PAUL THE GNOSTIC OPPONENT OF PETER, NOT AN APOSTLE OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY In Pauls own account of his conversion he continues: Immediately, I conferred not with the flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them who were Apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia. To the Galatians he says: If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be damned; or let him be Anathema. He chides them: O, foolish, Galatians, who did bewitch you? Are ye so foolish: having begun in the Spirit, are ye perfected in the flesh? I made known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it from man (or from a man), nor was I taught it, save through revelation of the Christ revealed within. He did not derive his facts from history, nor his gospel from the Apostles; he was neither taught by man nor book. He derived his gospel from direct personal revelation of the Christ within. In short, his Christ was not that Jesus of Nazareth whom he never mentions, and whom the others preached, and who may have been, and in all likelihood was, Joshua Ben Pandira, the Nazarene. The Christ of the Gnosis was not connected with place any more than personality, or line of human descent. His only birthplace was in the mind of man. Consequently, in his gospel, Marcion, who was a Gnostic Christian, does not connect his Christ with Nazareth. His Christ is not Jesus of Nazareth. And this note of the Gnosis is apparent in the writings of Paul. His Christ is nowhere called Jesus of Nazareth, nor is he born at Bethlehem, either of the Virgin Mary, or of Mary the wife of Cleopas, who was not the Virgin. Of course, either an historic Jesus could become the Christ, as Saviour of the world, or he could not; and, as the world never was lost in any such sense as the ignorant have derived from a fable misinterpreted, why he could not, and as he could not, then he did not, and Paul who was an Adept in the mysteries, a Master of the Hidden Wisdom, could never have mistaken the fable for a fact on which to build his system of Christology; nor could he accept it from others. When once we have got the Gnostic clue to the Hidden Wisdom, we find an universal argument amongst the Gnostics concerning their tenets. Wherever we meet with them they give us the Masonic grip; and by the same sign we know that Paul was a Gnostic. This is further corroborated by his own claim to have been an Adept, a wise master-builder, one who spoke wisdom amongst the Perfected. He was a Gnostic in the supreme degree, and all Gnostics agree that the Christ of the Gnosis could not be made flesh, and therefore all are, and must be opposed to Historic Christianity, Paul included. It was as a Gnostic, a wise master-builder, that Paul laid the foundations which others built upon; and the superstructure they reared became the Church of Historic Christianity. The Gnostics were Christians in an esoteric sense, but not because they explained a human history esoterically. There was no history to explain until the myth had been made exoteric by those who were ignorant, or who cunningly converted the Gnosis into history. It was the work of Peter to make the mysteries exoteric in a human history. It was the work of Paul to prevent this being effected by explaining the Gnosis. Hints of this appear in the Epistles when he speaks of his gospel, and the revelation of his mystery concerning the Christ, and warns his disciples against the preaching of that other gospel and other Jesus, which are opposed to his own truer teaching. As when he tells Timothy to remember Jesus Christ according to my gospel, and says to the Romans, establish you according to my gospel; that was the gospel of the Gnosis which he had brought to them.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 20:34:45 +0000
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