A refutation of dualism in the Christian gnostic tradition.

摘要

This paper refutes the notion of Gnostic dualism and supports the notion of Gnostic monism, i.e., the Gnostic ethos concerned with the deliverance from error, not sin, through psycho-spiritual integration via epinoic/metanoic awareness. The Gnostics of the Nag Hammadi Library did not consider themselves heretics. However, the Church Fathers of the 1 st through 3rd centuries C.E. fought to eradicate the Gnostic notion of experienced religion, promulgating an authorized system of belief in its stead: extra ecclesiam nulla salvus. The potential of at-one-ness fragmented by Papal authority, the epinoic/metanoic function, inherent but latent in all human beings as an integrating, ground-of-being intelligence, was banished in favor of a rigidly hierarchal belief system. Had Valentinus, the most renowned of Gnostic thinkers, proved as politically adept as Clement I, Bishop of Rome, then Christianity perhaps would not have devolved into what Nietzsche contemptuously dismissed as a religion of slaves.