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kimberlysteele
Woot! My first ever Open Post. Please feel free to comment on anything and everything. Thank you for not using profanity.
kimberlysteeleWoot! My first ever Open Post. Please feel free to comment on anything and everything. Thank you for not using profanity.
Re: Amazing interview with a woman who gets it
Date: 2021-01-03 05:25 pm (UTC)Re: Gnosticism.
1. I've come to learn it being a vague label that has been applied to pretty much any mystical or philosophical variant early Christianity. I.e. the types of Christianity that didn't make the Constantinan cut. The post-Nicene church authorities used 'Gnostic" (the word Gnosis itself simply means spiritual knowledge in Greek) as a snarky pejorative to slander and demean the aforementioned Christian variants, in a sense that, "oh these people think they know so much, and know our religion better than us and anyone else!" In essence, the typical anti-intellectual rhetoric dogmatists and materialists use against their intellectual and spiritual betters. It's not so different than the angry, "oh you think you know so much, don't you!!??" my boomer parents shriek at me whenever I challenge any of the vapid corporate media talking points they parrot in my general direction on given day.
2. In contemporary pop culture, "Gnosticism' generally refers to the most dualistic and paranoid (usually world-hating, sometimes believing that the material world is the deliberate creation of an evil entity) alternative Judeo-Christian narratives.
3. In my experience, people today who identify as Gnostics are those who want to maintain a nominal affiliation with Christianity but tend to substitute a grab-bag of New Age and pseudo-mystical beliefs in lieu of the old post-Nicene creeds and dogmas. In other words, not too much different than how a liberal Protestant goes about doing their religion, though with a more mystical (and less materialist) bent.
Sorry if this comes off as pedantic or tl;dr, haha
Re: Amazing interview with a woman who gets it
Date: 2021-01-03 08:48 pm (UTC)Re: Amazing interview with a woman who gets it
Date: 2021-01-05 03:03 am (UTC)Re: Amazing interview with a woman who gets it
Date: 2021-01-06 02:15 am (UTC)