Archimandrite
Vassilios looks at the growth of popular interest in Gnostic writings, arguing
that the Gnosticism of today is far removed from the tendency the early Church
fought for so long, particularly in its view of the material world. In support
of this view he examines the formation of the New Testament Canon and some of
the most prominent Gnostic texts from the first few centuries AD.
Over the
past few years, there has been an enormous popular interest in Gnosticism and
early Christian writings. Bookshops are full of material on the subject and, on
Christian holidays, the media bombards us with television productions on the
topic. But the Gnosticism that is today being hailed as the ‘original
Christianity’ is anything but the Gnosticism that plagued the Christian Church
between the second and fourth centuries. One of the main characteristics of
Gnosticism was an ethos that saw the material world as inherently evil. To the
Gnostics, therefore, the idea of God made flesh (a thing evil and beyond redemption)
was repugnant and ridiculous. For the Gnostics, salvation could only be
achieved by an escape from the body and the material world. Christ therefore,
according to the majority of the Gnostic writings, only appeared to be a man.
His body was nothing more than a cloak or a mask by which He could be seen and
touched, but which had no bearing on His person. As a result, many of the
Gnostic writings do not contain a narrative of the Crucifixion and Resurrection
(for these were not considered by the majority of Gnostics to be saving
events), but are accounts of Christ’s ‘secret teachings’, often allegedly
imparted to one or other of the apostles. The Gnostic writings that do contain
narratives of the Passion and Resurrection are often imbued with a strong Gnostic
ethos. A Christ that feels no pain on the cross is a classic example. The
Gnostic writings for the most part were effectively polemical works which
attempted to refute or ridicule the Christian belief that Christ was truly man
as well as God, but they were also largely pseudonymous works (falsely
attributed by the author to an important Christian figure, usually an Apostle).
By contrast, Gnosticism is today being upheld by many as the exact opposite: a
Christianity that saw Christ as a mortal prophet and not as the Son of God, and
they claim that this form of Christianity, which some now claim is Christianity
in its original, unadulterated form, was suppressed by the Constantinopolitan
Church which portrayed Christ the mortal prophet as a divine being. How these
Gnostic works can today be understood and put forward by anyone with half a
brain cell as a Christianity that saw Christ as purely human and not divine is
quite beyond my comprehension. In order to illustrate that the exact opposite
is true, we will look at just a few of the best-known of the ‘lost gospels’
which still survive, if only in part, today. But to start with, it would be
helpful to first have an idea of how the Church decided which of the many
different sacred texts that were being written and circulated were authentic.
The New
Testament Canon
In the
early life of the Church, people who claimed to adhere to true Christian
teaching believed in all kinds of strange things. Some believed in one God, but
some believed in two; others believed in as many as 365! Some believed that
Christ was both God and man, others believed that He was only one or the other.
There were those who believed that Christ’s Death and Resurrection brought
salvation to the human race, but others considered it to be irrelevant. Some
even believed that Jesus never died. Today, one well may ask, ‘why did they not
just read their New Testaments?’ The answer is simple: there was no such thing.
The variety of Christian writings that were being circulated in the local churches
created the need for the formation of a New Testament Canon: a selection of
authoritative Christian texts. The formation of such a canon took some time to
develop, beginning around the end of the 2nd century with Irenaeus’ Four-fold
Gospel: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (which, even now – after all the recent
discoveries of early Christian writings, such as those of the famous Nag
Hammadi library – remain the oldest historical records of Christ’s life on
earth) and ending with the famous encyclical by St Athanasius the Great in the
4th century, when for the first time we see the 27 books of our New Testament
listed as the only canonical books of the New Testament. But what was the
Church’s criterion for inclusion of a book in the New Testament Canon? For a
book to be canonical it had to be:
1) Ancient. It had to be written near the time
of Christ.
2) Apostolic. The book had to be written by an
apostle or by a companion of the apostles.
3) Catholic. Different churches used different
scriptures. To be included in the canon, a book had to have widespread
acceptance among the local churches.
4) Orthodox. This fourth criterion was by far
and away the most important. To a certain degree, the first two criteria hinged
on this one criterion. If the theology of a sacred text was not Orthodox, then
it could not have been apostolic or ancient.
