robbdn

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with the depiction of the Gnostic texts in this thread. Many of the Gnostic texts were written to criticize the canonization of Christian doctrine in general, and many of these texts were written by fringe monks, and they openly acknowledged that their texts were completely made up and in no way divine texts. Therefore, it's not accurate at all to state that they actually believed in any firm dogmatization of religion such as "secret knowledge" and so forth. For the most part, that was their problem. Most of the "secret knowledge" stuff is a criticism of emerging Catholicism's tendency to claim that they, and only they, knew the true gospel of Jesus, while the gnostics were more inclined to say, "Jesus said a lot of stuff, and all of it can be applied to our lives in different ways, and we should use the bits that help us live better lives, not the bits you tell us to." In all truthfulness, the gnostics were influenced by both the teachings of Jesus and buddhist teachings, hence they didn't really believe in absolute divine knowledge and an absolute way into heaven... they just tended to say rely on the teachings of Jesus that can lead you to enlightenment, and here are some of our made up stories of how we think that might be achieved, by following the general gist of what we think (but you should make up your own mind) Jesus was getting at... but ultimately it doesn't really matter how, as long as you are enlightened in the end.

If asked, I would venture that it was with similar intentions that Dan Brown set about writing his highly entertaining and terrible prose. It doesn't really matter what bits are true, just think about this stuff, and if it helps to enlighten you about the aim of religion with regards to the individual and independent soul, so be it, and if not, then at least you were entertained in the process.

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