God's Word or Human Words - Part 2

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 1 with the following words:

 

(p.75) " Orthodox Jews and Christians, of course, have never wholly denied

affinity between God and ourselves. But their leaders have tended to discourage

or, at least, to circumscribe the process through which people may seek God on

their own. This may be why some people raised as Christians and Jews today are

looking elsewhere to supplement what they have not found in Western tradition.

Even Father Thomas Keating, the former abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer,

Massachusetts, who has been a Cistercian monk for over fifty years, has sought

through dialogue with the Buddhist and other wisdom traditions, as well as

contemporary science, to deepen the ancient practice he calls Centering Prayer.

(p.76) Fr. Keating finds that certain elements of Buddhist meditative practice

complement Christian tradition by offering other experiential ways to discover

divine truth. Thomas Merton, the famous monk who wrote the best-seller of the

1940s 'The Seven Storey Mountain', a Trappist like Keating, had similarly

investigated Buddhist tradition. Thus even some devoted Christians have found

that the impulse to seek God overflows the banks of a single tradition. "

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 3, p. 75-76.

 

Note:

 

For the technical discussion of the research summarized in this chapter, see

Elaine Pagels, " Irenaeus, the 'Canon of Truth' and the Gospel of John: 'Making a

Difference' Through Hermeneutics and Ritual, " 'Vigiliae Christianae' 56.4

(2002), 339-371.

 

Here now, is Part 2.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

God's Word or Human Words - Part 2

 

(p.76) But as we have seen, within a century of Jesus' death, some of his most

loyal followers had determined to exclude a wide range of 'Christian' sources,

to say nothing of borrowing from other religious traditions, although, as we

have also seen, this often happened. But why, and in what circumstances, did

these early church leaders believe that this was necessary for the movement to

survive? And why did those who proclaimed Jesus the " only begotten son of God, "

as the Gospel of John declares, dominate later tradition, while other Christian

visions, like that of Thomas, which encourages disciples to recognize

themselves, as well as Jesus, as " children of God, " were suppressed? "

 

Traditionally, Christian theologians have declared that " the Holy Spirit guides

the church into all truth " --a statement often taken to mean that what has

survived must be right. Some historians of religion have rationalized this

conviction by implying that in Christian history, as in the history of science,

weak, false ideas die off early, while the strong and valid ones survive. The

late Raymond Brown, a prominent New Testament scholar and Roman Catholic

Sulpician priest, stated this perspective baldly: What orthodox Christians

rejected was only " the rubbish of the second century " --and, he added, " it's

still rubbish. " [2] (p.77) But such polemics tell us nothing about how and why

early church leaders laid down the fundamental principles of Christian teaching.

To understand what happened we need to look at the specific challenges--and

dangers--that confronted believers during the critical years around 100 to 200

C.E., and how those who became the architects of Christian tradition dealt with

these challenges.

 

The African convert Tertullian, living in the port city of Carthage in North

Africa about eighty years after the Gospels of John and Thomas were written,

around the year 190 (or, as Tertullian and his contemporaries might have said,

during the reign of Emperor Commodus), acknowledged that the Christian movement

was attracting crowds of new members--and that outsiders were alarmed:

 

The outcry is that the State is filled with Christians--that they are in the

fields, in the cities, in the islands; and [outsiders] lament, as if for some

calamity, that both men and women, of every age and condition, even high rank,

are going over to profess Christian faith. [3]

 

Tertullian ridiculed the non-Christian majority for their wild suspicions and

denounced the magistrates for believing them:

 

[We are called] monsters of evil, and accused of practicing a sacred ritual in

which we kill a little child and eat it; in which, after the feast, we practice

incest, while the dogs, our pimps, overturn the lights and give us the shameless

darkness to gratify our lusts. (p.78) 'This is what people constantly charge',

yet you take no trouble to find out the truth....Well, 'you think the Christian

is capable of every crime--an enemy of the gods, of the emperor, of the laws, of

good morals, of all nature'. [4]

