- Knowing Is Believing
I would like to begin this morning by reading, from
the Gospel of Mary.
Peter said to him, "Since you have explained
everything to us, tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?" The Savior said,
"There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like
the nature of adultery, which is called 'sin.' That is why the Good came into your
midst, to the essence of every nature, in order to restore it to its root."
When the blessed one had said this, he greeted them all, saying "Peace be with you.
Receive my peace to yourselves. Beware that no one lead you astray, saying, 'Lo
here!' or 'Lo there!' For the Son of
Man is within you. Follow after him! Those who seek him will find him. Go then and
preach the gospel of the kingdom. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed
for you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it."
When he had said this, he departed.
But they were grieved. They wept greatly, saying, "How shall we go to the Gentiles
and preach the gospel of the kingdom of the Son of Man? If they did not spare him,
how will they spare us?"
Then Mary stood up, greeted them all and said to her brethren, "Do not weep and
do not grieve nor be, irresolute, for his grace will be entirely with you and will
protect you. But rather let us praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and
made us fully human." When Mary said this, she turned their hearts to the Good,
and they began to discuss the words of the Savior.
Peter said to Mary, "Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest
of women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember - which you know but
we do not nor have we heard them."
Mary answered and said, "What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you."
And she began to speak to them these words: "I saw the Lord in a vision and
I said to him, 'Lord, I saw you today in a vision.' He answered and said to me,
'Blessed are you, that you did not waver at the sight of me. For where the mind
is, there is the treasure.' I said
to him, 'Lord, now does he who sees the vision see it through the soul or through
the spirit?' The Savior answered and said, 'He does not see through the soul nor
through the spirit, but the mind which is between the two - that is what sees the
vision. When Mary had said this, she fell silent, since it was to this point that
the Savior had spoken with her.
But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, "Say what you wish to say about what
she has said. I at least do not believe
that the Savior said this. For certainly
these teachings are strange ideas."
Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about
the Savior: "Did he really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are
we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?
Then Mary wept and said to Peter, "My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think
that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?"
Levi answered and said to Peter, "Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now
I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made
her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.
That is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and separate as
he commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other
law beyond what the Savior said. Then
they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.
from The Gospel of
Mary
The early church decided that this text does not belong
in the Bible. Like Peter (upon this rock will my church be built) in the text who
said, "Did he really speak privately with a woman (and) not openly to us? Are we
to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” there was some confusion
about which teaching belonged in the Bible and which didn’t.
Ultimately, like Andrew, "Say what you (wish to) say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Savior
said this. For certainly these teachings
are strange ideas." those who made
the final decision about what would and what would not constitute the authoritative
source of Christian teachings decided that “these teachings are strange ideas”,
and by a woman.
According to
Bart D. Ehrman
, author of Misquoting Jesus
:
The decisions about which books should finally be considered canonical were
not automatic or problem-free; the debates were long and drawn out, and sometimes
harsh. . .
In the year 367 C.E.,
Athanasius
[the powerful bishop of
Alexandria
]wrote his annual pastoral letter to the Egyptian churches under his jurisdiction,
and in it he included advice concerning which books should be read as scripture
in the churches. He lists . . . twenty-seven books, excluding all others. This is
the first surviving instance of anyone affirming [the] set of books [now recognized]
as the New Testament. And even Athanasius did not settle the matter. Debates continued
for decades, even centuries. The books we call the New Testament were not gathered
together into one canon and considered scripture, finally and ultimately, until
hundreds of years after the books themselves had first been produced.
