Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
by
3.94 · Rating details · 5,772 ratings · 256 reviews
Pagels, a writer and thinker on religion and history, winner of the National Book Award for The Gnostic Gospels, reflects on what matters most about spiritual and religious exploration in the 21st century. This book explores how Christianity began by tracing its earliest texts, including the Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945.
When her infant son was diagnosed with fatal pulmonary hypertension, Pagels' spiritual and intellectual quest took on a new urgency, leading her to explore historical and archaeological sources and to investigate what Jesus and his teachings meant to his followers before the invention of Christianity. The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, along with more than 50 other early Christian texts, some unknown since antiquity, offers clues. She compares such sources as Thomas' gospel (which claims to give Jesus' secret teaching and finds its closest affinities with kabbalah) with the canon to show how Christian leaders chose to include some gospels and exclude others from the collection many call the New Testament. To stabilize the emerging church in times of persecution, church fathers constructed the canon, creed and hierarchy - and, in the process, suppressed many of its spiritual resources.
Drawing on new scholarship - her own and that of an international group of scholars - that has come to light since the 1979 publication of The Gnostic Gospels, she shows that what matters about Christianity involves much more than any one set of beliefs. Traditions embodied in Judaism and Christianity can powerfully affect us in heart, mind and spirit, inspire visions of a new society based on practising justice and love, even heal and transform us.
Provocative and moving, Beyond Belief, the most personal of her books to date, shows how the impulse to seek god overflows the narrow banks of a single tradition. She writes, "What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions - and the communities that sustain them - is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery, encouraging us, in Jesus' words, to 'seek, and you shall find.'"
CONTENTS
From the feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed
Gospels in conflict: John and Thomas
God's word or human words?
The canon of truth and the triumph of John
Constantine and the Catholic Church
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index (less)
When her infant son was diagnosed with fatal pulmonary hypertension, Pagels' spiritual and intellectual quest took on a new urgency, leading her to explore historical and archaeological sources and to investigate what Jesus and his teachings meant to his followers before the invention of Christianity. The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, along with more than 50 other early Christian texts, some unknown since antiquity, offers clues. She compares such sources as Thomas' gospel (which claims to give Jesus' secret teaching and finds its closest affinities with kabbalah) with the canon to show how Christian leaders chose to include some gospels and exclude others from the collection many call the New Testament. To stabilize the emerging church in times of persecution, church fathers constructed the canon, creed and hierarchy - and, in the process, suppressed many of its spiritual resources.
Drawing on new scholarship - her own and that of an international group of scholars - that has come to light since the 1979 publication of The Gnostic Gospels, she shows that what matters about Christianity involves much more than any one set of beliefs. Traditions embodied in Judaism and Christianity can powerfully affect us in heart, mind and spirit, inspire visions of a new society based on practising justice and love, even heal and transform us.
Provocative and moving, Beyond Belief, the most personal of her books to date, shows how the impulse to seek god overflows the narrow banks of a single tradition. She writes, "What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions - and the communities that sustain them - is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery, encouraging us, in Jesus' words, to 'seek, and you shall find.'"
CONTENTS
From the feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed
Gospels in conflict: John and Thomas
God's word or human words?
The canon of truth and the triumph of John
Constantine and the Catholic Church
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index (less)
Hardcover, 1st, 272 pages
Published May 6th 2003 by Random House (NYC) (first published January 1st 2003)
Original Title
Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
ISBN
0375501568 (ISBN13: 9780375501562)
Edition Language
English
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Jul 27, 2016Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition
Shelves: 21st-century, ancient-history, religion, non-fiction
Long ago but not so far way I bought this book for my father, who was interested in reading the Gospel of Thomas. I had read an apocryphal Gospel one day while a student, happily nosing around in the reference section - it related how once when Jesus was a boy he was out playing in the street when some bigger boys came along, stamped on his mud pie and laughed at him. Jesus' eyes at this flashed with anger and those bully boys fell dead. Later their parents went round to Joseph and Mary and complained bitterly about Jesus' behaviour. Joseph and Mary gave Jesus a good talking to, after which he raised the boys from the dead and restored them to life.
For various reasons I'm a cautious and wary person, and so was unkeen, unfamiliar as I was with the Gospel of Thomas, to present my father with this kind of material without some kind of explanatory framework no doubt fearing some outbreak of gnosticism in middle England(view spoiler), and so it came to pass after some poking and prodding, that I came across Pagels' book, thought it looked the part, and gave it to the old man. I'm still not sure if he ever read it.
Which plainly was his loss if he didn't because it is a great introduction to the spiritual world of the early church, the one problem with which is that I'm not sure that the Gospel of Thomas as it is presented here on it's own has the weight to sustain her argument.
Pagels frames the story of the quashing of spiritual interpretations of the meaning of the ministry of Jesus (view spoiler) in favour of an Orthodox and Catholic church by the time of Constantine with her experience as a mother living through the death of a son, attending church first in crisis, later with her daughter for a Christmas service. I felt this placed a discussion of religious matters in its proper context: the experience of life, rawness and loss, the openness to community, a sense of loss and a sense of the need for metaphysical meaning. But then again I dreamt last night that I was employed by the British Government to buy and sell warships to African heads of state, so your opinion may well be different (view spoiler).
