Posts tagged gnosticism
To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
Just a quick public service announcement about this quote:
This is not a quotation from C.S. Lewis. People need to stop attributing it to him, if only for the sake of my sanity.
The words are from A Canticle for Leibowitz, written by Walter M. Miller, Jr. The original quote is:
You don’t have a soul… . You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.
Aside from the theological issues this raises (Christian theology has been pretty clear on the issue of having resurrected bodies, so our bodies are not temporary), this quote is wrongly attributed all over the internet. This is the second time in two days I have corrected the misattribution.
One day I’m going to write a master post about this and just direct people to it.
Update! I have written said master post, along with a follow-up.
To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
Secundus [a Gnostic writer] says that there is a first Ogdoad, a right-hand and a left-hand Tetrad…one light, the other darkness; and the power that fell away and suffered lack was not begotten of the thirty Aeons, but of their fruits…
Iu, iu, and pheu, pheu! Truly we may utter these exclamations from tragedy at such bold invention of ridiculous nomenclature, For when he says, “There is a certain Proarche before all things, above all thought, which I call Monotes,” and again, “With this Monotes there reigns a Power, which I call Henotes,” it is obvious that he admits that he is talking about his own inventions which no one else has given them before.
It is clear also that [Secundus] himself dared to make up these names and unless he had been on hand the Truth would have had no name. There is no reason why someone else shouldn’t assign names like these on the same basis: There is a royal Proarche above all thought, a power above all substance, indefinitely extended. Since this is the power which I call the Gourd, there is with it the Power which I call Superemptiness. This Gourd and Superemptiness, being one, emitted, yet did not admit, the fruit visible, edible, and delicious, which is known in the language as the Cucumber.
Irenaeus, Against the Heresies (via brother-john)
I am so sad that this work is commonly called Against the Heresies. The original title, The Unmasking and Overthrow of the Falsely Named “Knowledge,” is so much better.
(via shortbreadsh)
Never ever not reblog trolly Church Fathers.
(via crypte)
You can just hear the disdain.
