I would recommend “Against the Protestant Gnostics” by Philip J. Lee as a good reference.

Also, please see my presentation on Gnosticism in the context of a study of the Gospel of Thomas at the following link.

Gospel of Thomas Presentation

You can see this dualism in a few different forms such as the many false dichotomies posed today (IMO, there’s a delusion of Republican vs. Democrats as false dichotomy). My blog was set up as an apologetic against heresies running rampant through the “Church”. One guy I’ve researched at length is Bill Johnson and he ‘tweets’ and Facebooks many false dichotomies including pitting orthodox theologians as ‘evil’ against current “fathers”, those propounding esoterica, as ‘good’. He even goes to the exteme of redefining the term antichrist as essentially “anti-anointing” (and anointing is redefined) such that anyone against the anointing (as he defines it) is antichrist!

My view (which I admit is in the minority as many have difficulty seeing this) is that Johnson is propounding the same ol’ Jesus became Christ at baptism by virtue of the “Christ anointing” – a Cerinthian (of Cerinthus) and New Age view that the Christ Spirit descended upon the human Jesus but leaving Him before Crucifixion. [Jesus is the person/human, "Christ" is the Spirit.] A careful reading of this chapter with the view as I just set forth bears this out I do believe although it’s very confusing and at times seems to sound orthodox. My opinion is it’s conflation and confusing by design.

Further, read through “The Original Commission” [p 25] making note of the Scripture references by footnote he takes out of context and view this as if he’s speaking of the demiurge instead. The last paragraph (third paragraph) is the key as, of course, in Genesis 1, the world was “good”. Yes, he’s “Christianized” this teaching to a point, of course, to make it more palatable to undiscerning Christians and those who have no background in Gnosticism.

Sorry, it seems we’ve strayed from the subject of your post. But, I am passionate about exposing this stuff.

The connection between Docetism and Gnosticism is confusing. In my mind, Docetism is limited to the Christological heresy of Gnosticism.

It’s important to keep in mind that “good/evil” was a matter of “being” rather than morality in Greek thought. Matter was “evil” because it was an inferior level of being.

The point here is that Greek culture was primed to take a Docetic view of Jesus as pure spirit.

billb

But, then again, with John’s phraseology “the Logos became flesh [sarx]” I believe he’s refuting docetism which he would, of course, do much more specifically in his first epistle. This appears to go a bit beyond Paul; however, I believe docetism did not arise until after Paul wrote his corpus.

I don’t have the time to devote to this as I’d like. And, I’d love to learn Biblical Greek as well.

And you are correct about the proto-Gnostic background of John. I call John pseudo-Gnostic because it appears to be Gnostic but isn’t. Instead, it uses Gnostic-like language as a way of sidestepping Gnostic defenses. Its pseudo-Gnosticism though was enough to delay John’s inclusion in the canon.

See my posts on the Greek word “kai” for a bit of anti-Gnostic Gnosticism in John, specifically “ichor” the watery blood of the gods.

I don’t think Colossians uses rhema at all — could be mistaken.

I think you are correct on musterion.

I had considered writing an article on my site on ancient heresies adding in some others like Valentinus, for example; but, this is much better than I would have done as I’m not very artistic. Good job!

But, I do understand it’s very difficult to ascertain where the cultural context begins and ends in the Gospels. But, as one other example, Paul uses the word ‘mystery’ [Greek transliterated mysterion] as an apologetic against the mystery religions re-appropriating the term to mean instead “a mystery now revealed in Christ”.

The New Age Christology is a twist on a few of these. First and foremost, all of mankind has inherently two natures, one human (of course) and one divine (yet latent). Jesus Himself was human and, through much self effort, subjugated His humanity by actualizing His divinity. However, He was only able to work towards His full divinity by virtue of the divine “Christ spirit” indwelling him at baptism (thereby ‘Christing’ Him). He then is a model for all of mankind to follow to actualize our own divinity.

This is sort of like Apollinarianism (and perhaps Nestorianism) with a Cerinthian anointing by the “Christ spirit”.

When Jesus’ disciples say to Him, “now we know that you know all things and no man needs to ask you anything,” they are reflecting the Socratic method of instruction in which the teacher teaches by asking the student questions. (From a dynamic equivalency standpoint, the passage should be translated, “now we know that you know all things and no man needs to TEACH you anything.”)

My point here is to ask the question, does the original passage reflect a divine endorsement of the Socratic method or is the reference to the method simply cultural context without any particular weight? My feeling is that I wouldn’t want to use the passage as an authority in a dogmatic theology covering education to give the Socratic message divine weight.

I think a similar thing is somewhat true of Logos theology in the NT. When the NT speaks of Jesus as the Logos, it is playing off the Logos theology of contemporary Stoicism. And I’m not real sure where the biblical points end and the cultural context begins. So I anchor on the obvious points and avoid putting all my weight on the rest.

Regards,

billb

Very economical and staffed by the most faithful and encouraging professors I have ever met, most with doctorates from Yale, Harvard, Vanderbilt, etc.

I’m just very anal-retentive so when I research a subject I like to be thorough. I’d like to attend some sort of school of theology but, at present, it’s just not feasible.

In my mind, time is the only way a finite creature/creation can experience infinity.

In other words, if a finite creature is dropped into infinity, what would it feel like? My answer is “time.”

As a rule, I don’t do that, except in your case, you do so well, I just naturally assumed you had a lot of formal training.

Thought we might have go to the same schools . . .

My compliments.

So, then, to restate and (hopefully) clarify my response, the infinite (the Logos) did not become finite. The Logos added a human nature and, consequently, the person of Jesus Christ accepted the limitations of humanity yet the divine aspect (Logos) continued as infinite and remained the sustainer of the cosmos.

I’ll try to check out the links a bit later.

I see ‘eternality’ as much more than merely ‘time’. However, apparently, there are different views regarding the eternal realm. The best thoughts I’ve seen yet (I’ve not looked into this very much as I see it more of a philosophical thing and something that goes beyond the bounds of Scripture and quite possibly our ability to comprehend) are from Chafer:

“…Whatever time may be and whatever its relation to eternity, it must be maintained that no cessation of eternity has occurred or will. God’s mode of existence remains unchanged. Time might be thought of as something superimposed upon eternity were it not that there is ground for question whether eternity consists of a succession of events, as is true of time. The consciousness of God is best conceived as being an all-inclusive comprehension at once, covering all that has been or will be. The attempt to bring time with its successions into a parallel with eternity is to misconceive the most essential characteristic of eternal things.”

This quote was used in the 2nd part of the article referenced above.

I see eternality as well as all the ‘omni’ attributes as infinite (subsets of infinity, perhaps?) so that the term ‘infinity’ is a blanket term for all, hence each one should be defined separately.