To do this Pagels assumes that the Gospel of John was written in response to the Gospel of Thomas, my concern here was that she advances no discussion of the possible date of composition for either, but at a pinch, reading, one can assume that the first was written, if not in response to the Gospel we can read at the end of this book ,then in general terms to beliefs that the author of John did not approve of (view spoiler) as evidenced by John's presentation of "doubting" Thomas. Pagels' basic conception is of a dynamic, human, environment, and the various oddities of the Gospel attributed to John lend themselves to supporting that view - in other words John's Gospel is really not much like the three synoptic Gospels which together with John form part of the orthodox canon of the New Testament (view spoiler).
Pagels puts forward to the reader that there were two types of believers in the early church, a distinction that reminded me of Karen Armstrong's A History of God. On the one hand there were those who accepted what they were taught, on the other those who took this as a starting point to seek for themselves after truth. Or perhaps those who believed that at most only Jesus had (at least) some element of divinity in his nature (view spoiler) and those who felt that everyone has sparks of the divine in them - this later was to become an important element in Jewish mystical tradition (view spoiler). Or again that there are two types of conversion experience...the first sees salvation as deliverance from sin and death; the second shows how someone "ignorant of God and of [one's] own nature," and mired in destructive activity, eventually develops a growing awareness of - and need for - relationship with God (p162-3). Pagel cites Heracleon who describes the first group as perceiving God as a strict, limited, but well-meaning master and father, who has decreed the death penalty for every one of his children who sins and yet loves them and grieves when they perish. But they also believe that, apart from Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross, God does not forgive his children; he actually only saves those who 'believe' (p161). The alternative, for Heracleon, and I suspect for Pagels (and for that matter Karen Armstrong) is a conception of God as spiritual nourishment (pp 161-2). The story she tells in her book is that the first won out over the second. The hows and the whys are tempting to speculate about, but we don't even know much about the winning side, and what we know about the loosing side almost entirely comes from what the winners choose to say about them.
Almost. Luckily for us in the 1950s, an Egyptian uncovered a stash of writings deemed heretical by Athanasius - repeatedly bishop of Alexandria (view spoiler) in the late fourth century and buried for safe keeping by Nag Hammadi. One of those texts was the Gospel of Thomas. This reads as a stripped down version of the Gospel of Mark. It has no stories, only sayings attributed to Jesus, most of which seem in comparison to the conventional Gospels very familiar. Some are not familiar but similar. A few are a little bit different. Not, I felt, different enough to sustain Pagels' argument, but then I am not a second or third century Bishop striving for order and to contain debate.
Longer years ago I first read Eusebius and Henry Chadwick's The Early Church. Later Geza Vermes' The Changing Faces of Jesus. With each subsequent book I read on faith, on the early Church, I imagine that I am a little like an exploratory spacecraft sent into orbit around a planet to build up velocity so I can fling myself sling-shot style further out in search of understanding. In orbit one rotates round and round the same material, but sees it from a new angle with each approach.
Slowly I learn the oddness of what had been taught to me in school as plain and uncontroversial. (less)
For various reasons I'm a cautious and wary person, and so was unkeen, unfamiliar as I was with the Gospel of Thomas, to present my father with this kind of material without some kind of explanatory framework no doubt fearing some outbreak of gnosticism in middle England(view spoiler), and so it came to pass after some poking and prodding, that I came across Pagels' book, thought it looked the part, and gave it to the old man. I'm still not sure if he ever read it.
Which plainly was his loss if he didn't because it is a great introduction to the spiritual world of the early church, the one problem with which is that I'm not sure that the Gospel of Thomas as it is presented here on it's own has the weight to sustain her argument.
Pagels frames the story of the quashing of spiritual interpretations of the meaning of the ministry of Jesus (view spoiler) in favour of an Orthodox and Catholic church by the time of Constantine with her experience as a mother living through the death of a son, attending church first in crisis, later with her daughter for a Christmas service. I felt this placed a discussion of religious matters in its proper context: the experience of life, rawness and loss, the openness to community, a sense of loss and a sense of the need for metaphysical meaning. But then again I dreamt last night that I was employed by the British Government to buy and sell warships to African heads of state, so your opinion may well be different (view spoiler).
To do this Pagels assumes that the Gospel of John was written in response to the Gospel of Thomas, my concern here was that she advances no discussion of the possible date of composition for either, but at a pinch, reading, one can assume that the first was written, if not in response to the Gospel we can read at the end of this book ,then in general terms to beliefs that the author of John did not approve of (view spoiler) as evidenced by John's presentation of "doubting" Thomas. Pagels' basic conception is of a dynamic, human, environment, and the various oddities of the Gospel attributed to John lend themselves to supporting that view - in other words John's Gospel is really not much like the three synoptic Gospels which together with John form part of the orthodox canon of the New Testament (view spoiler).
