What Christianity has become by virtue of the histories written by it is another tale of those in power—those in power wielding Christianity this way or that, whereas the way Christianity started was a different story that needs to be retold in every age, because it’s about nameless people and disenfranchised people whose world has been invaded by Christ. We don’t hear from those disenfranchised people in history. We only hear about the big people. We only hear from the famous historians, the famous theologians, this king or that king, or Emperor Constantine taking Gnosticism out of the Gospel for the sake of power.
This week’s episode compares Sethian gnosticism to the Valentinian gnosticism we usually feature. We’ll learn some of the basic ways that these two strains of “gnosticism” differ. Who/what is the Barbelo? Who/what is Yaldabaoth? Who/what falls from the Fullness to create our material world? Who and how is a person redeemed to the Fullness?