Dr. Elaine Pagels | St. Luke's | Saturday, March 7, 2020, Part 1

please welcome Elaine Pagels tell them you're gonna be good about this good morning I'm so happy to be here is this audible okay great I'm gonna speak up because apparently last night I didn't enough and is there it's right here so it asked me to share with you first of all some of the research that really I love and started with and then after a break we'll talk a lot more personally but and many of you know this story so forgive me because some of my friends at Princeton have been at Princeton know about this but secret Gospels this was a surprise for me this is just because this is how I grew up sort of in a little Methodist Church in California it was a pretty boring Church with pictures like that and and my mother took my brother and me there sometimes but my father had had been in a family he said was ferociously Presbyterian and as soon as he encountered Darwin he said he was done and and so this is Darwin and I was brought up to think that religion was was totally unnecessary in the 21st century and so what what fascinated me at the time as an adolescent was music and dance the dances of the Hopi this is a the Martha Graham troupe in New York the poetry of John Donne on the right Mahalia Jackson Bach I mean music poetry dance that had passion and that was a lot more exciting but Palo Alto was a very boring town and I was asked invited to go to San Francisco one day and I didn't care what it was for cuz anything in San Francisco would be better than Palo Alto I didn't know it was for somebody called Billy Graham and there were 18,000 people in Candlestick Park and 6000 in the parking lot who couldn't get in and I had no idea what hit me but anyway so that anyway there was a this extraordinary preacher at the time we can talk about that later but the the bottom line is that when the choir six six thousand people began to sing just as I am and anyway I got born again and it was it was wonderful for a while it was powerful it was powerful something extraordinary about about that but after that I I left that church after a year and that's another story I went to New York to study dance this is the this is a Martha Graham class and I was just learning from her students and I found out that I was not good enough to be a professional dancer so I took Plan B and decided I was interested in what had hit me in that in that in that powerful encounter with evangelical Christianity which was not like the boring religion I had been brought up with so I wanted to learn about what do we really know about Jesus what and and and what are the sources and was there such a person and and so so I took off and the only really secular doctoral program at the time was was at Harvard and this is this is my professor Krister Stendhal who I thought it looked like an Ingmar Bergman version of God did like one and that was that was that and I was trying to figure out how did this movement start what do we know and I was really shocked because first of all I found out there's a lot we don't know and the second thing I found out was that my professors had file cabinets full of Gospels that I'd never heard of they were found by this cliff upper egypt it's pretty close to to Luxor if you've been there and but it's out in a little tiny village and they look like this written in Coptic originally in Greek this says the secret Gospel according to Thomas Mohamed Ali who's right here said he found these texts in a big jar hidden away sealed 13 books they were bound together and there are 51 different different writings in those 13 ancient books and and they were Gospels and secret writings and revelations of Jesus and some are not Christian summer Egyptian summer Jewish it's a kind of assorted library of ancient sacred texts and we were the first people to be able in this country to start to read them we were told of course that they were heresy right but but who says so this is the most exciting discovery and I'll talk about this one but there's so many others a French scholar found this text called the Gospel according to Thomas and he examined the first line it says these are the secret teachings were still living Jesus spoke and Judas Thomas wrote them down and then after that this this text consists only of sayings jesus said jesus said jesus said and you have you have them here in front of you some of the many of them and so john direst said wait a minute are these really teachings of jesus there's half of the Gospel of Thomas it's only about seven pages long half of it you'll find in Matthew and Luke the same parables of the sower the mustard seed love your brother as the apple of your eye sayings which aren't well known as Jesus sayings from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but the other half are really unknown sayings or they were so the earliest scholars this is a are we Charles Pugh ish French and and hor la vie was Egyptian and gilles quispel dutch they published in 15 1959 this one text because it was so exciting and and they said well it's not a real gospel right so the real Gospels are written within 40 years of the death of Jesus between the years say 40 and 90 of the first century well these are obviously the wrong Gospels so we'll say maybe they're written a hundred and forty about twice as long after that obviously so the first idea was that they were derivative and they were secondary to what we have in the New Testament the second stage was our professor at Harvard Helmut Kester who said maybe this isn't just late stuff maybe because before Matthew wrote a gospel and before Luke wrote a gospel we know that both of them had written sources of sayings of Jesus we know this because you know Jesus spoke in Aramaic but Matthew and Luke quote his sayings identically in Greek so if you were translating from Aramaic and you were translating from Aramaic it would sound a little different but they had the eggs