Recently I was in India speaking at a training school for pastors. One of the major issues that they were dealing with was publications being disseminated by fundamental Hindus claiming that Jesus was not a peacemaker, that the Bible was an unholy book because spoke of sinful men who had done evil things, and the number one issue that the pamphlet addressed was that Jesus was married and had had children.
Now the issue of Jesus coming to divide families has more to do with either Christ's return or the problems faced when one member of a family chooses to follow Jesus but the rest are non-followers. And the issue of sinful men and their story being told has more to do with the fact that the Bible refuses to cover up mankind's sinful nature. In both of these types of questions the answers come directly from Scripture and learning to apply the principles found in the Bibles.
But the issue of Jesus purported marriage and subsequent children is an issue that must be addressed from a historical perspective of the early church and the religions of the early centuries of the common era. Yes there are Biblical passages that can be used to refute this information but it must be combined with an understanding of the historical issues of the day.
My last session with these future pastors and their professors was taken up with addressing the issue of Gnosticism and it's impact on Christianity. Below is a summery of the talk I gave earlier this month in India.
The information is a bit long but I believe worth the read.
Christian Gnosticism
Dr Vallen Prest
There has been a lot
of publicity about a slip of paper from the 4th century written in Coptic
Egyptian that a professor at Harvard thinks says that Jesus had a wife. Should
this change our Christian faith? Is this a smoking gun that will change the way
our faith is viewed? does it matter if Christ had a wife or even a child?
To place this scrap
of paper into its proper perspective we must understand the people who wrote
it.To do this we must first overlook the fact that this scrap of paper has no provenance.
This means that we have no clear understanding where this piece of paper was
found what else was found with it and how that might change our perception of
this paper.
What we do now is
that this fragment of writing is written in Coptic Egyptian. That there are
gapes or spaces that tell us there are missing words. These missing words could
change the meaning of what is bring assumed by this professor and the media.
There is no way that
we can recover the missing words. The tests that have been performed on this
document tells us that the paper is 4th century and the ink also appears to be
from the same time period.
One other small
issue is that Dr. King (the Harvard professor who has the Coptic fragment)
chose the word “wife” which would be better translated “companion.” This
reading could provide a different understanding of the fragment.
Is this the first
fragment that has been found that indicates an alternative story of Jesus? No.
In fact there are all sorts of documents that claim to tell us stories about
Jesus. Many of these documents were
also written during the same time period.
What do we know
about these other documents? They compromise a collection of documents from a
group of people who were considered heretical Christians. They were known as
Gnostic Christians.
So what is
Gnosticism?
To understand Gnosticism we must first understand its roots.
The roots of Gnosticism can be traced back as early as the Persian Empire and
its religion of dualism. This religion taught that there were two equal
deities, one totally good and the other totally evil. These two entities worked
as kind of a yin and yang. For the world to properly exist there must be
summitry or balance between the two opposing forces.
One of the philosophical ideas that came out of dualism was
Gnosticism, which believed that anything that was of or from the spiritual
realm was good and anything from the physical realm was evil. This played out
with the belief that the flesh or the body was evil and the spirit was good.
This ancient heresy has two major streams that flow out of
this belief of the good of the spirit and the evil of the physical. Because of
the evil of the body one stream practiced licentiousness. Since the body is
unimportant, evil and won’t last therefore everything goes!
The other stream produced a form of legalism within the
church. The spirit was good but anything we did in the body was evil and
therefore had to be controlled and at times beaten into submission. One can see
the rise of monasticism directly from this teaching. We separate ourselves from
the world and all of its corruption. Some of the Anabaptist groups of the
reformation era (that still exist today) came to similar conclusions. The
Puritans of England also often forbade many pleasures of the body.
In its most extreme form the followers of these teachings
refrained from any form of sexual pleasures and the only way that these sects
could grow was through converts. Here in America a religious group known as the
Shakers (because of their intense shaking worship) that had existed since the
founding of America ceased to exist when their last surviving member died in
the early nineteen hundreds.
Gnosticism can be found in many different religions today.
Its roots crept into the church as early as the end of the first century and
beginning of the second century. By the fourth century it had come to full
bloom and was a heresy that the ancient church addressed and opposed. Even
today we still see the roots of dualism can be seen in Christianity. For
example, the sacred is good but the secular is bad or the notion that
Christianity is a religion of “no” to any pleasures.
God created man and in Genesis chapter One
26 Then
God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them
rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock,
over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the
ground."
