How can Gnosticism be debunked?

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From a purely philosophical manner, what are good arguments against Gnosticism?.. since any argument we use they will counter with “You don’t have gnosis, or else you would understand”, so any appeal to The Church condemning it won’t really work for them.
 
CatholicHere_Hi said:
From a purely philosophical manner, what are good arguments against Gnosticism?.. since any argument we use they will counter with “You don’t have gnosis, or else you would understand”, so any appeal to The Church condemning it won’t really work for them.
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There is no uniform Gnosticism.

Catholic Encyclopedia
Doctrines
Owing to the multiplicity and divergence of Gnostic theories, a detailed exposition in this article would be unsatisfactory and confusing and to acertain extent even misleading, since Gnosticism never possessed a nucleus of stable doctrine, or any sort of depositum fidei round which a number of varied developments and heresies or sects might be grouped; at most it had some leading ideas, which are more or less clearly traceable in different schools. Moreover, a fair idea of Gnostic doctrines can be obtained from the articles on leaders and phases of Gnostic thought (e.g. BASILIDES; VALENTINUS; MARCION; DOCETAE; DEMIURGE). We shall here only indicate some main phases of thought, which can be regarded as keys and which, though not fitting all systems, will unlock most of the mysteries of the Gnosis.
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Arendzen, J. (1909). Gnosticism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm
 
Can you tie this down to a real world scenario. It seems futile to tilt at abstract ideas rather than movements or persons.
What does it even mean to debunk abstractions?

Yes, the Catholic faith is not based on the premise we are saved by inside knowledge.
We are saved by putting our faith into practise…and that often means following the person of Jesus - often when we don’t understand and have no helpful knowledge of why or where. Just as Nicodemus discovered.
 
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What I mean, is we will give examples of the Church and it’s condemnation of Gnosticism as evidence that Gnosticism never had any part in the life of Jesus. The Gnostic will say “Well if you were to achieve gnosis, you would understand that Jesus actually did. Your church is just ignorant of the fact.”
 
Gnostics claim that the God of the old testament is the Demiurge and is actually evil. The true God was revealed only by Jesus.

Yet this quote says that they are the same God:

“The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him.” - Acts 3:13
 
Gnostics don’t tend to care about theology. They view all myths, even those of different cultures, as pointing to the same truth. Therefore, a theological debate would.
not work with them.

They are interested only in the inner transformation that comes with following a religion.
 
Well that is true.
What we call faith Jesus called direct experience of his Father.

But faith in revelation still does not save.
It is putting it into a lived practise through charity that does.
 
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