Nathan E. Lewis

In her book, “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas,� Elaine Pagels takes issue with the Church as a confessional community. She believes that creeds exclude people from the community of the Church that ought to be welcomed as members. She opens by sharing her personal story of finding warm reception at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City, during a difficult time in her life. She writes on page five, “I wondered when and how being a Christian became synonymous with accepting a certain set of beliefs.� She references Jesus telling his disciples that the world will know them by their love for one another, and concludes that the only mark of the Church should be love.
I decided to call the rector of the Church of Heavenly Rest. I never doubted Pagel’s report of this church’s warm acceptance of people. I needed to discover whether or not this church was a confessional church.
Online I discovered that the Church of the Heavenly Rest is a congregation of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. I telephoned the rector, who returned my call the following week. He confirmed that his congregation regularly confesses The Nicene Creed in worship! Pagels devotes significant time to the Nicene Creed in her writing. Pagels is on a mission to dismantle the confessing Church, yet in her time of personal/family tragedy, she discovered the warm welcome of Christ’s love in a confessing Church, amid a congregation who regularly recites The Nicene Creed.
Pagels writes that the attraction of the Church = “the presence of a group of people joined by spiritual power into an extended family.� (6). After listing the many charities of the Christian community, she concludes, “Such generosity, which ordinarily could be expected only from one’s own family, attracted crowds of newcomers to Christian groups, despite the risks.� (8) Pagels pay high compliments to the Church, but with the intention of removing any doctrinal standard defining the Church. Most Christians would observe a direct connection between Christian doctrine and charity, insisting that Christian doctrine teaches Christian charity. But Pagels clearly seeks to drive a wedge between the two, hoping to abolish doctrine from the Church.
Pagels devotes approximately ten pages to a discussion of the Lord’s Supper. Her main point is that during the first three centuries following Christ, the Church was comprised of diverse groups. She then writes, “Yet, since the 4th century, most churches have required those who would join such communion to profess a complex set of beliefs about God and Jesus - beliefs formulated by 4th century bishops into the ancient Christian creeds.� (27). Her point is that the warm, accepting Church of the first three centuries was twisted into a judgmental, exclusive communion, by the establishing of creeds in the 4th century. Her presentation of research is thin at best. She writes, “As we have seen, for nearly 300 years before these creeds were written, diverse Christian groups had welcomed newcomers in various ways.� (28). She offers the “Didache,� which presents the ethical teaching for a Jewish community of faith. The Didache includes ethical teaching nearly identical to the teaching of Jesus, but it does not include statements concerning the nature and mission of Jesus, including the apostolic gospel of salvation through Christ alone. In the first 30 pages of her book, Pagels presents a high view of scholarship, including her own work collaborating with other scholars working on the Nag Hammadi texts. Yet she lists one group in the first three centuries, similar to the Christian community and boldly concludes that there existed a diversity of Christian groups in the first three centuries.
There is a diversity of Christian communions in the 21st century! Even among confessing churches, there is a wide diversity! Even Pagels has discovered warm acceptance in a confessing church this side of the 4th century. Pagels is intelligent and skilled. But she writes for an audience that she must secretly assess to be a bit duller than herself. She makes no attempt to prove that creeds actually destroy Christian love.
From her studies of the Nag Hammadi texts, Pagels concludes that these fragments prove the existence of a diversity of Christian communions in the first three centuries. She writes, “Furthermore, the astonishing discovery of the gnostic gospels and other revelations attributed to Jesus and his disciples has revealed a much wider range of Christian groups than we had known before.� (28). I do not believe Pagels to be naiive and so I am not quite certain why she presents the presence of the Gnostic communities of the first three centuries as a new discovery. She writes, “many groups in the first three centuries saw themselves as not so much ‘believers’ as ‘seekers,’ people who seek for God.� (29). Why would any seeker criticize a believer? If a seeker discovers anything to be true, would not that seeker become a believer in some point of doctrine? Please don’t believe that Pagels has no set of beliefs. Her personal creed is quite lengthy and it excludes certain other beliefs. This is not Pagels’ fault; it is simply unavoidable.
Pagels writes, “I was also exploring in my academic work the history of Christianity in light of the Nag Hammadi discoveries, and this research helped to clarify what I cannot love: the tendency to identify Christianity with a single, authorized set of beliefs - however these actually vary from church to church - coupled with the conviction that Christian belief alone offers access to God.� (29). What Pagels misses in her assessment is the gospel of Christianity. The gospel, protected by the Christian creeds, announces that Christ alone, offers access to God. No confessional Christian can believe that his/her personal belief offers access to God. I realize that some Christians are confused about this. But the Christian creeds and confessions are not confused about salvation being a work of God on our behalf. Personal faith is instrumental. It is not the source. God is the source. God welcomes us into his presence. This is the Christian gospel protected by the creeds and confessions of the Church.
