Gnostic Gospels

THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS

"The Apocalypse of Peter" describes how Peter, deep in trance, experiences the presence of Christ, who opens his eyes to spiritual insight:

The Savior said to me .... , " ... put your hands upon your eyes... and say what you see!" But when I had done it, I did not see anything. I said, "No one sees this way." Again he told me, "Do it again." And there came into me fear with joy, for I saw a new light, greater than the light of day. Then it came down upon the Savior. And I told him about the things which I saw." 72.10-28 in NHL 340-341

On what grounds? Clement argues that God, the God of Israel, alone rules all things: he is the lord and master whom all must obey; he is the judge who lays down the law, punishing rebels and rewarding the obedient. But how is God's rule actually adminstered? Here Clement's theology becomes practical: God, he says, delegates his "authority of reign" to "rulers and leaders on earth." Who are these designated rulers? Clement answers that they are bishops, priests and deacons. Whoever refuses to "bow the neck" and obey the church leaders is guilty of insubordination against the divine master himself. Carried away with his argument, Clement warns that whoever disobeys the divinely ordained authorities "receives the death penalty!." pg34

I am the first and the last. I am the honered one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband. I am knowledge and ignorance, I am shameless; I am ashamed. I am strength, and I am fear, I am foolish and I am wise, I am godless and I am one whose God is great. (Source: Thunder, Perfect Mind 13.16 - 16.25 in NHL 271 - 274

Tertullian expresses similar outrage at such acts of gnostic Christians:
"These heretical women - how audacious they are! They have no modesty, they are bold enough to teach, to engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and it may be, even to baptize!"
pg 60

"It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer the eucharist, nort to claim for herself a share in any masculine function - not to mention any priestly office." pg 60

Yet Paul also expresses ambivalence concerning the practical implications of human equality. Discussing the public activity of women in churches, he argues from his own - traditionally Jewish - conception of a monistic, masculine God for a divinely ordained hierarchy of social subordination: as God has authority over Christ, he declares, citing Genesis 2-3, so man has authority over woman:
"A man ... is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man." I Cor 11: 7-9

"... the woman should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but they should be subordinate ... it is shameful for a woman to speak in church." 1 Cor 14:34

"Let woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent." I Tim 2:11 - 12

"To the Universe belongs the dancer. Amen
He who does not dance does not know what happens. Amen
Now if you follow my dance, see yourself in Me who am speaking...
You who dance, consider what I do, for yours is
This passion of Man which I am to suffer. For you could by no means have understood what you suffer
unless to you as Logos I had been sent by the Father
Learn how to suffer and you shall be able not to suffer"
pg 74 Apochrypha II Ibid 95.16-96.42

Justin, whom tradition calls "the martyr", declares that before his own conversion, when he was still a Platonist philosopher, he personally witnessed Christians enduring public torture and execution. Their courage, he says, convinced him of their divine insipiration. Protesting the world-wide persecution of Christians, he mentions those persecuted in Palestine (135):

It is clear that no one can terrify or subdue us who believe in Jesus Christ, throughout the whole world. FOr it is clear that though beheaded, and crucified, and thrown to the wild beasts, in chains, in fire, and all other kinds of torture, we do not give up our confession; but the more such things happen, the more do others, in larger numbers, become believers. pg 83

The story of one of the confessors in Lyons, the slave woman Blandina, illustrates what happened:
All of us were in terror; and Blandina's earthly mistress, who was herself among the martyrs in the conflict, was in agony lest because of her bodily weakness she would not be able to make a bold confessor of her faith. Yet Blandina was filled with such power that even those who were taking turns to torture her in every way from dawn to dusk were weary and exhausted. THey themselves admitted that they were beaten, that there was nothing further they could do to her, and they were surprised that she was still breathing, for her entire body was broken and torn.

On the day set for gladitorial games, Blandina, along with 3 of her companions, Matururs, Sactus and Attalus were led to the amphitheater:
Blandina was hung on a post and exposed as bait for the wild animals that were let loose on her. She seemed to hang there in the form of a cross and by her fervent prayer she aroused intense enthusiasm in those who were undergoing their ordeal... But none of the animals had touched her, and so she was taken down from the post and brought back to the jail to be preserved for another ordeal... tiny, weak, and insignificant as she was, she would give inspiration to her brothers.... Finally, on the last day of the gladitorial games, they brought back Blandina again, this time with a boy of 15 named Ponticus. Every day they had been brought in to watch the torture of the others, while attempts were made to force them to swear to pagan idols. And because they persevered and condemned their persecutors, the crowd grew angry with them, so that.... they subjected them to every atrocity and led them through every torture in turn.