Misquoting Jesus, by Bart D. Ehrman, page 36
Unitarian church historian,
Earl Morris Wilbur, informs us that, at this time,
Controversy between divergent theological
groups became so heated in Alexandria, and grew so violent throughout the Empire,
that it threatened to undermine the very throne [of Constantine]. As a measure of
political safety, therefore, and in order to bring the controversy to permanent
settlement, the Emperor Constantine felt forced to convene at Nicaea in 325
a general council of all the churches in the Roman Empire. The council lasted six
weeks, and was marked by great bitterness and even violence. Three parties were
involved: followers of Arius, holding that in his essential nature Christ was different,
from God; followers of Athanasius, holding that he was the same as God; and an intermediate
party, in the great majority, holding that he was similar to God. The Arians, being
a small minority, were soon outvoted; but the Athanasians, though also a minority,
proved so unwilling to make the least concession, that at length the Emperor
threw his weight into the balance, and insisted on the adoption of their statement
of doctrine, which nearly all now signed. This was the Nicene Creed, affirming the
eternal deity of Christ. Those opposing
it were declared the enemies of Christianity.
A History of Unitarianism, Earl Morris Wilbur, page 10
This was a controversy that continued from the time
of Arius and Athanasius to the twentieth century. Traditionally, Unitarians historians,
like Earl Morse Wilbur, have traced Unitarian roots back to Arius who asserted that
Jesus was not a person of the Trinity as the Orthodox maintained but something between
divine and human.
Today, most Unitarian Universalists, our name Unitarian,
not withstanding, no longer spend much time debating the Trinity.
When we investigate theology and the Bible today, we are usually
more interested in understanding whether there is anything in the Bible that we
can make use of, find inspirational or that speaks to our concerns today.
While we have no quarrel with Arius, his arguments no longer fill our cup.
Last week I asked the question “Does it belong in the
Bible?” Many of the books that constitute
the Bible, I contended, have a great deal to say to us today.
As for others, I suggested that, although there may be stories and ideas
that do not conform to our modern sense of morality, constituting, as they do, foundational
documents for Western culture, we might as well accept them.
I now need to ask the question again about other books,
such as the reading that I began with this morning which comes from the Gospel of
Mary. You won’t find that gospel in
the King James Version of the Bible or any other version of the Bible used by Protestants,
Catholics or Jews today. It was not
one of the books on the list that Athanasius sent to the Egyptian churches. It was probably available to
Athanasius
and he might have read it, but it wouldn’t have, in any event, conform to the standards
that he set down. For one thing the
Gospel of Mary elevated Mary Magdalene (the harlot!) above Peter (the rock). In addition, it rejects the importance
of sin in favor of secret knowledge.
The gospels that Athanasius affirmed were clear in
their teachings that: 1) Jesus as the
Christ had died on the cross to take on the sins of humanity and 2) only men should
be in leadership roles in the church.
The gospels that made it onto Athanasius’ list of 27 were, in addition, consistent
with a polemic against the Jews even though the early church had been made up entirely
of Jews, and softened the animosity to Rome even though the early church had been
oppressed by Rome.
The Gospel of Mary, it turns out, was one of the collection
of books produced and accepted by a sect of early Christians vehemently opposed
by another early church leader, Irenaeus.
. . . Irenaeus, who wrote a five volume work against heretics . . . had very
clear ideas about which books should be considered among the canonical Gospels. In a frequently cited passage from his
work Against Heresies Irenaeus
says that "heretics," had mistakenly assumed that only one or another of the
Gospels was to be accepted as scripture: Jewish Christians who held to the ongoing
validity of the Law used only Matthew; certain groups who argued that Jesus
was not really the Christ accepted only the Gospel of Mark; Marcion and his followers
accepted only (a form of) Luke; and a group of Gnostics . . . accepted only John.
Misquoting Jesus, by Bart D. Ehrman
About the same time as the discovery of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, another set of scrolls was discovered.
In December of 1945, two Egyptian brothers found several
papyri in a large earthenware vessel while digging for fertilizer around
limestone caves near Nag Hammadi in
Upper Egypt
. The find was not initially reported by either of the brothers, who sought to make
money from the manuscripts by selling them individually at intervals. It is also
reported that the brothers' mother burned several of the manuscripts, worried, apparently,
that the papers might have 'dangerous effects'. As a result, what came to be known
as the Nag Hammadi library appeared only gradually, and its significance went unacknowledged
until some time after its initial uncovering.