A good
example of how the Orthodoxy of a book helped determine its apostolicity can be
found in Eusebius’ account of Serapion and the Gospel of Peter. Serapion, a
bishop of Antioch during the late second and early third centuries, paid a
visit to one of his churches in the village of Roussos, where he learned that
the church there used a gospel written by the Apostle Peter in their worship.
Serapion saw no problem with this, for he assumed that the gospel had indeed
been written by Peter. After returning from his travels, he was informed that
the so-called Gospel of Peter was infact a docetic Gospel. Serapion acquired a
copy of the book and he noted that it was indeed shot through with docetic
ideas. Serapion then sent an encyclical to the church in Roussos, ‘On the
So-called Gospel of Peter’, instructing them to not use the Gospel in their
worship. For Serapion, the fact that the Gospel of Peter contained docetic
theology was evidence enough that it was not written in the time of the
Apostles. Therefore, it could not have been written by St Peter, nor was it
ancient. But it should not be thought that the Orthodoxy of a Christian work
was the sole criterion for determining its inclusion in the New Testament
Canon. The Shepherd of Hermas, a Christian text that the Church never
considered to be heretical, was not included in the New Testament Canon simply
because it was known to be a relatively recent work. Not all of the early
Christian writings that did not find their way into the Canon were considered
to be heretical. Indeed, some of those works have been integrated into Orthodox
Tradition, but all of the above four criteria had to be met if they were to be
included in the Canon of Sacred Scripture. The Gnostic writings however, simply
did not meet a single one of the above-mentioned criteria.
In recent
times, certain scholars have questioned the authorship of some of the New
Testament writings, but this should not lead us to the conclusion that such
books should now be omitted from our New Testament, for the Church has a fifth
criterion: Tradition. As Bishop Kallistos Ware has put it:
“A book
is not part of Scripture because of any particular theory about its dating and
authorship. Even if it could be proved, for example, that the Fourth Gospel was
not actually written by John the beloved disciple of Christ, this would not
alter the fact that we Orthodox accept the Fourth Gospel as Holy Scripture.
Why? Because the Gospel of John is accepted by the Church and in the Church”.
In other
words, even if a work is proven today to not be written by the person to whom
it is attributed, its Orthodoxy and Catholicity, its enduring position in the
New Testament Canon and in the life and Tradition of the Church, means that
such a book maintains its authority and so remains a part of the sacred Canon
of Holy Scripture.
Ancient,
Apostolic, Catholic, Orthodox: such were the criteria for determining a book’s
place in the New Testament Canon, and the Gnostic writings simply did not
qualify by a long shot. But if the Gnostics were to have any chance of having
their views recognised as sacred scripture, they had to pass off their
theological ideas as apostolic, and so many Gnostic Gospels were written by
their authors in the name of one of the Apostles. We will now look at a few of
these texts, beginning with the Gospel of Peter, which I briefly mentioned
above.
The
Gospel of Peter
Before
the discovery of the surviving fragment of the Gospel of Peter in 1886, we knew
of this gospel from the Christian historian Eusebius (as we saw above). It was
probably written in the early 2nd century, making it the oldest surviving
gospel from outside of the New Testament. This gospel, unlike many Gnostic Gospels,
deals only with the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. It could perhaps be
described as the first Passion Play. The fragment begins with Pontius Pilate
washing his hands, an account found in the New Testament only in the Gospel of
Matthew, but the Gospel of Peter slightly differs in that the Jews in Peter’s
Gospel are described as refusing to wash their hands, thereby refusing to
proclaim themselves innocent of Christ’s blood. This is more in line with the
more anti-semitic literature of the 2nd century, something which is not found
in the writings of the 1st century, to which the New Testament belongs. As the
narrative progresses, we come across an account of the Crucifixion which in
some ways resembles those of the New Testament, but significantly differs in
other respects. Christ is crucified between two criminals, as in our New
Testament Gospels, but we are told that “he was silent, as though he had no
pain”. This is clearly a docetic interpretation of the Crucifixion: he was
silent as if he had no pain because he had no pain. In the Gospel of Matthew,
shortly before Christ dies, he exclaims: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?” In the Gospel of Peter, we read something similar, but it has a distinctly
Gnostic twist: “My power, my power, why have you left me?” Here, Jesus is
mourning the departure of his divine nature from him before his death, leaving
only his human ‘shell’ on the Cross – something that is very much in line with
the views of many Gnostic groups.
