What about Those Other Gospels?
(Second in the series Our Still Point with God: The Reliability of the Bible)
1 Corinthians 15:1–8, 14–19; Luke 1:1–4
DISCLAIMER: The material in these three messages come from others who are better scholars than I! Contact me if I can credit anything in this series to its original source.
Introduction: Christians of the early church saw Gnosticism, a religious movement that took root in the second century A.D., as a threat to the historic Old Testament and Jesus’ teaching. Gnosticism is making a comeback in our day through the so-called Gospel of Judas and The Da Vinci Code, and now its upcoming sequel, Angels and Demons, which draws on extra-biblical documents as the base for its story line.
Many Christians are uncritically embracing Gnosticism. But why did the early church reject the Gnostic gospels? Why aren’t the Gnostic gospels relevant for today? Why are so many people returning to Gnostic ideas?
Identify the Current Issue: The reemergence of Gnostic teaching in modern life can be traced to the discovery of Gnostic manuscripts in December 1945. An Arab peasant found a red earthenware jar near Nag Hammadi, a city in Upper Egypt. Inside the jar were 13 leather-bound papyrus books, dating from approximately A.D. 350. According to some scholars, these manuscripts were penned mostly by Jesus’ disciples and hence carry their names, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Judas.
The Gospel of Judas is particularly interesting because it states that Judas was not the traitor that Christians have assumed all these years. Rather, he was Jesus’ most trusted disciple, because it was through his betrayal that Jesus was able to go to the cross. According to the story, Jesus gave Judas permission to betray him so that, through death, he could be freed from his physical body (Gnostics believe that matter, including the physical body, is evil). So Judas was actually portrayed as a hero.
At its core, the debate calls into question whether the Gnostic gospels are in fact historically accurate and compatible with the biblical canon as we know it.
Proposition: What makes Gnosticism so dangerous is that it puts man at the center of the universe instead of God, a trend already popular among those who want a convenient and customized faith.
1. The early church rejected the Gnostic gospels for good reason (1 Corinthians 15:1–8).
There is ample evidence from early Christian documents that there was a single Christian faith from the very beginning. When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians around A.D. 55, he spoke of a gospel message he “received” and “passed on” to others. That message included the account of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Read 1 Corinthians 15:1–8.
• Having read that passage, please understand that Gnostics do not believe in a bodily resurrection.
In numerous places in the New Testament there are warnings to the early church to reject false teaching and hold to sound doctrine.
• The early church teachers were very concerned about fighting against ideas that were not compatible with their doctrine.
• There was a discernable Christian orthodoxy in the early, first-century church, long before Gnosticism took hold or the Gnostic gospels were written.
The other important point is that Christianity is based upon historical fact.
• Its claims are rooted in actual events, not just ideas;
• In people who lived in time and space, not just principles;
• In revelation, not speculation;
• In incarnation, not abstraction.
Historical accuracy was of prime importance to Luke, who wrote the gospel known by his name. Read Luke 1:1–4.
• The text affirms that Luke was after nothing less than historical certainty, presented in an orderly fashion and based on firsthand testimony.
2. Gnostic writings contradict biblical doctrine (1 Corinthians 15:14–19).
The gospels of the Nag Hammadi library present a view of the world at extreme odds with the one found in the Old and New Testaments.
For starters, an all-good or powerful God did not create the universe.
According to the Gospel of Philip, the world as we know it is really a mistake. The creator of the universe supposedly bungled the act of creation, and as a result, the material cosmos is filled with pain, decay, and death. The record of God’s creation in Genesis stands in stark contrast to this botched view of creation. God pronounces his work of creation as “very good.”
• It was man’s choice to turn away from God that has caused the pain, decay, and death we know in this world. Read Romans 3:10–23.
Another crucial difference between Gnosticism and Christianity concerns the identity and purpose of Jesus’ life.
According to Gnostic teaching, Jesus was neither God nor man, and his main purpose was not to save us from sin but to guide us to spiritual understanding. But Jesus’ deity is clearly seen in numerous passages in the New Testament.
1 Corinthians 15:14–19 tells us that the resurrection is the pivot point of our faith.
• If Christ was not raised from the dead to save us from our sins, then we are to be pitied for believing in a story that is false.
The early church rejected the Gnostic gospels because their words rejected the Christian connection with the Old Testament Scriptures.
C. S. Lewis said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
3. We are special because we are created by God.
Gnosticism claims that some people are special because they have the potential to understand spiritual secrets others cannot. And the greatest spiritual insight is not knowledge of God, as Christianity would profess, but rather knowing oneself at a deep level.
• In other words, self-knowledge is knowledge of god; the self and the divine are identical.
Please understand: I agree that knowledge and awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and behavior can be beneficial in our daily lives. But self-knowledge is not the goal of life!
• The capacity to know ourselves does not come because we are the enlightened ones, as Gnosticism would claim.
• We have been given some degree of self-knowledge because we are created in God’s image.
• We are special because God has called us so.
Self-knowledge, properly used, helps us recognize:
• Our status as created beings; and
• Our need to bow before our Creator.
While Gnosticism teaches that humans need to be liberated from their human limitations, Christianity calls us to embrace our humanity. We need to live faithfully in submission to God and his plan for our lives.
Conclusion: Listen to part of the June 2006 editorial of Christianity Today, written when The Da Vinci Code was being released in theaters:
“The tendency to grasp at excuses for not making a commitment to (God) was illustrated by National Public Radio commentator Peter Manseau. He compared the Gospel of Judas to Jesus Christ Superstar and concluded: ‘Whether it is the Gospel according to Judas, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, or even Andrew Lloyd Webber, each one reminds us, with the shock of an electric guitar in the desert, that both faith and history are more complicated than we imagine.’
“That kind of hazy thinking, like Superstar itself, belongs to the early ‘70s. Can we please grow up?”
If Christianity is judged by its historical accuracy, then the Gnostic gospels must be judged by the same standard if they are to be taken seriously. And based upon the historical facts, they don’t measure up.
But Jesus does.
Invitation: Only Trust Him
