Gnosticism and the Gnostic Jesus
by Douglas Groothuis
From the Christian
Research Journal,
Fall 1990, page 8.
The Editor-in-Chief of the
Christian Research Journal is Elliot Miller.
Popular opinion
often comes from obscure sources. Many conceptions about Jesus now
current and credible in New Age circles are rooted in a movement of
spiritual protest which, until recently, was the concern only of the
specialized scholar or the occultist.
This ancient movement --
Gnosticism -- provides much of the form and color for the New Age
portrait of Jesus as the illumined Illuminator: one who serves as a
cosmic catalyst for others' awakening.
Many essentially
Gnostic notions received wide attention through the sagacious
persona of the recently deceased Joseph Campbell in the television
series and best-selling book, The Power of Myth.
For example, in
discussing the idea that "God was in Christ," Campbell affirmed that
"the basic Gnostic and Buddhist idea is that is true of you and
me as well."
Jesus is an enlightened example who "realized in
himself that he and what he called the Father were one, and he lived
out of that knowledge of the Christhood of his nature." According to
Campbell, anyone can likewise live out his or her Christ nature.[1]
Gnosticism has come to mean just about anything. Calling
someone a Gnostic can make the person either blush, beam, or fume.
Whether used as an epithet for heresy or spiritual snobbery, or as a
compliment for spiritual knowledge and esotericism, Gnosticism
remains a cornucopia of controversy.
This is doubly so when
Gnosticism is brought into a discussion of Jesus of Nazareth. Begin
to speak of "Christian Gnostics" and some will exclaim, "No way!
That is a contradiction in terms. Heresy is not orthodoxy." Others
will affirm, "No contradiction. Orthodoxy is the heresy.
The
Gnostics were edged out of mainstream Christianity for political
purposes
by the end of the third century." Speak of the Gnostic
Christ or the Gnostic gospels, and an ancient debate is moved to the
theological front burner.
Gnosticism as a philosophy refers
to a related body of teachings that stress the acquisition of
"gnosis," or inner knowledge. The knowledge sought is not
strictly intellectual, but mystical; not merely a detached knowledge
of or about something, but a knowing by acquaintance or
participation.
This gnosis is the inner and esoteric mystical
knowledge of ultimate reality. It
discloses the spark of divinity
within, thought to be obscured by ignorance, convention, and mere
esoteric religiosity.
This knowledge is not considered to be
the possession of the masses but of the Gnostics, the Knowers, who
are privy to its benefits. While the orthodox "many" exult in the
esoteric religious trappings which stress dogmatic belief and
prescribed behavior, the Gnostic "few" pierce through the surface to
the esoteric spiritual knowledge of God.
The Gnostics claim
the Orthodox mistake the shell for the core; the Orthodox claim
the Gnostics dive past the true core into a nonexistent one of their
own esoteric invention.
To adjudicate this ancient acrimony
requires that we examine Gnosticism's perennial allure, expose its
philosophical foundations, size up its historical claims, and square
off the Gnostic Jesus with the figure who sustains the New
Testament.
Glossary
aeons: Emanations of
Being from the unknowable, ultimate metaphysical principle or
pleroma (see pleroma).
Apostolic rule of faith: The
essential teachings of the apostles that served as the authoritative
standard for orthodox doctrine before the canonization of the New
Testament.
Demiurge: According to the Gnostics (as opposed
to Plato and others who had a more positive assessment), an inferior
deity who ignorantly and incompetently fashioned the debased
physical world.
esotericism: The teaching that spiritual
liberation is found in a secret or hidden knowledge (sometimes
called gnosis) not available in traditional orthodoxy or
esotericism.
esotericism: A pejorative term used by
esotericists to describe the mere outer or popular understanding of
spiritual truth which is supposedly inferior to the esoteric
essence.
gnosis: The Greek word for "knowledge" used by the
Gnostics to mean knowledge gained not through intellectual discovery
but through personal experience or acquaintance which initiates one
into esoteric mysteries.
The experience of gnosis reveals to the
initiated the divine spark within. "Gnosis" has a very different
meaning in the New Testament which excludes esotericism and
self-deification.
Pleroma: The Greek word for "fullness" used
by the Gnostics to mean the highest principle of Being where dwells
the unknown and unknowable God. Used in the New Testament to refer
to "fullness in Christ" (Col. 2:10) who is the known revelation of
God in the flesh.
MODERN GNOSTICISM
Gnosticism is experiencing something of a revival, despite
its status within church history as a vanquished Christian
heresy. The magazine Gnosis, which bills itself as a "journal
of western inner traditions," began publication in 1985 with a
circulation of 2,500.
As of September 1990, it sported a circulation
of 11,000. Gnosis regularly runs articles on Gnosticism and
Gnostic themes such as "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons."
Some have created institutional forms of this ancient
religion.
In Palo Alto, California, priestess Bishop Rosamonde
Miller officiates the weekly gatherings of Ecclesia Gnostica
Myteriorum (Church of Gnostic Mysteries), as she has done for the
last eleven years.
The chapel holds forty to sixty participants each
Sunday and includes Gnostic readings in its liturgy. Miller says she
knows of twelve organizationally unrelated Gnostic churches
throughout the world.[2]
Stephan Hoeller, a frequent contributor to
Gnosis, who since 1967 has been a bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica in Los
Angeles, notes that "Gnostic churches...have sprung up in recent
years in increasing numbers."[3]
He refers to an established
tradition of "wandering bishops" who retain allegiance to the
symbolic and ritual form of orthodox Christianity while
reinterpreting its essential content.[4]
Of course, these
exotic-sounding enclaves of the esoteric are minuscule when compared
to historic Christian denominations. But the real challenge of
Gnosticism is not so much organizational as intellectual. Gnosticism
in its various forms has often appealed to the alienated
intellectuals who yearn for spiritual experience outside the bounds
of the ordinary.
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a
constant source of inspiration for the New Age, did much to
introduce Gnosticism to the modern world by viewing it as a kind of
proto-depth psychology, a key to psychological interpretation.
According to Stephan Hoeller, author of The Gnostic Jung,
"it was
Jung's contention that Christianity and Western culture
have
suffered grievously because of the repression of the Gnostic
approach to religion, and it was his hope that in time this approach
would be reincorporated in our culture, our Western
spirituality."[5]
In his Psychological Types, Jung praised
"the intellectual content of Gnosis" as "vastly superior" to the
orthodox church. He also affirmed that, "in light of our present
mental development [Gnosticism] has not lost but considerably gained
in value."[6]
A variety of esoteric groups have roots in
Gnostic soil. Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, who founded Theosophy in
1875, viewed the Gnostics as precursors of modern occult movements
and hailed them for preserving an inner teaching lost to orthodoxy.
Theosophy and its various spin-offs -- such as Rudolf Steiner's
Anthroposophy, Alice Bailey's Arcane School, Guy and Edna Ballard's
I Am movement, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and
Triumphant -- all draw water from this same well; so do various
other esoteric groups, such as the Rosicrucians.
These groups share
an emphasis on esoteric teaching, the hidden divinity of humanity,
and contact with nonmaterial higher beings called masters or adepts.
A four-part documentary called "The Gnostics" was released
in mid-1989 and shown in one-day screenings across the country along
with a lecture by the producer. This ambitious series charted the
history of Gnosticism through dramatizations and interviews with
world-renowned scholars on Gnosticism such as Gilles Quispel, Hans
Jonas, and Elaine Pagels.
A review of the series in a New
Age-oriented journal noted: "The series takes us to the Nag Hammadi
find where we learn the beginnings of the discovery of texts called
the Gnostic Gospels that were written around the same time as the
gospels of the New Testament but which were purposely left out."[7]
The review refers to one of the most sensational and significant
archaeological finds of the twentieth century; a discovery seen by
some as overthrowing the orthodox view of Jesus and Christianity
forever.
