I'm saying the idea of the invisible Church is itself vaguely gnostic, not in its background but in its essence.
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Not so fast sherlock.
As I recall, that notion has been soundly refuted many moons and posts ago.
In my construction on reality, one can not make of gnosticism a rubber wet blanket tailor-made to be one size fits all PROTESTANTS only.
Nonsense.
Merium Webster
Main Entry: gnos·ti·cism
Pronunciation: 'näs-t&-"si-z&m
Function: noun
Usage: often capitalized
: the thought and practice especially of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries distinguished by the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis
If we are going to rubberize the notions of gnosticism--the following is more logical, to me . . .
The TOM [Traditions of Men] edifice asserts that wrestling with our current tangible realities is essentially evil--even with tangible SCRIPTURE . . . and that we are emancipated MUCH MORE SUCCESSFULLY by KNOWLEDGE of departed saints and reverence toward them, veneration toward them . . . even covert worship of them . . .
If gnosticism is the topic . . . seems to me the plethora of extra-Biblilcal saints and immaculate . . . constructions . . . builds an enormous edifice that quite consistently facilitates, encourages a mental manipulation of reality and religion quite along gnostic lines.
It's a paradox, really. On the one hand there's all this immersion in drearily obsessive/compulsive tangible fossilized rituals and traditions and doctrines of men. On the other hand, there's all this unBiblical supposedly heavenly minded stuff of focusing on supposedly heavenly things--any one of a list of hundreds upon hundreds of heavenly beings--as long as it distracts from God's Glory and Christ's intercessions for us . . . all the better.
Sigh.
Amen. At their peril.