View allAll Photos Tagged Repent
Give unto me all your sins, trials, tribulations, grievances, and find your truth.
It's much too late for all of that, but I look so good in this church hat I had to do it!
Believer: open.spotify.com/track/1Ckah0ICBG4AoAY0x6LbSF?si=16b118f8...
🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶
Muffin - 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 De repente se eu atender e ficar em silêncio, ele pode achar que eu tô com algum problema na garganta...ou que sou muda...É, pode ser ! Mas também vai ficar muito estranho eu não falar nada ! 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 ele pode achar que foi brincadeira e os planos da Pipoca vão por água abaixo...ela vai me matar ...🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶
Sabe do que mais, vou atender !!!
Joca - Oi !
Muffin - uh...(só saiu isso )
Joca - Ei, recebi sua mensagem Enigma. É sério isso que você escreveu ? Você estuda no colégio ?
Muffin - uh
Joca - Acho que não foi uma hora legal pra te ligar né ?! É que fiquei curioso de saber quem é você ! Você pode me dar uma dica de quem é, tipo, quantos anos você tem, faz tempo que você estuda lá ?
Muffin - Eu ? eu...eu...eu...eu sou loira e estudo na mesma sala que você ! (pronto falei !)
Joca - Legal !!! Na minha sala, então eu sei quem você é ! Porque loira tem a ...
Muffin - Nããoo, eu estudo na outra sala, eu falei que era a mesma sala, mas não é...eu me confundi porque as salas são parecidas e os garotos também são parecidos e eu achei um dia que o cara que sentava do meu lado era você, mas não é, então eu percebi que não era a mesma sala ! Entendeu ?
Joca - Ah tá, entendi. Mas que sala você estuda ? Como é teu nome ?
Muffin - (Ainnn e agora ? O que que eu falo ? Acho melhor inventar uma desculpa e desligar esse telefone !)...Eu vou ter que desligar o celular porque...porque...porque eu tenho um pouco de alergia de ficar falando no celular e minha pele já tá meio que coçando e se eu não desligar isso tudo pode virar, tipo, um choque anafilático ! Tchau ! (desliga)
Joca - Hã ? Que garota estranha
Muffin - Uffa !!!!
"
Quando esqueço a hora de dormir
E de repente chega o amanhecer
Sinto a culpa que eu não sei de que
Pergunto o que que eu fiz?
Meu coração não diz e eu...
Eu sinto medo!
Eu sinto medo!
Se eu vejo um papel qualquer no chão
Tremo, corro e apanho pra esconder
Com medo de ter sido uma anotação que eu fiz
Que não se possa ler
E eu gosto de escrever, mas...
Mas eu sinto medo!
Eu sinto medo!
Tinha tanto medo de sair da cama à noite pro banheiro
Medo de saber que não estava ali sozinho porque sempre...
Sempre... sempre...
Eu estava com Deus!
Eu estava com Deus!
Eu estava com Deus!
Eu tava sempre com Deus!
Minha mãe me disse há tempo atrás
Onde você for Deus vai atrás
Deus vê sempre tudo que cê faz
Mas eu não via Deus
Achava assombração, mas...
Mas eu tinha medo!
Eu tinha medo!
Vacilava sempre a ficar nu lá no chuveiro, com vergonha
Com vergonha de saber que tinha alguém ali comigo
Vendo fazer tudo que se faz dentro dum banheiro
Vendo fazer tudo que se faz dentro dum banheiro
Para...nóia
Dedico esta canção:
Paranóia!
Com amor e com medo (com amor e com medo)
Com amor e com medo (com amor e com medo)
Com amor e com medo (com amor e com medo)
Com amor e com medo (com amor e com medo)
Com amor e com medo"
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός gnostikos, "having knowledge", from γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) is a modern name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish Christian milieux in the first and second century AD. These systems believed that the material world is created by an emanation or 'works' of a lower god (demiurge), trapping the divine spark within the human body. This divine spark could be liberated by gnosis, spiritual knowledge acquired through direct experience. Some of the core teachings include the following:
All matter is evil, and the non-material, spirit-realm is good.
There is an unknowable God, who gave rise to many lesser spirit beings called Aeons.
The creator of the (material) universe is not the supreme god, but an inferior spirit (the Demiurge).
Gnosticism does not deal with "sin," only ignorance.
To achieve salvation, one needs gnosis (knowledge).
The Gnostic ideas and systems flourished in the Mediterranean world in the second century AD, in conjunction with and influenced by the early Christian movements and Middle Platonism. After the second century, a decline set in. In the Persian Empire, Gnosticism in the form of Manicheism spread as far as China, while Mandaeism is still alive in Iraq.
A major question in scholarly research is the qualification of Gnosticism, based on the study of its texts, as either an interreligious phenomenon or as an independent religion.
Gnosis refers to knowledge based on personal experience or perception. In a religious context, gnosis is mystical or esoteric knowledge based on direct participation with the divine. In most Gnostic systems, the sufficient cause of salvation is this "knowledge of" ("acquaintance with") the divine. It is an inward "knowing", comparable to that encouraged by Plotinus (neoplatonism), and differs from proto-orthodox Christian views.[1] Gnostics are "those who are oriented toward knowledge and understanding – or perception and learning – as a particular modality for living".
The usual meaning of gnostikos in Classical Greek texts is "learned" or "intellectual", such as used by Plato in the comparison of "practical" (praktikos) and "intellectual" (gnostikos). Plato's use of "learned" is fairly typical of Classical texts.
By the Hellenistic period, it began to also be associated with Greco-Roman mysteries, becoming synonymous with the Greek term musterion. The adjective is not used in the New Testament, but Clement of Alexandria[note 3] speaks of the "learned" (gnostikos) Christian in complimentary terms. The use of gnostikos in relation to heresy originates with interpreters of Irenaeus. Some scholars[note consider that Irenaeus sometimes uses gnostikos to simply mean "intellectual",[note 5] whereas his mention of "the intellectual sect" is a specific designation.
The term "Gnosticism" does not appear in ancient sources,[note 10] and was first coined in the 17th century by Henry More in a commentary on the seven letters of the Book of Revelation, where More used the term "Gnosticisme" to describe the heresy in Thyatira. The term Gnosticism was derived from the use of the Greek adjective gnostikos (Greek γνωστικός, "learned", "intellectual") by St. Irenaeus (c. 185 AD) to describe the school of Valentinus as he legomene gnostike haeresis "the heresy called Learned (gnostic)."
Origins
The earliest origins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed. The proto-orthodox Christian groups called Gnostics a heresy of Christianity,] but according to the modern scholars the theology's origin is closely related to Jewish sectarian milieus and early Christian sects. Scholars debate Gnosticism's origins as having roots in Neoplatonism and Buddhism, due to similarities in beliefs, but ultimately, its origins are currently unknown. As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did Gnosticism, with both proto-orthodox Christian and Gnostic Christian groups often existing in the same places. The Gnostic belief was widespread within Christianity until the proto-orthodox Christian communities expelled the group in the second and third centuries (C.E.). Gnosticism became the first group to be declared heretical.
Some scholars prefer to speak of "gnosis" when referring to first-century ideas that later developed into gnosticism, and to reserve the term "gnosticism" for the synthesis of these ideas into a coherent movement in the second century.No gnostic texts have been discovered that pre-date Christianity,and "pre-Christian Gnosticism as such is hardly attested in a way to settle the debate once and for all."
Jewish Christian origins
Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in non rabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects.
Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers, and Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems. The cosmogonic speculations among Christian Gnostics had partial origins in Maaseh Bereshit and Maaseh Merkabah. This thesis is most notably put forward by Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) and Gilles Quispel (1916–2006). Scholem detected Jewish gnosis in the imagery of the merkavah, which can also be found in "Christian" Gnostic documents, for example the being "caught away" to the third heaven mentioned by Paul the Apostle. Quispel sees Gnosticism as an independent Jewish development, tracing its origins to Alexandrian Jews, to which group Valentinus was also connected.
Many of the Nag Hammadi texts make reference to Judaism, in some cases with a violent rejection of the Jewish God. Gershom Scholem once described Gnosticism as "the Greatest case of metaphysical anti-Semitism". Professor Steven Bayme said gnosticism would be better characterized as anti-Judaism. Recent research into the origins of Gnosticism shows a strong Jewish influence, particularly from Hekhalot literature.
Within early Christianity, the teachings of Paul and John may have been a starting point for Gnostic ideas, with a growing emphasis on the opposition between flesh and spirit, the value of charisma, and the disqualification of the Jewish law. The mortal body belonged to the world of inferior, worldly powers (the archons), and only the spirit or soul could be saved. The term gnostikos may have acquired a deeper significance here.
Alexandria was of central importance for the birth of Gnosticism. The Christian ecclesia (i. e. congregation, church) was of Jewish–Christian origin, but also attracted Greek members, and various strand of thought were available, such as "Judaic apocalypticism, speculation on divine wisdom, Greek philosophy, and Hellenistic mystery religions."
Regarding the angel Christology of some early Christians, Darrell Hannah notes:
[Some] early Christians understood the pre-incarnate Christ, ontologically, as an angel. This "true" angel Christology took many forms and may have appeared as early as the late First Century, if indeed this is the view opposed in the early chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Elchasaites, or at least Christians influenced by them, paired the male Christ with the female Holy Spirit, envisioning both as two gigantic angels. Some Valentinian Gnostics supposed that Christ took on an angelic nature and that he might be the Saviour of angels. The author of the Testament of Solomon held Christ to be a particularly effective "thwarting" angel in the exorcism of demons. The author of De Centesima and Epiphanius’ "Ebionites" held Christ to have been the highest and most important of the first created archangels, a view similar in many respects to Hermas’ equation of Christ with Michael. Finally, a possible exegetical tradition behind the Ascension of Isaiah and attested by Origen's Hebrew master, may witness to yet another angel Christology, as well as an angel Pneumatology.
