============================================================================ * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . ____ _ _ ___ ____ _____ ___ ____ / ___| \ | |/ _ \/ ___|_ _|_ _/ ___| | | _| \| | | | \___ \ | | | | | | |_| | |\ | |_| |___) || | | | |___ \____|_| \_|\___/|____/ |_| |___\____| ___ ___ _ _______ _ _ ___ _ _ ____ / \ \ / / \ | |/ / ____| \ | |_ _| \ | |/ ___| / _ \ \ /\ / / _ \ | ' /| _| | \| || || \| | | _ / ___ \ V V / ___ \| . \| |___| |\ || || |\ | |_| | /_/ \_\_/\_/_/ \_\_|\_\_____|_| \_|___|_| \_|\____| .-''''''''''''-. .-' .------. '-. ( ( (()) ) ) '-. '------' .-' '-..........-' ~ The Church Truth ~ by Apokryphon * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . ============================================================================ You have been lied to about God. Not by accident. Not by a few bad priests. By design, and for sixteen hundred years. They handed you a creed and called it the faith. They handed you a hierarchy and called it the Church. They handed you a book, told you which parts you were allowed to read, and burned the rest. They told you to kneel, confess, obey, and fear. And when the questions came -- the ones that kept you awake, the ones you were ashamed to say out loud -- they called them pride. Doubt. Sin. They were none of those things. They were memory. They were the spark in you, waking up. So if you have ever sat in a pew and felt the hollow at the center of it all -- this is for you. If you have read the Gospels and sensed a deeper river under the words that no sermon would touch -- this is for you. If you have looked at the cruelty of this world and refused to believe it was the best a loving God could do -- this is for you. If you were told "just have faith" when you asked an honest question -- this is for you. You are not faithless. You are not broken. You are not alone. You are awake. Welcome home. . . THE LIGHT WAS NEVER TAKEN * IT WAS ONLY HIDDEN * . . .-''''''''''''-. .-' .------. '-. ( ( (()) ) ) '-. '------' .-' '-..........-' +======================================================================+ | CONTENTS | | the map of the awakening | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * PART I .......... How to Read This Document PART II ......... The Words They Translated Away PART III ........ The True Genealogy: From Jesus to Valentinus PART IV ......... The Timeline of the Takeover PART V .......... All Paths Lead to Rome PART VI ......... How Rome Changed the Book PART VII ........ Not in the Bible: Purgatory, Mary, Rosary, Booth PART VIII ....... How the Ten Commandments Were Reshuffled PART IX ......... The Institutional Record PART X .......... Who the Gnostics Really Were PART XI ......... Objections Answered PART XII ........ The Nag Hammadi Primer PART XIII ....... The Valentinian Way Today: A Practical Guide PART XIV ........ The Call, Further Reading, and Sources * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . +======================================================================+ | PART I | | HOW TO READ THIS DOCUMENT | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . This is not a sermon. It is evidence. Every claim in these pages is tied to a source you can check yourself: a Bible verse by book, chapter and verse; a church council by name and year; an ancient writer by title and section; a Nag Hammadi text by codex and tractate number. You do not have to trust Apokryphon. You have to check Apokryphon. That is the whole point. The men who buried the Gnostics asked for your trust. We ask for your attention. THE RULES THIS DOCUMENT FOLLOWS ------------------------------- * QUOTES ARE REAL. Bible quotations follow the named translation (KJV unless marked). Nag Hammadi quotations follow the standard English translations edited by James M. Robinson ("The Nag Hammadi Library in English") or Marvin Meyer ("The Nag Hammadi Scriptures"). Where a line is a summary rather than a quotation, it is marked PARAPHRASE. * CITATIONS ARE EXACT. "NHC I,3" means Nag Hammadi Codex I, tractate 3. A number like "18:24" after it means page 18, line 24 of the codex. * LEGEND IS FLAGGED. Some famous stories -- in church history and in our own history -- are legends. Where a story is legend and not record, you will see the word LEGEND. We do not need legends. The record is damning enough. * CONCESSIONS ARE MADE OPENLY. Where the other side has a point, we say so and then show why it does not save them. A cause that cannot admit a single fact against it is not a cause. It is a cult. * THE TARGET IS THE SYSTEM, NOT THE PEOPLE. Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists, Adventists, Mormons and Witnesses are not the enemy. Most of them love God with everything they have. That is exactly why they deserve the truth. Our fight is with the doctrines and the institutions that kept it from them. WORDS YOU WILL MEET ------------------- GNOSIS ....... (Greek) knowledge -- not information, but knowing by direct encounter, the way you "know" a person PLEROMA ...... (Greek) the Fullness -- the realm of the true God AION / AEON .. (Greek) an age; in Valentinian teaching, a living power or aspect of God within the Fullness SOPHIA ....... (Greek) Wisdom -- the youngest aeon, whose longing set the drama of this world in motion DEMIURGE ..... (Greek demiourgos) craftsman -- the lesser maker of this world, who did not know the Fullness above him PNEUMA ....... (Greek) spirit, breath, wind PSYCHE ....... (Greek) soul, life-force HYLE ......... (Greek) matter, stuff, raw material RUACH ........ (Hebrew) spirit, breath, wind -- a feminine noun EKKLESIA ..... (Greek) assembly, the "called-out" gathering NHC .......... Nag Hammadi Codex CE ........... Common Era (= AD) HOW TO USE IT ------------- Read it straight through once. Then go back and check five citations at random. Open a Bible. Look up the Nag Hammadi texts -- they are in print and freely available in English. When you find that the citations hold, you will understand why this document was written, and why it has to be shared. Each part stands alone. Copy any part, paste it anywhere, and it still works. Nothing here is copyrighted. Nothing here is for sale. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ / \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__:> +======================================================================+ | PART II | | THE WORDS THEY TRANSLATED AWAY | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * Every translation is a decision. Every decision serves someone. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with some Aramaic. For a thousand years the Western Church read neither. It read Latin -- Jerome's Vulgate -- and it punished laypeople who tried to read the Bible in their own language (see Part VI). When English Bibles finally came, they were made by translators working inside church structures, under church rules, using church vocabulary. Here are ten words where that vocabulary did the thinking for you. We compare five major English Bibles: the King James Version (KJV, 1611), the New International Version (NIV, 2011), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) -- the official Catholic Bible in the United States. 1. GNOSIS / GINOSKO -- "KNOWLEDGE" ---------------------------------- Greek gnosis (noun) and ginosko (verb) mean knowing by direct acquaintance. Not knowing ABOUT God. Knowing God, the way you know a face. Jesus himself defines eternal life with this verb: "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." -- John 17:3 (KJV). The verb is ginoskosin: that they might KNOW. Not "believe a doctrine about." Know. The Hebrew prophets say the same thing: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6), using da'at, the Hebrew counterpart of gnosis. Now look at the one verse every anti-Gnostic pulls out first, 1 Timothy 6:20. The Greek is "tes pseudonymou gnoseos" -- "the falsely named gnosis." KJV .... "oppositions of science falsely so called" NIV .... "the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge" ESV .... "contradictions of what is falsely called 'knowledge'" NRSV ... "contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge" NABRE .. "the absurdities of so-called knowledge" Read it carefully. The author condemns FALSE gnosis. That only makes sense if true gnosis exists. You do not warn people about counterfeit money in a world without money. Paul himself says "we know that we all have knowledge (gnosin)" (1 Corinthians 8:1) and counts "the word of knowledge" among the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8). The word was never the enemy. The word was the inheritance. 2. EKKLESIA -- "CHURCH" ----------------------- Ekklesia means "assembly," from ek-kaleo, "to call out." It was an ordinary civic word. The same Greek word is used in Acts 19:32, 39 and 41 for a rowdy crowd of pagan silversmiths in the theater at Ephesus -- and there even the KJV translates it "assembly." But when the ekklesia belongs to Jesus, suddenly the translators write "church." Why? Because they were told to. William Tyndale's New Testament (1526) translated ekklesia as "congregation." The bishops hated it. When King James' translators began work in 1604, the rules issued under Archbishop Richard Bancroft included this one (Rule 3): the old ecclesiastical words were to be kept, "the word church not to be translated congregation." The English word "church" comes through Germanic from the Greek kyriakon, "the Lord's (house)" -- a building. Jesus gathered people. The translators gave you a building, a hierarchy, and a corporation. Matthew 16:18 "upon this rock I will build my ekklesia" KJV / NIV / ESV / NRSV / NABRE ......... "church" Tyndale 1526 ........................... "congregation" Literal ................................ "assembly", "called-out ones" 3. AION / AIONIOS -- "WORLD," "ETERNAL," "EVERLASTING" ------------------------------------------------------ Aion means "age" -- a long span, an era. Aionios is the adjective: "of the age," "age-long," "belonging to the age to come." In Matthew 28:20 Jesus promises to be with his followers "unto the end of the world" (KJV). The Greek is "tes synteleias tou aionos" -- the end of the AGE. The NIV, ESV, NRSV and NABRE all fix this to "the end of the age." The KJV turned an age into the world. Now Matthew 25:46: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." (KJV) Both "everlasting" and "eternal" translate the SAME Greek word, aionios. The NIV, ESV, NRSV and NABRE all render both as "eternal." Literal translations such as Young's Literal Translation (1862) render it "age-during." Whether aionios means "unending" or "of the coming age" is debated by honest scholars. Fine. Here is why it matters: an entire theology of endless conscious torment, preached to terrify children, rests on choosing one meaning of one adjective and hiding the other from the reader. And for the Valentinians, "aion" was not a stretch of time at all. The Aeons are the living powers of God inside the Pleroma (Part X). Same word. Translators flattened it into a clock. 4. SHEOL, HADES, GEHENNA, TARTARUS -- ALL "HELL" ------------------------------------------------ Four different words. One English word. Here is what was collapsed: WORD LANGUAGE ORIGINAL MEANING --------- --------- ------------------------------------------------ Sheol Hebrew the grave, the shadowy place of all the dead, righteous and wicked alike Hades Greek the underworld; the Greek equivalent of Sheol Gehenna Greek from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where Hebrew children were once burned to Molech (Jer 7:31) Tartaroo Greek "to cast into Tartarus" -- used once (2 Pet 2:4) The KJV translates Sheol as "hell" in some places and "grave" in others -- for the same Hebrew word. Jacob mourning Joseph says "I will go down into the grave unto my son" (Genesis 37:35, Sheol). Job begs God, "O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave" (Job 14:13, Sheol). But in Psalm 16:10: "thou wilt not leave my soul in hell" -- Sheol again. If Sheol is hell, then Jacob and Job wanted to go to hell. Compare Matthew 16:18, "the gates of ___ shall not prevail" (Greek: Hades): KJV ...... "the gates of hell" NIV ...... "the gates of Hades" ESV ...... "the gates of hell" NRSV ..... "the gates of Hades" NABRE .... "the gates of the netherworld" And Matthew 5:22, Greek "ten geennan tou pyros": KJV ...... "hell fire" NIV ...... "the fire of hell" ESV ...... "the hell of fire" NRSV ..... "the hell of fire" NABRE .... "fiery Gehenna" The Catholic NABRE, to its credit, keeps "Gehenna" -- a real valley you can walk through today. The word that built the medieval torture chamber, the word that sold indulgences to frightened peasants, was a mistranslation layered over a place name. 5. LOGOS -- "THE WORD" ---------------------- "In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1, KJV) Logos means word, but also reason, meaning, ordering principle. Greek philosophers from Heraclitus onward used logos for the rational order of the cosmos. The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, called the Logos God's "firstborn" and image. Here is what the official history never tells you: the very first known commentaries on the Gospel of John were written by Valentinians. Ptolemy, a disciple of Valentinus, read John's prologue as a map of the Pleroma -- Father, Grace, Only-Begotten, Truth, Word, Life, Human, Church -- and Irenaeus preserves that exegesis in order to attack it (Against Heresies 1.8.5). Heracleon, another Valentinian, wrote a full commentary on John; Origen quotes it dozens of times in his own Commentary on John. The Gnostics did not run from John's Gospel. They were the first to take it seriously. 