Pagels puts forward to the reader that there were two types of believers in the early church, a distinction that reminded me of Karen Armstrong's A History of God. On the one hand there were those who accepted what they were taught, on the other those who took this as a starting point to seek for themselves after truth. Or perhaps those who believed that at most only Jesus had (at least) some element of divinity in his nature (view spoiler) and those who felt that everyone has sparks of the divine in them - this later was to become an important element in Jewish mystical tradition (view spoiler). Or again that there are two types of conversion experience...the first sees salvation as deliverance from sin and death; the second shows how someone "ignorant of God and of [one's] own nature," and mired in destructive activity, eventually develops a growing awareness of - and need for - relationship with God (p162-3). Pagel cites Heracleon who describes the first group as perceiving God as a strict, limited, but well-meaning master and father, who has decreed the death penalty for every one of his children who sins and yet loves them and grieves when they perish. But they also believe that, apart from Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross, God does not forgive his children; he actually only saves those who 'believe' (p161). The alternative, for Heracleon, and I suspect for Pagels (and for that matter Karen Armstrong) is a conception of God as spiritual nourishment (pp 161-2). The story she tells in her book is that the first won out over the second. The hows and the whys are tempting to speculate about, but we don't even know much about the winning side, and what we know about the loosing side almost entirely comes from what the winners choose to say about them.
Almost. Luckily for us in the 1950s, an Egyptian uncovered a stash of writings deemed heretical by Athanasius - repeatedly bishop of Alexandria (view spoiler) in the late fourth century and buried for safe keeping by Nag Hammadi. One of those texts was the Gospel of Thomas. This reads as a stripped down version of the Gospel of Mark. It has no stories, only sayings attributed to Jesus, most of which seem in comparison to the conventional Gospels very familiar. Some are not familiar but similar. A few are a little bit different. Not, I felt, different enough to sustain Pagels' argument, but then I am not a second or third century Bishop striving for order and to contain debate.
Longer years ago I first read Eusebius and Henry Chadwick's The Early Church. Later Geza Vermes' The Changing Faces of Jesus. With each subsequent book I read on faith, on the early Church, I imagine that I am a little like an exploratory spacecraft sent into orbit around a planet to build up velocity so I can fling myself sling-shot style further out in search of understanding. In orbit one rotates round and round the same material, but sees it from a new angle with each approach.
Slowly I learn the oddness of what had been taught to me in school as plain and uncontroversial. (less)
Sep 24, 2011Lee Harmon rated it it was amazing
Pagels is a recognized scholar of religion, and the author of The Gnostic Gospels, among others. This book might be her best.
Don't buy this expecting a dull, scholarly exposition on the Gospel of Thomas. It's hardly that. It's sort of an unobtrusive evangelism for unorthodox Christianity, a plea for the kind of "religious truth" that can never hide behind a stale set of doctrine.
Pagels bares her soul in this book, and her passion for spirituality, religion and Christianity shines. The result is inspirational. This is the book that turned me on to Pagels' scholarship, and I've felt a distant kinship ever since. It's really less about the Gospel of Thomas and more about diversity and meaning within the early Christian movement. John's Gospel actually gets as much attention as the Gospel of Thomas. While John hints of gnostic influence, it also finds itself in direct opposition to Thomas on many topics, such as the divinity of Christ. Pagels embraces this diversity of ideas, and spends a great deal of time discussing how the canon of acceptable scripture grew.
I love engaging, thought-provoking books, and Pagels never disappoints. (less)
Don't buy this expecting a dull, scholarly exposition on the Gospel of Thomas. It's hardly that. It's sort of an unobtrusive evangelism for unorthodox Christianity, a plea for the kind of "religious truth" that can never hide behind a stale set of doctrine.
Pagels bares her soul in this book, and her passion for spirituality, religion and Christianity shines. The result is inspirational. This is the book that turned me on to Pagels' scholarship, and I've felt a distant kinship ever since. It's really less about the Gospel of Thomas and more about diversity and meaning within the early Christian movement. John's Gospel actually gets as much attention as the Gospel of Thomas. While John hints of gnostic influence, it also finds itself in direct opposition to Thomas on many topics, such as the divinity of Christ. Pagels embraces this diversity of ideas, and spends a great deal of time discussing how the canon of acceptable scripture grew.
I love engaging, thought-provoking books, and Pagels never disappoints. (less)
I used this for my MA thesis. It's very smoothly and interestingly written--engaging, really--and contains a great deal of interesting information on the foundations of Christianity and, especially, how early church leaders strove to overpower one another and promote their own view of Jesus. Focus on is the "lost" Gospel of Thomas, part of the Nag Hamadi library--theory is that church leaders who came to power tried to destroy evidence of this report of Jesus' teachings that centered more on Gnostic and mystic spirituality. (Warning: Naturally, this may be off-putting to those who prefer to focus on traditional perspectives of the Bible. However, those interested in exploring various aspects of spiritualty and perceptions of Jesus would probably find it interesting.) (less)
Mar 25, 2009Megan rated it it was amazing
Elaine is wonderful and I began enjoying her work as a student. I think her book on the Gnostic Gospels in general is intelligent and accessible yet this particular work ( though I stand by my 5 star rating) is, at times, redundant. This is an endlessly fascinating subject for me and I trust Pagels knowledge base and motives. Good book.
