Haha, no, Bishop +Stephan doesn’t care much for the internet.Wonderful!!! Stephan A. Hoeller’s talks have been extremely pivotal to my spiritual development
You wouldn’t happen to be Bishop Stephan would you? Haha
I’m Rev. Dn. Winsor… But +Stephan is coming up to visit us in April, so that will be a blessing! It’s been quite some time since he’s come to Seattle.From where do you derive your information about what Valentius taught?
It is not merely about ‘labels’ and ‘identification’ (in the negative way you are using them). It is about truth and the fact that belief in the Incarnation is one of the things that define you as a Christian.
Confused…Sophia Christ said that Jesus is not the true God; that the Trinitarian God is not the true God; that Jesus is not truly the Messianic Savior of the world. If that is true then Gnosis of Truth should not come from Christ Himself, but rather from the true God that Sophia worships - right?
So one can be a good Catholic and not go to mass on Sundays? And the mass was just an example-the point is that the Catholic faith is dependent on the institutional structure which is an external entity-without this entity, there is no Catholicism.
The writings of Valentinus
According to your definition of what a Christian is.
How is it that those writings survived since the second century?
Christ was a messenger of the God that Sophia worships.
I’m having trouble finding that quote in this thread, but I think there might be a misunderstanding here. Gnostic scripture, particularly the writings of Valentius, makes one of the earliest and most explicit references to the Holy Trinity, of which Christ is a part – the Son. There is a bit of a distinction between the person of Jesus and the Aeon Christ who incarnated in the person of Jesus.
Fragments have survived-enough to formulate a systematic interpretation of his thought.
From where did these fragments come from, exactly?
There is a distinction between making the decision not to go and mass not being available, which is what you implied. That said, you are correct that Catholicism has a visible institution, as Christ dictated. You’ve failed to address why that’s a bad, where as I and other have pointed out why the lack of institution is a bad thing. Given that, I’d argue that the lack of institution in Gnosticism is one of its greatest weaknesses.
True, people can fail to understand or adhere to the Truths of the Church, in which case they are also fooling themselves. The fact that it can happen to Catholics doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a negative trait, and far more likely to happen in an belief structure that lack any real structure, and is instead based on the opinions of the believer.
Because the whole problem that we’ve put forward is that having an external method of validation is a MASSIVE FLAW. I cannot put it any clearer than that. Believing in a structure based entirely on personal opinion and feeling is, for lack of a better phrase, stupid. It is subject to wild and ungoverned shifts based on the mood or developing opinions of the believer, and has nothing in place to maintain consistency. You could believe that premarital sex is wrong one day, but then if you find someone you want to have sex with you could easily convince yourself (consciously or otherwise) that premarital sex is okay. You could do a complete 180 on the issue, and based on your stated belief structure, both of those positions are equally valid because they are based on your “personal revelation.”
No, according to the definition of the word. Do you think that squares might be circular?
OK: so, if external authority is subordinate to personal experience, then it is, practically speaking, irrelevant. (After all, if external authority says, “yep, you’re right”, then you respond, “ok thanks”, but if it says “sorry, you’re wrong”, then you simply respond “sorry; I don’t recognize your right to contradict my personal experience.”)
Not to ‘describe’ it, but to validate that one’s subjective experience is consonant with objective reality.
There are two Gods: the Trinity and the demiurge, who fashioned the physical universe?
Umm… I think you meant to say that “not having an external method of validation is a massive flaw”… right?
Precisely. More to the point, you could put a half-dozen believers in a room, and ask them a particular question with respect to God, and get six different (and mutually contradictory) answers. Without a measure by which to evaluate these assertions for objective truth, one is resigned to concluding either that the principle of non-contradiction is false, or that God has revealed mutually contradictory experiences to various people. Both are highly problematic, to say the least…
A good number of Valentinus’ writings, as well as other writings from the Valentinian school of thought, were preserved in the Nag Hammadi Library which sat buried in clay pots in Egypt for about 1600 years. These include the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Truth, as well as other fragments, exegeses, and homilies.
Quite right, my bad… I wish I could fix that…Umm… I think you meant to say that “not having an external method of validation is a massive flaw”… right?
The demiurge isn’t really a god, he’s the chief archon who fancies himself to be the only god there is – I guess you could call him a false god. As stated in the Apocryphon of John: “And when he saw the creation which surrounded him, and the multitude of the angels around him which had come forth from him, he said to them, ‘I am a jealous God, and there is no other God beside me.’ But by announcing this he indicated to the angels who attended him that there exists another God. For if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?”
