Eternal Security Disproven and how the "Epignosticism" that is Christianity is contradictory to Gnosticism

You wrote on Jul 6, 2007 at 6:13 AM.
In a post I just made to my Mormon friend Crystal, who I have been discussing biblical linguistics with:


That being the case, I'd like to cover another "linguistic" matter, dealing with Hebrews 10.

Hebrews 10:10, " By this "will," we have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

Hebrews 10:14, "For by one offering he has made perfect forever those who are being consecrated."

Consecrated can otherwise be translated as "sanctified." The context is clear that here, it is refering to salvation.

I thus moved on later into the chapter to demonstrate to my debate opponent that eternal security is thus disproven.

Hebrews 10:26-29, "If we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire that is going to consume the adversaries.Anyone who rejects the law of Moses is put to death without pity on the testimony of two or three witnesses.Do you not think that a much worse punishment is due the one who has contempt for the Son of God, considers unclean the covenant-blood by which he was consecrated, and insults the spirit of grace?"

My interpretation of this? Deliberate sin - mortal sin, in Catholic theology - can lead to loss of salvation. The author says the one that does this gets a punishment WORSE than physical death under the Law of Moses - which, I think, would have to be SPIRITUAL death.

Verse 29 was where I focused most of my attention last night:

"Do you not think that a much worse punishment is due THE ONE who has contempt for the SON OF GOD, considers unclean the covenant-blood by which HE was consecrated, and insults the spirit of grace?"

The parts I put in CAPS formed the core of the argument between my friend and I.

Essentially, I argued that since in the context, consecrate refers to salvation through the blood of Jesus, and the punishment worse than physical death is going to someone that considers unclean the blood by which they were consecrated, eternal security is disproven.

That is, if "he" refers back to "the one" then eternal security is destroyed.

My opponent argued that it instead referred back to "Son of God" and brought up John 17:19, "And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth."

So, I'd like your opinion on which term is the proper antecedent of "him" -

- the one
-the Son of God

That aside, I still think the context is referring to "the one."

Additionally, I made an extensive argument with regards to verse 26:

"If we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins"

It says "no longer" a sacrifice for sins. That implies that there WAS one. If we say the man was "no longer" king of a kingdom, it implies, necessitates, that he once WAS.

Now, Christ's sacrifice for sins cannot be undone. But the APPLICATION of that sacrifice to certain people CAN be undone - by deliberate sin.

The more "linguistic" point of my argument involved "after receiving knowledge of the truth."

If knowledge here simply means factoids, information about Christianity, then I don't have much of a point here.

Good thing the normal word in Greek for knowledge - gnosis - is not found here.

Rather, Epignosis is found.

Through extensive study, I have found that Epignosis - which means perfect or complete knowledge - has a connotation in the Bible of salvation. It doesn't refer to just intellectually knowing Christian truths - it refers to an INTIMATE knowledge of God. It isn't knowing OF the truth, or of God, but KNOWING the truth, and knowing God, intimately.

If that be the case, then the section here is STILL talking about a saved person sinning deliberately, and not someone never saved in the first place.

Are you following so far?

Well, to stress this point, I offered just one other example of Epignosis, found in 2 Peter 1:

2 Peter 1:1-2, "Symeon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of equal value to ours through the righteousness of our God and savior Jesus Christ: may grace and peace be yours in abundance through knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."

Here, the word "Epignosis" is used - NOT "gnosis." It's not just talking about knowing OF God and Jesus. It's talking about truly KNOWING Them.

That's why Peter says that grace and peace are ours THROUGH knowledge, through Epignosis. If we receive grace, which saves, through Epignosis, then we cannot have Epignosis and never have been saved in the first place.

2 Peter 1:3, "His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power."

Epignosis again. We get everything that makes for life and devotion through Epignosis of God. That's not just knowing doctrinal factoids - that's having an intimate relationship and a saving faith.

2 Peter 1:4, "Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire."

Through what? Through everything that makes for life and devotion. So, through Epignosis, we have everything that makes for life and devotion, and we have the precious and very great promises (one of which is baptism by the Spirit, if you read Acts!) and we can come to share - be partakers in - the divine nature. We escape from the corruption of the world, meaning we escape from sin.

Thus, to have Epignosis clearly means that you are saved.

2 Peter 1:5-7, "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love."

Epignosis is NOT used here. Gnosis is.

Why? Because Peter finally IS just talking about a more intellectual type of knowledge, more of a sense of knowing factoids than knowing a PERSON.

So, through Epignosis, we can come to have all these things listed, including gnosis. Through a relationship (Epignosis), we can come to know religious information (gnosis).

Gnosis SUPPLEMENTS our faith, our Epignosis. But it cannot begin it, as it does in Gnosticism.

2 Peter 1:8-9, "If these are yours and increase in abundance, they will keep you from being idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Anyone who lacks them is blind and shortsighted, forgetful of the cleansing of his past sins."