May 03, 2010Mike rated it it was amazing
Beyond Belief has been a formative book for me. (This is the third time I’ve read it.) In a nutshell, the New Testament is the end result of a protracted and often bitter media war. Two thousand years ago those arguing for one belief over another used the same techniques of persuasion that we see today. Case in point. Only is the Gospel of John is there a character named Doubting Thomas. Johannine Christians believed very different things than their contemporaries and rivals, the Thomas Christians. One way to assert one’s views over another’s is to demean and caricature the opposition’s most revered figurehead, and that’s what the author of the Gospel of John did when he turned the apostle Thomas into Doubting Thomas. Of course, this is all conjecture, but Elaine Pagels’ scholarship is very convincing, and human nature being what it is, her conclusions make a world of sense to me. (less)
Sep 17, 2017David Elkin rated it really liked it
Pagels is a well know Gnostic writer and this book is one of her better ones. A nice study of a Gospel not found in the Bible
Aug 16, 2010Erik Graff rated it really liked it
Recommends it for: Christians
Recommended to Erik by: no one
Shelves: religion
During my studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York I became acquainted with Elaine Pagels, initially on a social level as one of my girlfriend's favorite teachers at Barnard College, then as my own teacher for a course entitled "Creation Myths in Genesis" at Union. I wasn't much interested in the course topic, but I was interested in working under the author of The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis, a book which had impressed me while working on my undergraduate thesis on the history of scholarly debate about the origins of "gnostic" movements. As it happened, she was considerate enough to allow me to supplement the course work with a review of all of the patristic testamony through the fourth century and an encyclopedic thesis covering this material entitled "On the Procession of the Heresiarchs of Gnosis." Since then I have endeavored to read all of her books as they became available.
This particular title followed upon the deaths of her son, Mark (1987) and--unmentioned in it--husband, Heinz (1988). At the time I was acquainted with her and Heinz, neither seemed particularly religious, but as the text indicates, these losses caused her to reconsider her position. Such personal reflections introduce the text.
Three main topics come up repeatedly in Beyond Belief. First, The Gospel of Thomas, a version of which was discovered in Egypt in 1945. A collection of the sayings of Jesus, some have attempted to relate it to the long hypothesized Q, or "source", behind the canonical gospel sayings. Pagels does not push this thesis. Instead, she takes this and, to a lesser extent, other extra-canonical gospels to represent the actual diversity of early Christian belief and practice, a diversity suppressed by the affiliation of one section of the movement with the Powers and Principalities of Rome. Second, she employs Irenaeus, and most particularly his Adversus Haeresis, as an early example (c. 180) of the repressive ideology which won out. Having studied him myself rather intensively, I would only fault her for failing to emphasize how personal much of his invective is and for failing to note the irony of some this supposedly orthodox Father of the Church's own beliefs, most particularly his claim that Jesus lived to a ripe old age. Third, she discusses the original imperially-sponsored Council of the Church (325)which capped the early stage of ideological repression. With this, and with some brief review of the Arian controversy associated with the Council and its consequences, her overview ends.
Pagels' thesis that the early church was diverse and that the concretization of an orthodoxy under the Empire led to the suppression of many elements, particularly those maintaining a more democratic, or "low", Christology, is incontestable. She doesn't go far, however, in expositing what these other streams of thought actually maintained. Instead, she alludes, mostly by quotation, to some characteristic positions later rejected by the Church. The most important of these would seem to be, first, that what the Christ was we can be and, second, that there are many paths to such realization. In other words, what the official Church tried to stamp out was experientially-based religion--precisely, though not explicitly stated, what led her to reconsider her own beliefs.
This book was written for the general public. No specialized knowledge is required, the documentation being confined to endnotes, beyond a general familiarity with the Christian tradition. (less)
This particular title followed upon the deaths of her son, Mark (1987) and--unmentioned in it--husband, Heinz (1988). At the time I was acquainted with her and Heinz, neither seemed particularly religious, but as the text indicates, these losses caused her to reconsider her position. Such personal reflections introduce the text.
Three main topics come up repeatedly in Beyond Belief. First, The Gospel of Thomas, a version of which was discovered in Egypt in 1945. A collection of the sayings of Jesus, some have attempted to relate it to the long hypothesized Q, or "source", behind the canonical gospel sayings. Pagels does not push this thesis. Instead, she takes this and, to a lesser extent, other extra-canonical gospels to represent the actual diversity of early Christian belief and practice, a diversity suppressed by the affiliation of one section of the movement with the Powers and Principalities of Rome. Second, she employs Irenaeus, and most particularly his Adversus Haeresis, as an early example (c. 180) of the repressive ideology which won out. Having studied him myself rather intensively, I would only fault her for failing to emphasize how personal much of his invective is and for failing to note the irony of some this supposedly orthodox Father of the Church's own beliefs, most particularly his claim that Jesus lived to a ripe old age. Third, she discusses the original imperially-sponsored Council of the Church (325)which capped the early stage of ideological repression. With this, and with some brief review of the Arian controversy associated with the Council and its consequences, her overview ends.
Pagels' thesis that the early church was diverse and that the concretization of an orthodoxy under the Empire led to the suppression of many elements, particularly those maintaining a more democratic, or "low", Christology, is incontestable. She doesn't go far, however, in expositing what these other streams of thought actually maintained. Instead, she alludes, mostly by quotation, to some characteristic positions later rejected by the Church. The most important of these would seem to be, first, that what the Christ was we can be and, second, that there are many paths to such realization. In other words, what the official Church tried to stamp out was experientially-based religion--precisely, though not explicitly stated, what led her to reconsider her own beliefs.