GOLD IN THE JAR
In December 1945, while
digging for soil to fertilize crops, an Arab peasant named Muhammad
'Ali found a red earthenware jar near Nag Hammadi, a city in upper
Egypt. His fear of uncorking an evil spirit or jin was shortly
overcome by the hope of finding gold within.
What was found has been
for hundreds of scholars far more precious than gold. Inside the jar
were thirteen leather-bound papyrus books (codices), dating
from approximately A.D. 350.
Although several of the texts
were burned or thrown out, fifty-two texts were eventually recovered
through many years of intrigue involving illegal sales, violence,
smuggling, and academic rivalry.
Some of the texts were
first published singly or in small collections, but the complete
collection was not made available in a popular format in English
until 1977. It was released as The Nag Hammadi Library and was
reissued in revised form in 1988.
Although many of these
documents had been referred to and denounced in the writings of
early church theologians such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, most of
the texts themselves had been thought to be extinct. Now many of
them have come to light.
As Elaine Pagels put it in her best-selling
book, The Gnostic Gospels, "Now for the first time, we have the
opportunity to find out about the earliest Christian heresy; for the
first time, the heretics can speak for themselves."[8]
Pagels' book, winner of the National Book Critics Circle
Award, arguably did more than any other effort to ingratiate the
Gnostics to modern Americans. She made them accessible and even
likeable. Her scholarly expertise coupled with her ability to relate
an ancient religion to contemporary concerns made for a compelling
combination in the minds of many.
Her central thesis was simple:
Gnosticism should be considered at least as legitimate as orthodox
Christianity because the "heresy" was simply a competing strain of
early Christianity.
Yet, we find that the Nag Hammadi texts present
a Jesus at extreme odds with the one found in the Gospels. Before
contrasting the Gnostic and biblical renditions of Jesus, however,
we need a short briefing on gnosis.
THE GNOSTIC MESSAGE
Gnosticism in general and the Nag Hammadi texts in
particular present a spectrum of beliefs, although a central
philosophical core is roughly discernible, which Gnosticism scholar
Kurt Rudolph calls "the central myth."[9] Gnosticism teaches that
something is desperately wrong with the universe and then delineates
the means to explain and rectify the situation.
The
universe, as presently constituted, is not good, nor was it created
by an all-good God. Rather, a lesser god, or Demiurge (as he is
sometimes called), fashioned the world in ignorance. The Gospel of
Philip says that "the world came about through a mistake.
For he who
created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell
short of attaining his desire."[10] The origin of the Demiurge or
offending creator is variously explained, but the upshot is that
some pre-cosmic disruption in the chain of beings emanating from the
unknowable Father-God resulted in the "fall out" of a substandard
deity with less than impeccable credentials.
The result was a
material cosmos soaked with ignorance, pain, decay, and death -- a
botched job, to be sure. This deity, nevertheless, despotically
demands worship and even pretentiously proclaims his supremacy as
the one true God.
This creator-god is not the ultimate
reality, but rather a degeneration of the unknown and unknowable
fullness of Being (or pleroma).
Yet, human beings -- or at least
some of them -- are in the position potentially to transcend their
imposed limitations, even if the cosmic deck is stacked against
them.
Locked within the material shell of the human race is the
spark of this highest spiritual reality which (as one Gnostic theory
held) the inept creator accidentally infused into humanity at the
creation -- on the order of a drunken jeweler who accidentally mixes
gold dust into junk metal. Simply put, spirit is good and desirable;
matter is evil and detestable.
If this spark is fanned into
a flame, it can liberate humans from the maddening matrix of matter
and the demands of its obtuse originator. What has devolved from
perfection can ultimately evolve back into perfection through a
process of self-discovery.
Into this basic structure enters
the idea of Jesus as a Redeemer of those ensconced in materiality.
He comes as one descended from the spiritual realm with a message of
self-redemption.
The body of Gnostic literature, which is wider than
the Nag Hammadi texts, presents various views of this Redeemer
figure.
There are, in fact, differing schools of Gnosticism with
differing Christologies. Nevertheless, a basic image emerges.
The Christ comes from the higher levels of intermediary
beings (called aeons) not as a sacrifice for sin but as a Revealer,
an emissary from error-free environs.
He is not the personal agent
of the creator-god revealed in the Old Testament. (That
metaphysically disheveled deity is what got the universe into such a
royal mess in the first place.)
Rather, Jesus has descended from a
more exalted level to be a catalyst for igniting the gnosis latent
within the ignorant. He gives a metaphysical assist to
underachieving deities (i.e., humans) rather than granting ethical
restoration to God's erring creatures through the Crucifixion and
Resurrection.
NAG HAMMADI UNVEILED
By inspecting a
few of the Nag Hammadi texts, we encounter Gnosticism in Christian
guise: Jesus dispenses gnosis to awaken those trapped in ignorance;
the body is a prison, and the spirit alone is good; and salvation
comes by discovering the "kingdom of God" within the self.
One of the first Nag Hammadi texts to be extricated out of
Egypt and translated into Western tongues was the Gospel of Thomas,
comprised of one hundred and fourteen alleged sayings of Jesus.
Although scholars do not believe it was actually written by the
apostle Thomas, it has received the lion's share of scholarly
attention.
The sayings of Jesus are given minimal
narrative
setting, are not thematically arranged, and have a cryptic,
epigrammatic bite to them. Although Thomas does not articulate every
aspect of a full-blown Gnostic system, some of the teachings
attributed to Jesus fit the Gnostic pattern. (Other sayings
closely parallel or duplicate material found in the synoptic
Gospels.)
The text begins: "These are the secret sayings
which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote
down. And he said, 'Whoever finds the interpretation of these
sayings will not experience death.'"[11] Already we find the
emphasis on secret knowledge (gnosis) as redemptive.
JESUS AND GNOSIS
Unlike the canonical gospels, Jesus' crucifixion
and resurrection are not narrated and neither do any of the hundred
and fourteen sayings in the Gospel of Thomas directly refer to these
events. Thomas's Jesus is a dispenser of wisdom, not the crucified
and resurrected Lord.
Jesus speaks of the kingdom: "The
kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to
know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize
that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you
will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are
that poverty."[12]
Other Gnostic documents center on the
same theme. In the Book of Thomas the Contender, Jesus speaks
"secret words" concerning self-knowledge: "For he who has not known
himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the
same time already achieved knowledge of the depth of the all."[13]
Pagels observes that many of the Gnostics "shared certain
affinities with contemporary methods of exploring the self through
psychotherapeutic techniques."[14] This includes the premises that,
first, many people are unconscious of their true condition and,
second, "that the psyche bears within itself the potential for
liberation or destruction."[15]
Gilles Quispel notes that
for Valentinus, a Gnostic teacher of the second century, Christ is
"the Paraclete from the Unknown who reveals...the discovery of the
Self -- the divine spark within you."[16]
The heart of the
human problem for the Gnostic is ignorance, sometimes called
"sleep," "intoxication," or "blindness." But Jesus redeems man from
such ignorance.
Stephan Hoeller says that in the Valentinian system
"there is no need whatsoever for guilt, for repentance from
so-called sin, neither is there a need for a blind belief in
vicarious salvation by way of the death of Jesus."[17]
Rather,
Jesus is savior in the sense of being a "spiritual maker of
wholeness" who cures us of our sickness of ignorance.[18]
Gnosticism on Crucifixion and Resurrection
Those
Gnostic texts that discuss Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection
display a variety of views that, nevertheless, reveal some common
themes.
James is consoled by Jesus in the First Apocalypse
of James: "Never have I suffered in any way, nor have I been
distressed. And this people has done me no harm."[19]
In the
Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus says, "I did not die in
reality, but in appearance."
