Gnosticism: Known or Knowing

Introduction

Fifty years ago, I was a young pastor to a Lutheran congregation in rural Montana. Gnosticism, the subject of this essay, had recently splashed onto the scholarly pages of the theological press. In 1977 Harper and Row, under the editorship of James Robinson a prominent historian of early Christianity, published in English translation a collection of purportedly Gnostic writings from antiquity.1 The opening line from one of the more familiar writings, the Gospel of Thomas, purports to contain the very words of Christ, which explains the splash the materials created in the theological world. The Gospel of Thomas begins, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.”2 Although historians of early Christianity had snippets of manuscript evidence for the existence of the Gospel of Thomas and some of the other writings in the collection, they did not previously have any complete copies. In addition to the spotty manuscript evidence, historians also had secondary evidence from early Christian writers which substantiate the existence of these early non-canonical writings. For example, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, writing in the second century, mentions the Gospel of Thomas in a five-part work titled, Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies). As the title of Irenaeus’ work suggests, he took a dim view of the Gospel of Thomas, condemning it as a false version of Christian truth. As Irenaeus put it, the Gospel of Thomas sets “forth the views of those who are now teaching heresy . . . absurd and inconsistent with the truth. . . . [I urge] all those with whom you are connected to avoid such an abyss of madness and of blasphemy against Christ.”3

As historians reasoned, the dim view taken by Irenaeus and other authoritative teachers of the early church led to the suppression and eventual destruction of the Nag Hammadi texts. This circumstance in turn, explains why no existing copies of the materials had appeared to have survived from antiquity. But now, hidden copies, unearthed after sixteen hundred years, provided first-hand manuscript evidence for Thomas and these other authors. They could now be read in full and on their own terms. Scholars held that the publication of these materials promised to revolutionize our understanding of Jesus and the early Christian community. And in the view of some, the materials also offered an alternative Christian way for seekers who sought a life-affirming spirituality disconnected from the trappings of the allegedly flawed religious institutions of the mid-twentieth century.

At the time, despite the revolutionary billing of its publication, I was struck by the fact that in some ways the religious orientation expressed by the Nag Hammadi authors resonated with attitudes that I was encountering both within and outside the church. Irenaeus and other teachers of the ancient church may have condemned the “Gnostic” approach to Christian truth as heretical, but they hadn’t necessarily made the ideas go away. Many people I knew in rural Montana during the 1970s had never heard of, let alone read, the Gospel of Thomas. Nonetheless they shared his skepticism of churchly institutions. In fact, whether corrupt or uncorrupt, religious institutions, in their view, were not essential to an enlightened life. They were, as was the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas, confident that the light that enlightens and enlivens is to be found within the self.4 As Thomas’s Jesus put it, “the Kingdom is inside of you . . . There is light within a man of light and he lights up the whole world.”5 If these newly discovered gospels were to find their way into popular culture, I thought at the time, they would have a ready readership. My purpose in this essay, nearly fifty years after their publication into English, is to reflect a bit on the promises associated with the Nag Hammadi materials. Specifically, the plan is simply to read side by side the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mark as a case study in what Luther regarded as the fundamental theme of theology. As he put it, “sinners guilty of not wanting God to be God and the God who is determined to be the God of sinners.” The question that comes into focus as we set Thomas and Mark side by side is twofold: Where is the light of truth and life to be found? In us? Or does it come, bidden or unbidden, from the promise of the risen Jesus, alone? Does self-fulfillment come from insight that overcomes ignorance of the true self? Or does the freedom to live a fully human life arise from the forgiveness of sin? And if the latter, what exactly is the sin that Christ forgives?

The “Gnostic” Story

The story of Gnosticism—what it is, where it came from, and its significance for Christian theology—has two beginnings. Current interest in Gnosticism dates to the 1945 discovery, quite by chance, of a cache of ancient manuscripts buried near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The discovery of these materials constitutes the second beginning of the Gnostic story. In a roundabout way, the telling of it will lead us to the story of Gnosticism’s first beginning.

