The canon of truth and the triumph of John - Part 5

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

Part 4 concluded with the following words of Elaine Pagels:

 

(p.125) Thus, in the Round Dance of the Cross, Jesus says that he suffers in

order to reveal the nature of human suffering, and to teach the paradox that the

Buddha also taught: that those who become aware of suffering simultaneously find

release from it. Yet he also tells them to join in the cosmic dance: " 'Whoever

dances belongs to the whole.' 'Amen.' 'Whoever does not dance does not know what

happens.' 'Amen.' " [36]

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 4, p.124-125.

 

Here now, is Part 5.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

 

The canon of truth and the triumph of John - Part 5

 

(p.125) Those who loved the Acts of John apparently celebrated the eucharist by

chanting these words, holding hands, and circling in this dance to celebrate

together the mystery of Jesus' suffering, and their own--and some Christians

celebrate it thus to this day. In the Acts of John, John tells his fellow

disciples that it is not " strange or paradoxical " that each of them sees Jesus

in different ways, for he explains that what anyone can see depends on that

person's expectations and capacity. Once, he says, Peter and Andrew asked John

and James about the young child they saw calling them from the shore,

 

and my brother said...to me, " John, what does he want, this child on the shore

who called us? " And I said, " Which child? " And he answered me, " The one

beckoning to us. " And I said, " Because of the long watch at sea, you are not

seeing well, brother James. Don't you see the man standing there who is

handsome, with a joyful face? " But he said to me, " I do not see him, my brother;

but let us disembark, and see what this means. " [37]

 

John adds, " at another time, he took me and James and Peter onto a mountain

where he used to pray, and we saw him illuminated by a light that no human

language could describe. " Later, " Again he took the three of us onto a mountain,

and we saw him praying at a distance. " (p.126) John says, however, that " since

he loved me, I went up quietly to him, as if he did not see, and I stood there

looking at his back. " Suddenly, John says, he saw Jesus as Moses once saw the

Lord-- " he was wearing no clothes...and did not look like a human being at

all...his feet shone with light so brilliant that it lit up the earth, and his

head reached into heaven, so terrifying that I cried out " --whereupon Jesus

immediately turned, was transformed back into the man that John could easily

recognize, and rebuked John in words Jesus speaks to Thomas in John's own

gospel: " John, do not be faithless, but believe. " [38]

 

The Gospel of John inspired yet another example of " evil exegesis " [ " evil

Biblical interpretation " ]--the famous and influential Secret Book of John, which

Irenaeus apparently read, and which another anonymous Christian wrote, in John's

name, apparently as a sequel to the gospel. The Secret Book opens after Jesus'

death, when " John, the brother of James, the son of Zebedee, " walking toward the

Temple, is accosted by a Pharisee, who charges that " this Nazarene " has deceived

John and his fellow believers, " filled your ears with lies, closed your hearts,

and turned you from the traditions of your fathers. " [39] John turns away from

the Temple and flees to a desolate place in the mountains, " grieving greatly in

[his] heart. " There, as he struggles alone with fear and doubt, he says that

" suddenly the heavens opened, and the whole creation shone, and the world was

shaken. " [40] John is astonished and terrified to see an unearthly light, in

which changing forms appear, and to hear Jesus' voice saying, " John, John, why

are you astonished, and why are you afraid?...I am the one who is with you

always. I am the Father; I am the Mother; and I am the Son. " [41] After a moment

of shock, John recognizes Jesus as the one who radiates the light of God and

appears in various forms, including Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--the last

envisioned as feminine (suggested by the gender of the Hebrew term for spirit,

'ruah') and so as divine Mother.

 

But after Jesus consoles John with this vision, he says that " the God and Father

of all things " cannot actually be apprehended in anthropomorphic images, since

God is " the invisible one who is above all things, who exists as incorruption,

in the pure light into which no eye may look, " [42] invisible, unimaginable,

wholly beyond human comprehension. How, then, can one speak of God at all? To

answer this question, the author of the Secret Book borrows the language of

John's gospel: " To the point that I am able to comprehend him--for who will ever

be able to comprehend him?...[God] is the light, the one who gives the light;

the life, the one who gives the life. " [43] Yet what follows, as we shall see in

the next chapter, is a remarkable dialogue in which John questions the risen

Savior, who gives him a breathtaking and wildly imaginative account of what

happened " in the beginning " --mysteries hidden before creation within the divine

being, the origin of evil, and the nature and spiritual destiny of humankind.

 

Of all the instances Irenaeus offers of " evil exegesis, " however, his prime

example is part of a commentary on John that asks questions similar to those

asked in the Secret Book--what John's gospel reveals about " the origin of all

things. " The author of this commentary, traditionally identified as Ptolemy,

[44] says that " John, the disciple of the Lord, wanting to set forth the origin

of all things, how the Father brought forth all things, " [45] reveals in his

opening lines--although in a way hidden from the casual reader--the original

structure of divine being. (p.128) This, he says, is the " primary ogdoad, " which

consists of the first eight emanations of divine energy, rather similar to what

kabbalists later will call the divine 'sephirot'; thus, when Valentinus and his

disciples read the opening of John's gospel, they envisioned God, the divine

'word', and Jesus Christ as, so to speak, waves of divine energy flowing down

from above, from the great waterfall to the local creek.

