Inside & Outside
Previously, I submitted a working definition for gnosticism, an infamously vague category which typically serves to mark various doctrines as heterodox. These still have in my view a family resemblance, despite the exonymic nature of the term itself. There’s no minimum viable criteria to which all doctrines called gnostic can be reduced without shaving off the edges and possibly mischaracterizing many (or all ) of them. However, there are tendencies manifest in doctrines called gnostic, which distinguish them from others called orthodox, and we should think of these tendencies not as specific beliefs but as relations between a believer, their dogma, and their praxis. My earlier go was : that physical creation is a corrupt prison in which our souls are trapped, and that the goal of religion is to release our souls into a perfect immaterial realm where we’re free of material trappings and temptations But even my attempt to cast a wide net is too specific and thus fails to accomplish ...