Is Calvinism a form of Gnostic Christianity?

I don't see the connection you are trying to make. There is no secret knowledge implied in Calvinism, and Calvinists are very anti-Gnostic. The gist of the three elements you list is that the Fall made us unable to recognize God, Christ died only for those who believe on Him (and nobody knows who those are except God), and it is God who saves -- that's the efficacious grace part. His imparting grace inwardly to those He chooses is nothing like some secret knowledge. The idea is that we can't save ourselves, He must do it. There is nothing gnostic about any of this that I can see.ABE: In fact, by contrast, Gnosticism is all about cultivating this special knowledge by meditative and other practices, a form of works in a way, which is completely the opposite of the Calvinist emphasis on God's sovereignty in salvation.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2006 10:16 AM

They are not found in gnosticism. That was my point. There is no similarity whatever.

Maybe you didn't say enough in your OP to make the connection then, as I don't see anything similar to the Fall in gnosticism. Except perhaps the Eastern ideas such as Hinduism's Maya and the Buddhist idea of "ignorance" which I usually think of as distorted remnants of the knowledge of the Fall, and they are explained in completely different terms than the Fall. According to those views you can correct your own inborn ignorance by diligent pursuit of the right means. This is completely at odds with Calvinism which puts salvation completely in God's hands and sees salvation as a supernatural gift from above. The Fall is clearly shown in the Bible and without it the salvation of Christ makes no sense.Pelagius was condemned as a heretic for his man-centered understanding of salvation, and it seems to me that gnosticism is also man-centered in its idea of secret knowledge that can be cultivated, all in contrast with Calvinism which emphasizes the sovereignty of God, giving credit for salvation completely to God.But also, if your focus is on the Fall, why are you targeting Calvinism? The Fall was part of Christian theology from the earliest days. Luther certainly affirmed it. So did the Roman church.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2006 12:24 PM

Another difference between the Fall and Gnosticism: The gnostic ideas of ignorance and blindness, which are the closest ideas I can find to the Fall, whitewash, just as fallen nature is fond of doing, the fundamental concept of the Fall which is sin, or moral guilt before God. This of course calls for a different kind of remedy than sin does.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2006 01:16 PM

Doesn't look to me like I was all that wrong. The fall mentioned isn't even described but the implication that a revelation of one's original being is the goal certainly implies what I said about "ignorance" being the gnostic approximation to a fall, which has nothing to do with sin as the Christian fall does. As I said.And of course the Gnostics claim to be a legitimate strand of Christianity. What else is new? But they were declared heretics by the mainstream church for good reason. Their doctrine is not Christian, certainly not in keeping with the scriptures.In a certain sense a fair amount of Christian doctrine WAS formulated against the Gnostics as they were a major heresy that had to be answered, but what this means is that what the scriptures say was explicated to clarify it against the gnostics. Many of the early church writings are dealings with various heresies that spell out the orthodox doctrine in answer to them.There were many "forms of Christianity" in the early years in THAT sense, in the sense of many heresies. The same situation prevails today as well. There are more heretics than true believers. That's always been the case and will no doubt continue or even grow up to the end of time.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2006 11:41 PM

As I understand it, Gnosticism says we are all born "ignorant," meaning something like ignorant of our original being as part of God. According to them, something changed our status, that according to your link they call a "fall" but I've always heard this change called "ignorance," which is like the Hindu concept of Maya, or the veil that hides our true nature from us. A sort of forgetting of our original state. There may be different shades of definitions of all these terms, but this is how I remember them and it seems to fit with what you posted.So according to the gnostics we have to get back to our original state of being, our original self or spark or whatever they call it, and they have techniques for seeking that. A sort of Enlightenment I think, a flash of understanding of our true nature or something like that, that they seek by various "secret" disciplines.They may use the term "fallen" but from what you linked they give no definition of what it means. I'm telling you what I've heard they believe. If I'm wrong you could show me that by finding how they describe this "fall," some evidence of what they mean by the term.I am quite sure they do not mean what Christians mean by the Fall, which is disobedience of God, a moral Fall, that can only be corrected by the sacrifice of Christ. They mean something we can correct through certain disiplines. The very way they describe it as "a tragic fall" suggests something different. So if you can find what they mean by it, we can go from there.In any case, sure, all the heresies call themselves the true belief and appeal to the Bible and call the true church heretical. Believe as you please. It's of some concern I would think that you choose the true one, but in any case you're on your own.I have no idea what you mean about "secret dogma" in relation to Calvinism. A "secret impartation of the Holy Spirit" does not imply any sort of secret KNOWLEDGE or dogma, it simply means that the Holy Spirit works deep in the personality, hidden from view, to turn the person to belief in God. Not at all what the Gnostics mean by secret knowledge, which is some kind of discipline in esoteric stuff. Many heresies have that sort of inner-circle training. Like the Masons. Like the Rosicrucians. The Mormons too.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2006 02:17 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2006 02:21 AM

