Given by Ken Wilson - Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor - www.annarborvineyard.org
Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Dialog with Da Vinci: The Gnostic Gospels (Ken Wilson)
Summary: The Gnostic gospels and how they differ from the New Testament Gospels and why the differences are important.
creation we now want to bring our offerings our ties and our offerings the first fruits of our labor so receive these our gifts as our expression of love for you and our investment in the things that you're doing in the world today through the church give us wisdom and the stewardship of these funds give us your heart as we spend them and we just offer this in the name of love Father Son and Holy Spirit amen we've been encouraging us to find different ways to incorporate scripture in our daily lives we sold out the divine hour sold fifth day of them last weekend we have the book of God available for you though for fourteen dollars it's half price got the publisher's discount so we have a case load of these if you if you've if you're one of those people that you know the Bible's a little bit intimidating think of the book of God Walter Wangren a quite an excellent writer in his own right knowing the knowing the Bible story the Bible inside out imagine him sitting down at a fuck you know at a campfire telling the story of the Bible from Abraham all the way through Jesus in a way it's not a translation of the Bible it's a retelling of the storyline of the Bible it's just a just fabulous it's also available on you know in an online version as well so anyway we're doing a series based on the da Vinci code you know movie in case you went to Mars last year and you've just returned Don Bromley launched the series last weekend at a great job giving us a picture of the New Testament gospels how they were produced how how their reliable rating is compared to any other ancient documents you may recall in the movie block your ears if you don't want the ending ruin that the leading lady turns out to be the offspring of Mary Magdalene and Jesus himself whose marriage is inferred from the Gnostic gospels gnosis meaning knowledge next week we'll be looking at what's up with Mary Magdalene what's up with the sacred feminine so pretty fascinating topics and the final week we'll be talking about the divinity of Jesus but this week we get to talk about the Gnostic gospels themselves what do they say about the world what do they say about God about Jesus about the fix we're in about how to fix the fix we're in all the important questions you know these are the Gnostic gospels upon the screen the gospel of Thomas the gospel of Philip of Mary of truth there's just a whole slew of Gnostic gospels like the Gnostic gospel of Judas was recently discovered issue about it in National Geographic like everything else the scholars have varying opinions about which are truly Gnostic is Saint is the gospel of Thomas truly Gnostic or not indeed whether Gnosticism itself is a viable category but let me just before we launch into this give a little a viewpoint disclosure I'm a lover of the Jesus of the New Testament gospels I have been for 35 years I love them more every year I'm not objective or dispassionate about the Jesus of the New Testament gospels nor do I wish to be objective about Jesus or anyone else I love for that matter but I do value being open-minded I have read some of the Gnostic gospels an excellent little book here by Marvin Meyer the Gnostic gospels of Jesus I have informed myself for your benefit with that great fantastic study of the Gnostic gospel to the complete idiots guide to the Gnostic gospels which is really quite good I thought it was definitely on my level the little reading of the Lane Pagels the scholar who's probably most closely identified with the Gnostic gospels but I'm not an expert in Gnosticism but I am your pastor and and this is my perspective for what it's worth a full-blown Gnostics believed a few things generally first of all the physical world is evil it's not created by God but by some other spiritual beings who were in a sense many steps away from God what's wrong with the world in Gnosticism is the world itself the material world is evil and we need to escape the clutches of the world thirdly Gnosticism generally believes that some of us have a divine spark not all but some of us can discover an eternal divine self within and this secret knowledge this is the gnosis this is the liberating knowledge of the divine within is the key to liberation from what's wrong with the world which is the world itself a little brief history of Gnosticism and the church the early church you understand had many varieties of faith that's clearly evident in the New Testament writings there was not one monolithic Christianity from the very beginning we see in the writings of Paul he's constantly shadowboxing with those who are preaching a different gospel even speaks of at times a different Jesus everybody and his uncle wanted to claim Jesus because Jesus cut quite a swath through the first century you understand and some of these views that are evident even in the earliest time of the New Testament writings seem to share some important traits with what later became full-blown Gnosticism for example there was a group in Corinth on the road to Gnosticism probably they claim special knowledge that these Paul seems to be nipping a Gnostic in the bud with these words from 1 Corinthians 8 we know that we all possess knowledge knowledge puffs up but love builds up the man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know but the one who loves God is known by God this is a response to incipient Gnosticism Gnosticism came into full bloom in the second century for for many centuries virtually all we knew about Gnosticism we knew from the writings