Beyond Belief
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82. Glen W. Bowersock offers an excellent survey of these events in “From Emperor to Bishop.”
83. Letter, cited in J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church to A.D. 337 (London, 1957), 358.
84. Eusebius, Vita Constantinae 4.24.
85. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius.
86. Letter of Eusebius of Caesarea to his church, in Socrates’ Historia Ecclesiae 1.8. For a thoughtful and balanced discussion, see Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London, 1987).
87. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, 215.
88. See MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 59–119; see also Stark, Rise of Christianity.
89. See Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley, 1998), for a fascinating example of the persistence of groups that catholic Christians regarded as deviant.
90. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, 213.
91. Erik Peterson, Monotheismus als politisches problem: ein beitrag zur geschichte der politischen theologie im Imperium romanum (Leipzig, 1935), later interpreted by George H. Williams, “Christology and Church-State Relations in the Fourth Century,” in two installments in Church History 20:4 (1951), 3–33, and 20:4 (1951), 3–33.
92. For an incisive discussion of the evidence, see Susannah Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford and New York, 1992).
93. See Philip Rousseau, Pachomius in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978), and his important book Ascetics, Authority, and the Church: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1985); Peter Brown, Society and the Holy (London and New York, 1982), and Power, Politics, and Persuasion; David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism; Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goerhing, The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (Philadelphia, 1980), and The Making of a Church in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, 1985); and Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Anthony: Origenist Theology, Monastic Tradition, and the Making of a Saint (Lund, 1990); see also Richard Valentasis, Spiritual Guides of the Third Century: A Semiotic Study of the Guide-Disciple Relationship in Christianity, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and Gnosticism (Minneapolis, 1991).
94. Athanasius, Festal Letter 39. For discussion, see, for example, Martin Tetz, “Athanasius und die Einheit der Kirche: Zur ökumenisches Bedeutung eines Kirchenväters,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 81 (1984), 205–207; and Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict.”
95. On Athanasius’s use of the term dianoia as the standard for exegesis, see T. E. Pollard, “The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy,” in The John Rylands Library 41 (1958–59), 421–429; as in Athanasius, Or. Contra Ar. 7 (PG 261); also C. Kannengiesser, Arius and Athanasius: Two Alexandrian Theologians (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain, and Brookfield, Vt., 1991).
96. Augustine, On the Incarnation of the Word 6:1; 13.2; 10.3; see also 11.3. God “gives [humanity] a share in His own image, our Lord Jesus Christ, and makes them according to His own image and after His likeness, so that, by such grace perceiving the image, that is, the Word of the Father, they may be able through Him to . . . know their Master and live the happy and blessed life.”
97. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 86; on the advantages of conversion after that time, see “Nonreligious Factors in Conversion,” 52–59; see also Stark, Rise of Christianity.
98. I find persuasive the arguments of Timothy D. Barnes, in Constantine and Eusebius, 208–260; “The Constantinian Reformation,” Crake Lectures, 1982 (Sackville, 1986); and “The Constantinian Settlement,” in Eusebius, Judaism, and Christianity (Detroit, 1992), 655–657.
99. Jacob Burckhardt’s classic book suggests the traditional view; see also Eduard Schwartz, Zur Geschichte des Athanasius (Berlin, 1959), Kaiser Constantin und die christliche Kirche (Leipzig, 1936), and Zeit Constantins des Grosses (Leipzig, 1880).
100. See, for example, Brown, Power and Persuasion; Richard Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1995); Averill Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford, 1991); and Virginia Burrus, “Begotten, Not Made”: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford, 2000).
101. I am grateful to my friend and colleague Heinrich von Staden for raising this point; for discussion of “the dynamics of faith” in terms of Christian theology, see, for example, Paul Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith (New York, 1957). For a Buddhist (and thus nontheistic) view, see Sharon Saltzberg, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience (New York, 2002).
102. Tertullian, Against the Valentinians 4.
103. Peter Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (New York, 1979).
104. Matthew 7:7; note Tertullian’s objections to the way that “heretics” use this saying (much as I have here) in his Prescription Against Heretics 8–13.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is based on research originally presented, for the most part, in scholarly publications (cited in each chapter’s notes) and revised to make it more generally accessible. During the seven years of research and writing and revision, I have consulted with many colleagues and friends, from whom I have learned much. First, I am enormously grateful to those who generously took the time to read the manuscript and to offer corrections and criticism, and I mention in particular Glen Bowersock, Karen King, Helmut Koester, and Alexander Nehamas. And I wish to thank those whose comments and criticism helped improve portions of the work as it was in process, especially Daniel Boyarin, Ismo Dunderberg, Father Thomas Keating, Shaya Isenberg, and Stephen Mitchell, as well as April De Conick, Birger Pearson, Louis Painchaud, John Turner, and Robert McLeod Wilson, who commented on the sources presented in chapter 2; members of the Davis Seminar at Princeton University, where the research presented in chapters 3–5 was first presented, especially Anthony Grafton, who chaired the Seminar in 2001–2002, and to those who participated in it, including Peter Brown, Virginia Burrus, Susanna Elm, Rebecca Lyman, and Raymond van Dam, as well as Harry Attridge, Paula Fredriksen, Michael Stone, and Annette Reed. I owe special thanks to my colleagues John Gager, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schafer, for our collegial conversations and for their willingness to check the accuracy of portions of the manuscript, and to Professor Alain Le Boulluec for his helpful comments on an earlier draft, which enabled me to make needed corrections and qualifications. None of us in the Department of Religion at Princeton could accomplish what we undertake without the kindness and invaluable support of department manager Lorraine Fuhrmann, Pat Bogdziewicz, and Kerry Smith. I owe many thanks, too, to Margaret Appleby, for her intelligent and resourceful research investigations, and for her expert intervention with the computer.
Research and writing for this book were completed when I was a visitor at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, during a year of sabbatical from Princeton University in 2001–2002. I am very grateful to the faculty of that school, and to Giles Constable and Glen Bowersock, who chaired it during the past two years, for their gracious hospitality and for making available to me, as to many others, the serene and collegial environment that the Institute offers. A grant from the Ford Foundation enabled me to take the full year of sabbatical at the Institute; for this I am especially grateful to Constance Buchanan, senior program officer, for the vision, encouragement, and support for which she is well known among our colleagues, and much loved.
There are certain people without whose participation I cannot imagine having written this book. I am very grateful to have worked with Jason Epstein, whose extraordinary gifts as an editor are well known. Over the years, our collaboration and our friendship, with its many conversations, challenges, and marvelous lunches and dinners, has become, for me, an indispensable and enjoyable part of the writing process. John Brockman and Katinka Matson, both longtime friends as well, have contributed to this proj
ect in innumerable ways. I am grateful to Ann Godoff, editor in chief and president of Random House at the time the book was written, for her leadership and enthusiastic support, and to Lynn Nesbit, for her generosity of spirit and her enormously perceptive understanding of publishing. I am very grateful to Kate Medina for graciously taking on this book as editor after that time, and contributing to its production her fine insight and generous encouragement. I wish to thank Will Murphy for his excellent suggestions, and for all he has contributed in the process of production; Meredith Blum and Jessica Kirshner, for their care in arranging many details of publication; Benjamin Dreyer, for his careful, excellent supervision of the copyediting; and Catherine Cooney, for her expertise in helping find the Coptic Fayuum portrait on the cover. I owe special thanks to the Rev. Peter Gomes for his invitation to deliver the Noble Lectures at Harvard University, and for the extraordinarily generous hospitality that he offered—along with his colleague the Rev. Dorothy Austin—as well as his helpful and critical comments, and those of other respondents, including Krister Stendahl and Paula Fredriksen, which certainly have helped improve this book.
The most personal gratitude goes to my husband, Kent Greenawalt, for his willingness to read the manuscript in process, and whose incisive understanding and generous encouragement contributed so much to the process; and to members of our family, whose presence offers so much joy: Sarah, Dave, Robert, Carla, Sasha, Claire, and Andrei.
Finally, I am very grateful to those colleagues who have allowed me to read their work in progress in manuscript form, and mention in particular Karen King’s important new book, What Is Gnosticism?, and her new edition and commentary on The Gospel of Mary; Bart Ehrman’s forthcoming book, Lost Christianities, with his incisive analysis of the sources and their implications; Marvin Meyer’s new book, Secret Gospels; and Daniel Boyarin’s book still, as of this writing, in the process of completion. Having benefited from conversations with Daniel Boyarin about his most recent manuscript, as well as from his earlier publications, I regret that I read Border Lines: The Idea of Orthodoxy and the Partitioning of Judeo Christianity, forthcoming in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania Press, too late to incorporate its insights into this present work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After receiving her doctorate from Harvard University in 1970, Elaine Pagels taught at Barnard College, where she chaired the Department of Religion, and Columbia University. She is currently Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Professor Pagels has participated with other scholars in editing several of the texts from Nag Hammadi and has written several other books, including The Gnostic Gospels; Adam, Eve, and the Serpent; The Origin of Satan; and The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters. The Gnostic Gospels won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award in 1980. In 1981 she was awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
ALSO BY ELAINE PAGELS
The Origin of Satan
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent
The Gnostic Gospels
The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters
The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis
Copyright © 2003 by Elaine Pagels
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., for permission to quote from Meetings with the Archangel, by Stephen Mitchell.
Copyright © 1998 by Stephen Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pagels, Elaine H.
Beyond belief : the secret Gospel of Thomas / Elaine Pagels
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
1. Gospel of Thomas (Coptic Gospel)—Criticism, interpretation, etc.
2. Bible. N.T. John—Criticism, interpretation, etc.
3. Christianity—Essence, genius, nature.–I. Title.
BS2860.T52 P34 2003 229'.8—dc21 2002036840
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-4000-7908-7
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