From Gnosticism to LGBT rights to our Christian thinking

Recently, I have been struck by the parallels between the ever-louder pronouncements from the LGBT lobby and the influence of Gnosticism on the early church.

From the late first century, ‘fashionable’ Greek philosophy began to infiltrate the church. Gnosticism was one such philosophy that gained an early foothold. It was characterised by a dualism in which the entirety of physical existence was believed to be inherently deceptive and evil, while the unseen spirit world was believed to be inherently full of goodness and truth.

Members of the early church who espoused Gnosticism found it impossible to reconcile such beliefs with the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. They flatly rejected the belief that Jesus the Messiah is both fully God and fully human.