of the identical words of Jesus in Greek so we are safe in assuming most of us think that there was a written source that had translated them identically and was well known so Kester said maybe this is the earliest source we have maybe before there were narrative Gospels there were sayings Gospels just lists so maybe this is the earliest one we have and Kester thought we were closest to the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth now I think we're at least in a third stage of research and I would agree with this one but there are very different points of view on it which is that the Gospel of Thomas is a mixed list some of them are early sayings early versions of sayings we have in Matthew and Luke and some of them are added later they're sort of interpreting we revising you know reinterpreting now - Simon gather coal who teaches at Cambridge in a theology himself a conservative Christian says well yes that means they're all derivative and they're not very important Hans Martin Schenk ah who taught in Berlin said well actually it's a very significant find and these are early and late sayings but what do we make of them are they apples and oranges I mean this is the Bible right the Bible and these are the secret texts does that mean these are similar or you know some people would say are they rotten eggs I mean these are the just the really bad ones I mean that's kind of what we were taught even my dear professor Krister Stendhal said we thought these texts were just weird well we knew from early times that there were secret Gospels we just didn't have them because they were destroyed and burned and and censored by bishops in the fourth century after Bishop Athanasius in Egypt wrote the first of several lists of the New Testament collection that we have and it's his list that that we now use as 27 books in the New Testament he wrote it in the Year 367 in an Easter letter to Christians all over Egypt he said look these are the right books okay just read the four Gospels on my list so they that's what became the New Testament he said those other Gospels those other writings well they have some wisdom in them but they can really lead you astray so you have to avoid them 200 years before that another bishop in Leon said the heretics say they have more Gospels than there really are but really there's our only madness an abyss of insanity and blasphemy against Christ and that's how the first scholars read them because this is they knew very well what this famous bishop said so the question is one question is did Jesus have a secret teaching Irenaeus the bishop said no everything he taught was public he did not teach secretly that is completely fraud but if you read the Gospel of Mark chapter 4 verse 10 to 12 Mark's Gospel says yes he taught secretly to his disciples but he spoke to outsiders only in parables while explaining everything privately to his disciples but mark doesn't tell you he tells you almost nothing about secret teaching he says Jesus had it yes but I'm not telling you and all he tells you pretty much are the parables so he so in mark 10 jesus said the secret of the kingdom of God is given to you you close circle of disciples not to outsiders so that to them everything is in parables not as preachers love to say to make a point simple and illustrate it so you understand it but so that you may not understand Jesus says to them that they may hear and hear and not understand strange so what is the secret of the kingdom of God if you read the mark of the earliest one it says very clearly Jesus says as soon as the first announcement he makes is the kingdom of God is coming soon repent believe in the good news and that's of course the word gospel so the kingdom of God is coming with power he says in in chapter 9 so what is the kingdom of God I mean these are the Gospels have different suggestions there's kind of a cluster what is the kingdom of God if you start to ask the question it's not so obvious as how to answer it Luke suggests that it's life after death because when Jesus is dying he says to the man next to him he says remember the dying thief says to him enter remember me when you come into your kingdom and Jesus says today you will be with me in paradise meaning after both of us died we will be in the kingdom of God okay so so that would mean that the kingdom is is heaven in the afterlife the Gospel of John says those who are baptized born of water and spirit can see the kingdom of God we don't know he doesn't say what it is Luke says the kingdom of God is among you or within you you can translate the Greek either way the kingdom of God he said don't look for signs out there the kingdom of God is among you is within you how are you going to translate the Greek here and so it's it's either way mark suggests that the kingdom of God is a catastrophic event you know those people with the sign saying be what the end of the world is coming right so the kingdom of God is an event it's going to happen it's gonna be a catastrophe annihilate the world as we know it and it will come with power during your lifetime Jesus had said 10 years later people were waiting and Matthew keeps saying just hang on just keep waiting this is this is 50 years after Jesus has died he's saying the bridegroom is late I mean everyone's expecting him but just you'd better be ready you better have more supplies so you'll be able to wait a thief comes at night when you don't expect him just keep waiting just hang on so that's written 40 50 60 years after the death of Jesus and some people thought the it doesn't look like it's happening but some people refuse to give up on Jesus and they asked what did he mean and I'm assuming that they asked how do you transform his message how do you understand his message if he was right what what did he mean and what does it mean so that's what Luke suggests I mentioned the kingdom is either here already or someplace we go after we die he also