You are right to suggest that the Gnostic's saw the body as a prison
however this only applies to certain situations.
You note
Apocryphon According to John
"And I entered into the midst of their prison, which is the prison of
the body. And I said, 'He who hears, let him get up from the deep sleep."
Yet in that same Apocryphon you have
"And he said to the authorities which attend him, 'Come, let us create a
man according to the image of God and according to our likeness, that
his image may become a light for us.' "
"And the power of the mother went out of Yaltabaoth into the natural
body, which they had fashioned after the image of the one who exists
from the beginning. The body moved and gained strength, and it was
luminous."
"And they said to Yaltabaoth, 'Blow into his face something of your
spirit and his body will arise.'"
(this above quote is interesting because this is baptism by
Spirit/Breath instead of the more common baptism by water.)
================================
Their is no doubt that the Gnostic's like the "Orthodox ones" saw the
body as made in the "Image of God" and like the "Orthodox ones" they
saw it as a Temple where one could find God.
Teachings of Silvanus
"You were a temple, (but) you have made yourself a tomb. Cease being a
tomb, and become (again) a temple, so that uprightness and divinity may
remain in you."
"Let Christ alone enter your world, and let him bring to naught all
powers which have come upon you. Let him enter the temple which is
within you, so that he may cast out all the merchants. Let him dwell in
the temple which is within you, and may you become for him a priest and
a Levite, entering in purity."
Do not bring grief and trouble to the divine which is within you.
But when you will care for it, will request of it that you remain pure,
and will become self-controlled in your soul and body, you will become a
throne of wisdom, and one belonging to God's household. He will give you
a great light through it (wisdom).
============================
The problem is that we have two situations
we have Spiritual knowledge and we have Carnal knowledge
we have knowledge of the breath and we have knowledge of the flesh
we have pleasures of the Spirit and Pleasures of the flesh.
We have Breath quickens the flesh and we have the flesh quickens the
breath.
Romans
008:011 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall
also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in
you.
008:006 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually
minded is life and peace.
You have two directions and one can chose either "externals", Flesh and
fleshly pleasures or "within", Spirit and Godly pleasures.
A spiritual man sees a man who is attending to externals and he sees a
man who is in a prison while if he sees another man attentive to his
spirit/breath within then he sees a man who is in a temple and a temple
in which God dwells. The problem with the prison perception of a
person in a body is that to get out of the prison one must go within.
The path to liberation or to God is an inward path not an outward one.
To a man who truly accepts Jesus/God then Jesus/God breaths him he does
not breath himself. This is true and is not a function of religion. The
element that determines which direction one goes is the mind. If the
mind attends to externals then one goes that direction if the mind is
quited and at rest and one attends to ones Spirit/breath then one goes
to God.
AIO
Catawumpus wrote:
> aio <mwdarcy@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:
>
>> Yes Mortification of the flesh to purify the Soul(breath) is common
in many religions but you still need the soul (breath).
>
> Gnosticism in particular (not religion at large) goes well
> beyond mere mortification of the flesh by attacking the material
world and describing the body as a prison for the soul.
>
>> Clearly the carnal is not the path to the Spiritual. The problem is
that unless you have a carnal body you can not get to God.
>
> In gnosticism the problem is that the spirit is trapped in
> the body and in the world more generally: an evil place shaped by
the Demiurge, not by God. Of course the story varies.
> Sometimes there are demiurges, plural (the Simonians' malicious
angels, for example), sometimes the world is an exile
> or a labyrinth (the thinking of the Valentinians and the
> Naasenes respectively), and so forth. Many gnostic schools and
writings, none entirely alike, some of them with their own conflicts.
But the central world-rejecting, life-denying theme is unmistakable.
>
> -- Catawumpus
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