The Valentinian Rite of Redemption
The premise of Gnostic
Christianity is the redemption of the
soul and indeed all creation, from the fallen realm we live in.
The realm where we have forgotten who we are, a realm where we
have lost the experiential knowledge (Gnosis) of God and the Realm or
Kingdom of God.
The eternal unseen realm is the realm of love. The fallen
seen realm is the realm of authority.
The fallen realm and all within it are subject to Law, be it physical
law or spiritual law.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law
The fallen realm is a flawed copy of the heavenly original. A
reflection of the true reality as captured by a flawed mirror.
This flawed mirror was refered to by the Gnostics as fallen
sophia. An imperfect hearing of the eternal Word of Truth - the Creative Word.
Eternal reality is the Word perfectly perceived. The
place of the word perfectly heard was known to Gnostic Christians as
the Bridal Chamber.
Gnostics saw the Creator and Lord of the fallen realm as Yahweh, and
referred to this God as the Demierge. Distinguishing the demierge from
the Eternal Good God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Gnostics addressed the hard question of ultimate truth: Is the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ primarily only Good, or is he Yahweh the
Creator of this fallen realm.
Gnostics simply affirmed that God is only good, and cut loose from Judaism.
To argue against the Gnostic position it was necessary for the
primitive authoritarian church to regress back into a Judaistic Christian
Synchretism, pioneered by the Law affirming Messianist interloper James
in Jerusalem. A synchretism rejected by Paul.
Despite some fancy fiddling with the New Testament texts around 180 AD,
and 2 thousand years of tricky theology to 'prove' the contradiction,
synchretising the two positions is simply not viable, though the
ability to back your arguments with threat of death has done wonders.
In maintaining that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the
author of our fallen realm and the God of the Old Testament, the
authoritarian Church finds itself defending a Creation that is not
Good, and an Old Testament God who is not Good.
The Yahweh paradigm is the paradigm of the ego "I AM" and the knowledge of both good and evil.
You cant get past 'the God of this world'.
The Creator as the ultimate God has not been challenged since the
Authoritarian Church crushed the Gnostics between the 2nd and 4th
Centuries.
But thanks to our precious moment in time, we are now in a position to
see through the mess.
See Valentinus and Creation
The Primitive Christian Rite of Redemption.
The Gnostics taught that we are redeemed by Christ, in Christ's redemption
of the entire fallen perception in which the fallen universe exists.
Christ becomes for us Wisdom, that is, true perception, and in Him we begin to truly
perceive heaven and the true God.
Universalism is a logical consequence of this and a fundamental gnostic Christian Truth.
Contained within the Gospel of John, and first mapped out by the
preeminent Second Century Gnostic, Valentinus (and thankfully later
even reasserted within the Authoritarian Church by the Cappadocian
Fathers), The Trinity is the Key.
Understanding the Trinity and how we are incorporated within the
Trinity is the core of this redemption. When God is truly all
and in all, the perception of the All will be healed.
This is a process that is outworking, and the idea was for Christians
to be the firstfruits. Boy have we been taking a long time to
ripen!
We are meant to experience that perception now!
This was the mystery of the Kingdom. The Mind of Christ- now,
the true perception - now, the seeing of the eternal- now, heaven now.
But the Kingdom now, was formally shut down by Ireneus, the enemy of
Gnosticism, and the brains behind the great canonical redaction and
counter reformation of 180 AD.
(I dont know whether Ireneus ever read the Gospel of John - His claim
to apostolic connection through Polycarp - but there is no indication
in his writings of him having any idea of the Kingdom now.)
The Valentinian Rite of Redemption
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law
From the day I renounced the things of the world to consecrate
my soul to luminous and heavenly contemplation, when the supreme
intelligence carried me hence to set me down far from all that pertains
to the flesh, to hide me in the secret places of the heavenly
tabernacle; from that day my eyes have been blinded by the light of the
Trinity, whose brightness surpasses all that the mind can conceive
Gregory Nazianzen
Publically renounce Law for Love, and in so doing renounce Yahweh
for the Trinity.
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Early
Christianity!
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