“Is the flesh “BAD”... No I say.. but it is not “the Truth”.. for we are spirit(s)..
Evil spirits will choose the flesh.. to identify with it..
Good ones will choose to seek further..
Maybe, finding the “Truth”..
Spirited: There speaks a Gnostic psychic (matter-dwelling spirit) who aspires to be “born again” as a pneumatic, or immortal matter-free spirit.
Historically, Gnostics have been of two variants: materialist monists and neo-Platonist monists.
For the former, salvation is from all things spiritual, as made clear by the author’s brief timeline. For the latter, salvation is from matter.
Both views coalesce around the idea that Jahweh is the creator of evil. To the materialists as Creator of the immortal souls they seek to rid themselves of as well as of the entire order of being. To the pneumatics, Jahweh or perhaps an army of evil angels are guilty of creating the evil matter in which the pneumatic’s “spirit” (bit of soul) has been trapped.
In this view, salvation is through gnosis, that is, in remembering “who and what we really are,” to use your own words hosepipe. Gnostic pneumatics are spirits housed in “body suits” who know “we are spirits...and always will be” once “we” are reabsorbed into the one-thing...the impersonal “good” god-force.
Contemporary Gnostics, whether materialist or idealist also coalesce around the idea that there are two forces at work in the world. The immanentist god-force or energy of “good” and the force of darkness. Materialist Gnostics identified God the Father as the “god-force of evil” and satan as the god-force-of-good who liberated mankind from Yahweh. Idealist Gnostics (pneumatics) agree but identify God the Father as the Spirit-of-Evil and Satan as the Spirit-of-Good.
Hosepipe’s Manicheanism is seen in his claim that only “evil spirits are seduced by the flesh.. or bewitched by it.. indentified with it..” These “evil spirits” are the somatics, the lowest order of the three types of human beings as well as some of the psychics, or matter-dwelling spirits who have become “bewitched” by flesh.
The “fall” was not into sin, but into “matter.” Thus Gnostics are not sinners and have no need of a redeeming Saviour.
The “fall” was not into sin, but into “matter.” Thus Gnostics are not sinners and have no need of a redeeming Saviour.
Spirited: I meant to add that for Gnostic materialists the “fall” was into private property, which of course is “matter.”
[ The “fall” was not into sin, but into “matter.” Thus Gnostics are not sinners and have no need of a redeeming Saviour. ]
You seem to have “the Gnostics “ all figured out..
But they(gnostics) may have been Not been totally wrong..
I bore with spiritual mechanics.. fixing things..
Its like chimps tinkering with a Rolex..
Theres no doubt about tho.. I am a heretic..