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Kenoma
In Gnosticism, kenoma (''kenoma'', κένωμα) is the concept of emptiness that corresponds to the lower world of phenomena, as opposed to the concept of pleroma, or fullness, which corresponds to the Platonic world of ideal forms. Kenoma was used by the mid-2nd century Gnostic thinker and preacher Valentinius, who was among the early Christians who attempted to align Christianity with Middle Platonism. Employing a third concept of cosmos, what is manifest, Valentinian initiates could explain scripture in light of these three aspects of correlated existence. In Gnosticism The ancient Greek term for emptiness or void (''kenoma''), as pertaining to Theodotus's exegesis of Gospel of John chapter 1 verse 3, is described in ''The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria''. Hysterema Elsewhere, the usual antithesis to Pleroma is not Kenoma, but ''Hysterema'' (ὑστέρημα). As the system is reported by Hippolytus (vi. 31, p. 180) this word is used as the comple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pleroma
Pleroma (, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers. It is used in Christian theological contexts, as well as in Gnosticism. The term also appears in the Epistle to the Colossians, which is traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle. The word is used 17 times in the New Testament. Etymology The word literally means "fullness", from the verb (, "to fill"), from (Wikt:πλήρης, πλήρης, "full"). Christianity New Testament The word itself is a relative term, capable of many shades of meaning, according to the subject with which it is joined and the antithesis to which it is contrasted. It denotes the result of the action of the verb ''pleroun;'' but ''pleroun'' is either *to fill up an empty thing (''e.g.'' ), or *to complete an incomplete thing (''e.g.'' ); and the verbal substantive in -''ma'' may express either #the objective accusative after the verb, 'the thing filled or completed,' or # the cognate accusative, 'the state of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnosticism
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek language, Ancient Greek: , Romanization of Ancient Greek, romanized: ''gnōstikós'', Koine Greek: Help:IPA/Greek, [ɣnostiˈkos], 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Early Christianity, early Christian sects. These diverse groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (''gnosis'') above the Proto-orthodox Christianity, proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Generally, in Gnosticism, the Monad (Gnosticism), Monad is the supreme God who emanates divine beings; one, Sophia (Gnosticism), Sophia, creates the flawed demiurge who makes the material world, trapping souls until they regain divine knowledge. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnostic
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: , romanized: ''gnōstikós'', Koine Greek: �nostiˈkos 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects. These diverse groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge ('' gnosis'') above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Generally, in Gnosticism, the Monad is the supreme God who emanates divine beings; one, Sophia, creates the flawed demiurge who makes the material world, trapping souls until they regain divine knowledge. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment. Gnosticism likely originated in the late first and early second centuries around Alex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valentinius
Valentinus (Greek: Οὐαλεντῖνος; ) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen. Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those quoted in rebuttal arguments in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline. His doctrine is known only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples, the Valentinians. He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature received the ''gnosis'' (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser or uncertain form of salvation, and that those of a material nature were doomed to perish. Valentinus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panarion
In early Christianity, early Christian heresiology, the ''Panarion'' (, derived from Latin , meaning "bread basket"), to which 16th-century Latin translations gave the name ''Adversus Haereses'' (Latin: "Against Heresies"), is the most important of the works of Epiphanius of Salamis. It was written in Koine Greek beginning in 374 or 375, and issued about three years later,Williams, Frank; translator. "Introduction". The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1-46)'. 1987. (E.J. Brill, Leiden) . as a treatise on heresy, heresies, with its title referring to the text as a "stock of remedies to offset the poisons of heresy." It treats 80 religious sects, either organized groups or philosophies, from the time of Adam to the latter part of the fourth century, detailing their histories, and rebutting their beliefs.Long, G. ed. ''The penny cyclopædia''. Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge. 1833. p 477. The ''Panarion'' is an important source of information on the Jewis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tzimtzum
The ''tzimtzum'' or ''tsimtsum'' () is a term used in Lurianic Kabbalah to explain Isaac Luria's doctrine that God began the process of creation by limiting the Ohr Ein Sof (infinite light) of the Godhead in order to allow for a conceptual space in which the Four Worlds, or finite realms, could exist. This primordial initial contraction, forming a "vacant space" () into which new creative light could beam, is denoted by general reference to the ''tzimtzum''. In Kabbalistic interpretation, ''tzimtzum'' gives rise to the paradox of simultaneous divine presence and absence within the vacuum and resultant Creation. Various approaches exist as to how the paradox may be resolved, and as to the nature of ''tzimtzum'' itself. Function Because the tzimtzum results in the space in which the spiritual and physical worlds and, ultimately, free will, can exist, God is often referred to as " Ha-Makom" ( lit. "the Place", "the Omnipresent") in rabbinic literature. ''Olam'', the Hebrew t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dyad (Greek Philosophy)
The Dyad is a title used by the Pythagoreans for the number two, representing the principle of "twoness" or "otherness". Numenius of Apamea, a Neopythagorean philosopher in the latter 2nd century CE, said that Pythagoras gave the name of Monad to God, and the name of Dyad to matter. Aristotle equated matter as the formation of the elements (energies) into the material world as the static material was formed by the energies being acted upon by force or motion. Later Neoplatonic Philosophers and idealists like Plotinus treated the dyad as a second cause ( demiurge), which was the divine mind (nous ''Nous'' (, ), from , is a concept from classical philosophy, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, for the cognitive skill, faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is truth, true or reality, real. Alternative Eng ...) that via a reflective nature ( finiteness) causes matter to "appear" or become perceivable. See also * Monad * Tetrad References ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basilides
Basilides ( Greek: Βασιλείδης) was an early Christian Gnostic religious teacher in Alexandria, Egypt who taught from 117 to 138 AD, notes that to prove that the heretical sects were "later than the catholic Church," Clement of Alexandria''Stromata'', vii. 17 assigns Christ's own teaching to the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius; that of the apostles ends, he says, in the time of Nero; whereas "the authors of the sects arose later, about the times of the emperor Hadrian, and continued quite as late as the age of the elder Antoninus." He gives as examples Basilides, Valentinus, and (if the text is sound) Marcion. Yet his language about Carpocrates a few lines further on suggests a doubt whether he had any better evidence than a fallacious inference from their order in Irenaeus. He was acquainted with the refutation of Basilides by Agrippa Castor; but it is not clear, as is sometimes assumed, that he meant to assign both writers to the same reign. His chronicle (Armenian) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus (Marcosian)
Marcus was the founder of the Marcosian Gnostic sect in the 2nd century AD. He was a disciple of Valentinus, with whom his system mainly agreed. His doctrines are almost exclusively known through a long polemic (i. 13–21) in ''Adversus Haereses'', in which Irenaeus gives an account of his teaching and his school. Clement of Alexandria clearly knew of Marcus and actually used his system of mystical numbers (four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirty), though without acknowledgement. Life Marcus appears to have been an elder contemporary of Irenaeus, who speaks of him as though still living and teaching. Irenaeus writes that the Rhone district was a home to the followers of Marcus, but appears to know Marcus himself only by his writings. The location where Marcus lived is uncertain. Given accounts of Marcus having seduced the wife of one of the deacons in Asia, and the use of Hebrew or Syriac names in the Marcosian school, the Catholic Encyclopedia speculates that Marcus must ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
