnostics and have big groups of supporters. "SMALL" will address more fringe points that most Gnostic can simple ignore and that wouldn't affect too much their faith, however, are interesting points to talk about since it does lead to certain line of thoughts between Gnostics.

Later there will have a criticism to texts related to Gnosticism, some call it "Gnostic Gospel".

MAIN POINTS:

GNOSIS AS SALVATION:

One of the most characteristic features of several traditions commonly classified as Gnostic is the association between gnosis and salvation.

The Greek term gnosis means "knowledge," but in these religious contexts it generally refers to a special form of spiritual knowledge or awakening: an understanding of humanity's true nature, the structure of the cosmos, the divine realm, and the reason for humanity's present condition.

The precise content of this knowledge differs considerably between Gnostic traditions. Therefore, I do not intend to claim that every historical group described as Gnostic possessed an identical doctrine of salvation.

Nevertheless, a recurring structure can be identified:

• humanity is trapped in ignorance; revelation provides the knowledge necessary to recognize this condition; and acquiring or awakening to that knowledge enables liberation.

This differs fundamentally from the Christian understanding of salvation.

I think Salvation comes from the Love of God, and there is none worth of it on earth, be the lay or the one that achieved Gnosis. Just like a father loves his children and doesn't love one more than another because one have more success and / or the another is a failure. So i think salvation comes with your relationship with God, if you truly believe him, you would love him like your father, even more i would say, since he is Father of Us All and your father in this world is flawed and a sinner.

This would also explain the psychological nature humans have through empathy to understand that lay people also deserve love and salvation.

That means:

Salvation is God's work, not merely the discovery of a spiritual mechanism.

In Christianity, salvation is ultimately presented as an act of God.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast"

— Ephesians 2:8–9.

The Christian idea is therefore not that humanity discovers a hidden spiritual protocol and then successfully executes it.

God acts first, creates, reveals, calls, forgives, sends Christ and offers reconciliation.

And God ultimately resurrects the dead.

Human faith and obedience remain important, but they are responses to God's action rather than a technique by which humanity independently obtains salvation.

This distinction becomes particularly important when considering Gnostic systems in which Jesus is understood as a divine revealer.

I recognize that such systems can still describe Jesus as being sent by God for humanity's salvation. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to simply say that Gnosticism necessarily portrays God as completely inactive.

The more precise question is:

What actually accomplishes salvation?

If Jesus primarily comes to reveal the hidden truth, and the individual's liberation subsequently depends upon acquiring gnosis, recognizing his or her true spiritual nature, and applying that knowledge to escape the material condition, then the decisive salvific mechanism remains the individual's awakening.

God provides the revelation.

The individual must discover it.

God provides the teacher.

The individual must understand the teaching.

God reveals the mechanism.

The individual must perform or undergo the process by which liberation occurs.

This would imply that in Gnostic view, God is at maximum a teacher, but he is inactive beyond that, that all the path to salvation is developed by the individual.

This is substantially different from the Christian claim that God himself accomplishes redemption through Christ.

Christianity therefore does not merely present Jesus as someone who teaches humanity how to escape.

Christ is presented as the one through whom God acts to save humanity.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us"

— Romans 5:8.

And:

"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost"

— Luke 19:10.

The distinction is therefore between revelation about salvation and God's act of salvation.

A teacher can tell a drowning person how to swim.

That is fundamentally different from the teacher entering the water and rescuing the drowning person.

In my interpretation, the Christian doctrine of Christ is much closer to the latter.

God's inactivity create an scope where Demiurge being Evil and having a "Real Good God" to be subjective. If God does nothing for our good, who are us to claim that the "outside non-illusion realm" is indeed good and a better place to be and that such God is indeed good and / or better than the Demiurge?

That is a big problem, the problem of the "Real God". A problem that I consider very fundamental.

Many Gnostic cosmologies distinguish between the apparent creator of the material universe and a higher, transcendent divine reality.

The material world is consequently interpreted as defective, ignorant, deceptive, or otherwise inferior to the higher spiritual realm.

The individual must obtain gnosis in order to recognize the true nature of reality and ultimately return to the higher divine realm.

This immediately creates an epistemological problem:

How do we know that the supposedly higher reality is actually trustworthy?

If the world in which we currently exist is fundamentally deceptive, then our ordinary perceptions, intuitions, concepts, and experiences cannot simply be trusted to reveal reality.