The pseudepigraphical Christian text Ascension of Isaiah identifies Jesus with angel Christology:
[The Lord Christ is commissioned by the Father] And I heard the voice of the Most High, the father of my LORD as he said to my LORD Christ who will be called Jesus, ‘Go out and descend through all the heavens...
The Shepherd of Hermas is a Christian literary work considered as canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus. Jesus is identified with angel Christology in parable 5, when the author mentions a Son of God, as a virtuous man filled with a Holy "pre-existent spirit".
Neoplatonic influences
See also: Platonic Academy, Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism and Christianity
In the 1880s Gnostic connections with neo-Platonism were proposed.Ugo Bianchi, who organised the Congress of Messina of 1966 on the origins of Gnosticism, also argued for Orphic and Platonic origins.Gnostics borrowed significant ideas and terms from Platonism, using Greek philosophical concepts throughout their text, including such concepts as hypostasis (reality, existence), ousia (essence, substance, being), and demiurge (creator God). Both Sethian Gnostics and Valentinian Gnostics seem to have been influenced by Plato, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Pythagoreanism academies or schools of thought. Both schools attempted "an effort towards conciliation, even affiliation" with late antique philosophy, and were rebuffed by some Neoplatonists, including Plotinus.
Persian origins or influences
Early research into the origins of Gnosticism proposed Persian origins or influences, spreading to Europe and incorporating Jewish elements. According to Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920), Gnosticism was a form of Iranian and Mesopotamian syncretism,[29] and Richard August Reitzenstein (1861–1931) most famously situated the origins of Gnosticism in Persia.
Carsten Colpe (b. 1929) has analyzed and criticised the Iranian hypothesis of Reitzenstein, showing that many of his hypotheses are untenable. Nevertheless, Geo Widengren (1907–1996) argued for the origin of (Mandaean) Gnosticism in Mazdean (Zoroastrianism) Zurvanism, in conjunction with ideas from the Aramaic Mesopotamian world.
Buddhist parallels
In 1966, at the Congress of Median, Buddhologist Edward Conze noted phenomenological commonalities between Mahayana Buddhism and Gnosticism, in his paper Buddhism and Gnosis, following an early suggestion put forward by Isaac Jacob Schmidt. The influence of Buddhism in any sense on either the gnostikos Valentinus (c. 170) or the Nag Hammadi texts (3rd century) is not supported by modern scholarship, although Elaine Pagels (1979) called it a "possibility".
Characteristics
Cosmology
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The Syrian–Egyptian traditions postulate a remote, supreme Godhead, the Monad. From this highest divinity emanate lower divine beings, known as Aeons. The Demiurge, one of those Aeons, creates the physical world. Divine elements "fall" into the material realm, and are locked within human beings. This divine element returns to the divine realm when Gnosis, esoteric or intuitive knowledge of the divine element within, is obtained.
Dualism and monism
Gnostic systems postulate a dualism between God and the world, varying from the "radical dualist" systems of Manichaeism to the "mitigated dualism" of classic gnostic movements. Radical dualism, or absolute dualism, posits two co-equal divine forces, while in mitigated dualism one of the two principles is in some way inferior to the other. In qualified monism the second entity may be divine or semi-divine. Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of monism, expressed in terms previously used in a dualistic manner.
Moral and ritual practice
Gnostics tended toward asceticism, especially in their sexual and dietary practice. In other areas of morality, Gnostics were less rigorously ascetic, and took a more moderate approach to correct behaviour. In normative early Christianity the Church administered and prescribed the correct behaviour for Christians, while in Gnosticism it was the internalised motivation that was important. Ritualistic behaviour was not important unless it was based on a personal, internal motivation. Ptolemy's Epistle to Flora describes a general asceticism, based on the moral inclination of the individual.
Concepts
Monad
In many Gnostic systems, God is known as the Monad, the One. God is the high source of the pleroma, the region of light. The various emanations of God are called æons. According to Hippolytus, this view was inspired by the Pythagoreans, who called the first thing that came into existence the Monad, which begat the dyad, which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines, etc.
The Sethian cosmogony as most famously contained in the Apocryphon ("Secret book") of John describes an unknown God, very similar to the orthodox apophatic theology, but different from the orthodox teachings that this God is the creator of heaven and earth. Orthodox theologians often attempt to define God through a series of explicit positive statements: he is omniscient, omnipotent, and truly benevolent. The Sethian hidden transcendent God is, by contrast, defined through negative theology: he is immovable, invisible, intangible, ineffable; commonly, "he" is seen as being hermaphroditic, a potent symbol for being, as it were, "all-containing". In the Apocryphon of John, this god is good in that it bestows goodness. After the apophatic statements, the process of the Divine in action is used to describe the effect of such a god.
Pleroma
Pleroma (Greek πλήρωμα, "fullness") refers to the totality of God's powers. The heavenly pleroma is the center of divine life, a region of light "above" (the term is not to be understood spatially) our world, occupied by spiritual beings such as aeons (eternal beings) and sometimes archons. Jesus is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent from the pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity. The term is thus a central element of Gnostic cosmology.
Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language, and is used by the Greek Orthodox church in this general form, since the word appears in the Epistle to the Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a gnostic, such as Elaine Pagels, view the reference in Colossians as a term that has to be interpreted in a gnostic sense.
Emanation
The Supreme Light or Consciousness descends through a series of stages, gradations, worlds, or hypostases, becoming progressively more material and embodied. In time it will turn around to return to the One (epistrophe), retracing its steps through spiritual knowledge and contemplation.
Aeon
In many Gnostic systems, the aeons are the various emanations of the superior God or Monad. From this first being, also an æon, a series of different emanations occur, beginning in certain Gnostic texts with the hermaphroditic Barbelo, from which successive pairs of aeons emanate, often in male–female pairings called syzygies. The numbers of these pairings varied from text to text, though some identify their number as being thirty. The aeons as a totality constitute the pleroma, the "region of light". The lowest regions of the pleroma are closest to the darkness; that is, the physical world.
Two of the most commonly paired æons were Christ and Sophia (Greek: "Wisdom"); the latter refers to Christ as her "consort" in A Valentinian Exposition.
Sophia
In Gnostic tradition, the term Sophia (Σoφíα, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest emanation of God. In most if not all versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia births the demiurge, who in turn brings about the creation of materiality. The positive or negative depiction of materiality thus resides a great deal on mythic depictions of Sophia's actions. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian gnostic myth). Jewish Gnosticism with a focus on Sophia was active by 90 AD.[citation needed]
Sophia, emanating without her partner, resulted in the production of the Demiurge (Greek: lit. "public builder"),[50] who is also referred to as Yaldabaoth and variations thereof in some Gnostic texts.[43] This creature is concealed outside the pleroma;[43] in isolation, and thinking itself alone, it creates materiality and a host of co-actors, referred to as archons. The demiurge is responsible for the creation of mankind; trapping elements of the pleroma stolen from Sophia inside human bodies.[43][51] In response, the Godhead emanates two savior aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit; Christ then embodies itself in the form of Jesus, in order to be able to teach man how to achieve gnosis, by which they may return to the pleroma.[52]
Demiurge[edit]
A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge; however, cf. Mithraic Zervan Akarana[53]
Main article: Demiurge
The term demiurge derives from the Latinized form of the Greek term dēmiourgos, δημιουργός, literally "public or skilled worker".[note 20] This figure is also called "Yaldabaoth",[43] Samael (Aramaic: sæmʻa-ʼel, "blind god"), or "Saklas" (Syriac: sækla, "the foolish one"), who is sometimes ignorant of the superior god, and sometimes opposed to it; thus in the latter case he is correspondingly malevolent. Other names or identifications are Ahriman, El, Satan, and Yahweh.
The demiurge creates the physical universe and the physical aspect of humanity.[55] The demiurge typically creates a group of co-actors named archons who preside over the material realm and, in some cases, present obstacles to the soul seeking ascent from it.[43] The inferiority of the demiurge's creation may be compared to the technical inferiority of a work of art, painting, sculpture, etc. to the thing the art represents. In other cases it takes on a more ascetic tendency to view material existence negatively, which then becomes more extreme when materiality, including the human body, is perceived as evil and constrictive, a deliberate prison for its inhabitants.
Moral judgements of the demiurge vary from group to group within the broad category of Gnosticism, viewing materiality as being inherently evil, or as merely flawed and as good as its passive constituent matter allows.[56]
Archon[edit]
Main article: Archon (Gnosticism)
In late antiquity some variants of Gnosticism used the term archon to refer to several servants of the demiurge.[51] In this context they may be seen as having the roles of the angels and demons of the Old Testament.[citation needed]
According to Origen's Contra Celsum, a sect called the Ophites posited the existence of seven archons, beginning with Iadabaoth or Ialdabaoth, who created the six that follow: Iao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Elaios, Astaphanos, and Horaios.[57] Similarly to the Mithraic Kronos and Vedic Narasimha, a form of Vishnu, Ialdabaoth had a head of a lion.[43][58][59]
Other concepts[edit]
Other Gnostic concepts are:[60]
sarkic – earthly, hidebound, ignorant, uninitiated. The lowest level of human thought; the fleshly, instinctive level of thinking.
hylic – lowest order of the three types of human. Unable to be saved since their thinking is entirely material, incapable of understanding the gnosis.
psychic – "soulful", partially initiated. Matter-dwelling spirits
pneumatic – "spiritual", fully initiated, immaterial souls escaping the doom of the material world via gnosis.
kenoma – the visible or manifest cosmos, "lower" than the pleroma
charisma – gift, or energy, bestowed by pneumatics through oral teaching and personal encounters
logos – the divine ordering principle of the cosmos; personified as Christ. See also Odic force.
hypostasis – literally "that which stands beneath" the inner reality, emanation (appearance) of God, known to psychics
ousia – essence of God, known to pneumatics. Specific individual things or being.
