I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to write out that response. It helps give context to what you'd written, and brings us a bit closer to understanding one another. I will try to be concise.
- No, I am not Eastern Orthodox, but decisively of the Western, Reformed/Protestant type. (And no worries at all for a 'misidentification'!) That means that I believe Scripture to be the 'only rule for faith and obedience,' that it is 'the final arbiter' on all questions of doctrine (like the Bereans in Acts 14:11). So for any question, I will point back to Scripture for the answer.
- I get your point that 'Gnosticism' as it is known today is somewhat different from the many forms of it in the early church. But what it was, and what it still has echoes of, was rather decisively dealt with in the early church--for that I would refer you to Irenaeus' work. He showed that the general thrust of the gnosticism of his day was out of accord with right teaching (read: Scripture).
- In Luke 8:10, Jesus is speaking to the church, to those who had been 'born again from above,' who had been renewed by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is not a place--yet (see The Revelation for that), but is now an ethic: it's in our hearts. It's in our hearts like it was in Rahab's heart before Joshua took Jericho. It is the ethical rule that precedes the geographical realm, when Christ comes to conquer all his and our enemies at the Last Day. We still pray to this day, "thy Kingdom come," as we can imagine Rahab did in her prayer closet. She was 'in' Jericho, but no longer 'of' Jericho--because she was 'of' the coming Kingdom of Joshua, but not yet 'in' the kingdom of Joshua. But he was at the gate.
- Where is Christ? He is seated in heaven (Eph. 2; Heb. 1), at the right hand of God, 'from thence he shall come to judge to quick and the dead.' The Christ of Scripture is a man (John 1), a particular man (Matthew 1), who lived on this earth, at a particular time and a particular place "under Pontius Pilate--it is all in order" (as CS Lewis put it). He hungered, he wept, he had arm hair, his feet got dirty. "Christ" is not a state of consciousness that any human can achieve with enough meditation, enlightenment, and ego death. I know that is the teaching of many flavors of gnosticism and even some flavors of theosophy, but it is not the teaching of Scripture. Christ is not a state of mind or of being--He is a single, unique, historical, individual person, "born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were subject to the curse of the law." (Gal. 4).
- Yes, God is infinite, but--having material bodies--we are finite. We are bound by both time and space while he is not. We are not emanations from him, we are uniquely created minds/hearts/wills, though created in his image and likeness. He is not made of body, parts, or passions--he does not suffer change. We are, and we do.
- Much of what you've written is known by many names, be it gnosticism, the 'ancient philosophy,' theosophy, etc. The 'reconciling of the opposites,' the 'As Above, So Below' ideas, etc. To get at why these ideas in general--monism, as a catch-all term--cannot be reconciled with the teaching of Scripture, see Peter Jones, _The Other Worldview_, or--if you're a deep-diver--Michael Horton's _The Divine Self: The Origins of 'Spiritual, Not Religious'_ (Volume 1).
- The real point of my objections to this is that if 'All is One,' if 'I am the universe experiencing itself' (to quote another version of these ideas), then all of this resolves into the worship of self (or, the Self). If All is One then I am All and All is Me, God is I and I am actually he--or more precisely, we all together with the rocks and trees and birds and bees are God and we only need to remember who we Really Are. But we merely collapse into ourselves, and then into oblivion. And that was the primal temptation of the Serpent, wasn't it? "Look within," he said to Eve: "what looks good *to you*? Don't you want to be God? Never mind his threats, shut your ears to his Word--he's lying to you. Listen, instead, to me." This is why many who go down this path end up deciding that the Serpent himself was the savior--that the Serpent himself was the one that 'gave us knowledge/gnosis'. It is the primal lie; the first murder. And we have been 'dying the death' ever since.
- There is nothing 'within' except sin, corruption, and self-worship, unless or until the Spirit of God grants us the new life 'from above' (John 3), our eyes are opened, our hearts are changed, and our polarity/ethical disposition reverses back toward God. Only by turning away from ourselves and toward God (who is external to us) can we find redemption. Before this, we are blind, dead, enemies, alienated from God, without hope in the world, unwilling to enter the kingdom and unable to even see it. We are not merely sick; we are spiritually dead. That's what's 'within'--death.
I do not necessarily write the above to persuade you to embrace more historically orthodox teaching (not to be confused with Eastern Orthodox as in the denomination)--though I certainly would love it if you did--but simply to point out that pantheism (or monism, or gnosticism, or whatever you want to call it) and Christian theism are incompatible. We can choose one or the other, but not both.
I failed miserably in my objective to be concise. Didn't have time to refine, my apologies. But hopefully the above lays out just a bit more of the reason why I said what I said above.
