By Greg Petty
February 2005

“Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas” by Elaine Pagels

I think I was approximately fourteen years old when I began to question why I was confessing my sins to a priest in the confessional instead of directly to God. I had already been having direct communion with God for some time in private moments and asking for guidance with difficult matters. Somehow the assigned Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s did not either assuage my guilt or help me find answers to my questions. These direct appeals increased as I sought to fathom why people were cruel or why my father was taken from me at age sixteen.

The Christian debate about the search for God, whether God is inside each and every one of us or only to be found, joined and communed with through Jesus Christ, has been going since shortly after Jesus’ death on the cross.

As an adult I continued to educate myself about the origins, controversies, mysteries and history of the development of Christianity. My “orthodox” faith grew even as my intuition told me there were other stories and deep meaning in some “unorthodox” Christian history that I yearned to explore and understand.

The 1940’s saw many exciting archaeological discoveries, which helped pull the veil off of previous religious interpretations of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, primarily the Dead Sea scrolls (earliest discovered text of the Old Testament) and the Gnostic gospels found at Nag Hammadi in 1945.

Why were these so called “Gnostic” testaments excluded from the New Testament? How did the orthodox Christian church develop and what did we lose in that long process? The search for these questions is a fascinating quest. Elaine Pagels, Professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University in “Beyond Belief” shares both her personal questions and provides the reader the necessary historical background to understand the many challenges faced by early Christians and those who sought to lead the infant church through its first four centuries. The resolution of some of these struggles (sometimes with spiritual and earthly life or death hanging in the balance) came about under the reign of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. Held in June of the year 325, the Council addressed the teachings, testaments and church practices of the many competing Christian groups. The result, with Constantine’s participation and approval, was what we know today as the Nicene Creed. The canon (meaning “guideline”) of approved New Testament readings was also proposed and put into practice.

Gnosis in Greek means “knowledge”. It is used in several different ways including personal or mystical knowledge, awareness of oneself or God or awareness of deep truths. This personal mystical knowledge is evident in the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. This gospel is believed to have been written in approximately 50-60 CE, which would place it along with Paul’s earliest attributed writings as the first testaments to Jesus.

Gospel of Thomas Verse 1 “ Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.”

Verse 3 Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you, “Look, the Kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the Sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are poverty.”

Verse 5 Jesus said, “Recognize what is before your eyes, and the mysteries will be revealed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.”

Verse 70 Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] destroy you.

The search for God within, especially a search unaided or directed by church leaders, was a tremendous threat to the early church fathers and the whole development of the male dominated, Peter as Bishop, church hierarchy.

Unlike the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, Thomas is not a narrative gospel. It does not portray Jesus as the Son of God, have him perform any miracles, die for anyone’s sin or proclaim an apocalyptic kingdom. The Gospel of John, believed written around 90-100 CE may have been written in response to Thomas and it portrays Thomas in a negative way as Doubting Thomas. For the reasons mentioned above the Gospel of Thomas was not included in the New Testament canon. John’s gospel offers themes, which are considered Gnostic like presentations, and so this school of thought was not totally excluded.

“Beyond Belief “ is an enjoyable and stimulating read. I hope you have found enough in this article to stimulate your desire to begin your own search. If so, here are a couple of other sources to learn more about the Gnostic Texts:

“ The Gnostic Gospels” Elaine Pagels, Vintage Press

“ The Gnostic Bible” Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, Shambhala – This is a comprehensive study of all Gnostic movements including Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Manichaean and Cathar.