Esoteric Christianity is not Christianity, Rev., it's an occultic, and probably gnostic type of something or other but it is not Christianity. It's just another cult or heresy calling itself Chrstian. There is no secret knowledge in Christianity. It's all in the Bible for all to read. The term "dogma" simply means a body of fixed knowledge, it does not mean anything esoteric or secret. Anyone can learn Christian dogma.OK so the fall means this entity or emanation fell from God's presence? Not the whole human race then. And this entity created a bad god? How far can you get from Christianity's God and the Fall of mankind?Satan didn't create anything. He seduced Adam and Eve and that earned him his position as lord over humanity. His demons have impersonated "gods" for the majority of the human race, until Jesus came and defeated him by dying on the cross and taking his human prisoners from him.There is a true church. It is made up of those who know that Jesus died to pay for the sins of those who believe in Him, thus reversing the Fall.Gnosticism is simply one of the many "Christian" heresies, as I said.Thanks for explaining what they mean by the "fall."This message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2006 11:47 AM

It's a Buddhist concept. You can find lots on it by googling "ignorance Buddhism" A synonym is "delusion."Basics of BuddhismIgnorance is discussed under The Four Noble Truths:

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The Four Noble Truths are a contingency plan for dealing with the suffering humanity faces -- suffering of a physical kind, or of a mental nature. The First Truth identifies the presence of suffering. The Second Truth, on the other hand, seeks to determine the cause of suffering. In Buddhism, desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering. By desire, Buddhists refer to craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality, all of which are wants that can never be satisfied. As a result, desiring them can only bring suffering. Ignorance, in comparison, relates to not seeing the world as it actually is. Without the capacity for mental concentration and insight, Buddhism explains, one's mind is left undeveloped, unable to grasp the true nature of things. Vices, such as greed, envy, hatred and anger, derive from this ignorance.

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Page not found - EXPERIENCEDelusion (Ignorance)

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...In Buddhism, delusion is ... a lack of awareness of the true nature or Buddha nature of things, or of the true meaning of existence. "

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It has always seemed to me to be a recognition of the flawed state of humanity so a sort of vague recognition of the Fall.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2006 04:28 PM

Protestants don't regard the early church councils as Roman Catholic, but simply as part of early Christianity from which the Roman church deviated over the next few centuries. It was early Christianity that condemned Pelagius, but the later corrupted Roman church that condemned Calvin. Calvin was one of the Reformers who returned the Church to its pure Biblical form after the Roman church had become apostate. Augustine is indeed one of the main inspirers of the Reformation, although some of his writings are rejected by them.Yes I gather the gnostics have some version of a fall but it is very far from the Biblical Christian idea. The Biblical idea has nothing whatever to do with a hatred of the material world. God made the material world and called it good. It is only the Gnostics who hate the material world and try to escape it.All the heresies do their best to imitate and co-opt Biblical religion. Biblical religion did NOT take one thing from anything outside the revelation of God handed down by Israel.

I thought I'd said that gnosticism's notion of the fall is more like that of the eastern religions rather than traditional Christianity. Hinduism has the concept of Maya which is a sort of blindness to one's true nature, and Buddhism has the similar concept of Ignorance or Delusion. These ideas suggest that humanity is in an imperfect state, which is similar to the Christian fall, but theirs is not a moral imperfection as Christianity's fall is, and their solution to it is seeking enlightenment, which is not Christianity's solution. Since Gnosticism is about not recognizing the original state of humanity as part of God, but being blinded to it, and since the goal is returning to that recognition, it is quite similar to the eastern views.So from what you've said, the gnostic fall is not the same as the eastern religions but it is certainly not Christianity either. It has more in common with the eastern views overall, in seeking deliverance by meditative and other methods, and denying the need for sacrifice, which is the Christian view.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2006 04:36 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 04-12-2006 04:36 PM

I don't see how. If a person has genuine faith in Jesus Christ that is certainly a sign they are one of the elect. It was a gradual progression -- or regression -- over the years, characterized by such things as the introduction of superstitions like miraculous relics and veneration of Mary and the Saints, and purgatory and buying your way out of it with "indulgences" and various other nonBiblical things. By the time of the Reformation the Bible was hardly preached at all in the various churches. This is what the Reformers rediscovered, the Biblical foundation of the faith. Sin itself is evil and cruel and that is the first thing that happened -- humanity became sinners. But if you are talking about the cruelty of nature itself, the evil of destructive natural occurrences, God "cursed the ground for your sake." That is, God cursed the entire Creation for the sake of mankind, which is something I don't completely understand. I'm sure, from teh way it is worded, it is a kindness to us, but I'll have to study up on it. In another sense, the destructive natural occurrences are the natural consequences of sin. The whole natural world was disturbed by the contrariness of the creature against the Creator. HOw is the world "bascially good?" People aren't basically good, we're basically out of touch with God and His Law and that's being basically bad. The natural world can't be either good or bad, but it underwent massive change in response to the rebellion of the creature.Yes God is in the world, not IN it in the sense of inhabiting or animating the material of the world, but is certainly present everywhere. According to the Bible His presence ought to be apparent to us in nature but because of the Fall we have lost our spiritual senses and don't recognize Him. Some nevertheless do, and have a proper respect for Him for that reason, but nobody ever grasps the sacrifice of Christ from nature, and that is what saves.

