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betty: Actually, I think spirited irish has been “hammering away” at Paine because she recognizes him for what he fundamentally is: a gnostic thinker.

Spirited: Yes, and thank-you for your perception. Gnostic-thinking emerged out of the Renaissance as a rebellion against the Triune God but Jesus Christ God Incarnate in particular, Original Sin, and the idea of an eternal material or fleshy existence.

The Renaissance reawakened a magic view of the world closely connected with pagan Gnostic sectarianism, Eastern pantheism as well as Hermetic and alchemical-scientism.

Along with Eastern pantheism came spiritual evolution, reincarnation, karma and occultism (spiritual or magic science/ Western Magic Way) while for its’ materialist counterpart there eventually came Darwinism and determinism rather than karma (natural science, ‘secular’ Western Magic Way).

betty: “The undercurrents of esoteric gnosis, however, do not simply disappear. They emerge in the early part of the eighteenth century with the founding of Freemasonry and other spiritualist associations. Masonry in particular stands out as the equivalent of an alternative church for intellectual and social elites....”

Freemasonry and it’s derivatives (i.e., Secular Humanism, materialist atheism) is the philosophically materialist counterpart to spiritually pantheist Roisicrucianism (Cosmic Humanism) and it’s derivatives such as the pantheist religion of natural science proposed by Paine, Blavatsky’s Theosophy and today’s New Age spirituality.

“Alternative churches for intellectual and social elites” are modern equivalents of Mystery Religions (i.e., Scientology, B’hai, Theosophy). The mother of all Mystery Religions and their modern counterparts is Mystery Religion Babylon.

Transhumanism is a representative example of a modern Gnostic pagan Mystery Religion. It is a powerfully influential planetary ‘elite’ movement that believes man can begin a radical transfiguration of himself by merging his brain with technology with the long term goal of eventually transferring his ‘essence’ (Gnostic thinkers reject Imago Dei) out of his decaying body and into a highly advanced robo-machine. A Daily Mail article reported that,

‘...inserting technology into human brains is not the only thing going on. Some scientists also want to insert human brains into technology” (”Hitler would have loved The Singularity: Mind-blowing benefits of merging human brains and computers,” Ian Morris, 6 February 2012, dailymail.co.uk)

Early on Lewis understood that Cosmic and Secular Humanism were merely two sides of the same revival of Gnostic pagan monism. Thus he argued, Cosmic and Secular Humanism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies of naturalism united against the Creator Who exists outside of the time-space universe, His Revelation to mankind, Original Sin, His moral law, Christian theism, and Christian-based civilization.

During Lewis’s lifetime, cosmic and secular humanist ideas and philosophical systems were growing in acceptance and popularity throughout academia, within seminaries, universities and among the masses.

Among common points of departure for both types of humanism are the following ideas:

1. Rejection of the living God Who dwells outside the time-space universe with special antipathy directed against Jesus Christ God incarnate in favor of “only this world” naturalism; no God, a distant God or pantheist conceptions of God, and Jesus Christ as a mortal teacher such as Buddha, the angelic brother of Lucifer, or perhaps a highly evolved Transcended Master or spirit guide.

2. Rejection of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo in favor of ‘this-worldly’ mechanical evolutionary processes

3. Rejection of physical eternal life in either Paradise (renewed earth) or hell in favor of no afterlife whatsoever or wholly spiritual conceptions.

4. Humanity as deity.

5. Subjectivism: No right way, no wrong way, all directions lead to the same place.

The dangers of holding erroneous views are profound and in his book, “The Great Divorce,” Lewis attempted to address them by presenting us with a masterful study of the psychology of the hell-bound (i.e. Gnostic elites) versus the psychology of the Paradise-bound.

As the hell-bound depart the bus they are shocked by the realization that not only are they dirty ghosts but they cannot abide the matter, the fleshiness of heaven because in life, like the pagan sages, the Gnostic Arnobius and contemporary secular and cosmic transhumanists, they were dissatisfied with their own bodies and created condition as either male or female for example, as well as with the finiteness of their own minds. In “Adversus nationes” (2.37) Arnobius complains,

“If souls were of the Lord’s race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine.” (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)

Molnar explains that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that from being as one with or an aspect of the Divine Substance souls had inexplicably fallen into the material realm, a place of misery, suffering and binary, which means for example, two distinct sexes rather than a two-in-one, the androgynous being called ‘gay’ in modern terminology. Salvation was secured through the mystery cults which,

