Sophia and the Demiurge, Part II

I was hoping to generate some questions to know where to angle my future postings, but I suppose I will just continue with my generalities... A warning: this is going to be a mish-mash of different sources, since I'm not feeling the need for precision and citation.

The Gnostic beliefs tend to be what is considered a more conservative Christianity. The books and views it shares with Romanized Christianity is the Gospel of John and their intended separation from the passions of the physical world. However, the difference in concept is that the Gnostics believed much in the sense of Stoics and Eastern philosophy in the detachment from the physical world in order to lead an enlightened life, not necessarily that all pleasures must be abstained from because they are pleasurable and thereby evil.

Since the world was created by the proclaimed adversary to the true Godhead, everything of the world and this realm is seen as being separated from the Godhead, and thereby evil. In affect, humankind is inherently of the light, and imprisoned here in these bodies, subject to the Demiurge to defile, or to detach from worldly existence to once again transcend into the light. Where conservative Christianity believes in chastity and sanctity of marriage for the sake of averting promiscuity and promoting sinlessness, Gnostic faith would indicate that marriage is evil because it inherently produces children, and subjects more souls to the scrutiny of the Demiurge, being trapped in the darkness of physical existence; additionally, that the pleasure of union is a delight of the physical realm and can become a distraction.

However proscribed these perspectives may sound, the structure of the churches and actual practices were much less cumbersome and condemning than the Catholic Church. There were three levels of belief : the Listeners, the Believers, and the Perfect. Anyone and everyone could be a Listener, could come to services and hear the sermons, no obligations were placed on you, save your sole responsibility for yourself; Believers led a chaste life insomuch as honoring marriage vows and being an upright citizen; the Perfect were those who withdrew from such common existence as proprietor or spouse - those things which required a dependence on the physical world - and gave sermons and traveled. More often than not, the common person would live their life as a Believer and upon their deathbed be given the rights to be made Perfect. There were no other specific proscriptions.

Random tidbit :

All Protestant Churches acknowledge the Catholic Church as sovereign; the Affirmation of Faith and the Apostles Creed both decisively give the procession of the "Key" from the hand of Jesus to Peter to the first Bishop and then Pope. Most historians actually consider Peter and Paul's diversions to be the first heresy, and Jesus's brother James was the true receiver of the "Key" and the first Bishop of the Christian Church.

The only prevalent Christian Church that does not believe in the procession of the "Key" to Catholicism is the Mormon Church (founded by Masons... linked to the Templars... who fraternized with Gnostics and other "heresies")

A further tangent on the Apostles Creed : the creed itself was originally the Nicene Creed, the Apostolic right was given to it by Constantius who proclaimed himself descendant of the Apostles, and, as some believe, used it to establish a validity to the Roman church since at the time it was rather unpopular, most favoring either the "Heresies" or the other Orthodoxies (Eastern and Coptic).