I don’t know about you, but I love to explore new studies & to get more knowledge, my brain & curiosity crave for it! I know there are bad things over here (like the “DaVinci Code” accuracy about the Catholic faith, but I still believe it’s a masterpiece of storytelling), but the emotional sensation I have for it is so strong.
When I was a young adult, I was intrigued by the idea that there were other missing “gospels” other than the 4 that we know (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Perhaps, there were things we didn’t know about Jesus? Maybe the Church wasn’t aware of them? It was fascinating to know that ancient sources about the life of Jesus Christ could existed.
Some were of “gnostic” influences, which are an ancient idea of “hidden” or “secret” knowledge. The name comes from the Greek word “gnosis“, meaning “knowledge“. In contrast, the term “agnostic“, means someone who doesn’t know, mostly referring to the existence of God.
The Catholic Church condemned it as a heresy (wrong teaching) since the beginning. It wanted to mix up some Eastern philosophy & spirituality into Christianity. Now, what’s the problem? The idea behind “Gnosticism”, it’s this: the spirit is good, the body is evil. It’s a duality, a constant conflict in ourselves. They can’t stay together. The soul is imprisoned in the body, and need to be set free. Caution here! Now of course as a Catholic, we believe that the spirit is good, and the body is good too! Without it, the resurrection is meaningless! Think about it: if we separate the body from the soul, it’s called “death”. Right? The union of the body and the soul, it’s called “life”. No wonder the Church condemned it (Gnosticism). Also, it claims that salvation is obtained through these “secret knowledge”.
There were 3 criteria to select which books are officially recognized as “authentic” to use: apostolic, catholicity, orthodoxy.
Apostolic: was it written by an Apostle or an associate like Paul, Mark or Luke?
Catholicity: was it widely used & recognized by the majority of the Church? The origin of the Greek word “catholic” (καθολικός) means “universal”.
Orthodoxy: was it “conform” to the teachings of the Church or does it contradict it?
The Gnostic gospels were found in the Nag Hammadi Codex, in 1945.
Most of the so-called “lost Gospels” came from the 2nd century and beyond. (SOURCE)
Now if the “Gospel of Phillip” was true, I would be skeptical about the author: how could Philip, a disciple of Jesus, was able to lives until the 2nd century and write a book? He would be dead already by that time. Right? You can still read it just for fun, but it’s not a serious biblical scholarship to consider on. Not only it’s written late, but Church Fathers know they were forgeries (fake).
(EXAMPLE)
Who were the Gnostics? Were they heretics, or were they ancient visionaries who possessed the keys to the deepest secrets of Christianity? Where did they come from? Did they leave any descendants? Why were they suppressed by the early Church? And why do their ideas keep reappearing throughout history? Forbidden Faith is the first comprehensive popular history of Gnosticism, a secretive tradition that has survived for centuries in many forms and under many names.Richard Smoley, an expert in esoteric Christianity, traces the Gnostic legacy from its ancient roots in the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in Egypt; early second-century Gnostic communities of the Roman Empire; and the Manichaeans of Central Asia. He tracks how the Gnostic impulse was publicly repressed but survived underground in various forms of Christianity, surfacing again in the Middle Ages with the Cathars, a mysterious group of heretics who inspired the medieval tradition of courtly love but were then wiped out by the Inquisition.
Since then, Smoley reveals, the Gnostic legacy has survived into the modern era with the help of Jewish Kabbalists, the Freemasonry of our founding fathers, the poetry of William Blake, the intuitive insights of nineteenth-century American Theosophists, and the psychological works of Carl Jung. Finally, we learn how some of the key teachings of the Gnostics are being revived today in serious nonfiction such as the criticism of Harold Bloom, in the science fiction of Philip K. Dick, as well as in popular Hollywood films like The Matrix and The Da Vinci Code.
Why should Gnosticism exercise such a peculiar and lasting fascination? Throughout most of Christian history, Gnosticism was the “forbidden faith,” and such condemnation by the official Church might actually have served to endow the movement with glamour. But that explanation goes only so far. For the Gnostics to have such lasting appeal, it seems logical that they must offer solutions to some problems, solutions overlooked by mainstream religion. Forbidden Faith provides the enduring story and continuing legacy of those errant faithful who have had direct experiences of the divine that can’t be explained by the official beliefs of the Church.