Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Page from the Gospel of Judas Mandaean Beth Manda in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq, in 2016, a contemporary-style mandi. Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, romanized: gnōstikós, Koine Greek: [ɣnostiˈkos], 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects.
There were some Orthodox Christians who as mystics (in the modern sense) taught gnosis (Knowledge of the God or the Good) who could be called gnostics in a positive sense (e.g. Diadochos of Photiki). Whereas formerly Gnosticism was considered mostly a corruption of Christianity, it now seems clear that traces of Gnostic systems can be discerned ...
According to the Christian scholar Epiphanius of Salamis, he was born in Egypt and schooled in Alexandria, where the Gnostic Basilides was teaching. However, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215), another Christian scholar and teacher, reports that Valentinus was taught by Theudas , a disciple of the apostle Paul . [ 5 ]
Christian writers had to explain the truths of natural religion, such as God, the soul, creation, immortality, and freedom of the will; at the same time they had to defend the chief mysteries of the Christian faith. The efforts of the Fathers to define and combat heresy brought writings against Gnosticism, Manichæism, and Priscillianism.
In it, Irenaeus identifies and describes several schools of Gnosticism, and other schools of Christian thought, whose beliefs he rejects as heresy. He contrasts them with orthodox Christianity. Until the discovery of the Library of Nag Hammadi in 1945, Against Heresies was the best surviving contemporary description of Gnosticism.
Valentinus (Greek: Οὐαλεντῖνος; c. 100 – c. 180 CE) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. [1] He founded his school in Rome . According to Tertullian , Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.
Catholic priest Alfonso Aguilar has described Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Matrix as embodying Gnostic views, as "two signs of the power of the real enemy: Gnosticism" and stressing the need to "examine their philosophical background and reject what is incompatible with our Christian faith."
The Old Testament was absolutely rejected by most of the Gnostics. Even the so-called Judaeo-Christian Gnostics , the Ebionite (Essenian) sect of the Pseudo-Clementine writings (the Elkesaites), take up an inconsistent attitude towards Jewish antiquity and the Old Testament. In this respect, the opposition to Gnosticism led to a reactionary ...