Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (Vintage) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Needless to say, defenders of orthodoxy have been less than thrilled by the prospect of having to defend themselves against what they must have believed was, quite literally, a dead letter. The sharp tones of offended orthodoxy are evident in many of the reviews of this book found on this site, but that's really their problem, not Pagels's. If you are seeking after a glimmer and a hint of an alternative Christian path, an alternative to what Catholicism and its spin-offs offer, this might be a good place to start.

As an historian, Pagels takes a bold and risky step when she begins her book with a personal narrative of a parent's anguish at the prospective death of a child. It was this anxiety and anguish that led her into a church not as an academic analyst, but a customer, as it were. Still, she could not suspend her scholarly curiosity as the process of a faith reaffirmed unfolded.

Some reviewers have made the outrageous charge that Pagels is anti-Christian. Having just put down the book, I find this charge ludicrous. It would be true only if "Christian" is defined as someone who accepts without question a particular interpretation of a particular text with no possibility of there being anything else ever.

In any event, Pagels's personal journey takes up only a couple of pages of a good-sized work, the thrust of which is an examination of why the organized church selected a few of the many texts available as the sole authoritative texts for what would become the New Testamant.

Most of this paring down, it turns out, was the work of one man, Iraneous, Bishop of Lyons, in the early second century. A survivor of widespread anti-Christian purges, Iraneous's mission was to try to unify the scattered Christian communities of the Mediterranian basin. Presumably, the idea was that there would be strength in numbers, and more particularly there would be more strength among the Christians if their tendency to argue with eachother and form splinter movements were curtailed. To this end it would be greatly advantageous if the authorities on which they based their disagreements were narrowed to a few--hence the need to select what amounted to a "best of" album of early Christian writings.

From a doctrinal standpoint, Iraneous selected the Book of John as the most important of the gospels, and placed it first in front of Mathew, Mark and Luke. Iraneus's belief in the authority of John, and the take on Jesus it encompasses, has been the basis of orthodox belief ever since. Most particularly, it is the idea found in John--and no where else in the Bible--Jesus the man was none other than God Himself. With Jesus as the sole earthly instance of the divine, access to the divine can be had only through faith in Jesus, and by extention, the church that holds that view.

It is this core belief that became embodied in the Nicean creed and all subsequent Chrisitan orthodoxy, but as Pagels points out, it was certainly not the view of the majority of Christians who were contemporary with Iraneus.

Most clearly in opposition to the Jesus-is-God view (a view that both traditional Jews and many if not most early Christians would have found blasphemous) was the so-called book of Thomas. Thomas purports to lay out sayings of Jesus, sayings that taken together stand for the idea that Jesus was an exemplar of God, but not God Himself. Moreover, the individual can access the divine through deep reflection and Christian community rituals. Unspoken here is the critical question: So who needs an organized church?

True, in many of Pagels's quotes from Iraneus,the man comes across as a pompous prig who purports to speak for the common man. He also seems to have had a tough time seeing women who had had spiritual awakenings through gnostic ceremonies as anything other than "that stupid woman" etc. He also justifies his choice of there being only four "true" gospels on the basis of there being only four winds. Quid est demonstrandum. However, Pagels also reveals him to be a man of extraordinary bravery, patience and tenacity. That the hideous sufferings inflicted on the early Chritians by the Romans would, a few generations later, be inflicted on "heretic" Christians by orthodox Christians can not be laid at Iraneus's door. That kind of viciousness flows from orthodoxy itself, not the things that people are orthodox about.

What I found somewhat disappointing was not that Pagels tends to hang Iraneous with his own words so much as her failure to hang him high enough. More particularly, I wanted to read a lot more about Thomas (or at least, what's in Thomas), and the book would have benefitted greatly from having the whole Thomas work included as an appendix. Instead, she kind of meanders off in her lucid and erudite way into discussions with progressively less punch, as informative as they are.

While Pagels suggests that it was doctrine alone that kept Thomas out of the New Testament--particularly the idea of finding the divine within--I think there was a rather more obvious reason. The other gospels are narratives of the life of Jesus--Thomas is simply a group of sayings with no story, no structure, no life of Jesus to tell to the converts. As such, it could only serve to raise uncomfortable questions, the last thing the early church founders wanted.

I was also disappointed that Prof. Pagels did not put more time into the question of John's historicity. Although Iraneus believed that John was written by Jesus' actual disciple John, I think a good case can be made that John's author lived at least a generation later. Yet Pagels never picked up that particular gauntlet.

In sum, I'd give this book a B+ on the scale of fulfilling the promise of the jacket copy. It earns an A for what it has done to refresh me on my own spiritual journey.