Those "in error and blindness....saw
me; they punished me. It was another, their father, who drank the
gall and vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was
another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. I was rejoicing
in the height over all....And I was laughing at their
ignorance."[20]
John Dart has discerned that the Gnostic
stories of Jesus mocking his executors reverse the accounts in
Matthew, Mark, and Luke where the soldiers and chief priests (Mark
15:20) mock Jesus.[21]
In the biblical Gospels, Jesus does not
deride or mock His tormentors; on the contrary, while suffering from
the cross, He asks the Father to forgive those who nailed
Him
there.
In the teaching of Valentinus and followers, the
death of Jesus is movingly recounted, yet without the New Testament
significance. Although the Gospel of Truth says that "his death is
life for many," it views this life-giving in terms of imparting the
gnosis, not removing sin.[22]
Pagels says that rather than viewing
Christ's death as a sacrificial offering to atone for guilt and
sin, the Gospel of Truth "sees the crucifixion as the occasion for
discovering the divine self within."[23]
A resurrection is
enthusiastically affirmed in the Treatise on the Resurrection: "Do
not think the resurrection is an illusion. It is no illusion, but it
is truth! Indeed, it is more fitting to say that the world is an
illusion rather than the resurrection."[24]
Yet, the nature of the
post-resurrection appearances differs from the biblical accounts.
Jesus is disclosed through spiritual visions rather than physical
circumstances.
The resurrected Jesus for the Gnostics is the
spiritual Revealer who imparts secret wisdom to the selected few.
The tone and content of Luke's account of Jesus' resurrection
appearances is a great distance from Gnostic accounts: "After his
suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing
proofs that he was alive.
He appeared to them over a period of forty
days and spoke about the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3).
By now
it should be apparent that the biblical Jesus has little in common
with the Gnostic Jesus.
He is viewed as a Redeemer in both cases,
yet his nature as a Redeemer and the way of redemption diverge at
crucial points. We shall now examine some of these points.
DID CHRIST REALLY SUFFER AND DIE?
As in much modern
New Age teaching, the Gnostics tended to divide Jesus from the
Christ. For Valentinus, Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism and
left before his death on the cross.
Much of the burden of the
treatise Against Heresies, written by the early Christian theologian
Irenaeus, was to affirm that Jesus was, is, and always will be, the
Christ.
He says: "The Gospel...knew no other son of man but Him who
was of Mary, who also suffered; and no Christ who flew away from
Jesus before the passion; but Him who was born it knew as Jesus
Christ the Son of God, and that this same suffered and rose
again."[25]
Irenaeus goes on to quote John's affirmation
that "Jesus is the Christ" (John 20:31) against the notion that
Jesus and Christ were "formed of two different substances," as the
Gnostics taught.[26]
In dealing with the idea that Christ
did not suffer on the cross for sin, Irenaeus argues that Christ
never would have exhorted His disciples to take up the cross if He
in fact was not to suffer on it Himself, but fly away from it.[27]
For Irenaeus (a disciple of Polycarp, who himself was a
disciple of the apostle John), the suffering of Jesus the Christ was
paramount. It was indispensable to the apostolic "rule of faith"
that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross to bring salvation to His
people.
In Irenaeus's mind, there was no divine spark in the human
heart to rekindle; self-knowledge was not equal to God-knowledge.
Rather, humans were stuck in sin and required a radical rescue
operation.
Because "it was not possible that the man...who had been
destroyed through disobedience, could reform himself," the Son
brought salvation by "descending from the Father, becoming
incarnate, stooping low, even to death, and consummating the
arranged plan of our salvation."[28]
This harmonizes with
the words of Polycarp: "Let us then continually persevere in our
hope and the earnest of our righteousness, which Jesus Christ, "who
bore our sins in His own body on the tree" [1 Pet. 2:24], "who did
no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth" [1 Pet. 2:22], but
endured all things for us, that we might live in Him."[29]
Polycarp's mentor, the apostle John, said: "This is how we
know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us" (1 John
3:16); and "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved
us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (4:10).
The Gnostic Jesus is predominantly a dispenser of cosmic
wisdom who discourses on abstruse themes like the spirit's fall into
matter. Jesus Christ certainly taught theology, but he dealt with
the problem of pain and suffering in a far different way. He
suffered for us, rather than escaping the cross or lecturing on the
vanity of the body.
THE MATTER OF THE RESURRECTION
For Gnosticism, the inherent problem of humanity derives
from the misuse of power by the ignorant creator and the resulting
entrapment of souls in matter.
The Gnostic Jesus alerts us to this
and helps rekindle the divine spark within. In the biblical
teaching, the problem is ethical; humans have sinned against a good
Creator and are guilty before the throne of the
universe.
For Gnosticism, the world is bad, but the soul -- when freed
from its entrapments -- is good. For Christianity, the world was
created good (Gen. 1), but humans have fallen from innocence and
purity through disobedience (Gen. 3; Rom. 3).
Yet, the message of
the gospel is that the One who can rightly prosecute His creatures
as guilty and worthy of punishment has
deigned to visit them in
the person of His only Son -- not just to write up a firsthand
damage report, but to rectify the situation through the Cross and
the Resurrection.
In light of these differences, the
significance of Jesus' literal and physical resurrection should be
clear.
For the Gnostic who abhors matter and seeks release from its
grim grip, the physical resurrection of Jesus would be
anticlimactic, if not absurd. A material resurrection would be
counterproductive and only recapitulate the original problem.
Jesus displays a positive attitude toward the Creation
throughout the Gospels. In telling His followers not to worry He
says, "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or
store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them"
(Matt. 2:26).
And, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not
one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of
your
Father" (Matt. 10:29). These and many other examples presuppose the
goodness of the material world and declare care by a benevolent
Creator. Gnostic dualism is precluded.
If Jesus recommends
fasting and physical self-denial on occasion, it is not because
matter is unworthy of attention or an incorrigible roadblock to
spiritual growth, but because moral and spiritual resolve may be
strengthened through periodic abstinence (Matt. 6:16-18; 9:14-15).
Jesus fasts in the desert and feasts with His disciples.
The created
world is good, but the human heart is corrupt and inclines to
selfishly misuse a good creation. Therefore, it is sometimes wise to
deny what is good without in order to inspect and mortify what is
bad within.
If Jesus is the Christ who comes to restore
God's creation, He must come as one of its own, a bona fide man.
Although Gnostic teachings show some diversity on this subject, they
tend toward Docetism -- the doctrine that the descent of the Christ
was spiritual and not material, despite any appearance of
materiality. It was even claimed that Jesus left no footprints
behind him when he walked on the sand.
From a biblical view,
materiality is not the problem, but disharmony with the Maker. Adam
and Eve were both material and in harmony with their good Maker
before they succumbed to the Serpent's temptation.
Yet, in biblical
reasoning, if Jesus is to conquer sin and death for humanity, He
must rise from the dead in a physical body, albeit a transformed
one.
A mere spiritual apparition would mean an abdication of
material responsibility. As Norman Geisler has noted, "Humans sin
and die in material bodies and they must be redeemed in the same
physical bodies.
Any other kind of deliverance would be an admission
of defeat....If redemption does not restore God's physical creation,
including our material bodies, then God's original purpose in
creating a material world would be frustrated."[30]
For this
reason, at Pentecost the apostle Peter preached Jesus of Nazareth as
"a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs"
(Acts 2:22) who, though put to death by being nailed to the cross,
"God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death,
because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him" (v.
24).
Peter then quotes Psalm 16:10 which speaks of God not letting
His "Holy One see decay" (v. 27). Peter says of David, the psalm's
author, "Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of
Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave nor did his body see
decay. God raised Jesus to life" (vv. 31, 32).
The apostle
Paul confesses that if the resurrection of Jesus is not a historical
fact, Christianity is a vanity of vanities (1 Cor. 15:14-19). And,
while he speaks of Jesus' (and the believers') resurrected condition
as a "spiritual body," this does not mean nonphysical or ethereal;
rather, it refers to a body totally free from the results of sin and
the Fall.
