If All Are Redeemed, Why Not Be Sinful?

One of the big heresies of gnosticism is that all second order powers are redeemed by Christ and all will someday return to the paradise of the Fullness. Yay! Everyone is going to heaven! No one is going to hell, not even the fallen angels. What joy!

This seems to fly in the face of Christian orthodoxy that promotes the idea that only those humans who confess a belief in Jesus as the Christ will make it into heaven, and those who don't believe in Jesus will go to an eternal damnation of suffering in hell. Conventional Christianity states that Jesus came to save humanity, but only those who acknowledge Jesus as the only Son of God and invite him into their hearts will be saved. This is the basis for all evangelism and all churches that follow the Nicene Creed--which is to say, all Christian churches, whether Catholic or Protestant.  This is why Christians are so keen on saving souls--they do not want you to suffer for eternity in hell.

The Gnostic Church begs to differ with that common interpretation of Christ's mission. According to the books of the Nag Hammadi library, all of creation will be redeemed and returned to the Fullness and the Father's home in heaven. All of creation. Everyone and everything will be made clean and pure and holy by the end. To borrow a popular expression: "It will all be good in the end; if it's not all good yet, then it's not yet the end." 

Gnosis refers to the ability to use reason and logic to arrive at spiritual truth. So, let's think together about this idea of Christ and redemption and who does or does not go to heaven. 

First, if Christ's redemption were a matter of your belief, then Christ's mission of salvation would be limited to what you believe. In other words, you would be the one holding the power of salvation, not Christ. Does that make any sense to you? Are you the one who redeems, or is Christ? Do you think Christ can't redeem the unwilling? Can you see how making your beliefs central to redemption actually limits the power of Christ? Can you see how that makes sinful humans more powerful than the mission of Christ's redemption? Limiting Christ to your belief, it seems to me, is the greater heresy than simply trusting Christ to accomplish the mission. It is Christ's job to redeem humanity, not yours.

Second, according to gnostic texts, all creatures, great and small, will be redeemed. This means that all creatures are going to heaven. My dog has never professed a belief in Jesus as the Christ, yet my dog is going to heaven. The fishes in the water, the birds in the air, the insects, the forest animals, all "second order powers" are redeemed by Christ.  It is the job of the Christ to redeem creation, irrespective of creation's ability to confess that fact.  Do you think that only good dogs go to heaven? Or nice fishes? Maybe only herbivores? Perhaps only parrots who can say "Jesus saves"?

Once we concede that it is only the Christ that can redeem, then what is the point of leading a virtuous life? Why not sin up until the end, have all kinds of "fun," and then waltz into heaven without repentance--i.e. feeling sorrow and regret--for what you've done. Are we allowed to sin willy-nilly with no negative consequences?

An even more profound question is, why were we created in the first place? 

According to the Tripartite Tractate, the Second Order Powers were created in order to rescue the fallen angel known as "Logos." 

from a previous article: The most perfect and complete of the individual aeons, Logos, crowned the top of the aeonic hierarchy. This single aeon consisted of all of the attributes of the good and perfect Fullness rolled into one individual.

Logos Crowns the Fullness

Logos had fallen from the Fullness and smashed to smithereens in a lower dimension. The broken bits of Logos scattered into space, forming our material universe along with a host of powers and personalities--demons, evil jinn, and archons. 

from a previous article: Logos imagined he could build the Paradise dreamt by the Fullness because he understood all of the plans and possessed all of the necessary talents. However, without the willing support of the Fullness, Logos was unable to give proper glory to the Father.

Logos Falling

As he reached for the Father, Logos stumbled and fell, shattering himself to bits.

Because the isolated glory of Logos was inadequate to the task, everything he produced as a result of that effort fell disastrously short. Where there had been unity with the Son and with his brethren in the Fullness, now there was “a division and a turning away.” The undiluted will expressed by the Fullness was splintered because Logos “could not bear to look at the light, but looked at the depths, and he faltered.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 77]

“What issued from his presumptuous thought and his arrogance had existed from something that itself was deficient; because of that, what was perfect in him left him and went upward to his own” in the Fullness, leaving the “sicknesses” behind in the darkness. [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 78]

The material space of our universe is known as "the deficiency," and "the imitation," and it was initially populated by nothing but the lost and fallen.

The fallen were not hated by the Father or the aeons of the Fullness. The fallen were mourned as lost, as a prodigal son or daughter is mourned by the parents who still love them. The Fullness loves the fallen and only wants them to return home.

The Second Order Powers were sent into this dimension for the purpose of engaging the fallen and helping them to return home. However, as the Second Order Powers entered this earthly dimension, they were immediately plunged into never-ending battle with the fallen. Due to the law of mutual combat, we temporarily forgot our Father in heaven and our mission of engagement and rescue. We were all infected with a host of fallen influences and fell into lifetimes of fear, regret, lust, and rage.

Those of the Deficiency are locked in endless war with those of the Remembrance

"The two orders fought against each other, struggling for command with such a result that they were engulfed by forces and material substances in accordance with the law of mutual combat, and they too acquired lust for domination and all the other passions of this sort; and consequently, empty vainglory pulls them all toward the desire of lust for domination, and not one of them remembers what is superior or confesses it" [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 84].

