Development of Gnosticism

For example: "While these things atomic number 18 due to the Root of the All, let us for our part place his revelation and his goodness and his descent and the All, that is, the Son, the Father of the All, and the Mind of the Spirit." A Valentinian Exposition, in Nag Hammadi Library in English, trans. John D. turner (San Francisco: harpist and Row, 1977), 436.

That is the underlying concept of gnosis, which "involves coming to recognize the on-key source of divine power--namely, 'the depth' of all macrocosm." Pagels, 44.

The name gnostic was utilise to the sect by the gnostics themselves, Pagels, xviii-xix.

as a way of describing the meaning of their view of weird Christianity and what could be called a minority sketch of a realness view that differed sharply from the evolving institutional and positive character of orthodoxy. To discuss how Gnosticism evolved in the Christian era is of necessity to discuss the evolution of Christianity as well. It appears to have begun as a sectarian spiritual movement that was both parallel to and in an important sense competitive with the movement that was eventually to be defined as orthodox Roman Catholicism. Authorities say the growth and challenge of Gnosticism as a type of ghostlike alternative to orthodoxy mainly to the second century A.D./C.E. Ibid., passim; Green, 109.

Green's investigating of gnosticism as a sociological phenomenon concludes that Valentinian Gnosticism may have started as a sect

Pagels adds that Gnostic Christians scan the doctrine of the resurrection "in various ways. Some say that the somebody who experiences the resurrection does not meet Jesus raised physically tolerate to life; rather, he encounters Christ on a spiritual level. This may occur in dreams, in ecstatic trance, in visions, or in moments of spiritual illumination." Pagels, 5.

Those who collected this library were Christians, and m either a(prenominal) of the essays were originally composed by Christian authors. In a sense this should not be surprising, since primitive Christianity was itself a composition movement.

Jesus called for a full reversal of values, announcing the end of the world as we have known it and its replacement by a quite new, utopian kind of life in which the apotheosis would be the real. He took a stand quite fencesitter of the authorities of his day ... and did not last very coarse before they eliminated him. Through a remarkable experience of his vindication, his chase reaffirmed his stand--for them he came to personify the ultimate goal. Yet some of his circle, being a bit much practical, followed a more stodgy way of life. The circle gradually became an established organization with a quite natural denote to maintain order, continuity, lines of authority, and stability. But this concern could encourage a commitment to the status quo, rivalling, and at generation outweighing, the commitment to the ultimate goal far beyond any and every attained achievement. Those who cherished the radical dream, the ultimate hope, would pass to throw it up as an invidious comparison to what was achieved, and thence seem to be disloyal, and to pose a serious brat to the organization. James M. Robinson, Introduction, Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977), 3.

This is not to say that early Christianity and Gnosticism are entirely fracture systems of belief. Indeed, if Paul is to be considered a literalist, he is far more spiritual in attitude than orthodox
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