What is (generally) Gnosticism

Gnosticism was simply demonic and so you can't you can't use the term demonic in most church history classes or at least in most history classes you're you're not allowed to know you're not allowed to say things like that but for a believer you look at what Gnosticism taught it's demonic it is it is devilish satanic to its core because the one true God that the New Testament be labor is the fact the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob has revealed himself in Jesus Christ this is fundamentals of the New Testament teaching that is fundamentally to none and the God who created this world is an arrogant stupid creature who and I was doing some more reading on it so I'm I'm just gonna give you what I understand right now I've talked to you about the eons that how did I get at this I wasn't going to spend as much time but this is the problem you can't even talk about a little part of it and make it understandable well it's not fitting it into this massively complicated cosmogony this whole story of where how everything came into existence and and all the rest of stuff but the one true God who isn't a God like we conceive of a God this is the true the true light that who has just been at peace in eternity but is not the creator of all things and is not the self-sufficient source of its own existence or personal self learn of these things but this pure God emanates thoughts states of thought and these emanations can then interact with one another we automatically think of these as persons creatures there's an element of that but then there's not an element of that these are the eons that come forth from the one God which is not monotheism but I need no one no it's not monotheism by any stretch of the imagination but they come forth one of the last emanations is Sophia now what is Sophia mean Sophia means wisdom feminine and you know different systems had different numbers there's 12 then to the second 12 and but it all depends on who you're talking to I'm gonna get back to Irenaeus sentencing each one has a pair so it's a male-female pair and that creates harmony and balance harmony imbalance big thing big thing gotta have harmony balance well Sophia contemplates the source without consulting her consort and become so excited in her contemplation of the one true source that she brings forth a misformed thought that is a being and she's embarrassed that the other eons will find out that she's done this because she shouldn't have done it separately from her cuz there was disharmony see and so she basically thrust this thing out of the play romo the fullness and somehow and I haven't quite figured out exactly how this works or if it's just a matter of differing views because there was voluntary Valentinian spins and if you get down toward Egypt that has another spin and and just tremendously complex from this divine but misshapen creature that is removed by Sophia from the play Roma somehow that either becomes or gives birth to the god of this world called a number of different names within gnosticism but attached to the name Jehovah that's where Jehovah comes from in Gnosticism and hence there's this really complicated just as there isn't mana key ism there's this really complicated mythology about how mankind becomes created and how the eons get involved so there is this the dual nature of man the spiritual nature and the fleshly nature and there's rape involved and then again there is a mana key ism - so yeah okay it gets incredibly incredibly complex just wild but the whole idea is disharmony between what we would call attributes of the One God and interesting enough it's wisdom Sophia there's responsible now she is sort of like redeemed and you know once it becomes known what she did amongst eons she's brought back in and everybody's cool and yeah if you can describe it that way but it was wisdom Sophia that was the one that started the path toward the creation of this she experienced confusion and something else I was just reading it I was actually going to have a little story time with Jimmy today but I just decided I didn't want to put you all through it because this takes us back to rework you're an ass Irenaeus up until we discovered the NAG Hammadi library in the last century we were almost completely dependent upon Irenaeus --is description of Gnosticism to understand what the system was his book against heresies starts off with a entire section if you want to if you're sitting there going that guy's just so stupid he can't explain this to us here's what you need to do go online look up against heresies by Irenaeus read book one chapter one and following and he will lay out Gnosticism for you and I just go okay you try to summarize that in less than ten minutes good luck ain't gonna happen it's amazing go online look up Gnostic eons hit graphics be careful about that hope your filters on but you'll see the same thing even the graphics trying to show the relationship of the eons to each other and the dodeca and the DECA and it's really really really really complicated so I guess mentioning Irenaeus is what got me off on this tangent because I can really appreciate the fact that Irenaeus did a really good job describing Gnosticism he did his homework now scholars would say well now that we have the naga hamadi he wasn't exactly right about this look given that he's in gaul he's in france this isn't exactly the hometown of Gnosticism he did a really good job in laying out what the problems were and what the errors were and and it's quite in-depth he did a much better job than a lot of people credit him in fact we were able to recognize what was in the Nagas my library cuz we had here and as we're like oh did you know remember in 2006 when the gospel of junus came out remembered there was all the big discussion about the Gospel of Judas and it was you know more of it has come out since then and it's it's weird I mean it is it guess who we we knew it existed you know how we knew Irenaeus described it that's how we knew when we had it is Irenaeus had done that good of a job so I can really appreciate and Irenaeus but his doctrine of the atonement was totally whacked it really was it was