 

Tertullian was distressed that throughout the empire, from his native city in

Africa to Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Asia Minor, and in the provinces from Germany

to Gaul, Christians had become targets of sporadic outbreaks of violence. Roman

magistrates often ignored these incidents and sometimes participated in them. In

the city of Smyrna on the coast of Asia Minor, for example, crowds shouting " Get

the atheists! " lynched the convert Germanicus and demanded--successfully-that

the authorities arrest and immediately kill Polycarp, a prominent bishop. [5]

 

What outsiders saw depended considerably on which Christian groups they happened

to encounter. Pliny, governor of Bithynia, in modern Turkey, trying to prevent

groups from sheltering subversives, ordered his soldiers to arrest people

accused as Christians. To gather information, his soldiers tortured two

Christian women, both slaves, who revealed that members of this particular cult

" met regularly before dawn on a certain day to sing a hymn to Christ as to a

god. " Though it had been rumored that they were eating human flesh and blood,

Pliny found that they were actually eating only " ordinary, harmless food. " He

reported to the emperor Trajan that, although he found no evidence of actual

crime, " I ordered them to be taken away and executed; for, whatever they admit

to, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy should not

go unpunished. " [6] (p.79) But twenty years later in Rome, Rusticus, the city

prefect, interrogated a group of five Christians who looked to him less like

members of a cult than like a philosophy seminar. Justin Martyr the philosopher,

arraigned along with this students, admitted to the prefect that he met with

like-minded believers in his Roman apartment " above the baths of Timothy " to

discuss " Christian philosophy. " [7] Nevertheless Rusticus, like Pliny, suspected

treason. When Justin and his pupils refused his order to sacrifice to the gods,

he had them beaten, then beheaded.

 

Thirty years after Justin's death, another philosopher, named Celsus, who

detested Christians, wrote a book called 'The True Word', which exposed their

movement and accused some of them of acting like wild-eyed devotees of foreign

gods such as Attis and Cybele, possessed by spirits. Others, Celsus charged,

practiced incantations and spells, like magicians; still others followed what

many Greeks and Romans saw as the barbaric, Oriental customs of the Jews. Celsus

reported, too, that on large estates throughout the countryside Christian

woolworkers, cobblers, and washerwomen, people who, he said, " ordinarily are

afraid to speak in the presence of their superiors, " nevertheless gathered the

gullible--slaves, children, and " stupid women " --from the great houses into their

workshops to hear how Jesus worked miracles and, after he died, rose from the

grave. [8] Among respectable citizens, Christians aroused the same suspicions of

violence, promiscuity, and political extremism with which secretive cults are

still regarded, especially by those who fear that their friends or relatives may

be lured into them.

 

Despite the diverse forms of early Christianity--and perhaps because of

them--the movement spread rapidly, so that by the end of the second century

Christian groups were proliferating throughout the empire, despite attempts to

stop them. (p.80) Tertullian boasted to outsiders that " the more we are mown

down by you, the more we multiply; the blood of Christians is seed! " [9] Defiant

rhetoric, however, could not solve the problem that he and other Christian

leaders faced: How could they strengthen and unify this enormously diverse and

widespread movement, so it could survive its enemies?

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 3, p. 76-80

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

Notes:

 

[2] Raymond E. Brown, S.J.; this paraphrases the end of his review of 'The

Gnostic Gospels, New York Times', November, 1979.

 

[3] Tertullian, 'Apology' 1.

 

[4] Ibid., 2.

 

[5] 'Martyrdom of St. Polycarp' 3f.

 

[6] Pliny, 'Letter' 10.96.3.

 

[7] 'Martyrdom of St. Justin and His Companions', Recension A, 3.2. The place

name has been corrupted in the manuscripts; I follow the reading of Herbert

Musurillo, 'The Acts of the Christian Martyrs' (Oxford, 1972), 45.

 

[8] Origen, 'Contra Celsum' 3.54.

 

[9] Tertullian, 'Apology' 50.