The Gnostic Gospels (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books)

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The Controversy over Christ’s Resurrection: Historical Event or Symbol?

“JESUS CHRIST ROSE from the grave.” With this proclamation, the Christian church began. This may be the fundamental element of Christian faith; certainly it is the most radical. Other religions celebrate cycles of birth and death: Christianity insists that in one unique historical moment, the cycle reversed, and a dead man came back to life! For Jesus’ followers this was the turning point in world history, the sign of its coming end. Orthodox Christians since then have confessed in the creed that Jesus of Nazareth, “crucified, dead, and buried,” was raised “on the third day.”¹ Many today recite that creed without thinking about what they are saying, much less actually believing it. Recently some ministers, theologians, and scholars have challenged the literal view of resurrection. To account for this doctrine, they point out its psychological appeal to our deepest fears and hopes; to explain it, they offer symbolic interpretations.

But much of the early tradition insists literally that a man—Jesus—had come back to life. What makes these Christian accounts so extraordinary is not the claim that his friends had “seen” Jesus after his death—ghost stories, hallucinations, and visions were even more commonplace then than now—but that they saw an actual human being. At first, according to Luke, the disciples themselves, in their astonishment and terror at the appearance of Jesus among them, immediately assumed that they were seeing his ghost. But Jesus challenged them: “Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.”² Since they remained incredulous, he asked for something to eat; as they watched in amazement, he ate a piece of broiled fish. The point is clear: no ghost could do that.

Had they said that Jesus’ spirit lived on, surviving bodily decay, their contemporaries might have thought that their stories made sense. Five hundred years before, Socrates’ disciples had claimed that their teacher’s soul was immortal. But what the Christians said was different, and, in ordinary terms, wholly implausible. The finality of death, which had always been a part of the human experience, was being transformed. Peter contrasts King David, who died and was buried, and whose tomb was well known, with Jesus, who, although killed, rose from the grave, “because it was not possible for him to be held by it”—that is, by death.³ Luke says that Peter excluded metaphorical interpretation of the event he said he witnessed: “[We] ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”⁴

Tertullian, a brilliantly talented writer (A.D. C. 190), speaking for the majority, defines the orthodox position: as Christ rose bodily from the grave, so every believer should anticipate the resurrection of the flesh. He leaves no room for doubt. He is not, he says, talking about the immortality of the soul: “The salvation of the soul I believe needs no discussion: for almost all heretics, in whatever way they accept it, at least do not deny it.”⁵ What is raised is “this flesh, suffused with blood, built up with bones, interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, (a flesh) which … was born, and … dies, undoubtedly human.”⁶ Tertullian expects the idea of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection to shock his readers; he insists that “it must be believed, because it is absurd!”⁷

Yet some Christians—those he calls heretics—dissent. Without denying the resurrection, they reject the literal interpretation; some find it “extremely revolting, repugnant, and impossible.” Gnostic Christians interpret resurrection in various ways. Some say that the person who experiences the resurrection does not meet Jesus raised physically back to life; rather, he encounters Christ on a spiritual level. This may occur in dreams, in ecstatic trance, in visions, or in moments of spiritual illumination. But the orthodox condemn all such interpretations; Tertullian declares that anyone who denies the resurrection of the flesh is a heretic, not a Christian.

Why did orthodox tradition adopt the literal view of resurrection? The question becomes even more puzzling when we look at what the New Testament says about it. Some accounts, like the story we noted from Luke, tell how Jesus appears to his disciples in the form they know from his earthly life; he eats with them, and invites them to touch him, to prove that he is “not a ghost.” John tells a similar story: Thomas declares that he will not believe that Jesus had actually risen from the grave unless he personally can see and touch him. When Jesus appears, he tells Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.”⁸ But other stories, directly juxtaposed with these, suggest different views of the resurrection. Luke and Mark both relate that Jesus appeared “in another form”⁹—not his former earthly form—to two disciples as they walked on the road to Emmaus. Luke says that the disciples, deeply troubled about Jesus’ death, talked with the stranger, apparently for several hours. They invited him to dinner; when he sat down with them to bless the bread, suddenly they recognized him as Jesus. At that moment “he vanished out of their sight.”¹⁰ John, too, places directly before the story of “doubting Thomas” another of a very different kind: Mary Magdalene, mourning for Jesus near his grave, sees a man she takes to be the gardener. When he speaks her name, suddenly she recognizes the presence of Jesus—but he orders her not to touch him.¹¹

So if some of the New Testament stories insist on a literal view of resurrection, others lend themselves to different interpretations. One could suggest that certain people, in moments of great emotional stress, suddenly felt that they experienced Jesus’ presence. Paul’s experience can be read this way. As he traveled on the Damascus road, intent on arresting Christians, “suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground,” hearing the voice of Jesus rebuking him for the intended persecution.¹² One version of this story says, “The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one”;¹³ another says the opposite (as Luke tells it, Paul said that “those who were with me saw the light, but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me”).¹⁴ Paul himself, of course, later defended the teaching on resurrection as fundamental to Christian faith. But although his discussion often is read as an argument for bodily resurrection, it concludes with the words “I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable [that is, the mortal body] inherit the imperishable.”¹⁵ Paul describes the resurrection as “a mystery,”¹⁶ the transformation from physical to spiritual existence.