And guess who switched back to Epignosis? Peter just did, because he is talking about salvation again. Peter is saying that if we receive all the benefits of Epignosis listed above, they will help us to be fruitful in the "Epignosis" of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you don't have those fruits of Epignosis, you forget your previous cleansing.

Therefore, I don't see how Epignosis in Hebrews 10:26 can possibly mean just intellectual knowlege - meaning that that passage disproves eternal security, since it talks about the loss of salvation of a "once saved" person.

The whole reason that Paul and the other NT writers use "Epignosis" instead of "gnosis" is to attack Gnosticism and separate Christianity from that belief system.

Gnosticism was a philosophy that said that we could "save" or "free" our spiritual selves from the prisons of our physical bodies, from the "evil" material world. One could do this by gaining secret knowledge - "gnosis" - hence the name.

Gnosticism was very elitist, which is a large reason why it largely died out by the 300s. It did not promise the message of redemption and inclusion that Christianity did. All it promised was that the intellectual elites could escape the material world through gnosis.

Gnosticism was also a religion parasite, and if you look closely and the NT, you can see the Apostles fighting against Gnostic ideas.

1 Timothy 6:20-21, "O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid profane babbling and the absurdities of so-called knowledge (gnosis).By professing it, some people have deviated from the faith. Grace be with all of you."

This is why Christians developed the terminology of "epignosis" to refer to being saved. It's more intimate, more real, and more complete - and refers to KNOWING God, and having a RELATIONSHIP with Him, instead of just knowing divine little secrets about Him and other such stuff.

For example, John 1 talks about the Word being made flesh, which goes against Gnostic Docetism, which taught that Jesus only had the "appearance" of a physical body.

It also appears to be the case that Paul had to deal with Gnostic thought when he had to KEEP stressing the very physical nature of the Resurrection. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 15 (which contains your baptism for the dead reference!) is an argument about how the Christian faith is useless, and in vain, if Christ did not literally, and physically, rise from the dead. This is an attack on Gnostic thought, which would have seen the Resurrection differently.

Indeed, in the Pastorals Paul excommunicates Hymenaeus for saying the resurrection had already taken place. Hymenaeus denied the future physical resurrection of the born again (2 Timothy 2:17-18), as taught by Jesus Christ (John 5:25-29) and Paul (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). He claimed, instead, that the believer's "resurrection" only happens in a spiritual sense, occurring at the moment one is born again. That is Gnosticism...

And that is why Scholars who claim the anti-gnosticism of the Pastoral Epistles means they were written later are totally wrong - since this anti-gnosticism was clearly taught in the early epistles as well. As soon as Christianity moved into Gentile Greek areas, it encountered Gnosticism, the religion parasite. I'm sorry, but Christianity is much too Jewish to be Gnostic. Hehe.

Sorry for rambling. I like this topic.

In 2 Peter Chapter 2, Peter talks about false teachers, and uses the SAME LANGUAGE to describe them as he did for saved people in chapter 1:

Verse 20: "For if they, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of (our) Lord and savior Jesus Christ, again become entangled and overcome by them, their last condition is worse than their first."

They have escaped the defilements of the world - sin through Epignosis of Jesus - JUST what 2 Peter 1 was saying, although it said corruption that is in the world instead of defilements of the world. The parallels are intensely strong.

Their last condition is WORSE than their first? What?

So one is better off never coming to Epignosis than to come to Epignosis and become once again entangled by sin.

For your linguistic pleasure, notice also that it says "AGAIN become entangled and overcome by them."

We are all born with original sin, as slaves to sin. That's what 2 Peter 2:19 alludes to:

"They promise them freedom, though they themselves are slaves of corruption, for a person is a slave of whatever overcomes him."

Since we are slaves to sin, we cannot AGAIN become slaves to sin if we never STOP being slaves to sin. See what I mean?

Romans 6:6-7, "We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin."

Therefore, those that 2 Peter is talking about MUST be "once saved." They were no longer slaves to sin, and AGAIN became slaves to sin.

Romans 6:16-18, "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted. Freed from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness."

It is thus the case that saved individuals CAN once again become slaves to sin - and therefore, lose salvation.

Romans 6:20-21, "For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. But what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death."

Therefore, the end of "deliberate sin" in Hebrews 26 is death - spiritual death, of course. The end of being overcome by sin in 2 Peter 20 is death - spiritual death.

2 Peter 2:21, "For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment handed down to them."

Translation? Better off to never be saved, to never "know" the way of righteouness, and have Epignosis, then to know it and then apostasize.

Better off to be an unsaved, unjustified Jew, or other person, than to be a Christian that apostasizes.

Eternal security collapses.

Hope you enjoy the exegesis.

- Sean

Conclusion? Christianity is incompatible with Gnosticism, because Christianity is EPIGNOSTICISM.