I mean, any Revelation by your standard that is Oustide The Confines of The Catholic Church is “Gnostic” and i don’t think your going that route, so what are you actually trying to say about it (The Rapture and Gnosticism?). I will humble myself in hoping to understand your point more.
+T
I kinda am Father, and we are discussing a revelation of Christ when referring to gnosticism. But I’m not saying protestant theology is necessarily gnostic and in no way ‘outside’ in the degree that the gnostics were.
I’ll begin by describing the view of gnosticism that leads me to believe that the Rapture is theology influenced by gnosticism.
A fundamental view of the early gnostic christian movement was that God is revealed* internally*.
In direct opposition;
A fundamental view of the early Church is that God is revealed externally*.*
The Apostles taught that our true selves are hopelessly lost without the
external revelation of who we are in Christ. Christ reveals man to himself. The Christ event can only be understood by those who were intimate witnesses of it chosen by Christ Himslef.So Divine revelation is gnosis from without and is internalized and
the lost true self is found by God.
Gnosticism teaches there is no need for an external witness because the true meaning of the Christ event can only be understood through the true self from within that only those who are their true selves can receive and those initiated to that ‘secret’ kind of knowing can accept.
God once lost is found by the true self
That is why St John’s Gospel begins with apologetics defending the authority of the external witness of God. Also why he said the anti-christ spirit would claim that God did not really come in the flesh.
I do believe protestant methods are subject to gnostic tendencies and result in a kind of thinking that is a sublime reflection of gnostic thought. I don’t believe that protestants are gnostics or that what they believe is gnostic in it’s original form.
That said I see these comparisons.
The original gnostics were reinventing the events of Christ’s life in order to redefine what was Divinely revealed by the Apostolic Witness.
The methods of protestantism are re-inventing the tradition of beliefs that developed from that same Apostolic Witness of Divine Revelation.
The gnostics denied the necessity of a tangible, physical witness of God to receive divine revelation.
Protestants deny the necessity of a community that is tangibly, physically and historically a Witness of God to enterpret divine revelation.
The present and most obvious IMHO comparison is the denial of Apostolic Authority by the claim that it belongs to those who experience the interior *gnosis *received by the Holy Spirit and all external gnosis must submit to the judgement of God found internally, within the heart of the believer.
Father, isn’t that a reasonable eneogh comparison to support the claim that theology developed by that means is at least in degree gnostic?
The tendencies of a sola scriptura theology results in a denial of the same doctrins that the gnostics denied, a denial of the external examples of divine life developed and expressed in Sacred Tradition.
Finally The most profound IMHO comparison:
Gnostics deny that God became a tangible, physical, fully human fully divine person in the flesh on earth.
Protestant theology denies that Jesus becomes a tangible, physical, fully human fully divine person in the flesh on earth.
