The Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic sect still active in Iran and Iraq with small communities in other parts of the world. Gnosticism from its origins constituted a rival religion to both Judaism and Christianity. There were indeed Jewish Gnostics, and a bewildering array of Christian Gnostic sects, but there were also pagan Gnostics. Gnosticism was both a tendency within other religions, and an eclectic but authentic religion in itself.
The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Archon, in gnosticism, any of a number of world-governing powers that were created with the material world by a subordinate deity called the Demiurge Creator. The archon eponymous was the chief archon, and presided over meetings of the Boule and Ecclesia, the ancient Athenian assemblies.
The CDF points to a general spiritual yearning ambivalent about the body, while the Pope has in mind a colder intellectual vice deep inside the Church.
The document is rather simply warning Catholics to respect the whole person, in Christ, and resist the temptation to privatization and a world-fleeing spiritualization. Interestingly, in Gaudete et Exsultate , Francis heads in another, quite different direction.
They absolutize their own theories and force others to submit to their way of thinking. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options.
Where exactly do mainstream Christians and Gnostics part ways? This seems to have been the case with the Knights Templar, who, not unlike the Cathar Gnostics, were cruelly exterminated by the unholy alliance of the French crown and papacy. French history from the Middle Ages to the present is characterized by an oscillation between Roman Catholic and anti Roman Catholic tendencies in cultural life and in the body politic.
The cruel massacre of the Cathars and of the Templars created a wide spread and long lasting resentment against the Roman Catholic Church, which resentment was extended to the Bourbon monarchy as well. Every time the hold of the Roman Catholic Church weakened on the government of France, Gnostic and gnosticizing religious bodies emerged from hiding, only to be suppressed eventually by another clerical government. One of these incidents of emergence occurred in the late Nineteenth Century, when Jules-Benoit Doinel du Val Michel Tau Valentin II , inspired by spiritual influences that appeared to have been of Cathar origin founded the French Gnostic Church , which by way of its various branches and under several names has functioned ever since.
Primarily by way of its Haitian extension, this church came to establish itself in the United States as well, particularly within the last few decades. Gnostic interest in the English speaking countries was initially restricted to secular avenues.
The rise of the Theosophical Society in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century brought some considerable attention to focus on the Gnostics. Madame Blavatsky in her writings extolled the Gnostics as her kindred spirits and her pupil, G. Mead became the best known and most accurate as well as most sympathetic translator of Gnostic scriptures of his time. While there was certainly some contact between the French Gnostics and the gnostically inclined British and American Theosophists, Jules Doinel received his revelation concerning the founding of the Gnostic Church at the residence of the prominent British Theosophist, Lady Caithness , another half a century elapsed before the English Gnostic ecclesiastical transmission was to have its beginning.
De Palatine was born with the name Powell, but legally changed his name. Having been consecrated as a bishop by the well known British independent Catholic prelate, Hugh George de Wilmott Newman, de Palatine proceeded to establish a sacramental Gnostic church both in England and in the United States.
Bishop Palatine was acquainted with several French Gnostic bishops, and received encouragement and inspiration from them. The present writer, after serving for about a decade as a priest under Bishop Palatine, was consecrated in as regionary bishop for America by him, and has represented the Gnostic tradition ever since as senior holder of the English Gnostic transmission.
In their attempt to re establish and uphold the Gnostic tradition, the various branches of the Gnostic church always availed themselves of such scriptural sources of Gnostic teaching as were available at the time. In amplification of this statement, however, two issues need to be understood. One of these issues is that prior to the monumental find of Gnostic scriptures at Nag Hammadi in Egypt only a relatively small number of original Gnostic writings was available.
Even much of this material was either untranslated, or accessible only to a small circle of academics until G. Mead's popular translations appeared after Another issue concerns the relationship of scripture and tradition. Prior to the coming of Protestantism, with its highly one sided emphasis on scripture at the expense of tradition, it was always understood that many mysteries and teachings existed that were not written down, but rather handed on in an oral and initiatic fashion.
Scripture is not the only source of teaching and sacramental authority in the Gnostic church, even as it is not the only source of such in the other apostolic and sacramental branches of Christendom. Useful as scripture is, one must keep in mind that tradition augmented by individual Gnosis always plays an important role. The founders and leaders of the Gnostic Church in the 19th Century Gnostic revival as well as their counterparts in the 20th century were all well informed and devoted to classical Gnosticism.
To them, as well as to us, the terms "Apostolic Gnosis" conjured up the presence of the great Gnostic teachers, Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Bardesanes and their fellows. Apostolic Gnosis was not a nebulous commodity restricted to such s.
In our days there are many who bandy about the words "Gnosis" and "gnosticism" without much understanding of their meaning and import. Such was not the case regarding the leading figures of the Gnostic Revival who were active in the Gnostic Church.
0コメント