Beyond Belief

By Elaine Pagels

At the center of Beyond Belief is a textual battle between The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of John. While these gospels have many superficial similarities, Pagels demonstrates that John, unlike Thomas, declares that Jesus is equivalent to "God the Father" as identified in the Old Testament. Thomas, in contrast, shares with other supposed secret teachings a belief that Jesus is not God but, rather, is a teacher who seeks to uncover the divine light in all human beings. Pagels then shows how the Gospel of John was used by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon and others to define orthodoxy during the second and third centuries. The secret teachings were literally driven underground, disappearing until the Twentieth Century. As Pagels argues this process "not only impoverished the churches that remained but also impoverished those [Irenaeus] expelled."

Beyond Belief offers a profound framework with which to examine Christian history and contemporary Christian faith, and Pagels renders her scholarship in a highly readable narrative. The one deficiency in Pagels’ examination of Thomas, if there is one, is that she never fully returns in the end to her own struggles with religion that so poignantly open the book. How has the mysticism of the Gnostic Gospels affected her? While she hints that she and others have found new pathways to faith through Thomas, the impact of Pagels’ work on contemporary Christianity may not be understood for years to come.

--Patrick O’Kelley

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Pagels makes clear how choosing the gospel of John over the gospel of Thomas "shaped and limited" Christianity. Thomas directs each person to find the light within, where John says Jesus is "the light of the world' and whoever doesn't come through Jesus has no part of it. Thomas says, "you are from the kingdom and return to it," where John says only Jesus is from God: "you come from below, I come from above." John is saying Jesus is distinctly different than you or me, where Thomas asserts that we can become like Jesus. The book of John is the only gospel to portray Thomas negatively, making him obtuse, "doubting," and rebuking him as "faithless." The whole gospel of John can be seen to refute what the Book of Thomas was trying to represent. After all, Thomas' gospel allowed for a frightening level of individuality and that could be divisive! Thomas teaches that, "recognizing one's affinity with God is the key to the kingdom of God." He encourages us to consider ourselves "children of God" which through John's urging the church has suppressed. John instead offers a simple formula: Jesus loves you, believe in him and be saved. Eliminated is Thomas' urging to become like Jesus. ........

From the review by Polly Castor