Horizons Bible Study 2016-1027
Who is Jesus? What a Difference a Lens Makes
Lesson 7: The non-canonical Gospels
When we wonder about how certain writings became part of the New Testament, I think about what is treasured. There are things handed down to us that we cherish and want to pass on to our children. It might be a family Bible that lists all the marriages and births for four generations or letters from Dad to Mom during World War II.
The letters of Paul were the first writings to be treasured by the early Christian community. The letters were kept, copied and passed on to other churches. Paul often addressed problems in the church. Yet his letters were also highly valued because of Paul’s passionate experience of knowing Jesus as risen from death and guiding us now in the present. Paul and the early church experienced the power of Jesus directly through visions, inspired speech, the ability to heal the sick and deep generosity. Paul’s letters were not about a Jewish teacher who was dead and gone, but about Jesus who was alive and guiding his followers in the present.
In daily life, the early Christian communities shared prayer, studied the Hebrew Scriptures and shared the testimony of the early disciples. As the original eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances died, various Gospels were written as testimony to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Besides Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, other Gospels and letters circulated that told accounts of Jesus’ childhood, Jesus’ teachings and of Jesus’ mother’s purity.
Some of these writings contained views of Jesus that were rejected. There was not an organized process by which letters and gospels were evaluated. In retrospect, there seems to have been several criteria by which some writings became authoritative for the church:
Did the writing square with what was known of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the witness to God in the Old Testament? Did the writing read more like a superhero from Greek mythology, denying the suffering of Jesus? Or conversely, was Jesus’ relationship as God’s Son omitted? Was the account written by an early disciple of Jesus who knew Jesus? Had the churches found the writings useful for life and faith?
A crisis in the mid-second century forced the church to make some decisions. Marcion was a member of the Christian community in Rome. He believed that there were different gods. Daniel J. Harrington explained Marcion’s views in “The New Interpreter’s Bible,” saying Jesus was “the messenger of the Supreme God of goodness. This God was to be distinguished from the inferior God of justice, the creator and God of the Jews.” Marcion rejected all the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, including only Luke and the letters of Paul as important documents. However, the church in Rome was unwilling to exclude Christianity’s foundation in Judaism and Hebrew Scriptures.
While Marcion wanted to eliminate major portions of Scripture, the Gospel of Thomas added to the teachings of Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas has sayings unlike any in the New Testament. One saying attributed to Jesus was, “The Kingdom is inside you, and outside you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will see that it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.”
According to Elaine Pagels in “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas,” the Gospel of Thomas purports that the light of God and the image of God is within every person. Therefore, Thomas asserts that we have direct access to God through the divine image in ourselves. We believe that we are made in the image of God, but we also confess that we cannot truly know ourselves or God without God’s intervention.
The Apostle Paul adamantly rejects a self-help gospel. Through our own efforts we cannot turn away from sin. God sent the son into the world to break the power of sin. The Gospel of John emphases that only through the son do we have access to the divine father. Indeed, John may have been written, in part, to refute Thomas Christians.
What we include or exclude in our study of Scripture, in part, determines how we understand God and Jesus. For instance, if we never study the Old Testament in its fullness, we may believe the Old Testament reveals a “lesser” God of wrath and violence. If we don’t read Scripture regularly, we tend to shrink God into our societal norms, political party or family values. However, when we do engage thoughtfully and prayerfully with Scripture, we can experience a living Word, the voice of Christ speaking to us, like countless Christians before us.
Rosalind Banbury is associate pastor for adult ministries at First Church in Richmond, Virginia.
