Gnostics Sentence Examples
Some Gnostics sprinkled the heads of the dying with oil and water to render them invisible to the powers of darkness; but in the East generally, where the need to compete with the Cathar sacrament of Consolatio was less acutely felt, extreme unction is unknown.
When, then, Basilides identified the highest angel of the seven, the creator of the worlds, with the God of the Jews, this is a development of the idea which did not occur until late, possibly first in the specifically Christian circles of the Gnostics.
Alongside of Mana rabba frequent mention is made of D'mutha, his "image," as a female power; the name "image of the father" arises out of the same conception as that which gives rise to the name of 'vvota among the Greek Gnostics.
Berthelot, " alchemy rested partly on the industrial processes of the ancient Egyptians, partly on the speculative theories of the Greek philosophers, and partly on the mystical reveries of the Gnostics and Alexandrians."
The earlier fathers, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, believed in chiliasm simply because it was a part of the tradition of the church and because Marcion and the Gnostics would have nothing to do with it.
Used by the followers of Basilides and other Gnostics.
The life and writings of Bardaisan, " the last of the gnostics," and in some sense the father of Syriac literature and especially of Syriac poetry, have been treated in a separate article.
Nor did they escape the more serious imputation of heresy on important articles of faith; indeed, there was a disposition to put them on the same level with the Gnostics.
With its character largely determined by Jewish elements, and even more by contact with the dogmas of Christianity, this second Alexandrian school resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neo-Platonists and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.
In his work On the Soul, chap. xviii., the aeons and genealogies of the Gnostics are " the sacraments of heretical ideas."
AdvertisementBut could Christians sufficiently numerous to deserve a long discussion by St Epiphanius in 374-377, who upheld the Synoptists, stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists, and had escaped every special designation till the bishop nicknamed them the " Alogoi " (irrational rejectors of the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and country, to hold such views, had the apostolic origin been incontestable ?
Both bodies of exposition represent the traditional principle at work in the sub-apostolic age, making for the preservation in relative purity, over against merely subjective interpretations - those of the Gnostics in particular - of the historic or original sense of Christ's teaching, just as Ignatius stood for the historicity of the facts of His earthly career in their plain, natural sense.
The latter tendency appeared first in Paul, afterwards in the Gospel and First Epistle of John, in Ignatius of Antioch and in the Gnostics.
The views of the Gnostics, and of Marcion as well, seemed to the majority of Christians destructive of the gospel, and it was widely felt that they were too dangerous to be tolerated.
But the Creed was but the condensed essence of the New Testament scriptures, and behind it there lay an appeal to these scriptures, which was especially necessary where (as in the case of the Valentinian Gnostics) the dissident bodies professed to accept the common belief of Christians.
AdvertisementIn its conflict with Gnostics, Marcionites and Montanists the Church was led to insist more and more upon its Bible, its own Bible, just as in its older controversy with the Jews it had to insist on the Bible which it inherited from them.
The traditional Western day for the Christmas festival, 25th December, goes back as far as Hippolytus, loc. cit.; the traditional Eastern day, 6th January, as far as the Basilidian Gnostics (but in their case only as a celebration of the Baptism), mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, loc. cit.
But in all probability these dates were only one development of those speculations in the region of numbers to which Gnosticism was so prone; and in any case to look for genuine traditions among Egyptian Gnostics, or even in the church of Alexandria, would be to misread the history of Christianity in the 2nd century.
Such traditions must be found, if anywhere, in Palestine and Syria, in Asia Minor, in Rome, not in Egypt; within the Church, not among the Gnostics.
But the method observed by these Gnostics in thinking out the plan and the history of the universe is by no means thoroughgoing.
AdvertisementBut if we search Plotinus for evidence of any actual influence of Jewish and Christian philosophy, we search in vain; and the existence of any such influence is all the more unlikely because it is only the later Neoplatonism that offers striking and deep-rooted parallels to Philo and the Gnostics.
Plotinus is no dualist, like the Christian Gnostics; he admires the beauty and splendour of the world.
Of the actual writings of the Gnostics, which were extraordinarily numerous,' very little has survived; they were sacrificed to the destructive zeal of their ecclesiastical opponents.
It is a mistake to regard the Gnostics as pre-eminently the representatives of intellect amongChristians, and Gnosticism as an intellectual tendency chiefly concerned with philosophical speculation, the reconciliation of religion with philosophy and theology.
Similar ideas are to be found among the " Gnostics " of Epiphanius.
AdvertisementAbove all the Gnostics represented and developed the distinctly anti-Jewish tendency in Christianity.
The Old Testament was absolutely rejected by most of the Gnostics.
Even the so-called Judaeo-Christian Gnostics (Cerinthus), the Ebionite (Essenian) sect of the PseudoClementine writings (the Elkesaites), take up an inconsistent attitude towards Jewish antiquity and the Old Testament.
The conception of a resurrection of the body, of a further existence for the body after death, was unattainable by almost all of the Gnostics, with the possible exception of a few Gnostic sects dominated by Judaeo-Christian tendencies.