Jesus as Gnostic saviour[edit]
Jesus is identified by some Gnostics as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnōsis to the earth,[61][52] while others adamantly denied that the supreme being came in the flesh, claiming Jesus to be merely a human who attained divinity through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same.[citation needed] Among the Mandaeans, Jesus was considered a mšiha kdaba or "false messiah" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist.[62] Still other traditions identify Mani and Seth – third son of Adam and Eve – as salvific figures.
Development[edit]
Three periods can be discerned in the development of Gnosticism:[63]
Late first century and early second century: development of Gnostic ideas, contemporaneous with the writing of the New Testament;
mid-second century to early third century: high point of the classical Gnostic teachers and their systems, "who claimed that their systems represented the inner truth revealed by Jesus";[63]
end of second century to fourth century: reaction by the proto-orthodox church and condemnation as heresy, and subsequent decline.
During the first period, three types of tradition developed:[63]
Genesis was reinterpreted in Jewish milieus, viewing Jahweh as a jealous God who enslaved people; freedom was to be obtained from this jealous God;
A wisdom tradition developed, in which Jesus' sayings were interpreted as pointers to an esoteric wisdom, in which the soul could be divinized through identification with wisdom.[63][note 21] Some of Jesus' sayings may have been incorporated into the gospels to put a limit on this development. The conflicts described in 1 Corinthians may have been inspired by a clash between this wisdom tradition and Paul's gospel of crucifixion and arising;[63]
A mythical story developed about the descent of a heavenly creature to reveal the Divine world as the true home of human beings.[63] Jewish Christianity saw the Messiah, or Christ, as "an eternal aspect of God's hidden nature, his "spirit" and "truth", who revealed himself throughout sacred history".[25]
The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths,[65] and the Persian Empire. It continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but decline also set in during the third century, due to a growing aversion from the Catholic Church, and the economic and cultural deterioration of the Roman Empire.[66] Conversion to Islam, and the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), greatly reduced the remaining number of Gnostics throughout the Middle Ages, though a few Mandaean communities still exist. Gnostic and pseudo-gnostic ideas became influential in some of the philosophies of various esoteric mystical movements of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America, including some that explicitly identify themselves as revivals or even continuations of earlier gnostic groups.
Relation with early Christianity[edit]
Dillon notes that Gnosticism raises questions about the development of early Christianity.[67]
Orthodoxy and heresy[edit]
See also: Diversity in early Christian theology
The Christian heresiologists, most notably Irenaeus, regarded Gnosticism as a Christian heresy. Modern scholarship notes that early Christianity was very diverse, and Christian orthodoxy only settled in the 4th century, when the Roman Empire declined and Gnosticism lost its influence.[68][66][69][67] Gnostics and proto-orthodox Christians shared some terminology. Initially, they were hard to distinguish from each other.[70]
According to Walter Bauer, "heresies" may well have been the original form of Christianity in many regions.[71] This theme was further developed by Elaine Pagels,[72] who argues that "the proto-orthodox church found itself in debates with gnostic Christians that helped them to stabilize their own beliefs."[67] According to Gilles Quispel, Catholicism arose in response to Gnosticism, establishing safeguards in the form of the monarchic episcopate, the creed, and the canon of holy books.[73]
Historical Jesus[edit]
See also: Jesus in comparative mythology and Christ myth theory
The Gnostic movements may contain information about the historical Jesus, since some texts preserve sayings which show similarities with canonical sayings.[74] Especially the Gospel of Thomas has a significant amount of parallel sayings.[74] Yet, a striking difference is that the canonical sayings center on the coming endtime, while the Thomas-sayings center on a kingdom of heaven that is already here, and not a future event.[75] According to Helmut Koester, this is because the Thomas-sayings are older, implying that in the earliest forms of Christianity Jesus was regarded as a wisdom-teacher.[75] An alternative hypothesis states that the Thomas authors wrote in the second century, changing existing sayings and eliminating the apocalyptic concerns.[75] According to April DeConick, such a change occurred when the endtime did not come, and the Thomasine tradition turned toward a "new theology of mysticism" and a "theological commitment to a fully-present kingdom of heaven here and now, where their church had attained Adam and Eve's divine status before the Fall."[75]
Johannine literature[edit]
The prologue of the Gospel of John describes the incarnated Logos, the light that came to earth, in the person of Jesus.[76] The Apocryphon of John contains a scheme of three descendants from the heavenly realm, the third one being Jesus, just as in the Gospel of John. The similarities probably point to a relationship between gnostic ideas and the Johannine community.[76] According to Raymond Brown, the Gospel of John shows "the development of certain gnostic ideas, especially Christ as heavenly revealer, the emphasis on light versus darkness, and anti-Jewish animus."[76] The Johannine material reveals debates about the redeemer myth.[63] The Johannine letters show that there were different interpretations of the gospel story, and the Johannine images may have contributed to second-century Gnostic ideas about Jesus as a redeemer who descended from heaven.[63] According to DeConick, the Gospel of John shows a "transitional system from early Christianity to gnostic beliefs in a God who transcends our world."[76] According to DeConick, John may show a bifurcation of the idea of the Jewish God into Jesus' Father in Heaven and the Jews' father, "the Father of the Devil" (most translations say "of [your] father the Devil"), which may have developed into the gnostic idea of the Monad and the Demiurge.[76]
Paul and Gnosticism[edit]
Tertullian calls Paul "the apostle of the heretics",[77] because Paul's writings were attractive to gnostics, and interpreted in a gnostic way, while Jewish Christians found him to stray from the Jewish roots of Christianity.[78] In I Corinthians Paul refers to some church members as "having knowledge" (Greek: τὸν ἔχοντα γνῶσιν, ton echonta gnosin).[79] James Dunn claims that in some cases, Paul affirmed views that were closer to gnosticism than to proto-orthodox Christianity.[80]
According to Clement of Alexandria, the disciples of Valentinus said that Valentinus was a student of a certain Theudas, who was a student of Paul,[80] and Elaine Pagels notes that Paul's epistles were interpreted by Valentinus in a gnostic way, and Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic.[60] Many Nag Hammadi texts, including, for example, the Prayer of Paul and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul, consider Paul to be "the great apostle".[80] The fact that he claimed to have received his gospel directly by revelation from God appealed to the gnostics, who claimed gnosis from the risen Christ.[81] The Naassenes, Cainites, and Valentinians referred to Paul's epistles.[82] Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have expanded upon this idea of Paul as a gnostic teacher;[83] although their premise that Jesus was invented by early Christians based on an alleged Greco-Roman mystery cult has been dismissed by scholars.[84][note 22] However, his revelation was different from the gnostic revelations.[85]
Major movements[edit]
Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism[edit]
Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism includes Sethianism, Valentinianism, Basilideans, Thomasine traditions, and Serpent Gnostics, as well as a number of other minor groups and writers.[86] Hermeticism is also a western Gnostic tradition,[66] though it differs in some respects from these other groups.[87] The Syrian–Egyptian school derives much of its outlook from Platonist influences. It depicts creation in a series of emanations from a primal monadic source, finally resulting in the creation of the material universe. These schools tend to view evil in terms of matter that is markedly inferior to goodness and lacking spiritual insight and goodness rather than as an equal force.
Many of these movements used texts related to Christianity, with some identifying themselves as specifically Christian, though quite different from the Orthodox or Roman Catholic forms. Jesus and several of his apostles, such as Thomas the Apostle, claimed as the founder of the Thomasine form of Gnosticism, figure in many Gnostic texts. Mary Magdalene is respected as a Gnostic leader, and is considered superior to the twelve apostles by some gnostic texts, such as the Gospel of Mary. John the Evangelist is claimed as a Gnostic by some Gnostic interpreters,[88] as is even St. Paul.[60] Most of the literature from this category is known to us through the Nag Hammadi Library.
