“THE OTHER GOSPELS”

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, April 20, 2008

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Perception is stronger than reality. We’ve heard that said in many ways and in many circumstances of life.

Our perception: George Washington couldn’t tell a lie and confessed to chopping down the cherry tree. Reality: the tree thing never happened, and George was probably as prone to the lie as any of us.

Our perception: In American democracy, the people choose their leaders based on the candidate’s platform. Reality: more often than not, the people choose the candidate who spends more money on the campaign.

Our perception: Our country insures religious freedom through the separation of church and state. Reality: Well, you know the reality. If you don’t know, I suggest that the next time you get stuck in traffic, look at the license plate on the car in front of you.

Today I address one of the most important disconnects between perception and reality in history. It is our common perception that Christianity began when, after the resurrection of Jesus, his disciples spread out as missionaries founding new churches throughout the Middle Eastern lands. Many of the churches struggled, and certainly suffered persecution by the Romans, but eventually they succeeded in forming a dynamic and unified Christianity that would come to reign throughout the Western world.

That’s the perception. The reality is that during the first two hundred years after Jesus, there was a broad diversity of views among those calling themselves Christian, there was no identifiable single “Christian” tradition, let alone church, and those differing views contended against each other for acceptance. The view that won out, that which became orthodoxy for Christianity, was only one among several competing interpretations of the teachings of Jesus. Many of the ancient documents show that the establishment of the church was as much of a political story as it was religious.

Unitarianism, which was then called “arianism,” was one such competing interpretation of Jesus. It lost. Universalism, which at the time had some powerful advocates within the church hierarchy, also eventually lost. One of the most powerful competing groups of Christians was a cluster of teachings which come under the collective title of “Gnosticism.” The Gnostics.

For more than a thousand years or so, almost everything we knew about the Gnostics came from the writings of the official church which spoke out against them. The reason that was all we knew was because the writings of the Gnostics were eventually banned, and the church leaders ordered all their writings destroyed.

As a result, any attempt to reconstruct what the Gnostic Christian churches taught would have to be inferred from the biased descriptions found in the writings of those who wanted them defeated. Nevertheless, scholars patched together a fairly good picture. That picture, however blurred it was, became suddenly high-definition clear some 60 years ago when a treasure-trove of Gnostic writings were discovered by a peasant farmer in an area of Egypt called Nag Hammadi. How did they get there? The church fathers ordered the suppression of all Gnostic literature in the year 367, and we guess that some monk at a nearby monastery with Gnostic sympathies, rescued the documents from their library, and stored them in a sealed jar and buried them in the desert. There they waited for 1,600 years before they were found. The story of their discovery and their path to publication 30 years later is worthy of a Hollywood epic tale – complete with intrigue, murder, and espionage. But when the Gnostic library was finally published in the 1970s, only 30-some years ago, the world would have a new perception of the early centuries of Christianity.

There were over 50 documents that were found, each in varying degrees of decay. Five of those documents claimed to be Gospels. There was the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Phillip, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of the Egyptians. Like the New Testament Gospels, some of these were stories concerning the life and teaching of Jesus. Like the New Testament Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – three of these Gnostic Gospels were written in the name of someone who knew Jesus personally – Thomas, Mary, and Phillip.

So what is “Gnosticism”? The word “gnosis” comes from the Greek and means, literally, “knowledge.” But in this context, it is a special kind of knowledge, a self-knowledge, an intuitive insight into one’s own true nature. And what is your own true nature? Deep at your core, at everyone’s core, is your divine nature. Elaine Pagels, the best known scholar of the Gnostic Gospels, said it simply this way:

“Gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. . . . Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis.”

Some schools of Gnosticism developed elaborate myths to explain how this works. At one point in the past, all that existed was perfect and divine. God was in everything, everything was part of God. At some point, against God’s wishes, an angel decided to create this world, and that creation was inherently flawed. Every physical thing we experience is tarnished with evil, including our own bodies. Every physical pursuit we make in this world, every desire, every hunger, is removing us from spiritual purity. It is the path of the Gnostics to turn away from the world and look inside for spiritual wholeness. That is where to find God. And those that fully succeed in recognizing their own divine nature will ultimately leave this tainted world and be re-connected forever with God, who is our original source. The Gnostic religion was thoroughly mystical – it was presented as individualized path to spiritual completeness, especially by denying oneself the pleasures of the physical world.

