Word: gnostics
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...corruption of the world is presented with such apparent justice and restraint that the reader only gradually ceases to doubt his judgment - a doubt that Plarr at last experiences himself. His pure disgust at the physical side of life matches (and is perhaps intended to represent) the ancient Gnostic heresy that held Christ never to have been made flesh, and regarded the fleshly world as simply a dirty trick played by the devil...
...Author Wilfrid Sheed, in the recently published Max Jamison, commented most appropriately when he said: "I am not against youth as such. They are wonderfully teachable. But that they should be teaching us; that we should invest them with oracular powers, read into their shrugs and moans some great gnostic wisdom-this is an American superstition so crass that one scarcely knows where to begin with...
...structure of 20th century religious thought, the works of Ingmar Bergman perch like gargoyles. Their gnostic faith belongs to no known dogma; their acrid doubt is too large to sit in the cool shade of existentialism. The Shame, latest of his grotesqueries, once again prays to a dead God, once again mixes actuality and surrealism, calamity and humor, a fertile mind and an arid soul...
...some theologians, the emergence of this underground church is a sign of spiritual health, a harbinger of renewal. To be sure, there is the possibility that these unstructured groups might coalesce into a new kind of gnostic sect-an elect that considers itself set apart from the erring mass of nominal believers. On the other hand, there is the far greater danger that institutional Christianity, without an extraordinary amount of reform, will end up as a monumental irrelevancy. Faced with a choice between the church in its present form and the underground cell, it is likely that a majority...
...dead theologians are the reductio ad absurdum of American Protestant theology. When they have not fallen into the perennial heresy of gnostic mysticism, like Altizer, they are conscious or unconscious followers of Durkheim, in that the real object of their worship is 20th century culture, particularly 20th century intellectual culture. They put themselves in the ridiculous position of saying to God, "Either come up to us 20th century intellectuals or get out." It would be a mistake to take them too seriously...