Reading
on, we come to a rather bizarre narrative of the Resurrection. The stone of the
tomb rolls away of its own accord, and from within three men appear. The heads
of two of them reach up to the skies, and they support the third, whose head
reaches beyond the skies. Behind them appears a cross, and a voice from the
heavens asks: “have you preached to those who are asleep?”, to which the cross
replies: “yes”.
A Christ
who feels no pain on the cross, who then resurrects in the form of a living
skyscraper, accompanied by a talking cross. This is hardly a Gospel that
portrays Christ as a mere mortal prophet!
The
Infancy Gospel of Thomas
The
Infancy Gospel of Thomas probably dates back to the first half of the second
century, and is an account of Christ’s life as a child, which is an area of
Christ’s life that many Christians are still curious about. If Christ as an
adult was the wonderworking Son of God, what was he like as an infant?
According to the author of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, he was a nasty piece
of work. Imagine an ill-tempered, vengeful, badly behaved school boy with
deadly magic powers, and you have the ASBO Jesus of the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. In Chapter 3 for example, we read:
The son
of Annas the scribe was standing there with Jesus. Taking a branch from a
willow tree, he dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered. When Jesus saw
what had happened, he became angry and said to him, "You godless,
brainless moron, what did the ponds and waters do to you? Watch this now: you
are going to dry up like a tree and you will never produce leaves or roots or
fruit." And immediately, this child withered up completely. Then, Jesus
departed and returned to Joseph's house. The parents of the one who had been
withered up, however, wailed for their young child as they took his remains
away. Then, they went to Joseph and accused him, "You are responsible for
the child who did this."
And the
examples of the God-child’s vengefulness continue in chapter 4:
Next, he
was going through the village again and a running child bumped his shoulder.
Becoming bitter, Jesus said to him, "You will not complete your
journey." Immediately, he fell down and died. Then, some of the people who
had seen what had happened said, "Where has this child come from so that
his every word is a completed deed? And going to Joseph, the parents of the one
who had died found fault with him. They said, "Because you have such a
child, you are not allowed to live with us in the village, or at least teach
him to bless and not curse. For our children are dead!"
In
Chapter 5, Joseph expresses some concern about the behaviour of Jesus:
And
taking his child aside, he warned him, saying, "Why are you doing these
things? These people are suffering and they hate us and cause trouble for us.
"Then, Jesus said, "I know that the words I speak are not mine.
Nevertheless, I will be silent for your sake, but these people will bear their
punishment." And immediately his accusers became blind. When they saw what
he had done, they were extremely afraid and did not know what to do. And they
talked about him, saying, "Every word he speaks, good or evil, is an event
and becomes a miracle."
And in
chapter 6:
When
Joseph saw that Jesus had done this… he was outraged and took his ear and
pulled it extremely hard. Then, the child became angry and said to him,
"It is enough for you to seek and not find, but too much for you to act so
unwisely. Do you not know that I am not yours? Do not trouble me."
Here we
can see that the author of this Gospel is making a point that Christ is the Son
of God and not the son of Joseph and focuses on Christ’s divine nature even in
infancy. Again: not a Gospel that focuses on Jesus’ human qualities.
The
Coptic Gospel of Thomas
Unlike
the Gospels of our New Testament, which combine narrative accounts of the life
of Christ with sayings, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas is nothing more than a
Gospel of sayings. The date of this gospel is still debated by scholars. The
difficulty in dating the gospel arises from the difficulty in deciding whether
or not it is in fact a gnostic gospel. But there were many forms of gnosticism.
This gospel does not appear to display the docetic or dualistic ideas found in
many of the other gospels, but expresses the belief that people have the
capacity within themselves to perceive the Kingdom of God on earth. This might
sound compatible with Orthodox theology, but it also suggests that this
perception of the Kingdom on earth is achieved by a quasi-intuitive knowledge
of the mysteries of the universe and of secret formulae indicative of that
knowledge – something very much in line with Gnostic teaching. It is therefore
most likely that this gospel does not go back earlier than the late second
century, although some contemporary scholars do not accept this conclusion, and
some even claim that this gospel is in fact older than the canonical gospels,
and have even suggested that it was written by Christ Himself. But the most
sensible biblical scholars and historians agree that it does not date anywhere
near the time of Christ and was certainly not written by Christ or by Thomas or
by any other apostle.