In 1946, the brothers became involved
in a feud, and left the manuscripts with a
Coptic
priest, whose brother-in-law in October that
year sold a codex to the
Coptic Museum
in Old Cairo. The resident Coptologist and religious historian, realizing the significance
of the artifact, published the first reference to it in 1948. Over the years, most
of the tracts were passed by the priest to an antiques dealer in
Cairo
, thereafter being retained by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities; for fear
that they would be sold out of the country.
Markschies, Gnosis,
page 48
The speculation that
Jesus
was highly influenced by, and possibly a member of the
Qumran
community, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, made those scrolls the most
important find of the century for many religious scholars. The Nag Hammadi scrolls,
the work of Gnostic heretics, were much less widely acclaimed. The two thousand
years old prejudice against anything that is not orthodox had not abated.
For Unitarian Universalists today, however, the Nag
Hammadi scrolls might be considered the more important find.
We might see them as, rather than being a band of superstitious
crackpots who thought they knew it all, as a serious and important attempt to obtain
from
Jesus
a different message.
The Gnostics were not completely blotted out of history. A few of the texts discovered at Nag
Hammadi had been previously known but, 40 new texts (over 1,000 pages) were unearthed.
Many of these had been in wide circulation in the first three centuries of the Christian
era and were probably considered as authoritative as the books that now make up
the New Testament canon by many. These
texts range from secret gospels, poems, and quasi-philosophic descriptions of the
origin of the universe, to myths, magic, and instructions for mystical practice.
Unitarian Universalists continue to oppose a central
authority, committed as we are to congregational polity.
We experiment with forms of worship and ways of governing ourselves. While
the early Christian church was quite diverse, those who became the Orthodox insisted
on a specific form of church hierarchy which consisted of professional bishops,
priests and deacons, and making a firm distinction between clergy and laity. The Gnostics, like Unitarian Universalists
did not make as clear a distinction.
In some Gnostic churches they would begin each worship service with the drawing
of lots whereby a bishop, who presided over communion, a priest, who would read
the scriptures for worship, and a prophet, who would preach extemporaneously, would
be chosen. At the next worship service new lots would be drawn.
The Orthodox also insisted that Jesus was entirely different
from other human beings, since he was a person of the Trinitarian God.
The Gnostics disagreed. In the Gospel of
Thomas Jesus
says to
Thomas
:
. . . I am not your master. Because you drank, you have become drunk from the bubbling
stream which I have measured out . . . He who will drink from my mouth will become
as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed
to him.
The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, page xx)
In the Book of Thomas the Contender the distinction
between the divinity of Jesus and our own humanness is further diluted.
Jesus
tells
Thomas
:
Since it has been said that you are my twin
and true companion, examine yourself so that you may understand who you are . .
. I am the knowledge of the truth. So while you accompany me, although you do not
understand (it), you already have come to know, and now you will be called the one
who knows himself.' For whoever has not known himself has known nothing, but whoever
has known himself has simultaneously achieved knowledge about the depth of things.
The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels,
page 22
This passage also reveals the secret knowledge from which the name "Gnostic" derives.
Gnostic means knowing while agnostic
means not knowing. Like
Socrates
, the Gnostics believed that the most important knowledge was to "know thyself".
“Know” not in the sense that we know
how much is 2 plus 2 but “know” in the sense that we can know another person. "Gnostic",
thus, might be translated as "Insight" rather than "Knowledge". According to Gnosticism,
Jesus showed much concern for the knowledge of inner truth.
He wanted his disciples to be seekers and seers.
Do not leave off searching day and night
. . . Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will
become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will become astonished, and he will
rule over all things.