If the New Testament accounts could support a range of interpretations, why did orthodox Christians in the second century insist on a literal view of resurrection and reject all others as heretical? I suggest that we cannot answer this question adequately as long as we consider the doctrine only in terms of its religious content. But when we examine its practical effect on the Christian movement, we can see, paradoxically, that the doctrine of bodily resurrection also serves an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as the successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day. Gnostic Christians who interpret resurrection in other ways have a lesser claim to authority: when they claim priority over the orthodox, they are denounced as heretics.

Such political and religious authority developed in a most remarkable way. As we have noted, diverse forms of Christianity flourished in the early years of the Christian movement. Hundreds of rival teachers all claimed to teach the “true doctrine of Christ” and denounced one another as frauds. Christians in churches scattered from Asia Minor to Greece, Jerusalem, and Rome split into factions, arguing over church leadership. All claimed to represent “the authentic tradition.”

How could Christians resolve such contrary claims? Jesus himself was the only authority they all recognized. Even during his lifetime, among the small group traveling through Palestine with him, no one challenged—and no one matched—the authority of Jesus himself. Independent and assertive a leader as he was, Jesus censured such traits among his followers. Mark relates that when James and John came to him privately to ask for special positions in his administration, he spoke out sharply against their ambition:

You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.¹⁷

After Jesus’ execution his followers scattered, shaken with grief and terrified for their own lives. Most assumed that their enemies were right—the movement had died with their master. Suddenly, astonishing news electrified the group. Luke says that they heard that “the Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon [Peter]!”¹⁸ What had he said to Peter? Luke’s account suggested to Christians in later generations that he named Peter as his successor, delegating the leadership to him. Matthew says that during his lifetime Jesus already had decided that Peter, the “rock,” was to found the future institution.¹⁹ Only John claims to tell what the risen Christ said: he told Peter that he was to take Jesus’ place as “shepherd” for the flock.²⁰

Whatever the truth of this claim, we can neither verify nor disprove it on historical grounds alone. We have only secondhand testimony from believers who affirm it, and skeptics who deny it. But what we do know as historical fact is that certain disciples—notably, Peter—claimed that the resurrection had happened. More important, we know the result: shortly after Jesus’ death, Peter took charge of the group as its leader and spokesman. According to John, he had received his authority from the only source the group recognized—from Jesus himself, now speaking from beyond the grave.

What linked the group gathered around Jesus with the world-wide organization that developed within 170 years of his death into a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons? Christians in later generations maintained that it was the claim that Jesus himself had come back to life! The German scholar Hans von Campenhausen says that because “Peter was the first to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection,”²¹ Peter became the first leader of the Christian community. One can dispute Campenhausen’s claim on the basis of New Testament evidence: the gospels of Mark and John both name Mary Magdalene, not Peter, as the first witness of the resurrection.²² But orthodox churches that trace their origin to Peter developed the tradition—sustained to this day among Catholic and some Protestant churches—that Peter had been the “first witness of the resurrection,” and hence the rightful leader of the church. As early as the second century, Christians realized the potential political consequences of having “seen the risen Lord”: in Jerusalem, where James, Jesus’ brother, successfully rivaled Peter’s authority, one tradition maintained that James, not Peter (and certainly not Mary Magdalene) was the “first witness of the resurrection.”

New Testament evidence indicates that Jesus appeared to many others besides Peter—Paul says that once he appeared to five hundred people simultaneously. But from the second century, orthodox churches developed the view that only certain resurrection appearances actually conferred authority on those who received them. These were Jesus’ appearances to Peter and to “the eleven” (the disciples minus Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed Jesus and committed suicide).²⁸ The orthodox noted the account in Matthew, which tells how the resurrected Jesus announced to “the eleven” that his own authority now has reached cosmic proportions: “All authority, on heaven and on earth, has been given to me.” Then he delegated that authority to “the eleven disciples.”²⁴ Luke, too, indicates that although many others had known Jesus, and even had witnessed his resurrection, “the eleven” alone held the position of official witnesses—and hence became official leaders of the whole community. Luke relates that Peter, acting as spokesman for the group, proposed that since Judas Iscariot had defected, a twelfth man should now “take the office” that he vacated, restoring the group as “the twelve.”²⁵ But to receive a share in the disciples’ authority, Peter declared that he must be

one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.²⁶

Matthias, who met these qualifications, was selected and “enrolled with the eleven apostles.”²⁷

