Search for lost Christian teachings

What do people want from religion? Clearly, the answer would not be the same for the countless people all over the world who seek in their many different faiths sustenance, hope, guidance, community, exaltation, certainty -- or Kierkegaardian fear and trembling.

In her latest book, scholar Elaine Pagels reveals something of her own personal religious quest. She begins by telling us about the difficult time in her life when her infant son was diagnosed with a fatal lung disease. Stopping for a moment in her morning run at the Church of Heavenly Rest in New York, Pagels found herself unexpectedly moved by the sight and sound of the worshipers within: “As I stood watching, a thought came to me: Here is a family that knows how to face death.”

As a teenager, Pagels had joined an evangelical church. At first she seemed to find the sense of spirituality she was seeking. Before long, however, she became disturbed by her fellow congregants’ negative attitude toward outsiders. When they told her that a Jewish friend of hers killed in a car accident was eternally damned because he had not been born again, Pagels, “distressed and disagreeing with their interpretation -- and finding no room for discussion,” realized she was “no longer at home in their world and left that church.”

Based on her experience, Pagels feels that what many of us want from religion is not the same thing as a prescribed set of beliefs. As a historian of religion, she knew that “Christianity had survived brutal persecution and flourished for generations -- even centuries -- before Christians formulated what they believed into creeds.” Yet by the 4th century, Christianity had become synonymous with accepting certain beliefs and disowning others.

To explain how and why this happened is one of the goals of her new book, “Beyond Belief,” which also portrays the rich and beautiful heritage that was lost when champions of religious orthodoxy turned on many of their fellow Christians and declared them “heretics.” Who were the “heretics” and what did they believe? In 1945, a cache of texts dating from the dawn of the Christian era was unearthed near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. As a graduate student at Harvard University, Pagels had the opportunity to examine these texts and in her groundbreaking 1979 book, “The Gnostic Gospels,” she offered the general reader an immensely illuminating account of these writings of the earliest Christians, including the “secret gospels” that had later been excluded from the official New Testament canon.

Condemned as “heretical” by certain soi-disant “orthodox” bishops such as Athanasius of Alexandria, who in AD 367 ordered them burned, these texts were hidden in a 6-foot-tall jar and buried by monks hoping to preserve them from destruction. For about 1,600 years, Christian believers -- as well as students of the religion’s history -- had only been familiar with one side of the story. But with the discovery of these long-lost documents, the heretics finally had the opportunity to speak for themselves. And what they had to say resonated deeply with many, including Pagels herself.

“Beyond Belief” examines the question of “how certain Christian leaders from the second century through the fourth came to reject many other sources of revelation” in constructing their canon, and why, indeed, they felt the need to formulate an official set of beliefs. The book’s subtitle, “The Secret Gospel of Thomas,” is something of a misnomer, because Pagels also discusses gospels attributed to Mary Magdalene and Philip, not to mention Secret Books of James and John.

The reason she singles out Thomas, perhaps, is because she thinks that the canonical Gospel of John, so great an influence on later Christian belief, may have been written as a counter-argument to the Gospel of Thomas. With the winning combination of sound scholarship, deep insight and a crystal-clear prose style that distinguishes all her work, Pagels portrays the great variety of beliefs, teachings and practices that were found among the earliest Christians. Some still considered themselves Jews.

Some considered Jesus a prophet, some a philosopher, still others the long-predicted Jewish messiah or king. Even among those who considered Jesus divine, there were differences: Some held that he became so after his death, others that he had always been so. And then there were some who believed that what Jesus taught was the potential divinity within each human soul. This teaching, which Pagels and other scholars have classified as Gnostic, was contested by others who maintained there was a huge gulf between divinity and sinful humankind. In the Gospel of Thomas, Pagels tells us: “Jesus directs each disciple to discover the light within,” but in the Gospel of John, “Jesus declares instead that ‘I am the light of the world’ and that whoever ‘does not come to me walks in darkness.’ ”

Pagels explains why some bishops may have wanted to limit Christianity to a single, agreed-upon version. But, as subsequent history indicates, diversity and divergence seem to be innate tendencies of religious belief and practice. And by casting out “heretics,” the religion not only lost viable forms of spirituality, but also transformed itself into a force for persecution. By the time that Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, the Church had started down the road that led to the Inquisition. Indeed, the best way to foster the vibrancy of religion may be by insisting on the separation of church and state.