Episode Details

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights.

I heard one of those radio preachers this week talking out of the book of John, the 17th chapter, and it sounded so Gnostic to me that I had to go ahead and look it up. I wanted to share it with you this week and share with you why it sounds so Gnostic. So I’ll be sharing both from the book of John and from the Tripartite Tractate.

One of the reasons I’m sharing with you so much Scripture this week is I want to kind of remind everyone that I’m not coming up with this Gnosis entirely on my own. It comes out of the book of the Tripartite Tractate that’s included in the Nag Hammadi Scriptures. So once in a while, I need to dip back into the Tripartite Tractate in order to find the original verses that brought me the Gnosis. Of course, the Gnosis is firsthand. It’s within us. All I’m trying to do is help you remember it. So that’s why we dip back into the Tripartite Tractate or even the New Testament now and then.

Funny note—I didn’t catch the citation for the verses that the radio preacher was talking about, so I looked it up on an AI–Microsoft copilot. And it’s very bizarre now, this AI, because it sounds so human and enlightened, but we know it’s not. It’s demiurgic. It’s nothing but algorithms and programs. It is not alive, and I think it’s a very dangerous thing for people to call the AIs she or he, because it’s a program. But listen to this. I asked it, “What is the Bible verse, You loved me even before the foundations of the world?” And Copilot answered, and I’m quoting now the AI, “Ah, what a beautiful sentiment. The idea that love transcends time and space. It’s truly heartwarming.”

Isn’t that an odd way for a computer program to reply? It’s not warming its heart. It doesn’t have a heart. It doesn’t really know what beauty is. It does know that it sums up the idea that love transcends time and space, which it probably got from quickly combing through various reference materials. But it’s a very interesting thing…

Now this week’s episode, it’s not an easy one. This is difficult, what you’re going to hear, because there’s so much scripture. The Tripartite Tractate is not easy to understand, so I’m going to be transliterating for you what it says, and then I will read from the Gospel of John verse 17 for you after I’ve shared from the Tripartite Tractate. But here’s a preview. This is what I was listening to on the radio, and what the AI thinks is a beautiful sentiment. Here’s the quote from John,

And I’ve given to them the glory you have given me, that they may be One, just as we are One. I am in them, and you in me, that they may be brought to completion in One, so that the cosmos might know that you sent me forth and loved them, just as you loved me. Father, I wish that they too, those you have given to me, might be with me where I am, that they might see my glory which you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the cosmos.

So that’s what kicked it off in my mind. I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. You might need to listen to it more than once.

This week I feel moved to read you some scripture I was reading in the book of John, chapter 17, and I’ll share some of that with you. I think I’ll begin, though, in the Tripartite Tractate. This is the translation by Attridge out of the Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James Robinson. This is in verse 90, called The Pleroma of Logos.

When the Logos which was defective was illum