The circumstances surrounding the discovery of these ancient manuscripts and how they came to be valued, reconstructed, translated, and employed by historians to shed light on early Christian beliefs has been often and well told.6 The collection consists of thirteen codices or books, containing fortysix individual writings, six of which appear to be duplicated in different versions, so a total of fifty-two in all. The language of the materials is Coptic, an ancient version of Egyptian. The manuscripts are generally regarded by scholars to have been written in the fourth century. With near universal consensus, however, scholars agree that the writings are translated copies of earlier literary works originally written in Greek. When exactly the original Greek texts were written remains a matter of debate. With respect to the Gospel of Thomas, some scholars —E. P. Sanders and John Meier, for example—argue for a date in the early to mid-second century. Others—Helmut Koester and Elaine Pagels, for example— contend that it may have been written during the mid-first century, which would place it chronologically among the earliest Christian writings. In any event, we know for certain that Gospel of Thomas was completed and circulating throughout the Christian community in the last third of the second century. The reason we know this takes us to the first beginning story of Gnosticism.

Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library of writings, historians had very little physical evidence for the existence of such literature. For example, before the discovery of the library, we had only a fragmentary manuscript hardcopy for the Gospel of Thomas, one of the principal texts in the collection. In three fragments from Oxyrthynchus, an ancient city in Egypt, we had a little less than one fifth of the whole work.7 While historians had little to no manuscript evidence for the writings, they did, however, have in the writings of second and third century “right-minded” leaders and teachers of the church who reference the materials and their contents. These “rightminded” teachers of the second and third centuries—among them Irenaeus of Lyons (135-202), Tertullian of Carthage (155230), and Hippolytus of Rome (170-236)—universally ridiculed, vilified, and condemned the thought expressed in the Nag Hammadi library and similar texts, dismissing them as nonsensical heresy.

Tertullian

Heresy, from the Greek haeresis, means choice or division. By this designation, the orthodox leaders of the church declared that these writings were outside the bounds of a salutary understanding of the Christian faith. To illustrate the objections raised by so-called orthodox (from the Greek ortho = straight, and doxos = thinking; thus, the straight thinkers or the rightminded) teachers, we have space to cite only two examples.

Irenaeus of Lyons, the bishop of the church in Gaul (modern-day France), in the last third of the second century, wrote a five-volume work, Exposure and Refutation of Knowledge (Gnosis) So-Called, which purported to do exactly what the title declared. In this massive work, Irenaeus sets out to expose and condemn the “false knowledge” in the writings that he cites. His criticism, as Karen King explains in her excellent introduction to Gnosticism,8 focuses on three aspects of the “heretical” gnosis or false knowledge of the Christian truth—1) the Creator and creation, 2) the nature of salvation, and 3) the ethical laxity inherent in the theological outlook of the writings.

In as much as they regarded the material creation as something so evil as only to be escaped, they denied the biblical assertion of the Creator ’s and the creation’s divine goodness. Genesis, the Psalms, Paul’s Letters, as well as elsewhere in the Christian scriptures, testify to the truth, “God saw what he created, and it was good.” Moreover, as King goes on to explain, the Gnostic writings “undermined salvation by denying both that Jesus had a physical body and that believers would physically rise from the dead even as Jesus had . . . Instead, Irenaeus claims, the heretics presumptuously claimed that only a spiritual elite would be ‘saved by nature’ owing to their heavenly origin; salvation came not by faith in Christ but through knowledge revealed only to them.”9 Finally, Irenaeus argued that Gnosticism’s negative view of material creation, as something to be escaped for the higher and more fulling spiritual life, led inevitably to a material existence characterized by immorality and irresponsibility, either of a libertine or an ascetic variety. To top off his opposition and condemnation, Irenaeus charged that by their unwillingness to risk martyrdom for the faith the false teachers betrayed that they were unworthy of the name Christian.

Not surprisingly, Hippolytus of Rome, a student of Irenaeus, was pretty much of the same mind as his mentor with respect to the teachers of salvation by gnosis. As Elaine Pagels reports, in his massive Refutation of All Heresies Hippolytus aims “to expose and refute the wicked blasphemy of the heretics.”10 He goes on to delineate the blasphemies of the heretics by and large along the same lines as Irenaeus. The teachers of gnosis, the secret saving knowledge, have split themselves off from the community of the true faith. As Tertullian—another prominent leader of “right-thinking” Christianity, writing at about the same time as Irenaeus and Hippolytus— declares, “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the [Gnostic] heretic?”11

