"Christian Gnosticism"

Their main issue was the apparent character contradiction of God between the Old Testament and the new. God in the O.T. "seemed" to be fussy and stubborn, demanding humans follow a set of rules or he would slay them vs. Jesus who, after his own people slayed him, asked the Father to forgive them. It seems like two opposite personalities.
The gnostics came up with a story line that makes sense of it all....only the explanation they offer is just about as confusing if you think about it.

Daniel Marsh said:

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Docetism (2nd Century)
This heresy was coined from the Greek word, “dokesis” which means “to seem”. It taught Jesus only appeared to have a body and was not truly incarnate. Docetists viewed matter as inherently evil, and therefore rejected the idea God could actually appear in bodily form. By denying Jesus truly had a body, they also denied He suffered on the cross and rose from the dead.

Leader(s) in the Heresy: Attributed to Gnostics and promoted by the Gospel of Peter

Corrector(s) of the Heresy: Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus refuted it was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451AD" Historic Heresies Related to the Nature of Jesus | Cold Case Christianity

Docetism site:newadvent.org - Google Search

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Gnosticism on Crucifixion and Resurrection

Those Gnostic texts that discuss Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection display a variety of views that, nevertheless, reveal some common themes.

James is consoled by Jesus in the First Apocalypse of James: “Never have I suffered in any way, nor have I been distressed. And this people has done me no harm.”19

In the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus says, “I did not die in reality, but in appearance.” Those “in error and blindness….saw me; they punished me. It was another, their father, who drank the gall and vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. I was rejoicing in the height over all….And I was laughing at their ignorance.”20" http://www.equip.org/article/gnosticism-and-the-gnostic-jesus/

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Thanks for this OP. The subtle Gnosticism which has infected mainline denominations is the teaching that Jesus did rise bodily but "spiritually."

A proponent of such is bishop Spong.

Retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, best known for his famously liberal interpretation of Christianity, does not adhere to Rivett's literal view of the Resurrection. His 1995 book, Resurrection: Myth or Reality?, caused a dust-up when it asked, "Does Christianity fall unless a supernatural miracle can be established?"

For Spong, 82, the answer is an emphatic no.

"I don't think the Resurrection has anything to do with physical resuscitation," he said. "I think it means the life of Jesus was raised back into the life of God, not into the life of this world, and that it was out of this that his presence" -- not his body -- "was manifested to certain witnesses."
Can you question the Resurrection and still be a Christian?

Daniel Marsh said:

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Leader(s) in the Heresy: Attributed to Gnostics and promoted by the Gospel of Peter

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Daniel,
It's an interesting question whether the Gospel of Peter actually teaches Docetism, whereby Christ only seemed human, only seemed to have a human physical body, and only seemed to suffer.
On one hand, Bp. Serapion, writing in about 190 AD, about 130 years after Peter's preaching, wrote that he got a copy of it from the successors of the document's authors, who were the Docetists.
But on the other hand, a close reading of the part of the text that came down to us appears to suggest the opposite, since it describes the body of Christ after His death as still being "The Lord". There are a few more issues about this text that I wrote about here:
THE GOSPEL OF PETER (70-160). Question: Is it Docetic?

From Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities book as well as lecture series, (some) Gnostics believed that our fallen material world, dominated by the god of this world, came about...

when Sophia, Divine Wisdom [=HS?]...

did something extremely foolish

(creating -- on its own, without her consort (=Word??) -- another Divine "child" being, Yaldabaoth, the YHWH God of the Sabbath of the OT, a corrupt malformed bastard, who became the Wrathful god of this world)

If so, how does Wisdom, even Divine Wisdom, act foolishly ??

Erik Nelson said:

From Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities book as well as lecture series, (some) Gnostics believed that our fallen material world, dominated by the god of this world, came about...

when Sophia, Divine Wisdom [=HS?]...

did something extremely foolish

(creating -- on its own, without her consort (=Word??) -- another Divine "child" being, Yaldabaoth, the YHWH God of the Sabbath of the OT, a corrupt malformed bastard, who became the Wrathful god of this world)

If so, how does Wisdom, even Divine Wisdom, act foolishly ??

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Unfortunately you are not in the early Christian period so that you can ask them how they would answer the question.

