Some Christians like to mix their drinks when it comes to their beliefs. Some like a little bit of Bible with some motivational new age teaching, add a bit of philosophy and top it off with the latest mystic movie. It is what they believe, it defines their life and they believe it is truth.

Paul wrote the letters scholars now refer to as ‘the Prison Epistles’ whilst he was on house arrest in Rome for two years. By this point, he had already endured imprisonment in Caesarea, an appeal, an extremely dangerous voyage by sea and a subsequent shipwreck followed by a rescue… only to finally make it to Rome and be imprisoned again under house arrest!

There is this innate desire in all of us for a treasure hunt; to search for something that is prized, that is valuable, that is hidden and to do everything we can to find it. The children’s game Hide and Seek shows how natural this is in us from a very early age. The moment of joy and laughter when you find what you were searching for. The hidden is revealed to you. I used to love Easter and the Easter Bunny hunt.

Variegated Gnosticism seems to rear its head all over the history of the early Church, especially in the first three centuries. Inherently dualistic in nature – comprised of two opposing principles, that are generally mutually-incompatible, i.e. body and spirit, material and immaterial, good and evil – Gnosticism garners currency via the medium of some sort of ‘secret knowledge’.