The Gnostic Gospels (20 page)

None of these sources denies that Jesus actually suffered and died; all assume it. Yet all are concerned to show how, in his incarnation, Christ transcended human nature so that he could prevail over death by divine power.
⁹²
The Valentinians thereby initiate discussion of the problem that became central to Christian theology some two hundred years later—the question of how Christ could be simultaneously human and divine. For this, Adolf von Harnack, historian of Christianity, calls them the “first Christian theologians.”

What does this mean for the question of martyrdom? Irenaeus accuses the Valentinians of “pouring contempt” on the martyrs and “casting a slur upon their martyrdom.” What is their position? Heracleon, the distinguished gnostic teacher, himself a student of Valentinus’, directly discusses martyrdom as he comments on Jesus’ saying:

“…  every one who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.… And when they bring you before … the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious how or what you are to answer …”
⁹³

Heracleon considers the question, What does it mean to “confess Christ”? He explains that people confess Christ in different ways. Some confess Christ in their faith and in their everyday conduct. However, most people consider only the second type of confession—making a verbal confession (“I am a Christian”) before a magistrate. The latter, he says, is what “the many” (orthodox Christians) consider to be the
only
confession. But, Heracleon points out, “even hypocrites can make this confession.” What is required universally of all Christians, he says, is the first type of confession; the second is required of
some, but not of all. Disciples like Matthew, Philip, and Thomas never “confessed” before the magistrates; still, he declares, they confessed Christ in the superior way, “in faith and conduct throughout their whole lives.”
⁹⁴

In naming these specific disciples, who often typify gnostic initiates (as in the
Gospel of Philip
and the
Gospel of Thomas
), Heracleon implies that they are superior to such martyr-apostles as Peter, whom the Valentinians consider typical of “the many”—that is, of merely
orthodox
Christians. Is he saying that martyrdom is fine for ordinary Christians, but not necessary for gnostics? Is he offering a rationale for gnostics to avoid martyrdom?

If that is what he means, he avoids stating it directly: his comments remain ambiguous. For he goes on to say that although confessing Christ “in faith and conduct” is more universal, this leads naturally to making an open confession at a trial, “if necessity and reason dictate.” What makes such confession “necessary” and “rational”? Simply that a Christian accused before a judge cannot
deny
Christ: in that case, Heracleon admits, verbal confession is the necessary and rational alternative to denial.

Yet Heracleon articulates a wholly different attitude toward martyrdom from his orthodox contemporaries. He expresses none of their enthusiasm for martyrdom, none of their praise for the “glorious victory” earned through death. Above all, he never suggests that the believers’ suffering imitates Christ’s. For if only the
human
element in Christ experienced the passion, this suggests that the believer, too, suffers only on a human level while the divine spirit within transcends suffering and death. Apparently the Valentinians considered the martyr’s “blood witness” to be second best to the superior,
gnostic
witness to Christ—a view that could well have provoked Irenaeus’ anger that these gnostics “show contempt” for the martyrs and devalue what he considers the “ultimate sacrifice.”

Although Irenaeus acknowledges that the gnostics are attempting to raise the level of theological understanding, he
declares that “they cannot accomplish a reformation effective enough to compensate for the harm they are doing.”
⁹⁵
From his viewpoint, any argument that Christians could use to avoid martyrdom undermines the solidarity of the whole Christian community. Rather than identifying with those held in prison, facing torture or execution, gnostic Christians might withdraw support from those they consider overzealous and unenlightened fanatics. Such actions serve, Irenaeus says, to “cut in pieces the great and glorious body of Christ [the church] and … destroy it.”
⁹⁶
Preserving unity demands that all Christians confess Christ “persecuted under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and buried,” implicitly affirming the necessity of the “blood witness” that imitates his passion.

Why did the orthodox view of martyrdom—and of Christ’s death as its model—prevail? I suggest that persecution gave impetus to the formation of the organized church structure that developed by the end of the second century. To place the question in a contemporary context, consider what recourse remains to dissidents facing a massive and powerful political system: they attempt to publicize cases of violence and injustice to arouse world-wide public support. The torture and execution of a small group of persons known only to their relatives and friends soon fall into oblivion, but the cases of dissidents who are scientists, writers, Jews, or Christian missionaries may arouse the concern of an international community of those who identify with the victims by professional or religious affiliation.

There is, of course, a major difference between ancient and modern tactics. Today the purpose of such publicity is to generate pressure and gain the release of those who are tortured or imprisoned. The apologists, like Justin, did address the Roman authorities, protesting the unjust treatment of Christians and calling on them to end it. But Christians wrote the stories of the martyrs for a different purpose, and for a different audience. They wrote exclusively to other Christian churches, not in hope of ending persecution, but to warn them of their common danger, to encourage them to emulate the martyrs’ “glorious
victory,” and to consolidate the communities internally and in relation to one another. So, in the second and third centuries, when Roman violence menaced Christian groups in remote provinces of the Empire, these events were communicated to Christians throughout the known world. Ignatius, condemned to execution in the Roman arena, occupied himself on his final journey writing letters to many provincial churches, telling them of his own situation and urging them to support the catholic (“universal”) church organized around the bishops. He warned them above all to avoid heretics who deviate from the bishops’ authority and from the orthodox doctrines of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. His letters to the Christians in Rome, whom he had never met, testify to the efficacy of such communication: Ignatius was confident that they would intervene to prevent his execution if he allowed them to do so. Later, when some fifty Christians in Lyons and Vienne were arrested in June 177, they immediately wrote to “our brothers in Asia and Phyrgia who have the same faith,” describing their suffering, and sent Irenaeus to inform the well-established church in Rome.