Hippolytus

By the fourth century, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and the rest of the “right-minded” teachers of the church had succeeded in their aim. Gnosis, or the secret saving knowledge that the “living Jesus” had supposedly imparted to Thomas, had come to be synonymous with heresy. The teachers of this secret saving knowledge had succeeded in cutting themselves off from the orthodox community and the true faith. When in the fourth century Constantine converted to the faith and brought with him the military power of the empire, writes Elaine Pagels, “the penalty for heresy escalated.”12 Not only was the heresy condemned, but by the edict of the emperor all traces of the heresy were to be destroyed. It may have been under such pressure that the writings discovered at Nag Hammadi had been buried, not seeing the light of day again for sixteen hundred years.

When the cache of materials was discovered, scholars thought they had, from their study of Irenaeus and the other heresiologists, a pretty good understanding of the fundamental orientation and chief principles of the gnosis heresy. The heretical version of the Christian story, as reconstructed by historians, goes something like this: The divinely human spirit lives in carnal captivity of the physical body. Mired in the messy pedestrian material world, as though asleep in drunken ignorance of the true self, the human spirit lives in mortal danger. Jesus came into the world not to redeem from sin. He came to impart the secret saving gnosis, awakening the human spirit to its true nature and potential. Salvation does not come from above. It lies within. Those worthy of this secret of the kingdom will know what to do with it. They will rediscover and kindle their inner divine light. Just so, the human spirit may self-liberate from the carnal captivity of the body and mundane menial material existence to pursue the higher heavenly existence for which it was created and destined. But, as they say, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. In the course of seeking to refine their understanding of Gnosticism on the basis of the Nag Hammadi texts, scholars discovered such diversity and variety as to call into question the very idea of Gnosticism as a cohesive approach to Christian truth. As the individual documents were studied, it began to appear that none of them evidenced all the marks of gnostic thought as historians had defined it. The outlook in many of the writings appeared to be incompatible with one another. Some of the writings did not share any of the marks of gnostic thought as it had been previously characterized. Gradually scholarship has gotten to the point where some scholars, Karen King and Michael Williams, for example, question whether there is any historical justification at all to speak about a Gnostic approach to Christian truth. They argue that the term has become so problematic, not to say meaningless, perhaps it ought to be abandoned altogether.13

While scholarship has much to sort out with respect to Gnosticism, nonetheless it seems profitable for faith and the church’s ministry to proceed with the narrower proposal of our essay. Again, our aim is to examine side-by-side the theological outlooks of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mark in the interest of illuminating the human predicament in relation to God and the promise of life. Are human fortunes the captives of ignorance or sin? Does the promise of salvation come in the form of a saving gnosis lifting the human out of its ignorance of self? Or does the promise of salvation arise from God’s forgiveness of sin?

Secret of Kingdom Come: Saving Gnosis or Forgiveness of Sin14

Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mark revolve around “the secret of the kingdom.” As already noted, the Gospel of Thomas purportedly contains the “secret sayings” of Jesus, recorded in the promise that whoever finds their interpretation “will not experience death” (1). The Markan Jesus gives to his disciples “the secret to the kingdom of God” (4:11). However, the secret of the kingdom turns out to be very different in the two versions. Helmut Koester sums up the vision of salvation revealed in Thomas’ report of Jesus’ “secret sayings.” According to Koester, Thomas believes that, “the basic religious experience is not only the recognition of one’s divine identity, but more specifically the recognition of one’s origin (the light) and destiny (the repose). In order to return to one’s origin, the disciple is to become separate from the world by ‘stripping off ’ the fleshly garment and ‘passing by ’ the present corruptible existence; then the disciple can experience the new world, the kingdom of light, peace, and life.”15 By way of contrast, the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel does not come to show the way to escape the “present corruptible existence,” but liberates us from sin, death, and the power of the devil for the sake of life here and now and evermore as forgiven sinners in the everlasting blessedness, righteousness, and innocence of God’s kingdom come. As Jesus declares, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (2:17).