of the early opponents of Gnosticism what I called the early church fathers the next generation after the original eyewitnesses and the fathers had had a big argument going with Gnostics because there were Gnostics both outside and within the Jesus community it was a it was a family dispute for many years in fact in 143 AD Vlentinus who was a clear leader of a Gnostic brand Christianity was just a few shorts of way a few short votes away from being elected the Bishop of Rome the Pope we almost had a flat-out Gnostic Pope by this time of course by the second century the Gnostic gospels were probably beginning to circulate Gnostic forms of Christianity downplayed the crucifixion and they redefined generally the resurrection they mainly focused on Jesus as you might expect as a teacher of knowledge of secret knowledge that liberates us in the fourth century of course Christianity hooked its wagon with Constantine and Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and that was the beginning of a real suppression of Gnosticism in the Jesus movement in fact in the 13th century Pope Innocent III maybe ironically named innocent sent an army of 10,000 to wipe out a city of 20,000 because they were harboring a few hundred Gnostics called the Cathars of course this kind of atrocity makes it easier to swallow the thesis of the movie which is essentially that the Gnostics were good and the Orthodox were bad of course most of us are just a mixture of the two important to remember though that the early teachers those early fathers I mentioned earlier who opposed Gnosticism in the early years were not powerful leaders of a privileged institution but they were courageous leaders of a small and harassed movement in fact many of them who opposed Gnosticism actually gave their lives for their faith the Gnostic gospels as we know them now were largely unavailable until 1947 so that's why the big burst of interest in the Gnostic gospels we finally have our hands on some a Mohammed Ali not the boxer was digging for some special fertilizer type dirt near the Nile near a town named Nag Hamabi and his shovel hit something hard it was a clay pot and when he opened the jar like gold dust kind of floated to the surface he knew he was on to something dug it out it was filled with these ancient documents he took them home he put them in the kitchen next to the stove and his mother took some of the papyrus from the from the pots and used it as fuel wow I mean you cannot you cannot even begin to put a price on what she burned up from that fine but fortunately they were not all burned and we have many now of the Gnostic gospels from that fine eventually they were sold they they you know on the kind of the back channel market they finally came into public first academic view they were popularized in 1979 by a book called the Gnostic gospels by Elaine Pagels if you've ever watched public television and some you know story or thing on Jesus especially the origins of Christianity no doubt Elaine Pagels along with NT Wright and others will be interviewed on the show I think she's from Princeton and Elaine Pagels was really quite sympathetic toward the Gnostic gospels really popularized them and she virtually set the table for Dan Brown and his movie so now boom we all know about the Gnostic gospels what did the Gnostic gospels say about Jesus well they said a number of the things that the ordinary regular gospels say some of the sayings of Jesus are the same and for example the gospel of Thomas and Matthew Mark and Luke but there's also some pretty juicy things in the Gnostic gospels like Jesus loved her Mary Magdalene more than all the other disciples and he used to kiss her on her fragment word missing scholars have inserted mouth used to kiss her on her mouth that's all from the gospel of Philip it's about all it says actually the rest is inference about them being married and having offspring but you know you start with a kiss one thing does lead to another but the real difference between the Gnostic gospels and the New Testament gospels goes much deeper than whether Jesus kissed a Mary and where he kissed her the prime difference is the Gnostics believe including the Gnostic writers of the Gnostic gospels that the material world was a big mistake the God had nothing to do with the material world that the divine parent as he was conceived generated various beings spiritual beings emanations if you were will from himself that were progressive devil delusions of the divine called aeons and demi urges who in turn gave birth to other beings in one dominant version of Gnosticism one of these kind of in the line beings is Sophia who really messed up and she kind of released the sinister demi urge into the world and this sinister demi urge was responsible for creating our bad world interesting that the Gnostic view of Mary Magdalene as Jesus lover sounds juicy but sex means a lot less when the body in the material world is is bad now the biggest debatable point at least from my my listening of the of the movie I did those off a couple of times it wasn't quite I was hoping for better honestly but there's an expert in the movie who claims that the Jesus of the Gnostic gospels is a more human Jesus and this I just it was hard for me to understand having read some of the Gnostic gospels and loving the New Testament gospels in the New Testament gospels the world itself is good and God is not afraid to get close to it the world is charged with the grandeur of God it will sign out like shook foil that's Gerard manly Hopkins he's a very very unagnostic perspective and this God who's so in love with the world actually enters the world as a baby and he doesn't simply as the Gnostic thought hitch a temporary ride on Jesus of Nazareth but he's born Jesus of Nazareth the Jesus of the New Testament