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,"
hmm have any thing on the ignorace?, the fall itself comes from one of the eminations falling not man, its named sophia or wisdom. Its not saying this world is a veil to another, its saying its not a perfect world, but is created by a demon or demiurge.
to me that sounds a lot like how some christian fundis view the world. I've heard the world refered to as being ruled by satan, and i have read one poster who claims the world is not the real one but will be the next one - ie:the world is an illusion
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.
they believe that sophia in its want to see the unknown god, fell and created the demiurge that created the universe
a good site for a run down of it
Gnosticism - Wikipedia
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.
there is no true church there never has been, there will never be one, even the disciples didn't agree on anything.
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.
then you didn't really get my meaning, i was refering to the orignal meaning of dogma, which is secret knowlege, we are talking about gnostics who are all about knowlege. i was pointing out the irony of our useage of words then and now, no one uses dogma to mean secret knowlege anymore they use it to mean unbendable orthodoxy
and yes the church had secret knowlege take a look at
Esoteric Christianity - Wikipediapeople always want to give more meaning to things they believe in than what is really there, sorry but i include the fundamentalist-creationist hackery of Pauls writings, namely the claims of original sin that aren't really there
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