More on the “Gospel of Judas” (my previous post here) from Richard John Neuhaus at First Things today:

Christians will be surprised, we are assured by the New York Times, that there are more than four gospels, and I suppose Christians who know little about the origins of Christianity will be surprised. The National Geographic Society disgraced itself by puffing this latest discovery. Elaine Pagels of Princeton, an advisor to NGS who has for years been touting sundry gnostic gospels, wrote an op-ed in the Times saying that the latest discovery will make her Easter ever so much more mysterious.

There is nothing at all mysterious about people who want a designer Christianity tailored to their own predilections. That’s how we got all those deviant Christianities in the first place. The apostles and their successors in episcopal office spent the first several centuries sorting through the various writings and teachings to establish what became orthodox faith and the canon of the New Testament.

According to Pagels and others, the apostolic community to which Jesus promised the guidance of the Holy Spirit was dominated by power-hungry masters of the patriarchy who were determined to deprive people of delicious variations by labeling them as heresies.

And further:

The gnostic pseudo-gospels and related texts purport to be for the “knowers” who are equipped to deal with the “secret sayings” of Jesus and other matters unfit for the great unwashed. In his book The American Religion, Harold Bloom contends that most Americans are gnostics at heart, believing that they possess a “divine spark” that is spiritually serviced by whatever “works for me.” There is more than a little to that. It results in religions, typically called Christian, ever so much less interesting than Christianity.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• The Gospel of Judas
• Good Friday
• Salvation