therefore is both more divine and more human I think than the Gnostic gospels at least by by my read he's pretty dug on human in the New Testament gospels he eats he sleeps he gets tired he gets the only way of saying is he gets irritable at times in the gospels he has a pretty controlling mother that he has to back off so she doesn't ruin his life with her good intentions and plans for her life we all have an understanding of that Jesus in the gospels does his works of power even as a human being this might come as a surprise if you're not familiar with the gospels but Jesus does his healing his miracles not as in a sense the divine son but as the son of man for example Matthew says after Jesus healed the paralytic when the crowd saw it they were all filled with awe and they praised God who had given such authority to human beings who had given such authority to human being so even the wonder working Jesus is doing his wonder working as a human being now we will talk about the divinity of Jesus in two weeks but his divinity is absolutely irrelevant unless he is fully human as the New Testament gospels take pains to portray him I mean his flesh and blood humanity is intrinsically beautiful in the New Testament gospels it's not contemptible which means that God can truly make a beautiful home and garden among humans and that's what he's beginning in Jesus who tabernacled among us according to 1st John in the Gnostic gospels the story of Jesus really isn't all that important compared with the sayings of Jesus mostly the sayings have an obscure kind of quality which is part of the the draw of that secrecy of kind of a mystical secrecy of Gnosticism for example an interpretation of Jesus and the gospel of Philip says those who say the master first died and then arose are wrong for he first arose and then died okay now that's you know that's a twist that's a different perspective on resurrection and you know you're mentally that's that's the appeal of Gnosticism it's like oh wow that sounds secret that sounds obscure I just let me let me go deeper into that I'm gonna be skipping a little stick there for the multimedia team so I'm going to the next thing Jesus in the Gnostic gospels is in the secret knowledge business secrecy is a big thing in Gnosticism Jesus in the New Testament gospels although there is such a thing called the Messianic secret he he for a periods of time he did not openly disclose his Messianic identity but that was primarily strategic in fact Jesus said everything that's whispered in secret will be shouted from the rooftops so what can we learn though from the Gnostics I think this is a very important question to ask what can we learn from the Gnostics you know I did my study on Gnosticism because I knew the movie was coming out I knew it have to address it I really wasn't that interested in Gnosticism but I just found my study of Gnosticism really profitable you understand that God uses so-called heresy he uses heresy I mean God uses mistakes doesn't he uses mistakes in my life he uses mistakes in your life and he uses them often to deepen our understanding you know the Judaizers that was a group in the New Testament era and they said that obedience to the law saves us and even for the Gentiles they had a they were required to obey the Mosaic laws a big dispute in the early church but those Judaizers really didn't they they provoked St. Paul to dig for the treasure of radical grace would he have discovered that treasure if not for his Judaizing brethren in which he was in such conflict see mistaken views are probes are they press issues and they force us to go deeper they reveal in a sense by contrast so what can we learn from Gnosticism well Gnosticism reminds us that we humans crave experience and we will go where we need to go to get us some Gnostics understood this Gnosticism offers a kind of intimacy that's what the secret appeal is it's just like gossip in the office you know you know that there's there's an intimacy isn't there to those secrets that we share one with another the Gnostics were not so much after head knowledge as subjective experience kind of knowing the Gnostics dove in to the subjective realm it was treacherous territory but was filled with treasures as well as traps the inner realm for the Gnostic was a means of escape from the evil material world but for the Christian the inner realm is the place where we meet the God who has come into the world including our inner world to set up a beautiful garden a beautiful home a temple the problem with Gnosticism is not the inward journey their inner experience but it's where we go in there and why we go there by going inward to escape the world we're in danger of escaping the God who came into the world including if we'll have him into our inner world so we can hide from him in here we can hide from him out here but we can also hide from him in here as well but if we're feeling spiritual about our hiding from in him in here we're even less likely to find him so that's really the danger of the Gnostic path now the church you understand has often neglected subjective experience even though Jesus came to dwell among us but also within us if we shut the door as the church has for centuries on subjective inward experience we're just opening the door to Gnosticism because humans crave experience and we'll get it where we can a second thing that Gnosticism teaches us Gnosticism reminds us that we humans need something from our religion in the present beyond just promises for the future and the Gnostics they delivered on that count the Gnostics said you know the resurrection of Jesus which in Jewish context and Jesus was a Jew before he was anything else always meant resurrection from the dead bodily but the Gnostics twisted that and said no the resurrection is a spiritual experience