Believer or Seeker?

For some time I have been reading Elaine Pagels Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. It is one of those books I've been picking up and putting down, but I've finally finished it. As with most non-fiction I generally find something of interest, so now for a few thoughts:

Pagels is a historian of religion and a scholar involved with the study of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. These manuscripts were found in Upper Egypt in 1945 and are sometimes called "the gnostic gospels." They are "outside" the traditionally accepted gospels which form the New Testament, that body of writing accepted as revealed truth by the Christian Church. I am reminded that recently another similar manuscript, "the Gospel of Judas," has been in the news as historians attempt to transcribe it and debate its significance. Beyond Belief is not purely an academic work as Pagels brings much of her own questioning, religious quest and search for a spiritual home into the book. But it is the work of "an academic" with many footnotes detailing rigorous research.

In Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas Pagels paints a picture of the first 400 years of Christianity when it was becoming an established religion. During those years the "orthodox" version of the Christian tradition took hold. The canon for believers and the key statements of faith - the creeds - were formulated. To be a Christian was to be baptised and to believe in certain faith statements, primarily that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, indeed, the incarnate God, the Word of God. During this formative period certain writings - the familiar New Testament including the four gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - were given "the stamp of approval," as it were by the "Fathers of the Church," and others such as the gospels of Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene and so on, were rejected. According to Pagels, even though we just discovered these writings in the 20th Century it does not mean that they were not known in the early centuries. There were many, many ideas then, it was a time of great flux.

Perhaps the main idea that these gnostic gospels such as "The Secret Gospel of Thomas" teach is that the kingdom of God is within each of us, that each person, like Jesus, has the spark of divinity within them and that each of us can directly seek God through our own spiritual intuition.

Pagels states that whether "the Church" (Roman Catholic, Baptist, Anglican or whatever branch of Christianity one belongs to) likes it or not, each generation relives, reinvents and transforms what it receives. But, Pagels is careful to add, we have an enormous human capacity for self-deception, so it would be wise for us to balance our seeking with our believing.

If you think Pagels is another Dan Brown of The DaVinci Code, think again. There is no comparison. Pagels is not out to discredit the early Church or to make it sound as if there was a conspiracy of silence to hide certain documents. There are no demonic cabals and no secret societies. As a woman, one might expect Pagels to rant at the paternalistic nature of the early Church but she is too far above that. She simply recounts how the choices for belief were made and leaves it up to us, her readers, to decide if we can continue as Christians to be both believers and seekers - as I think she herself is, and as I, too, try to be.