Sethite-Barbeloite[edit]
Main article: Sethianism
Sethianism was one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd to 3rd centuries, and the prototype of Gnosticism as condemned by Irenaeus.[89] Sethianism attributed its gnosis to Seth, third son of Adam and Eve and Norea, wife of Noah, who also plays a role in Mandeanism and Manicheanism. Their main text is the Apocryphon of John, which does not contain Christian elements,[89] and is an amalgam of two earlier myths.[90] Earlier texts such as Apocalypse of Adam show signs of being pre-Christian and focus on the Seth, third son of Adam and Eve.[91] Later Sethian texts continue to interact with Platonism. Sethian texts such as Zostrianos and Allogenes draw on the imagery of older Sethian texts, but utilize "a large fund of philosophical conceptuality derived from contemporary Platonism, (that is, late middle Platonism) with no traces of Christian content."[31][note 23]
According to John D. Turner, German and American scholarship views Sethianism as "a distinctly inner-Jewish, albeit syncretistic and heterodox, phenomenon", while British and French scholarship tends to see Sethianism as "a form of heterodox Christian speculation".[92] Roelof van den Broek notes that "Sethianism" may never have been a separate religious movement, and that the term refers rather to a set of mythological themes which occur in various texts.[93]
According to Smith, Sethianism may have begun as a pre-Christian tradition, possibly a syncretic cult that incorporated elements of Christianity and Platonism as it grew.[94] According to Temporini, Vogt, and Haase, early Sethians may be identical to or related to the Nazarenes (sect), the Ophites, or the sectarian group called heretics by Philo.[91]
According to Turner, Sethianism was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism, and originated in the second century as a fusion of a Jewish baptizing group of possibly priestly lineage, the so-called Barbeloites,[95] named after Barbelo, the first emanation of the Highest God, and a group of Biblical exegetes, the Sethites, the "seed of Seth".[96] At the end of the second century, Sethianism grew apart from the developing Christian orthodoxy, which rejected the docetian view of the Sethians on Christ.[97] In the early third century, Sethianism was fully rejected by Christian heresiologists, as Sethianism shifted toward the contemplative practices of Platonism while losing interest in their own origins.[98] In the late third century, Sethianism was attacked by neo-Platonists like Plotinus, and Sethianism became alienated from Platonism. In the early- to mid-fourth century, Sethianism fragmented into various sectarian Gnostic groups such as the Archontics, Audians, Borborites, and Phibionites, and perhaps Stratiotici, and Secundians.[99][31] Some of these groups existed into the Middle Ages.[99]
Samaritan Baptist sects[edit]
According to Magris, Samaritan Baptist sects were an offshoot of John the Baptist.[100] One offshoot was in turn headed by Dositheus, Simon Magus, and Menander. It was in this milieu that the idea emerged that the world was created by ignorant angels. Their baptismal ritual removed the consequences of sin, and led to a regeneration by which natural death, which was caused by these angels, was overcome.[100] The Samaritan leaders were viewed as "the embodiment of God's power, spirit, or wisdom, and as the redeemer and revealer of 'true knowledge'".[100]
The Simonians were centered on Simon Magus, the magician baptised by Philip and rebuked by Peter in Acts 8, who became in early Christianity the archetypal false teacher. The ascription by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others of a connection between schools in their time and the individual in Acts 8 may be as legendary as the stories attached to him in various apocryphal books. Justin Martyr identifies Menander of Antioch as Simon Magus' pupil. According to Hippolytus, Simonianism is an earlier form of the Valentinian doctrine.[101]
The Basilidians or Basilideans were founded by Basilides of Alexandria in the second century. Basilides claimed to have been taught his doctrines by Glaucus, a disciple of St. Peter, but could also have been a pupil of Menander.[102] Basilidianism survived until the end of the 4th century as Epiphanius knew of Basilidians living in the Nile Delta. It was, however, almost exclusively limited to Egypt, though according to Sulpicius Severus it seems to have found an entrance into Spain through a certain Mark from Memphis. St. Jerome states that the Priscillianists were infected with it.
Valentinianism[edit]
Main article: Valentinianism
Valentinianism was named after its founder Valentinus (c. 100 – 180), who was a candidate for bishop of Rome but started his own group when another was chosen.[103] Valentinianism flourished after the middle of the 2nd century. The school was popular, spreading to Northwest Africa and Egypt, and through to Asia Minor and Syria in the east,[104] and Valentinus is specifically named as gnostikos by Irenaeus. It was an intellectually vibrant tradition,[105] with an elaborate and philosophically "dense" form of Gnosticism. Valentinus' students elaborated on his teachings and materials, and several varieties of their central myth are known.
Valentinian Gnosticism may have been monistic rather than dualistic.[note 24] In the Valentinian myths, the creation of a flawed materiality is not due to any moral failing on the part of the Demiurge, but due to the fact that he is less perfect than the superior entities from which he emanated.[108] Valentinians treat physical reality with less contempt than other Gnostic groups, and conceive of materiality not as a separate substance from the divine, but as attributable to an error of perception which becomes symbolized mythopoetically as the act of material creation.[108]
The followers of Valentinius attempted to systematically decode the Epistles, claiming that most Christians made the mistake of reading the Epistles literally rather than allegorically. Valentinians understood the conflict between Jews and Gentiles in Romans to be a coded reference to the differences between Psychics (people who are partly spiritual but have not yet achieved separation from carnality) and Pneumatics (totally spiritual people). The Valentinians argued that such codes were intrinsic in gnosticism, secrecy being important to ensuring proper progression to true inner understanding.[note 25]
According to Bentley Layton "Classical Gnosticism" and "The School of Thomas" antedated and influenced the development of Valentinus, whom Layton called "the great [Gnostic] reformer" and "the focal point" of Gnostic development. While in Alexandria, where he was born, Valentinus probably would have had contact with the Gnostic teacher Basilides, and may have been influenced by him.[109] Simone Petrement, while arguing for a Christian origin of Gnosticism, places Valentinus after Basilides, but before the Sethians. According to Petrement, Valentinus represented a moderation of the anti-Judaism of the earlier Hellenized teachers; the demiurge, widely regarded as a mythological depiction of the Old Testament God of the Hebrews, is depicted as more ignorant than evil.[110]
Thomasine traditions[edit]
The Thomasine Traditions refers to a group of texts which are attributed to the apostle Thomas.[111][note 26] Karen L. King notes that "Thomasine Gnosticism" as a separate category is being criticised, and may "not stand the test of scholarly scrutiny".[112]
Marcion[edit]
Marcion was a Church leader from Sinope (present-day Turkey), who preached in Rome around 150 CE,[113] but was expelled and started his own congregation, which spread throughout the Mediterranean. He rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul.[114] Some scholars do not consider him to be a gnostic,[115][note 27] but his teachings clearly resemble some Gnostic teachings.[113] He preached a radical difference between the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge, the "evil creator of the material universe", and the highest God, the "loving, spiritual God who is the father of Jesus", who had sent Jesus to the earth to free mankind from the tyranny of the Jewish Law.[113][2] Like the Gnostics, Marcion argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body.[116] Marcion held that the heavenly Father (the father of Jesus Christ) was an utterly alien god; he had no part in making the world, nor any connection with it.[116]
Hermeticism[edit]
Hermeticism is closely related to Gnosticism, but its orientation is more positive.[66][87]
Other Gnostic groups[edit]
Serpent Gnostics. The Naassenes, Ophites and the Serpentarians gave prominence to snake symbolism, and snake handling played a role in their ceremonies.[113]
Cerinthus (c. 100), the founder of a heretical school with gnostic elements. Like a Gnostic, Cerinthus depicted Christ as a heavenly spirit separate from the man Jesus, and he cited the demiurge as creating the material world. Unlike the Gnostics, Cerinthus taught Christians to observe the Jewish law; his demiurge was holy, not lowly; and he taught the Second Coming. His gnosis was a secret teaching attributed to an apostle. Some scholars believe that the First Epistle of John was written as a response to Cerinthus.[117]
The Cainites are so-named since Hippolytus of Rome claims that they worshiped Cain, as well as Esau, Korah, and the Sodomites. There is little evidence concerning the nature of this group. Hippolytus claims that they believed that indulgence in sin was the key to salvation because since the body is evil, one must defile it through immoral activity (see libertinism). The name Cainite is used as the name of a religious movement, and not in the usual Biblical sense of people descended from Cain.
The Carpocratians, a libertine sect following only the Gospel according to the Hebrews
The school of Justin, which combined gnostic elements with the ancient Greek religion.
The Borborites, a libertine Gnostic sect, said to be descended from the Nicolaitans[118]
Persian Gnosticism[edit]
The Persian Schools, which appeared in the western Persian province of Babylonia (in particular, within the Sassanid province of Asuristan), and whose writings were originally produced in the Aramaic dialects spoken in Babylonia at the time, are representative of what is believed to be among the oldest of the Gnostic thought forms. These movements are considered by most to be religions in their own right, and are not emanations from Christianity or Judaism.
Manichaeism[edit]
Manicheanism priests writing at their desks, with panel inscription in Sogdian. Manuscript from Khocho, Tarim Basin.
Main article: Manichaeism
Manichaeism was founded by the Prophet Mani (216–276). Mani's father was a member of the Jewish-Christian sect of the Elcesaites, a subgroup of the Gnostic Ebionites. At ages 12 and 24, Mani had visionary experiences of a "heavenly twin" of his, calling him to leave his father's sect and preach the true message of Christ. In 240–41, Mani travelled to the Indo-Greek Kingdom of the Sakhas in modern-day Afghanistan, where he studied Hinduism and its various extant philosophies. Returning in 242, he joined the court of Shapur I, to whom he dedicated his only work written in Persian, known as the Shabuhragan. The original writings were written in Syriac Aramaic, in a unique Manichaean script.