After forty days, having completed the transfer of power, the resurrected Lord abruptly withdrew his bodily presence from them, and ascended into heaven as they watched in amazement.²⁸ Luke, who tells the story, sees this as a momentous event. Henceforth, for the duration of the world, no one would ever experience Christ’s actual presence as the twelve disciples had during his lifetime—and for forty days after his death. After that time, as Luke tells it, others received only less direct forms of communication with Christ. Luke admits that Stephen saw a vision of Jesus “standing at the right hand of God”;²⁹ that Paul first encountered Jesus in a dramatic vision, and later in a trance³⁰ (Luke claims to record his words: “When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him speaking to me”³¹). Yet Luke’s account implies that these incidents cannot compare with the original events attested by the Twelve. In the first place, they occurred to persons not included among the Twelve. Second, they occurred only after Jesus’ bodily ascension to heaven. Third, although visions, dreams, and ecstatic trances manifested traces of Christ’s spiritual presence, the experience of the Twelve differed entirely. They alone, having known Jesus throughout his lifetime, could testify to those unique events which they knew firsthand—and to the resurrection of one who was dead to his complete, physical presence with them.³²

Whatever we think of the historicity of the orthodox account, we can admire its ingenuity. For this theory—that all authority derives from certain apostles’ experience of the resurrected Christ, an experience now closed forever—bears enormous implications for the political structure of the community. First, as the German scholar Karl Holl has pointed out, it restricts the circle of leadership to a small band of persons whose members stand in a position of incontestable authority.³³ Second, it suggests that only the apostles had the right to ordain future leaders as their successors.³⁴ Christians in the second century used Luke’s account to set the groundwork for establishing specific, restricted chains of command for all future generations of Christians. Any potential leader of the community would have to derive, or claim to derive, authority from the same apostles. Yet, according to the orthodox view, none can ever claim to equal their authority—much less challenge it. What the apostles experienced and attested their successors cannot verify for themselves; instead, they must only believe, protect, and hand down to future generations the apostles’ testimony.³⁵

This theory gained extraordinary success: for nearly 2,000 years, orthodox Christians have accepted the view that the apostles alone held definitive religious authority, and that their only legitimate heirs are priests and bishops, who trace their ordination back to that same apostolic succession. Even today the pope traces his—and the primacy he claims over the rest—to Peter himself, “first of the apostles,” since he was “first witness of the resurrection.”

But the gnostic Christians rejected Luke’s theory. Some gnostics called the literal view of resurrection the “faith of fools.”³⁶ The resurrection, they insisted, was not a unique event in the past: instead, it symbolized how Christ’s presence could be experienced in the present. What mattered was not literal seeing, but spiritual vision.³⁷ They pointed out that many who witnessed the events of Jesus’ life remained blind to their meaning. The disciples themselves often misunderstood what Jesus said: those who announced that their dead master had come back physically to life mistook a spiritual truth for an actual event.³⁸ But the true disciple may never have seen the earthly Jesus, having been born at the wrong time, as Paul said of himself.³⁹ Yet this physical disability may become a spiritual advantage: such persons, like Paul, may encounter Christ first on the level of inner experience.

How is Christ’s presence experienced? The author of the Gospel of Mary, one of the few gnostic texts discovered before Nag Hammadi, interprets the resurrection appearances as visions received in dreams or in ecstatic trance. This gnostic gospel recalls traditions recorded in Mark and John, that Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Christ.⁴⁰ John says that Mary saw Jesus on the morning of his resurrection, and that he appeared to the other disciples only later, on the evening of the same day.⁴¹ According to the Gospel of Mary, Mary Magdalene, seeing the Lord in a vision, asked him, “How does he who sees the vision see it? [Through] the soul, [or] through the spirit?”⁴² He answered that the visionary perceives through the mind. The Apocalypse of Peter, discovered at Nag Hammadi, tells how Peter, deep in trance, saw Christ, who explained that “I am the intellectual spirit, filled with radiant light.”⁴³ Gnostic accounts often mention how the recipients respond to Christ’s presence with intense emotions—terror, awe, distress, and joy.

