2.0 The Orthodoxy of Heresy
\nEhrman, 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 \u201csin\u201d 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\u2019t forgotten, though, is that, in commenting on academics not knowing who else is writing about what, Ian Samson said:<\/p>\n
most writers are so wrapped up in their own diddlings and dawdlings that it\u2019d 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After Brutus and Cassa slay Julius Ceasar, Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Brutus, \u201cnot that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.\u201d And then he confesses to the depth of his apparent love of Rome: \u201cthat 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\u201d (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 \u2013 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\u2019m 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.
\nTertullian tells us that Marcion interpreted the Bible, as did Thomas Jefferson, \u201cwith a pen knife\u201d (Prescription, 108). If Marcion used a pen knife to cut out what he did not like, both Ehrman and especially Pagels use \u201cglue.\u201d They add and add to what is already accepted as sacred.
\nSo sacred that Pagels embraces the Gnostic vision of reality, calling the orthodox and the heretical \u201ccomplementary interpretations of God\u2019s presence on earth\u201d that became rivals. She confesses two things that she \u201ccannot love: the tendency to identify Christianity with a single, authorized set of beliefs \u2013 however these actually vary from church to church \u2013 coupled with the conviction that Christian belief alone offers access to God.\u201d The Nag Hammadi texts, she claims, \u201care transforming what we know as Christianity.\u201d
\nI am concerned at this point to emphasize that Pagels\u2019 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\u2019t 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.
\nWhat Pagels is claiming is the same thing Victorinus asked of Simplicianus who said Victorinus\u2019 conversion meant nothing until he could see him inside a church. To which Victorinus asked, \u201cIs it, then, walls that make a Christian?\u201d Augustine then tells how Victorinus went to church in a \u201chubbub of delight\u201d(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 \u201cwalls that make Christians \u2013 creedal walls and creedal Christians.\u201d And something there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall, that wants it down. She wants those walls down. In effect, she wants to invert Dant\u00e9\u2019s Sixth Circle in Inferno <\/em>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.
\nPagels loves to cite G.Thom. 70: \u201cJesus said, \u2018If 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.\u201d She observes her central creed: \u201cThe strength of this saying is that it does not tell us what to believe but challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves\u2026 this perspective [she admits] seemed to me self-evidently true.\u201d 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 \u201cimage of God,\u201d and argues that in Thomas Jesus \u201csuggests\u2026 we have spiritual resources within us precisely because we were made \u2018in the image of God\u2019.\u201d I will quote further from her own words: \u201cIn other words, one either discovers the light within that illuminates \u2018the whole universe\u2019 or lives in darkness, within and without.\u201d
\nPagels argues that John\u2019s 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: \u201cThomas\u2019s Jesus directs each disciple to discover the light within \u2026; but John\u2019s Jesus declares instead that \u2018I am the light of the world\u2019 and that \u2018whoever does not come to me walks in darkness\u2019.\u201d And, \u201cwhat John rejects as religiously inadequate \u2026 is much like the hidden \u2018good news\u2019 that Thomas\u2019s gospel proclaims.\u201d
\nHere is perhaps her most potent claim: \u201cWhat such people seek, however, is often not a different \u2018system of doctrines\u2019 so much as insights or intimations of the divine that validate themselves in experience \u2013 what we might call hints and glimpses offered by the luminous epinoia\u201d (spiritual intuition). \u201cMost 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 \u2026 is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery. Thus they encourage those who endeavor, in Jesus\u2019 words, to \u2018seek, and you shall find\u2019.\u201d
\nC.S. Lewis had words for this sense of creativity in humans: \u201c\u2019Originality\u2019 in the NT is quite plainly the prerogative of God alone\u2026 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.\u201d So, Lewis contends, the proper method is not to ask \u201cIs it mine?\u201d but \u201cIs it good?\u201d Augustine said this only slightly differently: speaking of his past, he said: \u201cMy 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\u201d (Confessions <\/em>1.20.31).
\nAvoiding 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.
\nScholarship has offered alternatives to this revisionist historiography. My concern is the issue they raise for us to consider.
\nHere it is: one either chooses creedal orthodoxy, the faith Vincent of L\u00e9rins once described as \u201cubique, semper, omnibus,\u201d \u201ceverywhere, always, by all,\u201d or one chooses a radicalization of Christian diversity with boundaries either knocked down or enormously extended. In the time that remains, I\u2019d like to offer a mild defense of the \u201corthodoxy of orthodoxy.\u201d 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.
\nIn 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 \u201csin\u201d of the proto-orthodoxy is suppression and intolerance, he aligns himself with their method for he never engages the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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