Manichaeism conceives of two coexistent realms of light and darkness that become embroiled in conflict. Certain elements of the light became entrapped within darkness, and the purpose of material creation is to engage in the slow process of extraction of these individual elements. In the end the kingdom of light will prevail over darkness. Manicheanism inherits this dualistic mythology from Zurvanist Zoroastrianism,[119] in which the eternal spirit Ahura Mazda is opposed by his antithesis, Angra Mainyu. This dualistic teaching embodied an elaborate cosmological myth that included the defeat of a primal man by the powers of darkness that devoured and imprisoned the particles of light.[120]
According to Kurt Rudolph, the decline of Manichaeism that occurred in Persia in the 5th century was too late to prevent the spread of the movement into the east and the west.[121] In the west, the teachings of the school moved into Syria, Northern Arabia, Egypt and North Africa.[note 28] There is evidence for Manicheans in Rome and Dalmatia in the 4th century, and also in Gaul and Spain. From Syria it progressed still farther, into Palestine, Asia Minor and Armenia. The influence of Manicheanism was attacked by imperial elects and polemical writings, but the religion remained prevalent until the 6th century, and still exerted influence in the emergence of the Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathari in the Middle Ages, until it was ultimately stamped out by the Catholic Church.[121]
In the east, Rudolph relates, Manicheanism was able to bloom, because the religious monopoly position previously held by Christianity and Zoroastrianism had been broken by nascent Islam. In the early years of the Arab conquest, Manicheanism again found followers in Persia (mostly amongst educated circles), but flourished most in Central Asia, to which it had spread through Iran. Here, in 762, Manicheanism became the state religion of the Uyghur Empire.[121]
Mandaeanism[edit]
Main article: Mandaeanism
Mandaean house of worship in Nasiriya, Iraq
The Mandaeans are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. Their religion has been practised primarily around the lower Karun, Euphrates and Tigris and the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and Khuzestan Province in Iran. Mandaeanism is still practiced in small numbers, in parts of southern Iraq and the Iranian province of Khuzestan, and there are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide.[124]
The name of the group derives from the term Mandā d-Heyyi, which roughly means "Knowledge of Life". Although the exact chronological origins of this movement are not known, John the Baptist eventually came to be a key figure in the religion, as an emphasis on baptism is part of their core beliefs. As with Manichaeism, despite certain ties with Christianity,[125] Mandaeans do not believe in Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed. Their beliefs and practices likewise have little overlap with the religions that manifested from those religious figures and the two should not be confused. Significant amounts of original Mandaean Scripture, written in Mandaean Aramaic, survive in the modern era. The primary source text is known as the Genzā Rabbā and has portions identified by some scholars as being copied as early as the 3rd century. There is also the Qolastā, or Canonical Book of Prayer and The Book of John the Baptist (sidra ḏ-iahia).
Middle Ages[edit]
After its demise in the Mediterranean world, Gnosticism lived on in the periphery of the Byzantine Empire, and resurfaced in the western world. The Paulicians, an Adoptionist group which flourished between 650 and 872 in Armenia and the Eastern Themes of the Byzantine Empire, were accused by orthodox medieval sources of being Gnostic and quasi Manichaean Christian. The Bogomils, emerged in Bulgaria between 927 and 970 and spread throughout Europe. It was as synthesis of Armenian Paulicianism and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reform movement.
The Cathars (Cathari, Albigenses or Albigensians) were also accused by their enemies of the traits of Gnosticism; though whether or not the Cathari possessed direct historical influence from ancient Gnosticism is disputed. If their critics are reliable the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly in their notion of a lesser, Satanic, creator god), though they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effective salvific force.[verification needed]
Islam[edit]
The message of the Islamic prophet Muhammad shows close similarities to many Gnostic ideas. The Quran, like Gnostic cosmology, makes a sharp distinction between this world and the afterlife. The notion of four rivers in heaven, as mentioned in the Quran, separating this world from the other , also appears frequently in Mandaean literature. God is commonly thought of as being beyond human comprehension. In some Islamic schools of thought, somehow identifiable with the Gnostic Monad.[126][127] However, according to Islam and unlike most Gnostic sects, not rejection of this world, but performing good deeds leads to the heaven. And according to the Islamic belief in strict Oneness of God, there was no room for a lower deity; such as the demiurge.[128] According to Islam, both good and evil come from one God, a position especially opposed by the Manichaeans. Ibn al-Muqaffa depicted the Islamic deity as a demonic entity who "fights with humans and boasts about His victories" and "sitting on a throne, from which He can descend". It would be impossible that both light and darkness were created from one source, since they were regarded as two different eternal principles.[129] Muslim theologists countered this accusation by the example of a repeating sinner, who says: "I laid, and I repent";[130] this would prove that good can also result out of evil.
Islam also integrated traces of an entity given authority over the lower world in some early writings: Iblis is regarded by some Sufis as the owner of this world, and humans must avoid the treasures of this world, since they would belong to him.[131] In the Isma'ili Shia work Umm al Kitab, Azazil's role resembles whose of the Gnostic demiurge.[132] Like the demiurge, he is endowed with the ability to create his own world and seeks to imprison humans in the material world, but here, his power is limited and depends on the higher God.[133] Such Gnostic anthropogenic can be found frequently among Isma'ili traditions.[134] However, Ismailism were often criticised as non-Islamic. Ghazali characterized them as a group who are outwardly Shias but were actually adherence of a dualistic and philosophical religion. Further traces of Gnostic ideas can be found in Sufi anthropogenic.[135] Like the gnostic conception of human beings imprisoned in matter, Sufi-traditions acknowledges the human soul is an accomplice of the material world and subject to bodily desires similar to the way archontic spheres envelop the pneuma.[136] The Ruh must therefore gain victory over the lower and material-bound psyche, to overcome his animal nature. A human being captured by his animal desires, mistakenly claims autonomy and independence from the "higher God", thus resembling the lower deity in classical gnostic traditions. However, since the goal is not to abandon the created world, but just to free oneself from ones own lower desires, it can be disputed whether this can still be Gnostic, but rather a completion of the message of Muhammad.[129] It seems that Gnostic ideas were an influential part of early Islamic development but later lost its influence. However the Gnostic light metaphorics and the idea of unity of existence still prevailed in later Islamic thought.[127]
Kabbalah[edit]
Gnostic ideas found a Jewish variation in the mystical study of Kabbalah. Many core Gnostic ideas reappear in Kabbalah, where they are used for dramatically reinterpreting earlier Jewish sources according to this new system.[137] The Kabbalists originated in 13th-century Provence,[note 29] which was at that time also the center of the Gnostic Cathars. While some scholars in the middle of the 20th century tried to assume an influence between the Cathar "gnostics" and the origins of the Kabbalah, this assumption has proved to be an incorrect generalization not substantiated by any original texts.[139] On the other hand, other scholars, such as Scholem, have postulated that there was originally a "Jewish gnosticism", which influenced the early origins of gnosticism.[140]
Kabbalah does not employ the terminology or labels of non-Jewish Gnosticism, but grounds the same or similar concepts in the language of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible).[141] The 13th-century Zohar ("Splendor"), a foundational text in Kabbalah, is written in the style of a Jewish Aramaic Midrash, clarifying the five books of the Torah with a new Kabbalistic system that uses completely Jewish terms.[142]
Modern times[edit]
Main article: Gnosticism in modern times
The Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic sect that have survived to this day and are found today in Iraq.[143] Their namesake owes to their following John the Baptist and in that country, they have about five thousand followers.[143] A number of ecclesiastical bodies that think of themselves as Gnostic have set up or re-founded since World War II, including the Ecclesia Gnostica, Apostolic Johannite Church, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Gnostic Church of France, the Thomasine Church, the Alexandrian Gnostic Church, the North American College of Gnostic Bishops,[144] and the Universal Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor.[145]
A number of 19th-century thinkers such as Arthur Schopenhauer,[146] Albert Pike and Madame Blavatsky studied Gnostic thought extensively and were influenced by it, and even figures like Herman Melville and W. B. Yeats were more tangentially influenced.[147] Jules Doinel "re-established" a Gnostic church in France in 1890, which altered its form as it passed through various direct successors (Fabre des Essarts as Tau Synésius and Joanny Bricaud as Tau Jean II most notably), and, though small, is still active today.[148]
Early 20th-century thinkers who heavily studied and were influenced by Gnosticism include Carl Jung (who supported Gnosticism), Eric Voegelin (who opposed it), Jorge Luis Borges (who included it in many of his short stories), and Aleister Crowley, with figures such as Hermann Hesse being more moderately influenced. René Guénon founded the gnostic review, La Gnose in 1909, before moving to a more Perennialist position, and founding his Traditionalist School. Gnostic Thelemite organizations, such as Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and Ordo Templi Orientis, trace themselves to Crowley's thought.
The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library after 1945 has had a huge effect on Gnosticism since World War II. Intellectuals who were heavily influenced by Gnosticism in this period include Lawrence Durrell, Hans Jonas, Philip K. Dick and Harold Bloom, with Albert Camus and Allen Ginsberg being more moderately influenced.[147] Celia Green has written on Gnostic Christianity in relation to her own philosophy.[149]
Alfred North Whitehead was aware of the existence of the newly discovered Gnostic scrolls. Accordingly, Michel Weber has proposed a Gnostic interpretation of his late metaphysics.[150]
Sources[edit]
Heresiologists[edit]
Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 Gnosticism was known primarily through the works of heresiologists, Church Fathers who opposed those movements. These writings had an antagonistic bias towards gnostic teachings, and were incomplete. Several heresiological writers, such as Hippolytus, made little effort to exactly record the nature of the sects they reported on, or transcribe their sacred texts. Reconstructions of incomplete Gnostic texts were attempted in modern times, but research on Gnosticism was coloured by the orthodox views of those heresiologists.
Justin Martyr (c. 100/114 – c. 162/168) wrote the First Apology, addressed to Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, which criticising Simon Magus, Menander and Marcion. Since this time, both Simon and Menander have been considered as 'proto-Gnostic'.[151] Irenaeus (died c. 202) wrote Against Heresies (c. 180–185), which identifies Simon Magus from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria as the inceptor of Gnosticism. From Samaria he charted an apparent spread of the teachings of Simon through the ancient "knowers" into the teachings of Valentinus and other, contemporary Gnostic sects.[note 30] Hippolytus (170–235) wrote the ten-volume Refutation Against all Heresies, of which eight have been unearthed. It also focuses on the connection between pre-Socratic (and therefore Pre-Incantation of Christ) ideas and the false beliefs of early gnostic heretical leaders. Thirty-three of the groups he reported on are considered Gnostic by modern scholars, including 'the foreigners' and 'the Seth people'. Hippolytus further presents individual teachers such as Simon, Valentinus, Secundus, Ptolemy, Heracleon, Marcus and Colorbasus. Tertullian (c. 155–230) from Carthage wrote Adversus Valentinianos ('Against the Valentinians'), c. 206, as well as five books around 207–208 chronicling and refuting the teachings of Marcion.
