April 29, 2006, Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City, Utah, 2006)
The other night, I finally read “The Gospel of Judas.” If you missed the news, “Judas” is an ancient gospel that was recently unearthed. It is meant to embellish the “official” gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and add to the growing list of Gnostic gospels such as Mary and Thomas.
It is an intriguing read.
For the most part, I agree with the “review” in The New Yorker. In ”The Gospel of Judas” Jesus isn’t as human or as divine as the Jesus we already have. He does say some interesting things, however. He talks about having heavenly parents and says God lives in a fixed location at the center of everything. Those ideas caught my eye. I just didn’t find the Jesus in “Judas” to be very convincing.
Other modern Christians disagree.
What piques their interest about “Judas” is a passage where Jesus says Judas must help him set his inner self free and talks often about light. It’s an old Quaker notion, really; the idea that the light — inner and outer — is the essence of spirituality. Now, others are turning to it.
In the book, “The End of Faith,” author Sam Bass says many modern Christians have grown uncomfortable with their religion. They are searching for a “purer,” less defined version of Christianity. Bass says that only Buddhism today can stand up to the probings of biology, physics and the other sciences. But those new “inner light” Christians would disagree. They are not about to toss Baby Jesus out with the bath water.
In a recent speech at Westminster College, Elaine Pagels — author of “The Gnostic Gospels” — spoke about the “inner light” and showed how abstract thinking about Christ is possible. Brilliant and devout, she seemed to agree with that old Episcopalian, John Updike, who laced his novel “Roger’s Version” with such thoughts. There, Updike says that whenever science touches God, God gets burned. And the only way to keep God out of harm’s way is to say he is a mystery beyond all human understanding. Period.
Pagels and many modern Christians are going that route.
Many traditional Christians never will, of course. Traditionalists view the new-wavers as skittish — as intellectuals trying to feel comfortable in their own skins and sidestep their mocking peers, so they’ve created a “Jesus as the inner light” idea so they can live with themselves.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps, as Updike said of Robert Browning, they are simply trying to save what they can from faith’s ebbing sea.
As for me, I salute the new pioneers. I think pushing into the unknown shows bravery, not cowardice.
But more than the new breed of Gnostics, I admire the stalwarts determined to keep traditional Christianity alive — the ones who hold to the literal divinity of the risen Lord. In the long run, I think they will be the ones to preserve Christianity. As one preacher put it, not many martyrs are willing to be burned at the stake in the name of “an abstract concept of light.”
I agree.
But hold on to your Bibles. Those of us who follow — and practice — religion are in for an interesting ride.