has Jesus say if I cast out demons by the finger of God then the kingdom of God has come near to you already so Luke says it's coming but not with signs the kingdom of God is among you and this part I mentioned so there are different kinds of hints the Gospel of John mentions the kingdom of God only once where Jesus says to Nicodemus no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit in Baptism so the idea in John is that the kingdom is coming but it is also now in the sense that the kingdom may have to do with a sense of living in the presence of God even now these are just hints the Gospel of Thomas says something else in the saying number 3 I hope you have it there Jesus said if your leaders say to you look the kingdom is in the sky then the birds will get there first it if they say it's in the sea then the fish will get there first that is its kind of ridicule of the idea that it's a local place right or even that it's an event in time so is it temporal and spatial the kingdom of God neither this this this saying suggests in in saying three Jesus says rather the kingdom is within you but it's also outside of you when you come to know yourselves then you will know that you are the children of the Living God so it's here as in the Gospel of John the kingdom of God seems like a kind of quality of awareness of the presence of God but the disciples in Thomas keep saying as they do in the other gospel but when is it gonna happen when will the kingdom come when will the end come come on tell us and in this gospel Jesus says well you're looking at the for the end of time you really have to start looking at the beginning you have to go back to the beginning if you want to find out the answer to that this is rather like John's Gospel which starts in the beginning of time right you have to go back before the beginning it's it's actually it's saying 18 where Jesus says blessed is the one who stands in the beginning you have to go back to the beginning before you came into being well how do you go back to before you came into being I mean does that make any sense how do you go back to the beginning well and and the Philosopher's Plotinus very irritated with people like this in the second century said yeah well they're they're just where are you supposed to look come on they don't even tell you the Gospel of Thomas says no you have to look back at the beginning so everyone in that tradition would know where you look to find out what happened before the world was created you look in Genesis right and it says in the beginning God said let there be light and there was light and you know that's before there's a world it's before a Sun and a moon is not it's not that kind of light it's not this kind of light it's a metaphor for the divine energy that brings the world into being what is this light in saying 77 and the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says I am the light that is before all things I am all things split a piece of wood and I am there lift up a rock and you will find me there this is as though Jesus is speaking not just as as the logo says the word of God as he does in John but speaking as a kind of voice from the divine energy through which the world was created not speaking as a personal human but as the voice of that divine energy and saying that divine energy pervades the universe pervades everything all of us all the rocks even to the rocks and the stones so who is Jesus in this text as in John's Gospel well you know in John Jesus says I am the light of the world here Jesus says I am the light that is before the world before the world I am all things all things he's the divine energy in the first place so where do you find the light how well you know what the Gospel of John says it says believe in Jesus God's only Son Jesus is the light of the world right and so you believe in Jesus and that is how you find the light of the world Thomas's Gospel says something different it says you have to look for it you can find it in Jesus but you can also find it in yourself so the suggestion in the Gospel of Thomas is that as rabbis would have said when God created Adam which means humankind right in Hebrew in his image what image I mean this is this is a I think this is Dirar right a Christian artist who is able to picture the Lord as a human being of course male and suggests that humans were made in the image of God but but whoever wrote the Gospel of Thomas is is saying what is the image of God in in in Jewish tradition as you know you cannot make an image of God that's prohibited you can't make a human form so what is the image of God and the rabbi's would have said well the only image of God is the one given in Genesis 1:3 the image is light and light is just a kind of energy which is a metaphor for that divine energy as we said so so the image of God would be this energy that came forth in the beginning of time from which everything in this room and everything in this world came forth so the Gospel of Thomas suggests that all humans are created in God's image which which means that within us there is some connection with the source of the divine light at the beginning of time so in Thomas 24 Jesus says within a person of light there's light if it's illuminated it lights up the whole world and if it's not everything is dark so the question for Thomas is not just who is Jesus it's who are you and that's an interrogation that this text suggests of the hearer or later of the reader this is saying to when you seek don't stop seeking until you find when you find you're going to be troubled when you're troubled you'll be astonished so the question is who are you how do you identify how do we identify our else who do you think you are well you know we identify this way with name with family of origin with background with political and ethnic identity so everyone in this room has a different name and we come from different places and we identify ourselves in terms of primarily in terms of how we're different that's how we you know different everyone here has a distinct what social security number or whatever name background all of that but the Gospel of Thomas has a kind of baptismal initiation a second baptism probably in which Jesus says this is the liturgy for the baptism the first question is and these are questions that you would be asked when you pass from one country to another what is your name who are you where do you come from how do you identify yourself okay so in saying 50 Jesus says okay when they when they say to you where do you come from say we come from the light we come from where the light came into being by itself in the beginning that's where we come from originally and when they say who are you then say we're children of the light we're children of the Living father and when they say how do you identify yourself to say movement and rest just as in Genesis the Lord acts and he risks now notice there's no individual identity here this is not you or me this is we so we all come from the same place spiritually speaking this text would suggest we're all in the same family children of the living father and what identifies us is our affinity with that divine source from which we all come so this is what the Gospel of Thomas suggests is what the kingdom of God means when you come to know yourselves you will know that it is you who are sons of God now that that word in Greek in Hebrew and Coptic could be translated children but sons of course is the generic that's always used in antiquity and it's been used for a long long time ever since but it means that everyone comes you will know that you are the children of God so this gospel the first line says these are the secret sayings of Jesus which the twin Judas Thomas wrote down now if you look in the Gospel of John I think it's in chapter 19 or 20 it it speaks about didymus Judas Thomas he's not the Judas Kiss and John will say Judas not Iscariot his name was his given name was Judas but he wasn't Judas Iscariot they called him Tomas which is Aramaic for the twin so he was a twin and in Greek it's didymus which means twin so Thomas is a twin and when direst first investigated this text he said wait a minute is this saying Jesus had a twin brother well it is saying that but it's a symbolic statement like everything else in this gospel because when you read it through you realize that Tomas represents the hearer the reader you so what you come to realize is that you if you come to through the process that's articulated in this secret teaching whoever drinks from my mouth that is accepts my teaching will become like me says Jesus toward the end I will become that person and the mysteries will be revealed to him so it's about you as the twin in the sense that you and I come from the same place from which Jesus speaks from the beginning of time and and and are connected in the same family with Jesus and that's what the kingdom of God means so this is called Gnostic it was taken as a kind of dirty word because it meant heretical and it's contrasted typically by Fathers of the Church with the term for faith pista' s-- gnosis gnosis does mean knowledge but while these the adherents of this kind of teaching were ridiculed as being kind of snobs by others because they claimed to have a different understanding of the message of Jesus gnosis is not intellectual knowledge in Greek knowledge in the mind is the word attained right it means from which we get the word idea an idea is means something you have seen in your mind okay so cat right you've seen it now in your mind and you have an image of a cat because that's intellectual knowledge you know what the word means that's an idea but this kind of knowledge comes from the word it gives us the word recognize called gnosis is recognized it is knowledge but it's personal knowledge it's do you know that person do you know yourself do you know God it's recognition and you get it you know in French with cornet WA instead of savoir or in German with Kennan rather than vissa or Spanish and Oh what is it conocer is to know I know that person instead of sub air so these languages discriminate between intellectual knowledge mental knowledge and personal knowledge this is personal knowledge this is knowing who you are so here's a quote this becomes a question for Christian tradition what does it mean to say that Jesus is the Son of God this is the right answer of course a Jesus is the only Son of God you and I may become children of God but not like Jesus or you and I may become children of God like Jesus these are different interpretations so Matthew and Luke actually have suggestions of teachings like this which are not so different Matthew says not Jesus is the light of the world which is what you find in John 8:12 but Jesus says you are the light of the world Luke says at 1721 the kingdom of God is within you not just Jesus and saying 3 is where we started when Jesus says look the kingdom of God is not a place it's not a it's not an event it's it's it's a it's a reality of awareness the kingdom of within you and outside of you when you come to know yourselves you will know that you are the children of the Living God so these texts which were then called heretical suggest that when you come to understand who we really are as a human family which is has a sort of hidden connection with a divine source from which we come because there is that hidden connection to which this text says and it says well many people are kind of asleep or they're just kind of like they're drunk they just are oblivious to this other reality that's why saying to says when you when you when you begin to find out who you really are spiritually you're going to be troubled and anxious because we're much more comfortable with our ordinary identity and if it's if it's kind of dislodged and you you don't identify yourself anymore in the ways that we ordinarily do it's it's deeply unsettling it's what happens to people sometimes in deep meditation and spiritual practice so the gospel of truth is another one that says say then from the heart that you are the perfect day in you dwells the unfailing light that is that discovery of some point of access to the divine source which you could actually find but it's not easy you have to look and look and fail and keep looking and sometimes can be found the Gospel of Philip says don't seek to become simply a Christian but a Christos which means an anointed one somebody aware of that connection so the Gospels are quite different and I've asked myself okay why are those for that we know in the New Testament and I suggest it's because they all say Jesus is very unique he is not like you and me got it mark says this is the good news of Jesus the Messiah the son of God that's utterly unique Matthew says this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah son of David son of Abraham Luke goes on Jesus son of David son of Abraham son of Seth son of Adam son of God okay that's pretty clear nobody here in this room is got that genealogy much less the one that John has which Jesus is God's only Son and that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son and that Greek word Bono ghana's means single born utterly unique okay John wants to say that loud and clear so this is what I'm guessing what what do we make of this text it seems to me that after Jesus death when he said the kingdom of God was coming really soon his followers reinterpreted in various ways Matthew said just keep waiting the you know that thing about the groom is late the thief will come when you don't just keep waiting it's been a couple thousand years but it'll happen or maybe that Jesus did have a secret teaching about the kingdom as Mark says he did what I came to think about the Gospel of John which why of angelical friends said and I believed at the time was the most spiritual gospel is that the Gospel of John may have been written to challenge what you find in the Gospel of Thomas how does John portray Thomas in John's Gospel John has that favorite word for Jesus Jesus God's only Son only son only son only Son God so loved the world he gave His only Son and in and so in John's Gospel did he miss Judas Thomas appears as a character which he is not in in Matthew Mark or Luke he doesn't appear ever with with a dialogue John gives him words and the words are kind of stupid because here in John Jesus is knows he's about to die and he says to the disciples I go to my father you know where I'm going you know the way Thomas said we don't know where you're going how can we know the way what are you talking about so he's the one who doesn't get it so Jesus turns to Thomas in in the Gospel of John and says I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me and I have the feeling he wants to say is that clear Thomas and of course the Gospel of Thomas doesn't say that you can get there without Jesus it just says you can also find your way there but this is of course what what the churches teach that saying of Jesus there is one way to salvation and that is through Jesus Christ there's one way through the Christian Church and the only the Christian Church has access to a human being who was God's unique son of God all the others are basically in darkness and and and you're lost without this way but the Gospel of Thomas has a rather different message and so I think that other Christians were distressed about this claim of secret teaching and at the time when churches were established by Constantine and Constantine wanted to establish a single all over the world the Gospels he chose and that the church chose were the narrative Gospels which give you a very simple message there's one way and that is through Jesus so there's a lot to talk about here and we don't have time I won't we could talk more so we'll open it up to questions in a minute there are other texts here one is the gospel of Mary Magdalene and some of you how many of you have seen it before was destroyed there are many copies of it in the ancient world translated into many languages but the only one that survives is in Ethiopia and it's only a fragment of the gospel of Mary Magdalene here she is in an icon form holding an egg which we which is a symbol of new life okay as a saint the gospel of Mary Magdalene says that after the death of Jesus I think you have a little piece of it there after the death of Jesus the disciples were terrified in these and they said well how can we go out and preach the Son of Man because they killed him they're going to kill us too and Mary Magdalene stands up and says brother's the Lord came to us and made us into men which means courageous and and and then Peter says well Mary tell us some of the things jesus said to you that maybe we didn't hear them we were somewhere else and he said something to you maybe something that we didn't hear and she says oh alright Peter I'll tell you things that he he didn't tell you he he kept away from you now that made Peter angry what do you mean he told things to a woman he didn't tell us on purpose and then there follows a dialogue in which Mary says well the Lord said these things to me and then she talks about a vision she had in which she sees him and he speaks about the powers that one encounters after day the text is broken there we don't have it but we do have an argument at the end where Levi comes in and says I don't think the Lord said these things I think she's just making it up I these are strange ideas this is nothing to do with with our Jesus and then and I think it's Andrew comes in and says brother Peter you are always angry at this at the woman like our enemies you know just just be quiet and and at the end of the gospel of Mary Mary is vindicated as an apostle and she is they all go out to preach the gospel together but previously they want to refuse her permission so this gospel this is not Mary accosting Peter but the picture kind of works but there are there are texts like this which claim to be secret teaching which the church has which churches many of them are early destroyed and banished that's why we have only fragments another text just a mention of this one the secret revelation of John this is one in which the disciple John it opens it's called the secret revelation of John unlike the revelation of John in the New Testament it says John after the death of Jesus was grieving bitterly and somebody said he was going to the temple to worship and another Pharisee came to him and said you have no business going to the temple you are misled by this false seducer Jesus of Nazareth you know you you you've been misled he's a disgrace and G and John goes into the into the desert alone and and weeps and he said then suddenly the earth shook and there was a brilliant light all around him and he said he heard a voice coming out of the light and it said John John why are you weeping I am the one who is with you always I the father I am the mother and I am the son and I'm gonna read this I thought well who would you expect to find with the father and the son now if you if you think of the way Christians speak of the divine is as Father Son Holy Spirit if you're thinking in Hebrew or Syria the word for spirit Ruach would be a feminine word so if you're using anthropomorphic images which they are it would be quite obvious that it would be father mother and son and that occurs in many of these texts in the gospel of there's another text of Thomas Thomas which in which Jesus speaks of my mother the Holy Spirit but when you translate Syriac and Hebrew into Greek you get the word for spirit or breath as Ponemah which is neuter so it has no gender and when you translate it into Latin it's what it's either mascius masculine I believe that right correct me masculine or neuter for sure so the idea that spirit in these other languages doesn't have a connotation of gender but in these early texts there is this sense of a different ways of describing the divine which is understood that these are all very limited it metaphors but they do include feminine metaphors in the Gospel of Thomas interestingly this is the only gospel well not the only one but the only one if you know the New Testament there are no women disciples right now I mean there are women who follow Jesus but they're not the disciples because Luke will say the disciples and he will name 12 men and then there are the women and they help Jesus and Mary Magdalene is one who provides for him and she later gets a different reputation but but they're never the disciples in in the Gospel of Thomas there are five disciples mentioned one is Thomas one is Peter one is Matthew James the brother of Jesus Mary Magdalene and Salome eight not not Herod's daughter but Salome a the follower of Jesus who went around with the women the Mary's so and very interestingly and in one of these in saying 61 saying 22 when you make the two one when you make the male and female one in the same then you will enter the kingdom this is like going back to the beginning of time in which God creates humans in His image and the idea is that the first creation this is what other rabbis and what other Jewish teachers like Philo of Alexandria said the first saying God creates humans in His image that means a spiritual being and later the spiritual being is is divided into physical male and female that's that's a derivation of the spiritual creation of humankind so that interpretation of Genesis is implied in Thomas in which Salome II says to Jesus who are you man that you've come up on my couch and eaten from my table and it sounds a little bit charged sexually and Jesus says I he ignores the question I come from what is not divided that's a rebuke right I'm not divided I come from what is undivided and salomi says oh I get it I'm your disciple and Jesus says later after that whoever is undivided is full of light but whoever is divided is full of darkness that is whoever identifies with this or that characteristic that in that differentiates us from each other and the first one right when a baby is born the instant they're born people say what male or female right that's that's the best primary and that's a primary division and that's the why this text suggests that one has to recognize that instead of dividing people up even by the very primary issue of male and female one has to think differently on this level so anyway we'll stop with that I mean there's more but let's stop and open it up okay so Elaine please remember that you're in charge of the entire day so you're seriously and you're in charge of bio breaks and all that kind of stuff so it's your call right now to do some Q&A okay beautiful does somebody have a mic they're gonna help oh great okay if you'll kinda to pre person who's asking time to do that okay it's just so talk for maybe seven minutes question I'm sorry yes Nate okay the ID did everybody hear that question a very important question particularly for our day that's an interesting question I mean this is this is what what division as I say is more fundamental than that this is of course meant as a spiritual metaphor for the way that humans are related on an even more fundamental level than our physiology so I don't know how to answer that literally because this is metaphorical but that's what this text is saying is using us as an image yes may I ask may I add a question and this is not meant to be an answer is this a call to come from the undivided yes for us to or an invitation for us to in our journey developmentally evolutionarily whatever to have unitive soul experience personality well it's I think it is a call to speak about humans as we coming from the same family that's certainly what's implied here and it's it's quite it's a very this is deeply I think part of what will become Jewish mystical traditional a thousand