Yet these gnostic writers do not dismiss visions as fantasies or hallucinations. They respect—even revere—such experiences, through which spiritual intuition discloses insight into the nature of reality. One gnostic teacher, whose Treatise on Resurrection, a letter to Rheginos, his student, was found at Nag Hammadi, says: “Do not suppose that resurrection is an apparition [phantasia; literally, “fantasy”]. It is not an apparition; rather it is something real. Instead,” he continues, “one ought to maintain that the world is an apparition, rather than resurrection.”⁴⁴ Like a Buddhist master, Rheginos’ teacher, himself anonymous, goes on to explain that ordinary human existence is spiritual death. But the resurrection is the moment of enlightenment: “It is … the revealing of what truly exists … and a migration (metabolē—change, transition) into newness.”⁴⁵ Whoever grasps this becomes spiritually alive. This means, he declares, that you can be “resurrected from the dead” right now: “Are you—the real you—mere corruption? … Why do you not examine your own self, and see that you have arisen?”⁴⁶ A third text from Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Philip, expresses the same view, ridiculing ignorant Christians who take the resurrection literally. “Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error.”⁴⁷ Instead they must “receive the resurrection while they live.” The author says ironically that in one sense, then, of course “it is necessary to rise ‘in this flesh,’ since everything exists in it!”⁴⁸

What interested these gnostics far more than past events attributed to the “historical Jesus” was the possibility of encountering the risen Christ in the present.⁴⁹ The Gospel of Mary illustrates the contrast between orthodox and gnostic viewpoints. The account recalls what Mark relates:

Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene … She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.⁵⁰

As the Gospel of Mary opens, the disciples are mourning Jesus’ death and terrified for their own lives. Then Mary Magdalene stands up to encourage them, recalling Christ’s continual presence with them: “Do not weep, and do not grieve, and do not doubt; for his grace will be with you completely, and will protect you.”⁵¹ Peter invites Mary to “tell us the words of the Savior which you remember.”⁵² But to Peter’s surprise, Mary does not tell anecdotes from the past; instead, she explains that she has just seen the Lord in a vision received through the mind, and she goes on to tell what he revealed to her. When Mary finishes,

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 will about what she has said. I, at least, do not believe that the Savior has said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas!”⁵³

Peter agrees with Andrew, ridiculing the idea that Mary actually saw the Lord in her vision. Then, the story continues,

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? Do you think I am lying about the Savior?” Levi answered and said to Peter, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered … If the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?”⁵⁴

Finally Mary, vindicated, joins the other apostles as they go out to preach. Peter, apparently representing the orthodox position, looks to past events, suspicious of those who “see the Lord” in visions: Mary, representing the gnostic, claims to experience his continuing presence.⁵⁵

These gnostics recognized that their theory, like the orthodox one, bore political implications. It suggests that whoever “sees the Lord” through inner vision can claim that his or her own authority equals, or surpasses, that of the Twelve—and of their successors. Consider the political implications of the Gospel of Mary: Peter and Andrew, here representing the leaders of the orthodox group, accuse Mary—the gnostic—of pretending to have seen the Lord in order to justify the strange ideas, fictions, and lies she invents and attributes to divine inspiration. Mary lacks the proper credentials for leadership, from the orthodox viewpoint: she is not one of the “twelve.” But as Mary stands up to Peter, so the gnostics who take her as their prototype challenge the authority of those priests and bishops who claim to be Peter’s successors.

We know that gnostic teachers challenged the orthodox in precisely this way. While, according to them, the orthodox relied solely on the public, exoteric teaching which Christ and the apostles offered to “the many,” gnostic Christians claimed to offer, in addition, their secret teaching, known only to the few.⁵⁶ The gnostic teacher and poet Valentinus (c. 140) points out that even during his lifetime, Jesus shared with his disciples certain mysteries, which he kept secret from outsiders.⁵⁷ According to the New Testament gospel of Mark, Jesus said to his disciples,

… “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven.”⁵⁸

Matthew, too, relates that when Jesus spoke in public, he spoke only in parables; when his disciples asked the reason, he replied, “To you it has been given to know the secrets [mysteria; literally, “mysteries”] of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”⁵⁹ According to the gnostics, some of the disciples, following his instructions, kept secret Jesus’ esoteric teaching: this they taught only in private, to certain persons who had proven themselves to be spiritually mature, and who therefore qualified for “initiation into gnosis”—that is, into secret knowledge.

Following the crucifixion, they allege that the risen Christ continued to reveal himself to certain disciples, opening to them, through visions, new insights into divine mysteries. Paul, referring to himself obliquely in the third person, says that he was “caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know.” There, in an ecstatic trance, he heard “things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.”⁶⁰ Through his spiritual communication with Christ, Paul says he discovered “hidden mysteries” and “secret wisdom,” which, he explains, he shares only with those Christians he considers “mature”⁶¹ but not with everyone. Many contemporary Biblical scholars, themselves orthodox, have followed Rudolph Bultmann, who insists that Paul does not mean what he says in this passage.⁶² They argue that Paul does not claim to have a secret tradition; such a claim would apparently make Paul sound too “gnostic.” Recently Professor Robin Scroggs has taken the opposite view, pointing out that Paul clearly says that he does have secret wisdom.⁶³ Gnostic Christians in ancient times came to the same conclusion. Valentinus, the gnostic poet who traveled from Egypt to teach in Rome (c. 140), even claimed that he himself learned Paul’s secret teaching from Theudas, one of Paul’s own disciples.