But then the problem extends beyond the material world.

How do we know that our supposed gnosis is not itself another layer of deception?

If the Demiurge is capable of creating an apparently real universe that deceives conscious beings about the nature of reality, then what prevents another entity from deceiving us about the realm beyond the universe?

Suppose someone says:

"This world is an illusion created by an inferior being. Through gnosis, I will escape it and enter the true realm of the supreme God."

A natural epistemological question follows:

What establishes that the knowledge telling you this is itself not part of the deception?

If our perception of reality can be systematically falsified, then merely possessing a spiritual experience or receiving a supposed revelation does not automatically establish that its metaphysical interpretation is correct.

The opposite can also be the case.

What if it is the opposite? Demiurge created a good world so we don't have to face the boring or evil world of the "Real God"? And that in fact the supposed "Real God" wants to imprison us by removing us from the good world of the Demiurge and plotted a complex plan to accuse Demiurge of being the evil God?

If this world is an illusion and we need to figure it out from Gnosis, what are the parameter to define the same foolery is not also part of the next realm?

The problem can be expressed more formally:

1. The apparent world can be fundamentally deceptive.
2. Human beings initially possess no reliable access to the true structure of reality.
3. Gnosis is supposed to reveal the true structure of reality.
4. But if reality is systematically capable of deceiving us, the individual needs a reliable reason to trust the source of gnosis.
5. Therefore, the claim that gnosis reveals the "real" God and the "real" realm cannot simply be assumed from the fact that the individual experiences awakening or receives spiritual knowledge.

Otherwise, one risks replacing one unquestioned metaphysical assumption with another.

The problem becomes particularly severe if the supreme God is radically inaccessible to ordinary human experience.

If the material creator can deceive us, while the true God exists beyond the material universe and we need to do all the work to achieve Gnosis, then what independently establishes that the being presented to us as the "true God" is actually the true God and / or good? Is such a passive God good?

This is not merely a problem for one particular Gnostic text. It is a general epistemological difficulty that arises whenever salvation depends upon escaping a fundamentally deceptive reality.

The Christian worldview provides a different epistemological foundation which SOLVES this problem.

The biblical worldview does not require this kind of radical distrust of creation.

Genesis begins with God creating the world and repeatedly declaring it good:

"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good"

— Genesis 1:31.

This is fundamentally different from the proposition that material existence is intrinsically defective because its creator is evil or ignorant.

The Christian problem with the world is therefore not creation itself.

The problem is corruption within creation.

Death, sin, violence, suffering, and disorder are not presented as proof that matter itself is evil.

Consequently, Christianity does not need to teach that salvation consists in discovering that existence itself was a mistake. It also shows a solution against the evil of the world, and we can visualize a perfect world without evil. Consequently, why would a Demiurge create an inherently evil world that at the same time will have no evil in the future and that little by little we become more moral? And inherently evil and illusory world would make it to be a permanent trait.

Christianity solves this question because it presents salvation as the restoration of creation.

Paul writes:

"For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed"

— Romans 8:19.

And Revelation culminates not in humanity permanently escaping creation, but in the restoration of creation:

"Then I saw 'a new heaven and a new earth,' for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away"

— Revelation 21:1.

The final Christian hope is therefore resurrection, restoration, and the renewal of creation—not the permanent abandonment of the material world.

This distinction is fundamental, because it shows a benevolent material realm and solve the distrust problem.

The Gnostic pattern can be represented approximately as:

material existence → awakening → escape → higher spiritual realm

The biblical pattern is closer to:

creation → corruption → redemption → resurrection → renewed creation

The latter does not require the premise that existence itself is an elaborate deception.

Why trust the Christian God?

This also changes the epistemological problem.

In Christianity, the God who promises salvation is not a previously unknown entity that we discover only after determining that the creator of our universe is false.

The God who created the world is the same God who speaks through the biblical narrative and is identified with the Father of Jesus Christ.

The Christian claim is therefore internally much more stable:

the Creator is also the Redeemer.

The God who created the physical world is not an inferior deity whose creation must be escaped.

The God who created humanity is also the God who loves humanity.

The God who created the body is also the God who promises resurrection.

The God who created the earth is also the God who promises its renewal.

And the God revealed in the Old Testament is not presented by Jesus as an evil predecessor who must be overthrown.