called the recapitulation theory I've told you about it before but I've told you about it in another context the recapitulation theory was that Jesus had to live through all the ages of man to redeem all the ages of man so that's why Irenaeus is the first one to use the phrase apostolic tradition that he had an apostolic tradition that had been passed down from the Apostles that Jesus was more than fifty years old when he died now nobody today believes that but that's the earliest reference to apostolic tradition in the patristic sources so I can read against heresies and really appreciate what work went into that but I always have to keep in mind Irenaeus his doctrine of atonement was not biblical he thought it was and we we can't know exactly what can in Scripture he necessarily had I mean I'm sure someone's written a study of it but did were certain books of Scripture only recently available in his area or known to be Scripture you know I I try to have as broad a extension of grace that possibly can in those first years in those first centuries because I know how dependent I am and you are on those who came before us we have inherited a fully developed theological language you didn't know that no one no one walked up to you let's say you walked an aisle in a Baptist Church nobody walked up to you and handed you the theological lingo book but you picked it up fast you picked it up fast it was picked up in the conversations going on and in Sunday school and it's picked up in the services and it's picked up for music our hymns man there's a lot of theology in those things and you learn the language well that took a long time to develop we've had an advantage that those early church fathers did not have and so I can appreciate Irenaeus while going yeah but is document now he didn't know what I know about some of the backgrounds and and didn't have the commentaries and he took over the group there in Lyon because the previous bishop was killed there had been bad persecution and we don't know when he died cuz he probably died in persecution too so give cut the guy a break basically is what I'm saying don't judge him on standards that he didn't have okay but that also means I have to go yeah okay I hear what what he's saying on this that or the other thing that's why we have to be so careful in how we handle the early church father the point is this we need to have and so we want to have a consistent theology why am i why am I even investing my time other than the cool enjoyable thing about getting to teach church history on the dividing line to a depth that at least some of you appreciate some others maybe have just tuned us out I don't know but why because we're being told by Ken Wilson and Layton flowers and these people that the steepest central insight of reformed theology which is that God is God and we are not that God is absolutely sovereign that his self glorification is sufficient reason for all of creation and redemption that he is the creator of all things that he has the right to decree the very fabric of time and then and then amazingly he enters into the fabric of time as a part of his decree something no Manichean Gnostic or stoic could have ever dreamed of but anyway we're being told that that's central beautiful reality that changes everything and you in the audience you know what I'm talking about you know what it was like to all sudden realize God is really God and he has the right to do with his creation as he sees fit to his glory and the amazing thing is he's chosen to enter into his own creation and join a people to himself that central reality we're being told is actually a straight line borrowing from stoicism Gnosticism anarchism so I know that's not true I know that's patently absurd but I'm seeing people being influenced by that because it comes from two directions it is natural for man to put himself in the center it is natural for man to D centralize God's intentions and and go with the man's tenderness on the theology side and then join that with a with the simple reality that the man in the pew in the world today has no idea what mana key isn't was what Gnosticism was what the Stoics believed and therefore someone comes along and says believe me here are some quotes you put the two together and it becomes a very noxious fume and I'm just turn the fan on to blow it out the windows that's all but I think it's an important thing to do and the process hopefully edify a whole bunch of folks and teach you and by example to be able to read Irenaeus against heresies and go man this guy put a lot of work into this and isn't it amazing it's something written this long ago we can still read it and he was really concerned about apologetics and he's his day and man his stuff is really twisted by liberals and things like that today and he's attacked and all that kind of stuff but then at the same time when you then read someplace else and Austin he says something weird about recapitulation and stuff like that you don't just automatically go ah burn by Tim Berners works heretic no you go oh you live in the second century and man I've got a access to a whole lot more and isn't it isn't wonderful that God has not left us to our own devices and and there has been people who've been able to work through these things and we can we can use the language we've developed to understand these things and so instead of it being a I'm going to exercise judgment and get the flames that are out and identify Irenaeus as a heretic because he had a different view than I do though he wouldn't have known what your view was so that's the point you see I can be really thankful for even people who had different views and I did in the past I think that involves maturity and growth and that's what we need in our day and while we still have the freedom to be doing this all we still have this program and we haven't been shut down by the bots yet for not bowing to Big Brother and Big Brother's definition of truth and we need to do it we can do

Channel: Dividing Line Highlights

Views: 4,637

Keywords: James White, Alpha, Omega, ministries, Christianity, Theology, God, Jesus

Id: N_wrbeuSi2g

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020