Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (19 page)

Excited by these words, a novice would have listened more intently for the secrets James is about to reveal. As he listened, he might have heard “the living Jesus” invite him to join Peter, James, and John to
seek revelation
: “I am the one who is with you always” … “If you want to come with me, come!”
⁴⁵

Having joined the inner circle of believers in the monastery, the novice then might hear such readings, which invite—and challenge—believers to go beyond the elementary teaching that they might have heard at churches in town. For listening to this “secret revelation” and others,
⁴⁶
one might hear oneself included among disciples allowed to hear what these writings claim Jesus spoke in private: “From now on … remember that you have seen the Son of Man, and spoken with him in person, and listened to him in person.… Become better than I; make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit!”
⁴⁷

Instead of being told that one can learn about Jesus only from what the apostles wrote and handed down in their writings, the Secret Revelation of James invites the believer to commune directly with “the living Jesus”—even challenges one to become
like
him. Rather than being put off with simple answers, the novice is encouraged to ask bolder questions: What was there before the world was created? Where do we come from, and where are we going? How can we come to know God—not just through Bible stories or concepts but
experientially
—and come to know who, spiritually speaking, we really are?

The newcomer might have to wait for the next session, on
another night, to hear readings from the Gospel of Truth, which follows next in the same volume and speaks to these questions, offering to reveal “the true gospel.” The Gospel of Truth begins by telling how, “in the beginning,” all beings came forth from the Father, but then lost contact with their divine source and so fell into anguish and terror, like people lost in dense fog. But this gospel, weaving in allusions to the New Testament Gospel of John, goes on to tell how the Father sent his Son into the world to bring his lost and lonely children back into the embrace of divine love, “into the Father, into the Mother, Jesus of the infinite sweetness.”
⁴⁸

Leaving aside more familiar teachings about Christ as the “lamb of God” offered as atonement, as a sacrifice to “save us from our sins,”
⁴⁹
the Gospel of Truth, like the New Testament Gospel of John, pictures Jesus’ crucifixion as
itself
a revelation—one that reveals God’s love and shows us who we really are.
⁵⁰
Recalling the tree of knowledge in Paradise, this gospel pictures Jesus “nailed to a tree,” as the “fruit” that offers
true
knowledge, “the fruit of knowing the Father.” Those who “eat this fruit” by sharing in worship the bread and wine that recall Jesus’ death discover that they share an intimate connection with God, and become “glad in the discovery; for he discovered them in himself, and they discovered him in themselves.”
⁵¹
As the reader concludes, those listening in the dark might feel themselves blessed, now that they have been called back into communion with God as “the children … that he loves.”
⁵²

Yet those reflecting on the poetic images of Jesus’ crucifixion in the Gospel of Truth might also wonder about the question that opens the next writing—a question many Christians ask to this
day:
Is it necessary to believe that Jesus was actually raised from the dead?
The anonymous author of the Letter to Rheginos (also called Treatise on the Resurrection) writes to a student who has asked this question, saying that although it is difficult to answer, “let us discuss the matter.”
⁵³
Anyone struggling with this question would know, of course, that certain disciples had said they
had
seen Jesus alive after his death and that certain gospel stories suggest that he had come back
physically.
⁵⁴
Some stories report that his disciples had actually touched and felt his body—even, as the Book of Acts says Peter claimed, that he and others “ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”
⁵⁵

Rheginos’ teacher answers
yes
in his letter: one must believe in resurrection—but not
literally.
Recalling what Paul teaches about resurrection, he explains that it does not necessarily mean resuscitation of the present physical body, since “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption.”
⁵⁶
Although, as he points out, the apostle Paul says that resurrection is a mystery, Rheginos’ teacher insists that faith in it is neither optional nor an illusion; on the contrary, “it is the truth”—more real than the world in which we now live! He goes on to say that although it is not easy to understand,
resurrection
shows how we, once oblivious to divine reality, may be raised to spiritual life and become enlightened: “Why not think of yourself as raised, then, and already brought to this?”
⁵⁷
Resurrection, then, involves a shift in consciousness—it is “the revelation of what is, and the transformation of things, and a transition into newness.”
⁵⁸
But, Rheginos’ teacher cautions, “if someone doesn’t believe it, my son, the person cannot be persuaded,” since resurrection is a matter of faith, not philosophical argument.

Hearing such sources read aloud, most likely on successive nights—in gatherings for devotions that might conclude with the group praying together and sometimes embracing before sharing the sacred meal
⁵⁹
—the novice might be moved to hear the final teaching in Codex I speak poetically of whence we came and where we are going. For the Tripartite Tractate that concludes the book we call Codex I expands what the Gospel of Truth had sketched out: how, in the beginning, each of us—and all beings in the universe—came forth from God, the Father, “like a young child, like a drop of water from a spring, like a blossom from a vine.”
⁶⁰
Although originally all were linked together, the Tripartite Tractate, like the Gospel of Truth, tells how they became scattered and separated, then turned arrogant and violent, lusting for power, fighting to dominate and kill one another, as people do in the outside world. Those gathered in the monastery, hearing this account, could see themselves as God’s children, whom Christ had brought back and joined into one community so that, as this final teaching concludes, they might “help one another” as they seek to be reunited with “the One filled with love, through his holy spirit, from now through all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
⁶¹

On other nights, in spring or winter, the monks might listen to teachings from other sacred books from the monastery library. As we have seen, such writings as the Secret Revelation of James offer techniques of prayer drawn from Jewish tradition to lift heart, mind, and spirit, while the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth and Allogenes set forth disciplines of fasting, study, meditation, and prayer practiced in Hermetic, Platonic, and perhaps Buddhist circles as well, to help attune body, mind, and spirit. For, as one famous disciple of Plato had said, one who seeks God