Gnostic texts[edit]
See also: Gnostic texts and Nag Hammadi library
Prior to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, a limited number of texts were available to students of Gnosticism. Reconstructions were attempted from the records of the heresiologists, but these were necessarily coloured by the motivation behind the source accounts.
The Nag Hammadi library [note 31] is a collection of Gnostic texts discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt. Twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman.[152] The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic. These codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery, and buried after Bishop Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367.[153] Though the original language of composition was probably Greek, the various codices contained in the collection were written in Coptic. A 1st- or 2nd-century date of composition for the lost Greek originals has been proposed, though this is disputed; the manuscripts themselves date from the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Nag Hammadi texts demonstrated the fluidity of early Christian scripture and early Christianity itself.[note 32]
Academic studies[edit]
Development[edit]
Prior to the discovery of Nag Hammadi, the Gnostic movements were largely perceived through the lens of the early church heresiologists. Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1694–1755) proposed that Gnosticism developed on its own in Greece and Mesopotamia, spreading to the west and incorporating Jewish elements. According to Mosheim, Jewish thought took Gnostic elements and used them against Greek philosophy.[33] J. Horn and Ernest Anton Lewald proposed Persian and Zoroastrian origins, while Jacques Matter described Gnosticism as an intrusion of eastern cosmological and theosophical speculation into Christianity.[33]
In the 1880s Gnosticism was placed within Greek philosophy, especially neo-Platonism.[29] Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), who belonged to the School of the History of Dogma and proposed a Kirchengeschichtliches Ursprungsmodell, saw gnosticism as an internal development within the church under the influence of Greek philosophy.[29][155] According to Harnack, Gnosticism was the "acute Hellenization of Christianity."[29]
The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule ("history of religions school", 19th century) had a profound influence on the study of Gnosticism.[29] The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule saw Gnosticism as a pre-Christian phenomenon, and Christian gnosis as only one, and even marginal instance of this phenomenon.[29] According to Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920), Gnosticism was a form of Iranian and Mesopotamian syncretism,[29] and Eduard Norden (1868–1941) also proposed pre-Christian origins,[29] while Richard August Reitzenstein (1861–1931), and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) also situated the origins of Gnosticism in Persia.[29] Hans Heinrich Schaeder (1896–1957) and Hans Leisegang saw Gnosticism as an amalgam of eastern thought in a Greek form.[29]
Hans Jonas (1903–1993) took an intermediate approach, using both the comparative approach of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule and the existentialist hermeneutics of Bultmann. Jonas emphasized the duality between God and the world, and concluded that Gnosticism cannot be derived from Platonism.[19]
Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish or Judeo-Christian origins;[19] this theses is most notably put forward by Gershom G. Scholem (1897–1982) and Gilles Quispel (1916–2006).[156]
The study of Gnosticism and of early Alexandrian Christianity received a strong impetus from the discovery of the Coptic Nag Hammadi Library in 1945.[157][158] A great number of translations have been published, and the works of Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, especially The Gnostic Gospels, which detailed the suppression of some of the writings found at Nag Hammadi by early bishops of the Christian church, has popularized Gnosticism in mainstream culture,[web 3][web 4] but also incited strong responses and condemnations from clergical writers.[159]
Definitions of Gnosticism[edit]
According to Matthew J. Dillon, six trends can be discerned in the definitions of Gnosticism:[160]
Typologies, "a catalogue of shared characteristics that are used to classify a group of objects together."[160]
Traditional approaches, viewing Gnosticism as a Christian heresy[161]
Phenomenological approaches, most notably Hans Jonas[162]
Restricting Gnosticism, "identifying which groups were explicitly called gnostics",[163] or which groups were clearly sectarian[163]
Deconstructing Gnosticism, abandoning the category of "Gnosticism"[164]
Psychology and cognitive science of religion, approaching Gnosticism as a psychological phenomena[165]
Typologies[edit]
The 1966 Messina conference on the origins of gnosis and Gnosticism proposed to designate
... a particular group of systems of the second century after Christ" as gnosticism, and to use gnosis to define a conception of knowledge that transcends the times, which was described as "knowledge of divine mysteries for an élite.[166]
This definition has now been abandoned.[160] It created a religion, "Gnosticism", from the "gnosis" which was a widespread element of ancient religions,[note 33] suggesting a homogeneous conception of gnosis by these Gnostic religions, which did not exist at the time.[167]
According to Dillon, the texts from Nag Hammadi made clear that this definition was limited, and that they are "better classified by movements (such as Valentinian), mythological similarity (Sethian), or similar tropes (presence of a Demiurge)."[160] Dillon further notes that the Messian-definition "also excluded pre-Christian Gnosticism and later developments, such as the Mandaeans and the Manichaeans."[160]
Hans Jonas discerned two main currents of Gnosticism, namely Syrian-Egyptian, and Persian, which includes Manicheanism and Mandaeanism.[19] Among the Syrian-Egyptian schools and the movements they spawned are a typically more Monist view. Persian Gnosticism possesses more dualist tendencies, reflecting a strong influence from the beliefs of the Persian Zurvanist Zoroastrians. Those of the medieval Cathars, Bogomils, and Carpocratians seem to include elements of both categories.
Gilles Quispel divided Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism further into Jewish Gnosticism (the Apocryphon of John)[89] and Christian Gnosis (Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus). This "Christian Gnosticism" was Christocentric, and influenced by Christian writings such as the Gospel of John and the Pauline epistles.[168] Other authors speak rather of "Gnostic Christians", noting that Gnostics were a prominent substream in the early church.[169]
Traditional approaches – Gnosticism as Christian heresy[edit]
The best known example of this approach is Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), who stated that "Gnosticism is the acute Hellenization of Christianity."[161] According to Dillon, "many scholars today continue in the vein of Harnack in reading gnosticism as a late and contaminated version of Christianity", notably Darrell Block, who criticises Elaine Pagels for her view that early Christianity was wildly diverse.[162]
Phenomenological approaches[edit]
Hans Jonas (1903–1993) t
Some poor saps trying to save souls at UW-Madison. I don't think they were very effective that day.
Shot with: Leica M4-P and Leica Summicron-C 40mm f/2 lens on expired Kodak Gold film.
De repente, Pancada escuta um barulhinho vindo debaixo da porta e vê um papelzinho dobrado que Chanti passou por baixo. Ele fica muito surpreso e agitado ao mesmo tempo:
- É verdade o que está escrito aqui, Chanti?
Chanti responde baixinho, depois de uma longa pausa, o suficiente para deixa-lo mais aflito:
- É...
Pancada: Não se preocupe, ok? Eu vou conversar com ele e resolver isso ainda hoje! Vai dar tudo certo!
A visual experience.
Disclaimer I own no rights to this footage. It is being used for non-profit educational purposes.
Whatever your past may have been, your future is still spotless.... Repent and aim to do good for the rest of the journey.
Marie Madeleine repentante
Marie Madeleine est représentée, de manière traditionnelle pour l'époque, allongée dans sa grotte (de la Sainte-Baume), l'air farouche, dénudée et méditant, les bras appuyés sur un crâne. L'influence du Caravage est sensible dans les oeuvres de l'école d'Utrecht auquel appartient l'artiste. Le commissaire a placé cette "vanité" dans la partie de son exposition intitulée "Dévoiler l'émotion", car l'intériorité des personnages représentés commence à apparaître dans les toiles du 17è siècle.
Oeuvre de Johannes Moreelse (Utrecht, vers 1603 - vers 1634)
Vers 1630
Huile sur bois
58 x 71,5 cm
Caen, musée des beaux-arts
Notice complète dans le catalogue du musée
mba.caen.fr/oeuvre/marie-madeleine-penitente
Oeuvre présentée dans l'exposition "Le théâtre des émotions", Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
L’émotion, avec ses « réactions souvent intenses », est systématiquement présente dans les arts visuels, travaillée, traquée, déclinée. Elle incarne même la plus grande partie de leur sens, suggérant la chair, stimulant la curiosité. Toutes les expressions y sont illustrées : de la souffrance à la joie, de l’enthousiasme à la terreur, du plaisir à la douleur... Extrait du site de l'exposition : "Le théâtre des émotions", au musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
“It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.”
Hannah Arendt
Tudo começou assim, tão de repente, e de um jeito inexplicável você se tornou essencial para a minha vida, para a minha sobrevivência. Foi tanto tempo gasto tentando fazer isso tudo dar certo, parecia até uma eternidade, e esse tempo todo foi a melhor fase da minha vida. Jamais você vai entender o quanto eu te amei, você é simplesmente incapaz de compreender.
Tanto tempo eu esperei por aquele momento, tantas vezes eu já sonhei com isso e tantas vezes eu chorei por isso. Quando finalmente tudo o que eu mais sonhava, aconteceu, em poucas horas já havia acabado. E eu vi, tudo o que eu mais tinha sonhado e esperado, desmoronando. É difícil entender porque tudo acabou assim... tínhamos tudo para dar certo e infelizmente não deu. Eu simplesmente não consigo entender porque isso aconteceu, era tudo tão perfeito ao seu lado e você fazia todos os problemas do mundo parecerem migalhas só com três palavras, simples e singelas, aquelas que muitas pessoas temem... mas não sabem o quão bem fazem para a alma.
