Thankfully, the early church fathers were nearly unanimous in recognizing the Gnostic gospels as promoting false teachings about virtually every key Christian doctrine. There are countless contradictions between the Gnostic gospels and the true Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Gnostic gospels can be a good source for the study of early Christian heresies, but they should be rejected outright as not belonging in the Bible and not representing the genuine Christian faith.

And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. 1 John 4:3

Gnosticism  by Dr. Norman Geisler

Gnosticism

The Gnostics followed a variety of religious movements that stressed gnosis or knowledge, especially of one’s origins. Cosmological dualism was also a feature of the system—opposed spiritual worlds of good and evil. The material world was aligned with the dark world of evil.

Gnosticism Exposed

No one is certain of the origins of Gnosticism. Some believe it was rooted in a heretical group within Judaism. Supporters of this theory cite The Apocalypse of Adam and The Paraphrase of Shem as early Gnostic documents revealing Jewish origins. Others give it a Christian context. An incipient form may have infiltrated the church in Colosse. Or it may have had a totally pagan root. During the second through the fourth centuries, it was addressed as a major threat by such church fathers as Augustine, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen.

Early Sources for Gnostics

Irenaeus’s book Against Heresies provides extensive treatment of what Gnostics believed. Three Coptic Gnostic codices were published. Two were discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. Codex Askewianus contains Pistis Sophia and Codex Brucianus contains The Book of Jeu. Best known as the Nag Hammadi documents is the Gospel of Thomas. The third work from this period, Codex Berolinensis, was found elsewhere and published in 1955. It contains a Gospel of Mary [Magdalene], a Sophia of Jesus, Acts of Peter, and an Apocryphon of John. The first translation of a tractate, The Gospel of Truth, appeared in 1956, and a translation of fifty-one treatises, including Gospel of Thomas, appeared in 1977.

Leaders

The early fathers of the church held that Gnosticism had first-century roots and that Simon the Sorcerer of Samaria (Acts 8) was the first Gnostic. According to church fathers, Simon practiced magic, claimed to be divine, and taught that his companion, a former prostitute, was reincarnated Helen of Troy. Hippolytus (d. 236) attributed the Apophasis Megale to Simon. Simon’s disciple, a former Samaritan named Menander, who taught in Syrian Antioch near the end of the first century, taught that those who believed in him would not die. That claim was nullified when he died.

At the beginning of the second century, Saturninus (Satornilos) asserted that the incorporeal Christ was the redeemer denying that Christ was really incarnated in human flesh. This belief is shared with docetism. In this period Cerinthus of Asia Minor was teaching adoptionism, the heresy that Jesus was merely a man upon whom Christ descended at his baptism. Since Christ could not die, he departed from Jesus before his crucifixion. Basilides of Egypt was called both a dualist by Irenaeus and a Monist by Hippolytus.

Gnostic Inversion of The Truth

One of the more controversial, though atypical, Gnostics was Marcion of Pontus. He believed that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God of the New Testament and that the canon of Scripture included only a truncated version of Luke and ten of Paul’s Epistles (all but the pastoral Epistles). His views were severely attacked by Tertullian (ca. 160s—ca. 215). Marcion became a stimulus for the early church to officially define the limits of the canon.

Valentinus of Alexandria was another prominent Gnostic. He came to Rome in 140 and taught that there were a series of divine emanations. He divided humanity into three classes: (1) Hylics or unbelievers, who were immersed in material and fleshly nature; (2) psychics or common Christians, who lived by faith and pneumatics; and (3) spiritual Gnostics. His followers included Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, Theodotus, and Marcus. Heracleon’s interpretation of John is the first known New Testament commentary.

Gnostic-like beliefs persisted into the fourth century. Among the late manifestations was Manichaeism, a dualistic cult that trapped Augustine in his pre-Christian life. Against it he wrote many treatises, which are collected in The Anti-Manichaean Writings in the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

Gnostic Teachings

Since Gnosticism lacked a common authority, it encompassed a variety of beliefs. Central to many, if not most, were:

1. a cosmic dualism between spirit and matter, good and evil;

2. a distinction between a finite Old Testament God, Yahweh, who was equated with Plato’s Demiurge or Craftsman, and the transcendent God of the New Testament;

3. view of creation as resulting from the fall of Sophia (Wisdom);

4. identification of matter as evil;

5. belief that most people are ignorant of their origins and condition;

6. identification of sparks of divinity that are encapsulated in certain spiritual individuals;

7. faith in a docetic Redeemer, who was not truly human and did not die on the cross. This Redeemer brought salvation in the form of a secret gnosis or knowledge that was communicated by Christ after his resurrection.