This myth closely parallels even more ancient Greek mythology, but is especially connected with the Greek philosopher Plato. The Gnostics openly acknowledged their reliance on Plato, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. Many of the Gnostic writings, like the New Testament itself, were written in Greek. Plato’s teachings were the beginning of what has come to be called Western “dualism.” Plato spoke of the division between matter and spirit, between body and mind. The physical world is profoundly imperfect, but the mind and spirit can show us true perfection. Gnosticism brought this platonic dualism into the core of their Christian view.

The connection of the Gnostic Christians with Greek philosophy, though, was one of the many things about which orthodox Christians objected. The Greeks were pagans, after all, and the only acceptable ancient wisdom comes out of their own Jewish tradition. One of the more famous Church Fathers, Tertullian, wrote strongly against any Greek influence on Christian thought, and in his book against heretics, he asks the question that has become a bit of an icon through history, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” His answer: “nothing.”

So far, I’ve not said much of anything about Gnostics as Christians. What role does Jesus play in their writings? The role of Jesus is dramatically different than the role he played in the religion of their orthodox opponents. The Jesus of the New Testament Gospels, as interpreted by the early church fathers, revolved around the story of sin and repentance. Jesus was sent by God to die as a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus came to save us from our sins and turn us toward more righteous living.

The Gnostic interpretation of Jesus is substantially different. To begin with, sin itself is an illusion. Our soul is stained not because of sin, not because of behavior. It is stained because when we were born into this world, we became separated from the divine source of life – God. There is no need to repent of sin or to have Jesus die for our sins. The Gnostics didn’t focus on the crucifixion and resurrection. Bodily resurrection especially made no sense, since the whole point of returning to God is to get rid of the physical things, such as a body, that holds us back from perfection. Some Gnostic writers even claimed that Jesus wasn’t technically crucified. Christ simply inhabited the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ body was used as a tool for God to use in communicating with humans. Before the actual crucifixion on the cross, Christ left that earthly body to return to God. What was hung on the cross was not Christ, but the body that Christ used while on earth.

The bottom line is that for the Gnostics, Jesus was not a Savior who died for our sins. He was, rather, a spiritual guide sent by God to show us how to return to God, to enlighten us with knowledge of a true spiritual path to God. And that path, as I’ve said, is to look deeply inside ourselves and discover God there. You don’t need a church. You don’t need scriptures. You don’t need a Savior or Lord. All you need is “gnosis,” that special knowledge of God within. Jesus taught us how to gain that knowledge.

I’ll leave the theological territory for now, and return to the history for a moment. There is little question that Gnosticism was present in the very earliest Christian churches, even during the biblical times. A few of Paul’s letters that eventually became part of the Bible, were written to advise churches not to stray into such heresy as Gnosticism. Within a century or so, Gnostic Christianity was strongest in northern Egypt. The Egyptian city of Alexandria was known to be a great center of scholarship in the Western world, and Greek philosophy was the strongest influence there. But like its orthodox competitor, Gnosticism spread rapidly and broadly throughout the Mediterranean region. It had influential churches in Rome, alongside the orthodox, and an especially strong influence in Southern France. The Orthodox Church was, by far, better organized with bishops and other strict hierarchy. They organized efforts to rid the church of all heresy, and Gnosticism was at the top of the list. Several books warning against heresy appeared, specifically aimed at the Gnostics.

In fact, the creation of formal creedal statements was done in part to rid the church of heretics. In the year 185, the Church Father Irenaeus wrote a major book called Against Heresies. Here is an excerpt from that book:

“The Church. . . has received from the apostles this faith: In one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and Earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; in one Christ Jesus, Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit. . .”

Many of you may recognize this as closely paralleling of the Apostles Creed, which was adopted by the church more than a century after this was written. It appears as if that creed was initially written for the purpose of responding to the challenges from Gnosticism.

