Welcome to Gnostic Insights. My name is Dr. Cyd Ropp, and I'm your host. In 2019, I posted an article to my new Gnostic Gospel blog called If All Are Redeemed, Why Not Be Sinful?, and I'd like to share that with you today. Much of this episode was broadcasted in May of 2021; this content has been updated as my gnosis has deepened. One of the big heresies of Gnosticism is that all Second Order Powers are redeemed by Christ and all will someday return to the paradise of the Fullness. Yes. Yay! Everyone's going to heaven! No one is going to hell, not even the fallen angels. What joy! This seems to fly in the face of Christian Orthodoxy that promotes the idea that only those humans who confess a belief in Jesus as the Christ will make it into heaven. And those who don't believe in Jesus will go to an eternal damnation of suffering in hell. Conventional Christianity states that Jesus came to save humanity, but only those who acknowledge Jesus as the only son of God and invite him into their hearts will be saved. This is the basis for all evangelism and all churches that follow the Nicene Creed, which is to say all Christian churches, whether Catholic or Protestant. This is why Christians are so keen on saving souls. They don't want you to suffer for eternity in hell. The Gnostic church begs to differ with that common interpretation of Christ's mission. According to the books of the Nag Hammadi Library, all of Creation will be redeemed and returned to the Fullness and the Father's home in heaven. All of creation, everyone and everything, will be made clean and pure and holy by the end. As they say, it will all be good in the end, and if it's not good yet, then it's not yet the end. Gnosis refers to the ability to use reason and logic to arrive at spiritual truth. So let's think together about this idea of Christ and redemption, and who does or does not go to heaven. First, if Christ's redemption were a matter of your belief, then Christ's mission of salvation would be limited to what you believe. In other words, you would be the one holding the power of salvation, not Christ. Does that make any sense to you? Are you the one who redeems, or is Christ? Can you see how making your belief central to redemption actually limits the power of Christ? Can you see how that makes sinful humans more powerful than the mission of Christ's redemption? Limiting Christ to your belief, it seems to me, is the greater heresy than simply trusting Christ to accomplish the mission. It is Christ’s job to redeem humanity, not yours. Second, according to Gnostic texts, all creatures great and small will be redeemed. This means that all creatures are going to heaven. My dog has never professed a belief in Jesus as the Christ. Yet my dog is going to heaven. The fishes in the water, the birds in the air, the insects, the forest animals—all Second Order Powers are redeemed by Christ. It is the job of the Christ to redeem creation, irrespective of creation’s ability to confess that fact. Do you think that only good dogs go to heaven or nice fishes? Maybe only herbivores. Perhaps only parrots who can say Jesus saves. Once we concede that it is only the Christ that can redeem, then what is the point of leading a virtuous life? Why not sin up until the end, have all kinds of fun and then waltz into heaven without repentance? Repentance, by the way, means to feel sorrow and regret. Are we allowed to sin willy nilly with no negative consequences? An even more profound question is why were we created in the first place? According to the Tripartite Tractate, the 2nd Order Powers were created in order to rescue the fallen Aeon known as Logos. The most perfect and complete of the individual Aeons, Logos crowned the top of the aeonic hierarchy. This single Aeon consisted of all the attributes of the good and perfect Fullness rolled up into one individual. And as you know by now, from listening to the first eight episodes of Gnostic Insights,
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Sep 23 202332 m