8. a goal of escaping the prison of the body, traversing the planetary spheres of hostile demons, and being reunited with God;

9. a salvation based not on faith or works, but upon special knowledge or gnosis of one’s true condition;

10. a mixed view of morality Carpocrates urged his followers to engage in deliberate promiscuity. Epiphanes, his son, taught that licentiousness was God’s law. Most Gnostics, however, took a strongly ascetic view of sexual intercourse and marriage, contending that the creation of woman was the source of evil and procreation of children simply multiplied the number of persons in bondage to the evil material world. Salvation of women depended on their one day becoming men and returning to the conditions of Eden before Eve was created. Oddly enough, women were prominent in many Gnostic sects.

11. interpretation of baptism and the Lord’s supper as spiritual symbols of the gnosis;

12. view of the resurrection as spiritual, not physical. In the Nag Hammadi codices, De Resurrectione affirms that:

Hollywoods Gnostic AgendaGnostic View on Death and Resurrection

The Saviour swallowed up death…. For he laid aside the world that perishes. He changed himself into an incorruptible aeon and raised himself up, after he had swallowed up the visible by the invisible, and he gave us the way to immortality…. But if we are made manifest in this world wearing him, we are his beams and we are encompassed by him until our setting, which is our death in this life. We are drawn upward by him like beams by the sun, without being held back by anything. This is the spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic together with the fleshly.1

Gnosticism as an organized movement acknowledging its source all but died. The sole surviving remnant is in southwestern Iran. However many Gnostic teachings live on among new agers, existentialists, and Bible critics. The revival of interest in the Gospel of Thomas by the Jesus Seminar is a case in point. There is also a tendency, even among some evangelical scholars, to deny the physical nature of the resurrection. However, Gnosticism lives today in the New Age Movement in an extensive way.

Evaluation

Gnosticism was thoroughly critiqued by the early church fathers, especially Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, and Origen, though Origen bought into some of their views.

Notes

1 M. Malinine, ed and trans., De Resurrection epistula ad Rheginum (Zurich: Rascher, 1963), p. 45

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Gnosticism Exposed in Hollywood as Dualism in a Updside Down World

Dualism A Gnostic Worldview “Conspiracy of Everything”

Dualism: The Illuminati Religion – In this ‘Conspiracy Theory of Everything’ type exposé on the Illuminati, Gnosticism and Luciferian beliefs I reveal for the first time the hidden and zealously guarded religious beliefs of the Elites. I begin by outlining their basic beliefs about Dualism and the Great Work and what all these doctrines entail.

I then attempt to prove my outlandish assertions by reviewing four of the most Gnostic entrenched pieces of content available (The Matrix, Tron Legacy, Lego Movie & ES4: Shivering Isles). I also offer a large list of other similar content. After this I examine occult symbolism and cultural trends showing that the same doctrines appear where ever the Illuminati have any influence.

Some examples of topics covered are: Masonic Symbolism, Baphomet, 9/11, The Emerald Tablet, LGBT, Evolution, Chimeras, Trans-humanism, Race Wars, Prince ect. ect. In the final section of the video I go about refuting the many beliefs revealed in the first two sections, as well as offering a superior alternative to those beliefs which is found in the Gospel of Christ contained in the Word of God, the Bible. -By Theophilus Most Excellent on YouTube

No one is certain of the origins of Gnosticism. Some believe it was rooted in a heretical group within Judaism. Supporters of this theory cite The Apocalypse of Adam and The Paraphrase of Shem as early Gnostic documents revealing Jewish origins. Others give it a Christian context. An incipient form may have infiltrated the church in Colosse. Or it may have had a totally pagan root. During the second through the fourth centuries, it was addressed as a major threat by such church fathers as Augustine, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen.

EXPOSING THE WICKED WORLDVIEW OF THE GNOSTICS
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Recommended Resource: The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities by Darrell Bock.