The Serpent's Wisdom

This article in Christianity Today, linked to by Frater AMPH, concerns the role of Gnosticism in the early formation of Christian doctrine.

It is embarrasing to see an article like this from an accomplished scholar like Ben Witherington III. It is particularly puzzling that Witherington chose to cloud his arguments in a disingenous and misleading way instead of simply acknowledging the truth about these matters, since the truth of what happened is not inherently damaging to Christian doctrine.

He starts by quoting from the The Da Vinci Code, a popular work of fiction which suggests that bishops changed Christian doctrine at the Council of Nicea and then instituted a massive cover-up. He uses this clearly fictional scenario to muddy the issues at hand:

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crossposting in my journal and crossposting in questionofgod

I finally made time last night to start reading Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels. The basic thesis of this book is simple and astonishing:

I was amazed when I went back to the Gospel of John after reading Thomas, for Thomas and John clearly draw upon similar language and images, and both, apparently, begin with similar "secret teaching." But John takes this teaching to mean something so different from Thomas that I wondered whether John could have written his gospel to refute what Thomas teaches. For months I investgated this possibility, and explored the work of other scholars who also have compared these sources, and I was finally convinced that this is what happened. As the scholar Gregory Riley points out, John -- and only John -- presents a challenging and critical portrait of the disciple he calls "Thomas, the one called Didymus," and as Riley suggests, it is John who invented the character we call Doubting Thomas, perhaps as a way of caricaturing those who revered a teacher -- and a version of Jesus' teaching -- that he regarded as faithless and false. (p. 57-58, italic emphasis in original, bold emphasis added)

This is actually not the first time I've encountered the idea that the Gospel of John was written specifically to answer the Gnostic idea of divinity, or Kingdom of God, within each of us. I first heard this suggestion on Beliefnet two years ago from Bnet user finnfire, who suggested that John's intent was to incorporate certain of the Gnostic ideas into mainstream Christianity, while refuting others. Pagels would seem to agree:

John's gospel begins by recalling, as Thomas does, the opening of the first chapter of Genesis -- saying that, since the beginning of time, divine light, "the light of all people," has shone forth.... But John's next lines suggest that he intends not to complement but to reject Thomas's claim that we have direct access to God through the divine image within us, for John immediately adds -- three times! -- that the divine light did not penetrate the deep darkness into which the world has plunged. Though he agrees that, since the beginning of time, the divine light "shines into the darkness," he also declares that "the darkness has not grasped it." ... Moreover, he says that, although the divine light had come into the world, "and the world was made through it, the world did not recognize it." [but cf. the Gospel of Truth, Valentinus retained this idea -- SS] John then adds that even when the light "came unto its own, its own -- God's people, Israel -- did not receive it." ... But to anyone who claims, as Thomas does, that we are (or may become) like Jesus, John emphatically says no: Jesus is unique or, as John loves to call him, monogenes -- "only begotten" or "one of a kind" -- for he insists that God has only one son, and he is different from you and me. ...[H]e argues that humankind has no innate capacity to know God. What John's gospel does... is claim that only by believing in Jesus can we find divine truth. (p. 66-67, emphasis in original)

I made a comment about this yesterday in challenging_god and realized I haven't done a systematic treatment of this passage.

Following are logia 5, 6, and 14 from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi II-2)

(5) Jesus said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."

(6) His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?"
Jesus said, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered."

(14) Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth - it is that which will defile you."

(Thomas O. Lambdin translation)

My instincts tell me that the text has been corrupted here in recopying and translation, and that what we have as logion 14 was originally intended as an answer to the question posed in the first part of logion 6 because it gives a point-by-point answer to the question. The answer to 6 looks like an interpolation, part of which was taken from logion 5. I don't want to entirely discard the answer portion of 6, though.

My proposed reconstruction would look like this:

His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?"

Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth - it is that which will defile you."

Whether Jesus said this or whether someone put these words in his mouth, I think the underlying message is this: the disciples were asking Jesus to lay out a set of religious practices like those with which they were familiar -- fasts, prayers, and alms. In that context the response is seen to suggest that doing such things as religious observances is what Jesus wants to warn the disciples away from.

Taken a bit further, the way the Gnostics would have read this, it suggests that what Jesus offers is freedom from religious orthodoxy. I read this to mean that he did not want his followers to be "observant Jews" or "observant Christians," thinking that ritual practice will bring understanding or salvation -- but instead to be open-minded mystics -- "passers-by" (as in logion 42).

This relates also to comments in some of the Gnostic texts regarding disrobing; in logion 37 Jesus is quoted as telling his disciples "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid." (I commented on this a while ago.) Here I read "garment" as a reference to religious doctrine, which the Gnostics wanted people to cast aside in favor of gnosis.

I think too that this was intended as an answer to the Gospel of Matthew. This gospel, as is well-known, was intended to defend Jewish observance within Christianity. My reconstructed passage has an obvious intended parallel to the first part of Matthew, chapter 6, wherein Jesus told his followers not to give alms with fanfare as the hypocrites did, or to fast publically as a show of religious piety. "They have their reward," he said of public religious display -- which reward is not a spiritual benefit but simply the social status that goes with the appearance of piety. The authors of GTh wanted to highlight the way they read this passage as a criticism of religious observance not for the sake of personal spiritual growth but solely for social status.

I think too this is what Paul meant when he wrote that "By dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code" (Romans 7:6)

crossposting to cp_circle

Crossposted in questionofgod

The question of whether to accept or reject the Gospel of Thomas from the orthodox or mainstream Christian viewpoint is not clear-cut. Many of the church fathers quoted approvingly from it. For example, in the second epistle of Clement, we find this:

[II Clement 12] Let us therefore await the kingdom of God betimes in love and righteousness, since we know not the day of God's appearing. For the Lord Himself, being asked by a certain Person when His kingdom would come, said, When the two shall shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female, neither male nor female. Now the two are one, when we speak truth among ourselves, and in two bodies there shall be one soul without dissimulation. And by the outside as the inside He meaneth this: by the inside He meaneth the soul and by the outside the body. Therefore in like manner as thy body appeareth, so also let thy soul be manifest in its good works. And by the male with the female, neither male nor female, He meaneth this; that a brother seeing a sister should have no thought of her as of a female, and that a sister seeing a brother should not have any thought of him as of a male. These things if ye do, saith He, the kingdom of my Father shall come.

( on references by Justin, Irenaeus, the <i>Didascalia Apostolorum</i>, and Origen. )