Pistis
Sophia
Jesus
is saying that one finds knowledge within oneself. When
his disciples asked when the new world or kingdom would come Jesus responds in the
Gospel of Thomas:
. . . rather, the Kingdom is inside of you,
and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known,
and you will realize that you are the sons of the living Father. But if you will
not know yourselves, then you will dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that
poverty.
Gospel
of Thomas
In another passage when describing the kingdom Jesus said
What you look forward to has already come,
but you do not recognize it . . . the Kingdom of the Father is spread out on the
earth, but men do not see it.
Gospel
of Thomas
The
Kingdom of God
, for the Gnostics, seems to represent an alternation of consciousness rather than
a physical coming future event.
. . . Say, then, from the heart that you
are the perfect day, and dwell in the light that does not fail . . . For you are
the understanding that is drawn forth. . .
Gospel
of Thomas
Gnosticism embraces numerous general attitudes toward life: it encourages non-attachment
and non-conformity to the world, a “being in the world, but not of the world”; a
lack of egotism; and, like UUs, a respect for the freedom and dignity of other beings.
For the Gnostics the crucified
Jesus
was a spiritual presence that could be part
of any of us. The physical
resurrection of Jesus was an important
point for the orthodox and the paradox of
it was one of the necessary
statements of faith for them. The Gnostics, however, dismissed this
teaching as unreasonable and instead insisted on the concept
of the resurrection of
the "Spirit".
For the Gnostics, the Spirit was often seen as feminine
and the resurrected Jesus was frequently considered androgynous.
The Gnostics, also, had a different version of Creation, one that was decidedly
Greek. The Gnostics believed that
Sophia
, "Wisdom" (which was female) existed prior to God, the creator, and that she produced
the creator God that the Orthodox called God.
The Greeks called the creator God the "Demiurge". The Demiurge then created
the universe.
“. . .he (the Demiurge) said. . . "I
am a jealous God, and there is no other god besides me." But by announcing this
[the Demiurge] indicated to the angels . . . that another God does exist, for if
there were no other one, of whom
should he be jealous? . . . then the mother began to be distressed.
Secret
Book of
John,
The Gnostic
Gospels, Elaine Pagels, page 69
. . . and a voice came forth from above the
realm of absolute power, saying,
"You are wrong,
Samuel
" [which means, "god of the blind"].
And [the Demiurge] said, "If any other thing exists before me, let it appear to
me!" And immediately, Sophia (Wisdom)
stretched forth her finger and introduced light into matter, and she followed it
down the region of Chaos. . . And
[the Demiurge] again said to his offspring, "It is I who am the god
of All." And, Life the daughter of Wisdom, cried out; she said to him,
"You are wrong. . .
The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, page 70
The Orthodox used the story of Adam and Eve to demonstrate
that it was women who brought evil into what had been “Paradise.”
The Gnostics would have none of it.
The Gnostics could not accept the Christian interpretation
of the Fall any more than they could the concept of Sin. In the ancient
world the snake was not regarded as evil but rather as magical and powerful and
a source of healing. The image
of a snake on a staff is still
the symbol of medicine today. From
this perspective, which the Gnostics understood and agreed with, the snake who convinced
Eve
to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil could not be understood as demonic.
They understood the snake to be a symbol of wisdom and that the obedience demanded
by the Demiurge was only so that humans could not become spiritually equal to him.
Wisdom, in the form of the snake foiled the Demiurge by convincing Eve, the mother
of Humanity to gain Knowledge by eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil. The Christian church sees the beginning of evil as disobedience. But the Demiurge’s
threat of death for disobedience did not occur. Instead Wisdom provided Adam and
Eve with self-awareness. Later, when the Demiurge sent a flood to wipe out the creation,
the Gnostics believed it was Wisdom again who prevailed by sending the rainbow that
saved
Noah
and his family.