After having run through the gauntlet of whips, having been mauled by animals, and forced into an iron seat placed over a fire to scorch his flesh, Ponticus died. Blandina, having survied the same torutures, was at last tossed into a net and exposed to a bull. After bing tossed a good deal by the animal, she no longer perceived what was happening ... THus she too was offered in sacrifice, while the pagans themselves admitted that no woman had ever suffered so much in their experience. pg 85

As Justin remarked: "The more such things happen, the more do others, in larger numbers, become believers." Tertullian writes in defiance to Scapula, the pronconsul of Carthage:
"Your cruelty is our glory. All who witness the noble patience of the martyrs, are struck with misgivings are inflamed with desire to examine the situation .. and as soon as they come to know the truth, they immediately enroll themselves as its disciples."
He boasts to the Roman prosecutor that "the oftener we are mown down by you, the more we grow in numbers: the blood of the Christians is seed!" Those who followed the orthodox consensus in doctrine and church politics also belonged to the church that - confessing the crucified Christ - became conspicuous for its martyrs. Groups of gnostic Christians, on the other hand, were scattered and lost - those who resisted doctrinal conformity, questioned the value of the "blood witness", and often opposed submission to episcopal authority.

Gnostic Christians, on the contrary, assert that what distinguishes the false from the true church is not its relationship to the clergy, but the level of understanding of its members, and the quality of their relationship with one another. The Apocalypse of Peter declares that "those who are from the life... having been enlightened," discriminate for themselves between what is true and false. Belongings to "the remnant ... summoned to knowledge (gnosis)," they neither attempt to dominate others nor do they subject themselves to the bishops, deacnons, those "waterless canals". Instead they participate in the "wisdom of the brotherhood that really exists .. the spiritual fellowship with those united in communion."
The Second Treatise of the Great Seth similarly declares that what characterizes the true church is the union its members enjoy with God and with one another, "united in the friendship of friends forever, who neither know any hostility, nor evil, but who are united by my gnosis ... (in) friendship with one another." Theirs is the intimacy of marriage, a "spiritual wedding," since they live "in fatherhood and motherhood and rational brotherhood and wisdom" as those who love each other as "fellow spirits". pg 106

LOOK UP CARL ANDERSEN - he has a massive study of the early church.

He (Tertullian) complains that heretics welcome anyone to join with them, "for they do not care how differently they treat topics", so long as they meet together to approach "the city of the one sole truth". Yet their metapohr indicates that the gnostics were the neither relativists nor skeptics. Like the orthodox, they sought the "one sole truth". But gnostics tended to regard all doctrines, speculations and myths - their own as well as others - only as approaches to truth. The orthodox, by contrast, were coming to identify their own doctrine as itself the truth - the sole legitimate form of Christian faith. Tertullian admits that the heretics claimed to follow Jesus' counsel ("Seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you".) But this means the says, that Christ taught "one definite thing" - what the rule of faith contains. Once having found and believed this the Christian has nothing further to seek:
Away with the person who is seeking where he never finds; for he seeks where nothing can be found. Away with him who is always knocking; because it will never be opened to him, for he knocks where there is no one to open. Away with the one who is always asking, because he will never be heard, for he asks of one who does not hear. pg114
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"There is light within a man of light, and it lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is darkness." - Gospel of Thomas pg 120

"If one does not understand how the fire came to be, he will burn in it, because he does not know his root. If one does not first understand the water, he does not know anything.... If one does not understant how the wind that blows came to be, he will run with it. If one does not understand how the body that he wears came to be, he will perish with it.... Whoever does not understand how he came will not understand how he will go." - Dialogue of the Savior

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth with is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." - Gospel of Thomas

"I found them all drunk; I found none of them thirsty. And my soul became afflicted for the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight; for empty they came into this world, and empty they seek to leave this world. But for the moment they are drunk." Gospel of Thomas 38.23-29 pg 126

"His disciples said to him, "WHen will .. the new world come?" He said to them, "what you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it." His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?" (Jesus said), "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is'. Rather the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." pg 29 Gospel of Thomas

THey said to him, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you." He said to them, "You read the face of the sky and of the earth, but you have not recognized the one who is before you, and you do not know how to read this moment". Gospel of Thomas 48.20-25 pg 131