It is a spirit-driven body, untouched by any of the
entropies of evil. Because Jesus was resurrected bodily, those who
know Him as Lord can anticipate their own resurrected bodies.
JESUS, JUDAISM, AND GNOSIS
The Gnostic Jesus is also
divided from the Jesus of the Gospels over his relationship to
Judaism. For Gnostics, the God of the Old Testament is somewhat of a
cosmic clown, neither ultimate nor good.
In fact, many Gnostic
documents invert the meaning of Old Testament stories in order to
ridicule him.
For instance, the serpent and Eve are heroic figures
who oppose the dull deity in the Hypostasis of the Archons (the
Reality of the Rulers) and in On the Origin of the World.[31]
In the Apocryphon of John, Jesus says he encouraged Adam and
Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,[32] thus
putting Jesus diametrically at odds with the meaning of the Genesis
account where this action is seen as the essence of sin (Gen. 3).
The same anti-Jewish element is found in the Jesus of the Gospel of
Thomas where the disciples say to Jesus, "Twenty-four prophets
spoke in Israel, and all of them spoke in you." To which Jesus
replies, "You have omitted the one living in your presence and have
spoken (only) of the dead."[33] Jesus thus dismisses all the
prophets as merely "dead." For the Gnostics, the Creator must be
separated from the Redeemer.
The Jesus found in the New
Testament quotes the prophets, claims to fulfill their prophecies,
and consistently argues according to the Old Testament revelation,
despite the fact that He exudes an authority equal to it. Jesus
says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them"
(Matt. 5:17).
He corrects the Sadducees' misunderstanding of the
afterlife by saying, "Are you not in error because you do not know
the Scriptures..." (Mark 12:24). To other critics He again appeals
to the Old Testament: "You diligently study the Scriptures because
you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the
Scriptures that testify about me" (John 5:39).
When Jesus
appeared after His death and burial to the two disciples on the road
to Emmaus, He commented on their slowness of heart "to believe all
that the prophets have spoken." He asked, "Did not the Christ have
to suffer these things and then enter into glory?" Luke then
records, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he
explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning
himself" (Luke 24:25-27).
For both Jesus and the Old
Testament, the supreme Creator is the Father of all living. They are
one and the same.
GOD: UNKNOWABLE OR KNOWABLE?
Many
Gnostic treatises speak of the ultimate reality or godhead as beyond
conceptual apprehension. Any hope of contacting this reality -- a
spark of which is lodged within the Gnostic -- must be filtered
through numerous intermediary beings of a lesser stature than the
godhead itself.
In the Gospel of the Egyptians, the ultimate
reality is said to be the "unrevealable, unmarked, ageless,
unproclaimable Father." Three powers are said to emanate from Him:
"They are the Father, the Mother, (and) the Son, from the living
silence."[34]
The text speaks of giving praise to "the great
invisible Spirit" who is "the silence of silent silence."[35] In
the
Sophia of Jesus Christ, Jesus is asked by Matthew,
"Lord...teach us the truth," to which Jesus says, "He Who Is is
ineffable."
Although Jesus seems to indicate that he reveals the
ineffable, he says concerning the ultimate, "He is unnameable....he
is ever incomprehensible."[36]
At this point the divide
between the New Testament and the Gnostic documents couldn't be
deeper or wider. Although the biblical Jesus had the pedagogical
tact not to proclaim indiscriminately, "I am God! I am God!" the
entire contour of His ministry points to Him as God in the flesh.
He
says, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). The
prologue to John's gospel says that "in the beginning was the Word
(Logos)" and that "the Word was with God and was God" (John 1:1).
John did not say, "In the beginning was the silence of the silent
silence" or "the ineffable."
Incarnation means tangible and
intelligible revelation from God to humanity. The Creator's truth
and life are communicated spiritually through the medium of matter.
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling place among us. We have
seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the
Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
The Word that became
flesh "has made Him [the Father] known" (v. 19). John's first
epistle tells us: "The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to
it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the
Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen
and heard..." (1 John 1:2-3).
Irenaeus encountered these
Gnostic invocations of the ineffable. He quotes a Valentinian
Gnostic teacher who explained the "primary Tetrad" (fourfold
emanation from ultimate reality): "There is a certain Proarch who
existed before all things, surpassing all thought, speech, and
nomenclature" whom he called "Monotes" (unity).
Along with this
power there is another power called Hentotes (oneness) who, along
with Monotes produced "an intelligent, unbegotten, and undivided
being, which beginning language terms 'Monad.'"
Another entity
called Hen (One) rounds out the primal union.[37] Irenaeus
satirically responds with his own suggested Tetrad which also
proceeds from "a certain Proarch":
But along with it there
exists a power which I term Gourd; and along with this Gourd there
exists a power which again I term Utter-Emptiness.
This Gourd and
Emptiness, since they are one, produced...a fruit, everywhere
visible, eatable, and delicious, which fruit-language calls a
Cucumber. Along with this Cucumber exists a power of the same
essence, which again I call a Melon.[38]
Irenaeus's point is
well taken. If spiritual realities surpass our ability to name or
even think about them, then any name under the sun (or within the
Tetrad) is just as appropriate -- or inappropriate -- as any other,
and we are free to affirm with Irenaeus that "these powers of the
Gourd, Utter Emptiness, the Cucumber, and the Melon, brought forth
the remaining
multitude of the delirious melons of
Valentinus."[39]
Whenever a Gnostic writer -- ancient or
modern -- simultaneously asserts that a spiritual entity or
principle is utterly unknown and unnameable and begins to give it
names and ascribe to it characteristics, we should hark back to
Irenaeus. If something is ineffable, it is necessarily unthinkable,
unreportable, and unapproachable.
ANCIENT GNOSTICISM AND MODERN THOUGHT
Modern day Gnostics, Neo-Gnostics, or Gnostic
sympathizers should be aware of some Gnostic elements which
decidedly clash with modern tastes.
First, although Pagels, like
Jung, has shown the Gnostics in a positive psychological light, the
Gnostic outlook is just as much theological and cosmological as it
is psychological.
The Gnostic message is all of a
piece, and the
psychology should not be artificially divorced from the overall
world view. In other words, Gnosticism should not be reduced to
psychology -- as if we know better what a Basilides or a Valentinus
really meant than they did.
The Gnostic documents do not
present their system as a crypto-psychology (with various cosmic
forces representing psychic functions), but as a religious and
theological explanation of the origin and operation of the universe.
Those who want to adopt consistently Gnostic attitudes and
assumptions should keep in mind what the Gnostic texts -- to which
they appeal for authority and credibility -- actually say.
Second, the Gnostic rejection of matter as illusory, evil,
or, at most, second-best, is at odds with many New Age sentiments
regarding the value of nature and the need for an ecological
awareness and ethic.
Trying to find an ecological concern in the
Gnostic corpus is on the order of harvesting wheat in Antarctica.
For the Gnostics, as Gnostic scholar Pheme Perkins puts it, "most of
the cosmos that we know is a carefully constructed plot to keep
humanity from returning to its true divine home."[40]
Third,
Pagels and others to the contrary, the Gnostic attitude toward women
was not proto-feminist. Gnostic groups did sometimes allow for
women's participation in religious activities and several of the
emanational beings were seen as feminine.
Nevertheless, even though
Ms. Magazine gave The Gnostic Gospels a glowing review[41], women
fare far worse in Gnosticism than many think. The concluding
saying from the Gospel of Thomas, for example, has less than a
feminist ring:
Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us,
for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall
lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a
living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make
herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."[42]
The
issue of the role of women in Gnostic theology and community cannot
be adequately addressed here, but it should be noted that the Jesus
of the Gospels never spoke of making the female into the male -- no
doubt because Jesus did not perceive the female to be inferior to
the male.
Going against social customs, He gathered women followers,
and revealed to an outcast Samaritan woman that He was the
Messiah -- which scandalized His own disciples (John 4:1-39).