Te esquecer? Jamais. A única coisa que me resta agora é seguir em frente, como se nada tivesse importado para mim, da mesma forma que parecia não importar para você. Mas você me deixou marcas, cicatrizes e muita, mas muita tristeza e pra sempre vou carregá-las comigo... já que são as únicas coisas que você teve coragem de deixar para mim. Mas a saudade que eu sinto é algo bom, já que é uma das únicas coisas que me fazem acreditar que por um momento, só por um momento... que o que tínhamos foi real.
Foi de repente que a estação mudou. A seca insistente perdurou até há poucos dias; a desolação, o abatimento...
Uma chuvada e os olhos sedentos de imagens já olham para as cores molhadas, cheios de espanto como se fosse a primeira vez.
E a vida pulula, percebida pela vibração cromática ao redor, pelos voos surpreendidos onde se olha, os pios variados que se mesclam em sinfonias. Quase dá para sentir o crescer das folhas novas e das inflorescências das bromélias nas pedreiras bem acima de nós. Como se a natureza estivesse se exibindo e pedindo para ser vista.
O dia foi de árvores e aves nos arredores de Torreões. Talvez a câmera tenha se cansado, depois de 350 fotos.
Eu quero mais.
Sorri. De repente beijei-o, excitado pelo seu calor, pela sensação de maciez e flexibilidade de sua pele quase humana. Deus, como eu odiava a brancura de meus dedos tocando-o, dedos que agora poderiam esmagá-lo sem esforço! Perguntei-me se ele sequer imaginava isso. Encarei-o idiotamente. Como ele me parecia perfeito, parado ali, esperando com tanta delicadeza e tanta paciência! E então, como um tolo, soltei:
Lestat: Você ainda me ama?
Ele sorriu; ah, era torturante ver seu rosto suavizar-se e ao mesmo tempo iluminar-se quando ele sorria!
Louis: Sim.
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
Martin Luther King, the author of the words quoted above, was as a thirty five year old in 1964, the youngest person in history to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. A year earlier, he had made his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington DC which has now been shown as truly prophetic. Four years later, he was assassinated. A man was convicted for this but it was widely believed that it was part of a conspiracy in which the FBI was also involved. Throughout his involvement with the civil rights movement, King had been receiving death threats, some of it allegedly emanating from the FBI itself. He had been a strident opponent of the Vietnam War and criticized the US Congress for the continuing to spend billions in the conduct of the war. "A nation", he declared, "that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programmes of social uplift is approaching spiritual death". For this King was riled not only by the establishment but even by the mainstream media. The Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi" and even the liberal Washington Post wrote that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." Later events however proved right the wisdom of King.
Take from:
JUST DO IT TRAILER
"Come, Come who or whatever you are
Should you be an unbeliever, a Magian or a pagan still come
Our lodge is not a lodge of despair
With hundred repentions unheeded you may be,still, come"
For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the main reason to come to Konya is to visit the Mevlâna Museum, the former lodge of the whirling dervishes and home to the tomb of Celaleddin Rumi (later known as Mevlâna), who we have to thank for giving the world the whirling dervishes. This is one of the biggest pilgrimage centres in Turkey, and the building's fluted dome of turquoise tiles is one of Turkey's most distinctive sights.
For Muslims, this is a very holy place, and more than 1.5 million people visit it a year, most of them Turkish. You will see many people praying for Rumi's help. When entering, women should cover their head and no one should wear singlets or shorts.
After walking through a pretty garden you pass through the Dervişan Kapısı (Gate of the Dervishes) and enter a courtyard with an ablutions fountain in the centre.
At the entrance to the mausoleum, the Ottoman silver door bears the inscription, 'Those who enter here incomplete will come out perfect'. Put on the supplied plastic over-shoes before entering. Once inside the mausoleum, look out for the big bronze Nisan tası (April bowl) on the left. April rainwater, vital to the farmers of this region, is still considered sacred and was collected in this 13th-century bowl. The tip of Mevlâna's turban was dipped in the water and offered to those in need of healing. Also on the left are six sarcophagi belonging to Bahaeddin Veled's supporters who followed him from Afghanistan.
Continue through to the part of the room directly under the fluted dome. Here you can see Mevlâna's Tomb (the largest), flanked by that of his son Sultan Veled and those of other eminent dervishes. They are all covered in velvet shrouds heavy with gold embroidery, but those of Mevlâna and Veled bear huge turbans, symbols of spiritual authority; the number of wraps denotes the level of spiritual importance. Bahaeddin Veled's wooden tomb stands on one end, leading devotees to say Mevlâna was so holy that even his father stands to show respect. There are 66 sarcophagi on the platform, not all visible.
Mevlâna's tomb dates from Seljuk times. The mosque and semahane, the hall where whirling ceremonies were held, were added later by Ottoman sultans (Mehmet the Conqueror was a Mevlevi adherent and Süleyman the Magnificent made charitable donations to the order). Selim I, conqueror of Egypt, donated the Mamluk crystal lamps.
The semahane to the left of the sepulchral chamber contains exhibits such as the original copy of the Mathnawi, Mevlâna's cape and other clothing, a 9th-century gazelle-skin Christian manuscript and a copy of the Koran so tiny that its author went blind writing it. In the middle of the room is a display case holding a casket which contains strands of Mohammed's beard. The small mosque in front of the semahane is reserved for prayers but as you exit the building, look to the left of the mihrab for a seccade (prayer carpet) bearing a picture of the Kaaba at Mecca. Made in Iran of silk and wool, it's extremely fine, with some three million knots (144 per square centimetre).
The matbah (kitchen) of the lodge is in the southwest corner of the courtyard. It is decorated as it would have been in Mevlâna's day, with mannequins dressed as dervishes. Look out for the wooden practice board, used by novice dervishes to learn to whirl. The dervish cells (where the dervishes lived) run along the northern and western sides of the courtyard. Inside the cells are a host of ethnographic displays relating to dervish life. In particular, one room contains personal items belonging to Şems of Tabriz including his hat and a manuscript of the Mâkâlât, his most famous work.
The complex can get oppressively busy, and seeing any of the contents of the museum display cases can be a pushing and shoving, head-ducking affair. Come early on a weekday if you want to see all the items in peace. On the other hand, the atmosphere on busy days is almost addictive and more than makes up for not being able to properly examine the museum pieces.
Beside the museum is the Selimiye Camii.
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I appreciate it very much, wishing the best of luck and good light.
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De repente bateu uma vontade enorme de usar um Dote ,e dentre todas as opções resolvi usar um dos primeiros da marca que comprei:o Porto de Galinhas,lilás/rosa SUPER clarinho e meigo,mas é aquela coisa depois de um tempo ele acaba perdendo a graça!
E nada melhor do que uma carimbada para animar um pouquinho,durante o processo fui fazendo vários testes para achar algum esmalte que não fosse branco ou preto que funcionasse para carimbar,e ecabei achando o Speciallità Free Rosa Neon que foi usado na Konad M51!
Titian: Mary Magdalene Repenting
"A good rendering of Mary Magdalene was to contain three elements: the aesthetic, in the form of female beauty, the penitential, generally with a stark landscape, and the ecstatic. This painting is praised in the Musaeum for “the artist’s skill in maintaining proper modesty in such nudity”, and indeed the viewer’s eye is immediately attracted by the saint’s face enraptured in ecstasy." (From the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana website.)
The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana is home to the Portrait of a Musician -- the only Leonardo da Vinci panel painting still in Milan -- as well as the world-famous Codex Atlanticus of 1,119 folios of his designs, sketches, and notes. This small art museum near the Duomo in Milan also has paintings and sculptures by many further famous artists including Caravaggio, Titian, Botticelli, Veronese, Bramantino, and Brueghel but is small enough to appreciate in not much more than an hour. A further top attraction is Raphael's Cartoon for the School of Athens fresco.
De repente intentó aprender la Ligereza, maravillosa virtud existencial que consiste en saber vivir el presente con plenitud serena…
Rosa Montero – La ridícula idea de no volver a verte
Se o toque do outro de repente for bom? Bom, a palavra é essa. Se o outro for bom para você. Se te der vontade de viver. Se o cheiro do suor do outro também for bom. Se todos os cheiros do corpo do outro forem bons. O pé, no fim do dia. A boca, de manhã cedo. Bons, normais, comuns. Coisa de gente. Cheiros íntimos, secretos. Ninguém mais saberia deles se não enfiasse o nariz lá dentro, a língua lá dentro, bem dentro, no fundo das carnes, no meio dos cheiros. E se tudo isso que você acha nojento for exatamente o que chamam de amor? Quando você chega no mais íntimo, No tão íntimo, mas tão íntimo que de repente a palavra nojo não tem mais sentido. Você também tem cheiros. As pessoas têm cheiros, é natural. Os animais cheiram uns aos outros. No rabo. O que é que você queria? Rendas brancas imaculadas? Será que amor não começa quando nojo, higiene ou qualquer outra dessas palavrinhas, desculpe, você vai rir, qualquer uma dessas palavrinhas burguesas e cristãs não tiver mais nenhum sentido? Se tudo isso, se tocar no outro, se não só tolerar e aceitar a merda do outro, mas não dar importância a ela ou até gostar, porque de repente você até pode gostar, sem que isso seja necessariamente uma perversão, se tudo isso for o que chamam de amor. Amor no sentido de intimidade, de conhecimento muito, muito fundo. Da pobreza e também da nobreza do corpo do outro. Do teu próprio corpo que é igual, talvez tragicamente igual. O amor só acontece quando uma pessoa aceita que também é bicho. Se amor for a coragem de ser bicho. Se amor for a coragem da própria merda. E depois, um instante mais tarde, isso nem sequer será coragem nenhuma, porque deixou de ter importância. O que vale é ter conhecido o corpo de outra pessoa tão intimamente como você só conhece o seu próprio corpo. Porque então você se ama também.