This book was written for the general public. No specialized knowledge is required, the documentation being confined to endnotes, beyond a general familiarity with the Christian tradition. (less)
Jan 28, 2009Mark rated it liked it
The book compares the outlook of the apostle Thomas with the writings that became the book of John. His outlook is that God is within all of us and Jesus told us to find the way to heaven. Even that all people have the spirit of God within us and need to come to Gnosis ( a mutual knowing or understanding of one another with God) through meditation, introspection and study. My main complaint is that very little of the book actually discusses what Thomas' teachings are. Mostly, the book focuses on how his teachings were repressed in favor of John in the creating of the canon of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. First Pagels focuses on Irenaeus who pushes for a 'four-formed' canon in the 2nd century, then she focuses a large part of the book on Roman Emporer Constantinus' conversion and acceptance of Christianity, his patronage, and his organization of bishops to create the Nicene Crede, which is still the basis for ecclesiatical books included as orthodox Christian teachings and the basis for most subsequent versions of the bible. She makes MANY references to the books of Nag Hammadi, which were the basis for her book The Gnostic Gospels.
I find her writing to be interesting, although with sheer amount of dates and names, it can be a bit dry. It is educational to read about how the teachings of Christ were captured and synthesized into what has become the Catholic Church. She follows many of the political and ideological controversies of the first few centuries after Christ's life. (less)
I find her writing to be interesting, although with sheer amount of dates and names, it can be a bit dry. It is educational to read about how the teachings of Christ were captured and synthesized into what has become the Catholic Church. She follows many of the political and ideological controversies of the first few centuries after Christ's life. (less)
Mar 29, 2010Randy White rated it liked it · review of another edition
While I enjoyed "Beyond Belief", both the content and Dr. Pagels's writing style, I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of analysis of the Gospel of Thomas. Dr. Pagels presents decent analysis of the Gnostic movement, and places the Gospel of John within the Gnostic context, yet fails to deliver much on the Gospel of Thomas. I enjoyed her personal story and how she believes that there is more than one way to discover God, but again this book is supposed to be about the Gospel of Thomas (or so I assumed from the title). Finally, her analysis of the role of Constantine in enshrining orthodox Christianity as the religion of the late Roman Empire is cursory. She gives Constantine a pass, without noting the real role he played, the fact that as he lay dying he was baptized by an Arian bishop and not an orthodox bishop, and that the shields of his soldiers during THE pivotal battle to become Emperor may have borne the Cross on one side but ALSO bore the symbol of the Sun god on the other as he was hedging his bets. All in all a good read, but rather "light and fluffy" when it comes to the stated material it would supposedly deal with (yes, I end sentences with preposition). (less)
This book hardly touches on the Gospel of Thomas. I read the Gospel of Thomas before coming to this book, and I was hoping for some scholarly reflections, but I got very little.
She briefly comments on a handful of saying such as:
Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you." It seems this is the passage that resonated most with Pagels, having rejected traditional Christianity, this passag is right up her ally.
She points out the following passage as something Gnostics may have used to identify themselves.
Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, '.
Pagel's think maybe some of the Gospel of John was written in opposition to this.
Pagel mentions nothing concerning the bizarreness found in Thomas like the following:
Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
Not any mention of weirdness like: Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."
But yeah, she presents the Gospel of Thomas evidence that there were these Christians who believed we could find the truth within ourselves, that everyone came from the light was was created in God's image and had access to the truth within themselves, if we only seek it. While the gospel of John on the other hand, mentions people are in darkness, and turn from the light, cannot find the truth and only Jesus reveals the truth to the elect. Pagels seems to be attempting to say there was a better form of Christianity that was destroyed by the dogmatic catholics, which is what most of the book is about. But eventually while writing about Irenaeus and his "Against Heresies", pointed out that Irenaeus was actually rather inclusive as he tried to define catholicity and outline spectrum of "orthodoxy", the reason he was so hateful towards the Gnostics, was their stuck up attitude, their walking around like they were the enlightened people, and dismissing and brushing off the enlightened who just couldn't get it, or couldn't the truth. But yeah, Pagel's seem to suggest Irenaeus depictions here was accurate, and this may be in part why he turned against them so strongly, throwing every vindictive and hateful epithet their direction. If this is the case, it seems to go against just how wonderful these gnostic Christians were. Looks like both ends of the power struggle had their share of nastiness. (less)
She briefly comments on a handful of saying such as:
Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you." It seems this is the passage that resonated most with Pagels, having rejected traditional Christianity, this passag is right up her ally.
She points out the following passage as something Gnostics may have used to identify themselves.
Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, '.
Pagel's think maybe some of the Gospel of John was written in opposition to this.
Pagel mentions nothing concerning the bizarreness found in Thomas like the following:
Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
Not any mention of weirdness like: Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."