The Gospels also record women as the first witnesses to Jesus'
resurrection (Matt. 28:1-10) -- and this in a society where women
were not considered qualified to be legal witnesses.
Fourth,
despite an emphasis on reincarnation, several Gnostic documents
speak of the damnation of those who are incorrigibly
non-Gnostic[43], particularly apostates from Gnostic groups.[44]
If
one chafes at the Jesus of the Gospels warning of "eternal
destruction," chafings are likewise readily available from Gnostic
doomsayers.
Concerning the Gnostic-Orthodox controversy,
biblical scholar F. F. Bruce is so bold as to say that "there is no
reason why the student of the conflict should shrink from making a
value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to
lose."[45]
The Gnostics lost once, but do they deserve to lose
again? We will seek to answer this in Part Two as we
consider the
historic reliability of the Gnostic (Nag Hammadi) texts versus that
of the New Testament.
NOTES
1 Joseph Campbell, The
Power of Myth, ed. Betty Sue Flowers (New York: Doubleday, 1988),
210.
2 Don Lattin, "Rediscovery of Gnostic Christianity," San
Francisco Chronicle, 1 April 1989, A-4-5.
3 Stephan A. Hoeller,
"Wandering Bishops," Gnosis, Summer 1989, 24.
4 Ibid.
5 "The
Gnostic Jung: An Interview with Stephan Hoeller," The Quest, Summer
1989, 85.
6 C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1976), 11.
7 "Gnosticism," Critique,
June-Sept. 1989, 66.
8 Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New
York: Random House, 1979), xxxv.
9 Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The
Nature and History of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1987), 57f.
10 James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 154.
11 Robinson, 126.
12 F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New
Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 112-13.
13 Bentley
Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co.,
Inc., 1987), 403.
14 Pagels, 124.
15 Ibid., 126.
16
Christopher Farmer, "An Interview with Gilles Quispel," Gnosis,
Summer 1989, 28.
17 Stephan A. Hoeller, "Valentinus: A Gnostic
for All Seasons," Gnosis, Fall/Winter 1985, 24.
18 Ibid., 25.
19 Robinson, 265.
20 Ibid., 365.
21 John Dart, The Jesus
of History and Heresy (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 97.
22 Robinson, 41.
23 Pagels, 95.
24 Robinson, 56.
25
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.16.5.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.,
3.18.5.
28 Ibid., 3.18.2.
29 "The Epistle of Polycarp," ch.
8, in The Apostolic Fathers, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1987), 35.
30 Norman L. Geisler, "I Believe...In the
Resurrection of the Flesh," Christian Research Journal, Summer
1989,
21-22.
31 See Dart, 60-74.
32 Robinson, 117.
33
Ibid., 132.
34 Ibid., 209.
35 Ibid., 210.
36 Ibid.,
224-25.
37 Irenaeus, 1.11.3.
38 Ibid., 1.11.4.
39 Ibid.
40 Pheme Perkins, "Popularizing the Past," Commonweal, November
1979, 634.
41 Kenneth Pitchford, "The Good News About God," Ms.
Magazine, April 1980, 32-35.
42 Robinson, 138.
43 See The
Book of Thomas the Contender, in Robinson, 205.
44 See Layton,
17.
45 F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1988), 277.
End of document,
CRJ0040A.TXT (original CRI file name),
"Gnosticism And The
Gnostic Jesus"
release A, March 21, 1994
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The Gnostic
Gospels: Part Two
Are They Authentic?
by Douglas
Groothuis
from the Christian Research Journal, Winter
1991, page 15. The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal
is Elliot Miller.
In the first installment of this two-part
series, I outlined the stark contrasts between the gnostic Jesus and
"the Word become flesh." These respective views of Jesus are lodged
within mutually exclusive world views concerning claims about God,
the universe, humanity, and salvation. But our next line of inquiry
is to be historical. Do we have a clue as to what Jesus, the Man
from Nazareth, actually did and said as a player in space-time
history? Should such gnostic documents as the Gospel of Thomas
capture our attention as a reliable report of the mind of Jesus, or
does the Son of Man of the biblical Gospels speak with the authentic
voice? Or must we remain in utter agnosticism about the historical
Jesus?
GLOSSARY
aeons: Emanations of Being
from the unknowable, ultimate metaphysical principle or pleroma (see
pleroma).
Nag Hammadi collection: A group of ancient
documents dating from approximately A.D. 350, predominantly Gnostic
in character, which were discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945.
pleroma: The Greek word for "fullness" used by the Gnostics
to mean the highest principle of Being where dwells the unknown and
unknowable God. Used in the New Testament to refer to "fullness in
Christ" (Col. 2:10) who is the known revelation of God in the flesh.
pseudepigrapha: Ancient documents which falsely claim authorship
by noteworthy individuals for the sake of credibility; for instance,
the Gospel of Thomas.
syncretism: The teaching that various
religious truth-claims can be synthesized into one basic, underlying
unity.
Valentinus: Influential early Gnostic of the Second
Century A.D. who may have authorized the Nag Hammadi document, the
Gospel of Truth.
Unless we are content to chronicle
a cacophony of conflicting views of Jesus based on pure speculation
or passionate whimsy, historical investigation is non-negotiable.
Christianity has always been a historical religion and any serious
challenge to its legitimacy must attend to that fact. Its central
claims are rooted in events, not just ideas; in people, not just
principles; in revelation, not speculation; in incarnation, not
abstraction. Renowned historian Herbert Butterfield speaks of
Christianity as a religion in which "certain historical events are
held to be part of the religion itself" and are "considered
to...represent the divine breaking into history."[1]
Historical accuracy was certainly no incidental item to Luke
in the writing of his Gospel: "Many have undertaken to draw up an
account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as
they were handed down to us by those who from the first were
eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself
have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed
good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent
Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you
have been taught" (Luke 1:1-4, NIV). The text affirms that Luke was
after nothing less than historical certainty, presented in orderly
fashion and based on firsthand testimony.
If Christianity
centers on Jesus, the Christ, the promised Messiah who inaugurates
the kingdom of God with power, the objective facticity of this Jesus
is preeminent. Likewise, if purportedly historical documents, like
the gospels of Nag Hammadi, challenge the biblical understanding of
Jesus, they too must be brought before historical scrutiny. Part Two
of
this series will therefore inspect the historical standing of
the Gnostic writings in terms of their historical integrity,
authenticity, and veracity.
LOST BOOKS OF THE BIBLE?
Although much excitement has been generated by the Nag
Hammadi discoveries, not a little misunderstanding has been mixed
with the enthusiasm. The overriding assumption of many is that the
treatises unearthed in upper Egypt contained "lost books of the
Bible" -- of historical stature equal to or greater than the New
Testament books. Much of this has been fueled by the titles of some
of the documents themselves, particularly the so-called "Gnostic
gospels": the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary,
Gospel of the Egyptians, and the Gospel of Truth. The connotation of
a "gospel" is that it presents the life of Jesus as a teacher,
preacher, and healer -- similar in style, if not content, to
Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John.
Yet, a reading of these
"gospels" reveals an entirely different genre of material. For
example, the introduction to the Gospel of Truth in The Nag Hammadi
Library reads, "Despite its title, this work is not the sort found
in the New Testament, since it does not offer a continuous narration
of the deeds, teachings, passion, and resurrection of Jesus."[2] The
introduction to the Gospel of Philip in the same volume says that
although it has some similarities to a New Testament Gospel, it "is
not a gospel like one of the New Testament gospels. . . . [The] few
sayings and stories about Jesus...are not set in any kind of
narrative framework like one of the New Testament gospels."[3]
Biblical scholar Joseph A. Fitzmyer criticized the title of Pagels'
The Gnostic Gospels because it insinuates that the heart of the book
concerns lost gospels that have come to light when in fact the
majority of Pagel's references are from early church fathers'
sources or non gospel material.[4]
In terms of scholarly and
popular attention, the "superstar" of the Nag Hammadi collection is
the Gospel of Thomas. Yet, Thomas also falls outside the genre
of the New Testament Gospels despite the fact that many of its 114
sayings are directly or indirectly related to Matthew, Mark, and
Luke. Thomas has almost no narration and its structure consists
of
discrete sayings. Unlike the canonical Gospels, which provide
a social context and narrative for Jesus' words, Thomas is more like
various beads almost haphazardly strung on a necklace. This in
itself makes proper interpretation difficult. F. F. Bruce observes
that "the sayings of Jesus are best to be understood in the light of
the historical circumstances in which they were spoken. Only when we
have understood them thus can we safely endeavor to recognize the
permanent truth which they convey. When they are detached from their
original historical setting and arranged in an anthology, their
interpretation is more precarious."[5]
Without undue appeal
to the subjective, it can be safely said that the Gnostic material
on Jesus has a decidedly different "feel" than the biblical Gospels.