In spite of the rejection of the ascetic attitude of the Gnostics, as a blasphemy against the Creator, a part of this ascetic principle became at a later date dominant throughout all Christendom.
And since the Gnostics were compelled to draw the figure of the Saviour into a world of quite alien myths, their Christology became so complicated in character that it frequently recalls the Christology of the later dogmatic of the Greek Fathers.
Its adherents feel themselves to be the isolated, the few, the free and the enlightened, as opposed to the sluggish and inert masses of mankind degraded into matter, or the initiated as opposed to the uninitiated, the Gnostics as opposed to the " Hylici " (Wiwi); at most in the later and more moderate schools a middle place was given to the adherents of the Church as Psychici (1/vXtKoi).
As a point of departure for the history of the development of Gnosticism may be taken the numerous little sects which were apparently first included under the name of " Gnostics " in the narrower sense.
On the one hand we have sects with a strongly ascetic tendency, on the other we find some characterized by unbridled libertinism; in some the most abandoned prostitution has come to be the most sacred mystery; in others again appears the worship of serpents, which here appears to be connected in various and often very loose ways with the other ideas of these Gnostics - hence the names of the " Ophites," " Naasseni."
Finally, apart from all other Gnostics stands Marcion.
It has been necessary to consider at such length St Paul's account of the Eucharist, both because it antedates nearly by half a century that of the gospels, and because it explains the significance which the rite had no less for the Gnostics than for the great church.
In apologetics his principal master was Justin, and in theology proper and in the controversy with the Gnostics, Irenaeus.
After having done battle with heathens, Jews, Marcionites, Gnostics, Monarchians, and the Catholics, he died an old man, carrying with him to the grave the last remains of primitive Christianity in the West, but at the same time in conflict with himself.
They had accepted the teaching of Paul of Samosata, though at a later period the name of Paul was believed to be that of the Apostle; and they were not quite free from the Dualistic principle of the Gnostics, at a later period too much identified with the teaching of Mani.
Paul's teaching about the believer being already risen with Christ gave a welcome handle to the later Gnostics.
The Gnostics rejected this eschatology as in their view the enlightened spirit already possessed immortality.
In this Baur attempts to prove that the false teachers mentioned in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus are the Gnostics, particularly the Marcionites, of the second century, and consequently that the Epistles were produced in the middle of this century in opposition to Gnosticism.
This of itself shows that it is a mistake to reckon Marcion among the Gnostics.
It was worked by the Assyrians for their engraved cylinder-seals, and was used by the gnostics for amulets.
He tells us also that he gave barbaric names to the " principalities and powers," and that he was the beginning of the Gnostics.
Among the Gnostics and Manichaeans it existed in its most developed type, and in a milder form it is to be found even in the writings of the orthodox teachers.
The Gnostics were the " first theologians."
Human birth in a grossly material body is partly due to the pre-temporal fall of souls; here we see in Origen the Greek, the dualist (mind and matter), the ascetic, and to some extent the kinsman of the Gnostics.
The Gnostics held that "the present world sprang from a fall of man, or from an undertaking hostile to God, and is, therefore, the product of an evil or intermediate being" (p. 257).
While they did not delimit the canon as Marcion did, the Gnostics also performed a catalytic function in the formation of the canon.
However, for the Gnostics true gnosis was beyond Scripture.
Among the Gnostics we meet with the hypothesis of emanation, as, for example, in the curious cosmic theory of Valentinus.
A still more remarkable parallel to the later Neoplatonism is afforded by the Christian Gnostics of Alexandria, especially Valentinus and the followers of Basilides.2 Like the Neoplatonists, the Basilidians believed, not in an emanation from the Godhead, but in a dynamic manifestation of its activity.
Here must also be mentioned the dialogue of Adamantius with the Gnostics, De recta in deum fide (beginning of 4th century).
At one time the Primal Man, who sank down into matter, has freed himself and risen out of it again, and like him his members will rise out of darkness into the light (Poimandres); at another time the Primal Man who was conquered by the powers of darkness has been saved by the powers of light, and thus too all his race will be saved (Manichaeism); at another time the fallen Sophia is purified by her passions and sorrows and has found her Syzygos, the Soter, and wedded him, and thus all the souls of the Gnostics who still languish in matter will become the brides of the angels of the Soter (Valentinus).
In the above acceptation of the term, the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanations from the supra-essential One, the fanciful emanation-doctrine of some of the Gnostics (the aeons of the Valentinian system might be mentioned), and the elaborate esoteric system of the Kabbalah, to which the two former in all probability largely contributed, are generally included under the head of theosophy.
In Plato 8rlµcovpyos is the name given to the "creator of the world" (Timaeus, 40) and the word was so adopted by the Gnostics (see Gnosticism).
Docetism springs from the same roots as Gnosticism, and the Gnostics generally held Docetic views (see Gnosticism).
People who teach OBE travel cover a wide range of beliefs and practices, including Reiki, Hinduism, Gnostics, Taoism and many Native American rituals.