27 So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and
female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27 (NIV)
And in Chapter Two we find out that God not only formed man
from the dust of the ground (physical) but God also breathed into Adam the
breath of life (certainly spiritual since God is a spirit John 4:24)
7 the LORD
God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
at the end of day 6
He claimed that everything He had created (all of the physical creation) was
very good. God created man in his own image and claimed his created as “good.”
It is only after the fall of man that evil entered into the heart of man.
31 God saw
all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there
was morning--the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31 (NIV)
At the core of Gnostic teaching is knowledge, especially
secret knowledge. This special knowledge could only be passed on to those who
were worthy of ascending to the place of knowledge. This knowledge would allow
a person to eventually ascend past the physical world into the spiritual world
and become godlike.
If we know or have secret knowledge about something or
someone we have power over them. This information allows us to control them.
Ancient religions believed if we knew the true name of something (or someone)
it allowed us to control that item or person.
The more knowledge the less in control we really are. The
more knowledge we have the more we are controlled by pride (1 Corinthians 13
and 1 John 2:15-16). Our problem as believers is not that we need more
information. No our problem is not a lack of knowledge but rather a lack of
application of the knowledge that we already know.
While there were many different Gnostic beliefs the main
ones consisted of the fact that Christ was less than God but higher than any
other spiritual being. The lowest of the spiritual beings was Jehovah who
created the physical world and was therefore the creator of evil.
Christ was a spirit who descended on the man Jesus at his
baptism and when Jesus was arrested the spirit of Christ left him. Therefore
while Jesus physical body died Christ did not die. He tricked Satan into
killing Jesus.
Another belief is that Jesus didn’t die on the cross and was
revived after he was taken down. The licentious stream believed after the cross
that Jesus married and had children.
The other group (the legalists) believed that Christ would
never marry much less have children because the flesh was evil. This group
spiritualized the concept of the bride and the acts of procreation to mean the
spiritual bride and converts were known as children.
I have read many of the Gnostic writings and can attest to
the fact that their quality of writing and concepts are not even close to those
found in the New Testament canon. Most of these writings are not complete and
are almost child-like in their construction and content.
The vast majority of these works are in Coptic and ancient
Egyptian language and were found in Egypt. The only copies of these works were
written in the end of the third century and fourth century. No early copies of
these works exist in earlier centuries. Of additional interest to me is that
this fragment has no provenance and casts serious doubt over its authenticity.
A former professor of mine made the following comments
regarding Gnosticism and the recent fragment that has made the news.
Sensationalism
catches the interest the news media and sometimes Christians get worried about
such sensational news reports. Please do not worry about such accounts. Such
ideas are not new, and calling Mary Jesus' wife is Dr. King's translation for
the Coptic idea of companion. The Gnostics had ideas that intimacy with the
divine was best expressed in sexual terms so that in the Coptic Gnostic Gospel
of Philip the highest sacrament was called the Bridal Chamber. Gnostics
believed that intimacy with God was to be understood sexually.
These late 3rd - 4th century and following documents were hardly accepted
by the Church as authentic representative expressions of portraits of Jesus.
Dr.
Gerald Borchert, IWS Trustee and Professor Emeritus
John wrote the Gospel of John to proclaim that Christ had
come in the flesh and was not simply a spiritual being.
1 In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the
beginning.
3 Through him all things were
made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4 In him was life, and that
life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the
darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
John 1:1-5 (NIV)
14 The Word became flesh and
made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and
Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 (NIV)
The First Epistle of John was written to refute that Christ
Jesus had not come in the flesh.
1 Dear
friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they
are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 This is how you can
recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ
has come in the flesh is from God,
3 but every spirit that does
not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist,
which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
1 John 4:1-3 (NIV)
Paul also addressed this in his letter to the Galatians.
6 I am
astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the
grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel--
7 which is really no gospel
at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to
pervert the gospel of Christ.
8 But even if we or an angel
from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let
him be eternally condemned!
9 As we have already said, so
now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you
accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
Galatians 1:6-9 (NIV)
While this is at best a quick overview of the problem of
Gnosticism I hope that it will help address the needs of the faith community
where you are.
A final note of caution, please remember that apologetics is
a wonderful tool for helping to build up the wavering faith of believers it is
not an evangelistic tool. No one has ever been argued into heaven. Only the
Spirit drawing people to God the Father through the sharing of the Gospel will
bring people into the Kingdom of God.
All for the Kingdom
Pastor Val
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