Religion and Theology

Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University with a PhD from Harvard, is well known for her 1979 book on the Gnostic Gospels, to which she refers (p 33). She worked, with others, on translating and annotating the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. It was these non-canonical gospels that interested her in the diversity of early Christian thought. Beyond Belief is an exploration of how Christians decided to condemn certain gospels as heretical while declaring others orthodox. Pagels theological training had led her to respect the Church Fathers, for whom the Gnostic gospels were tissues of falsehood. When she started to read the newly available texts, she expected to find them pretentious and trivial (p 32). This was not what she experienced.  Instead, she was exposed to unexpected spiritual power.   Who wrote these lost gospels, she asked, and why Political considerations played a role, she says, in the process that condemned them (p 35). In five cogent and readable chapters, clearly intended for a general as well as an academic readership, Pagels responds to this question. She begins her work by recalling her visit to the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York, which she entered almost on a whim as she dealt with her sons death from a serious illness, trying to make sense of this very personal experience.  Each chapter begins with a personal anecdote. Could belief help her She does not find traditional formulations of Christian faith expressed by the Creeds meaningful. Yet she does find comfort in what she sees as a more authentic, even older tradition of seeking answers, rather than assuming that Churchs teachings Church contain them. She writes for those who share the search, offering less a reformulation of belief than a recovery of a lost tradition. She argues that before the four gospels displaced all others,

Christianity was about community, agape (love), about belonging not belief in set doctrines, about a shared journey toward God and a more humane world journey. Thos who revered the Go Gospel of Thomas, later proscribed, she says, saw themselves as not so much believers but seekers, people who seek God (28). In contrast, Johns gospel especially assumed the priority of particular beliefs, an advanced set of convictions about who Jesus was. For these Christians, to be Christian or to have faith became synonymous with belief in a single, unauthorized set of beliefs (p 29). How, she asks, was Christianity transformed from a community that gathered around the communion table, or agape feast, into one that insisted that people endorse certain beliefs before they were accepted at the table
Two chapters deal with rivalry between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas, which she reproduces on pages 227 to 242. Pagels says that these two, one canonical, one heretica appear to date from about the same time (p 34). We do not know exactly when any of the gospels were written but Pagels says 90-130 for John, so Thomas was presumably a little earlier. In the book, she also compares John with the other three orthodox gospels, known as the Synoptics because they share the same synopsis.  There is some different material in each but their writers may have used a common source, a sayings Gospel. Thomas has no joined up narrative of Jesus life, so may belong to this genre. Pagels thinks that both John and Thomas assumed that readers already knew Jesus biography, focusing rather on his secret teaching to close associates.

Some sayings are common between the Synoptics and Thomas. She identifies significant differences between John and the other three canonical texts. Convinced that the author of John (whose actual identity is unknown) knew at least the teachings contained in Thomas (whose author is also unknown), Pagels thinks that aimed to refute this. The main difference between John and the other three, apart from chronology, lack of parables and presence of the I am sayings is that only John emphatically identifies Jesus as God, as does Thomas. Both depict Jesus as the divine light yet here that they also part company. For Thomas, this light, which is within all people, can be sought and found in our own spiritual experience. For John, this light cannot be found other than in Jesus, Only Jesus is from God and only he offers access to God (68). Rival communities, who vied for, may have championed the two gospels

Both John and Thomas also teach that Gods kingdom is already here, not a future Kingdom (p 51). Thomas in John is the doubter who was slowness to believe may even have forfeited his apostolic status (p 71).  This could be polemical, depicting Thomas as having abandoned his quest for experimental truth (72). It was Irenaues, bishop of Lyons in the second century, who did much to secure Johns place in the canon.

He championed John, despite differences between John and the three gospels. For their authors Jesus was human, not divine. John elevated Jesus as divine, transforming him into Gods word. A somewhat simplistic mathematical formula followed God  word  Jesus Christ (p 151). Irenaeus wanted to unify Christians, so protected against heresy by making apostolic tradition, represented by the four gospels, the yardstick of correct belief. He wanted to place the church at the center of the Roman world, controlling belief. He probably thought that a united church would survive more easily, perhaps eventually win over the empire, as it did when Constantine converted (80). Personal quests, the possibility of multiple understandings of faith, charismatic dreamers and prophets challenged a single authority. Aware that John could be interpreted to support what he saw as heresy  that human experience and the divine reality are analogous because the divine spark resides in us all  he condemned those who, in his view, misinterpreted John. He did not deny that the Holy Spirit continues to speak through inspired individuals (p 112) but set the gospels up as the definitive word against which all claims to speak Gods word must be judged.  He wanted to remove the danger that what was spoken or written was merely the opinion of the person claiming revelation in the name of a secret teaching (p 96) or even false prophecy (85). If people could find God within, communicating directly with the God within, there could be no single creed, no single church. People might find satisfaction in very different beliefs and practices. Pagels suggests that later Christian and Jewish mysticism essentially taught what Thomas did, that human experience is analogous to divine reality (145). It was this that the church, in the effort to impose authority and uniformity, resisted. Under Constantine, the concept of orthodoxy represented by elevating four gospels over all others went further, producing a single creed. The autonomy of local bishops, who exercised individual authority, had to yield to a single supreme pontiff, based in Rome.

Having chosen to support Christianity, Constantine wanted one creed, one church, for one empire. Irenaeus had helped the process along. This fundamentally changed Christian faith from the trust that enables us to commit ourselves to what we hope and love into assent to a set of beliefs (p 183-4).  All of this is supported by extensive footnotes.  Arguing mainly from the gospels and other early sources, she is interested in what can be deduced from ancient documents, not in the story that the church subsequently told. Relatively few secondary sources are used. Despite sympathies, she resists demonizing, rejecting the common view that Constantines motives were cynical. She thinks that he genuinely saw Jesus as promising eternal life (p 180). Whether you agree or disagree with Pagels thesis, it is skillfully presented, erudite, scholarly yet also engagingly personal and very accessible.