And where are those jews now?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie Great question! Presumably they took their beliefs seriously and starved themselves to death, or stayed in their monastic cells until they gracelessly expired in obscurity

And how do you know that this is because of Gnosticism being a false religion, and not just due to their excessive jewishness and inherited blood guilt etc.?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie Nag Hammadi is a few kilometers away from the first established "orthodox" monastery. These people really did live the lifestyle that they pushed, especially since they believed rejection of their own material body was essential to their salvation - to the point, as we read in Zostrianos, of attempted suicide when possible.

I mean, Christ arguably did not just attempt suicide, but actually succeeded (and managed to survive anyhow) — how do you know they weren't attempting to do the same (since that's what the gospels command us) and failed (due to a lack of faith perhaps)?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie St. Peter and the other Apostles all make it clear that Christ was murdered by crucifixion and rose again physically from the dead.
We know that the gnostics were not attempting to do the same because, as their writings have shown, they hated the human body in the first place and saw their deaths as an escape. The notion of a physical resurrection was repugnant to them. This is all stuff I've read out from their own writings and commented on.

Well if they did not believe in physical resurrection, how weren't they just Sadducess (according to Matt. 22:23)?

And isn't that basically the same as lacking faith?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie The Sadducees believed that death resulted in oblivion. Gnostics typically believed that oblivion was for the nonelect (or they were reincarnated). Meanwhile, their highest ideal was becoming a nonphysical entity that lived in the Plaroma with the aeons and platonic ideals. Sadducees believed in one deity, gnostics held to an endless array of emanating aeon deities, the list of differences is enormous

According to their definitions, would Jesus be considered a nonphysical entity living in the Pleroma? Or is He in fact a real person living on Earth?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie He has a physical body (as He demonstrates in Luke by eating food with the Apostles after the Resurrection), and has ascended to Heaven - wherein yes, physical things may reside

So He still has a physical body today?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie Yes! And a perfect one at that, imbued with the glories inherent to a Resurrected body the way St. Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15.

Can I touch it, the way Thomas did?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie If He were in the room with you, that could happen yes.

Does that preclude His simultaneous existence in the Pleroma?

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie The "pleroma" does not exist in the sense that valentinians and sethians conceived of it, since they violated their own doctrines concerning immensity.
If you are referring to Christ's Divine essence and the attribute of omnipresence, it is clear that you cannot "touch" the Divine nature the way you can the human nature - both in the physical sense (if Jesus gave you a hug) and in the Sacramental fashion at the Eucharist.

Okay, I'll be honest, I do not know nearly enough about Gnosticism to even know the difference between these two.

I just stumbled across it on 4chan a few years ago and thought it was an interesting perspective, until I realized that the Pleroma is basically just the Platonic realm of ideas, and the demiurge is the Platonic cave, more or less.

Does that make any of it false? Depends on how you relate Greek philosophy with Christianity, I guess — in my opinion, it's basically a syncretism Greek and Jewish thought (and there are plenty of passages in the gospels that bear that out).

Perhaps this is a naive way of seeing things, but I haven't read any Nag Hammadi stuff to know any better. I do appreciate your debating skills, however — it's certainly rare to be able to debate religion with anyone without things being taken personal, so kudos to you on that.

@Verfassungsschmutz @Scubbie I appreciate the honesty. You aren't wrong about jewish and Greek doctrines in Christianity, but I would contend that those doctrines aren't in the text of Scripture. Tertullian, one of the Church Fathers, expressed his disappointment that so many of his contemporaries were going after Greek philosophy by asking "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"

Same thing with a concerted effort to make Christianity more jewish than it was: things like the Epistle of Barnabas and Matheteis both demonstrate an awareness that sects like the ebionites were actively trying to subvert the Church with foreign small-hat doctrines. These were things Jesus Himself attacked when screaming at the Pharisees.

Yeah man, I took no offense, have a great evening 🙏

@SuperLutheran @Verfassungsschmutz The history of the Gnostics was they tried to get them added to the Bible in Catholicism but 1 vote rejected them because teachings would take power away from the Papacy declared heresy by Irenaeus he was made a saint in the Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Lutheran Churches, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East.and a Doctor of the Church in the Catholic Church by Pope Francis in 2022.

@Scubbie @Verfassungsschmutz Which vote are you referring to?

@SuperLutheran @Verfassungsschmutz Constantine, 325 AD, he convened the Council of Nicae

@Scubbie @Verfassungsschmutz Here's the canon list of Nicaea, please tell me which one does what you're saying it does:
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm

@SuperLutheran @Verfassungsschmutz The Synodal Letter a direct rebuttal of Arianism belief Christ was a created being not co- eternal with the Father the Monad,Arius of Alexander was condemned heresy & Christ was affirmed divine by the Christian Orthodox in relations to Yahweh, Gnostics often distinguished between “The One” an unknowable, transcendent source the Monad & Yahweh the one known as the Demiurge,later confirmed in 381 AD in councils ,constanoble & later Ephesus & Chaicedone

@Scubbie @Verfassungsschmutz Arius wasn't a gnostic lmao.
None of the ecumenical councils in your sentence fragment had anything to do with gnosticism, let alone confirming what you claim they confirm.

@SuperLutheran @Scubbie @Verfassungsschmutz Yeah for all his Faults Arius, to my Knowledge, never said "Lets throw away the OT."

@Brandschatzer @Verfassungsschmutz @SuperLutheran I am claiming that the gnostic texts were omited from Christian Orthodoxy because the theological chaos was a threat to imperial stability.It wasn’t just about heresy it was about identity, authority and the metaphysical divide of Arianism mirrored, and echoed, Gnostics mysticism councils were defining Christianity and both were ungovernable for the emerging Church.

@Scubbie @Brandschatzer @Verfassungsschmutz How much have you read from Irenaeus, Origen, Clement, the nag hammadi collection, etc.? Because I seriously doubt you'd be making this claim if you read any of them.

Here, if you don't have time to read any of it, you can take a listen to my audiobooks with commentary on the topics:
https://m.soundcloud.com/verylutheran/sets/evaluating-...
https://m.soundcloud.com/verylutheran/sets/reading-the...

@SuperLutheran @Verfassungsschmutz @Brandschatzer I have just started to read the Nag Hamadi collection as I stated earlier ,I don't claim to be authority on organized religion,I don't care much for Judeo controlled version of Christianity I also understand that Gnostic interpretations are flawed,I believe there is truth to be found in them as well,The Serpents Seed infiltrates ALL organized religion, governments,etc..for control,Gnosis to me is finding the truth in the lies