inner and outer christianity During the fourth century, a tragedy occurred with great consequences for original Christianity. Since Constantine (280-337 AD), a great political game was played to separate the true inner experiencing of Christianity, which every human being can experience, from the official Roman religion, which was mainly used as an instrument of power. An important chapter in this tragedy was the selection of the so-called true scriptures of the church, which were initially called ‘the new Roman testimonies’, but which soon became ‘The New Testament’. However, now the Gospel of Thomas has been found.
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he Gospel of Thomas begins as follows: ‘Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.’ Instead of seriously seeking the meaning of these words, they were ultimately dealt with as heretical, that is, far from the truth. How could this happen? And has an explanation ever been found for these words? During the early years of Christianity, differences in interpretation between the various groups was not a problem, that is, until, during the second century, church father Irenaeus became restless. He stated that there could be one church only. In his view, only the members of that church were orthodox Christians who stuck to the true faith. Those whom he considered not to think ‘straight’, were the Gnostics, particularly Valentinus, Basilides, Montanus and Marcion. Irenaeus’ ideas were gradually adopted widely, so that the church had become an institution by the end of the fourth century. Thus it had become possible to pursue a strict policy. Three radical measures were enforced: • It was decided which books were holy and which were not. The church came with a canon, a collection of writings that deter mined once and for all which writings be longed to the Bible. • A bishop was the head of the church. • The teachings of the church determined 20 pentagram 4/2010
what people should believe. During succes sive councils or church assemblies, these were expanded and further specified. The consequences are clear: even the discovery of about 35 gospels at Nag Hammadi in 1945 did not change an almost two-thousand-yearold canon overnight. In addition, it was discovered that the teachings of the church significantly deviated from the image of Jesus of Nazareth, which we find in these newly-found gospels. These documents describe teachings, according to which the original Christians of those days lived and worked, and which had already been known long before Irenaeus. By the way, the image of Jesus of Nazareth that the church had at the time was certainly not unequivocal; it had not yet crystallised by a long shot. It was not until 451 AD, during the Council of Chalcedon, that the discussion was closed. For four and a half centuries, people had been discussing the question: How are the divine and the human nature combined in Jesus? Athanasius succinctly formulated it in his Confession: ‘And although He is God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ.’ If we compare this with the part about Jesus from the ‘apostolicum’, which formulated the content of the faith, the image is almost complete: Jesus Christ is the only-begotten son. This confirmed the classical image: God has only one son, who was born as Godman on earth.
