Consequently, early multiple interpretations of these materials generate later theological differences, i.e., enthusiastic pneumatological characteristics based on realized eschatology may provide an intellectual framework for later
gnostic ideas.
The
gnostic film, as he discusses it, is an ambiguous and challenging work of art, one showing paradoxes and contradictions that are intended to call its status as a separate world into question, and then, through that questioning, to lead the viewer to some form of transcendence, as with the shattering of the aesthetic borders, strange magic can flow into our quotidian world.
In Gnosticism, perfection is measured by information and knowledge or by some special experience, not by one's charity The
Gnostic takes pride in understanding everything, in having special knowledge.
In the
Gnostic Gospel discovered in the Nag Hammadi Cave in Upper Egypt in 1945, these hidden meanings are more clearly revealed.
Kahn, whose research interests include modernity and identity, above all in island Southeast Asia, has chosen a somewhat unlikely focus for his newest book: what he terms prominent Western authors' "
Gnostic" engagement with Asian religion between the two world wars.
A
Gnostic form of Christianity based on some special hidden knowledge which could restore harmony, which could introduce a believer into an intimate, spiritual relationship with the world and its creator, was in a battle with the powers-that-be, with the bishops and their hierarchy, and with the institutional church.
Two decades after the fact, the coiner himself recalled that the word seemed "suggestively antithetic to the '
gnostic' of church history" and so he chose it on that basis.
The first claims of a marriage arose in the so-called '
Gnostic Gospels' written by a group opposed to traditional Christianity.
Gnostic Mysteries of Sex: Sophia the Wild One and Erotic Christianity is a recommendation for occult collections and readers and focuses on a secret inner teaching passed down by certain societies--that of sexual gnosis, or a higher union with God through sex.
Synopsis: In "
Gnostic Mysteries of Sex: Sophia the Wild One and Erotic Christianity", author Tobias Churton (Britain's leading scholar of Western Esotericism, a world authority on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism) takes the reader on an exploration of the sexual practices and doctrinal secrets of Gnosticism.