#读书笔记 #TheGnostics
作者在 UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN SECOND-CENTURY ROME 这个章节提出了一些很有趣的观点。本章主要想要论证的观点是那时的罗马城尚不存在一个中央教会组织，可以去审定、攻击异端。应该拒绝“正统”与“异端”相斗争的叙事模式：作者认为不该说诺斯替派输掉了一场“战争”；“rather, they were participants in a lively and often contested multilateral process of defining and redefining what Christianity might be”.

这个观点本身其实倒不算新奇，因为教会史确实认为那时“教区制”和“单一主教制”都还没有完全成型。一座城市还不是一个教区，里面可以有很多不同的基督教团体。每个团体有他们自己的主教或长老（团）。就像在罗马城中有一位伯多禄的继承人，他周围有一个基督教团体。但很难想象他会将整座罗马城视为自己的领地，所有进入这个地理区域的基督徒都必须加入他的团体。

但让我觉得有趣的是作者对一些具体事件的分析：对于马西翁派，他（依从其他学者）认为虽然马西翁的立场和其他基督徒具有明显区别，但他并没有被其他基督教团体完全拒绝。直到他自己召集全城的全部长老和教师一起开会，试图说服他们都接受他自己的观点。他至此才被正式谴责(condemn)。作者说，与之相对的是瓦伦蒂努斯，一般认为他是诺斯替异端的代表人物。但他有生之年从未因教义问题而被谴责。作者说这就是因为当时并没有一个中央管理组织可以发布并执行这样的谴责（除非他像马西翁那样自己去召集出这样一个机构）。与教会史更传统的叙述相比，作者这个叙述显得极其的和平友善，对我来说是新视角。

#摘录 #TheGnostics
……[In] Plato’s dialogue Timaeus…… a divine being called “the craftsman” (demiurge) creates the visible universe as a copy of the eternal forms. The craftsman creates lower gods, who then assist him, and the universe that he creates and in which we live is the best possible image of the perfect spiritual world.

……During the first and second centuries, intellectuals, especially admirers of Plato’s thought, became increasingly sensitive to the distance between the changing material nature of our world and the ideal of an unchanging……. If the ultimate God is utterly transcendent, unchanging, and immaterial, as the ideals of Plato suggested, then some sort of mediating divine principle(s) between that God and this created order appeared necessary.……

In comparison to these thinkers, the Gnostics appear to stand out for two reasons: their divine mediating principles are numerous and complex, and their craftsman god is ignorant and even malicious.

#摘录 #TheGnostics
As we shall see, all Jews and Christians with any philosophical interests ascribed the creation of this world (in full or in part) to a deity lower than the highest God and also interpreted and adapted Jewish or Christian Scriptures. As the Gospel of John put it, God did not create the world directly; rather, “all things came into being” through God’s Word (John 1:3).

[有点被吓到 hhhh]