Well, I'm mulling over this last point. I don't think it's quite true that the saved have no free will to do evil. Most of us are unpleasantly aware of just how much sin we are still able to commit if we aren't being careful to obey God and stay in touch with God and the Church. It's not that we CAN'T do evil, it's that our conscience beats us up something fierce when we do. And being saved, as soon as we sincerely repent we are once again cleansed and freed of guilt feelings. In THAT sense one who is born again "cannot sin" as the Apostle John puts it, but I may still not have this quite right. If any human being had invented the way of salvation it would certainly have depended on doing good works. In fact that's how you can tell when a religion is merely man-made; it's all about earning your way to heaven by doing good works.In the most important sense, salvation by Christ is not about morality at all, because no human being has the ability to meet God's standards. We're all so far from it that the most righteous person who ever lived would be shown to clearly deserve Hell if we could see into that person's innermost soul by God's light.That's why salvation is pure grace and has nothing to do with good works. But salvation also changes a person, causes a person to clean up his/her act, sometimes quite dramatically, and DESIRE to do good works and to please God, so that being a Christian certainly means doing good works, lots of good works. But salvation itself has already been given, as a free gift, simply through faith in Him and the good works are simply part of the new nature as an adopted child of God. But the change is a different sort of change. I haven't run across a description of the Gnostic "way" in any terms other than as Knowledge or "enlightenment" or understanding. But the change a Christian undergoes is a change in the whole personality or character, from unrighteousness to a desire for righteousness, and to gratitude toward God where before there was alienation and even bitterness toward Him, from living for self to learning how to live for God and others. Well that's very interesting and informative. I didn't know that Gnosticism was "markedly peculiar" in this way. But there it is, they are supposedly "saved" by "knowledge," by some kind of insider esoteric formulae, whereas the Christian is saved by faith in God alone, nothing esoteric about the process. And nothing is said about a change in character of the Gnostic, just that he knows something other people don't and that somehow makes him "superior." (As a Protestant I disagree with the Catholic formulation "saved by faith AND works" as to a Protestant faith is the saving factor and the works are the predictable outcome which demonstrate the faith.)

Yes, as I go on to explain, but I guess I wasn't clear: That is, the original Creation was good but since the Fall we are out of touch with God and His law, which is bad, and the whole Creation was also cursed for our sake according to this scripture so that all living things and the material world itself have been altered in some way. I've tried to acknowledge both the similarity and the differences between the Christian and the Gnostic Fall. Certainly ignorance and blindness occurred with the Fall, but to the Christian it was a Fall from obedience into sin, therefore primarily a moral transformation from good to bad. The Gnostic belief, on the other hand, seems to be completely about knowledge, ignorance being a loss of knowledge, gnostic enlightenment restoring it -- no wrathful God, no moral debt owed that needs paying etc., simple knowledge. Seems to me that's a very big difference.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-16-2006 06:44 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 04-16-2006 06:57 PM

I've read up on all that at one time or another, though I don't remember a lot about it, but the original Buddhism taught by the Buddha was predominantly a meditative method to enlightenment, isn't that so? And this is what I'm saying is similar to gnosticism. One comes to enlightenment via various disciplines -- or in the case of gnosticism, some sort of magic apparently -- and that is what "saves" you. Yes, Buddha is transformed more or less into God, and faith is put in him somehow. But this seems an awfully odd idea since Buddha himself taught nothing of the sort. Seems to me to be an idea that probably developed out of some odd bits of knowledge of Christianity. Faith was never a factor in any pagan religion that I know of, but since Christ came it seems that almost all religions talk about faith. In any case I was comparing the Buddhist pursuit of enlightenment with gnosticism and there being a Buddhist sect that is based on faith in Buddha is something else -- and it also started a long time (1000 years or so) after Gnosticism was going strong, which further removes it from comparison with either Gnosticism or early Christianity.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-16-2006 07:16 PM

You'd have to provide a quote to show me this supposed similarity because I see none whatever. Sin is a condition of the human heart and the Gnostics find evil in the material world, not the human heart. It's not a matter of going further at all, it's a whole other concept. There is no Biblical problem with the material world, for one thing, that is completely a Gnostic idea. And they picture humanity as victim rather than perpetrator of the Fall, a good humanity that just sort of got disconnected from their good God somehow or other through no fault of their own.This entity(?) called sophia "fell" -- see Message 13 -- and this word isn't even defined, in this message at least, just plain "fell," sort of like falling out of a tree or something, and "created" the "demiurge" or bad God or something like that. This is a whole other religion than Christianity.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-18-2006 01:07 PM