22 Comments

Exciting. Roland in Moonlight was wonderful. This new novel will be on my Christmas wishlist for sure. Are there any introductory books on Gnosticism you recommend?

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2 questions

1. who are some of the best scholars on Gnosticism that one should read, David? I know this can be pretty broad, but who would you recommend

2. You are writing a fantasy novel? that's awesome? is that going to be the cover art?

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Sounds good and I think this is going to work very well as advertising and will likely inspire me to buy your soon to be released novel. Or increase my desire for it as I'm already keen to get it.

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Sorry, not "When is the novel due?"--rather, who is publishing it?

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Well, OK. As long as its not an allegory. One Piers Plowman is one too many.

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founding

I didn't realize subscribers could make requests.

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This will be very helpful, especially for those of us who have a universalist approach. A standard critique of universalism by heresiologists is that universalism is a gnostic excrescence on the pure gospel.

My understanding is that Gnosticism is not usually universalistic in expectation to begin with. I also have a sense that Paul's writings contain some themes which would be quite familiar to gnostic ways of thinking, so there may be more than normally appreciated interaction between Gnosticism and "orthodoxy".

Also there is Michael McClymond's argument that while Origen might not have been a gnostic per se, his three-fold cosmic idea of pre-existence, earthly embodiment, and final return to God is analogous to a schema employed by Gnostics of Origen's day and of later times.

It seems to me that Origen saw the final restoration in 1 Cor. 15:28 in Paul's declaration that God would finally be all in all. And the problem Origen was working on was how to explain it that souls seem to come into this world with various states of advantage, and then the ethical dilemma that raises for God in arranging things this way.

Origen's explanation was to exonerate God and place the blame on those psyche's (if I'm using that term correctly), or rational beings, who decided to fall away from God prior to human embodiment.

I'm not aware if Gregory of Nyssa speculated in this way or not. I'm under the impression that he did not.

So, any help on getting a handle on a fair assessment of the relationship between Gnosticism and early Christianity is greatly appreciated!

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Would love to see a few more of your Gnostic favorites by Redon with each posting.

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