Beyond Belief
Page 5
Hearing Jesus announce the coming kingdom of God—an earth-shattering event that is about to transform the world—Peter, James, John, and Andrew ask privately when these things will happen. Jesus does not name the day but tells them the “signs of the times” that will signal its approach. He predicts that “wars and rumors of wars,” earthquakes, and famine will initiate “the birth pangs of the messiah,” and warns his followers to expect to be “beaten in synagogues,” arraigned before “governors and kings,” betrayed by family members, and “hated by all.” Still worse: the great Temple in Jerusalem will be desecrated and ruined, floods of refugees will flee the city—“such suffering as has not been from the beginning of creation . . . until now, and no, never will be.”55 Still later, Mark says, Jesus predicted that “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give light; stars will fall from heaven” as people see in the sky supernatural events foreseen by the prophet Daniel, who told of the “ ‘Son of man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory.”56 Solemnly Jesus warns his disciples that “truly, I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place”; above all, he warns, “Keep awake.”57
But according to both the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals that the kingdom of God, which many believers, including Mark, expect in the future, not only is “coming” but is already here—an immediate and continuing spiritual reality. According to John, Jesus announces that the Day of Judgment, which the prophets call “the day of the Lord,” “is coming, and is now,”58 and adds that the “resurrection of the dead” also may happen now. For when Jesus consoles his friends Mary and Martha on the death of their brother Lazarus and asks whether they believe he will rise from the dead, Martha repeats the hope of the pious, saying, “I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”59 But in John, Jesus astonishes everyone as he immediately proceeds to raise Lazarus, four days dead, calling him forth alive from his grave. Thus the great transformation expected at the end of time can—and does—happen here and now.
According to the Gospel of Thomas, the “living Jesus” himself challenges those who mistake the kingdom of God for an otherworldly place or a future event:
Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will get there before you. . . . If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will get there before you.”60
Here Thomas’s Jesus ridicules certain unnamed leaders—perhaps even Peter himself, or his disciple Mark; for it is in Mark that the troubled disciples ask Jesus what to look for as “signs of the end,” and Jesus takes them seriously, warning of ominous events to come, and concludes by admonishing them to “watch.”61 But Thomas claims that Jesus spoke differently in secret:
His disciples said to him, “When will the resurrection of the dead come, and when will the new world come?” He said to them, “What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it.”62
When they ask again, “When will the kingdom come?” Thomas’s Jesus says, “It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.”63
The Gospel of Luke includes passages suggesting that other believers agree with Thomas that the kingdom of God is somehow present here and now; in fact, Luke offers an alternate version of the same saying:
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, [Jesus] answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!,’ for the kingdom of God is within you.”64
Some have taken the phrase “within you” to mean that the kingdom is among the disciples so long as Jesus is with them, while others take it to mean that the kingdom of God is embodied not only in Jesus but in everyone. The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible adopts the first sense—that Jesus alone embodies the kingdom of God. But a century ago, in a book called The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Leo Tolstoy urged Christians to give up coercion and violence in order to realize God’s kingdom here and now. Thomas Merton, the twentieth-century writer and Trappist monk, agreed with Tolstoy but interpreted the kingdom of God mystically rather than practically.65
In certain passages, then, the Gospel of Thomas interprets the kingdom of God as Tolstoy and Merton would do nearly two thousand years later. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, also discovered in Egypt, but in 1896, about fifty years before the Nag Hammadi find, echoes this theme: Jesus tells his disciples, “Let no one lead you astray, saying, ‘Lo, here!’ or ‘Lo, there!’ For the Son of Man is within you. Follow after him!”66 Yet after including his version of this saying at one point in his gospel, Luke retreats from this position and concludes his account with the kind of apocalyptic warnings found in Mark: the Son of Man is not a divine presence in all of us but a terrifying judge who is coming to summon everyone to the day of wrath that, Luke’s Jesus warns, may catch you unexpectedly, like a trap; for it will come upon all who live upon the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, and pray that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will happen, and to stand before the Son of Man.67
The Gospels of Thomas and John, however, speak for those who understand Jesus’ message quite differently. Both say that, instead of warning his disciples about the end of time, Jesus points them toward the beginning. John opens with the famous prologue describing the beginning of the universe, when “the word was with God, and the word was God.”68 John is referring, of course, to the opening verses of Genesis: “in the beginning” there was a vast, formless void, darkness, and “the abyss,” or deep water, and “a wind [or spirit] from God swept over the face of the waters.”69 Yet before there were sun, moon, or stars, there was, first of all, light: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”70 Thus John identifies Jesus not only with the word that God spoke but also with the divine light that it called into being—what he calls “the true light that enlightens everyone, coming into the world.”71
Thomas’s Jesus also challenges those who persist in asking him about the “end time”: “Have you found the beginning, then, that you look to the end?” Here, too, he directs them to go back to the beginning, “for whoever takes his place in the beginning will know the end, and will not taste death”72—that is, will be restored to the luminous state of creation before the fall. Thomas, like John, identifies Jesus with the light that existed before the dawn of creation. According to Thomas, Jesus says that this primordial light not only brought the entire universe into being but still shines through everything we see and touch. For this primordial light is not simply impersonal energy but a being that speaks with a human voice—with Jesus’ voice:
Jesus said, “I am the light which is before all things. It is I who am all things. From me all things came forth, and to me all things extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there; lift up the stone, and you will find me.”73
Yet, despite similarities between John’s and Thomas’s versions of Jesus’ secret teaching, when we look more closely, we begin to see that John’s understanding of Jesus’ ”way” is diametrically opposed to Thomas’s on the practical and crucial question: How can we find that light? Let us look first at the Gospel of Thomas.
