Reforming Gnosticism

When people say, “My goodness, your Gnosticism is so different than what I have come to understand Gnosticism to be,” that’s because I didn’t take it from secondary sources. I took it from the original sources.  Then of course, Valentinian Gnosticism is an early form of what has come to be called Christianity. Christianity diverged immensely from the original message around the 300’s and on up, when the gnostic books were taken out of Orthodoxy. Those folks that are called heresiologists are the people that went around slapping heresy labels on the early Christianity—the early Valentinian Gnosticism. They weeded it out of the official sacred texts that made their way into the New Testament.

The main book of the Nag Hammadi that I relate to is called the Tripartite Tractate. I believe it to be the purest form of gnosis. It has very little in the way of mythologies, of extraneous characters, of the names of things and the numbers of things and the astrology of it all.

Valentinian Gnosticism from the Tripartite Tractate is unique in that the fallen Aeon is not called Sophia, a female character. The Aeon who fell is called Logos, not to be confused with the Son of God, Christ, or Jesus.

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Tag: David Bentley Hart

  • Thumbnail for The Radiant Answer

    The Radiant Answer

    This one spark, that’s what we call the big S Self. And the particularity of our personal existence is what we here at Gnostic Insights label as our Ego. So we are made up of the Self that we share with all others and that we share with the Son, but we are also our own individual existence. That’s why we can’t just blink out into nothingness and not be missed, because we have our particularity, and it has its own place in the hierarchy.

  • Thumbnail for The True Nature of the God Above All Gods

    The True Nature of the God Above All Gods

    Perhaps you were raised in an extremely cruel household with extremely vindictive parents, or schoolteachers, or somebody got to you and, in the name of God, inflicted cruelty upon you. Then you have come to accidentally transpose their human cruelty onto God, because they told you to. But that’s not God, by definition, you see? And when I say, by definition, that means, like, cold is not hot, by definition. Cold is cold. And if you’re going to start arguing, oh no, cold is hot, well, then you’re not talking about cold, you’re talking about hot. Do you see what I mean? And if you have been rejecting God, the God Above All Gods, because you have this view of God as merciless and vindictive, cruel, illogical, unfair, unjust, take comfort, because that’s not God you’re talking about.

    Now, it may be the small g god of this world. It could be the guy whose best friend is Satan, because remember, that is a small g god of confusion. And its main job is to cause you to forget that you come from transcendent goodness, that you come from above, from the God Above All Gods, and that you do have freedom. You do have free will. You are meant to inherit joy. You are to do good works, and to be happy, and to be in love, and to love everybody else.

    Don’t let some evil archon, or evil Demiurge, or evil human, redefine God in such a way that you reject God, because that’s the mistake. That’s a categorical error. And that’s why I say, take comfort, have joy, receive the love that was meant for you.

  • Thumbnail for Deluded? or Damned?

    Deluded? or Damned?

    “The irresistibility of God for any soul that has been truly set free is no more a constraint placed upon its liberty than is the irresistible attraction of a flowing spring to fresh water in a desert place to a man who is dying of thirst. To choose not to drink in that circumstance would not be an act of freedom on his part, but only a manifestation of the delusions that enslave him and force him to inflict violence upon himself, contrary to his nature.” David Bentley Hart

  • Thumbnail for Are You Going to Hell

    Are You Going to Hell

    My major reason why everyone and everything that’s living now will return to heaven is that everything comes from heaven. So if everything doesn’t return to heaven in the end, if most of it, as a matter of fact, was thrown into eternal fires of torment, well, God itself would be lessened. The Father would be less than he was at the beginning, and that’s an impossibility, because the Father was, is, and ever shall be the same. He is not diminished by the love and consciousness and life that flows out of him. But if that life, love, and consciousness winds up in a black hole at the bottom of an eternal pit of torment, well, there’s so many things wrong with that statement, just absolutely wrong.
    The reason I say it can’t be so is that all consciousness, life, and love come from the Father. So in the big roll-up, if we accept the proposition that there will be an end to this material existence, which is what all Christians and Jews profess, and if everything that emanated from the Father in the beginning, beginning with the Son, which is the first and only direct emanation, and then everything else emanates through the Son, well, if it doesn’t return at the end of material time, then the Father and the ethereal plane would be diminished, because it poured out all of this love and consciousness into this material realm, and it all has to return.

  • Thumbnail for Treasures of Heaven

    Treasures of Heaven

    Matthew 6:19 Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. Lately, people have been asking me to translate Bible verses—to give my Gnostic Gospel version of familiar Bible…

  • Thumbnail for Universal Salvation–an Introduction

    Universal Salvation–an Introduction

    This idea that most everyone and everything is going to hell rather than going to heaven is a relatively recent addition to Christianity, but it has been grasped so firmly with the great assistance of the Catholic Church and their doctrines that by now most Christians think that most people won’t go to heaven. So even the Protestants who protest Catholicism—that’s what the word Protestant means, one who protests—they’ve lost the original thread of universal salvation that Jesus was teaching. The Anointed came to save everyone, it says over and over in the New Testament.

  • Thumbnail for How Best To Thrive

    How Best To Thrive

    I looked up magnanimity, just to make sure I knew exactly what it means. And it means “the quality of being magnanimous, greatness of mind, elevation or dignity of soul. That quality or combination of qualities in character, which enables one to encounter danger and trouble with tranquility and firmness, to disdain injustice, meanness and revenge, and to act and sacrifice for noble objects.” Another definition says, “magnanimity is the virtue of being great of mind and heart. It encompasses usually a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes.”

  • Thumbnail for The Logos of Life

    The Logos of Life

    You don’t want to go marching around in righteous indignation. You want to return to grace and righteousness—true righteousness. So the moment you recognize that the Demiurge has gotten you again, that’s called repentance. You say, oh, wait a minute, back off, and you return to righteousness. And every time you allow one of these small corrections to take place, it becomes easier and easier and the longer and longer you can allow the 3rd Order of Powers to sit on the throne of your Self.

  • Thumbnail for In the Origin, there was Logos

    In the Origin, there was Logos

    “In the origin there was the Logos and the Logos was present with GOD (the God Above All Gods) and the Logos was god. This one was present with GOD in the origin. All things came to be through him (Logos) and without him came not a single thing that has come to be. In him was life and this life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not conquer it.” (John 1:1-6)

  • Thumbnail for The Truth About Eternal Damnation

    The Truth About Eternal Damnation

    Those who have not accepted the forgiveness and redemption of the Christ do indeed suffer when they pass away from this life. This suffering is not handed down by an angry God but is rather their own recognition and guilt over their sins and shortcomings. The more sinful an unredeemed person is, the more they suffer when they die. The suffering comes from their own conscience as they see clearly the path of their ego-driven life and the true condition of their soul. After a period of denying their need for a Messiah to rescue them from this place where they have been set aside, they will call out to the Savior to rescue them. The moment they repent of all that they now see clearly as their accumulated faults, they will be redeemed.