Followers of Valentinus say that only their own gospels and revelations disclose those secret teachings. These writings tell countless stories about the risen Christ—the spiritual being whom Jesus represented—a figure who fascinated them far more than the merely human Jesus, the obscure rabbi from Nazareth. For this reason, gnostic writings often reverse the pattern of the New Testament gospels. Instead of telling the history of Jesus biographically, from birth to death, gnostic accounts begin where the others end—with stories of the spiritual Christ appearing to his disciples. The Apocryphon of John, for example, begins as John tells how he went out after the crucifixion in “great grief”:

Immediately … the [heavens were opened, and the whole] creation [which is] under heaven shone, and [the world] was shaken. [I was afraid, and I] saw in the light [a child] … while I looked he became like an old man. And he [changed his] form again, becoming like a servant … I saw … a[n image] with multiple forms in the light …⁶⁴

As he marveled, the presence spoke:

“John, Jo[h]n, why do you doubt, and why are you afraid? You are not unfamiliar with this form, are you? … Do not be afraid! I am the one who [is with you] always … [I have come to teach] you what is [and what was], and what will come to [be] …”⁶⁵

The Letter of Peter to Philip, also discovered at Nag Hammadi, relates that after Jesus’ death, the disciples were praying on the Mount of Olives when

a great light appeared, so that the mountain shone from the sight of him who had appeared. And a voice called out to them saying “Listen … I am Jesus Christ, who is with you forever.”⁶⁶

Then, as the disciples ask him about the secrets of the universe, “a voice came out of the light” answering them. The Wisdom of Jesus Christ tells a similar story. Here again the disciples are gathered on a mountain after Jesus’ death, when “then there appeared to them the Redeemer, not in his original form but in the invisible spirit. But his appearance was the appearance of a great angel of light.” Responding to their amazement and terror, he smiles, and offers to teach them the “secrets [mysteria; literally, “mysteries”] of the holy plan” of the universe and its destiny.⁶⁷

But the contrast with the orthodox view is striking.⁶⁸ Here Jesus does not appear in the ordinary human form the disciples recognize—and certainly not in bodily form. Either he appears as a luminous presence speaking out of the light, or he transforms himself into multiple forms. The Gospel of Philip takes up the same theme:

Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not reveal himself in the manner [in which] he was, but in the manner in which [they would] be able to see him. He revealed himself to [them all. He revealed himself] to the great as great … (and) to the small as small.⁶⁹

To the immature disciple, Jesus appears as a child; to the mature, as an old man, symbol of wisdom. As the gnostic teacher Theodotus says, “each person recognizes the Lord in his own way, not all alike.”⁷⁰

Orthodox leaders, including Irenaeus, accused the gnostics of fraud. Such texts as those discovered at Nag Hammadi—the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Letter of Peter to Philip, and the Apocryphon (Secret Book) of John—proved, according to Irenaeus, that the heretics were trying to pass off as “apostolic” what they themselves had invented. He declares that the followers of the gnostic teacher Valentinus, being “utterly reckless,”

put forth their own compositions, while boasting that they have more gospels than there really are … They really have no gospel which is not full of blasphemy. For what they have published … is totally unlike what has been handed down to us from the apostles.⁷¹

What proves the validity of the four gospels, Irenaeus says, is that they actually were written by Jesus’ own disciples and their followers, who personally witnessed the events they described. Some contemporary Biblical scholars have challenged this view: few today believe that contemporaries of Jesus actually wrote the New Testament gospels. Although Irenaeus, defending their exclusive legitimacy, insisted that they were written by Jesus’ own followers, we know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We only know that these writings are attributed to apostles (Matthew and John) or followers of the apostles (Mark and Luke).

Gnostic authors, in the same way, attributed their secret writings to various disciples. Like those who wrote the New Testament gospels, they may have received some of their material from early traditions. But in other cases, the accusation that the gnostics invented what they wrote contains some truth: certain gnostics openly acknowledged that they derived their gnosis from their own experience.

