I'm sorry. WHAT has been refuted repeatedly?
Maybe there's a misunderstanding. I'm not saying the any particular group of official gnostics are influencing Protestantism. I'm saying the idea of the invisible Church is itself vaguely gnostic, not in its background but in its essence.
Here's what it looks like to me, so here's what I was trying to put up for USEFUL (hey, this capitalization stuff is FUN!) comment and criticism:
Over here we have the vast clunkiness of RC and EO. It's easy to tell where the Church is, and who is in it, and who is, so to speak WAY in it. If you're Baptized you're in it, if you're in full communion with the See of Rome or the various Patriarchal Sees, you're WAY in it. But this is not a guaranteed pass into heaven.
And over THERE we have the elect, those who read the Scriptures in the Spirit and call upon the Name of the Lord with sincerity and have the "blessed assurance". But we're not sure who they are.
That's all I'm saying: two very different ecclesiologies, related to two very different views of authority. I'm not ready to rear back and unveil some devastating argument to show that I, like King Friday, am "correct as usual", because I don't have one. I'm just trying to grasp the question.
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.
That's all I'm saying: two very different ecclesiologies, related to two very different views of authority.
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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
THAT is indeed true.
The authority of The Word with the authority of Holy Spirit--paramount to all Biblical, thinking protestants.
Christ died to remove the [evidently by then 3 foot thick] veil, curtain between the Holy of Holies and the rest of us.
Romanism and all the embelishments, traditions of men, fossilized empty rituals etc. reinstalls that and more between man and God.
No thanks.
PING TO SOME BUDDIES.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
THAT is indeed true.
The authority of The Word with the authority of Holy Spirit--paramount to all Biblical, thinking protestants.
Christ died to remove the [evidently by then 3 foot thick] veil, curtain between the Holy of Holies and the rest of us.
Romanism and all the embelishments, traditions of men, fossilized empty rituals etc. reinstalls that and more between man and God.
No thanks.