One hypothetical answer is that this only seems like something foolish but was ultimately wise because it served as a test for humans or served some other unexpected purpose. To give an analogy, Paul said that he preached Christ crucified, but said that this teaching was foolishness or nonsense in the eyes of Greek pagans.

From Bart Ehrman's Early Christian Controversies lecture series from The Great Courses...

Gnostics believed that

• The One True Ineffable God of Pure Incomprehensible Spirit...
  
• "emanated" divine "aeon" beings...
  
• in eternity beyond our created material realm...
• in balanced pairs (seemingly of male & female)
• the last & lowest & 30th of which was the Wisdom (Sophia)
• all 30 "aeons" together with the 1 True God comprised the Pleroma ("fullness") of eternity

The contemporary "orthodox" Christian views:

• The One True God the Father...
• "generated" divine beings
• in eternity beyond creation
• in the pair of the Word ("begotten") the Son and Spirit ("proceeded") of Wisdom (Sophia)
• which in Greek are grammatically male (Logos) and female (Sophia)
• both of Word & Spirit together with the Father comprised the Godhead

Ergo, the Word & Spirit of "orthodox" Christian sects were the last & lowest 29th-30th "aeons" of (something vaguely like) Thought & Wisdom.

Ergo, the Gnostics added 14 pairs of previous "emanations" imagined to be "upstream" of the Word & Spirit intermediate between them and the Father. They would have viewed regular, rank & file Christians as extremely ignorant of the divine realm, aware of only the very top (Father) and bottom (Word & Spirit) of the eternal Godhead.

According to the Gnostics, the Holy Spirit of Wisdom foolishly tried to comprehend the fullness of the Pleroma-Godhead, without "her" partner "consort" the Word. Evidently, "she" tried to "rise" all the way up the hierarchy towards The Father Himself, because this unauthorized activity led to "her" fall all the way down through the Pleroma-Godhead in eternity beyond material creation "down" into material creation itself.

Along the way, "she" became impregnated by the other "aeons", and gave birth to "Yaldabaoth" (YHWH God of the Sabbath, Elohim of the OT) in material creation. Ignorant of the higher heavenly eternal realm, Yaldabaoth arrogantly claimed to be "The One True God", but was really only the malformed bastard "god of this [material] world".

Jesus Christ, the Messiah Yehoshua ("YHWH saves"), was sent down into material creation, by The [Real] One True God, to impart humanity with Salvific secret "insider" gnostic knowledge, to save them from & against "the god of this [material] world", the corrupt Yaldabaoth YHWH God of the Sabbath.

I suspect, inexpertly, that Judeo-Christian Gnostics may have been distinguishing the "God of the heavenly creation account (Gen 1)" from the "god of the worldly creation account (Gen 2-3)" ?

These Gnostics "got seriously carried away" with their syncretic mixture of Middle-Platonism with the first six "antediluvian" chapters of Genesis.

The fall of Adam & Eve from Eden seems to inform the Gnostic notion of the fall of (Thought &) Wisdom from the Pleroma. Wisdom reaching too high smacks of Eve seeking "too much knowledge", and Wisdom's corrupt bastard Yaldabaoth born in material creation below eternity, resembles the spiritually corrupt Cain born in Nod outside of Eden. Yaldabaoth oppressing the material world echoes Cain and his line (influenced by the fallen Watchers) oppressing Abel and all the prophets down to Christ (Matthew 23:35). Yaldabaoth being ignorant of the higher eternal realm mirrors the line of Cain & cities & Babel & Nimrod being ignorant of The One True God in the heavens, trying to proclaim themselves as "gods" when the title has already been claimed by heaven.

The "fall" of the Spirit of Wisdom into material creation parallels Genesis 1:2, with the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, as the earth was formless & void amidst the darkness shadowing the abyss... Modern "Gap Theory" authors (Pieter Dykstra, Creation and the Consequence of Satan's Fall) point to the same verse to indicate some major cosmic catastrophe...

CONCLUSION:
"Orthodox" Christianity is a form of Gnosticism, having:

• only one pair of emanated divine "aeon" beings, generated by the Father
  • His begotten Word
  • His proceeded Spirit
• a "Pleroma" Godhead in eternity beyond creation comprising only 1+2 divine beings
• the Word was the "aeon" which incarnated into Jesus Christ, in material creation, from the eternal Pleroma divine realm of the Godhead