Gnosticism, or mainstream Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican/Protestant Christianity?

[Zioneer]

Not the one based on special esoteric knowledge for a secretive elite few.

BUT MUH SACRED FEMININE!

Technically Mormonism has a Heavenly Mother to go along with a Heavenly Father/God the Father.

So you don't need Gnosticism for that.

[Zioneer]

Not the one based on special esoteric knowledge for a secretive elite few.

BUT MUH SACRED FEMININE!

Technically Mormonism has a Heavenly Mother to go along with a Heavenly Father/God the Father.

So you don't need Gnosticism for that.

Mormonism is basically a superficially-Gnostic heresy.

Not really? I mean, we don't believe that God is evil, we don't believe that flesh is evil (indeed, we celebrate mortality), while we do have "secret" ordinances in which you have to be authorized to take part in, it's theoretically open to any baptized member of the church, we definitely don't see procreation as evil, there's no such thing as the Demiurge in Mormonism, and etc.

[Zioneer]

Not the one based on special esoteric knowledge for a secretive elite few.

BUT MUH SACRED FEMININE!

Technically Mormonism has a Heavenly Mother to go along with a Heavenly Father/God the Father.

So you don't need Gnosticism for that.

Mormonism is basically a superficially-Gnostic heresy.

Not really? I mean, we don't believe that God is evil, we don't believe that flesh is evil (indeed, we celebrate mortality), while we do have "secret" ordinances in which you have to be authorized to take part in, it's theoretically open to any baptized member of the church, we definitely don't see procreation as evil, there's no such thing as the Demiurge in Mormonism, and etc.

Well, Mormons aren't exactly Gnostic (hence the "superficially"), but they do share more than most of Christianity: the Mormon version of God is very similar to the concept of the Demiurge in that the Heavenly Father is not the highest God but only one in a long series of exalted men; Mormon exaltation is essentially a version of gnosis; the way Mormonism treats knowledge and revelation is pretty Gnostic; Mormon ideas of pre-existence have Gnostic roots, as does the idea of Jesus and Lucifer being brothers; etc. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of other heresies syncreticized into the mix (like Arianism), but the Gnosticism is pretty strong.

Technically Heavenly Father is the highest God in the sense that if there are others, we don't really care about them.

I'll give you the exaltation/gnosis issue. Pre-existence, I haven't studied gnostic views on that, though Mormons tend to brag whenever evidence of pre-existence views comes up in early Christianity. Jesus and Lucifer being brothers seems logically sound if the rest of us are spiritual siblings.

As for Arianism, how does that come into the picture? Also, dang, that's pretty impressive for a faith that originated with a fairly uneducated farmboy.

[Zioneer]

Also, dang, that's pretty impressive for a faith that originated with a fairly uneducated farmboy.

As a non-Mormon, one must assume that the Freemasons possess(ed) a far more impressive cache of esoteric knowledge than they've ever officially been given credit for. That's the only way to make it make sense.

Joseph Smith only joined the Freemasons in 1842 or thereabouts. Most of what he was teaching was already there before any affiliation with Freemasonry. I had a timeline I found that seemed to prove that most of the teachings people think he stole from the Masons were taught months if not years before joining them. I'll see if I can find it again.

[Zioneer]

Not the one based on special esoteric knowledge for a secretive elite few.

BUT MUH SACRED FEMININE!

Technically Mormonism has a Heavenly Mother to go along with a Heavenly Father/God the Father.

So you don't need Gnosticism for that.

Mormonism is basically a superficially-Gnostic heresy.

Not really? I mean, we don't believe that God is evil, we don't believe that flesh is evil (indeed, we celebrate mortality), while we do have "secret" ordinances in which you have to be authorized to take part in, it's theoretically open to any baptized member of the church, we definitely don't see procreation as evil, there's no such thing as the Demiurge in Mormonism, and etc.

Well, Mormons aren't exactly Gnostic (hence the "superficially"), but they do share more than most of Christianity: the Mormon version of God is very similar to the concept of the Demiurge in that the Heavenly Father is not the highest God but only one in a long series of exalted men; Mormon exaltation is essentially a version of gnosis; the way Mormonism treats knowledge and revelation is pretty Gnostic; Mormon ideas of pre-existence have Gnostic roots, as does the idea of Jesus and Lucifer being brothers; etc. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of other heresies syncreticized into the mix (like Arianism), but the Gnosticism is pretty strong.

Technically Heavenly Father is the highest God in the sense that if there are others, we don't really care about them.

I'll give you the exaltation/gnosis issue. Pre-existence, I haven't studied gnostic views on that, though Mormons tend to brag whenever evidence of pre-existence views comes up in early Christianity. Jesus and Lucifer being brothers seems logically sound if the rest of us are spiritual siblings.

As for Arianism, how does that come into the picture? Also, dang, that's pretty impressive for a faith that originated with a fairly uneducated farmboy.

You believe Jesus is a created being, no?

We do not. However, we believe that all human souls (sometimes called "intelligences") were unorganized matter from the beginning of the universe, and that God the Father organized them into coherent beings which we now recognize as human spirits. All other matter was organized as well. Christ was either organized from the beginning as God the Father was, or organized as human souls, but the first organized of all of them. In any case, he assisted God the Father with the Creation, which in LDS theology was more of turning pure matter into what is now the universe, rather than something out of nothing.

Which now that I think about it, kind of points to more Gnosticism in Mormonism than I thought...