His book Against Heresies was written long before the Bible was collected into an official canon of books. He was aware of more than a dozen Gospel narratives floating around the Christian Churches. It was Ireneaus, in this book, who first declared that only four of those Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – had true scriptural authority. The others, like Thomas, Mary, and Phillip, were heretical.

I would like to look briefly at some of these other “Gospels.” Perhaps the most popular one, the most quotable one, is the Gospel of Thomas. This is largely a collection of sayings of Jesus strung together. Many of them are quite esoteric, even strange. They are reminiscent of the Zen Buddhist tradition of “koans.” In Zen, the teacher gives the student a sentence to focus on in meditation, and very often that sentence makes no logical sense. The most famous koan, perhaps, is the question, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” Listen to this statement of Jesus found in the Gospel of Thomas:

“When you make two into one, when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one. . . . then you will enter the kingdom.”

Actually, even in the official New Testament, Jesus’ comments sometimes sound like koans – such as, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” or “I am the door. . . “

There is little doubt that the Gnostic Gospels enjoyed their greatest popularity a few years ago with the spectacular sales of a book of fiction called, “The Di Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown. This book took some pieces from the Gnostic Gospels, and used them to weave a tale that goes quite far beyond what they actually say. But it is also true that much of the book expresses the spirit of the writings, in many ways. One of the most dramatic displays of that spirit, is the way the Gnostics seemed to honor the feminine nature of God, and God’s respect for the role of women. To understand all that, we can turn to another Gospel, the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene).

Women weren’t initially relegated to second class in the church; that took quite a while. In the very early church, they held positions of leadership. In his letter to the Romans, Paul identified specific women as church deacons and apostles. The Gospel references to Mary (Magdalene) place her in an honored position and speak respectfully of her devotion to Jesus. In John’s account of the resurrection, which is quite different from other accounts, Jesus appeared first to Mary, and instructed her to witness to the other disciples what she saw. Because of this scene, in the first years of Christianity, Mary was called the “apostle to the apostles.”

But as the church evolved politically, women’s role in the church became increasingly limited. It was in this atmosphere that Mary Magdalene, a hero of the biblical narratives and a respected voice among the apostles, had her reputation done-over by the church. In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory I gave a homily that confused Mary Magdalene with biblical mentions of others named Mary, and declared her a prostitute. It took many centuries, but eventually (in 1969) the church formally recanted the Pope’s unfortunate slander of Mary Magdalene’s character.

But while she was still an honored character in the church, many stories were told about her, especially among the Gnostics who were more accepting of feminine symbolism.

In the Gospel of Mary, Mary instructs the disciples about what Jesus told her in various visions. The gist of his teachings to her was that the physical world, including our own bodies, is temporary and ephemeral and obstructs us from true communion with God. Like other Gnostic writing, Jesus tells Mary, and through her the disciples, that communion with God comes from denying the physical world and looking inside your own soul.

Implicit in this view of things, gender is an aspect of the flawed physical world, not a part of the spiritual world. From this perspective, the differences between male and female are ultimately irrelevant to spirituality. Therefore, in the Gnostic tradition, there is no reason for separating women and men from leadership roles.

After she reported her visions of Jesus to the disciples, the apostle Peter challenged her, claiming that Jesus would not reveal such things to a woman, or have a woman instruct the male disciples. Another disciple, Levi, reminded Peter that Jesus loved Mary the most of all the disciples. Some scholars recognize that the conflicted exchange between Peter and Mary had its parallel in real life between the institutional Church that was founded in Rome by Peter, which limited the roles of women in church leadership, with the Gnostic traditions found more strongly in Egypt, which granted leadership responsibilities to both genders.

The idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were closer, maybe even married, comes not so much from the Gospel of Mary, but rather the Gnostic Gospel of Phillip. Phillip frequently refers to Mary as Jesus’ “companion.” Also, like at the end of the Gospel of Mary, Phillip declares that Jesus “loved (Mary Magdalene) more than all the rest of the disciples,” and then he added that “he used to kiss her on her (mouth).” Most scholars do not accept this as persuasive evidence that they were married or intimate. After all, kissing as a form of friendship or greeting, such as a “kiss of peace,” was common and had no necessary meaning of intimacy.