Just as Christian monks today often include in their libraries books written by teachers ranging from the Dalai Lama to the Jewish master Moses Maimonides, monks in such monasteries as those in Upper Egypt apparently gathered eclectic writings for their libraries.
⁶³

Some scholars who first read these texts after their discovery in 1945, noting how they diverge from orthodox tradition, assumed that monks would have collected such writings only to refute the heresy they found in them. More recent research suggests, however, that early in the fourth century, before Athanasius’ campaign to reform the monasteries had succeeded in making them conform their teaching to orthodox doctrine, many monks might have seen these diverse writings pointing in the same direction as the great pioneers of their own monastic tradition. Athanasius knew, of course, that monks in the federation based at Nag Hammadi looked above all to Pachomius, their monastic “father,” who urged them to press into the unknown, seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance, as he did himself, while countless others looked to Anthony of Egypt, that great pioneer of the spiritual life.

Anthony, born in Egypt around 250, had given up the wealth and hundreds of acres of land he had inherited when his parents died to live alone in the desert seeking God. In his later years, after he had become a mentor to monks all over Egypt and a legend throughout the empire, he wrote letters addressed to his
“dear children” who sought to follow his example.
⁶⁴
Anthony encouraged them to undertake “fasts, vigils, exertions and bodily disciplines” until “the guiding spirit begins to open the eyes of the soul,” since the purpose of such exercises was to discover one’s true self in God.
⁶⁵

What Anthony taught resonated with what Pachomius’ monks might have heard in their evening devotions, as well as in the “secret writings” that Athanasius sought to dismiss. Anthony spoke of how, being created in God’s image, “we are all created from one invisible being,”
⁶⁶
but having lost our original connection with the divine source, we “descended into the abyss, being completely dead,” and came into present existence as into a “dark house full of war.”
⁶⁷
Anthony went on to teach that Christ, moved by God’s love, came, suffered, and died to bring us back to life. Thus, like the anonymous teacher of the Letter to Rheginos, Anthony wrote that God’s spirit resurrects us—not our mortal bodies but our essential being—so that we may live in joyful communion with one another and with God. Discovering this, we may learn, with difficulty, to live by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who restores us to ourselves—for, as Anthony wrote, “whoever knows himself, knows God.”
⁶⁸

Although influenced by Plato and by the brilliant Christian teacher Origen, Anthony speaks in these letters to his “brothers and sisters” with utter simplicity, stressing the practical results of living the “angelic life”: “whoever harms his neighbor harms himself … but whoever knows himself knows all things … and whoever is able to love himself loves all.”
⁶⁹
Because what matters most is receiving the Holy Spirit’s guidance and coming to know oneself, Anthony offers no doctrines that he requires believers to
learn, and no beliefs that he demands they accept. Instead, as the scholar Samuel Rubenson says, since “the chief criterion is experience,” Anthony “invites and implores the reader to discover and understand himself.”
⁷⁰

What listeners might hear, then, in such readings from Codex I, found at Nag Hammadi, is much the same. Like Anthony, the anonymous authors whose writings are included offer nothing to memorize, no theological systems buttressed with philosophical argument, nor any prescribed method of interpreting the Scriptures. For them, as for Anthony, “what counts is not intellectual capacity … but a state of mind characterized by insight and true perception.”
⁷¹
Whoever collected for the monastery library such writings as the Secret Revelation of James, the Gospel of Truth, and the Letter to Rheginos, as well as the Scriptures themselves, apparently saw them not as maps but as trustworthy guides for those willing to leap into the unknown and to seek, as the spiritual teacher Origen had urged, to “be transformed!”
⁷²

When Athanasius set out to unify Christians all over Egypt into a single communion, then, he had to deal not only with Pachomius’ federation, which had expanded by 360
C.E.
to include twelve
⁷³
communities housing thousands of men and women, but also with another network of monasteries initially loyal to his old rival Melitius, as well as lesser-known groups of Christians living in private houses, individual shelters, and monasteries that have left fewer traces.
⁷⁴
Leaders in such groups, as well as freelance teachers and “fathers” like Pachomius, tended to resist attempts to intervene in their affairs, much less to control them. As monks set out to build new houses in territory that bishops and priests claimed as their own dioceses, they often clashed with the Catholic
clergy. When, for example, Pachomius began to build his large monastery near Nag Hammadi, Bishop Serapion, who presided in the nearby town of Tentyra, asked Athanasius to seize Pachomius and forcibly ordain him as a priest so that he would have to subordinate himself—along with his thousands of monks—to Serapion’s authority.
⁷⁵
But Pachomius, determined to protect his communities’ full autonomy,
⁷⁶
refused ordination. Historian David Brakke notes that some time later, when Pachomius planned to build a church in Tentyra, the bishop strongly opposed this move, which could drain tribute and revenues from townspeople whom he regarded as under his own jurisdiction. And when Pachomius sought to expand to the south by starting to build a new monastery near Latopolis, the bishop of that city “led a mob in a violent attempt to stop [him].”
⁷⁷

Because Pachomius usually initiated new building projects by saying that a divine voice or an angel had told him to do so, clergy who opposed his expansionist moves accused him of receiving “revelations” from Satan, not God. In 346, a council of bishops and their allies summoned him to Latopolis to answer charges that he used “suspicious clairvoyant powers,” suggesting that he was demon-possessed. Pachomius later said that he barely escaped from that trial—and from a hostile monk who chased him, wielding a sword—with his life.