Can someone give a few paragraphs-worth explanation of what Gnosticism/ a Gnostic is?

Question

Explain in relation to Christianity...and I looked at wikipedia defn already but I found it to be too confusing.

Answer 1

same as a gnawgie

Answer 2

Whew! I wish it were that simple! I assume you can look up things in wikipedia just like anyone else, so here's my understanding of it...

Gnosticism is kind of like a heavily philosophized version of the various monotheistic religions. The influence of Plato is pretty strong, but then so is the influence of a number of religious figures. Some Gnostic sects go so far as to use whole texts produced by other religions, and some use almost none of it. So there's a certain variety in the term to be expected.

Most Gnostics seem to believe that everything came from one primary diety, who is given a variety of different names, sometimes even within a single sect. From this original diety, others were spawned... or perhaps 'distinguished themselves' would be a better way to describe it.

These other sub-dieties were not quite as perfect as the original one, and one of the sub-dieties was responsible for creating our universe. This is the Gnostic explanation for why things don't seem to be perfect around here - an imperfect diety made it all.

An important factor in Gnostic theology is that this imperfection is not necessarily a permanent condition. Because everything emnated from the original, perfect diety, it may all return as well. Central to being able to return in pretty much all Gnostic traditions is achieving a certain kind of mental state, an 'elightenment', if you will. A person who does this might escape the current world and be able to rise up to the level of the original diety.

Outside of those core ideas, there is quite a bit of variety involved. Some groups that are called Gnostic acknowledge and revere a whole spectrum of divine entities, some just the originator, most have their own distinct rituals, and so on and so forth. As a general term, it's probably a lot less descriptive than 'Christian' in figuring out what any one group does or believes.

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

Gnosticism (from Greek gnosis, knowledge) is a term created by modern scholars to describe a diverse religious movement often associated with Christianity, although textual evidence for the movement contains distinctly non- and anti-Christian elements, as well as anti-Judaic elements. These beliefs had largely syncretistic origins in that they were often based on various influences from such idea systems.

Essentially, however, a Gnostic is one who follows in Philo’s (20B.C.-42 A.D.) footsteps to wed the teachings of Plato (427-347 B.C.) to the Old and New Testaments, by primarily justifying the same through the teachings that Plato learned from Moses, to produce a supposedly new and different philosophical position on the nature of the soul relative to Platonism and who thereby believed they held “secret” knowledge of the truth and salvation.

Answer 4

Gnosticism (from Greek gnosis, knowledge) is a term created by modern scholars to describe a diverse religious movement often associated with Christianity, although textual evidence for the movement contains distinctly non- and anti-Christian elements, as well as anti-Judaic elements. These beliefs had largely syncretistic origins in that they were often based on various influences from such idea systems.

Essentially, however, a Gnostic is one who follows in Philo’s (20B.C.-42 A.D.) footsteps to wed the teachings of Plato (427-347 B.C.) to the Old and New Testaments, by primarily justifying the same through the teachings that Plato learned from Moses, to produce a supposedly new and different philosophical position on the nature of the soul relative to Platonism and who thereby believed they held “secret” knowledge of the truth and salvation. As such, Gnostics from the Western traditions maintain, for example, that all definitions of the soul prior to the book of Wisdom are incomplete, and thereupon merged the definitions of a soul (which up until the book Wisdom was understood as the vital force of the body wherein the genetic disease of aging was described in terms of the slow loss of the soul, and in which the only evidence of that vital force after death was in terms of one’s lineage or genetic materials) with that of a shade (the sinful self, as manifest in terms of persistent elements of the personality and mind which was not burned away by consistent religious or spiritual experiences, and it was the shade which was understood as being relegated to Baal after death) to produce supposedly new and different philosophical position on the nature of the soul in relation to God. The corruptions of Gnosticism is really not new though, as it can be clearly seen that they just merged Baalistic theory with Yahwistic Theory, called it Platonism and carried the same into Jewish thought and it became the primary corruption of early Christianity.

Several Gnostic texts appear to have no Christian element at all. Because the textual evidence comes from the first few centuries AD, many scholars have assumed that Gnosticism did not predate this period, but earlier historians of religion saw it as an outgrowth of ancient mystical traditions in Asia, especially Iran.

Answer 5

one who has knowlegde of an existance of God