We humans are Second Order Powers infected with many, many fallen influences that blind us to our true natures and our mission. These negative influences prefer the deficiency to the Fullness. These negative powers of the fall represent the opposite of the All and of all that makes us truly happy and fulfilled. The survival reflex of the imitation requires the Second Order Powers to be miserable and lost, because "misery loves company." They influence people to fight each other rather than fight and resist the evil fallen. Our lives become an endless and fruitless quest to find happiness through selfish pursuits. 

At this point in the gnostic story, the Father and the aeons of the Fullness produced a superior new entity--a Third Order Power--called "The Christ." It became the mission of the Christ to help the Second Order Powers remember and love the fallen so that the fallen could be redeemed.

Love is the only Power that can redeem the fallen. 

Why then, was a Third Order Power needed to accomplish the task that the Second Order Powers were sent to accomplish? Why populate creation with well-meaning but ignorant and confused Second Order Powers? Why not just send in the Christ to accomplish the redemption of fallen Logos in the first place? What is our function and purpose other than bumbling around in never-ending war with the fallen?

Because the fallen Logos must be loved and redeemed one fallen piece at a time. 

Imagine if the original body of Logos resembled a human form--like we might picture an angel in heaven looking something like us. Now, imagine that the heavenly body of Logos in the Fullness was comprised of the blueprint for every single potential body that would ever come to life in the imitation down here after the fall. Imagine the body of Logos falling from an immaterial dimension (the Fullness/heaven) and crashing and breaking apart into a lower, slower, thicker dimension (our material universe), and spilling out the blueprints for the material universe. 

Then, each of our material lives, and the parts that make us up, from the sub-atomic particles up through our bodies and our brains and everything, are themselves the parts of the fallen Logos that need redemption. Moreover, our personal stories, the drama that each human life enacts, are also stories of the fall, stories that need redemption. Every life tells stories of falls and redemption, temptation and overcoming, despair and triumph. And every time an archonic influence is defeated and stripped from your personal life, part of Logos is redeemed.

When we live a "virtuous" life, we are following the principles of the Father and the Fullness in heaven. And we are participants with Christ in redeeming the fall of Logos.  When we live a "sinful" life, we are succumbing to the demons of the fall and contributing to the chaos and despair of the deficiency.

Because we are, in actuality, children of the Fullness, we can only be truly happy when we act out of love, i.e. "virtue."  When we forget our place in the Fullness, we operate out of ignorance and are subject to the evil influences of the fall.  The fall can only produce misery, fear, rage, and lust--never love. Never happiness.

Here is the reason we strive to lead a virtuous life: because only virtue can make you happy. All else leads to despair and depression, because "the wages of sin is death."

The imitation does not bring happiness.  Despite a world full of false promises, vice can only bring ignorance and suffering, isolation, and despair. When you dwell in vice rather than virtue, your life is part of the problem and not part of the solution.  

The Christ brings redemption and remembrance of the Father and the Fullness, one bit, one piece, of the fall at a time. Every time you resist evil and turn a bad habit into a good habit, you have redeemed a piece of the fall.  When you redeem all of your bits and pieces, you will be fully redeemed and regain your home in the Fullness.  And when all Second Order Powers have accepted the remembrance and the redemption of the Christ, then Logos will be fully redeemed and this material universe can pass away. At  that point, Paradise, with all the love, peace, and happiness that implies, will be fully restored. 

The Fruit of the ALL and the Father, the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer, the Advocate, the Light, the Beloved

from a previous article: The end goal of Redemption is return to the Father's abode--that Paradise dreamed by the Fullness, where there is no death, no disease, no disappointment, and no deficiencies. That Paradise where Christ is King and peace reigns supreme, and there is only cooperation, fellowship, and true love. In Paradise there is naught but life; so all the grass is green, and flowers blossom endlessly, and every soul that has ever lived, lives happily with their friends and families. 

The Christ will leave no one behind to condemnation and hell. What kind of unholy savior would that be!?

from a previous article: Thus the Called will condemn evil and will turn away from the rage that has consumed them, and they will be healed as they "acknowledge that they have an origin of their existence, and they desire to know what that is that exists before them" [Tripartite Tractate, v. 132].

"And even those who were brought forth from the desire of lust for domination, having inside them the seed that is lust for domination, will receive the recompense of good things if they have worked together with those who are predisposed toward good things, and provided they decide to do so deliberately, and are willing to abandon their vain love of temporary glory so as to do the command of the Lord of glory, and instead of that small temporary honor they will inherit the eternal kingdom" [Tripartite Tractate, v. 131, 132].

As for Those of the Imitation who embrace the darkness and deny the light, well, "even they will obtain direct vision, so that they will no longer have to believe only on account of a small word produced by a voice that this is how things are. For the restoration back to that which was is a single one. Even if some are exalted because of the economy, having been set up as causes for the things that happened, unfolding numerous physical forces and taking pleasure in them, they--angels as well as humans--will obtain the kingdom, the confirmation, and the salvation" [Tripartite Tractate, v. 133].

These, too, will be provided "with dwelling places where they will dwell eternally after they have renounced the downward attraction of deficiency, and the power of the Fullness has pulled them upward, on account of the great generosity and the sweetness of the preexistent aeon" [Tripartite Tractate, v. 136].