XPost: rec.arts.books, alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books.childrens   
   XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: kimmerian@fastmail.fm   
      
   Bill Baldwin :   
      
   > It's been years since I read the Nag Hammadi Library. But I recall   
   > enough to say that there isn't such a thing as "the gnostic outlook".   
      
        You seeem to be forgetting that the Nag Hammadi Library is   
   a miscellany containing gnostic scriptures, Hermetic   
   philosophy, wisdom teachings, a fragment of Plato, and so forth.   
      
        Of course gnosticism isn't monolithic.  Many schools, many   
   writings, no two entirely alike, some differing within   
   themselves.  But the NHL doesn't remove the gnostic outlook any   
   more than the British Library does yours.   
      
   > Pullman's moralizing angels ring in some variations on standard   
   > gnostic themes and fit comfortably within the gnostic conversation.   
      
        Not so.  Gnosticism characteristically rejects Creator and   
   Creation, lowering the maker of this misbegotten world from   
   supreme deity to inferior demiurge and taking a correspondingly   
   negative view of his work.  Pullman's angels do just the   
   opposite:  they excuse the Creator from the complaints they aim   
   at the Authority and preach cheerful surrender to life's   
   dictates, the very antithesis of the gnostics' cosmic rebellion.   
      
   -- Catawumpus   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)