Thomas’s gospel offers only cryptic clues—not answers—to those who seek the way to God. Thomas’s “living Jesus” challenges his hearers to find the way for themselves: “Jesus said, ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these words will not taste death,’ ”74 and he warns the disciples that the search will disturb and astonish them: “Jesus said, ‘Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled; when he becomes troubled, he will be astonished and will rule over all things.”75 Thus here again Jesus encourages those who seek by telling them that they already have the internal resources they need to find
what they are looking for: “Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.’ ”76
Yet the “disciples [still] questioned him,” Thomas writes, “saying, ‘Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give alms? What diet should we observe?’ ”77 In Matthew and Luke, Jesus responds to such questions with practical, straightforward answers. For example, he instructs them that “when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret.”78 When you fast, “put oil on your head, and wash your face.”79 And “when you pray, pray like this, [saying], ‘Our Father, who art in heaven. . . .’ ”80 In Thomas, Jesus gives no such instructions. Instead, when his disciples ask him what to do—how to pray, what to eat, whether to fast or give money, he answers only with another koan: “Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate; for all things are plain in the sight of heaven.”81 In other words, the capacity to discover the truth is within you. When the disciples still demand that Jesus “tell us who you are, so that we may believe in you,” he again deflects the question and directs them to see for themselves: “He said to them, ‘You read the face of the sky and the earth, but you have not recognized the one who stands before you, and you do not know how to read this present moment.’ ”82 Plotinus, an Alexandrian philosopher baffled and apparently irritated by such sayings, complained that “they are always saying to us, ‘Look to God!’ But they do not tell us where or how to look.”83
Yet Thomas’s Jesus offers some clues. After dismissing those who expect the future coming of the kingdom of God, as countless Christians have always done and still do, Thomas’s Jesus declares that the Kingdom is inside you, and outside you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will see that it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.84
This cryptic saying raises a further question: How can we know ourselves? According to Thomas, Jesus declares that we must find out first where we came from, and go back and take our place “in the beginning.” Then he says something even stranger: “Blessed is the one who came into being before he came into being.”85 But how can one go back before one’s own birth—or even before human creation? What was there before human creation—even before the creation of the universe?
According to Genesis, “in the beginning” there was, first of all, the primordial light. For Thomas this means that in creating “adam [humankind] in his image,” as Genesis 1:26 says, God created us in the image of the primordial light. Like many other readers of Genesis, then and now, Thomas suggests that what appeared in the primordial light was “a human being, very marvelous,” a being of radiant light, the prototype of the human Adam, whom God created on the sixth day. This “light Adam,” although human in form, is simultaneously, in some mysterious way, also divine.86 Thus Jesus suggests here that we have spiritual resources within us precisely because we were made “in the image of God.” Irenaeus, the Christian bishop of Lyons (c. 180), warns his flock to despise “heretics” who speak like this, and who “call humankind [anthropos] the God of all things, also calling him light, and blessed, and eternal.”87 But, as we noted, what Irenaeus here dismisses as heretical later became a central theme of Jewish mystical tradition—that the “image of God” is hidden within each of us, secretly linking God and all humankind.88
Thus Thomas’s Jesus tells his disciples that not only he comes forth from divine light but so do we all:
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 by itself, and was revealed through their image.” If they say to you, “Who are you?” say, “We are its children, the chosen of the living father.”89
According to Thomas, Jesus rebukes those who seek access to God elsewhere, even—perhaps especially—those who seek it by trying to “follow Jesus” himself. When certain disciples plead with Jesus to “show us the place where you are, since it is necessary for us to seek it,” he does not bother to answer so misguided a question and redirects the disciples away from themselves toward the light hidden within each person: “There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole universe. If it does not shine, there is darkness.”90 In other words, one either discovers the light within that illuminates “the whole universe” or lives in darkness, within and without.