 

Irenaeus rejects this attempt to find hidden meaning in John's prologue and

explains to his reader that he has quoted this commentary at length so that " you

may see, beloved, the method by which those using it deceive themselves, and

abuse the Scriptures by trying to support their own invention from them. " [46]

Had John meant to set forth the primordial structure of divine being, Irenaeus

says, he would have made his meaning clear; thus " the fallacy of their

interpretation is obvious " ; [47] and he then, as we shall see, offers the 'true'

interpretation of John's gospel.

 

Yet Irenaeus undertook his massive, five-volume 'Refutation and Overthrow of

Falsely So-Called Knowledge' precisely because he knew that many people might

find his conclusions far from obvious. Worse, they might well see him and his

opponents as rival theologians squabbling about interpretation, rather than as

orthodox Christians against heretics. While his opponents say he reads only the

surface, he replies that all of them say different things; not one of them

agrees with another, not even with their own teachers; on the contrary, " each

one of them comes up with something new every day, " [48] as do writers and

artists today, for whom originality is evidence of genuine insight. For

Irenaeus, however, innovation proved that one had abandoned the true gospel.

(p.129) The problem he faced, then, was how to sort out all those lies,

fictions, and fantasies. How to distinguish true from false?

 

Irenaeus says that there is only one way to be safe from error: go back to what

you first learned, and " hold 'unmoving' in [your] heart the canon of truth

received in baptism. " [49] He assumes that his audience knows what this canon

is: " This faith, which the church, even when scattered throughout the whole

world...received from the apostles, " and which, he specifies, includes faith in

 

one God, Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth,

and the seas...and in one Christ Jesus, the son of God,

who became incarnate for our salvation, and in the holy

spirit...and the birth from a virgin, and the suffering, and

the resurrection from the dead, and the heavenly ascension

in flesh...of our beloved Jesus Christ. [50]

 

True believers everywhere, he says, share this same faith.

 

Irenaeus's vision of a united and unanimous " catholic church " speaks more of

what he hoped to create than what he actually saw in the churches he knew in

Gaul, and those he had visited or heard about in his travels through Gaul, Asia

Minor, and Italy. In those travels he encountered resistance from those he

called heretics, and when he urged them to return to the simple baptismal faith,

he says that they answered in words like this:

 

We too, have accepted the faith you describe, and we have confessed the same

things--faith in one God, in Jesus Christ, in the virgin birth and the

resurrection--when we were baptized. (p.130) But since that time, following

Jesus' injunction to " seek, and you shall find, " we have been striving to go

beyond the church's elementary precepts, hoping to attain spiritual maturity.

 

Now that the discoveries at Nag Hammadi allow the heretics--virtually for the

first time--to speak for themselves, let us look at the Gospel of Philip, to see

how its author, a Valentinian teacher, compares his own circle with that of

those he considers 'simpler' Christian believers.

 

[To be continued in Part 6]

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas), Chapter 4, p.125-130

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

 

Notes:

 

For fuller and more technical discussions 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, " in 'Vigiliae Christianae' 56.4 (2002), 339-371; also Pagels,

" Ritual in the Gospel of Phillip, " in Turner and McGuire, 'Nag Hammadi

Library After Fifty Years', 280-294; " The Mystery of Marriage in the

Gospel of Phillip, " in Pearson, 'Future of Early Christianity',

442-452; and 'Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis'.

 

[30] I Corinthians 11:23.

 

[31] John 13:4-5.

 

[32] John 13:7-8.

 

[33] " Round Dance of the Cross, " in Acts of John 94.1-4. For a

recently edited Greek text with French translation and notes, see E.

Junod and J.P. Kastli, 'Acta Johannis: Praefatio-Textus in Corpus

Christiane' (Turnhout, 1983). Here I am following the recent English

translation published by Barbara E. Bowe in her article " Dancing into

the Divine: The Hymn of the Dance in the 'Acts of John', " 'Journal of

Early Christian Studies' 7:1 (1999), 83-104.

 

[34] " Round Dance of the Cross, " in Acts of John 94.9-95.50.

 

[35] Ibid., 96.1-15.

 

[36] Ibid., 95.27-30.

 

[37] Ibid., 88.12-18.

 

[38] Ibid., 90.1-17.

 

[39] Apocryphon of John 1.5-17; see the recent edition already cited, edited by

Frederick Wisse and Michael Waldstein; see also the commentary on the Apocryphon

of John by Karen King, forthcoming from Harvard University Press in spring 2003.

 

[40] Apocryphon of John, 1.18-33.

 

[41] Ibid., 2.9-14.

 

[42] Ibid., 2.3-10.

 

[43] The latter part of the citation follows BG 25.14-20; cf. John 1:1-4:10.

 

[44] For our purpose here, the precise identity of the author is not the central

point--especially because it is not known. We note, however, that Christoph

Markschies has persuasively challenged the traditional identification in his

important article " New Research on Ptolemaeus Gnosticus, " in Zeitschrift fur

Antike und Christentum 4 (Berlin and New York, 2000), 249-254.

 

[45] Irenaeus, AH 1.8.5.

 

[46] Ibid., 1.9.1.

 

[47] Ibid., 1.9.2.

 

[48] Ibid., 1.18.1.

 

[49] Ibid., 1.9.4.

 

[50] Ibid., 1.10.1.