What We Covered Last Sunday 4/28

• We started our look at the Ancient Gnostic View of Knowledge. We looked at how they saw knowledge (gnosis) as being hidden, revealed by enlightened messengers, mystical, individualistic and purely subjective (verses objective), and truth being relative.
• We heard quotes from both the early Church Fathers (defenders of the Faith) and some modern day defenders. I will list some of these at the end of this posting.
• We examined Jude 8 and Deuteronomy 13:1-5. I will provide further commentary on these texts later on.

The Church Fathers' Response to Gnosticism:

• "Indeed, take away from the heretics(Gnostics) the wisdom that they share with the pagans, and let them support their inquiries from the Scripture alone. They will then be unable to hold their ground." Tertullian
• ”We call those heretics “empty” for they are destitute of the counsels of God and of the traditions of Christ. Their dogmas originate with themselves and are therefore bitter- like the wild almond.” Clement of Alexandria
• “The heretics insist that the apostles did not reveal everything to all men. Rather, they say that the apostles proclaimed some things openly and to all the world, but that they disclosed other things only in secret and to a few.” Tertullian

The Modern Gnostic Manifestations:

• “Gnosticism is experiencing something of a revival, despite its historical status within Christianity as a vanquished Christian heresy.” Doug Groothius
• “The perennial war of ideas develops few new weapons systems. In the intellectual combat between the New Age movement and orthodox Christianity, the points of conflict were recognized by the early church(in the Gnostic heresy) eighteen hundred years before New Age celebrity evangelist Shirley MacLaine spoke to her first disembodied spirit.” Doug Groothuis
• Michael Horton agreeing with Harold Bloom that “The American religion, regardless of the denominational label, is Gnosticism. It is not merely a New Age or left-leaning phenomenon. It is swallowing the culture whole, and with it, much of modern Christianity.”