Jesus explicitly says:

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them"

— Matthew 5:17.

This continuity is important because it provides a basis for trusting the Christian conception of salvation.

The God who created reality is not trying to trick us into escaping reality.

He is trying to restore what has been corrupted.

The problem of a "better realm":

The same question applies to the destination of salvation.

If the material universe is fundamentally deceptive, and gnosis allows us to escape into a higher reality, why should we assume that the higher reality is morally or ontologically superior?

It is not enough to say:

"The higher realm is the true realm."

That merely restates the conclusion.

One must establish why it is true, why it is good, and why it is worthy of being called salvation.

If the individual can be deceived about the nature of this universe, there must be some independent criterion by which the individual can establish that the supposed higher realm is genuinely better.

Otherwise, one could theoretically construct an endless hierarchy:

this world is an illusion → the next world is real → the next world is another illusion → another realm exists beyond it → etc.

At some point, the system requires an epistemic foundation that cannot itself be subject to the same suspicion.

Christianity has such a foundation in the character of God.

The Christian God is not merely defined as "the entity beyond this universe."

He is characterized morally:

"God is love" - 1 John 4:8.

He is also repeatedly characterized as truthful and righteous.

Therefore, the goodness of salvation is not inferred merely from the fact that it takes us somewhere beyond the present world.

It is grounded in the character of the God who promises it.

This is important because it means that Christianity does not merely say:

"There is another realm, therefore it is better."

It says:

"God is good, God is trustworthy, God loves his creation, and therefore the future he promises can be trusted."

Knowledge does not determine who is worthy of salvation:

Another difficulty with making gnosis the decisive criterion is that knowledge does not correspond reliably to moral character.

Gnosis as salvation would also imply that an evil person that also achieved Gnosis to be able to be saved.

A person can possess enormous amounts of knowledge and still be cruel.

A person can understand theology and still refuse to love.

A person can possess mystical experiences and still behave destructively.

Conversely, a person can possess very little intellectual or theological knowledge while demonstrating extraordinary love, humility, generosity, and faith.

The New Testament explicitly separates knowledge from moral transformation:

"If I have [...] all knowledge [...] but do not have love, I am nothing"

— 1 Corinthians 13:2.

Likewise:

"Knowledge puffs up while love builds up"

— 1 Corinthians 8:1.

And even demons possess knowledge about God:

"Even the demons believe that—and shudder"

— James 2:19.

Therefore, knowledge about divine reality cannot by itself constitute salvation.

This does not make knowledge unimportant.

Quite the opposite: Christians are repeatedly commanded to seek wisdom and understanding.

But knowledge is not a salvific currency.

It is not something accumulated until one reaches an intellectual threshold and becomes eligible for liberation.

The possibility of salvation without esoteric knowledge:

This also explains why Christianity can coherently maintain that ordinary people can be saved.

A person does not need to understand metaphysics, cosmology, angelology, ontology, or the structure of spiritual reality in order to receive God's grace.

The thief crucified beside Jesus provides the most obvious example:

"Jesus answered him, 'Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise'"

— Luke 23:43.

Whatever theological conclusions one draws about baptism, works, or the intermediate state, the narrative certainly does not present the man's salvation as the result of having acquired an advanced body of esoteric knowledge.

He recognizes Jesus, turns toward him, and receives a promise.

This is radically different from the concept that only those who discover a hidden metaphysical truth can escape the material condition.

The biblical narrative seems more consistent, it presents a morally good God that made a good world. We are made in semblance to God, and I interpret this to be an idea that our conscience is also a semblance from God. That means, God is conscious and have the same virtues we have, like, love and mercy. If we can, by our own flawed nature, still perceive that a lay person is still worth to be saved, why wouldn't a perfect being like God not do the same?

For this reason, I also think there is a psychological danger in making spiritual knowledge the decisive criterion of salvation.

A distinction can emerge between:

"those who know" and "those who do not know".

The person who believes that he possesses a hidden understanding of reality can consequently begin to regard ordinary people as spiritually inferior.

Christianity places a significant barrier against this kind of spiritual pride.

Paul writes:

"What do you have that you did not receive?"

— 1 Corinthians 4:7.

And:

"If you think you know something, you do not yet know as you ought to know"

— 1 Corinthians 8:2.