But yeah, she presents the Gospel of Thomas evidence that there were these Christians who believed we could find the truth within ourselves, that everyone came from the light was was created in God's image and had access to the truth within themselves, if we only seek it. While the gospel of John on the other hand, mentions people are in darkness, and turn from the light, cannot find the truth and only Jesus reveals the truth to the elect. Pagels seems to be attempting to say there was a better form of Christianity that was destroyed by the dogmatic catholics, which is what most of the book is about. But eventually while writing about Irenaeus and his "Against Heresies", pointed out that Irenaeus was actually rather inclusive as he tried to define catholicity and outline spectrum of "orthodoxy", the reason he was so hateful towards the Gnostics, was their stuck up attitude, their walking around like they were the enlightened people, and dismissing and brushing off the enlightened who just couldn't get it, or couldn't the truth. But yeah, Pagel's seem to suggest Irenaeus depictions here was accurate, and this may be in part why he turned against them so strongly, throwing every vindictive and hateful epithet their direction. If this is the case, it seems to go against just how wonderful these gnostic Christians were. Looks like both ends of the power struggle had their share of nastiness. (less)
Oct 01, 2008Lisa Louie rated it really liked it
While I'm a little disappointed that Beyond Belief is not the book I was hoping it would be, the book's argument builds steadily to a satisfying plateau of understanding, namely that the social and political upheaval that dominated the first two centuries after Jesus' life and death motivated the likes of church father Irenaeus to unify the church under one set of beliefs and practice, and simultaneously to squelch the diversity of beliefs about God and Jesus that abounded in the early church....more
May 09, 2012Heather Shaw rated it liked it
Recommends it for: practicing or disaffected Christians, anyone interested in the origins of Christian doctrine
Shelves: christianity, non-fiction
You don't have to agree with everything Elaine Pagels says to love her. This book combines scholarly research with a personal vulnerability that is very disarming, and I found myself engaged with the book on a personal level that I did not expect.
That said, I was troubled by Pagels' tendency to equate mysticism and gnosticism, and I think this is problematic to her argument. I would loosely define mysticism as a belief in man's capacity to commune with God on a personal level, to recognize God within himself and to become one with God. Gnosticism is a very specific belief system that contains mystical elements, but which was declared heretical by Irenaeus in the second century.
Pagels' argues that the Gospel of John was likely written to refute the so-called gnostic gospel of Thomas, and that Irenaeus championed the Gospel of John and the Nicene Creed (which draws freely from John's gospel) to establish the divinity of Christ as the central doctrine of Christianity, which in turn would rid the church of pesky gnostic sects. The New Testament canon, along with the Nicene Creed, effectively excluded all mysticism from the catholic (lowercase) church, while instituting a Catholic (uppercase) doctrine of atonement and original sin. Here's the rub: Pagels seems to equate the acceptance of Christ's divinity with a denial of mysticism. We are separated from God by original sin, therefore we cannot have access to God without a mediator (Christ).
What bothers me is that Pagels creates this false dichotomy between orthodox doctrine and christian mysticism, without any mention of how these traditions intersect and complement each other within the orthodox faith. I am no scholar, nor am I well-educated on the finer points of Orthodox doctrine, but I do know that the Orthodox Church does not hold a doctrine of atonement or original sin (in the same sense as the Roman Catholic church), but does promote the concept of theosis, a mystical journey wherein man is ultimately joined to God, becoming divine by grace. Pagels oversimplifies her argument by excluding any mention of these points, which present a rather compelling gray area between the gnostic sects and modern Christianity (with it's focus on man's separation from God).
I enjoyed reading the book, overall, but found myself more interested in what Pagels leaves out, and why...(less)
That said, I was troubled by Pagels' tendency to equate mysticism and gnosticism, and I think this is problematic to her argument. I would loosely define mysticism as a belief in man's capacity to commune with God on a personal level, to recognize God within himself and to become one with God. Gnosticism is a very specific belief system that contains mystical elements, but which was declared heretical by Irenaeus in the second century.
Pagels' argues that the Gospel of John was likely written to refute the so-called gnostic gospel of Thomas, and that Irenaeus championed the Gospel of John and the Nicene Creed (which draws freely from John's gospel) to establish the divinity of Christ as the central doctrine of Christianity, which in turn would rid the church of pesky gnostic sects. The New Testament canon, along with the Nicene Creed, effectively excluded all mysticism from the catholic (lowercase) church, while instituting a Catholic (uppercase) doctrine of atonement and original sin. Here's the rub: Pagels seems to equate the acceptance of Christ's divinity with a denial of mysticism. We are separated from God by original sin, therefore we cannot have access to God without a mediator (Christ).
What bothers me is that Pagels creates this false dichotomy between orthodox doctrine and christian mysticism, without any mention of how these traditions intersect and complement each other within the orthodox faith. I am no scholar, nor am I well-educated on the finer points of Orthodox doctrine, but I do know that the Orthodox Church does not hold a doctrine of atonement or original sin (in the same sense as the Roman Catholic church), but does promote the concept of theosis, a mystical journey wherein man is ultimately joined to God, becoming divine by grace. Pagels oversimplifies her argument by excluding any mention of these points, which present a rather compelling gray area between the gnostic sects and modern Christianity (with it's focus on man's separation from God).