According to Thomas, Jesus only justifies those who prove themselves worthy of God (45, 70). To them he has appeared in flesh, to reveal the secret path to the true existence for which they were created and destined (87, 112). The rest of humanity, “blind in their hearts” and without “sight” came into the world empty and empty they will leave (28). Jesus is like “a shepherd who has a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for that one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble, he said to the sheep, ‘I care for you more than the ninety-nine’” (107). “It is to those [who are worthy of My] mysteries that I tell My mysteries, Jesus assures the elect of God (62). To them, the worthy “elect,” he entrusts the secret of the kingdom (17, 45). The kingdom, in Thomas’ version of Christian truth, is not a place in time yet to come, as those lacking divine insight have been led to imagine. It is here and now, “inside of you” (3). “Seek to know yourself,” Jesus encourages, “and you will become known (3) . . . Recognize what is in your sight and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest (5) . . . I am not your master,” Jesus continues. “ There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world (24) . . . Blessed are the solitary and the elect, for you will find the kingdom. For you are far from it, and to it you will return” (49). Just so, the elect set themselves on the path to enlightenment and salvation, escaping the everyday burdens and the numbing, unfulfilling routines of an ordinary life. “Woe to the soul that depends on the flesh” (112). “Whoever finds himself is superior to the world!” (111).

…the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel does not come to show the way to escape the “present corruptible existence,” but liberates us from sin, death, and the power of the devil…

But according to Mark, the story of salvation is very different. Driven by boundless divine compassion, the Spirit of God tears out of heaven and takes possession of Jesus. “Just as he was ascending from the baptismal waters of the Jordan, Jesus saw “the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (1:10-11). From that moment forward Jesus is driven to be the saving God of sinners. His aim is to “exorcise” from humanity the evil spirit of inner enlightenment that imagines it can make its own way without the mercy of God (1:21-28). In reality, that spirit only binds and “cripples” people, tormenting and cutting sinners off from God, life, and the neighbors with whom they share life (2:1-12; 5:113, 25-43; 7:32-37). His singular aim is, by forgiveness, to free sinners, free-to-be fully human, down-to-earth, in service and enjoyment of creation by faith in God’s promise of life apart from demand and merit. We haven’t space here to rehearse the whole of Mark’s story of Jesus. We must content ourselves with only a few episodes that illustrate the way that Mark’s view of salvation and Jesus contrasts with Thomas’s view.

Mark’s story is complex. It moves in many directions and at many levels simultaneously. But for the purpose of this essay, we will stick with one thread. Pull it and you see the unraveling of Simon’s and the other apostles’ false confidence in the inner spirit of self-knowledge (1:35-39; 3:13-19a; 4:10-13; 6:30-56; 7:17; 8:1-10, 14-21, 27-38; 9:33-48; 10:32-45; 14:26-50, 66-72). We are particularly interested, that is, to observe the experience of the fishermen followers of Jesus as they know themselves and as they are known by Jesus. Mark’s story begins with an episode, reported toward the end of chapter 1. The whole town has gathered at Simon’s front door, abuzz about Jesus. Instead of taking advantage of this attention for God’s sake, Jesus retreats to the hills for prayer. When Simon and the other disciples wake up to Jesus’ alleged mistake, they fly off, intent on hunting him down to set him straight. “Everyone is searching for you,” they chastise him. In other words, in their judgment he should not be out in the hills praying, but in town taking advantage of the enthusiastic interest that he has stirred up around himself. Gently, but firmly, Jesus affirms to his followers that he is, and will remain, one step ahead of them, leading the way to life. “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message [of forgiveness] there also; for that is what I came out to do” (1:38). For Simon, the twelve, and the reader, the episode signals the beginning of the end for salvation by gnosis, by theological self-knowledge. Salvation depends not on what we know but upon how God has chosen to know sinners in his forgiveness.

Simon Peter

Space does not allow for the whole story to be told. We must cut to the quick of our theme where it is taken up in chapter 14. Jesus has been preparing his followers for the crisis they are about to face in Jerusalem. As he has come to know them in the course of their time together, Peter and the twelve have proven themselves to be quite dense to the secret of the kingdom. The secret seems to have gone in one ear and out the other. Again and again in the course of the story Jesus asks Peter and the twelve, ”Do you not understand?” In each instance the evidence of their ineptitude is overwhelming; they repeatedly fail to understand. But now Jesus preaches to them the good news in a way that can only be described as doing the good news to them. As the good news of God generally comes, so in this case it comes under the sign of its opposite. “You will all become deserters,” Jesus declares ahead of time about their failed discipleship. “As it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up I will go before you to Galilee . . .” (14:27-28).