Thus, even genuine spiritual knowledge does not provide grounds for boasting.

If wisdom is received from God, then the person possessing wisdom cannot reasonably use it as proof of his own superiority.

My objection, therefore, is not that every person described as Gnostic is arrogant, nor that every Gnostic tradition possesses precisely the same doctrine.

My objection is specifically directed toward the soteriological structure in which gnosis constitutes the decisive mechanism of liberation.

I find this difficult to reconcile with Christianity for several reasons.

First, salvation in Christianity originates in God's grace rather than in human discovery.

Second, Christ is not merely a teacher revealing a hidden escape mechanism; he is presented as God's agent of redemption and reconciliation.

Third, Christianity does not require ordinary people to acquire esoteric knowledge before they can receive salvation.

Fourth, knowledge itself is not equivalent to righteousness, and Scripture explicitly distinguishes the two.

Fifth, the Gnostic distinction between a deceptive material world and a supposedly higher "real" realm creates an epistemological problem: if our reality can be fundamentally deceptive, what establishes that our supposed knowledge of the next reality is trustworthy?

Finally, the biblical worldview avoids this problem by maintaining continuity between creation, God, Christ, and redemption.

The world is not an evil illusion that must ultimately be escaped.

It is a good creation that has been corrupted.

God is not an inferior creator whose work must be abandoned.

He is the Creator who intends to restore his creation.

The body is not merely a prison from which the soul must escape.

It is part of God's creation and is therefore capable of resurrection.

Salvation is not primarily the discovery of a secret.

It is reconciliation with God.

And the final Christian hope is not that we will discover that existence was an elaborate deception.

It is that God will remove the corruption from creation and make all things new.

"He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!'"

— Revelation 21:5.

That, in my view, provides a considerably stronger foundation for trusting the destination of salvation: we trust the future not merely because it is supposedly beyond this world, but because the God who promises it is the same good and trustworthy God who created this world and revealed himself in Christ.

WORLD AS EVIL (BECAUSE IT WAS MADE BY THE DEMIURGE):

This is also another point that i never heard a Gnostic to deny, even if i think it have less value than "GNOSIS AS SALVATION".

The Gnostic idea is that the material world was made by an Evil entity called Demiurge that stole spiritual forces from Sophia.

This goes against the teaching of the bible that God made the world, saw it and said it was "very good". It also goes against lot of pagan beliefs that the world was stolen by a Saturn-like entity, by "gods" that are considered "god of death, time and space", like Odin: that murdered another entity to steal the material realm.

I believe Demiurge is Satan, text from my Genesis article:

"

At this point is important to consider some other religions:

• GNOSTICISM likes to present the idea (and there is a text about it) that the fruit is in fact an entheogen, the snake is Christ, that Yahweh is the Demiurge.

https://telegra.ph/Critics-to-Gnosticism-08-15

• PAGAN religions have diverse accounts about a "Demiurge like entity", some gods of "Death, Time and Space", but, instead of being alike Demiurge (view as the creator of the material realm), those are seem as "robber of the material realm". Odin, for example, is not "God Almighty", he is the son of other higher "gods", gave his eye for Wisdom, and killed an entity to "steal" the material realm and rule over it.

https://telegra.ph/Why-do-i-dislike-all-sorts-of-paganism-09-25

• HINDUS believes Vishnu separated the Heaven from Earth, but i believe Kali is a female aspect representation of Demiurge.

https://telegra.ph/Why-do-i-dislike-Hinduism-09-28

• GERMAN MYTHOLOGY shows Odin killing an entity that made him "steal" the material realm to him.

My view is that Satan comes from Saturn, and so, that Satan is Odin, Vishnu or Kali (as a female aspect), Ra, Demiurge, The Great Architect of the Universe and etc. I believe Satan is "the god of Death", he is the "Father of Lies" and "The Death". Saturn is a "god of Death", there is interesting peculiarities to make Satan syncretic with Saturn. I do believe pagans talk about true things, but have not the correct practice and worship "lower gods" instead. And i think it is important to find syncretism in the bible with other religions, but taking the bible as authority of what is the real history.

But my view of the Demiurge is that he is a "robber", and not of a "creator of the material realm", i see Yahweh as the creator of the material realm, and that this realm was to be good and will be good in the end. Once again, i believe in a syncretism between pagan entities with Satan, which is not fringe to do, we can see pagan entities in the bible like the Canaanite's Baal.