Notice that Pagels admits in the preceding quotation that she is intolerant of certain groups of people. She is unable to love a certain group of people - quite a significant percentage of humanity. Does Pagels realize that she is unable to love nearly all of Christianity, all of Islam, all of orthodox and conservative Judaism? Pagels is unable to love any of the animistic/tribal religions of the continent of Africa. While Hinduism provides 3 million gods, a good Hindu must become a devotee of at least one god and worship according to prescribed rituals. A devout Buddhist must follow the 8-fold pathway.
Pagels is quite devoted to the Nag Hammadi texts. She calls them sources while referring to The Bible of Christianity as traditions. She writes, “Now that scholars have begun to place the sources discovered at Nag Hammadi….next to what we have long known from tradition….â€? This is an unfair distinction on Pagels’ part. A greater number of sources exist today supporting the Christian Bible than the fragments supporting the Gnostic Gospels. Perhaps Pagel would argue that the large number of sources of the Bible prove that the Church has manipulated the “truth,” while the fragments of Nag Hammadi prove that the genuine “truth” was discarded and left to rot in Upper Egypt.
What Pagel does not tell her readers about the Gospel of Thomas is that there is one complete manuscript of it found at Nag Hammadi. It is a Coptic manuscript dated circa 340 A.D. Also at Nag Hammadi, three Greek fragments of the text were found, dating possibly as early as 140 A.D. (That would be approximately 70 to 80 years later than the Gospels of the Bible.)

Pagels pits the Gospel of John against the Gospel of Thomas. Her hypothesis is that John wrote his gospel in response to The Gospel of Thomas, to refute it. This hypothese works well for Pagel’s view of the Church as reactionaries, phobicly writing creeds. Her internal, textual evidence for her hypothesis is thin. She writes (58) that John’s Gospel is the source of the world referring to Thomas as “Doubting Thomas.” Only John’s Gospel tells us of Thomas’ doubting. Pagel, possessing sufficient mastery of the biblical texts, does not tell her readers that John presents to us “Confessing Thomas.” Yes, Thomas doubts at first, but when he is met by the risen Lord Jesus, he confesses, “My Lord and my God.”
Pagels must assume that her readers have not mastered the biblical texts as she has done. She assumes that John’s placement of Jesus clearing the temple early in his chronology is a simple contradiction of the synoptic Gospels which place Jesus clearing the temple late in the chronology.
New Testament scholars have observed that it is altogether possible that Jesus cleared the temple twice. Quite a few students of the Bible have discovered the plausibility of this suggestion as they have noticed the details of the texts and meditated upon them. But Pagels is driving a wedge between John and Thomas, between John and the other Gospel writers. If she can create division among the Gospel writers, then she can make space for Thomas, who she thinks, has been given a bum rap by the Church. By the way, the Church reveres Thomas as an Apostle and the Roman Catholic Church venerates him as Saint Thomas. Pagels is hoping that her readers will assume that the Church would condemn doubting as a sin. But most members of the Church have read Jude who wrote, “Have mercy upon those who doubt.” John does not insult Thomas or discount him by reporting his doubting. Rather, he shows Saint Thomas, a great man of God, instrumental in estabishing the Church in India, to be human, as human as any other follower of Jesus Christ. Thomas is honest about his doubting and is strong in humility, able to confess the truth when it is revealed to him.
Pagels is promoting the reading of the Gnostic Gospels, and there is nothing wrong with her doing so. I wonder if she expects any of her readers to read the Gospels of the Bible. Pagels pits John against Luke: “Luke says that Peter outran all the rest.” She is referring to the women returning from the empty tomb of Jesus, announcing the resurrection of Jesus to the disciples. John describes a race between Peter and another disciple: “Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.” Pagel then lists as a contradiction, Luke recording that Peter won the race. But Luke’s Gospel does not mention the race at all. Luke simply writes, “But Peter rose and ran to the tomb.” Pagels knows that biblical authors like all authors are selective and perspectival in their writing. Why does she write, “Luke says that Peter outran all the rest,” when Luke says, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb?”
Pagel claims that both John and Thomas write about the secret sayings of Jesus. The important distinction she does not make is that John uniquely includes in his Gospel, the discourses of Jesus in the upper room at Passover, at which the twelve disciples and other witnesses feasted together. These words of Jesus were spoken in private, that is, in the hearing of this select group. But the Gospel of Thomas, includes statements of Jesus taking Thomas aside privately and imparting to him secrets unknown to any other person. This is an important distinction but Pagels presents this as a similarity between the two gospels.
While I am pointing out minor discrepancies in Pagels’ presentation, her main point is made abundantly clear. The Gospel of Thomas supplies a different message than the Gospel of John. The Gospel of Thomas teaches us that truth comes from within us. The Gospel of John teaches us that truth is revealed to us from an external divine source. Pagel even distinguishes Christian mystics who can say “I and Thou,” from Thomas who can say, “I am Thou.” (74-75). The Gospel of Thomas differs from all the books of the Bible when it comes to the classic distinction between Creator and Creature. The Bible clearly distinguishes while Thomas at best blurs the distinction.