How, for example, could a Christian living in the second century write the Secret Book of John? We could imagine the author in the situation he attributes to John at the opening of the book: troubled by doubts, he begins to ponder the meaning of Jesus’ mission and destiny. In the process of such internal questioning, answers may occur spontaneously to the mind; changing patterns of images may appear. The person who understands this process not in terms of modern psychology, as the activity of the imagination or unconscious, but in religious terms, could experience these as forms of spiritual communication with Christ. Seeing his own communion with Christ as a continuation of what the disciples enjoyed, the author, when he casts the “dialogue” into literary form, could well give to them the role of the questioners. Few among his contemporaries—except the orthodox, whom he considers “literal-minded”—would accuse him of forgery; rather, the titles of these works indicate that they were written “in the spirit” of John, Mary Magdalene, Philip, or Peter.

Attributing a writing to a specific apostle may also bear a symbolic meaning. The title of the Gospel of Mary suggests that its revelation came from a direct, intimate communication with the Savior. The hint of an erotic relationship between him and Mary Magdalene may indicate claims to mystical communion; throughout history, mystics of many traditions have chosen sexual metaphors to describe their experiences. The titles of the Gospel of Thomas and the Book of Thomas the Contender (attributed to Jesus’ “twin brother”) may suggest that “you, the reader, are Jesus’ twin brother.” Whoever comes to understand these books discovers, like Thomas, that Jesus is his “twin,” his spiritual “other self.” Jesus’ words to Thomas, then, are addressed to the reader:

“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 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 all things.”⁷²

Like circles of artists today, gnostics considered original creative invention to be the mark of anyone who becomes spiritually alive. Each one, like students of a painter or writer, expected to express his own perceptions by revising and transforming what he was taught. Whoever merely repeated his teacher’s words was considered immature. Bishop Irenaeus complains that

every one of them generates something new every day, according to his ability; for no one is considered initiated [or: “mature”] among them unless he develops some enormous fictions!⁷³

He charges that “they boast that they are the discoverers and inventors of this kind of imaginary fiction,” and accuses them of creating new forms of mythological poetry. No doubt he is right: first- and second-century gnostic literature includes some remarkable poems, like the “Round Dance of the Cross”⁷⁴ and the “Thunder, Perfect Mind.” Most offensive, from his point of view, is that they admit that nothing supports their writings except their own intuition. When challenged, “they either mention mere human feelings, or else refer to the harmony that can be seen in creation”:⁷⁵

They are to be blamed for … describing human feelings, and passions, and mental tendencies … and ascribing the things that happen to human beings, and whatever they recognize themselves as experiencing, to the divine Word.⁷⁶

On this basis, like artists, they express their own insight—their own gnosis—by creating new myths, poems, rituals, “dialogues” with Christ, revelations, and accounts of their visions.

Like Baptists, Quakers, and many others, the gnostic is convinced that whoever receives the spirit communicates directly with the divine. One of Valentinus’ students, the gnostic teacher Heracleon (c. 160), says that “at first, people believe because of the testimony of others …” but then “they come to believe from the truth itself.”⁷⁷ So his own teacher, Valentinus, claimed to have first learned Paul’s secret teaching; then he experienced a vision which became the source of his own gnosis:

He saw a newborn infant, and when he asked who he might be, the child answered, “I am the Logos.”⁷⁸

Marcus, another student of Valentinus’ (c. 150), who went on to become a teacher himself, tells how he came to his own firsthand knowledge of the truth. He says that a vision

descended upon him … in the form of a woman … and expounded to him alone its own nature, and the origin of things, which it had never revealed to anyone, divine or human.⁷⁹

The presence then said to him,

“I wish to show you Truth herself; for I have brought her down from above, so that you may see her without a veil, and understand her beauty.”⁸⁰

And that, Marcus adds, is how “the naked Truth” came to him in a woman’s form, disclosing her secrets to him. Marcus expects, in turn, that everyone whom he initiates into gnosis will also receive such experiences. In the initiation ritual, after invoking the spirit, he commands the candidate to speak in prophecy,⁸¹ to demonstrate that the person has received direct contact with the divine.

What differentiates these gnostics from those who, throughout the history of Christianity, have claimed to receive special visions and revelations, and who have expressed these in art, poetry, and mystical literature? Christians who stand in orthodox tradition, Catholics and Protestants, expect that the revelations they receive will confirm (in principle, at least) apostolic tradition: this, they agree, sets the boundaries of Christian faith. The apostles’ original teaching remains the criterion; whatever deviates is heresy. Bishop Irenaeus declares that the apostles,

like a rich man (depositing money) in a bank, placed in the church fully everything that belongs to truth: so that everyone, whoever will, can draw from her the water of life.⁸²

The orthodox Christian believes “the one and only truth from the apostles, which is handed down by the church.” And he accepts no gospels but the four in the New Testament which serve as the canon (literally, “guideline”) to measure all future doctrine and practice.

