Tag: Christianity
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Christianity: The Ultimate Secret
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Today there is an unprecedented thirst for the innermost secrets of Christianity. The quest for these lost teachings drives the plots of best-sellers like The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail; it is discussed in major newsmagazines; and it is the subject of intense speculation and debate among believers and nonbelievers alike. What are these secrets?…
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Judas: The Greatest Disciple?
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At the climax of Dante’s Inferno, the narrator and his guide, Vergil, make their way to the deepest part of hell in the centre of the Earth. Embedded there is the fallen Lucifer, a hideous, three-headed figure with batlike wings. Each of his heads is chewing mercilessly on an archvillain. Two are reserved for Brutus and…
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True Light of Christ
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True religion is based upon the premise that Truth, or the way of life as it really is, cannot be understood by a materialistic approach to life. Questions arising with regard to the materialistic approach and the true spiritual approach differ enormously because organised religion fits its tenets into crystallised ideas on life and being…
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The Gnostics: An Interview with Tobias Churton
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Tobias Churton is one of today’s most lively and spirited investigators of that underground stream of the Western tradition known as Gnosticism. He first became interested in the Gnostics while reading for a degree in theology at the University of Oxford in the 1970s. Soon after leaving, he became interested in exploring these ideas for…
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The Gospel of Mary Magdelene
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Of all the earliest followers of Christ, none has sparked the level of interest generated by one particular woman – the biblical figure known as Mary Magdalene. Revered as a saint, maligned as a prostitute, imagined as the literal bride of Christ, Mary of Magdala stands apart as an enigmatic individual about whom little is…
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Pre-Nicene Christianity
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Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller reminds us that “having known him [Richard, Duc de Palatine] for more than twenty years the present writer can attest that this modern Gnostic leader was also profoundly learned in Gnostic scriptures and wished his church to be truly a Gnostic one.” We are making Bishop Richard, Duc de Palatine’s essay…
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The Mystery of Iniquity: Does Evil Exist or Do Bad Things Just Happen?
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On June 10, 1991, a cover story appeared in Time magazine on the topic of evil. The author, Lance Morrow, did not argue for a particular thesis and did not reach any conclusions. What he did, however, was in a sense more important. He began by stating three propositions: God is all-powerful. God is all-good.…
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What in the World is a Gnostic?
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Are we witnessing a rediscovery of Gnosticism? To judge from the burgeoning new literature and the increased use of the terms “gnosis” and “Gnosticism” in popular publications, the answer would seem to be yes. Only twenty-five years ago, when one used the word “Gnostic,” it was very likely to be misunderstood as “agnostic,” and thus…
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What Do the Lost Gospels Have to Teach?
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Over the last century, a number of previously lost and unknown texts have come to light and illumined the origins of the main religions of the West. The most famous include the Nag Hammadi library, unearthed in Egypt in 1945, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in Israel in 1947. The Gospel of Judas is…
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Rescuing the Bible from Literalism
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“The world,” wrote the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “is the totality of facts, not of things.” So it is, but facts take many forms. The hard-edged events of ordinary reality are only one form, and not always the most important. This insight can be hard to accept in the positivist world of mainstream Western thought. In…