Obviously such a program of discipline, like the higher levels of Buddhist teaching, would appeal only to a few. Although major themes of gnostic teaching, such as the discovery of the divine within, appealed to so many that they constituted a majory threat to catholic doctrine, the religious perspectives and methods of gnosticism did not lend themselves to mass religion. In this respect, it was not match for the highly effective system of organization of the catholic church, which expressed a unified religious perspective based on the New Testament canon, offered a creed requiring the initiate to confess only the simplest essentials of faith, and celebrated rituals as simple and profound as baptism and the eucharist. The same basic framework of doctrine, ritual, and organization sustains nearly all Christian churches today, whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. Without these elements, one can scarcely imagine how the Christian faith could have survived and attracted so many millions of adherents all over the world, throughout twenty centuries. For ideas alone do not make a religion powerful, although it cannot succeed without them; equally important are social and political strcutures that identify and unite people into a common afflilation. pg 141

Gnostics came to the conviction that the only way out of suffereing was to realize the truth about humanity's place and destiny in the universe. Convinced that the only answers were to be found within, the gnostic engaged on an intensely private interior journey.
Whoever comes to experience his own nature - human nature - as itself the "source of all things," the primary reality, will receive enlightenment. Realizing the essential Self, the divine within, the gnostic laughed in joy at being released from the external constraints to celebrate his idenfication with the divine being:
"The gospel of truth is a joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him .... For he discovered them in himself, and they discovered him in themselves, the incomprehensible, inconceivable one, the Father, the perfect one, the one who made all things. Gospel of Truth 16.1-18.34 pg 144

If we go back to the earliest known source of Christian tradition - the sayings of Jesus (although scholars disagree on the question of which sayings are genuinely authentic), we can see how both gnostic and orthodox forms of Christianity could emerge as variant interpretations of the teaching and significance of Christ. Those attracted to solitude would note that even the New Testament gospel of Luke includes Jesus' saying that whoever 'does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." He dmenanded that those who followed him must give up everything - family, home, children, ordinary work, wealth - to join him. And he himself, as prototype, was a homeless man who rejected his own family, avoiding marriage and family life, a mysterious wanderer who insisted on truth at all costs, even the cost of his own life. Mark relates that Jesus concealed his teaching from the masses, and entrusted it only to the few he considered worth to receive it. pg 148

Now that the Nag Hammadi discoveries give us a new perspective on this process, we can understand why certain creative persons throughout the ages, from Valentinus and Harcleon to Blake, Rembrandt, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzche, found themselves at the edges of orthodoxy. All were fascinated by the figure of Christ - his birth, life, teachings, death and resurrection: all returned constantly to Christian symbols to express their own experience. And yet they found themselves in revolt against orthodox institutions. An increasing number of people today share their experience. They cannot rest solely on the authority of the Scriptures, the apostles, the church - at least not without inquiring how that authority constituted itself, and what, if anything, gives it legitimacy. All the old questions - the original questions, sharply debated at the beginning of Christianity - are being reopened: How is one to understand the resurrection? What about women's participation in priestly and episcopal office? Who was Christ, and how does he relate to the believer? What are the similarities between Christianity and other world religions?
That I have devoted so much time of this discussion to gnosticism does not mean as the casual reader might assume, that I advocate going back to gnosticism - much less that I "side with it" against orthodox Christianity. As a historian, of course, I find the discoveries at Nag Hammadi enormously exciting, since the evidence they offer opens a new perspective for understanding what fascinates me most - the history of Christianity. But the task of the historian, as I understand it, is not to advocate any side, but to explore the evidence - in this instance, to attempt to discover how Christianity originated. Furthermore, as a person concerned with religious questions, I find that rediscovering the controversies that occupied early Christianity sharpens our awareness of the major issue in the whole debate, then and now: What is the source of religious authority? For the Christian, the question takes more specific form: What is the relation between the authority of one's own experience and that claimed for the Scriptures, the ritual, and the clergy?
When Mohammed Ali smashed that jar filled with papyrus on the cliff near Nag Hammadi and was disappointed not to find gold, he could not have imagined the implications of his accidental find. Had they been discovered 1000 years earlier, the gnostic texts almost certainly would have been burned for their heresy. But they remained hidden until the 20th century, when our own cultural experience has given us a new perspective on the issues they raise. Today we read them with different eyes, not merely as "madness and blasphemy" but as Christians in the first centuries experienced them - a powerful alternative to what we know as orthodox Christian tradition. Only now are we beginning to consider the questions with which they confront us. pg 151