We attended a couple of lectures on the Gnostic Gospels by a local preacher at UW, Richland as part of their Love of Learning Lecture series. As we were talking about the gnostic approach versus the orthodox perspective on religion, in particular, Christianity, it occurred to us that one could look at that bifurcation simply as the variation between the Myers-Briggs type of iNtuition vs. Sensing. The gnostic approach focuses on an inner experience / knowing. The orthodox approach focuses on externally sensed feedback: going to church, good deeds, tithing, ....
In a more general sense, one could say that there is a spectrum of types. And that to these different types, different forms of belief are appealing. What often seems to happen in culture and religion is that the dominant type / person in / of that religion coerces in various ways those whose type is a mismatch to theirs to get in line. When this does not happen, you get schism / bifurcations of the belief system.
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