And eventually, in the fourth century, when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity through the conversion of Constantine, it was the orthodox Church which became favored, and now they were in charge. They had the authority of force to rid the world of Gnostic influence. And by and large they did. Gnosticism would reappear here and there over the centuries, but for at least 1,000 years the official church would silence it, sometimes violently. But it never died entirely, and in many ways, it is thriving more today more than ever among many of what is called the New Age movements.

Please don’t think in saying all this that I side with the Gnostics against the orthodox. I don’t. There are key pieces of Gnosticism I can’t accept, such as their dualism, just as there are key pieces of orthodoxy I can’t accept, such a substitutionary atonement. There are things from orthodoxy I prefer, such as religion based in community. There are things from Gnosticism I prefer, such as tolerance of diversity. This is not the story of good guys and bad guys. It is the story of how our perceptions of things must change with new information.

Discovery of new information should help us sharpen our thinking and rethink our views of the world. Probably no discovery concerning the nature of Western religion has been more dramatic in the last two thousand years than the discovery of these documents, the “other” Gospels, only decades ago.

I think this is an important story for our reflection. There is a major disconnect between our perception of how the church arose, and the reality of it. The diversity of churches today – the various Protestant denominations, along with more recent groups like Mormons and Christian Scientists – that diversity is closer to the picture of the first 200 years of Christianity than the common perception of a single church growing from the aftermath of Jesus’ death. There was no single theological consensus for centuries. There was no definitive “Bible” to guide their movement, but many assorted Gospels and sacred texts to choose from. The scripture they chose to follow influenced their views toward authority, their views toward the message of Jesus, their views toward the role of women, and their views toward the path to salvation. For at least the first two centuries, there was no single definition of what it meant to be Christian.

It is a fascinating story, and one that begs us to wonder “what if?” What if the Gospel of Mary superseded the letters of Paul, wherein Paul denied women the right to speak in church? What if Christianity had not become institutionalized, but rather became an individual spiritual path? What if no creeds had been developed, no “us” and “them,” and the concept of “heresy” held no meaning? What if there were no clear winner in the contest between the various Christian factions, and history recorded a diversity of religious paths from the very beginning up until today?

The “what if” questions are endless. Yet it is these questions that keep us alive to life, that challenge us to we the world differently, and grow.

READING

from Elaine Pagels, NPR interview

There have long been hints that the New Testament wasn’t the only version of Jesus’ life that existed, and that even the gospels presented there were subject to misinterpretation. . . . (Now we know) that the New Testament is just one version of events crafted in the intellectual free-for-all after Christ’s death. At that time, church leaders were competing with each other to figure out what Christ said, what he meant – and perhaps most important, what writings would best support the emerging church.

What we know now is that the scholars who championed the “Gnostic” gospels are among the ones who lost the battle.

In the decades after Jesus’ death these (Gnostic gospels) and many others were circulating widely among Christian groups from Egypt to Rome, Africa to Spain, and from today’s Turkey and Syria to France. So many Christians throughout the world knew and revered these books that it took more than 200 years for hardworking church leaders who denounced the texts to successfully repress them.

The copies discovered in 1945, for example, were taken from the sacred library of one of the earliest monasteries in Egypt, founded about 10 years after the conversion of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to join the fledgling church. For the first time, Christians were no longer treated as members of a dangerous and seditious group and could form open communities in which many lived together. Like monks today, they kept in their monastery libraries a very wide range of books they read aloud for inspiration.

But these particular texts appeared to upset Athanasius, then archbishop of Alexandria, in the year 367 he sent out an Easter letter to monks all over Egypt ordering them to reject what he called “illegitimate and secret books.” Apparently, some monks at the Egyptian monastery defied the archbishop’s order and took more than 50 books and (hid them in the desert.

READING

from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

When Mary had said this, she fell silent, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken to her. But Andrew answered and said ot the brethren, “Say what you (wish to) say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas.” Peter answered and spoke concerning the same things. He questioned them about the Savior: “Did he really speak with a woman without our knowledge (and) not openly? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?”

Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother, Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?” Levi answered and said to Peter, “Peter, you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. This is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect man and acquire him for ourselves as he commanded us, and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.” . . . [And] they began to go forth [to] proclaim and to preach.