Is the RCC largely gnostic?

[LadyCalvinist]

Hello,

I am reading Chadwick's The Early Church and it it he talks about the various Gnostic groups and he says that some Gnostics practiced extreme asceticism and forbade marriage. It sounds like the early church was deeply, too deeply, influenced by Gnosticism rather than the Scriptures.

 

[RamistThomist]

Hello,

I am reading Chadwick's The Early Church and it it he talks about the various Gnostic groups and he says that some Gnostics practiced extreme asceticism and forbade marriage. It sounds like the early church was deeply, too deeply, influenced by Gnosticism rather than the Scriptures.

Kind of. They weren't gnostic in the sense of official Gnosticism, but many of the key theologians and monks frowned upon sex in marriage and believed in physical acscetism to a degree that is unhealthy (no bathing, sleeping on stone floors, etc).

I posted a review of Methodius of Olympus on PB where I noted his anti-biblical views of sex in marriage. It caused a bit of a firestorm on PB.

 

[Justified]

Many of the gnostics also believed that Jesus was God. Does that mean that everyone who believes in the deity of Christ is a gnostic? I think we should steer clear of these kind of arguments. John the Baptist was an asetic but no gnostic.