years later and 1500 years later but wasn't written down I think did Jesus know of early Jewish mystical traditions we don't know I mean Jewish scholars are have been asking that questions for a long time because the only place you find what looks like affinity with Jewish with Kabbalah which speaks about the divine light coming into the world right and how it pervades the universe and every one of us and even the tables and the coffee cups that teaching is only written down much later but may have been known and passed down orally in by Jewish teachers for thousands of years and to stay with any question is it an invitation for me not to be embarrassed by the woman in me and whatever might be classified as feminine so that I can embrace the United part of me well even I think you we could use it that way I mean I think this is an interpretation got it and it just says prior to gender there is a communality between human beings that is a spiritual one at least that's how I read it but they're different life is ready okay here's the second question well I think that's where this text is really it's about see this is not about believing in thing when I was reading the Gospel of Thomas you know my favorite line is one that many of you know saying seventy in which do you have it there I sang seventy the way we translated it here is Jesus said if you bring forth what is within you what you bring forth will save you if you do not bring forth what is within you what you do not bring forth will destroy you and when I read that I thought oh you don't have to believe that it just happens to be true so I was taking it psychologically and I think it works on that level but I think it's also now I think it's a theological statement it's saying what is within you is the divine energy since we're in the world of metaphor we're not talking about a cognitive function we're talking about a inside spiritual function that arises with no effort or what effort do we put on it to cause it to arise that's a really great question well the text says you have to seek to find and I think it means if if you bring forth what is within you you you have to struggle and you may be troubled to give up a sense of ordinary identity and say well what I am on a deeper level is a manifestation of this energy as is everyone else and the struggle I don't know there's there's a spiritual path there it doesn't tell you as Platina says how to do it but many of these people were were Christian monks who read this and nuns who were who were trying to reach a deeper devotional understanding of God it's a great question thank you very much and I think that's important it's it's hard knowledge this it's hard experience really I just was blown away by this concept of being a twin of Jesus and and you know I've always loved the you know you you knit me together in my mother's womb and you were there but the concept of me actually sharing amniotic fluid with Jesus himself and like there wasn't a time that I existed that Jesus wasn't with me right there in the thick of it I find that to be a very encouraging image that and then I don't I'm not I wouldn't say identical twin but you know I mean just like I would say yeah Jesus Jesus is my brother but but Jesus is my twin kind of a that is the image that's used that that you see yourself in that image but it's not a grandiose thing right it's it's in a way very humbling because it also includes everyone else whether they realize it or not and the gospel Joe says many people don't Jesus came into the world and found everybody drunk they were just unaware of the link with a divine source that they could find so that's what one needs to bring forth I think that's what it means so I wouldn't want to just pin it on gender that's an issue about how we differentiate out of many ways but but it is about what you say and and it's it's a spiritual path but but it doesn't have clear markers either as far as I know quick question is you mentioned a Canisius up there earlier on he seems to be a very pivotal and individual in determining how we view Christianity today he basically it seems like if what I've read he said back in the middle of the you know he was charged by Constantine it sounds like to say this is the stuff that you're going you know he wanted Constantine wanted one religion it was one set of documentation and all this variation rubbed out and this is the good stuff and the rest of y'all can just take your stuff and go put it on fire and yet how much of what we've you today as Christianity is pivotal around his thinking as the Bishop of Alexandria and that all those decisions that he made back in the fourth century it's a very good question and it was it is he's he can be an image of what happened he's not the only one Irenaeus before that was trying to unify this very diverse movement and Athanasius had the backing of the emperor sometimes at least and he had police power and he was able you know the the emperor was able to invite more than 300 bishops to write a statement of belief and you sign it and you're in and if you don't sign it you're out that's a very different way he Constantine wanted a litmus test of how do you unify an empire that is the whole world and it goes from Africa to Spain to Iran to what we now call Europe and and you know and all of the Mediterranean and Egypt the world how do you do that well you do it through a network of bishops and you do it through certain readings and certain church hierarchy which we call Catholic which means Universal yes that's what happened in the fourth century and that's when all this stuff had to be destroyed I think we should take a break so that we just can come back so let me thank you let me say let's take a 15-minute break okay

Channel: St. Lukes Atlanta

Views: 467

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 583EdwlyuG0

Length: 59min 43sec (3583 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020