only which means it can be all here all now all the time and we unlock it through this secret knowledge this journey within you know understand that the church for long stretches lapsed into the opposite the manana faith that all the goods come later in heaven after we die here and now just don't expect much from God keep your expectations low and you won't be disappointed if it be thy will oh God heal so and so the New Testament Jesus says well no the kingdom is both already and not yet but he had a leaning to bring as much of the kingdom as soon as possible and he wants us to have the same lead feed the hungry heal the sick preach the gospel to the poor work for social justice now there's an urgency about the kingdom with Jesus because it is already and it's coming rushing toward us from the future but third Gnosticism reminds us that something's profoundly wrong that we do need liberating from you know the Gnostics said what's wrong with the world is the world itself and we need to escape it through secret knowledge of the spirit but let's be kind to the Gnostics many Christians comparatively close to that view many charismatic Christians and I am one comparatively close to that view often secret knowledge you need to know this you need to know that you need to you know you know deliver yourself from all the curses of all the bloodlines and all the complicated charismatic you know secret knowledge that we have sometimes it's very very Gnostic in its flavoring sometimes let's be kind toward the Gnostics we dabble in Gnosticism at least Gnosticism says it all flat out at least Gnosticism has the courage to admit something's deeply wrong that a good education can't fix now Christianity authentic Christianity says what's wrong with the world is broken relationship something went wrong long ago our hearts hardened toward God and it affected all of humanity and our hearts have to turn back to him so we he came in human form to turn our hearts back to him and toward one another people give Saint Paul a hard time he's got some oddities I'll admit but Paul had some very deep knowledge he writes in Ephesians 4 now this I affirm and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do they are darkened in their understanding alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart they've become callous and have given themselves over to licentiousness greedy to practice every kind of unclear you did not so learn Christ he's juxtapose he's putting together three different ideas here ignorance hardness of heart and then immoral behavior giving yourself over to uncleanness now the Gnostic said yes ignorance is the core problem it's solved by gnosis by knowledge sometimes the church has gone off to the other side wrongly and said no immoral behavior is the core problem shape up and you'll be saved the Gnostics though they knew immoral behavior wasn't the core problem they mostly ignore immorality which is part of their appeal the Gnostics appeal to those who grew up often on moralistic religion and found it exhausting and so the Gnostic success is often a reflection of the church's failure but Paul is taking a third path ignorance is a problem to Paul but it's due to hardness of heart ignorance is not the core problem gnosis is not the core solution immorality is not the core problem either it's a symptom the core breakdown is relational hardness of heart is the deepest wound in the human we turn our hearts away from each other away from God and in the process we turn our hearts away from ourselves and we become fractured within you know there's just some phenomenal studies of married couples which ones make it and which ones don't and this is really solid data the interviews with couples videotaping couples I mean it's really solid stuff and one of the surprising findings is that married couple that is in hot anger with one another hotly contested issues power struggle there on each other all the time they're not so much in danger of divorce as those who turn their hearts off to each other and are in a cool distant place and the psychologists have a videotaped couple after couple after couple tracked them over many years which ones maintain their marriage which were divorced and they're and if you are train yourself a psychologist can sit who's trained in this methodology can sit down with a married couple talk with them for five to ten minutes and predict within an accuracy I think of eighty five percent whether they will remain married or divorced for the next five years because they're trained to look for hardness of heart contempt in the language facial expression all that stuff its hardness of heart that's the core breakdown see the revelate the unique revelation of the of the New Testament gospels is not knowledge it's Jesus revealing a relational God God the Father God the Son God the Holy Spirit God is love God is irreducible relationship Jesus at his baptism reveals this he comes into the waters of baptism and solidarity with broken humanity and while he's there the spirit alights on him like a dove there's an overshadowing cloud and there's a voice from the cloud it's not the voice of the spirit it's the voice of the father this is my beloved son in whom my soul delights were in love with each other and there you have the gospel in picture form Jesus taking our place the divine son in love with the father the spirit lighting on them it's all this just beautiful relational love going on right there in that moment hardness of heart is the violation of that immorality of course too but it's caused by hardness of heart ignorance is not the main is hardness of heart in Oprah speak every sinner has intimacy issues every sinner has intimacy issues when Paul goes on to say how then shall we live notice it's all relational he's talking about sin now but it's stop