The Gnostics believed that the overarching power of
the universe was not solely male oriented creativity but, also, female oriented
Wisdom. As a consequence, unlike the orthodox, women naturally participated in all
of the Gnostic church activity as equal to men. Unlike the orthodox who degraded
Mary Magdalene, considering her a harlot, and would never elevate her to the status
of the disciples because she was a woman, the Gnostics elevated her to the status
of most beloved disciple of Jesus and the one who knew secret knowledge from him
that he did not reveal to the others. It is for this reason that women, especially
UU women have been drawn to the Gnostics. UUs, in general, like the Gnostics, have
been way ahead of mainline Christian churches in affirming women.
The Gnostics believed that Jesus saved humanity through
the secret knowledge that human beings can become like him, his "twin", through
self-awareness. The Gnostics, like modern UUs, and unlike the orthodox, welcomed
sources of Wisdom from outside of the prescribed cannon. They were much more inclusive
and syncretistic than the Orthodox.
The Gnostics did not look to salvation from sin (original
or other), but rather from the ignorance of which sin is a consequence. Ignorance
-- whereby is meant ignorance of spiritual realities - is dispelled only by Gnosis,
and the decisive revelation of Gnosis is brought by the Messengers of Light, especially
by Jesus. It is not by his suffering and death but by his life of teaching and his
establishing of mysteries that
Jesus
has performed his work of salvation.
The Gnostic concept of salvation, like other Gnostic
concepts, is a subtle one. On the one hand, Gnostic salvation may easily be mistaken
for an unmediated individual experience, a sort of spiritual do-it-yourself project.
Gnostics hold that the potential for Gnosis, and thus, of salvation is present in
every man and woman, and that salvation is not vicarious but individual.
Throughout the twentieth Century the new scientific
discipline of depth psychology gained much prominence.
Carl Jung
was instrumental in calling attention to the Nag Hammadi library of Gnostic writings
in the 1950's because he perceived the outstanding psychological relevance of Gnostic
insights.
The noted scholar of Gnosticism, G. Filoramo, wrote:
Jung's reflections
had long been immersed in the thought of the ancient Gnostics to such an extent
that he considered them the virtual discoverers of 'depth psychology' . . . ancient
Gnosis, albeit in its form of universal religion, in a certain sense prefigured,
and at the same time helped to clarify, the nature of Jungian spiritual therapy.
Some Jungians believe that the Gnostic gospels may indeed
possess important psychological relevance and applicability. For instance, the blind
and arrogant creator-demiurge bears a close resemblance to the alienated human ego
that has lost contact with the Self. The
myth of Sophia resembles closely the story of the human psyche that loses its connection
with the collective unconscious and needs to be rescued by the Self.
It is in these areas then, its modern seeming psychological
insights, its affirmation of women, its sense of equality between clergy and laity
and its openness to new sources of knowledge that UUs might seem to resemble Gnostics.
But it is in the elevation of the importance of the secret spiritual knowledge that
we crave, the Gnosis of self-insight (knowledge of the heart rather than knowledge
of the head), that UUs come not only to resemble Gnostics but in some way, to possibly
be, in fact, modern Gnostics.
For over a century Unitarians, in particular, but Universalists,
as well, viewed the Bible as but one source in our quest for understanding and making
sense of the world and our place in it.
We have discovered that other writings, sometime more recent and sometime from other
than Western cultures, have enabled us to see further and understand more fully
than the books of the Jewish and Christian Bibles.
Some UUs have spoken, perhaps irreverently, of this compendium of diverse
sources as our “Loose Leaf Bible”.
Do the Gnostic gospels belong in our Loose Leaf Bible? For UUs, at least, it seems to me, that
they are even more important ancient sources of insight and understanding than the
gospels that the traditional version of the Bible contains.
So, I would give them a resoundingly positive vote for inclusion.
UUs may not affirm all of the dualism and mysticism that is also present
in large measure in some of the Gnostic Gospels, but that shouldn’t prevent us from
gaining valuable ideas and insight from the rest.
We seek wisdom from many sources and the Gnostic Gospels certainly add something
to our “Loose-Leaf Bible”.