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The early church heresiologists created an interpretive definition of Gnosticism, and modern scholarship followed this example and created a categorical definition. According to Williams the term needs replacing to more accurately reflect those movements it comprises, [ 11 ] and suggests to replace it with the term "the Biblical demiurgical ...
Gnosticism teaches that the natural or material world will and should be destroyed (total annihilation) by the true spiritual God in order to free mankind from the reign of the false God or Demiurge. A common misperception is caused by the fact that, in the past, "Gnostic" had a similar meaning to the current usage of the word mystic.
Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem produced the hypothesis that the source of the 13th century Kabbalah (such as the Zohar) was Jewish gnosticism that preceded Christian gnosticism. For example, in the title of his 1960's Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and the Talmudic Tradition.
Gnosticism used a number of religious texts that are preserved, in part or whole, in ancient manuscripts, or lost but mentioned critically in Patristic writings. There is significant scholarly debate around what Gnosticism is, and therefore what qualifies as a "Gnostic text."
Most Gnostic sects did not accept the Old Testament moral law. For example, the Manichaeans held that their spiritual being was unaffected by the action of matter and regarded carnal sins as being, at worst, forms of bodily disease. [21] The Old Testament was absolutely rejected by most of the Gnostics.
Prominent early Christian gnostics like Valentinus taught that the Monad is the high source of the Pleroma, the region of light constituting "the fullness of the Godhead." Through a process of emanation, various divine entities and realms emerge from the One. Arranged hierarchically, they become progressively degraded due to their remoteness ...
The doctrine of sin is central to the Christian faith, since its basic message is about redemption in Christ. [2] Hamartiology, a branch of Christian theology which is the study of sin, [3] describes sin as an act of offence against God by despising his persons and Christian biblical law, and by injuring others. [4]
Although earlier Christians taught original sin, the concept of total depravity (total inability to believe on Christ) was borrowed from Gnostic Manichaeism. Manichaeism taught that unborn babies and unbaptized infants were damned to hell because of a physical body.