Is Calvinism a form of Gnostic Christianity?

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.

then again as always, who are you to say what is christian and what is not? sigh, the only parallel i made was there was a fall in both beliefs, they take differing forms but its still a fall then i guess most of them are true then? the mormons believe this, so do the catholics as i said who are you to decide this? if god wants to say this is wrong he can say it himself, stop judging people thank you for not taking someones beliefs serously, and it is a fall just not yours

And this has what to do with gnostism?
sorry but really what does buddhism have to do withn gnostism?you shouldn't tack on beliefs that do not show up in the religion, i mean you would get upset if we started claiming christians eat babies wouldn't you? but gnostics don't believe in a flawed state of humanity they believe in a failed state of the material world,it shoudln't exist as it is in other words

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 have some questions for you Faith. The first one was at the end of my last post but you must have missed it (my fault for suggesting that you skip part of my post ).

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(By the way, can you answer an off-topic question I've got about Calvinist theology? I'm quite impressed by the implacable logic of Calvinism, but one thing isn't clear to me. I can understand that logically God must know beforehand who is saved, and that therefore those who are going to be saved must receive the call to be saved, and can't avoid being saved. But does that mean that everyone who has faith is necessarily one of the saved, or is it possible for someone to hear the call, have faith, but not be saved, because they're not predestined to be saved?)

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Now for my response to your post: Is there a particular point in time when the Catholic church became apostate? (This isn't a trick question - I'm just showing my ignorance!). Two questions:1. So what does the notion of a Fallen world mean? I got the impression from the numerous threads on the subject here that evil and cruelty were intoduced into the world by the Fall. Why did man's trangression have this effect?2. If the world is basically good despite the presence of evil in the world, then doesn't that mean that God is present in the material world? And if that's the case, then what stops us coming to God through recognition of his presence here? Is it a lack of something in ourselves?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

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.

So let me get this right. Human beings have no free will to do good before they're saved. Whatever we do, we're equally sinful creatures (in another thread iano explained that, in the eyes of God, there's no real difference between Mother Theresa and Hitler, if they're not saved).Now at some point God calls those who are predestined to be saved, and these elect cannot resist God's call. From this point on the elect have no free will to do evil.I don't think I've misrepresented Calvinist doctrine here, have I?To non-Calvinists (Christian and otherwise) this doctrine seems strangely amoral. The state of sin doesn't seem to have anything to do with morality (how can we be said to be moral or immoral if we have no free will?), but instead seems to be a state of separation from God. And similarly, salvation is not a reward for any moral actions performed, but a state in which the saved are no longer separated from God. And how is this change of state achieved? By God intervening directly to change the person so that they're no longer separated from him.Now you can use the terms sin and righteousness all you like, but this sounds to me like Gnostic enlightenment, a sudden change from ignorance to knowledge, changing the person permanently. And what makes the parallel with Gnosticism even more suggestive is the belief that, once changed in this way, the saved person can never be damned, whatever they do: (entry on Gnosticism in the online Catholic Encyclopedia: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Gnosticism)

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

I thought I was just paraphrasing what you said in the previous post: Did I misunderstand you? To me these two phrases sound very like you're saying our Fallen state is a state of ignorance and blindness. Not too dissimilar in fact to the Gnostic beliefs you described in other posts.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Buddhism has been going for about 500 years longer than Christianity and has developed almost as many varieties. In China and Japan one of the most popular forms is called 'Pure Land Buddhism' and I think you'd be surprised how similar to Protestantism it can seem.Here's a short biography of Shinran (1173-1263 AD), founder of the Jodo Shinsu ('True Pure Land') sect, in Japan: (from The Religious Experience of Mankind, Ninian Smart, Fount Paperbacks, 1982 (p. 268))

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

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

I don't want to push my argument about the similarities too far, but I think it's a given in Gnostic thought that the Fall brought sin into the world. In fact they seem to go further than you do and insist that the whole material world is evil because of the Fall. But I concede 'no wrathful God, no moral debt owed that needs paying' - it seems to be a given that the good God is on their side, wanting and helping their spiritual essence to escape the evil material world.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Yes, I think the Buddha might have been a little horrified by this perversion of his message. I might have agreed if they were closer to obvious points of contact with Christians. But I think this is probably a case of convergent evolution, i.e. similar circumstances generating a similar reaction.In a sense Buddhism (and Taoism) do stress the paradoxical notion that enlightenment can only be achieved by NOT striving towards enlightenment, so I can understand how they could have arrived at the notion of salvation by faith alone, faced with a contemporary Buddhist monasticism that was as rigid, formalised and corrupt as medieval Catholicism.In Protestantism/Pure Land Buddhism this NOT striving is achieved by having faith in Christ/the Buddha (which is effectively letting go of human striving after salvation and waiting for God/the Buddha to come to you). In Zen Buddhism/Taoism satori or wisdom is achieved by the act of letting go (wu-wei) - any works performed, such as meditation, are paradoxically aimed at stopping striving.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible