Biblical & Theological Issues

by Darrell L. Bock –

The recent works from Nag Hammadi are full of fascinating ideas. These so-called missing gospels have had a growing impact on Jesus studies and the history of early Christianity. This is only right because these texts possess the teachings of a series of movements counter to traditional Christianity written by those who promoted these views.

No group has worked more tirelessly to promote the significance of these missing gospels than the new school generated by Walter Bauer. A host of professors teaching religion classes in North American universities write frequently about the topic, some claiming that these important new historical texts require a rewriting of early Christian history. The new school believes it is time for the losers in the great theological debate of the early centuries of the Common Era to be heard and gain their due.

In my The Missing Gospels I gave people a chance to see these writings up close. Many passages were cited so that one could appreciate the scope and variety of what was taught. We looked at the first two centuries so that the emphases, similarities, and differences could be exposed. What do these traditional and the alternative works tell us about history and the new school? This essay summarizes those results.

The Contributions and the Limitations of New School Claims

The Contributions ————

Our new sources are worthy of the energy the new school gives them. The new school has made four important contributions to early Christian study:
1. They attest to alternative expressions of Christian claims in the second century that historically affected the emergence of a carefully defined orthodoxy of the third and fourth centuries. The alternatives also reveal a variety of beliefs, most of which were attempts to make Christianity more philosophically acceptable in a Greco-Roman religious environment where gods contended with each other and the dead did not rise.
2. The new school has shown the complexity of the second- and third-century religious environment by highlighting its polemical context. It has examined the church fathers’ works in a critical manner and pointed out many places where polemics pushed them to make erroneous claims or associations.
3. It has made us sensitive to the fact that Christianity was expressed with differing levels of diversity in different regions of the world in that time.
4. The new school also has forced historians to wrestle with the question of what the church was like and how Christians made the case for their identity in the period before the widespread use of what we now call the New Testament. The sense that the church had a recognizable collection of sacred books does not clearly emerge until the late second century. Many of these texts, such as the key Pauline letters, 1 Peter, 1 John, the four Gospels, and Acts, had influence in the areas where they were sent, but their work together as a unit influenced the church more and more as the third century arrived. All of these things are gains for the study of early Christian history.

The Limitations of the New School and the Nature of Early Orthodoxy————

The new school, however, suffers from a zeal for the new that has produced distorted claims. These distortions often work from a true historical point but then exaggerate
its significance by ignoring other features in the historical equation. There are three major problems in their analysis. The result is that the benefits of the new school are limited and its most extensive claims are not historically sustainable.

Problem 1. The value of the tradition contained in its early writings as evidenced in its small teaching units is ignored or undervalued. Also undervalued is the evidence
for the traditional sources still being our best connection to the Christian faith’s earliest years. Ironically, by focusing on the issue of the recognition of the Canon and the lateness of recognition for the sacred text, the evidence for traditional views within those texts in these teaching units is largely ignored. This evidence represents more than simply reflecting the presence of one alternative from the early centuries.

Here is how the distortion is produced. From a perspective that emphasizes variety in the early church and that no sacred text collection was in place, the deduction is
made that neither side had the right or the ability to claim authority for its views. Earliest Christianity is said to be diverse, and that is what it should have been. No one group had the right to make claims of truth or to throw its theological weight around. One of Pagels’s chapter titles in Beyond Belief nicely puts it in the form of a question: “God’s Word or Human Words?” Here the implication is that all religious ideas are the product of humanity and have equal merit.

In fact, Pagels tries to blunt the association of the Gospels with the earliest period. She claims that we do not know who wrote the four Gospels. They were merely attributed to apostles, much as the alternative works were.² Ehrman starts his book with the same point about attributed authorship, calling them forgeries.³ First and second-century traditionalists and those of the alternative school made such claims and used such allegedly early texts. It is as if stating the point about forgeries and uncertain authors, which is itself contested, puts an end to the value of pursuing a search for the roots. Never mind that many scholars think we know who wrote all these works or most of them. And above all do not take stock of the apostolic line of tradition that stood behind most of the first-century works, which is what made them important to the early church. Ignore the fact that the authors named, except for John, were not prominent in their own light and thus were not the best candidates to be picked out of a hat to represent a claim of authority. It is more likely that the tradition named them, because they were the authors who did have apostolic connections.

Pagels is right that scholars debate these points about authorship, but the case that the Gospels are rooted in apostolic connections either directly by authorship or by apostolic association is far greater for the four Gospels than for any of the other alternative gospels, a point the new school often leaves unmentioned. Conservative scholars in general will contend that two of the New Testament gospels come from apostles (Matthew and John) and two from those who were in close association with them (Mark with Peter, Luke with several of them and Paul). Some even tackle the claims of forgery in detail.⁴

No such potentially plausible claim has ever been made for the alternative texts. The closest one can come involves the more ambiguous text of Thomas, but the claim’s success depends on a very early date for Thomas, which is suspect.⁵ More moderate scholars, like Dunn and Hengel, hold to a more indirect line back to apostolic teaching, through communities that Matthew and John influenced. The result of even such indirect claims is still important historically. Hengel has made this argument in detail, pointing out along the way that the special formula that names a gospel was imitated by later writers of the apocryphal gospels to give their works an appearance of apostolic claim.⁶ The Gospels we have in the fourfold collection have a line of connection to the earliest days and figures of the Christian faith that the alternative texts do not possess. Those associations, whether direct as conservatives claim or more indirect as moderates claim, are stronger for these works while they are nonexistent for the alternative gospels. The only way to deny this is to argue that the apostolic circle really never existed, never had solid ties to Jesus, and never had authority derived from him. This is historically implausible.

The ancient texts reveal this connection. Doctrinal summaries appear in the earliest writings we have. Clement, writing in AD 95, stated the connection this way:

The apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus
the Christ was sent forth from God. So Christ is from God, and the apostles
are from Christ. Both, therefore, came of the will of God in good order. Having
therefore received their orders and being fully assured by the resurrection
of our Lord Jesus Christ and full of faith in the Word of God, they went forth
with the firm assurance that the Holy Spirit gives, preaching the good news
that the kingdom of God was about to come. (1 Clement 42:1–3)

What counted for Clement was that the tradition genuinely reflected Jesus and apostolic teaching. One could argue that such a claim for an exclusive apostolic connection cannot be made because we have only a limited sample of texts that existed. This point is true enough. So how do we work with this fact? Given the nature of our textual pool, three options exist:

1. The reason we have no evidence for early diversity is that the early faith actually was not so diverse. Most opponents in the earliest works are troublesome blips on the screen. They did not have any real staying power, nor did they exist in meaningful enough numbers to last. They faded away, never becoming established as credible alternatives. Other more powerful alternatives emerged later. If that were the case, we would see a sudden emergence of alternative texts in the second century, which is really when they emerged. Then the long-held idea that the tradition was first and the alternatives came later holds.
2. Any diversity that did exist, if it were really rooted in the early period, would have left traces of its core later as well. My work has assumed this model and has concentrated on the Gnostic movement that obviously was the biggest threat to traditionalists in the second century. Our contention would be that what we have in the alternative perspective of the second century would be close to what existed earlier, if it existed at all. So the examination of later texts can show the tendencies that also may well be hinted at but not fleshed out in the earlier texts we have. However, the flip side of this option is that if the later texts reflect earlier realities, then the differences they show and the subsequent reactions to them as well would have been early, producing the reaction early on as the early texts we have also suggest.
3. Diversity existed, but we do not have any texts that give real evidence for what it was. This could be true, given that our text pool is partial. However, if this is so, then no one can say anything about this early diversity because it is an argument from silence that cannot be proved or disproved. If this diversity took place and was significant and early, then we need to explain the content of the texts we have. Why is there not more early trace of such diversity?

If there were diversity early and it was as neutral in terms of authority as the new school claims, that neutrality cannot be found in the Nag Hammadi texts, which are often
claimed as evidence for this neutral diversity. The teaching of those missing gospels—or better, the ideas reflected in these later texts—produced a negative reaction virtually from the start of our textual record.

I cannot claim to have proved that there were no significant movements that precluded a significant diversity in Christian claims early on. Yet I do think I have shown that this was much less likely than the new school claims. In particular, the Nag Hammadi texts cannot be used as positive evidence of this claim. I can claim historically that traditional materials possess the best pedigree of any of our early sources.

Problem 2. The new school errs in failing to see that certain ideas in the new texts were important bones of contention virtually from the start. In making this observation I do not appeal to claims of revelation or to highlight the Gospels or the New Testament as sacred text. I simply examined historical differences in terms of ideas, an examination of two centuries or more worth of texts used on each side of the dispute.

These texts together show how key similarities and differences related to the four topics we covered. Those ideas formed the identity of the traditional and the alternative
movements. So what existed and emerged in the time before Irenaeus was a spectrum of beliefs. However—and this is the key point—along that spectrum existed points of
demarcation, separating the views from each other. Most works of the period reflect this difference in thought. These differences rotated around four areas: the view of God, the view of Jesus, the nature of salvation, and Jesus’ work. Significant difference in any one of these areas (not necessarily all four of them, as some want to insist before questioning a work) provoked traditionalist reaction. A look at these themes show enough unanimity of traditionalist belief that, for them, these ideas were the
core of Christianity.

The core can be viewed as this: There was one Creator God. Jesus was both human and divine; He truly suffered and was raised bodily. He also is worthy to receive worship. Salvation was about liberation from hostile forces, but it also was about sin and forgiveness—the need to fix a flaw in humanity that made each person culpable before the Creator. This salvation was the realization of promises that God made to the world and to Israel through Israel’s Law and Prophets. The one person, Jesus Christ, brought this salvation not only by revealing the way to God and making reconciliation but also by providing for that way through His death for sin. Resurrection into a new exalted spiritual life involves salvation of the entire person—spirit, soul, and body. Faith in this work of God through Jesus saves and brings on a spiritual life that will never end. This was the orthodoxy of the earliest tradition. These ideas consistently appeared in their texts.

This belief comes very early in the movement, a point that cannot be doubted. Our historical sources date these ideas to the mid-first century as they contend that
they reflect what Jesus taught.⁷ Evidence that Jesus taught such things is found especially in the community’s earliest innovative worship practices. They proclaim Jesus Christ, the Savior, to be worthy of worship. They affirm such worship through the Lord’s Supper, hymns, and theological summaries. These elements of worship and the teaching summaries that affirmed them are important historical pieces of evidence for how the core tradition was taught and passed on.

This orthodoxy can also be stated in terms of what was to be excluded and included: (1) God was not to be divided in such a way that He was not the Creator. God was a Creator of all things, and that initial creation was good. (2) A division between Jesus and the Christ in terms of His basic person and work was not acceptable. Orthodoxy was that Jesus came truly in the flesh and truly suffered. (3) Redemption only on a spiritual plane was not the true faith. Salvation included a physical dimension of resurrection and extended into the material creation. (4) Jesus did not come only to point the way to faith, to be a prophet, merely a teacher of religious wisdom, nor to be a mere example of religious faith. Rather, His work provided the means to salvation. Jesus was more than a prophet, which is why He was worshipped.

Traditional circles viewed with deep suspicion teaching that faltered on any one of these four points. One could teach without mentioning these issues, but to deviate in any of these four areas would raise questions.

In another work that concentrates on the first century, Arland Hultgren composed a list of six elements that reflected what he calls “normative” Christianity.⁸ His first four items parallel ours: (1) The God of Israel can be loved and trusted as the Creator of all that is and as benevolent to humanity. (2) Jesus of Nazareth can be trusted as the One sent by God to reveal God and redeem humanity. (3) In spite of human failure, which would disqualify one from salvation, trust in God’s redemptive work in Christ is the way to salvation, which is begun in this life, but completed beyond it. (4) The person saved by faith in God’s redemptive work in Christ is expected to care about, indeed, love, others and be worthy of their trust.

Our list focuses on the content of the persons of God and Christ and on Jesus’ work with some more detail. Hultgren’s ethical emphasis is a part of normative belief, but it is not a distinct element belonging only to the tradition. Many alternative expressions desired to live in a way that honored God at an ethical level. Hultgren and I share the point that what became the New Testament was a reflection of such normative beliefs and did not create orthodoxy.

Larry Hurtado, who teaches New Testament at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, summarizes:

As a closed collection, the fourfold Gospel also certainly represents a refusal to include the numerous other Jesus books that had begun circulating
in the second century. In other words, whatever toleration for diversity was represented by the preference for the fourfold Gospel, it was neither mindless
nor without limit. Some Jesus books were obviously unacceptable in proto-orthodox circles; their differences were simply too great. Those, such
as Gospel of Thomas, that showed disdain for the Old Testament, and/ or represented major innovations in belief that departed from what proto-orthodox
circles regarded as apostolic tradition (e.g., distinguishing between creator deity and the true God), could not be accommodated.⁹

Hurtado is saying that proto-orthodoxy existed because a sense of what was orthodox existed. Much of what came to be rejected was already seen as problematic when it went public. Stated positively, Turner in his Oxford lectures says it this way: “The church’s grasp on the religious facts was prior to any attempt to work them out into a coherent whole.”¹⁰ Not just the emergence of the fourfold gospel in the late second century shows this, but the entire, traditionally oriented material of the first two centuries.

Underneath the entire dispute is a distinct revelatory claim from each side in the dispute. I have called the “orthodox” or “proto-orthodox” view the “traditional” view because of its emphasis on a deposit of teaching laid down and passed on through oral tradition, written text, and worship, often summarized for memory in short bursts of teaching. These elements exist in the writings accepted by these traditional groups. In addition, most of the teaching in the gospel texts used by this group are tied to Jesus in the context of His earthly ministry and present a teaching that is to be proclaimed openly to anyone.

The alternative texts, for the most part, emphasize a secret teaching, often given by a risen heavenly Jesus. Those texts seem to be designed to trump the claims and ideas of more traditional views, perhaps indicating they come later. These revelations express themselves in ways that are less countercultural than the traditional message, especially when it comes to sin, resurrection, and the nature of God (and the gods). This view also distanced itself clearly from the God of Israel’s promise and from the writings tied to that God as Creator. In fact, this distancing from the God of promise is one of the features that made this alternative movement so objectionable to the traditionalists. The central difference between early orthodoxy and other Christian movements surrounded competing views of God, something fundamental to anyone’s religious construction of reality. It is no wonder contention arose.

Problem 3. The new school errs historically in claiming that there simply was variety in the first two centuries, with neither side possessing an implicit right to claim authority. The nature of early Christian worship, the inherently closer position of those who wrote from the traditional perspective, and the unity of the core elements indicate a movement with deep roots for the traditionally oriented texts.

Key differences show up in four key areas. A few works sit in between the ends of the spectrum, trying to reflect the alternative view but in a less contrastive way than some of its counterparts. This is where I would place Thomas and some of the works by the Valentinian school. They worked in the middle of this spectrum between orthodoxy and alternatives but in ways that show such leanings to the alternative approach. This leaning, especially when it came to revelatory questions, explains why eventually they were associated with the non-traditional side of the spectrum.

Ben Witherington, professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, has given a short assessment of the new school. His objections sum up things well.¹¹
(1) The claim that Gnostic Christians existed alongside orthodox Christians at the start of Christianity is “simply false.” (2) Gnosticism was “not the first unorthodox belief on the block.” The Marcionite heresy likely preceded it (not to mention the Ebionites). (3) “Yet another falsehood that revisionist historians espouse is that there was no core belief system in the first century that could later be called orthodoxy.” To show this was a major burden of our earlier book. Each of our four topics
surfaced core teaching summarized in the doctrinal summary given above. (4) The adoption of the Hebrew Scriptures as canon meant that Gnosticism would have never been recognized as a “legitimate development of the Christian faith.” I agree. It and the view of the Creator God were very important in the rejection of Gnosticism.