We can observe this in some interesting curiosities:

https://www.biblestudy.org/meaning-names/chiun-remphan.html

Here we can see some name that were things being worshiped by the Israelites. It is an entity related to the planet Saturn and with Death.

"You have taken along Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your star god, the idols you made for yourselves" - Amos 5:26.

"You have taken along the tabernacle of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Babylon’" - Acts 7:43.

Chiun (Remphan, Kaiwan)

Meaning of Name: An image, pillar, lifeless

Although there is some debate as to what Chiun (Remphan) is referencing, the consensus among Biblical commentaries is that it refers to the planet Saturn. Worshipping the "host of heaven," meaning the sun, moon, planets and stars (Deuteronomy 4:19, 2 Kings 23:5, Jeremiah 8:2), was common in the ancient world.

"Saturn is no less certainly represented by the star Kaiwan, adored by the reprobate Israelites in the desert... The same word... frequently designates, in the Babylonian inscriptions, the slowest-moving planet... The ancient Syrians and Arabs, too, called Saturn Kaiwan..." (1913 Catholic Encyclopedia).

"The passage in Amos refers to the Saturn worship which appears to have been in vogue in the prophet's days" (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia).

The Septuagint translates "Chiun" into Remphan, as Stephen quotes it (Acts 7:42 - 43). The same god often had different names... Chiun, the Arabic and Persian name, written also Chevan. In an Arabic lexicon Chiun means "austere"; so astrologers represented Saturn as a planet baleful in his influence (Jamieson, Fausset, Brown Commentary).

https://biblenarratives.fandom.com/wiki/Sakkuth_and_Kaiwan

"Sak′kuth and Kai′wan are interchangeable names for the star-god Saturn."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remphan

"There is general agreement among bible scholars, however, that both remphan and chiun refer to the planet Saturn".

"Remphan is a rendering of the Ancient Greek, ρεμφαν. (...) It is likely in reference to "Kiyyun" ("Chiun") mentioned in Amos 5:26, which the Septuagint renders as "Raiphan" (Ῥαιφάν) or "Rephan". Kiyyun is generally assumed to be the god Saturn, the Assyrian name of which was "Kayvân" ("Kēwān")".

Check this out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(mythology)

"The potential cruelty of Saturn was enhanced by his identification with Cronus, known for devouring his own children. He was thus used in translation when referring to gods from other cultures the Romans perceived as severe; he was equated with the Carthaginian god Baal Hammon, to whom children were sacrificed".

"Although these features are to be found in Greek god Cronus as well, it appears that those features were proper to Roman Saturn's most ancient aspects, such as his presence on the Capitol and his association with Jupiter, who in the stories of the arrival of the Pelasgians in the land of the Sicels(1.7.27–31) and that of the Argei orders human sacrifices to him".

"There was in the city a bronze image of Kronos, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tophet#Greco-Roman_sources

"In the Hebrew Bible, Tophet or Topheth is a location in Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), where worshipers engaged in a ritual involving "passing a child through the fire", most likely child sacrifice. Traditionally, the sacrifices have been ascribed to a god named Moloch. The Bible condemns and forbids these sacrifices, and the tophet is eventually destroyed by king Josiah, although mentions by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah suggest that the practices associated with the tophet may have persisted.

Most scholars agree that the ritual performed at the tophet was child sacrifice, and they connect it to similar episodes throughout the Bible and recorded in Phoenicia (whose inhabitants were referred to as Canaanites in the Bible) and Carthage by Hellenistic sources".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tophet

Saturn and Cronus are [in many levels], in terms of history, equated with Baal and with the child sacrifices that the bible speaks of. So it is not fringe to think Saturn and Satan are syncretic. I'm not less Christian to think like this.

I then believe all other pagan gods that are falsely attributed as "The Higher God" are in fact all Saturn / Satan. Any god attributed to "creation" or "stealing" of the "material realm" (in specific, Yahweh created the heavens and earth, so, not the same) is one and the same to me: Satan.

And if you change the name of Satan to Saturn, Odin, Kali, Marduk, Enlil, Demiurge or etc in the bible, then this is the history i believe to be correct. So, no, i wont consider pagan myths and histories without skepticism.

"

CONTINUE:

https://telegra.ph/Critics-to-Gnosticism-2-08-15