Monday, June 18, 2012

Closing the in and out gaps of Gnosticism


This is the pattern I see in religious history: ancient religious Gnosticism turned inward to the God within, then according to Robert Ellwood's “The Politics of Myth,” came what Voegelin called political gnosticism (Voltaire, Comte, Marx) with a secular vision of an end time utopia (heaven) in the material world, then came “mythological gnosticism” (Jung, Campbell) which turned back inward again disillusioned with the faceless modern world seeking psychological grounding in myths.

Now the Theoevolutionary Church turns outward again while including the gnostic inward vision in the Twofold Path. Unlike the gnostics the inward God is seen as a mirror of the outward Godhood which is evolved to in the cosmos, gnostic idealism is grounded in theological materialism, the Spirit-Will activates life and life is then shaped by outside evolution. Life, the desire to live, or the Spirit-Will, comes before the randomness of evolution that shapes life. The modern divide between the traditional and modern, the romantic and the Enlightenment, religion and science can be joined.

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