But discovering the divine light within is more than a matter of being told that it is there, for such vision shatters one’s identity: “When you see your likeness [in a mirror] you are pleased; but when you see your images, which have come into being before you, how much will you have to bear!”91 Instead of self-gratification, one finds the terror of annihilation. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke gives a similar warning about encountering the divine, for “every angel is terrifying.” Giving oneself over to such an encounter, he says, involves terror, as if such an angel would come more fiercely to interrogate you, and rush to seize you blazing like a star, and bend you as if trying to create you, and break you open, out of who you are.92
What “breaks [us] open, out of who [we] are,” shatters the ways in which we ordinarily identify ourselves, by gender, name, ethnic origin, social status. So, Thomas adds, “Jesus said, ‘Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished.”93
Finally Jesus reveals to Thomas that “whoever drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I myself will become that person, and the mysteries shall be revealed to him.”94 This, I believe, is the symbolic meaning of attributing this gospel to Thomas, whose name means “twin.” By encountering the “living Jesus,” as Thomas suggests, one may come to recognize oneself and Jesus as, so to speak, identical twins. In the Book of Thomas the Contender, another ancient book belonging to Syrian Thomas tradition discovered at Nag Hammadi, “the living Jesus” addresses Thomas (and, by implication, the reader) as follows:
Since you are my twin and my true companion, examine yourself, and learn who you are. . . . Since you will be called my [twin], . . . although you do not understand it yet . . . you will be called “the one who knows himself.” For whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously come to know the depth of all things.95
I was amazed when I went back to the Gospel of John after reading Thomas, for Thomas and John clearly draw upon similar language and images, and both, apparently, begin with similar “secret teaching.” But John takes this teaching to mean something so different from Thomas that I wondered whether John could have written his gospel to refute what Thomas teaches. For months I investigated this possibility, and explored the work of other scholars who also have compared these sources, and I was finally convinced that this is what happened. As the scholar Gregory Riley points out, John—and only John—presents a challenging and critical portrait of the disciple he calls “Thomas, the one called Didymus,”96 and, as Riley suggests, it is John who invented the character we call Doubting Thomas, perhaps as a way of caricaturing those who revered a teacher—and a version of Jesus’ teaching—that he regarded as faithless and false. The writer called John may have met Thomas Christians among people he knew in his own city—and may have worried that their teaching would spread to Christian groups elsewhere. John probably knew that certain Jewish groups—as well as many pagans who read and admired Genesis 1—also taught that the “image of God” was within humankind; in any case, John decided to write his own gospel insisting that it is Jesus—and only Jesus—who embodies God’s word, and therefore speaks with divine authority.
Who, then, wrote the Gospel of John? Although we cannot answer this question with certainty, the text itself provides some clues. The author we call John was probably a Jewish follower of Jesus who, various scholars suggest, may hav
e lived in Ephesus or in Antioch, the capital of Syria, and probably wrote toward the end of the first century (c. 90 to 100 C.E.).97 Some scholars suggest that, as a young man, before mid-century, he may have been attracted to the circle gathered around John the Baptist, as was Jesus of Nazareth, who also came to hear John preach, and received baptism from him in the Jordan River, which the Baptist John promised would prepare people for the coming day of divine judgment. At some point—perhaps after King Herod beheaded the Baptist—this other John may have followed Jesus. His account shows his familiarity with Judaea and its local Jewish practices, and includes details which suggest that he traveled with Jesus and his other disciples during their last journey to Jerusalem, as he claims to have done.
The conclusion added by John to the gospel implies that after that time John lived so long that some of Jesus’ followers hoped that the kingdom of God would come during his lifetime, and so that he would never die.98 According to church tradition, John lived as an old man in Ephesus, revered as the spiritual leader of a circle of Jesus’ followers—a passionate, articulate man, educated in Jewish tradition and by no means provincial. Like many other Jews of his time, John was influenced by Greek philosophic and religious ideas. But, if this surmise is true—which I regard as possible, although not likely—his old age must have been a stormy time, for he would have been excluded from his home synagogue and threatened by Roman persecution. Thus John contended not only against hostile outsiders but also with other Jews—including other groups of Jesus’ followers.
From the second century to the present, most Christians have assumed that the author of this gospel was in fact the John who was the brother of James, whom Jesus saw mending nets with their father, Zebedee, and called to himself—one of those who “immediately left the boat and their father, and followed him.”99 In that case, John would be one of the group called “the twelve,” headed by Peter. Yet the gospel itself (and its possibly added conclusion) declares that it was written by “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” If John, the son of Zebedee, was that “beloved disciple,” why does his name never appear in the gospel, and why does the gospel never mention either “the apostles” or “the twelve”? If the author had been one of them, why doesn’t he say so? Why, while acknowledging Peter as a leader, does he simultaneously denigrate Peter’s leadership in favor of the “beloved disciple” and claim that this—otherwise anonymous—disciple’s greater authority ensures the truth of his gospel? Could a fisherman from Galilee have written the elegant, spare, philosophically sophisticated prose of this gospel?