Thanks for the responses, Pleroma.
The view that Gnostics had on resurrection was this.
“Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.”
(Gospel of Philip)
Faith alone will not save us, we need to born again here and now.
The argument is that Paul’s message is dual layered, he gave them knowledge according to the level of their understanding for both psychics as well as pneumatics. I see that there is a problem with Jewish Christianity and the Christianity of the Gentiles. The majority versus the few.
The quotation from the Gospel of Philip is more in-keeping with Johannine literature than Pauline.
You could argue that Paul’s message is dual-layered, and that is true to a point, however, there is no evidence that he withheld secret knowledge or teachings from the churches to which he wrote.
Certainly, there are tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christianity but there are also points of contact and reconciliation.
Scholarly evidence suggests that the Pastoral Epistles was not written by Paul instead they were forged in his name in order to suppress the participation of women in church activities on equal with men.
I’d say scholars are divided on this point. Being a Catholic, I’ll wait until the Magisterium comes down on the issue before I believe anything definitively. Regardless, if anything, that supports my point. Even in the non-pastoral epistles, Paul elevates the status of women, which is inconsistent with how women are viewed in gnostic culture.
Paul criticizes the church at Colossians for practising ascetic practices and the worship of angels one by one in order to reach a communion with Christ and says that all the fullness of deity i.e. pleroma(all the angels) dwells with in Christ himself and that they need not worship other angels individually.
He doesn’t criticise them on this but warns them not to fall into ineffectual Judaic pratices. He is not suggesting they worship angels
through Christ! Rather because Christ is divine and through faith in him salvation is assured without the traditions and works of the law.
Yes, faith in Christ is important but it is also important to understand that the body of Christ has a local existence which is not made of flesh or blood, a view missing in the religion of Catholics.
How can this be, when we believe in the cult of the saints? The Body of Christ is the Church, which includes the Church triumphant in Heaven, the Church suffering in purgatory, and the Church militant on earth. It is not an ethereal something or rather but real-life persons who have become children of God.
Gnosticism pre-dated Christianity and I do not reject the possibility that Paul knew about Aeons, for example:- his claims of making an ascent to the third heaven.
The influence of gnosticism in Palestine during the first century was, if anything, minimal. Moreover, Paul was Jew who was not only zealous for the Traditions of his people but also highly educated in them. It isn’t likely that a student of Gamaliel would have come under such an influence.
I honestly don’t think there is any solid evidence for contending that Paul was gnostic or leaned towards gnosticism. I guess you can cherry-pick verses that, out of context, might sound gnostic but it’s completely out of character with what we know about Paul, his writings, his influences on others, and the very early Church.
