Gnostic longings.

Beyond Belief

The Secret Gospel of Thomas 

Elaine Pagels

Random House, $24.95, 256 pp.

From the subtitle a reader might expect that Elaine Pagels, whose scholarly work has centered in Gnostic literature, has written a sustained interpretation of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. Wrong: the Gospel of Thomas takes up only part of one chapter. Given the propensities of publishers these days, it is entirely conceivable that "the secret Gospel of Thomas" part of the title was added for commercial appeal. Nothing succeeds in the popular market like secrecy. The main focus of the book, though, is on "Beyond Belief." Pagels continues the project she began with her 1979 book, The Gnostic Gospels. She wants to reclaim for today the rich spirituality offered by alternative forms of early Christianity, especially Gnosticism, that she thinks orthodox Christianity booted away.

She dislikes the form of Christianity in which "being a Christian [is] virtually synonymous with accepting a certain set of beliefs." She doesn't find "faith" satisfying for life's deep problems, especially hers. When she was in a state of grief, she tells us, she found consolation not in belief but in the inclusive community offered by New York's Church of the Heavenly Rest.

Like many before her, then, Pagels seeks to secure her present commitment to a Christianity that is about "experience"--and to some vague extent about "spiritual practices" as well. Such experience is honored in those early expressions of Christianity that, she proposes, were rejected in favor of the canon of Scripture and the rule of faith (or creed). Welcome to another exercise in revisionist history.

To make this sort of thing work, one needs to maintain an absolute dualism: on one side, wonderfully interesting marginal types (interested in spirit stuff), and on the other side, horribly boring ecclesiastical types (interested in suppressive creeds). Pagels tries her best. Each chapter tackles a discrete topic. In "From Agape to the Nicene Creed" she opposes the romantic expressiveness of meals to the staid formalism of belief; in "Gospels in Conflict: John and Thomas," she opposes the inclusive Gospel of Thomas (it's all about the inner me) to the exclusive Gospel of John (you're in or you're out); in "God's Word or Human Words" she sets up the tension between advocates of prophecy and ongoing revelation (Montanus and Priscilla and Gnostics generally) and Irenaeus's fussy insistence on a canon of Scripture. Her fourth and fifth chapters show how Irenaeus first won ecclesiastically ("The Canon of the Truth and the Triumph of John") and then politically ("Constantine and the Catholic Church").

Her historical point is that the good stuff lost out. Her normative point is that Christianity has to claim its inner Kabbalah if it is to appeal to people like Elaine Pagels.

Unfortunately for this stunningly simple argument, the historical evidence does not allow for such simple dichotomies. Against the simple progression from meal to creed suggested by Pagels's first chapter is the fact that both meal and creed developed simultaneously from the birth of Christianity. Yes, the Gospel of Thomas can be read in terms of spiritual transformation, but so can the Gospel of John--indeed, it was demonstrably read that way both by Gnostic interpreters like Heracleon and orthodox interpreters like Origen. Yes, Irenaeus of Lyons was cautious about ongoing revelation and argued the need for boundaries, but Irenaeus also celebrated the continuation of prophecy and spiritual gifts within the churches.

Pagels is, in fact, a good enough historian to know that things don't fall into the neat oppositions that she herself (or someone) has proposed. Although she fudges on the data here (as she famously did in The Gnostic Gospels), she does not distort them altogether. A good example is the figure of Justin Martyr. In her first chapter, Pagels portrays him as a player on the side of the meal and martyrdom, which he certainly was. Only a reader who knows Justin very well indeed, however, would detect how she slights the emphasis put on the creed by Justin, both in his apology and in the account of his martyrdom.

Pagels also avoids easy demonization. Her portrayal of Irenaeus, though certainly superficial, is not entirely unsympathetic. She recognizes that the Gnostic teachers opposed by Irenaeus did in fact scorn the faith of the simple and did tend to form their own conventicles of the elect that threatened the unity of the church.

Even as she wants to advance boldly, therefore, she is required by the evidence to back and fill, leaving the reader with a bewildering combination of affirmation and qualification. At the very end of the book, the boldness has been almost entirely muted. She recognizes that orthodoxy has had the effect of curbing "the notorious capacity for self-deception," and says that we can thank the church for this. At the same time, she worries about the stultifying effect of "unquestioning acceptance of religious authority." She just wants to leave room, it seems, for those "who seek...insights or intimations of the divine that validate themselves in experience." This is all mild enough. Then what were all those sharp oppositions about in the first place?

I can't say what a reader uninitiated in ancient biblical and patristic lore will make of this. I suspect that the packaging will ultimately triumph, and that readers who share Pagels's innate sense that structure is unfortunate and spirit always good will come away from reading this book with that conviction strengthened. This is unfortunate on two counts. The first is that despite her own packaging, I really think that in the end Pagels wants to acknowledge the value as well as the limits of tradition. The second is that while Christianity is certainly in need of the Spirit these days, it does not need the cultivation-of-the-self spirit of narcissism nearly so much as it needs the shaking-the-foundations spirit of prophecy.

If Pagels had aimed for something beyond easy (and by now stereotypical) revisionism, she might have shown how in the best realizations of Christianity the most robust spiritualities have not been replaced by but rather have thrived within the framework of the creed and canon. Alternatively, she might have used her undoubted knowledge of Gnostic texts to provide a full and responsible report of the sort of Christianity they really represent, or indicate how a community without institution, without canon, and without belief, could have provided an enduring framework for the sort of imagination for which she longs.

Such studies would require something more than the delivery of common knowledge in the breathless whisper of new and personal discovery, would demand the full and fair reporting of the evidence within conceptually clear categories rather than the artful weaving of personal narration and false antinomies, would ask of writer and reader alike an intellectual integrity that demands hard thinking and not just the hard sell.

Luke Timothy Johnson is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. His book The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters is forthcoming from Doubleday.