But the gnostic Christians, whom Irenaeus opposed, assumed that they had gone far beyond the apostles’ original teaching. Just as many people today assume that the most recent experiments in science or psychology will surpass earlier ones, so the gnostics anticipated that the present and future would yield a continual increase in knowledge. Irenaeus takes this as proof of their arrogance:

They consider themselves “mature,” so that no one can be compared with them in the greatness of their gnosis, not even if you mention Peter or Paul or any of the other apostles.… They imagine that they themselves have discovered more than the apostles, and that the apostles preached the gospel still under the influence of Jewish opinions, but that they themselves are wiser and more intelligent than the apostles.⁸³

And those who consider themselves “wiser than the apostles” also consider themselves “wiser than the priests.”⁸⁴ For what the gnostics say about the apostles—and, in particular, about the Twelve—expresses their attitude toward the priests and bishops, who claim to stand in the orthodox apostolic succession.

But despite their emphasis on free creativity, some gnostic teachers—rather inconsistently—claim to have their own, secret sources of “apostolic tradition.” Thereby they claim access to different lines of apostolic sucession from that commonly accepted in the churches. The gnostic teacher Ptolemy explains to Flora, a woman he sees as a potential initiate, that “we too have received” apostolic tradition from a sucession of teachers—one that, he says, offers an esoteric supplement to the canonical collection of Jesus’ words.⁸⁵

Gnostic authors often attribute their own traditions to persons who stand outside the circle of the Twelve—Paul, Mary Magdalene, and James. Some insist that the Twelve—including Peter—had not received gnosis when they first witnessed to Christ’s resurrection. Another group of gnostics, called Sethians because they identified themselves as sons of Seth, the third child of Adam and Eve, say that the disciples, deluded by “a very great error,” imagined that Christ had risen from the dead in bodily form. But the risen Christ appeared to “a few of these disciples, who he recognized were capable of understanding such great mysteries,”⁸⁶ and taught them to understand his resurrection in spiritual, not physical, terms. Furthermore, as we have seen, the Gospel of Mary depicts Mary Magdalene (never recognized as an apostle by the orthodox) as the one favored with visions and insight that far surpass Peter’s. The Dialogue of the Savior praises her not only as a visionary, but as the apostle who excels all the rest. She is the “woman who knew the All.”⁸⁷ Valentinus claims that his apostolic tradition comes from Paul—another outsider to the Twelve, but one of the greatest authorities of the orthodox, and, after Luke, the author most extensively represented in the New Testament.

Other gnostics explain that certain members of the Twelve later received special visions and revelations, and so attained enlightenment. The Apocalypse of Peter describes how Peter, deep in trance, experiences the presence of Christ, who opens his eyes to spiritual insight:

[The Savior] said to me …, “… put your hands upon (your) eyes … and say what you see!” But when I had done it, I did not see anything. I said, “No one sees (this way).” Again he told me, “Do it again.” And there came into me fear with joy, for I saw a new light, greater than the light of day. Then it came down upon the Savior. And I told him about the things which I saw.⁸⁸

The Secret Book of James tells how “the twelve disciples were all sitting together and recalling what the Savior had said to each one of them, whether in secret or openly, and [setting it in order] in books.”⁸⁹ But when Christ appeared, he chose Peter and James, and drew them apart from the rest to tell them what the others were not to know. Either version of this theory bears the same implication: it asserts the superiority of gnostic forms of secret tradition—and hence, of gnostic teachers—over that of the priests and bishops, who can offer only “common” tradition. Further, because earlier traditions, from this point of view, are at best incomplete, and at worst simply false, gnostic Christians continually drew upon their own spiritual experience—their own gnosis—to revise and transform them.

But what gnostics celebrated as proof of spiritual maturity, the orthodox denounced as “deviation” from apostolic tradition. Tertullian finds it outrageous that

every one of them, just as it suits his own temperament, modifies the traditions he has received, just as the one who handed them down modified them, when he shaped them according to his own will.⁹⁰

That they “disagree on specific matters, even from their own founders” meant to Tertullian that they were “unfaithful” to apostolic tradition. Diversity of teaching was the very mark of heresy:

On what grounds are heretics strangers and enemies to the apostles, if it is not from the difference of their teaching, which each individual of his own mere will has either advanced or received?⁹¹

Doctrinal conformity defined the orthodox faith. Bishop Irenaeus declares that the catholic church

believes these points of doctrine just as if she had only one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them and teaches them in perfect harmony.… For although the languages of the world are different, still the meaning of the tradition is one and the same. For the churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the east, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Africa, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world.⁹²

What would happen if arguments did arise among such scattered churches? Who should decide which traditions would take priority? Irenaeus considers the question:

But how is it? Suppose a dispute concerning some important question arises among us; should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches, with which the apostles held continual intercourse, and learn from them what is clear and certain in regard to the present question?⁹³

Irenaeus prescribes terminating any disagreement

by indicating that tradition, derived-from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul … and by indicating the faith … which came down to our time by means of the succession of the bishops. For it is necessary that every church should agree with this church, on account of its preeminent authority.⁹⁴

Since no one of later generations can have access to Christ as the apostles did, during his lifetime and at his resurrection, every believer must look to the church at Rome, which they founded, and to the bishops for authority.