lying to each other instead speak the truth in love to one another be angry but don't sin don't let the son go down on your anger let the thief steal no longer why but let him do honest work so he can share with those in need let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what bills each other up and don't breathe the spirit don't offend relationally this it's all relational you know today is Pentecost we can celebrate it is isn't it yeah it's something absolutely clear but I know it was the tension on Thursday so I'm pretty sure it's Pentecost today and Pentecost is when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit Ezekiel the Prophet said I will put a new spirit in them I will remove from them what their heart of stone their heart of sin their heart of stone and I will give to them a heart of flesh that a heart of spirit a heart of flesh that's what the spirit will do will soften our hearts it's all the language of relationship to the best answer to Gnosticism is not a knowledge driven I know better than you scathing criticism of Gnosticism but it's an incarnational fully human love soaked Christianity God uses heresy he's a God who uses mistakes to deepen our understanding heresy reveals by contrast proof proof positive Elaine Pagels Elaine Pagels is the author most connected with Gnosticism in the academic world and the popular understanding and on public TV where it really comes she wrote the Gnostic Gospels Elaine Pagels you know in the Gnostic Gospels she's extremely sympathetic toward the Gnostic Gospels I mean she loves the Gnostic Gospels she's making the case for Thomas being earlier than the other gospels and all sorts of things but the woman understands Orthodox Christianity better than many Orthodox Christians listen to this in her conclusion Orthodox Christianity on the other hand articulated a different kind of experience than Buddhism or Gnosticism Orthodox Christians were concerned far more than Gnostics with relationships with other people if Gnostics insisted that humanity's original experience of evil involved internal emotional distress very appealing to us modern the Orthodox assented they explained that humanity discovered evil in the human violation of the natural order itself essentially good the Orthodox interpreted evil primarily in terms of violence toward others Orthodox Christians affirm the natural order earth planes desert seas mountain stars and trees form an appropriate home for humanity I mean the songs that we're singing are not Gnostic songs let the heavens rejoice let the earth clap their hands let the seas rejoice let the let the trees be glad I mean it's that the creation the material creation is is worshiping God in our songs as part of that good that was me not Elaine as you could have seen as part of that good creation the Orthodox recognized the processes of human biology why is the church at war with modern science why is it the church at war with biology they tended to trust and affirm sexuality at least in marriage procreation and human development the Orthodox Christians saw Christ not as the one who leads souls out of his world into enlightenment as many so-called Orthodox Christians do but as fullness of God come down into human experience bodily experience to sacralize it to make it holy to make it sacred yeah the Orthodox Christianity is not defensive power mongering self righteous witch-hunting head knowledge driven world escaping Christianity it's it's caught up in the mystery of the relational God love so God's good earth flesh and blood affirming Christianity and expert in Gnosticism sees that better than many Orthodox Christians i.e. Elaine Pagels Pentecost is also the birthday of that flesh and blood incarnational enterprise called the church the church being an expression of in history and time and extension of the New Testament Jesus again Pagels is our guide while the Gnostic saw himself as one out of a thousand two out of ten thousand just a standard Gnostic view the Orthodox experienced himself is one member of the common human family and is one member of the universal church according to professor helmet this German i know it's ku kushju i know it's not keester that much i know the test of orthodoxy is whether it is able to build a church rather than a club or school or sect or merely a series of concerned religious individuals most Orthodox Christians don't have that view of the church what is Pentecost Pentecost is the Holy Spirit unalloyed divine fire come down to land on us oh so struggling oh so broken oh so alienated confused frightened disconnected from God and one another and ourselves flesh and blood variety cells and he comes to land on us directly on Pentecost directly directly the spirit comes there's no intermediaries there's no emanations from the distant god divine parent divinely deluded progressively corrupt but flat out sheer uh inducing holiness touching touching touching us directly that's Pentecost divine fire on fragile failing falling to the earth from which it came rose of humanity that's Pentecost and the test of this and there is a test and we're in it right now the test of this is not what can any one of us achieve in terms of spirituality and can we feel the fire and can we feel the electricity and can we shake and if all the manifestations many of which I enjoy myself that's not the test the test is what will we become together what will we become together we are the test the church is the test happy pentecost uh slalen the uptake band that was like a cue time to come back up here yeah yeah we're just like not quite as smooth as we think we are sometimes you know okay to calm down just a moment let's stand for the communion for I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you that the Lord Jesus and the night he was betrayed to bread