There, Jesus' teaching emerges naturally from the overall contour of
His life. In the Gnostic materials Jesus seems, in many cases, more
of a lecturer on metaphysics than a Jewish prophet. In the Letter of
Peter to
Philip, the apostles ask the resurrected Jesus, "Lord,
we would like to know the deficiency of the aeons and of their
pleroma."[6] Such philosophical abstractions were never on the lips
of the disciples -- the fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots -- of
the biblical accounts. Jesus then discourses on the precosmic fall
of "the mother" who acted in opposition to "the Father" and so
produced ailing aeons.[7]
Whatever is made of the historical
"feel" of these documents, their actual status as historical records
should be brought into closer scrutiny to assess their factual
reliability.
THE RELIABILITY OF THE GNOSTIC DOCUMENTS
Historicity is related to trustworthiness. If a document is
historically reliable, it is trustworthy as objectively true; there
is good reason to believe that what it affirms essentially fits what
is the case. It is faithful to fact. Historical reliability can be
divided into three basic categories: integrity, authenticity, and
veracity.
Integrity concerns the preservation of the writing
through history. Do we have reason to believe the text as it now
reads is essentially the same as when it was first written? Or has
substantial corruption taken place through distortion, additions, or
subtractions? The New Testament has been preserved in thousands of
diverse and ancient manuscripts which enable us to reconstruct the
original documents with a high degree of certainty. But what of Nag
Hammadi?
Before the discovery at Nag Hammadi, Gnostic
documents not inferred from references in the church fathers were
few and far between. Since 1945, however, there are many primary
documents. Scholars date the extant manuscripts from A.D. 350-400.
The original writing of the various documents, of course, took place
sometime before A.D. 350-400, but not,
according to most
scholars, before the second century.
The actual condition of
the Nag Hammadi manuscripts varies considerably. James Robinson,
editor of The Nag Hammadi Library, notes that "there is the physical
deterioration of the books themselves, which began no doubt before
they were buried around 400 C.E. [then] advanced steadily while they
remained buried, and unfortunately was not completely halted in the
period between their discovery in 1945 and their final conservation
thirty years later."[8]
Reading through The Nag Hammadi
Library, one often finds notations such as ellipses, parentheses,
and brackets, indicating spotty marks in the texts. Often the
translator has to venture tentative reconstructions of the writings
because of textual damage. The situation may be likened to putting
together a jigsaw puzzle with numerous pieces missing; one
is
forced to recreate the pieces by using whatever context is
available. Robinson adds that "when only a few letters are missing,
they can be often filled in adequately, but larger holes must simply
remain a blank."[9]
Concerning translation, Robinson relates
that "the texts were translated one by one from Greek to Coptic, and
not always by translators capable of grasping the profundity or
sublimity of what they sought to translate."[10] Robinson notes,
however, that most of the texts are adequately translated, and that
when there is more than one version of a particular text, the better
translation is clearly discernible. Nevertheless, he is "led to
wonder about the bulk of the texts that exist only in a single
version,"[11] because these texts cannot be compared with other
translations for accuracy.
Robinson comments further on the
integrity of the texts: "There is the same kind of hazard in the
transmission of the texts by a series of scribes who copied them,
generation after generation, from increasingly corrupt copies, first
in Greek and then in Coptic. The number of unintentional errors is
hard to estimate, since such a thing as a clean control copy does
not exist; nor does one have, as in the case of the Bible, a
quantity of manuscripts of the same text that tend to correct each
other when compared (emphasis added)."[12]
Authenticity
concerns the authorship of a given writing. Do we know who the
author was? Or must we deal with an anonymous one? A writing is
considered authentic if it can be shown to have been written by its
stated or implied author. There is solid evidence that the New
Testament Gospels were written by their namesakes: Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John.
But what of Nag Hammadi?
The Letter of
Peter to Philip is dated at the end of the second century or even
into the third. This rules out a literal letter from the apostle to
Philip. The genre of this text is known as pseudepigrapha --
writings falsely ascribed to noteworthy individuals to lend
credibility to the material. Although interesting in explaining the
development of Gnostic thought and its
relationship to biblical
writings, this letter shouldn't be overtaxed as delivering reliable
history of the events it purports to record.
There are few
if any cases of known authorship with the Nag Hammadi and other
Gnostic texts. Scholars speculate as to authorship, but do not take
pseudepigraphic literature as authentically apostolic. Even the
Gospel of Thomas, probably the document closest in time to the New
Testament events, is virtually never considered to be written by the
apostle Thomas
himself.[13] The marks of authenticity in this
material are, then, spotty at best.
Veracity concerns the
truthfulness of the author of the text. Was the author adequately in
a position to relate what is reported, in terms of both
chronological closeness to the events and observational savvy? Did
he or she have sufficient credentials to relay historical truth?
Some, in their enthusiasm over Nag Hammadi, have lassoed
texts into the historical corral that date several hundred years
after the life of Jesus. For instance, in a review of the movie The
Last Temptation of Christ, Michael Grosso speaks of hints of Jesus'
sexual life "right at the start of the Christian tradition." He then
quotes from the Gospel of Philip to the
effect that Jesus often
kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth.[14] The problem is that the text
is quite far from "the start of the Christian tradition," being
written, according to one scholar, "perhaps as late as the second
half of the third century."[15]
Craig Blomberg states that
"most of the Nag Hammadi documents, predominantly Gnostic in nature,
make no pretense of overlapping with the gospel traditions of Jesus'
earthly life."[16] He observes that "a number claim to record
conversations of the resurrected Jesus with various disciples, but
this setting is usually little more than an artificial framework
for
imparting Gnostic doctrine."[17]
What, then, of the
veracity of the documents? We do not know who wrote most of them and
their historical veracity concerning Jesus seems slim. Yet some
scholars advance a few candidates as providing historically reliable
facts concerning Jesus.
In the case of the Gospel of Truth,
some scholars see Valentinus as the author, or at least as authoring
an earlier version.[18] Yet Valentinus dates into the second century
(d. A.D. 175) and was thus not a contemporary of Jesus. Attridge and
MacRae date the document between A.D. 140 and 180.[19] Layton
recognizes that "the work is a sermon and has nothing to do with the
Christian genre properly called 'gospel.'"[20]
The text
differs from many in Nag Hammadi because of its recurring references
to New Testament passages. Beatley Layton notes that "it
paraphrases, and so interprets, some thirty to sixty scriptural
passages almost all from the New Testament books."[21] He goes on to
note that Valentinus shaped these allusions to fit his own Gnostic
theology.[22] In discussing the use of the synoptic Gospels
(Matthew, Mark, and Luke) in the Gospel of Truth, C. M. Tuckett
concludes that "there is no evidence for the use of sources other
than the canonical gospels for synoptic material."[23] This would
mean that the Gospel of Truth gives no independent historical
insight about Jesus, but rather reinterprets previous material.