Pressed by their common danger, members of scattered Christian groups throughout the world increasingly exchanged letters and traveled from one church to another. Accounts of the martyrs, often taken from records of their trials and from eyewitnesses, circulated among the churches in Asia, Africa, Rome, Greece, Gaul, and Egypt. By such communication, members of the diversified earlier churches became aware of regional differences as obstacles to their claim to participate in one catholic church. As noted earlier, Irenaeus insisted that all churches throughout the world must agree on all vital points of doctrine, but even he was shocked when Victor, Bishop of Rome, attempted to move the regional churches toward greater uniformity. In 190, Victor demanded that Christians in Asia Minor abandon their traditional practice of celebrating Easter on Passover, and conform instead to Roman custom—or else give up their claim to be “catholic Christians.” At the same time, the Roman church was compiling the definitive list of books
eventually accepted by all Christian churches. Increasingly stratified orders of institutional hierarchy consolidated the communities internally and regularized communication with what Irenaeus called “the catholic church dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth”—a network of groups becoming increasingly uniform in doctrine, ritual, canon, and political structure.

Among outsiders, reports of brutality toward Christians aroused mixed emotions. Even the arrogant Tacitus, describing how Nero had Christians mocked and tortured to death, is moved to add:

Even for criminals who deserve extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
⁹⁷

Among the townspeople of Lyons, after the slaughter in the arena, some wanted to mutilate the corpses; others ridiculed the martyrs as fools, while others, “seeming to extend a measure of compassion,” pondered what inspired their courage: “What advantage has their religion brought them, which they preferred to their own life?”
⁹⁸
No doubt the persecutions terrified many into avoiding contact with Christians, but Justin and Tertullian both say that the sight of martyrs aroused the wonder and admiration that impelled them to investigate the movement, and then to join it. And both attest that this happened to many others. (As Justin remarked: “The more such things happen, the more do others, in larger numbers, become believers.”)
⁹⁹
Tertullian writes in defiance to Scapula, the proconsul of Carthage:

Your cruelty is our glory … All who witness the noble patience of [the martyrs], are struck with misgivings, are inflamed with desire to examine the situation … and as soon as they come to know the truth, they immediately enroll themselves as its disciples.
¹⁰⁰

He boasts to the Roman prosecutor that “the oftener we are mown down by you, the more we grow in numbers: the blood of the Christians is seed!”
¹⁰¹
Those who followed the orthodox consensus in doctrine and church politics also belonged to the church that—confessing the crucified Christ—became conspicuous for its martyrs. Groups of gnostic Christians, on the other hand, were scattered and lost—those who resisted doctrinal conformity, questioned the value of the “blood witness,” and often opposed submission to episcopal authority.

Finally, in its portrait of Christ’s life and his passion, orthodox teaching offered a means of interpreting fundamental elements of human experience. Rejecting the gnostic view that Jesus was a spiritual being, the orthodox insisted that he, like the rest of humanity, was born, lived in a family, became hungry and tired, ate and drank wine, suffered and died. They even went so far as to insist that he rose
bodily
from the dead. Here again, as we have seen, orthodox tradition implicitly affirms bodily experience as the central fact of human life. What one does physically—one eats and drinks, engages in sexual life or avoids it, saves one’s life or gives it up—all are vital elements in one’s
religious
development. But those gnostics who regarded the essential part of every person as the “inner spirit” dismissed such physical experience, pleasurable or painful, as a distraction from spiritual reality—indeed, as an illusion. No wonder, then, that far more people identified with the orthodox portrait than with the “bodiless spirit” of gnostic tradition. Not only the martyrs, but all Christians who have suffered for 2,000 years, who have feared and faced death, have found their experience validated in the story of the
human
Jesus.

V

Whose Church Is the “True Church”?

F
OR NEARLY
2,000 years, Christian tradition has preserved and revered orthodox writings that denounce the gnostics, while suppressing—and virtually destroying—the gnostic writings themselves. Now, for the first time, certain texts discovered at Nag Hammadi reveal the other side of the coin: how gnostics denounced the orthodox.
¹
The
Second Treatise of the Great Seth
polemicizes against orthodox Christianity, contrasting it with the “true church” of the gnostics. Speaking for those he calls the sons of light, the author says:

 … we were hated and persecuted, not only by those who are ignorant [pagans], but also by those who think they are advancing the name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals.
²