The Gnostic Gospels

Though gnostic beliefs were diverse and not always consistent, they centered around The Primacy of Direct Spiritual Knowledge. Pagels identifies gnostic Christianity with the following constellation of ideas: Gnostics emphasized the individual, practiced egalitarianism in groups and between women and men, venerated spiritual experiences, distrusted the body and the physical world, traced the origins of suffering and evil to ignorance, and believed that knowledge of the divine came mainly or entirely from within. In contrast, orthodox Christianity focused on hierarchical relationships, viewed suffering and evil as a result of sins and harms committed in relationships, tended to argue that women should be subordinate to men, and believed that knowledge of God had to be mediated through priests and other authorities. Gnostic belief sought “experiential truth” (133) rather than the authority found in external and prescribed sources, such as the interpretations of bishops, rituals, or texts.

Still, throughout The Gnostic Gospels, Pagels admits that these categories are not absolute and have numerous exceptions. Despite their differences, gnostic and orthodox Christianity drew on the same traditions and texts (with the exception of specifically gnostic sources that were rejected from the orthodox canon, such as The Gospel of Thomas). Pagels argues that the differences between the two camps can be found in something even more fundamental than divisions in religious belief and practice, writing, “Gnosticism and orthodoxy […] articulated very different kinds of human experience; I suspect that they appealed to different types of persons” (143). Given Pagels’s overarching thesis about the political impact of religious beliefs—that institutions shape persons as much as persons shape institutions—the gradual disappearance of the gnostic churches may have meant that the modes of being and thinking exemplified by those churches became unavailable. Here, the book implies a counterfactual—an invitation to imagine how different the modern world might look if gnostic views of Christianity had survived or even won out over “orthodox” views. 

The conflict between gnostic and orthodox Christianity emerges in part from the motivations of people becoming Christians. Pagels writes that “conflicts arose in the formation of Christianity between those restless, inquiring people who marked out a solitary path of self-discovery and the institutional framework that gave to the great majority of people religious sanction and ethical direction for their daily lives” (149). As the orthodox church solidified itself as an institution, it came increasingly to view the gnostic rejection of hierarchy as a threat: 

When Irenaeus denounced the heretics as “gnostics,” he referred less to any specific doctrinal agreement among them (indeed, he often castigated them for the variety of their beliefs) than to the fact that they all resisted accepting the authority of the clergy, the creed, and the New Testament canon (122). 

Pagels suggests that The Subjective Distinction Between Orthodoxy and Heresy is most evident in how the orthodox church was able to accept the monastic movement, which like the gnostics emphasized insularity, because it made itself subordinate to church authority.

In Pagels’s view, the gnostic focus on the interior self makes the discovery of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts especially timely. Many scholars argue that the distinguishing feature of modernity is its emphasis on the individual and its valorization of direct experience as a means of acquiring knowledge. These are the same key features by which Pagels defines gnosticism, suggesting that modern readers may be better suited to appreciate gnostic thought than many of the gnostics’ contemporaries were. She argues that “our own cultural experience has given us a new perspective on the issues” that gnostic writings raise (151). She particularly finds a similarity between gnostic belief and the modern science of psychotherapy, writing, “Both gnosticism and psychotherapy value, above all, knowledge—the self-knowledge which is insight” (124). Such observations have fueled criticisms that Pagels misreads the gnostics, by assessing their beliefs through a modern interpretive lens. Pagels explicitly denies this. Her stated goal “is not to advocate any side, but to explore the evidence—in this instance, to attempt to discover how Christianity originated” (151). For her, the question The Gnostic Gospels seeks to answer is why did orthodox Christianity not only survive, but thrive, while gnostic Christianity went underground and vanished from history. Her answer derives from her overarching belief that religion and politics are inextricably intertwined: Orthodox Christianity had characteristics that lent itself to the increase of institutional power. It was easy to become an “orthodox” Christian, but difficult to challenge the church’s leadership from within. This combination of openness and authoritarianism meant that the orthodox church could expand indefinitely while its beliefs and power structures remained relatively stable. In the late 20th century, as orthodox forms of Christianity find themselves increasingly at odds with modern, liberal culture, Pagels argues that gnosticism holds a particular appeal.