The Gospel of Philip is thick with Gnostic theology and
contains several references to Jesus. However, it does not claim to
be a revelation from Jesus: it is more of a Gnostic manual of
theology.[24] According to Tuckett's analysis, all the references to
Gospel material seem to stem from Matthew and not from any other
canonical Gospel or other source independent of Matthew. Andrew
Hembold has also pointed out that both the Gospel of Truth and the
Gospel of Philip show signs of "mimicking" the New Testament; they
both "know and recognize the greater part of the New Testament as
authoritative."[25] This would make them derivative, not original,
documents.
Tuckett has also argued that the Gospel of Mary
and the Book of Thomas the Contender are dependent on synoptic
materials, and that "there is virtually no evidence for the use of
pre-synoptic sources by these writers. These texts are all
'post-synoptic,' not only with regard to their dates, but also with
regard to the form of the synoptic tradition
they
presuppose."[26] In other words, these writings are simply
drawing on preexistent Gospel material and rearranging it to conform
to their Gnostic world view. They do not contribute historically
authentic, new material.
The Apocryphon of James claims to
be a secret revelation of the risen Jesus to James His brother. It
is less obviously Gnostic than some Nag Hammadi texts and contains
some more orthodox-sounding phrases such as, "Verily I say unto you
none will be saved unless they believe in my cross."[27] It also
affirms the unorthodox, such as when Jesus says, "Become
better
than I; make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit."[28] While
one scholar dates this text sometime before A.D. 150,[29] Blomberg
believes it gives indications of being "at least in part later than
and dependent upon the canonical gospels."[30] Its esotericism
certainly puts it at odds with the canonical Gospels, which are
better attested historically.
THOMAS ON TRIAL
The
Nag Hammadi text that has provoked the most historical scrutiny is
the Gospel of Thomas. Because of its reputation as the lost "fifth
Gospel" and its frequently esoteric and mystical cast, it is
frequently quoted in New Age circles. A recent book by Robert
Winterhalter is entitled, The Fifth Gospel: A Verse-by-Verse New Age
Commentary on the
Gospel of Thomas. He claims Thomas knows "the
Christ both as the Self, and the foundation of individual
life."[31] Some sayings in Thomas do seem to teach this. But
is this what the historical Jesus taught?
The scholarly
literature on Thomas is vast and controversial. Nevertheless, a few
important considerations arise in assessing its veracity as history.
Because it is more of an anthology of mostly unrelated
sayings than an ongoing story about Jesus' words and deeds, Thomas
is outside the genre of "Gospel" in the New Testament. Yet, some of
the 114 sayings closely parallel or roughly resemble statements in
the Synoptics, either by adding to them, deleting from them,
combining several references into one, or by changing the sense of a
saying entirely.
This explanation uses the Synoptics as a
reference point for comparison. But is it likely that Thomas is
independent of these sources and gives authentic although
"unorthodox" material about Jesus? To answer this, we must consider
a diverse range of factors.
There certainly are sayings that
harmonize with biblical material, and direct or indirect
relationships can be found to all four canonical Gospels. In this
sense, Thomas contains both orthodox and unorthodox material, if we
use orthodox to mean the material in the extant New Testament. For
instance, the Trinity and unforgivable sin are referred to in the
context of
blasphemy: "Jesus said, 'Whoever blasphemes against
the father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son
will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit
will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven.'"[32]
In
another saying Jesus speaks of the "evil man" who "brings forth evil
things from his evil storehouse, which is in his heart, and says
evil things"[33] (see Luke 6:43-46). This can be read to harmonize
with the New Testament Gospels' emphasis on human sin, not just
ignorance of the divine spark within.
Although it is not
directly related to a canonical Gospel text, the following statement
seems to state the biblical theme of the urgency of finding Jesus
while one can: "Jesus said, 'Take heed of the living one while you
are alive, lest you die and seek to see him and be unable to do so'"
(compare John 7:34; 13:33).[34]
At the same time we find
texts of a clearly Gnostic slant, as noted earlier. How can we
account for this?
The original writing of Thomas has
been dated variously between A.D. 50 and 150 or even later, with
most scholars opting for a second century date.[35] Of course,
an earlier date would lend more credibility to it, although its lack
of narrative framework still makes it more difficult to understand
than the canonical Gospels. While some argue that Thomas
uses
historical sources independent of those used by the New
Testament, this is not a uniformly held view, and arguments are
easily found which marshal evidence for Thomas's dependence (either
partial or total) on the canonical Gospels.[36]
Blomberg
claims that "where Thomas parallels the four gospels it is unlikely
that any of the distinctive elements in Thomas predate the canonical
versions."[37] When Thomas gives a parable found in the four Gospels
and adds details not found there, "they can almost always be
explained as conscious, Gnostic redaction [editorial
adaptation]."[38]
James Dunn elaborates on this theme by
comparing Thomas with what is believed to be an earlier and partial
version of the document found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, near the turn
of the century.[39] He notes that the Oxyrhynchus "papyri date from
the end of the second or the first half of the third century, while
the Gospel of Thomas...was probably written no earlier
than the
fourth century."[40]
Dunn then compares similar statements
from Matthew, the Oxyrhynchus papyri, and the Nag Hammadi text
version of Thomas:
Matthew 7:7-8 and 11:28 -- "...Seek and
you will find;...he who seeks finds...Come to me...and I will give
you rest." Pap. Ox. 654.5-9 -- (Jesus says:) 'Let him who see(ks)
not cease (seeking until) he finds; and when he find (he will) be
astonished, and having (astoun)ded, he will reign; an(d reigning),
he will (re)st' (Clement of Alexandria also knows the saying in this
form.) Gospel of Thomas 2 -- 'Jesus said: He who seeks should not
stop seeking until he finds; and when he finds, he will be
bewildered (beside himself); and when he is bewildered he will
marvel, and will reign over the All.'[41]
Dunn notes that
the term "the All" (which the Gospel of Thomas adds to the earlier
document) is "a regular Gnostic concept," and that "as the above
comparisons suggest, the most obvious explanation is that it was one
of the last elements to be added to the saying."[42] Dunn further
comments that the Nag Hammadi version of Thomas shows a definite
"gnostic
coloring" and gives no evidence of "the thesis of a
form of Gnostic Christianity already existing in the first century."
He continues: "Rather it confirms the counter thesis that the
Gnostic element in Gnostic Christianity is a second century
syncretistic outgrowth on the stock of the earlier Christianity.
What we can see clearly in the case of this one saying
is
probably representative of the lengthy process of development
and elaboration which resulted in the form of the Gospel of Thomas
found at Nag Hammadi."[43]
Other authorities substantiate
the notion that whatever authentic material Thomas may convey
concerning Jesus, the text shows signs of Gnostic tampering. Marvin
W. Meyer judges that Thomas "shows the hand of a gnosticizing
editor."[44] Winterhalter, who reveres Thomas enough to write a
devotional guide on it, nevertheless says of it that "some sayings
are
spurious or greatly altered, but this is the work of a later
Egyptian editor."[45] He thinks, though, that the wheat can be
successfully separated from the chaff.
Robert M. Grant has
noted that "the religious realities which the Church proclaimed were
ultimately perverted by the Gospel of Thomas. For this reason
Thomas, along with other documents which purported to contain secret
sayings of Jesus, was rejected by the Church."[46]
Here we
find ourselves agreeing with the early Christian defenders of the
faith who maintained that Gnosticism in the church was a corruption
of original truth and not an independently legitimate source of
information on Jesus or the rest of reality.
Fitzmyer drives this
home in criticizing Pagels's view that the Gnostics have an equal
claim on Christian authenticity: "Throughout the book [Pagels] gives
the unwary reader the impression that the difference between
'orthodox Christians' and 'gnostic Christians' was one related to
the 'origins of Christianity'. Time and time again, she is blind to
the fact that she is ignoring a good century of Christian existence
in which those 'gnostic Christians' were simply not around."[47]
In this connection it is also telling that outside of the
Gospel of Thomas, which doesn't overtly mention the Resurrection,
other Gnostic documents claiming to impart new information about
Jesus do so through spiritual, post-resurrection dialogues -- often
in the form of visions -- which are not subject to the same
historical rigor as claims made about the earthly life of Jesus.