I enjoyed reading the book, overall, but found myself more interested in what Pagels leaves out, and why...(less)
This book was used as a study book for a Tuesday morning discussion group. While it's subtitle is the Secret Gospel of Thomas (and the text of the complete Gospel of Thomas is printed in the back, we found it to be more of a history of the development of the early Christian Church. In 1945 a stone jar was found at Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt containing other writings from the beginning of the Christian era. These texts had been hidden when they had been ordered to be destroyed. Elaine Pagels stepped inside a church during a morning run, and found herself drawn to the spiritual power she felt there. This began a search for her in determining at what point the church moved from the strong spiritual base in its early years to one of creeds and statements of beliefs. (She also now sees now a swing back to the spiritual base, with less interest in creeds.) Studying early writings helped her see that there was a wide diversity of interpretations in the years following Christ's death, and the creeds and beliefs statement (culminating in the canonization of the books to appear in the Bible during the time of Constantine) were a desperate effort to protect the "true faith" from the many groups with what seemed like strange and dangerous interpretations. Much of the book is history. Pagels sees that harm sometimes results from unquestioning acceptance of religious authority. Her final words are, "What I have come to love in the wealth of our religious traditions--and the communities that sustain them--is that they offer the testimony of innumerable peopleto spiritual discovery. Thus they encourage those who endeavor, in Jesus words, to "seek, and you shall find."(less)
Oct 06, 2010Chip rated it really liked it
Yes, there is a discussion of the Gospel of Thomas; yes, there is a little about the author's struggle to find her own faith; there's even a compact overview of the first millenium of Christianity. What this book is concerned with mostly is the internecine war for dominance between the proponents of the Gospel of John and the proponents of every other Gospel. This book dissects and examines the history of that war and demonstrates how the results of this war shaped, and continues to shape, the Christian world today. The rest mentioned previously is the gilding on the frame; the meat of this book is the incisive examination of the winners (the Orthodoxy) and the losers (the Gnostics). Very well done and a compelling read. (less)
Mar 25, 2009jcg rated it really liked it
I thought the book was going to be about the Gospel of Thomas, but it is really an overview of early Christianity tied in with Elaine Pagels personal search for something to make sense of the world.
Written in plain language, it covers a lot of territory and shows how the beliefs of some groups were crowded out of orthodox Christianity. As always, the most ruthless win.
The main investigation of the book is how to tell the difference between divinely inspired texts and those that are human imagination.
She doesn't touch on the work of scholars who believe that the Gospel of John was originally written more sypathetically to the Gospel of Thomas, but that a later Redactor added the opening chapters and inserted additional material to change the perspective to refute Thomas. (less)
Written in plain language, it covers a lot of territory and shows how the beliefs of some groups were crowded out of orthodox Christianity. As always, the most ruthless win.
The main investigation of the book is how to tell the difference between divinely inspired texts and those that are human imagination.
She doesn't touch on the work of scholars who believe that the Gospel of John was originally written more sypathetically to the Gospel of Thomas, but that a later Redactor added the opening chapters and inserted additional material to change the perspective to refute Thomas. (less)
This was interesting, though I was disappointed that it was not more about the Gospel of Thomas specifically, as the title indicated, but was more generally about the strife within the early Christian church/es as to which "version" should prevail.
Nov 06, 2007Jason rated it liked it
First and foremost I think Elaine Pagels writes nicely. She gives her work a nice tone and it flows easily. This book itself seems to contrast an apparently ancient work, the Gospel of Thomas, to one of the main works in the Four Formed Gospel, John. The Gospel of Thomas was discovered with some other works hid away in a field in the town of Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt. Apparently these works which oppose orthodox Christianity were hid there to preserve them from being destroyed. Pagels herself was apparently disillusioned with orthodox Christianity at an early age and asked herself 'how could people with different beliefs be condemned to hell?' Therefore, she has found great comfort in works like the Gospel of Thomas which seem to say the Truth of God can be found within as opposed to John which says Jesus is the way to the Truth etc. The Gospel of Thomas has a bit of similarity with Buddhist thought (especially Zen) which emphasizes looking to oneself for ultimate answers and also the idea that we only lose perfection through not realizing our Buddha natures. For these reasons this book is actually an interesting read but I can't give it a high rating because I find it fanciful to say the least. There is a reason John was included in the gospels of the new testament by the early Christians. I don't believe like Pagels does that John was written perhaps to refute the more heretic book of Thomas. Secondly, John seems to have much in common with the synoptic gospels even though Pagels proclaims it doesn't. If you do a thorough check of the information you will see for yourself. I simply cannot believe that for nearly two thousand years we've all been duped about how Christianity should have been. I have no doubts that Pagels has some merit of scholarship but I do not feel she's above and beyond the many scholars who have looked and written about this issue extensively. To put it simply: Pagels doesn't give any strong proof for us to accept the Gospel of Thomas and also other so-called secret works.
Throughout the book Pagels gives us an account of a man named Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, and his struggle to suppress what he viewed as heretical works of the day being put forth.
Later in this book Pagels goes on to give a minor historical account of the Nicene Creed. Of course, this was the time when the orthodox doctrines were agreed upon by most of the Christian leaders and would shape the universal Catholic church in the future. Perhaps distressingly to "true" Christians the concept or idea of the Trinity was solidified here. We are also told about a bishop who held a contrary view, (as did some other Christians at this time) Arius. However, ultimately the emperor Constantine who had been a Christian convert prevailed and we have what constitutes orthodoxy today. My point here being that Pagels did a good job of providing interesting reading. Her minor tracing of history keeps you interested enough to plow ahead. It's a shame the other parts of the book didn't have more support or weight to help make them more convincing. This is what ultimately causes this book to fall short.(less)
Throughout the book Pagels gives us an account of a man named Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, and his struggle to suppress what he viewed as heretical works of the day being put forth.