“...afforded their devotees the opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine. The process of ‘initiation’ in the mystery religions, therefore, had as its objective the liberation of the soul from its earthly...chains” (C.K. Barrett cited in “The Interruption of Eternity,” Carl A. Raschke, p. 28)

In his “Journey to the Celestial City,” Wayne Martindale describes the hell-bound (Gnostic elites) as haters of good people. Self-centeredness, hate, and envy twist their hearts, thus they prefer evil thoughts, evil words, evil companions and evil acts, though it makes them wretched and miserable. Thus when they encounter good people they,

“...condemn them, perverting their reason by rationalizing evil and finding ways to blame the good or God or religion for their problems and the problems of the world. They already hate goodness because it implicitly condemns the evil they have chosen. They wouldn’t like heaven if they could have it. They are, in a sense, already in hell, preferring darkness to light.” (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p 76)

Read More: Bus Ride from Hell http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/120904

Molnar explains that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that from being as one with or an aspect of the Divine Substance souls had inexplicably fallen into the material realm....

Thank you for your excellent, informative essay/post, dear spirited!

RE: the italics at the top: I find it inexplicable that Thomas Molnar would regard Plato as a gnostic thinker. I don't think he is any such thing. Plato in his works describes a Great Hierarchy of Being, which consists of four "partners": God–Man–World–Society. God is the principal partner; the preeminent relation is between God and Man; relations to World and Society flow from the critical relation between God and Man. Plus Plato evidently believed in the necessity of divine Judgment of each and every human soul. He presents this idea in the Pamphyllian Myth, a/k/a/ the Myth of Er (i.e., a sort of "Everyman"), found in the Republic.

Er is a mortal man who descends alive to the underworld and witnesses the judgment of souls, according to divine justice — and then is somehow able to "come back" alive to the world to tell mankind what he had seen. Plato exhorts all men to prepare their souls for such Judgment, for the worst thing that can happen to a man is to face Ananke, the mediator of the judgment, with a soul full of punishable injustice....

That does not at all sound like the "gnostic attitude" to me.

As to what the "gnostic attitude" may be, Eric Voegelin describes it this way ["Science, Politics, and Gnosticism," in Modernity Without Restraint, Manfred Henningsen, ed., 2000; p. 297f]:

[1] It must first be pointed out that the Gnostic is dissatisfied with his situation. This, in itself, is not especially surprising. We all have cause to be not completely satisfied with one aspect or another of the situation in which we find ourselves.

[2] Not quite so understandable is the second aspect of the gnostic attitude: the belief that the drawbacks of the situation can be attributed to the fact that the world is intrinsically poorly organized. For it is likewise possible to assume that the order of being as it is given to men [wherever its origin is to be sought] is good and that it is we human beings who are inadequate. If in a given situation something is not as it should be, then the fault is to be found in the wickedness of the world.
[3] The third characteristic is the belief that salvation from the evil of the world is possible.
[4] From this follows the belief that the order of being will have to be changed in a historical process. From a wretched world a good one must evolve historically. This assumption is not altogether self-evident, because the Christian solution might also be considered, namely, that the world throughout history will remain as it is and that man's salvational fulfillment is brought about through grace in death.
[5] With this fifth point we come to the gnostic trait in the narrower sense — the belief that a change in the order of being lies in the realm of human action, that this salvational act is possible through man's own effort.
[6] If it is possible, however, so to work a structural change in the given order of being that we can be satisfied with it as a perfect one, then it becomes the task of the Gnostic to seek out the prescription for such a change. Knowledge — Gnosis — of the method of altering being is the central concern of the Gnostic. As the sixth feature of the Gnostic attitude, therefore, we recognize the construction of a formula for self and world salvation, as well as the Gnostic's readiness to come forward as a prophet who will proclaim his knowledge about the salvation of mankind.

Generally, it will be found that magical operations are involved in [6] — as for instance, Nietzsche's "Death of God," or Hegel's self-divinization in the Phänomonologie.

Anyhoot, I am convinced that Plato had no truck with such thinking and general attitude toward the world and man's place in it.

The great symbol Dike — "Justice, order, law, right" — is divine, not man-made; it cannot be repealed by man; every man is eternally subject to it; no man can ever escape it.

Just some thoughts for your consideration, dear sister in Christ!