Some gnostic Christians counterattacked. The Apocalypse of Peter, probably among the latest writings discovered at Nag Hammadi (c. 200–300), tells how dismayed Peter was to hear that many believers “will fall into an erroneous name” and “will be ruled heretically.”⁹⁵ The risen Christ explains to Peter that those who “name themselves bishop, and also deacon, as if they had received their authority from God,” are, in reality, “waterless canals.”⁹⁶ Although they “do not understand mystery,” they “boast that the mystery of truth belongs to them alone.”⁹⁷ The author accuses them of having misinterpreted the apostles’ teaching, and thus having set up an “imitation church” in place of the true Christian “brotherhood.”⁹⁸ Other gnostics, including the followers of Valentinus, did not challenge the bishop’s right to teach the common apostolic tradition. Nor did they oppose, in principle, the leadership of priests and bishops. But for them the church’s teaching, and the church officials, could never hold the ultimate authority which orthodox Christians accorded them.⁹⁹ All who had received gnosis, they say, had gone beyond the church’s teaching and had transcended the authority of its hierarchy.

The controversy over resurrection, then, proved critical in shaping the Christian movement into an institutional religion. All Christians agreed in principle that only Christ himself—or God—can be the ultimate source of spiritual authority. But the immediate question, of course, was the practical one: Who, in the present, administers that authority?

Valentinus and his followers answered: Whoever comes into direct, personal contact with the “living One.” They argued that only one’s own experience offers the ultimate criterion of truth, taking precedence over all secondhand testimony and all tradition—even gnostic tradition! They celebrated every form of creative invention as evidence that a person has become spiritually alive. On this theory, the structure of authority can never be fixed into an institutional framework: it must remain spontaneous, charismatic, and open.

Those who rejected this theory argued that all future generations of Christians must trust the apostles’ testimony—even more than their own experience. For, as Tertullian admitted, whoever judges in terms of ordinary historical experience would find the claim that a man physically returned from the grave to be incredible. What can never be proven or verified in the present, Tertullian says, “must be believed, because it is absurd.” Since the death of the apostles, believers must accept the word of the priests and bishops, who have claimed, from the second century, to be their only legitimate heirs.

Recognizing the political implications of the doctrine of resurrection does not account for its extraordinary impact on the religious experience of Christians. Whoever doubts that impact has only to recall any of the paintings it evoked from artists as diverse as Della Francesca, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Dali, or the music written on the theme by composers from ancient times through Bach, Mozart, Handel, and Mahler.

The conviction that a man who died came back to life is, of course, a paradox. But that paradox may contain the secret of its powerful appeal, for while it contradicts our own historical experience, it speaks the language of human emotions. It addresses itself to that which may be our deepest fear, and expresses our longing to overcome death.

The contemporary theologian Jürgen Moltmann suggests that the orthodox view of resurrection also expressed, in symbolic language, the conviction that human life is inseparable from bodily experience: even if a man comes back to life from the dead, he must come back physically.¹⁰⁰ Irenaeus and Tertullian both emphasize that the anticipation of bodily resurrection requires believers to take seriously the ethical implications of their own actions. Certainly it is true that gnostics who ridiculed the idea of bodily resurrection frequently devalued the body, and considered its actions (sexual acts, for example) unimportant to the “spiritual” person. According to the Gospel of Thomas, for example, Jesus says,

“If spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth [the spirit] has made its home in this poverty [the body].”¹⁰¹

For the gnostics stood close to the Greek philosophic tradition (and, for that matter, to Hindu and Buddhist tradition) that regards the human spirit as residing “in” a body—as if the actual person were some sort of disembodied being who uses the body as an instrument but does not identify with it. Those who agree with Moltmann may find, then, that the orthodox doctrine of resurrection, far from negating bodily experience, affirmed it as the central fact of human life.

But in terms of the social order, as we have seen, the orthodox teaching on resurrection had a different effect: it legitimized a hierarchy of persons through whose authority all others must approach God. Gnostic teaching, as Irenaeus and Tertullian realized, was potentially subversive of this order: it claimed to offer to every initiate direct access to God of which the priests and bishops themselves might be ignorant.¹⁰²