The Case for Gnosticism: The Ultimate Heresy

Series of articles by Scott Smith, and I know God Reconsidered has been mentioned before but don't think the articles have according to the link checker?

Starts here:

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 1: The Ultimate Heresy

But the entire mainstream idea of the “plan of salvation” is not found in the Four Gospels and they apparently were written after Paul, who wrote his letters from 50 on and shows no awareness of them. Paul asserts that Christ died for our sins and the penalty was not hell, but death, and we are released from that because he was sinless. The “princes of this world” (a lower order of angels) who brought this about did such an injustice that that the Law of Moses was invalidated. But later Christian leaders felt uncomfortable with the idea of such powerful fallen angels, so this was blamed on Satan. By paying a “ransom” of his own innocent blood, they argued, Jesus had forced the devil to release his hold on humanity (which started when Adam was enticed to eat the apple by Eve against God’s command, committing Original Sin, according to the late Catholic theory).

But by the fifth century, there were qualms about giving Satan such power, so theologians decided it was better to say that it was actually God who needed to be appeased. This God was the Trinity: the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, which are three aspects of one being. According to this new view of salvation, the Father had to send his innocent Son—an aspect of the Father—to earth to appease his sense of justice in saving sinful humans, as long as they accepted Jesus as savior. This “penal substitution” theory is the most widely accepted one today.
The problem with this, aside from the lack of any logic, is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the New Testament, which was not made official in its current form until 367 A.D. (and scholars now know that many of the letters attributed to Paul are in a different style and were written much later than the authentic ones).

As I point out in God Reconsidered: Searching for Truth in the Battle Between Atheism and Religion www.GodReconsidered.com, Jesus refers to the Father as someone he prays to, as in the Lord’s Prayer.

Continues:

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 2: Is There Any Objective Reality?

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 3: Is the Purpose of Life to Obey God’s Commandments?

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 4: What Happens After We Die?

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 5: Comparing Gnostic Christianity with the Traditional Version

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 6: A Gnostic Viewpoint on “Alien Abductions”

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 7: Manifestation of the Living Gnosis, Alex Rivera

The Case for Gnosticism, Part 8: Carl Jung and Gnosticism

What a deep subject!  I am not gnostic per se but there is definitely a gnostic aspect to biblical christianity.  I am reminded of the following verse:

"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)