Bruce Chilton, Professor at Bard College in New York, has presented a piece assessing The Gnostic Gospels of Elaine Pagels for the New York Sun. It is a serious, crisp assessment of her work, which he says is full of anachronisms. It is worth reading. Check out this link:
http://www2.nysun.com/pf.php?id=74033&v=0530547021
The core anachronism he describes as follows:
"The argument that "The
Gnostic Gospels" mounts alongside its helpful description, however,
depends upon an anachronism. In discussing each of her topics, Ms.
Pagels attempts to make the case that the motivation for the Catholic
position was to give the clergy greater power, while the Gnostics nobly
pursued their quest of knowledge into historical oblivion, until the
Nag Hammadi collection surfaced again after 1,500 years. Ms. Pagels
sees her essay as a contribution to the relationship between religion
and politics, but for the most part, she leaves out the real power in
the whole equation of the religious history of the period: the Roman
Empire.
Because successive emperors promoted or permitted the persecution of
"atheists" — people such as Christians who refused to acknowledge the
gods of Rome and the divinity of the emperor — both Catholics and
Gnostics were martyred, paying for their convictions with torture and
even death. Although the great majority from both sides managed to find
an accommodation with their Roman masters, enough of them refused to
bend to the will of their persecutors that Catholics and Gnostics alike
had to contend with the question of how much their adherents should put
themselves in harm's way for their beliefs.
Under the circumstances of Roman rule, it is unconvincing,
misleading, and inaccurate to portray Catholics as somehow exercising
power over Gnostics in the period prior to the fourth century. After
Constantine's conversion, of course, Rome's might did back Catholic
Christianity in military and financial, as well as political, terms.
But it is anachronistic to describe the two groups' relationship prior
to that as a power inequality. Both of them were oppressed. They did
argue with one another, and amongst themselves; that was the nature of
theological debate in earliest Christianity, and in the ancient
Mediterranean world as a whole. Moreover, the lines of demarcation and
debate were fluid: Many Catholics claimed access to true gnosis, while
Gnostics claimed their truth was universal. In fact, "Catholic" and
"Gnostic," though convenient terms for grouping differing communities
in retrospect, did not at the time represent mutually exclusive
orientations, as Ms. Pagels herself admits."
Students who wish to be sensitive to the history of the Gnostic gospels have a nice discussion to pursue here.
Thanks for drawing attention to Chilton's review! He did a good job pointing out inconsistencies and anachronisms in Pagels' approach. It was also nice to see his civility in honoring her initial work, despite his sharp disagreement with her. I had also noted the inconsistency that Pagels (and others in her camp) show in trying to compare gnosticism with modern liberalism.
I found two of Chilton's claims surprising: 1) he claims that Paul and some church fathers believed that Jesus' resurrection was spiritual, not physical; and 2) he claims that modern fundamentalism is committed to a gnostic-derived ransom-to-Satan theory of the atonement. That theory does not seem at all common in fundamentalism or evangelicalism, and I have a hard time believing it derived from gnosticism. Didn't it arise within medieval catholicism?
Gary
Gary:
Good observations. The ransom idea, fully developed, is a medieval idea associated with Anselm.
dlb
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