One question remains: Why does the new school take this tack? Witherington again makes an excellent summation.¹² He speaks of their desire not only to
rewrite Christian history but also to remake modern Christianity. He says, “This clarion call needs to be seen for what it is. It’s not simply a rejection of the canonizing process and creedal orthodoxy but of the limits of first century Christian diversity in favor of a much broader and more pluralistic model. King
calls us to reject our earliest historical sources, the New Testament, as the basis of defining the normative character of the Christian faith. It plays right into our culture’s belief that ‘the new is true.’” Whatever the new school is seeking to do with Christianity, it is neither historically sound nor is it a reflection of what
Christianity has been for almost two millennia. As learned as many of these studies are when it comes to helping us with Gnostic sources (and they are excellent pieces of work at that level), they remain more seriously flawed when it comes to describing early Christianity.

Conclusion: Who Deserves the Makeover?—-

Orthodoxy is not the product of third-century theologians. Those theologians certainly developed and honed traditional teaching. They gave flesh to the bones and structure to the basic ideas, especially in Greek philosophical terms. However, the core of ideas they worked with and reflected in their confessions mirror the faith’s earliest works. These works embraced what the apostles passed on. The works that we find in the New Testament also testify to this faith. That is why they were recognized as special sources for this teaching, even seen as being inspired by God. Irenaeus was not the creator of orthodoxy; he was created by it. The early traditional texts show us why someone such as Irenaeus eventually arose. They also explain why Irenaeus called alternative views “ropes of sand,” while emphasizing that the church’s basic teaching is about “God the Father and the Son” (Against Heresies 1.8.1;1.10.1).

Nag Hammadi has much to teach us about early Christianity, but its value lies more beyond the first century than in it. Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, speaks of new school efforts this way: “At least the ambitious recent attempts to rehabilitate the Gnostics are based on extensive writings of that sect, but Gnostics too can be fitted into the desired historical role only by ignoring a great deal of contrary evidence about the group’s attitudes and world-view. In terms of their potential value for reconstructing the earliest Christianity, the ancient heresies are of strictly limited value.”¹³

In other words, rehabilitating the Gnostics does not mean reimaging Christianity. A comprehensive look at the missing gospels and Gnostic teaching does not make them
a light for the twenty-first century, despite the new school’s recent claims. To regard them as such is a horrible anachronism, doing immense damage to the Christian faith
and to our culture’s roots. Such reimaging distorts Gnosticism, the Christian faith, and early Christian history. It deflects attention from our real need to accept responsibility for our actions before a Creator God. It also is a historical disservice to understanding a key faith of the West. Most important, it distorts the claims of a faith that aspires to better the human spirit before God by having humanity enter into a relationship with God in the context of forgiveness, graciously provided through
Jesus Christ.

The most important claim of the new school—that the history of Christianity shows Christianity needs redefining—lacks historical grounding. What needs a makeover is not Christianity, but the new school.

Darrell L. Bock is Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is the author of many articles and books, including The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Thomas Nelson); (with Daniel Wallace) Dethroning Jesus: Popular Culture and the Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ (Thomas Nelson); and Jesus the Messiah: Tracing the Promises, Expectations, and Coming of Israel’s King (Kregel).

Notes
1 The following chapter is adapted from the concluding chapter of my book, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson, 2006). The core documentation of details is found there in the walk through four key themes of the early church: God, The Person of
Jesus, The Work of Jesus and Salvation.
2 Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2003), 112.
3 Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2003), 13–89.
4 Armin Daniel Baum, Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung im frühen Christentum, WissenschaftlicheUntersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2, Reihe
138 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), 2001.
5 See James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 2003), 161–65.
6Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), esp. pp. 48–60. On Mark, see Martin Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 65–72.
7 See I. H. Marshall, “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity,” Themelios 2 (1976): 5-14.
8 Arland J. Hultgren, The Rise of Normative Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 86.
9Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 584.
10 H. E. W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study of the Relations Between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church (London: Mowbray, 1954).
11 Ben Witherington III, The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Da Vinci (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 114–15.
12 Ibid., 119.
13 Philip Jenkins, The Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 205.

(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 12 No. 1 – Lost Christianities?)