Post by rmcdra on Jan 19, 2015 11:22:41 GMT -5
The gospel of truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the Logos, who has come from the Pleroma and who is in the thought and the mind of the Father; he it is who is called "the Savior," since that is the name of the work which he must do for the redemption of those who have not known the Father. For the name of the gospel is the manifestation of hope, since that is the discovery of those who seek him, because the All sought him from whom it had come forth. You see, the All had been inside of him, that illimitable, inconceivable one, who is better than every thought.
The opening is pretty much introduction to being a Gnostic. The good news of truth is a joy to those who know the Father-Mother through Christ, the one that is the perfect image of the Mother-Father. Christ is called savior because this image is what redeems those who do not know the Father-Mother. It is this image that reveals the nature of the Father-Mother to us and lets us know that the nature of God is love. Truth is what brings hope. It brings hope because we can expect that truth will bring us closer to God. Hope is not just wishful thinking but has a meaning that is lost to modern English of being “a promise that is expected to be fulfilled.” This is why hope is placed as a virtue in Christianity since without expectations, we loose confidence and without confidence we lose the courage to love. The image of Christ is what God would be like if God were a man. Just as the fullness of God is within Christ, the fullness of God and the Christ spirit is within each of us. To know yourself is to know a fragment of God.
This ignorance of the Father brought about terror and fear. And terror became dense like a fog, that no one was able to see. Because of this, error became strong. But it worked on its hylic substance vainly, because it did not know the truth. It was in a fashioned form while it was preparing, in power and in beauty, the equivalent of truth. This then, was not a humiliation for him, that illimitable, inconceivable one. For they were as nothing, this terror and this forgetfulness and this figure of falsehood, whereas this established truth is unchanging, unperturbed and completely beautiful.
While on the surface it is a telling of the Gnostic Creation story, it's also telling of the nature of human kind. The absence of truth brings about terror and fear. The less we know about something the more apt we are to fear it. This fear becomes a fog and we are unable to see things for what they are, only through the lens of our fear. When we let our fears take over, error takes place of truth. Again we fill in the gaps of what we don't know and use beliefs in place of truth and over time we begin to think our beliefs are truths. Truth has nothing to fear though for if it is true then nothing you can do will change the truth. It's error that has to fear for if the error is revealed to not be truth then it will lose its power.
For this reason, do not take error too seriously. Thus, since it had no root, it was in a fog as regards the Father, engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears in order, by these means, to beguile those of the middle and to make them captive. The forgetfulness of error was not revealed. It did not become light beside the Father. Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, although it existed because of him. What exists in him is knowledge, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed and that they might know the Father, Since forgetfulness existed because they did not know the Father, if they then come to know the Father, from that moment on forgetfulness will cease to exist.
This is why we use beliefs as tools because we know that beliefs are not the same as truth. If we are confronted with the fact that our beliefs are false, we can discard them. Error relies on trickery and fear to keep its power. It's not anything revealed but a created thing that demands submission and worship. Compared to truth, it is nothing. This line about forgetfulness “existing because of the Father” seems to be a little off but since I do not know Coptic, nor do I have a translator's notes, I'll take a stab at what I think it could mean. Since a lie does require a grain of truth to exist, error could exist as a by product of the fact that there is truth present. This interpretation is consistent with On the Origin of the World in which Sophia creates the Demiurge in an attempt to know God without her consort, the Logos. Rather than ignore it, we'll hold our belief for now until the “truth” comes to correct us on this matter. This next part is a reiteration of the earlier passage. Error exists because of lack of knowledge but once you know, error ceases. In a practical, “apply this in your life” sense, this means until you know and understand better, you're going to do wrong. Once you know and understand a better way, you cease to want to do wrong. Until your come to know something, you wouldn't know any different or any better.
The opening is pretty much introduction to being a Gnostic. The good news of truth is a joy to those who know the Father-Mother through Christ, the one that is the perfect image of the Mother-Father. Christ is called savior because this image is what redeems those who do not know the Father-Mother. It is this image that reveals the nature of the Father-Mother to us and lets us know that the nature of God is love. Truth is what brings hope. It brings hope because we can expect that truth will bring us closer to God. Hope is not just wishful thinking but has a meaning that is lost to modern English of being “a promise that is expected to be fulfilled.” This is why hope is placed as a virtue in Christianity since without expectations, we loose confidence and without confidence we lose the courage to love. The image of Christ is what God would be like if God were a man. Just as the fullness of God is within Christ, the fullness of God and the Christ spirit is within each of us. To know yourself is to know a fragment of God.
This ignorance of the Father brought about terror and fear. And terror became dense like a fog, that no one was able to see. Because of this, error became strong. But it worked on its hylic substance vainly, because it did not know the truth. It was in a fashioned form while it was preparing, in power and in beauty, the equivalent of truth. This then, was not a humiliation for him, that illimitable, inconceivable one. For they were as nothing, this terror and this forgetfulness and this figure of falsehood, whereas this established truth is unchanging, unperturbed and completely beautiful.
While on the surface it is a telling of the Gnostic Creation story, it's also telling of the nature of human kind. The absence of truth brings about terror and fear. The less we know about something the more apt we are to fear it. This fear becomes a fog and we are unable to see things for what they are, only through the lens of our fear. When we let our fears take over, error takes place of truth. Again we fill in the gaps of what we don't know and use beliefs in place of truth and over time we begin to think our beliefs are truths. Truth has nothing to fear though for if it is true then nothing you can do will change the truth. It's error that has to fear for if the error is revealed to not be truth then it will lose its power.
For this reason, do not take error too seriously. Thus, since it had no root, it was in a fog as regards the Father, engaged in preparing works and forgetfulnesses and fears in order, by these means, to beguile those of the middle and to make them captive. The forgetfulness of error was not revealed. It did not become light beside the Father. Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, although it existed because of him. What exists in him is knowledge, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed and that they might know the Father, Since forgetfulness existed because they did not know the Father, if they then come to know the Father, from that moment on forgetfulness will cease to exist.
This is why we use beliefs as tools because we know that beliefs are not the same as truth. If we are confronted with the fact that our beliefs are false, we can discard them. Error relies on trickery and fear to keep its power. It's not anything revealed but a created thing that demands submission and worship. Compared to truth, it is nothing. This line about forgetfulness “existing because of the Father” seems to be a little off but since I do not know Coptic, nor do I have a translator's notes, I'll take a stab at what I think it could mean. Since a lie does require a grain of truth to exist, error could exist as a by product of the fact that there is truth present. This interpretation is consistent with On the Origin of the World in which Sophia creates the Demiurge in an attempt to know God without her consort, the Logos. Rather than ignore it, we'll hold our belief for now until the “truth” comes to correct us on this matter. This next part is a reiteration of the earlier passage. Error exists because of lack of knowledge but once you know, error ceases. In a practical, “apply this in your life” sense, this means until you know and understand better, you're going to do wrong. Once you know and understand a better way, you cease to want to do wrong. Until your come to know something, you wouldn't know any different or any better.