The
Coptic Apocalypse of Peter
Like the
vast majority of texts in the Nag Hammadi collection, the Coptic Apocalypse of
Peter is heavily gnostic. It was probably written around 200 A.D. The
description of the Crucifixion is an example of docetism gone mad, picturing
Jesus as laughing and warning against people who cleave to the name of a dead
man, thinking they shall become pure; and in typically docetic fashion, it
presents Christ’s flesh as nothing more than an illusion:
"'He
whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this
one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which
is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness.
But look at him and me.'"
The Gospel
of Judas
The most
recent discovery of early Christian writings is the so-called Gospel of Judas,
though we already knew of this Gospel from our historical sources. Irenaeus in
the 2nd Century makes mention of it:
“They
declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and
that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of
the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown
into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they
style the Gospel of Judas.”
This
gospel dates back probably no earlier than the second century since it contains
theology that is not represented before the second half of the second century,
and since its introduction and epilogue assume the reader is familiar with the
canonical Gospels.
The
Gospel of Judas, as suggested by Irenaeus’ comment on the gospel, portrays
Judas in a very different perspective than do the Gospels of the New Testament.
The author of the Gospel of Judas interprets Judas's act not as betrayal, but
rather as an act of obedience to the instructions of Jesus. This conforms to a
notion, current in many forms of Gnosticism, that the human body is a spiritual
prison, and that Judas served Christ by helping to release Christ's spirit from
his human body. Furthermore, the Gospel of Judas claims that of all the
disciples, Judas alone knew the true teachings of Christ, asserting that the
disciples had not learned the true Gospel, which Jesus taught only to Judas
Iscariot.
One of
the aspects of this Gospel, found also in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, that
has drawn a great deal of attention is found at the beginning of the narrative,
during the eucharistic prayer, when Christ laughs. Some have claimed that this
Gospel of the ‘laughing Jesus’ portrays Christ in more human terms than those
of the New Testament. But the narrative indicates that Christ’s laughter has a
very different agenda:
One day
he was with his disciples in Judea, and he found them gathered together and
seated in pious observance. When he approached his disciples, gathered together
and seated and offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed.
The disciples said to him, “Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of
thanksgiving? We have done what is right.” He answered and said to them, “I am
not laughing at you. You are not doing this because of your own will but
because it is through this that your god will be praised.”
In the
Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, Christ’s laughter not only signifies his inability
to feel pain; his laughter - as in the Gospel of Judas – is there to ridicule
those who believe that their salvation will be achieved through the death of
Christ’s humanity, which is commemorated in the Mystical Supper, mirrored in
the Eucharistic prayer of the apostles in the Gospel of Judas: “…it is through
this that your god will be praised”. For the author of the Gospel of Judas,
like so many of the Gnostics, the death of Christ has nothing to do with the
salvation of the human race. The Christ of the Gospel of Judas is laughing at
those who believe that Christ’s death brought salvation to the world.
The Real
Jesus
We have
looked at just a few examples from Gnostic writings that some popular writers
and even scholars today claim are older than those of our New Testament, and
some even claim that these writings present Christ as a mere mortal prophet and
not divine. I hope I have adequately illustrated that this is utter nonsense.
Most biblical scholars and historians today still agree that these writings
were far later than those of our New Testament. And yet, year after year, books
are published on the topic of early Christian writings telling us the exact
opposite, with titles such as “The Real Jesus”, “The Historical Jesus”, or
something similar. But it remains the case that it is the Orthodox Church that
has preserved the truth about Christ and it continues to preserve that truth
today: fully God and fully man, of the same essence as God in divinity, of the
same essence as us in humanity. The criteria for inclusion in the New Testament
Canon were laid down for good reason, and of all the Gospels that we know of,
only the Gospels of our New Testament fulfilled those criteria. To find out who
the “real Jesus” is, one does not need to look very far. He will find what he
is looking for in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
By
Archimandrite Vassilios
(Papavassiliou)
Source: http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/2594410.html
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