Well, since there are a lot of responses, and I haven’t had a chance to get on here since yesterday, I’ll try to answer a few of these at once to avoid multiple posting.
greetings
i myself am an esoteric catholic so ive always had an interest in gnosticism.
my first question, do you accept Paul as a legitamate apostle? because ive heard some gnostics in the past say that they reject him. is this true?
I personally don’t think of him as an apostle in addition to the 12, but I do think his writings are valuable. While I don’t consider his writing as authoritative as the words of Christ Himself, his experience on the road to Damascus was definitely Gnosis, and many of his writings use extremely Gnostic language. For example, talking about our struggle against the principalities, powers, and rulers of the this world evokes the Gnostic concept of the archons to me. I struggled with accepting his epistles for a long time, and it wasn’t until reading Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Paul that I was actually able to see the tremendous value in them!
Can you give a short description of Gnostic in just one sentence or two?
It’s difficult to sum up in one sentence, but Gnosis is knowledge one gains from experience, as opposed to knowledge one gets from studying. So for the Gnostic, that salvific Gnosis means that we don’t just have to
believe – we can
know.
So as a gnostic, do you accept every Gnostic gospel, even ones that may have been written by competing sects of christianity?
Every scripture needs to be taken with a grain of salt (including Biblical scripture), as a product of the human being who wrote it. Anything written in the world is subject to error, because we live in an imperfect world. However, the holy scriptures are tremendously valuable because we can learn from the authors’ own experiences. We don’t have an official canon of scripture so it’s up to each individual Gnostic to decide which scriptures to accept… Some scriputres are a little “out there,” but I can usually find some value in any scripture, even if I don’t accept everything a particular book says.
I’d just like to ask: what type of gnostic are you?
I’m a member of the Ecclesia Gnostica, which is primarily Valentinian in theology, although we do draw from other ancient and medieval Gnostic sects, including Manichaeism. We also honor the Cathar and Templar martyrs as saints of the Gnosis.
Coffee or tea? And I’m serious about that.
Also, what “apocryphal” gospels do you accept? Like the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thomas?
If I’ve just woken up, definitely coffee! But I do love tea too.
I’ll read pretty much any of them, but ones that mean a lot to me spiritually are the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary, Pistis Sophia, Thunder Perfect Mind, Odes of Solomon, and Wisdom of Solomon (which is “apocryphal” to Protestants, so I guess I can count it here, haha!).
Why are you interested in being on a Catholic website?
I was baptised and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church, and was pretty devout as a teenager. Then around 20, I became completely disgusted with Christianity for a couple of years. Since joining the Gnostic church, I’ve actually developed a deeper appreciation for my Catholicism as strange as that may sound. And our church is part of the greater catholic (universal) ecclesia, having apostolic succession and the sacraments – it’s just considered ‘valid but’ illicit by the Roman Catholic Church. I’ve tried participating on other Christian websites, but I find I still have a lot more in common with Catholics than I do with Evangelicals.
Who founded your denomination? When? Are gnostics considered Christian?
Our denomination was founded by Bishop Richard Duc de Palatine in England, who had been consecrated in the Liberal Catholic Church. He wanted to establish a church that specifically embraced Gnosticism based on the limited scriptures that were available at the time. I believe that was approximately 1951, but don’t quote me on that. One of the priests he ordained was Stephan Hoeller, who moved to the US around 1953 and established a parish in Los Angeles. He was consecrated a bishop in the church in 1967, and when +Duc de Palatine passed away in the early 1970s, +Stephan Hoeller became the regionary bishop in America. As our catechism says, we aren’t Christian in the same sense that other churches call themselves Christian, the Gnostic Church is Christian by her own definition, based on Gnosis. We certainly believe in Christ our Savior, so we can rightly say that we are Christian.
I apologize, but I’ll try and answer some of the other interesting questions here a little later. This post is getting too long, and I don’t want to spam the forum. Pax vobiscum!
