Author: Jadranka Brnčić
Reading the Gospel of Thomas is both an intellectual and spiritual challenge. Intellectual because by questioning how and where this gospel lived and why it was condemned as heretical, we discover the complexity of the emergence of Christianity as we know it. Spiritual because of what we can discover in it for our own spiritual journey.
Those who reject the Gospel of Thomas simply because it was long ago declared heretical do not differ significantly from those who seek to find the "true" truth hidden in Thomas' gospel, if not from the authors of the canonical gospels, then from those who interpret them. The place of the Gospel of Thomas is elsewhere. It neither adds nor subtracts anything from the canonical gospels. Moreover, it does not write anything that we cannot find as a hidden message in the canonical gospels.
Misunderstandings, ambiguities, contradictions do not arise from what is said, but from how we understand what is said. Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas says that whoever understands (not just "keeps," as translated in Jn 8:51) his words will truly live (cf. logion 1). These words are not a secret in the sense that only the chosen ones can understand it, but they are hidden from those who do not have ears to hear them, or who do not recognize them within themselves as true ("He who has ears, let him hear" - logia 8, 21, 24, 63, 65, 96).
Who is Thomas? In the opening sentence of the Gospel of Thomas (logion 1; numerous translations, including Croatian, can be found online), the author introduces himself: "These are the secret words that the living Jesus spoke, and Judas Thomas (the Twin) recorded."
The author's name is Judas, while the words "tomas" (Aramaic תאומא) and "dydamus" (Greek Θωμάς) both mean: twin. Since the name Judas was very common among Jews, the nickname was certainly given as a distinguishing feature. It is possible that he had a twin brother, or perhaps, as indirectly suggested in the Gospel of Thomas, he got this name because of spiritual affinity with Jesus.
However, some authors believe that Judas the Twin is not identical to Thomas the Twin, but is Jesus' brother mentioned in his gospel by Mark (Mk 6:3) and referred to as Jesus' twin brother in "Thomas' book" (another manuscript found in Nag Hammadi in 1945).
Thomas is rarely mentioned in the canonical gospels: Mark, Matthew, and Luke mention his name only when listing the twelve closest disciples of Jesus (Mk 3:18; Mt 10:3; Lk 6:15; Acts 1:13). However, John mentions him several times (Jn 11:16; Jn 14:3-7; Jn 20:26-29; Jn 21:2), which characterizes him as a bold and rational man, capable of yielding his own rationality to deeper insight and recognition.
The Coptic translation manuscript contains a total of 114 sayings (Greek logia), short dialogues, and parables attributed to Jesus. It dates from the 340s, while experts dispute the dating of the original (whose fragments were found in a Greek translation, while the original was most likely written in Syriac Aramaic) because the manuscript is obviously a compilation of older sources and newer additions (two-thirds of the sayings are very similar to those in the canonical gospels, while a third of them are completely unique).
Many experts agree that it was written, at least a large part of it, at the time of the composition of the canonical gospels (ranging from 66 to 110 CE), or even earlier: between 40 and 50 CE.
The Gospel of Thomas already differs in structure from both apocryphal and canonical gospels. While the canonical gospels are structured as a story of Jesus' life (with quotations of his words), woven around the kerygmatic core (the proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah in the light of his passion, death, and resurrection), the Gospel of Thomas is a collection of Jesus' sayings, short dialogues, and parables. Therefore, these are two different genres.
The first thing we notice when comparing the canonical and the Gospel of Thomas is that among the sayings of Jesus that the authors and/or editors of the Gospel of Thomas selected, there is no talk of Jesus foreshadowing his own death (an allusion may perhaps be found in logion 65), there are no eschatological parables and sayings; moreover, Thomas' Jesus responds to the disciples' question about the end: "What you seek from the beginning, that the end will reveal. Where the beginning is, there the end will be" (logion 18). The talk about the Kingdom (of God) is not about a future event but about an event here and now: "The Kingdom spreads across the earth, but people do not see it" (logion 113).
If we read the gospels carefully, focusing on what Jesus said rather than how they are commonly interpreted, we will see that Jesus of Nazareth did not call himself the Messiah, nor did he claim to be a divine being who descended from heaven to die as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
At the center of Jesus' teaching and action was the vision of life in the Kingdom of God, where God's generosity and goodness are the measure of human life.
All are accepted as God's children and as such are called to be free from the ethnocentric limitations of traditional Judaism and from the secularizing submission to the ruthless rulers of the Roman Empire.
Jesus' vision of the Kingdom of God was not apocalyptic in the narrow sense of the word: he did not speak what many witnesses of his words believed in the light of his death and resurrection: that God would bring history to an end by direct intervention and establish a new, perfect order of life. Instead, Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God as already present but unseen by people.
His parables about the Kingdom of God (like Zen koans) serve to open eyes, redirect gaze, conversion (Greek: μετάνοια) from the cause-and-effect logic of life to freedom from the conditioning of such logic (in the Gospel of Thomas, it is called death; cf. logia 18, 19, 111). We are called to live a full life as whole beings (cf. Jn 10:10). And that is precisely the Good News of Jesus in both the canonical and the Gospel of Thomas.
When it comes to who Jesus is, in the background of the Gospel of Thomas, we discover a theology that, in perspective, differs from that in the canonical gospels: while for all four canonical gospels Jesus is the Messiah, regardless of how they understood him (Mark as a future king, Matthew as a rabbi and prophet, Luke as a compassionate healer and Savior, and John as the incarnation of God himself), for Thomas, the question of who Jesus is is inseparably linked to the question of who we are, or with our selves rooted in the transcendental, only capable of answering or even asking the question itself.
