Elaine Pagels Quotes
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The Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible, and the most controversial. Instead of stories and moral teaching, it offers only visions - dreams and nightmares, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, earthquakes, plagues and war.
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The Gospel of Thomas claims to be the secret sayings of Jesus. There are 114 of them, so it says many things, but the central message is that Jesus is the one who reveals the divine light that brought the universe into being, and that you and I also reveal that light.
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I got to thinking about the Book of Revelation that was written by a Jewish prophet who was also a follower of Jesus who hated the Roman Empire. I realized that the Book of Revelation could be a way to reflect on the issue of religion's relationship to politics.
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These ancient stories in religion speak to our desire. But they move us toward hope.
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People who are comfortable with very clear boundaries and group definitions don't like the instability and ambiguity of people who say they are more advanced Christians, or they don't have to do what the bishop says.
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Orthodox theologians insisted that the rest of humankind were only transitory creatures, lost in sin - a view that would support what would become their dominant teaching about salvation, offered only through Christ, and, in particular, through the church they claimed to represent.
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Fundamentalism does mean reading quite conservatively and literally, saying 'the Bible is the word of God and we have to follow it. What it says is this.'
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The Secret Revelation of John opens, again, in crisis. The disciple John, grieving Jesus' death, is walking toward the temple when he meets a Pharisee who mocks him for having been deceived by a false messiah. These taunts echoed John's own fear and doubt.
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Startling as the Gospel of Judas sounds, it amplifies hints we have long read in the Gospels of Mark and John that Jesus knew and even instigated the events of his passion, seeing them as part of a divine plan.
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We use the word 'synoptic' to talk about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it really means 'seeing together,' because they all have a similar perspective. Matthew and Luke - whoever wrote those Gospels - used Mark as a focus and as a basic story. So all of them have a lot in common.
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I just have a sense that, you know, I'm curious about what is religion about, you know? Why do some of us still engage it? It's not because it's a set of old beliefs or old ideas. Or even, particularly, the view that this is the only true religion. Many of us no longer accept those views.
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What survived as orthodox Christianity did so by suppressing and forcibly eliminating a lot of other material.
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I realize that I cannot live without a spiritual dimension in my life.
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Christianity becomes just a set of things you believe in. It's almost an intellectual kind of abstract issue.
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There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole thing.
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What's different about the Gospel of Thomas is that, instead of focusing entirely on who Jesus is and the wonderful works of Jesus, it focuses on how you and I can find the kingdom of God, or life in the presence of God.
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I am enormously susceptible to religious environments - the music, the liturgy and the prayers.
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Throughout the ages, Christians have adapted John of Patmos's visions to changing times, reading their own social, political and religious conflicts into the cosmic war he so powerfully evokes. Yet his Book of Revelation appeals not only to fear and desires for vengeance but also to hope.
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The Gospel of Judas is a kind of protest literature. It's challenging leaders of the church.
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Unlike many deities of the ancient Near East, the God of Israel shared his power with no female divinity, nor was he the divine husband or lover of any.
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About the gnostic writers themselves and the setting in which they lived we know little, although gnostic Christians were influential enough to be denounced at length.
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So often, religion is identified in terms coined by Christianity as sets of belief. But I had the sense that it not only involves practice, but also emotion and levels of our experience that are almost precognitive.
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The sense of a spiritual dimension in life is absolutely important, and the religious communities are also important. The question of believing in a set of creedal statements is a lot less important, because I realize the Christian movement thrived then and can now on other elements of the tradition.
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I have sympathy for anyone who finds consolation anywhere we can. And many people do find it in religious tradition as it has been. I mean, I love much of that tradition. But somehow, that just didn't speak to me in the way that it does to some.