The line between God and self became indistinguishable. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the finding the Nag Hammadi Literature in 1947 has caused an increase in academic curiosity with ancient gnostic texts and their relation to the early Christian community. In fact, Christians have known of these texts for years, but they were excluded from the original canon of Scripture. The revival of Gnosticism today and the New Age movement actually is more the result of nineteenth-century Romanticism and revivalism than the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts. There is a gnostic influence touching all of our culture, from science to politics, from art to religion, from business to education.
Self becomes the focus.
The orthodox distinction between Creator and creature is blurred and God's holiness is thrown out the window. Spirit Versus Matter Spirit is good and matter is evil. This had a great impact on early Christianity and spawned much of the ascetic movement. Western Christian mysticism was a product of the monastic world and its search for spiritual release. As we mentioned, Christianity was early affected by the in-roads of Gnostic dualistic thinking in which a heavy emphasis was placed upon the antithesis of matter and spirit, body and soul.