April 22, 2005
The Pious Pastors and Faithful of
the Holy Metropolis
of Denver
Beloved in the Lord,
Recent news reports and a television special
have informed us about
the discovery and translation of a fourth-century Gnostic manuscript
known as the Gospel of Judas.
There is nothing new in this finding,
since the existence of that text was well known within the early Church.
Its discovery is interesting only from an academic, archeological point
of view insofar as it corroborates references made about it in other
early documents.
From the first days of the Church there have been, and continue to be, many diverse writings about our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ did not write His teachings down Himself; others did so by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord Himself validates which writings are accurate, through His mystical Body, the Church, which must in every age make this determination. The ultimate expression of His Body is an Ecumenical Council guided by the Holy Spirit. There have been seven such Ecumenical Councils held during the first millennium of the Church.
Of the many writings in circulation during the early centuries, some have been regarded as essential to the Christian faith. These are the four Gospels and the Epistles which are read to this very day in our Church services.
Other writings were determined to be inaccurate, or inconsistent, or
expressing ideas at odds with the mind of the Church. Some individuals
believe that this implies early Christianity was not monolithic
but
very diverse. This is nonsense, since Jesus is the Truth, and the
Divine Truth does not contradict Himself.
The Gospel of Judas
is one of many writings written within, and
maintained by, certain groups of people regarded as Gnostics. It was
rejected by the early shepherds of the Church as being both historically
inaccurate and also inconsistent with Christian revelation and
understanding.
Gnosticism was one of the first heresies (alternate teachings)
addressed by the early Church. The term gnostic
comes from the Greek
word gnosis (knowledge). The Gnostics were neo-Platonists, grounded in
pre-Christian Greek philosophy which regarded the physical world as
lesser than the spiritual. Gnostic heretics intellectualized
Christianity, rejecting the body while exalting the spirit or soul.
This same error later afflicted Western Christianity during the
Protestant Reformation, and is evident even today in Calvinism.
The Gnostics maintained that the material world was flawed, having been the work of an inferior creator (a demi-god) rather than of the one all-good God. The Gnostics further believed that the divine mind was an ultimate source of goodness which existed outside the physical universe. They speculated that each man possesses a portion of that divine power, and that the awakening of this spark could lead to salvation through union with the divine mind.
For a Gnostic, secret higher knowledge
was the key to unlocking the
path to divine awakening and was attained through the guidance of a
teacher. Clearly this sort of religion, from within which the Gospel
of Judas
was written, is completely contrary to Christian thought. It
actually has more in common with the contemporary quest for gurus and
eastern religions than with Orthodox Christianity.
Gnosticism was a problem in the Apostolic age, and Saint John the
Evangelist dealt with the matter in his Gospel and three Epistles.
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. AD 130-202) addressed the background and
content of the Gospel of Judas
and also numerous other heretical
writings in his foundational discourse regarding Christian doctrine, On
the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis (normally referred
to by its Latin title Adversus Haereses, or Against Heresies. Another
early Church father, Saint Athanasios (ca. AD 298-372), wrote in his
Paschal Letter that the secret and illegitimate books
of the Gnostics
were to be totally rejected as outside the Christian tradition.
Orthodox Christianity maintains that there is a single Creator, Who
brought all things into existence and looked upon His creation declaring
it to be good.
The fallen condition of creation, both in the physical
and in the spiritual realm, results not from its deficiency at creation
but as a consequence of human failure to live up to the expectation of
the all-good God.
The incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity within the womb of the Virgin Mary attests to the fundamental goodness of physical creation, for Jesus Christ took on a material human body as well as an immaterial human soul. Moreover, His third-day resurrection, of both His body and soul, attests to the potential redemption of the entire human person, not merely of his intellectual, mental, or spiritual component.
The Gnostic context of the Gospel of Judas
is thus completely
outside the doctrinal Christian context. Furthermore, its premise, that
Christ directed Judas Iscariot to betray Him so as to effect His
necessary death for the world, is entirely illogical for Jesus Christ as
the all-good and all-holy Son of God. This would have essentially meant
that Jesus, the only sinless One,
sinned by directing Judas to cause
His own murder. More seriously, if the Lord directed Judas to betray
Him, the inference is that He did not die willingly for the salvation of
the world. He would have created the scenario of a betrayal, which
would have negated His willing sacrifice on the Cross by using the
assistance of a second party.
We Christians, of course, completely reject such a possibility as irrational, but it can make sense to a Gnostic who platonically believes that salvation rests in the liberation of the soul from the body and its awakening to divine gnosis. Gnosticism ultimately refutes and rejects the divine incarnation of the Son of God as Jesus Christ, and it ultimately leads to iconoclasm and to the denial of a bodily resurrection.
Finally, there is no secret knowledge
in Christianity. This is an
absurd notion. Our Lord Jesus Christ came for the salvation of all,
without regard to persons or their intellectual capabilities. There was
no private revelation that He imparted to His Apostles in which He
entrusted to them alone the mystery of the Kingdom of God. The four
gospels clearly and openly report the public and the private words of
Jesus, which are accessible to all people. You shall know the truth
and the truth shall set you free.
(John 8:32)
We Orthodox Christians can therefore regard the Gospel of Judas
as
an archeological discovery of an already known text that scholars may
find useful for studying the concepts of the Gnostics. It adds nothing
to our historical knowledge of events that took place 2,000 years ago.
It also adds nothing to our understanding of Christian dogma and
doctrine since it merely reflects the perspective of a particular group
(the Gnostics) that was regarded even in the Holy Scriptures as outside
of Christianity.
With Paternal Blessings,
+Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver