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Belief and the nature of the divine.

Article Excerpt
Review of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels. New York: Random House 2003, 241 pages, notes and index

The subtitle of this intriguing book is somewhat deceptive, in that the Gospel of John is far more central to the book's theme than is the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. However, the two gospels, and the philosophical views embedded in them, form the basis of a debate that still surfaces despite the attempts of orthodox authorities to silence it. This debate centers on the nature of human beings with respect to the divine, the nature of Jesus, human versus divine and the sufficiency of human experience--as opposed to scriptural teachings and dogma--to understand the numinous.

Pagels frames the debate by opening the book with her involvement with the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York, where she found solace and support after doctors discovered her one-and-a-half year old son, Mark, had a rare, invariably fatal disease--pulmonary hypertension. She says of her experience in the wake of this devastating news (pp.4, 5):

I returned often to that church, not looking for faith but because, in the presence of that worship and the people gathered there--and in a smaller group that met on weekdays in the church basement for mutual encouragement--my defenses fell away, exposing storms of grief and hope. In that church I gathered new energy, and resolved, over and over, to face whatever awaited us as constructively as possible for Mark, and for the rest of us.

Ultimately, what awaited her was, tragically, the death of her child. Many people said to her during this tragedy that her faith must have been of great help to her. Ironically, faith was probably the one thing she lacked while coping with her grief. Pagels began as an evangelical Christian, but lost her faith as she studied Christian origins. The faith we call Christian, particularly its doctrine as stated in the form of the Nicene Creed, was established under Constantine in the fourth century. What actually attracted early converts was, according to Pagels, the Christian sense of family and community. She quotes the physician Galen (ca. 130-200 CE), who observed that the Christian response to a devastating plague was to tend the sick, whom most people had abandoned for fear of contagion (in Pagels, pp. 8,9):

[For] the people called Christians ... contempt of death is obvious to us every day, and also their self control in sexual matters.... They also include people who, in self-discipline ... in matters of food and drink, and in their keen pursuit of justice, have attained a level not inferior to that of genuine...