CrossLinks Topical Index - GN


gnats : gnats - unclean
gnats - unclean : Ex. 8:16; Lev. 11:20-23; Ps. 105:31; Mat. 23:24
gnostic gospels : gospels - gnostic - rejected
gnostic gospels - rejected : gospels - gnostic - rejected
gnosticism : John 1:18

"Gnosticism embraces so many diverse movements that it is impossible to summarize it adequately in a sentence. The word comes from the Greek gnōsis (knowledge) and refers to various sects that often combined elements of pagan, Jewish and Christian belief, claiming that they had received some secret revelation about the nature of true religion and that salvation was achieved through that knowledge. They normally adopted a dualist philosophy, in which matter was inherently evil and only the immaterial was redeemable. Thus they denied the resurrection of the body and looked forward only to the immortality of the soul. The vast majority were ‘docetist’ (from the Greek dokeō, meaning ‘to seem’), believing that Jesus only seemed to be human, since a perfectly holy God could not really take on an irredeemably corrupt body. The modern-day legacy of Gnosticism can be seen in its selective appropriate by various branches of the so-called New Age movement and perhaps most fully by Christian Science or Theosophist churches." Ref-1282, p. 256n45 "When those who had been tainted with Gnosticism cite John 1:18, they cite it as only begotten God. Such is true of Tatian (second century), Valentinus (second century), Clement of Alexandria (215 AD), and Arius (336 AD). On the other hand, we find many of the orthodox fathers who opposed Gnosticism quoting John 1:18 as only begotten Son (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Basil, Gegory Nazianzus, and Chrysostom)." Ref-0086, p. 181. "The constant premise in all these systems was an uncompromisingly radical dualism: however much their mythological schemes may have differed from one another in particular details, they all taught that the God who acts to rescue his elect is not in any sense the God of this world; and that the material cosmos is the evil or defective creation either of inferior gods (the archons or "rulers" who reign in the planetary spheres above) or of the chief archon (the wicked or incompetent demiurge or "world maker," often identified with the God of the Old Testament), who out of either ignorance or envy claims to be the sole true God, beside whom there is no other." Ref-1290, p. 138. "Nothing so dilutes one's sympathy for the Gnostics as an encounter with their actual writings." Ref-1290, p. 139. "whatever moments of beauty or profundity can be found among the literary remains of the Gnostics are insufficient to alleviate the surpassing dreariness of the whole." Ref-1290, p. 139. "But behind the crassness and childishness of many Gnostic beliefs there lies a more pardonable conviction, and even an understandable pathos: a profound sense that somehow one is not truly at home in this world, and a deep longing for escape." Ref-1290, p. 141.


GN