Throughout the history of Christianity, believers have vacillated between a God they imagined as being utterly distant from human life and a God who is His participant, between a God who commands from unreachable heights of His incomprehensible power and a God who can be known only in the depths of our intimacy, in other words: between religion and faith, faith in God and trust in God.
In the Gospel of Thomas, there is no talk of ethics but of mysticism, not of faith but of knowledge, not of evil but of ignorance, not of eschatology but of the Beginning, not of decision but of experience, not of obligation but of enlightenment.
His gospel speaks of spiritual transformation and leads the reader toward contemplative practice and inner growth through non-duality, wakefulness to unity in the presence of God.
When the Gospel of Thomas was discovered, most experts were inclined to discredit it, like Irenaeus of Lyons, as a theological distortion of the canonical gospels, but in the last thirty years, this initial negative assessment has been radically revised: some scholars now suggest that the Gospel may contain the earliest version of Jesus' original teachings, and Christian Gnosticism, once demonized, is increasingly recognized as the authentic wisdom of Judeo-Christianity.
With popular editions of the Gospel according to Thomas now widely available, thousands of spiritual seekers around the world have begun to read the text, discovering in it a tool for their own spiritual adventure and confirmation of the relevance of Jesus' words.
The Gospel of Thomas encourages us to delve into the rich, mostly neglected source of early Christian spirituality. "There are many around the well, but no one in the well" (logion 74).
The contemplative type of Christianity nurtured in the Syrian community (the future Orthodox Syrian Church), among the Syrian fathers who inherited Thomas's mysticism, was based on the process of deification, which included not only baptism and the Eucharist but also instruction in contemplation whose purpose was to become like Christ, to replace the "fallen man" with the image (icon) of God, "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ," as Paul says (Ephesians 4:13).
The "hidden things" were discovered throughout the history of Christianity by numerous men and women dedicated to contemplation that included the demand for spiritual transformation, renunciation of the material world, and withdrawal into solitude and silence.
However, institutional Christianity can tolerate such a radical demand only as aspirations within itself, but not as essential theological principles of its own message.
The Church has lived in tension between religiosity and spirituality throughout its history: religiosity, however, keeps Christianity alive, while spirituality revitalizes it.
But for a person to even enter the world of spirituality, one must seek it, seek until one finds (cf. logion 2). And when one finds it, one will be emptied of one's personal, particular self (which distinguishes between outside and inside, male and female, beginning and end), amazed by the ineffable, and "will rule over everything" (logia 2, 22). One will not die even when one's body dies because one will "know what is unchangeable" (logion 19).
Thomas's gnosis is the skill of finding God within oneself by discovering the hidden power in human consciousness.
Thomas's Jesus wants his disciples to become aware of who they are, just like him.
Man is a light particle of the divine Body and is saved, or returns to his wholeness when he recognizes the connection with the divine origin of his being (cf. logia 49, 50).
The key word in the Gospel of Thomas is "to recognize" (Coptic: cooyn, coywn - to know, to recognize): oneself (logia 3, 67), what is before our eyes (18), the beginning and the end (18), peace (51), what does not pass away (19), the Living Father (3, 69).
Thomas's Jesus teaches his disciples: to recognize the Kingdom, or truly be alive, they must "fast from the world" and enter into Rest (Sabbath), which we could understand as surpassing ordinary human consciousness (mental activity, memories, and concerns), closing physical eyes and ears (entering into silence), and resting in the Spirit to "see the Father" with the eyes of the soul (cf. logia 17, 27). Whoever does not do this, the world will "devour" him (cf. logion 7, 11, 60), and he will be poor (logion 3) and "naked" (logion 28). Therefore, it is essential for us to be passers-by (cf. logion 42).
Thomas's Jesus addresses his disciples as children of Light (many spiritual movements of early Christianity /Essenes, Gnostics, Ebionites/ called themselves that way). Entering the Kingdom is entering another dimension of inner space illuminated by divine light (cf. logion 51), entering "into the chambers of the heart filled with blessed Light" (Joseph the Visionary; cf. Colles 2009: 109-112).
But to be able to enter the Kingdom, disciples must be "alone" in the sense of "being one" (logion 4, 49, 11 cf. Mt 6:22): "When the disciple is one within, he is full of light. When he is divided within, he is full of darkness" (logion 61). To be alone means to be one, whole, united with God (Coptic: mmonaχs, Greek: μοναχός - "alone, solitary", and then also: monk; cf. logion 22).
Mystics often describe inner vision as what spontaneously appears when they reach a certain level of inner consciousness they call "pure prayer." Jesus said, "I will give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, and what has not entered the human heart" (logion 17; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:9).
From that consciousness in which we are not separated from God and in which nothing can separate us from Him, it is no longer necessary to ask how to pray, fast, give alms, love our neighbors (logia 14, 25, 89, 95). It is enough not to lie and not to do what is hateful to us (logion 6), to learn from little children (4, 22) and to watch over thieves (21, 35).
"When you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you" (or as it is most commonly translated: "When you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you") (logion 70). Jesus said, "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed" (logion 108).
If the Gospel of Thomas had been found just a few hundred years earlier, it certainly would not have been published for a wider readership. However, it remained hidden until the 20th century when we became capable of seeing the questions it raises in a new way and of opening ourselves to the wisdom it offers and which, as Thomas's Jesus said, is within us.
Source: autograf
