7 Comments

Not sure if I agree with this article. Religion relies on dogma and revelation, but the philosophical traditions you discussed (such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism) are firmly based on reason and logic. Fun to read though, good historical overview.

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Amazing read, you explain it so well. Crazy enough I’m reading Nag Hammadi scriptures again right now to understand all of these connections better. I see book of Thomas is very different from the rest of it. I read in the few older documents that it’s believed that Magnus the sorcerer started Gnosticism.

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Interesting! Sadly and frustratingly, my life took a sharp turn after I published this article and my research got derailed. I'm hoping to get back to it at some point and continue this thread, and that looks like a good place to start digging. Thank you!

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Sending you prayers of wellbeing and strength.

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Thank you!

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Jan 8
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Oh, I meant it in a good way! I always try to have a posture of learning and, as I'm not a professional scholar, my research can only go so deep. So I'm happy to learn from others with more knowledge and different perspectives.

I want to give Augustine the benefit of the doubt, but based on my research so far, he had a nasty habit of labeling anyone who challenged him a heretic and leading the Church in severely persecuting them. He bore some really rotten fruit. Enough to make me question whether his conversion was legitimate, or if he was truly saved but just struggled with carnality. IDK -- only God knows where his heart was. But he's definitely a more problematic figure than a lot of people realize, and either way, I think Satan used him to infiltrate and plant a lot of false doctrine.

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Jan 8
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I feel like I got taken to school. Your research on this clearly goes much deeper than mine. But to be fair, I said "gnostic ideas were already permeating Jewish theosophical mysticism in early forms of what we know today as Kabballah." Maybe it was a mistake to link it to the evolution of Jewish thought that led to Kabballah, but AFAI understand Jewish mysticism began to take off after the destruction of the second temple when they turned to rabbinical Judaism. I appreciate your insights.

Like I said in a previous comment, I wrote this article almost a year ago and my trail of thought and research got derailed by life coming at me hard and fast, but I want to take it up again at some point. But my main area of concern is how gnostic ideas have penetrated the Church in the form of Augustinianism/Calvinism, woke progressive ideology, new age thought, Richard Rohr's teachings, etc. All leading up to how I think it ties into transhumanism and how it will play out in the final seven years.

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