I Am Not the Way (and Other “Alternative to the Church” Jesus Wisdom)
One of the stumbling-blocks, of course, is the Christians’ insistence that Jesus was God Incarnate; that the carpenter of Nazareth, the man who wavered over his destiny in the Garden of Gethsemane, was in fact the creator of the cosmos. Even accepting that the gospels are a reasonably accurate account of his sayings, we cannot find that he ever claimed to be God.
—Janet and Stewart Farrar 69
It may come as a surprise to hear a “man of the cloth” say this, but I honestly and truly believe that Jesus would never have claimed to have been the only way to God literally, nor did he think of himself as the only incarnate son of God. I am not for one minute suggesting that these theological texts of John’s Gospel (and elsewhere) are wrong or untruthful but that they are metaphorical We will look at how we might reclaim some of this “literalised metaphor” in a later chapter.
From what we now know of the actual man who walked first-century Palestinian earth, it is simply impossible to imagine him making such extraordinary claims about his own divinity. It is completely out of character. As Baldet points out: “What’s so striking and worth emphasising in these synoptic extracts is that in those sayings that satisfy the criterion of multiple attestation, Jesus never claims a central role for himself in an event or in his teaching. He never presents himself as someone worthy of worship, never as the Son of the Almighty, or as God Incarnate.”70 Borg puts it this way: “Jesus was in all likelihood nonmessianic … His message was not about believing in him. Rather, the pre-Easter Jesus consistently pointed away from himself to God. His message was theocentric, not christocentric—centred in God, not centred in a messianic proclamation about himself.”71
And it’s not just the fact that the earliest and most authentic sayings of Jesus do not have him claiming divinity; it’s his whole style of teaching and what he taught that makes the enormous “I am” statements so historically unlikely. In his teaching Jesus was consistently pointing away from himself, either to God or to his listeners themselves as the place to look for wisdom.72 His parables were wonderfully constructed koan-like-stories which did not give “answers” or produce devotion from his audiences. In fact, he did not even speak with any supposed divine authority. Nolan sees it like this: “Nothing could be more unauthoritative than the parables of Jesus. Their whole purpose is to enable the listener to discover something for himself. They are not illustrations of revealed doctrines; they are works of art which reveal or uncover the truth about life. They awaken faith in the listener so that he can ‘see’ the truth for himself.”73
Jesus simply did not require people to believe in him. He wanted folk to listen to him and make use of his teachings that they might come to know inner freedom and transformation in themselves, not to bow down and worship him or become the so-called “saved” of evangelistic rallies. The subtitle of Robin Meyers’s book is “How to Stop Worshipping Christ and Start Following Jesus.” As I’ve said, it is a gem of a book and is written from the perspective of a progressive Christian leader. One of the most brilliant observations of Meyers is with regard to this contrast between Jesus as Sacrificial Son of God in whom people must simply believe in order to be saved and Jesus as Teacher of Transformative Wisdom, whom folk follow and are changed. Like all such progressive clergy and leaders, Meyers is passionate about Jesus. He oozes with excited admiration for this Galilean master whose sermon on the mount, as the great Gandhi knew, could have literally changed the world if only its teachings were applied and not rejected for Churchianity. Meyers cleverly enlightens his readers to the shocking fact that in the space of a few centuries Christianity changed from being a group of followers of the radical teachings of this nonviolent genius into an institution where the teachings were submerged under weighty doctrines and dogmas. In other words, it stopped being action-based and became belief-centred. It changed from following Jesus to worshipping Christ. Meyers puts it like this: “Consider this: there is not a single word in that sermon [on the mount] about what to believe, only words about what to do. It is a behavioural manifesto, not a propositional one. Yet three centuries later, when the Nicene Creed became the official oath of Christendom, there was not a single word in it about what to do, only words about what to believe.”74
The Gospel of Thomas
Jesus said, “If those who lead you say, ‘See, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.75
—Thomas Saying 3
In a previous chapter I mentioned that certain Jesus scholars now tend to place the Gospel of Thomas alongside the three synoptic Gospels as an equally reliable source. Indeed some have dated its original edition as early at 50–60 ce, which is earlier than the estimated date for Mark, the earliest of the three synoptics. Others believe it is more likely to be early to mid second century, like John’s Gospel. Whatever the actual date, one can’t deny the fact that it paints a very different portrait of Jesus to the heavily divinised later Gospel of John.
One of the most well-respected authorities on the Nag Hammadi library and, in particular, the Gospel of Thomas, is Elaine Pagels. In the second chapter of her remarkable book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, she cross-compares the two Gospels of Thomas and John. She, along with many other Thomas and non-canonical gospel scholars, holds that were Thomas kept and not banned by the early Church, Christianity would have developed into a very different animal than what it is.