This leads Dunn to comment that "Christian Gnosticism usually
attributed its secret [and unorthodox] teaching of Jesus to
discourses delivered by him, so they maintained, in a lengthy
ministry after his resurrection (as in Thomas the Contender and
Pistis Sophia). The Gospel of Thomas is unusual therefore in
attempting to use the Jesus-tradition as the vehicle for its
teaching. . . . Perhaps Gnosticism abandoned the Gospel of Thomas
format because it was to some extent subject to check and rebuttal
from Jesus-tradition preserved elsewhere."[48]
Dunn thinks
that the more thoroughly the Gnostics challenged the already
established orthodox accounts of Jesus' earthly life, the less
credible they became; but with post-resurrection accounts, no checks
were forthcoming. They were claiming
additional information
vouchsafed only to the elite. He concludes that Gnosticism "was able
to present its message in a sustained way as the teaching of Jesus
only by separating the risen Christ from the earthly Jesus and by
abandoning the attempts to show a continuity between the Jesus of
the Jesus-tradition and the heavenly Christ of their faith."[49]
What is seen by some as a Gnostic challenge to historic,
orthodox views of the life, teaching, and work of Jesus was actually
in many cases a retreat from historical considerations entirely.
Only so could the Gnostic documents attempt to establish their
credibility.
GNOSTIC UNDERDOGS?
Although Pagels and
others have provoked sympathy, if not enthusiasm, for the Gnostics
as the underdogs who just happened to lose out to orthodoxy, the
Gnostics' historical credentials concerning Jesus are less than
compelling. It may be romantic to "root for the underdog," but the
Gnostic underdogs show every sign of being heretical hangers-on who
tried to harness Christian language for conceptions antithetical to
early Christian teaching.
Many sympathetic with Gnosticism
make much of the notion that the Gnostic writings were suppressed by
the early Christian church. But this assertion does not, in itself,
provide support one way or the other for the truth or falsity of
Gnostic doctrine. If truth is not a matter of majority vote, neither
is it a matter of minority dissent. It may be true, as
Pagels
says, that "the winners write history," but that doesn't necessarily
make them bad or dishonest historians. If so, we should hunt down
Nazi historians to give us the real picture of Hitler's Germany and
relegate all opposing views to that of dogmatic apologists who just
happened to be on the winning side.
In Against Heresies,
Irenaeus went to great lengths to present the theologies of the
various Gnostic schools in order to refute them biblically and
logically. If suppression had been his concern, the book never would
have been written as it was. Further, to argue cogently
against the Gnostics, Irenaeus and the other anti-Gnostic apologists
would presumably have had to be diligent to correctly represent
their foes in order to avoid ridicule for misunderstanding them.
Patrick Henry highlights this in reference to Nag Hammadi: "While
the Nag Hammadi materials have made some corrections to the
portrayal of Gnosticism in the anti-Gnostic writings of the church
fathers, it is increasingly evident that the fathers did not
fabricate their opponents' views; what distortion there is comes
from selection, not from invention. It is still legitimate to use
materials from the writings of the fathers to characterize
Gnosticism."[50]
It is highly improbable that all of the
Gnostic materials could have been systematically confiscated or
destroyed by the early church. Dunn finds it unlikely that the
reason we have no unambiguously first century documents from
Christian Gnostics is because the early church eradicated them. He
believes it more likely that we have none because there were
none.[51] But by archaeological virtue of Nag Hammadi, we now do
have many primary source Gnostic documents available for detailed
inspection. Yet they do not receive superior marks as historical
documents about Jesus. In a review of The Gnostic Gospels, noted
biblical scholar Raymond Brown affirmed that from the Nag Hammadi
"works we learn not a single verifiable new fact about the
historical Jesus' ministry, and only a few new sayings that might
possibly have been his."[52]
Another factor foreign to the
interests of Gnostic apologists is the proposition that Gnosticism
expired largely because it lacked life from the beginning. F. F.
Bruce notes that "Gnosticism was too much bound up with a popular
but passing phase of thought to have the survival power of apostolic
Christianity."[53]
Exactly why did apostolic Christianity
survive and thrive? Robert Speer pulls no theological punches when
he proclaims that "Christianity lived because it was true to the
truth. Through all the centuries it has never been able to live
otherwise. It can not live otherwise today."[54]
NOTES
1 Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), 119.
2 Harold W. Attridge and
George W. MacRae, "Introduction: The Gospel of Truth," in James M.
Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco: Harper and
Row, 1988), 38.
3 Wesley W. Isenberg, "Introduction: The Gospel
of Philip," Ibid., 139.
4 Joseph Fitzmyer, "The Gnostic Gospels
According to Pagels," America, 16 Feb. 1980, 123.
5 F. F. Bruce,
Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1974), 154.
6 Robinson, 434.
7 Ibid., 435.
8
Robinson, "Introduction," 2.
9 Ibid., 3.
10 Ibid., 2.
11
Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 See Ray Summers, The Secret Sayings of the
Living Jesus (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1968), 14.
14 Michael
Grosso, "Testing the Images of God," Gnosis, Winter 1989, 43.
15
Wesley W. Isenberg, "Introduction: The Gospel of Philip," in
Robinson, 141.
16 Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of
the Gospels (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 208.
17
Ibid.
18 See Stephan Hoeller, "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All
Seasons," Gnosis, Fall/Winter 1985, 25.
19 Ibid., 38.
20
Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, NY: Doubleday
and Co., 1987), 251.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 C. M. Tuckett,
"Synoptic Tradition in the Gospel of Truth and the Testimony of
Truth," Journal of Theological
Studies 35 (1984):145.
24
Blomberg, 213-14.
25 Andrew K. Hembold, The Nag Hammadi Texts
and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1967), 88-89.
26
Christopher Tuckett, "Synoptic Tradition in Some Nag Hammadi and
Related Texts," Vigiliae Christiane 36 (July 1982):184.
27
Robinson, 32.
28 Ibid.
29 Francis E. Williams,
"Introduction: The Apocryphon of James," in Robinson, 30.
30
Blomberg, 213.
31 Robert Winterhalter, The Fifth Gospel (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 13.
32 Robinson, 131; See
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 130-31.
33 Robinson, 131.
34 Ibid., 132.
35 Layton, 377.
36 See Craig L. Blomberg,
"Tradition and Redaction in the Parables of the Gospel of Thomas,"
Gospel Perspectives 5: 177-205.
37 Blomberg, Historical
Reliability, 211.
38 Ibid., 212.
39 See Joseph A. Fitzmyer,
"The Oxyrhynchus Logoie of Jesus and the Coptic Gospel According to
Thomas," in Joseph Fitzmyer, Essays on the Semitic Background of the
New Testament (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1974), 355-433.
40
James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia, PA:
Westminster Press, 1985), 101.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 102.
43 Ibid.
44 Marvin W. Meyer, "Jesus in the Nag Hammadi
Library," Reformed Journal (June 1979):15.
45 Winterhalter, 4.
46 Robert M. Grant with David Noel Freedman, The Secret Sayings
of Jesus (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1960), 115.
47 Fitzmyer, "The Gnostic Gospels According to Pagels," 123.
48 James Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 287-88.
49 Ibid., 288;
see also Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 219.
50 Patrick
Henry, New Directions (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 282.
51 Dunn, The Evidence, 97-98.
52 Raymond E. Brown, "The
Gnostic Gospels," The New York Times Book Review, 20 Jan. 1980, 3.
53 F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 1988), 278.
54 Robert E. Speer, The Finality
of Jesus Christ (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1933),
108.
End of document, CRJ0088A.TXT (original CRI
file name),
"The Gnostic Gospels: Are They Authentic?"
release A, April 30, 1994
R. Poll, CRI
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