At this point Simon the Rock rudely interrupts the sermon of Jesus’ unfinished promise. He is beside himself to report that he knows himself a damn sight better than Jesus will ever know him. “Even though all become deserters, I will not!” the Rock boasts to Jesus. Against what Simon knows about himself, Jesus declares how Peter is known in the truth of God, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” Still, Peter imagines that he knows better. He knows himself! He denies Jesus’ prophecy. He was bound to do it. By his imagined self-knowledge he is compelled to swear vehemently, “‘Even though I must die with you I will not deny you.’ And all of them said the same” (14:37). There is the evil inner spirit that must be exorcised from Peter before he can live, following Jesus, as a free child of God.

Fortunately for Peter and all sinners, Jesus’ word, throughout Mark’s entire story, proves to tell the truth of salvation if there is to be salvation. Simon and his colleagues go on, despite their assurances, to betray, forsake, and deny any association with Jesus whatsoever. If their future in life and in relation to God depended upon their self-knowledge and performance, their fortunes would be dashed, their bridges burned.

After all is said and done, their only hope resides with the promise of Jesus, back from the dead, in the promise of forgiveness: “ Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (2:17). That ’s the promise that faith can sink its teeth into—the body of Christ given for you, the blood of Christ shed for you, for the forgiveness of sin. Contrary to Thomas, Mark declares that knowledge of the heroic self does not save. Rather, it is the sin for which Christ comes in forgiveness, to set us free to be, by faith in God for us and not against us, free to trust God to be the merciful God for us, free to enjoy and serve creation, including the neighbors with whom we share it.

Rev. Dr. Virgil Thompson retired from Gonzaga University as a Senior Lecturer in biblical studies. In retirement he has continued to serve the church as Managing Editor of Lutheran Quarterly, Adjunct Professor at St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, and as author and lecturer. He and his wife Linda currently make their home on Lummi Island, across the bay from Bellingham, WA.

Endnotes

1James Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). Since the publication of the Robinson edition of the Nag Hammadi materials there have been two other notable editions. The first is Marvin Meyer ’s The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007). As Nicola Denzey Lewis explains in her Introduction to Gnosticism, in some instances the translation of materials in the Meyer edition, benefitting from updated insight, sometimes differs quite significantly from those in the Robinson edition. In addition, there is also an edition of the materials edited by Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1987). The distinguishing thing about the Bentley edition of the materials is that he was the sole translator. And while his translations may betray certain idiosyncrasies unique to him, they serve for that very reason to enrich the English reader ’s engagement with the original writings. According to one of the examples provided by Nicola Denzey Lewis, Bentley translates differently the title of a text which everyone else references as Hypostasis of the Archons. In Bentley’s edition the tractate is titled the Reality of Rulers. It may be problematic for referencing the materials in scholarly discussion, but it does provide contemporary students, particularly the non-scholarly, a better sense of the subject matter. All in all, these three volumes, produced by top scholars in the field, make the materials available to English readers in accessible form.

2Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 118.

3Irenaeus, Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses, Praefatio. Quoted in Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), xv.

4Robinson, ed., The Gospel of Thomas, The Nag Hammadi Library, 118: “Jesus said . . . the Kingdom of God is inside 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.” All ensuing citations from the Gospel of Thomas, unless otherwise noted, are from the Robinson edition of the Nag Hammadi materials, in the notes by page and intertextually numerated according to the conventional scholarly enumeration of the individual sayings. 5

Robinson, ed., The Gospel of Thomas, 118, 121.

6See, for example, G. McRae, “Nag Hammadi,” in The Interpreter ’s Dictionary of the Bible, Suppl. Vol. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962): 613-19; Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, Karen. L. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1-4. Nicola Denzey Lewis, Introduction to Gnosticism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1-10.

7Lewis, 101.

8King, 26-27.

9Ibid., 26-27.

10Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, xvii.

11Quoted in King, 35; S. L. Greenslade, “Prescription Against Heretics 7” Early Latin Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 1956), 36

12Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, xxiv.

13Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief, 33; King, 218-36. Lewis, 12-27.

14Textual references from the Gospel of Thomas in this section are drawn from the Robinson edition of Nag Hammadi materials, observing the standard scholarly numbering of the sayings. References from the Gospel of Mark are drawn from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible.

15Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, 117.