Now, the squawk: The title of "Beyond Belief" leads the reader to expect an exegesis of the Gospel of Thomas. Although the Gospel of Thomas is mentioned from time to time, this book is about something else entirely. To the extent that it interprets any Gospel at all, the book interprets the Gospeal of John. The thrust of the book, particularly in its second half, concerns the ascendancy of the Gospel of John, as supported by church fathers such as Iraneaus and Athanasius. At the same time, it talks about the suppression of alternative or non-canonical writings, including but hardly limited to the Gospel of Thomas. Moreover, Dr. Pagels discusses at some length, the doctrinal squabbles between the orthodox movement chracterized by Iraneaus and the more liberal gnostic movement, characterized by Valentinus.

The book is interesting and provides a sketchy introduction to the panoply of gospels extant in the early church. It is well worth reading. Like any quality scholarly work, it invites the reader to further research. With voluminous footnotes and a seemingly comprehensive bibliography it points the reader to library shelves and, most likely, to interlibrary loans for further essential reading.

The book, however, talks a whole lot less about the Gospel of Thomas than the title would have us believe. I advise the reader first to read the Gospel of Thomas itself. Then read the Gospel of John. Then, and only then, read this book to find out about the Ascendancy of John, and look elsewhere for a full interpretation of Thomas.

"Beyond Belief" is intensely interesting to the right audience. It is part gospel analysis, which she translates from ancient Greek, part early Christian history and part personal story meant to provide context in understanding the beauty of modern Christianity. One audience for this book is those seeking to understand factually what Jesus taught and what happened to Christianity in the early centuries following his death (30 ce) and how the Gospel of Thomas can shed light on that understanding.

But another audience, the one for whom this book will resonate most deeply, are readers with an intuitive grasp of "transcendence" and the teachings of Jesus that verify the union that can be experienced between God and man. This is what Saint John of the Cross referred to when he wrote "All and Nothing." ("Here I stand alone transcending all knowledge"). Pagels points out that this experience is taught by Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas and expressed in the Vedic literature of India. ("I am That"). It is found in the writings from many religious traditions. One Catholic University scholar has compared the description of the higher states of consciousness from the Upanishads to the rooms described by Saint Theresa of Avila in her "Interior Castle"(Seven states of consciousness; seven rooms in the castle).

There is no doubt that saints the world over have written of union with God. The Christian tradition is no exception (read Alan Watts, "The Supreme Identity."): "It seemed to me, as if [my soul] was wholly and altogether passed into its God, to make but one and the same thing with Him; even as a little drop of water, cast into the sea, receives the qualities of the sea. Oh, union of unity, demanded of God by Jesus Christ for men and merited by him!" -Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon. Or "Blessedness consists primarily in the fact that the soul sees God in herself. Only in God's knowledge does she become wholly still. Therefore it is in Oneness that God is found and they who would find God must themselves become One." And the famous "My eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." -Meister Eckhart.

I wonder sometimes how we got from these sublime expressions to the crap that is dispensed by our Churches. Nobody explains this better than Pagels. She attempts to explain why, if the experience of union with God is universal, it is not prominently recognized in the four gospels and most Christian teaching.

The problem, Pagels explains as she accounts for the development of early church othodoxy, is that the apostles and the early Christian writers built Church teaching upon revelation and visions. "Without visions and revelations, the Christian movement would not have begun. But who can tell the holy spirit when to stop?..."And when so many people--some of them rivals and even antagonists--all claim to to be divinely inspired, who knows who has the spirit and who does not? She claims that Irenaeus, the promoter of the four gospels, and only those four, was confronted not by "a lack of spiritual revelation but an overwhelming surplus. 'How' he asked 'can we tell the difference between the word of God and mere human words?'" It is in this climate the first attempt to unify Christian believers began.

Hericlitus, the great Greek philosopher, said "All is One." If you recognize the wisdom of this ancient expression and you understand that, consciousness, the source of thought, is divine and that the inner experience of Jesus is available to all, you will enjoy this book. Jesus says in Thomas "I am all: From me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.". Or in the words of the Vedas "I am That, Thou art That, All this is That."

Understanding the Transcendent may be the key to appreciating this book. I had been practicing meditation for only about seven years when I discovered Pagels' first book over twenty years ago. The Gospel of Thomas and these gnostic writings from the earliest christians resonated immediately for I could validate it by my experience. Pagels quotes the gospel of Mary Magdalene, "The Son of Man is within you."

In the end, the orthodox view, the Church view, prevailed and the Gnostic writings were suppressed. Perhaps for this reason Hericlitus had another saying for which he was known: "People who follow religions are like cattle."