Monday, October 08, 2007

soft gnostics and semi pelagians

I was blog surfing yesterday and came across a post where someone said the 90% of Americans were soft gnostics and semi-pelagians. I'm sure this was the bloggers personal opinion, but it got me wondering. What was he seeing that caused him to make the statement. First I think that in context he was really talking about 90% of American Christians.

So, if there was a 'Gnosticism for Dummies' it would say something along the lines of, "Material things are bad, spiritual things are good". There is a lot more to gnosticism, of course, but I think this will due for now. Maybe the blogger I read was looking at Evangelicalisms focus on 'saving souls'. Certainly in evangelicalism there appears to be a lack of concern for things like social justice, or the environment (it's all going to burn after all). Could this be considered soft gnosticism?

As for semi-pelagianism the definition can be found here. I also have a friend who took one of those 'what is your theological worldview' quizes and he registered as semi-pelagian. At the end of the quiz's results it said 'If you left God out of your beliefs, nothing would change'. Kind of harsh, but many of his posts do border on something like - 'if we don't get busy, nobody will get saved'.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Keep up the good work.