No other important early Christian text has caused as much heated debate and disagreement as Thomas. To many it is falsely termed a gospel. Rather it is a short manuscript of Jesus sayings, similar to how many New Testament scholars imagine the hypothetical “Q” document to have looked.76
Unlike the four canonical Gospels, Thomas has no narrative or context for the sayings of Jesus. There are no miracle accounts or Christological titles such as “Christ” or “Son of God.” There are no references to his birth, death, resurrection, or second coming. Dating the document is notoriously difficult. There are, however, some clues. For example, if the Thomas we have today is (basically) the original, it cannot really have been written before 70 ce, for it gives reference to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (which occurred in 70 ce). The majority of scholars would not place it much after the end of the second century because there are references to it within other early third-century Christian writings. However, a certain amount of Jesus scholars actually date it earlier than 70 ce, for they believe that there was an earlier edition which was added to at a later date. Among the reasons for this assertion are two things: The simple (even primitive) style of lists of sayings seems to suggest an earlier method of writing than the more narrative-based Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Thomas looks a lot like what scholars hope to some day discover as “Q,” which clearly preceded the other gospels, for they used it as a source. The other thing is that roughly half of Thomas’s sayings are also found in the canonical gospels, though their order in Thomas is completely independent of the biblical material. This suggests an author not borrowing from narrative-based Gospel stories but, on the contrary, that those authors inserted Jesus sayings into their own narratives, taking them from Thomas or an independent common source.
I’m not concerned here with proving one view or another. Rather I’m excited by the fact that a very early Christian text about Jesus paints a very different portrait of him to the one the Church has taught for almost two thousand years, a portrait which has strong Pagan connotations. This at least proves that, in early centuries, there were a number of ways of viewing Jesus and his role. Over time the Orthodox way became the only official line and wiped out the rest. But thankfully we are now discovering something of this, up until now, previously hidden Jesus.
The Jesus one encounters in Thomas is a spiritual teacher whose words hold the secret to eternal life. Interestingly, the philosophy is very close to that of the non-dualistic Eastern Christianity of Brother John Martin Sahanjananda we looked at in the previous chapter. Knowing oneself and having direct and personal experience of the divine without need of a mediator is where Thomas attempts to lead his readers, and being made aware of and drawn into the “Kingdom” means going beyond all duality. One can easily say that Thomas gives a very different picture of Christianity to that of Christian orthodoxy. It is a mystical and esoteric approach rather than dogmatic and exoteric.
A central teaching in Thomas, and one which is in huge contrast to most of the canonical New Testament is with regard to “finding the inner light.” There has been a constant denominational argument over the New Testament’s apparently mutually exclusive concept of salvation by works as opposed to salvation by grace.77 Thomas is unconcerned with either. Rather, he points to something which on the whole sounds more Buddhist, the way of insight: finding the light within so one can become a light in the world.78
Elaine Pagels talks about her own revelation when reading some of Thomas’s Jesus sayings which point us to what’s within rather than to beliefs about this or that doctrine. She says that Thomas’s Jesus “does not tell us what to believe but challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves; and, with a shock of recognition, I realized that this perspective seemed to me self-evidently true.”79
As I mentioned above, Pagels examines Thomas’s and John’s Gospels together. One striking similarity between them (which sets them apart from the three synoptic Gospels) is their notion of Jesus as “the light.” John’s Gospel contains the highest Christology of any. He presents Jesus as the incarnation of the pre-existent logos (the word of God). On top of this, he is the light of God which comes into this darkened world to illuminate it and bring salvation. We’ve seen Thomas also advocate a strong “light” ethos; however, for him the light is not reserved for Jesus alone, but is found in all things. With reference to this similarity yet distinction between John and Thomas, Pagels says this: “What might have been complementary interpretations of God’s presence on earth became, instead, rival ones; for by claiming that Jesus alone embodies the divine light, John challenges Thomas’s claim that this light might be present in everyone. John’s views, of course, prevailed, and have shaped Christian thought ever since.”80
For John, Jesus points to himself as the light and the way. For Thomas, Jesus points his followers to themselves, to discover the light within and to know their true selves as in some sense divine. This corresponds very closely to the often quoted Pagan phrase “know thyself.” The Gospel of John’s Jesus is not even a human being at all, but a divine presence who takes on a human form. If humans believe in this divine incarnation then they are saved, but if they do not they are damned and will not enter the kingdom of God. But in Thomas, far from setting up an enormous chasm of separation between the human followers of Jesus and Jesus himself, he actually bridges that divide by suggesting that Jesus and his followers are in fact one. Elaine Pagels points out, at a very deep and profound level, that whoever reads the gospel is in fact a twin of Jesus—identical twins. The book claims to be written by “the twin, Didymous Judas Thomas.” Interestingly Thomas is Hebrew for “twin,” and Didymous is Greek for “twin.” This, according to Pagels, is symbolic language. As she explains, “By encountering the ‘living Jesus,’ as Thomas suggests, one may come to recognize oneself and Jesus as, so to speak, identical twins.”81
My own reflection on the distinction between the Gospels of Thomas and John has led me to the conclusion that John’s “Logos” is the Cosmic Christ and not Jesus at all. Rather it is the pre-existent “word” which John sees as manifested in Jesus (but not identical with him). Jesus is the “in time and space” limited human form of the “eternal” unlimited Christ. I believe that the term Christ would never have become such a great difficulty were it not for the fact of being literalized throughout much of Christian history, to the extent that it almost became Jesus the human’s surname. I will come back to this very important notion in a later chapter on the Cosmic Christ.