Secret teachings: Pagels excerpt #3

Pagels notes that Bishop Irenaeus, engaged in missionary work in Gaul in 160-180, “insists  that Jesus and Paul never offered secret teachings.” Yet, she writes, “Mark’s gospel says that Jesus, like other rabbis of his time, spoke a simple message in public, but explained its meaning only to his closest disciples when he was alone with them, saying, ‘the secret of the kingdom of God is given to you—but to those outside, everything is in parables,” so that “they may listen, but not understand’—although Mark tells nearly nothing of what he taught in private.

 

Furthermore, while researching the Gospel of Truth found at Nag Hammadi, Pagels “discovered a different Paul—and a different message. Its anonymous author, most likely Valentinus, the Egyptian poet and visionary, who admires Paul, sees the apostle as teacher of secret wisdom whose vision of grace includes everyone.

And writing to the church in Corinth, Paul adds that while teaching the simple gospel, he also shares with some a secret wisdom: “We do teach wisdom among people who are mature—not the wisdom of this world, nor of the rulers of this age. Rather, we speak the wisdom of God hidden in mystery, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory—which none of the rulers of this age knew—for, had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Pagels asserts: “I was intrigued to see that here, in his own words, Paul hints at a different version of the gospel—not that God ‘sent his own son to die’ as a human sacrifice, but that ignorant and violent people, or the spiritual powers that energized them, had killed Jesus.”

“Fascinated,” Pagels continues, “I realized that the anonymous author of the Gospel of Truth writes to answer that question, and to reveal that secret wisdom—or, at least, his version of it. He begins with the words ‘The true gospel is joy, to those who receive from the Father the grace of knowing him!’ Plunging into that mystery, he says that the true gospel, unlike the simple message, doesn’t begin in human history. Instead, it begins before this world was created.

“What happened, then, not just ‘in the beginning,’ but before the beginning, in primordial time—and how would we know? To answer this question, the Gospel of Truth offers a poetic myth. For around the time this author was writing, some devout Jews, and some non-Jews as well, loved to speculate on questions about what God was doing before he created the world. Often they looked for hidden meaning in poetic passages of the Hebrew Bible, like that opening line from Genesis, which tells how ‘a wind (or spirit, ruah) from God moved over chaotic deep waters.’

“What was there, then? Others claimed to find hints of what happened in a famous poem in the biblical Book of Proverbs, in which divine wisdom (hohkmah), identified with God’s spirit (ruah), tells how she worked with God to create the world. Since both ‘spirit’ and ‘wisdom’ are feminine terms in Hebrew, she speaks as the Lord’s feminine companion, or perhaps as his beloved daughter, who participated with him in creating the world, when first she swept over the deep ocean waters:

“When he marked out the foundations of the earth, I was there beside him, like a little child, delighting him daily, always rejoicing before him, and rejoicing in his world full of people, delighting in the human race.”

 

Pagels, Elaine. Why Religion? (p. 197-198). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.