The Gospel of Niggle 2

Last updated on: May 30, 2006 at 5:12 am by Scot McKnight

The Gospel of Niggle 2 2006-05-30T05:12:32-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

2.0 The Orthodoxy of Heresy
Ehrman, who relentlessly tries to unveil the truth about earliest Christianity in order to demonstrate that it was a suppressive machine of power-mongers, commits the very sin he castigates. If the “sin” of the proto-orthodoxy is suppression and intolerance, he aligns himself with their method for he never engages the traditional or even an alternative view of the general thesis in his entire book. Someone has said, and I forget who, that you either have time to write books or read books, but not both. What I haven’t forgotten, though, is that, in commenting on academics not knowing who else is writing about what, Ian Samson said:

most writers are so wrapped up in their own diddlings and dawdlings that it’d take a smack in the face with a piece of unplanned two-by-four to get them to sit up and take notice of the world outside.

After Brutus and Cassa slay Julius Ceasar, Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Brutus, “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” And then he confesses to the depth of his apparent love of Rome: “that as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself when it shall please my country to need my [own] death” (Julius Caesar, 3.22, 43-46). Ehrman, too, think he has to slay the orthodox to save the truth, but to do so he must keep his opponents under lock and key – and there are plenty who argue not only that orthodoxy is early (which Ehrman would agree with) but that it was the majority viewpoint or that it was, after all, what was most accurate about the early faith. I’m thinking especially of Larry Hurtado, Richard Bauckham, and C. FitzSimons Allison. The singular disappointment of Ehrman’s books for me, written always with a measured reserve, is that they never engage the traditional viewpoint or take their arguments into consideration. What we get is a single exposition of a view that very few believe.
Tertullian tells us that Marcion interpreted the Bible, as did Thomas Jefferson, “with a pen knife” (Prescription, 108). If Marcion used a pen knife to cut out what he did not like, both Ehrman and especially Pagels use “glue.” They add and add to what is already accepted as sacred.
So sacred that Pagels embraces the Gnostic vision of reality, calling the orthodox and the heretical “complementary interpretations of God’s presence on earth” that became rivals. She confesses two things that she “cannot love: the tendency to identify Christianity with a single, authorized set of beliefs – however these actually vary from church to church – coupled with the conviction that Christian belief alone offers access to God.” The Nag Hammadi texts, she claims, “are transforming what we know as Christianity.”
I am concerned at this point to emphasize that Pagels’ appeal to the marginalized as a prop to respond to marginalization in our society is not without value. Gnosticism has been embraced by feminist scholars, in part because they find in Gnosticism a similar marginalized voice. I support some of this agenda. What I don’t support about Pagels (and Ehrman) is their theology and history. Copernicus, too, made a discovery; it is of no use to science today to canonize pre-Copernican astronomy as an alternative scientific view.
What Pagels is claiming is the same thing Victorinus asked of Simplicianus who said Victorinus’ conversion meant nothing until he could see him inside a church. To which Victorinus asked, “Is it, then, walls that make a Christian?” Augustine then tells how Victorinus went to church in a “hubbub of delight”(Confessions 8.2.4-5). I am asking to take those real walls and make them metaphorical, and suggest to Pagels that indeed, she may not like it, but it is “walls that make Christians – creedal walls and creedal Christians.” And something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down. She wants those walls down. In effect, she wants to invert Danté’s Sixth Circle in Inferno to the Sixth Circle of Paradise. I am sorry to say this, but she knows she is standing Church history and theology on its head. We must make clear what these two scholars are actually suggesting.
Pagels loves to cite G.Thom. 70: “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.” She observes her central creed: “The strength of this saying is that it does not tell us what to believe but challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves… this perspective [she admits] seemed to me self-evidently true.” And it was also to Rousseau and his innumerable progeny, to use the words of Alan Jacobs. Pagels then connects G.Thom. 70 to Genesis 1:26, in the “image of God,” and argues that in Thomas Jesus “suggests… we have spiritual resources within us precisely because we were made ‘in the image of God’.” I will quote further from her own words: “In other words, one either discovers the light within that illuminates ‘the whole universe’ or lives in darkness, within and without.”
Pagels argues that John’s Gospel is a face-to-face repudiation of the Gnostic understanding of Jesus and, while very few would date G.Thomas that early, her points needs to be understood: she is not contending that Thomas is the original view of Jesus, but an alternative interpretation of Jesus. Again, Thomas and John differ, as she states it: “Thomas’s Jesus directs each disciple to discover the light within …; but John’s Jesus declares instead that ‘I am the light of the world’ and that ‘whoever does not come to me walks in darkness’.” And, “what John rejects as religiously inadequate … is much like the hidden ‘good news’ that Thomas’s gospel proclaims.”
Here is perhaps her most potent claim: “What such people seek, however, is often not a different ‘system of doctrines’ so much as insights or intimations of the divine that validate themselves in experience – what we might call hints and glimpses offered by the luminous epinoia” (spiritual intuition). “Most of us, sooner or later, find that, at critical points in our lives, we must strike out on our own to make a path where none exists. What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions … is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery. Thus they encourage those who endeavor, in Jesus’ words, to ‘seek, and you shall find’.”
C.S. Lewis had words for this sense of creativity in humans: “’Originality’ in the NT is quite plainly the prerogative of God alone… Our whole destiny seems to lie in the opposite direction, in being as little as possible ourselves, in acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed, in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours.” So, Lewis contends, the proper method is not to ask “Is it mine?” but “Is it good?” Augustine said this only slightly differently: speaking of his past, he said: “My sin lay in this, that I sought pleasures, distinctions and truths within myself and in the other objects of your creation; and in doing so I fell headlong into pain, disgrace and error” (Confessions 1.20.31).
Avoiding nuances for the moment, the fundamental weakness of this growing school of thought, which fits comfortably within a general social ill-will against major religious establishments, especially the orthodox ones, is this: it is simply inaccurate to argue that the canon and the Nicene Creed is a singular event, suddenly dropped on unsuspecting church leaders by powerful political leaders with ulterior motives. By permitting, and I see this more in Pagels than Ehrman, the historical facts to fall so neatly into the lap of the orthodox as power-mongers who were embodied politically in Constantine, this revisionist scholarship suggests that what Christians have always believed is actually the thought of only a powerful few rather than the rounded faith of the majority.
Scholarship has offered alternatives to this revisionist historiography. My concern is the issue they raise for us to consider.
Here it is: one either chooses creedal orthodoxy, the faith Vincent of Lérins once described as “ubique, semper, omnibus,” “everywhere, always, by all,” or one chooses a radicalization of Christian diversity with boundaries either knocked down or enormously extended. In the time that remains, I’d like to offer a mild defense of the “orthodoxy of orthodoxy.” In doing so, I am trying to set the table for discussion; I do not pretend to be able to offer a definitive or complete defense. Instead, I propose some observations that can provoke our discussion to explore how we might defend our own orthodoxy.
In fact, I want to suggest that these scholars point out a gaping hole in Evangelical ecclesiology and that together we need to begin to think about how we might best plug that hole.

Theology

Previous Post

May 29, 2006

Rio, Rio!

Next Post

May 30, 2006 The Truth of Wrath

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did Ezekiel cook his food over as a sign of coming judgment?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Stones Wood Cow dung Ashes