Please read this. It is important.
Charles Spurgeon:
This chapter speaks to many people who know nothing of peace, for “there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked” (Isa. 57:21). “The wicked is like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” I do not address this to you with any desire of making a false peace with your souls. Woe to the prophets who say, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace!” (Jer. 6:14). Rather let me, first of all, expose the warring state of your soul that is without peace.
O soul! You are at war with your conscience. You have tried to quiet it, but it will prick you. You have shut up the recorder of the town of Mansoul in a dark place, and you have built a wall before His door. Still, when he has His fits, your conscience will thunder at you and say, “This is not right; this is the path that leads to hell; this is the road to destruction.” Oh! there are some of you to whom conscience is like a ghost, haunting you by day and night. You know the good, though you choose the evil. You prick your fingers with the thorns of conscience when you try to pluck the rose of sin. To you the downward path is not an easy one; it is hedged up and ditched up. There are many bars and gates and chains on this road but you climb over them, determined to ruin your own souls.
Oh, there is war between you and conscience. Conscience says, “Turn,” but you say, “I will not.” Conscience says, “Alter this system of trade, it is cheating.” Conscience says, “Lie not one to another, for the Judge is at the door.” Conscience says, “Away with that drinking cup, it makes the man into something worse than a brute.” Conscience says, “Rip yourself from that unchaste connection, be done with that evil, bolt your door against lust;” but you say, “I will drink the sweet though it damns me. I will go still to my haunts, though I perish in my sins.”
There is war between you and your conscience. Still your conscience is God’s vicegerent in your soul. Let conscience speak a moment or two this morning. Fear him not, he is a good friend to you, and though he speak roughly, the day will come when you will know that there is more music in the very roarings of conscience than in all the sweet and enticing tones that lust adopts to cheat you to your ruin. Let your conscience speak.
But more, there is war between you and God’s law. The Ten Commandments are against you this morning. The first one comes forward and says, “Let him be cursed, for he denies me. He has another God besides me. His God is His belly; he yields homage to His lust.” All the Ten Commandments, like ten great cannons, are pointed at you today, for you have broken all God’s statutes, and lived in the daily neglect of all His commands.
Soul! You will find it a hard thing to go to war with the law. When the law came in peace, Sinai was completely in smoke, and even Moses said, “I do exceedingly fear and quake” (Heb 12:21). What will you do when the law comes in terror, when the trumpet of the archangel shall tear you from your grave, when the eyes of God will burn their way into your guilty soul, when the great books shall be opened, and all your sin and shame shall be published? Can you stand against an angry law in that day? When the officers of the law will come forth to deliver you up to the tormentors, and cast you away forever from peace and happiness, sinner, what will you do? Can you dwell with everlasting fires? Can you abide the eternal burning? Oh,
“agree with your adversary quickly, whiles you are in the way with him: lest at any time the adversary deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison. Verily I say unto you, you shalt by no means come out thence, till you have paid the uttermost farehing.” (Matt. 5:25-26)
But, sinner, do you know that you are this morning at war with God? He that made you and was your best friend you have forgotten and neglected. He has fed you, and you have used your strength against him. He has clothed you, — the clothes you have upon your back today are the garb of His goodness — yet, instead of being the servant of Him whose garments you wear, you are the slave of His greatest enemy. The very breath in your nostrils is the loan of His charity, and yet you use that breath perhaps to curse Him, or at the best, in lewdness or loose conversation, to do dishonor to His laws. He who made you has become your enemy through your sin, and you are still today hating him and despising His Word.
You say, “I do not hate him.” Soul, I charge you then, “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” “No,” you say, “I cannot, I will not do that! “Then you hate Him. If you loved him, you would keep His great command. “His commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3), they are sweet and easy. You would believe in His Son if you did love the Father, for “everyone that loveth the Father loveth him also that is begotten of him” (1 John 5:1).
Are you at war with God in this way? Surely this is a sorry plight for you to be in. Can you meet Him who comes against you with ten thousand? Can you stand against Him who is Almightly, who makes heaven shake at His reproof, and breaks the crooked serpent with a word? Do you hope to hide from Him? “Can any hide in secret places, that I shall not see him? saith the Lord” (Jer. 23:24). Though you dive into the caverns of the sea, He will there command the crooked serpent, and it will bite you. If you make your bed in hell, He will find you out. If you climb to heaven, He is there. (Ps. 130:8). Creation is your prison house, and He can find you when He will. Or do you think you can endure His fury? Are your ribs of iron? Are your bones brass? If they are so, they will melt like wax before the coming of the Lord God of hosts, for He is mighty, and as a lion will He tear in pieces His prey, and as a fire will He devour His adversary, “for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).
This, then, is the state of every unconverted man and woman. You are at war with conscience, at war with God’s law, and at war with God himself. And, now, then, as God’s ambassadors, we come to talk of peace. I urge you to give heed. “As though God did beseech you by me, I pray you, in Christ’s stead, be you reconciled to God.” (2 Cor. 5:20).
Look and listen. It is Christ speaking to you now. I think I hear Him speak to some of you. This is the way He speaks, “Soul, I love you; I love you from my heart, I would not have you at enmity with my Father.” The tear proves the truth of what He states, while He cries, “How often would I have gathered you, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, but you would not” (Matt. 23:37). “Yet,” He says, “I come to treat with you of peace. Come, now, and let us reason together. (Isa. 1:18). I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. (Isa. 55:3). Sinner,” He says, “you are bidden now to hear God’s note of peace to your soul, for thus it runs — ‘You are guilty and condemned; will you confess this? Are you willing to throw down your weapons now, and say, Almighty God, I yield, I yield, I would no longer be Your foe?’ If so, peace is proclaimed to you. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him turn unto the Lord, for he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” (V. 7) Pardon is freely presented to every soul who sincerely repents of his sin; but that pardon must come to you through faith.
So Jesus stands here, points to the wounds upon His breast, and spreads His bleeding hands. He says, “Sinner, trust in me and live!” God no longer proclaims to you His fiery law, but His sweet, His simple gospel, which is “believe and live.” “He that believeth on the Son is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18). “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life” (vv. 14-15).
O soul! does the spirit of God move in you this morning? Do you say, “Lord, I would be at peace with you?” Are you willing to take Christ on His own terms in the matter, and give yourself up, body, soul, and spirit, to be saved by Him? Now, if my Master were here visibly, I think He would plead with you in such a way that you would say, “Lord, I believe; I would be at peace with you.” But even Christ Himself never converted a soul apart from the Holy Spirit, and even he as a preacher won not many to him, for they were hard of heart. If the Holy Ghost is present as you are reading this, He may as much bless you when I plead in Christ’s stead as though he pleaded Himself.
Soul! Will you have Christ or not? Young men, young women, you may never hear about this Word again. Will you die at enmity against God? You who are sitting there, still unconverted, you may never see tomorrow. Would you go into eternity “enemies to God by wicked works (Col. 1:21)?” Soul! will you have Christ or not? Say “No,” if you mean it. Say “No, Christ, I never will be saved by You.” Say it. Look the matter in the face. But I pray you do not say, “I will give no answer.” Come, give some answer this very moment — yes, this very moment. Thank God you can give an answer. Thank God that you are not in hell. Thank God that your sentence has not been pronounced — that you have not received what you have deserved. God help you to give the right answer!
Will you have Christ or not? “I am not fit.” There is no question of fitness; it is, will you have Him? “My heart is black.” He will come into your black heart and clean it. “Oh, but I am hard-hearted.” He will come into your hard heart and soften it. Will you have Him? You can have Him if you will. When God makes a soul willing, it is a clear proof that He means to give Christ to that soul, and if you are willing He is not unwilling. If He has made you willing, you may have Him. “Oh,” says one, “I cannot think that I might have Christ.” Soul, you may have Him now. Mary, he calls you! John, he calls you! Sinner, whoever you may be reading this, if there is a holy willingness towards Christ in your soul, or if there is even a faint desire towards Him, He calls you, He calls you! Oh, do not tarry, but come and trust in Him.
Oh, if I had such a gospel as this to preach to lost souls in hell, what an effect it would have upon them! Surely, surely, if they could once more have the Gospel preached in their ears, I think the tears would wet their poor cheeks, and they would say, “Almighty God, if we may but escape from Your wrath, we will lay hold on Christ.” But here it is preached among you, preached every day, until I fear you listen to it as an old, old story. Perhaps it is my poor way of telling it; but God knows, if we knew how to tell it better, we would do so. O my Master, send better ambassadors to people, if that will woo them. Send more earnest pleaders, and more tender hearts, if that will bring them to Yourself! But oh! bring them, bring them! Our hearts long to see them brought.
Sinner, will you have Christ or not? This morning is the time of God’s power to some of your souls, I know. The Holy Spirit is striving with some of you. Lord, win them, conquer them, overcome them! Do you say, “Yes, happy day! I want to be led in triumph, captive to my Lord’s great love?” Soul, it is done, if you believe. Trust Christ, and your many sins are all forgiven you. Cast yourself before His dear cross, and say —
“A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, Into your arms I fall;
Be you my strength and righteousness, My Jesus and my all.”
And if He rejects you, tell of it. If He refuses you, let us hear it. There was never such a case yet. He always has received those who come. He always will. He is an openhanded and an openhearted Savior.
O sinner, may God bring you to put your trust in Him once for all! Spirits above! Tune your harps anew. There is a sinner born to God this morning. Lead the song, O Saul of Tarsus! And follow the sinner with sweetest music, O Mary! Let music roll up before the throne today; for it is there that heirs of glory are born, and prodigals have returned! To God be the glory forever and ever! Amen.