Later in this book Pagels goes on to give a minor historical account of the Nicene Creed. Of course, this was the time when the orthodox doctrines were agreed upon by most of the Christian leaders and would shape the universal Catholic church in the future. Perhaps distressingly to "true" Christians the concept or idea of the Trinity was solidified here. We are also told about a bishop who held a contrary view, (as did some other Christians at this time) Arius. However, ultimately the emperor Constantine who had been a Christian convert prevailed and we have what constitutes orthodoxy today. My point here being that Pagels did a good job of providing interesting reading. Her minor tracing of history keeps you interested enough to plow ahead. It's a shame the other parts of the book didn't have more support or weight to help make them more convincing. This is what ultimately causes this book to fall short.(less)
Apr 25, 2015Gail Holm rated it really liked it
This is the second time I’ve read Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. Reading it with a group this time deepened my understanding. The words, “Beyond Belief,” have significance in more than one way. I think these words mainly refer to early Christians who chose to embrace rituals, myths and perspectives that didn’t have the stamp of approval of church leaders, such as Irenaeus, who were trying to establish orthodoxy. This phrase can be extended to those people who continue to be seekers today. “Beyond Belief” could also refer to the motives of the orthodox Christian leaders. Beyond getting Christians to accept one immutable story and path to salvation, the orthodox leaders were trying to consolidate the religion in the interest of power and protection from outside forces.
Pagels suggests that the Gospel of John may have been written to refute Thomas’s claims that the light of God shines in everyone and that individuals may seek God. John proposed that Jesus IS God and that believing in Jesus is the only thing that matters. I’m puzzled, however, that The Secret Gospel of Thomas was chosen as the subtitle. Pagels discusses other non-canonical gospels that also incurred the wrath of the orthodox leaders. In addition, the content of the book is woven from many strands. To me, it isn’t primarily about The Gospel of Thomas.
Ireneas and others established a mandatory set of beliefs for Christians thereby consolidating the church and establishing the structure that made Christianity’s continued existence possible, but often, strict adherence to orthodoxy has been harmful. Today, many people want to feel free to interpret religious stories and tenets in light of their own experiences…to go “beyond belief.” More and more we go our own ways, away from organized religion. I hope we can save the life-affirming aspects of organized religion without depending on the structure of orthodoxy.
Beyond Belief is a thought-provoking book that will engage readers interested in how Christian beliefs developed and how the church became a power to be reckoned with. Moreover, Pagels insights into the content of Christian works rejected by the orthodoxy may give spiritual validation to those who seek in light of their own experience.(less)
Pagels suggests that the Gospel of John may have been written to refute Thomas’s claims that the light of God shines in everyone and that individuals may seek God. John proposed that Jesus IS God and that believing in Jesus is the only thing that matters. I’m puzzled, however, that The Secret Gospel of Thomas was chosen as the subtitle. Pagels discusses other non-canonical gospels that also incurred the wrath of the orthodox leaders. In addition, the content of the book is woven from many strands. To me, it isn’t primarily about The Gospel of Thomas.
Ireneas and others established a mandatory set of beliefs for Christians thereby consolidating the church and establishing the structure that made Christianity’s continued existence possible, but often, strict adherence to orthodoxy has been harmful. Today, many people want to feel free to interpret religious stories and tenets in light of their own experiences…to go “beyond belief.” More and more we go our own ways, away from organized religion. I hope we can save the life-affirming aspects of organized religion without depending on the structure of orthodoxy.
Beyond Belief is a thought-provoking book that will engage readers interested in how Christian beliefs developed and how the church became a power to be reckoned with. Moreover, Pagels insights into the content of Christian works rejected by the orthodoxy may give spiritual validation to those who seek in light of their own experience.(less)
Sep 26, 2011Janet rated it liked it
The book compares the gospel of John with the gnostic gospel of Thomas. Both follow a similar timeline - different from Matthew, Mark and Luke. John's emphasis is on communing to God through Jesus Christ. Thomas has more of a Buddhist approach - looking for God inside yourself.
The theological aspects aren't nearly as interesting as the political ones. In compiling the bible, the "editor" (in the form of Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon) was the one who decided which books to include, and which to leave out, and declaring the books left out as blasphemous.
This does not provide the Gospel of Thomas, but at least some of the text is available online, and also in the book covering the 52 text discovered in Egypt in 1945, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. (less)
The theological aspects aren't nearly as interesting as the political ones. In compiling the bible, the "editor" (in the form of Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon) was the one who decided which books to include, and which to leave out, and declaring the books left out as blasphemous.
This does not provide the Gospel of Thomas, but at least some of the text is available online, and also in the book covering the 52 text discovered in Egypt in 1945, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. (less)
Sep 29, 2011Jane rated it liked it
Like some of Bart Ehrman's books, Pagels deals extensively with conflicts among early Christian sects and how the Bible ended up being what it is today. The Gospel of Thomas is one among many others that didn't make the cut and we wouldn't know of it today except that it was hidden for 1600 years with other gnostic gospels at Nag Hammadi. There was not as much detail about the Gospel of Thomas as I had expected. Pagels compares it to the Gospel of John which states that belief in Jesus is the only means of salvation. Thomas asserts that there is a spark of divinity in all of us with the implication that there may by more than one road to God. (less)
May 16, 2009Carol rated it it was amazing
After reading Picoult's Change of Heart, I was given this book as a Mom's Day gift. I enjoyed Pagels' guidance through the debate of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries regarding the life and teachings of Jesus. As a Religion Prof a Princeton, Pagels has studied the debate of those years through not only those gospels included in the Bible but also the hidden 50 books that were not included and that were found in Neg Hammadi in 1945. A fascinating read that is 'healing, good sense, and gives permission to think,imagine and yet believe'. (less)