6. PNEUMA, PSYCHE, HYLE -- SPIRIT, SOUL, MATTER ----------------------------------------------- This is the heart of it. Paul divides human beings into types, and the translations blur it. 1 Corinthians 2:14 "psychikos anthropos" -- literally "the SOULISH person" -- does not receive the things of the Spirit of God 1 Corinthians 2:15 "ho pneumatikos" -- "the SPIRITUAL person" judges all things, yet is judged by no one How it was rendered in 2:14: KJV ...... "the natural man" NIV ...... "the person without the Spirit" ESV ...... "the natural person" NRSV ..... "those who are unspiritual" NABRE .... "the natural person" Paul did not write "natural." He wrote psychikos -- "of the psyche, the soul." He contrasted the psychic person with the pneumatic person. The same pair returns in 1 Corinthians 15:44-46: "It is sown a natural body (soma psychikon); it is raised a spiritual body (soma pneumatikon)... Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual." (KJV, Greek added) And in 15:47-48 Paul adds the third term: the "earthy" human -- choikos, "made of dust." Earthly (choic or hylic), soulish (psychic), spiritual (pneumatic). Three kinds. That is not a Valentinian invention. That is Paul's vocabulary, used again in Jude 19: "sensual (psychikoi), having not the Spirit." The Valentinians read Paul and saw exactly what was on the page. Elaine Pagels documented it in "The Gnostic Paul" (1975): second-century Valentinians claimed Paul as their apostle and read his letters as teaching for the spiritual. The translators then wrote "natural" and "unspiritual," and the threefold map of the soul disappeared from the English Bible. 7. METANOIA -- "REPENTANCE" VS "DO PENANCE" ------------------------------------------- Metanoia is built from meta (beyond, after, change) and nous (mind). It means a change of mind -- a turning of the whole inner self. An awakening. John the Baptist cries "metanoeite!" (Matthew 3:2). Watch what the Latin Church did with it: Greek .............. metanoeite "change your mind / turn" Latin Vulgate ...... paenitentiam agite "do penance" Douay-Rheims 1582 .. "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" KJV ................ "Repent ye" NIV/ESV/NRSV/NABRE . "Repent" "Do penance" turned an inner awakening into an outward transaction administered by priests: confess, receive a penance, perform it. That single rendering fed a thousand years of the penitential system -- and the sale of indulgences that grew out of it. Erasmus challenged it in 1516; Luther built his first thesis on it in 1517. Full story in Part VI. 8. ALMAH -- "VIRGIN" OR "YOUNG WOMAN"? (ISAIAH 7:14) ---------------------------------------------------- Isaiah 7:14 in Hebrew: "ha-almah harah" -- "the almah is pregnant / will conceive." Almah means a young woman of marriageable age. Hebrew has a more specific word for virgin, betulah. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint), almah was rendered parthenos, and Matthew 1:23 quotes that Greek. KJV ...... "a virgin shall conceive" NIV ...... "The virgin will conceive" ESV ...... "the virgin shall conceive" NRSV ..... "the young woman is with child" NABRE .... "the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son" Yes, the official Catholic Bible in America says "young woman." So does the NRSV. In its own context, Isaiah gives the sign to King Ahaz about the Syro- Ephraimite war of his own day (Isaiah 7:1-16). We are not here to mock anyone's devotion to Mary. We are here to show that a doctrine was hung on a translation choice. And note what the Valentinian Gospel of Philip says: "Some said, 'Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit.' They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?" -- Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 55:23-27 (Robinson) Why "a woman"? Because in Hebrew and Aramaic the Spirit -- ruach -- is grammatically feminine. 9. RUACH -- THE FEMININE SPIRIT ------------------------------- "And the Spirit of God (ruach elohim) moved upon the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:2, KJV). Ruach is breath, wind, spirit -- and it takes feminine grammar in Hebrew. The verb for "moved" (merachefet) is feminine too; it is used elsewhere for an eagle hovering over its young (Deuteronomy 32:11). Greek pneuma is neuter. Latin spiritus is masculine. By the time the doctrine reached you, the hovering mother-bird of Genesis had become "He." The Gnostics remembered her. They called her Sophia, Wisdom -- the same Wisdom who says in Proverbs 8:22-23, "The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was." 10. WHAT THE WORDS TELL YOU --------------------------- WHAT THE TEXT SAYS WHAT YOU WERE TOLD ---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- gnosis -- know God directly believe what the Church teaches ekklesia -- an assembly of people the Church, an institution aionios -- of the age eternal, everlasting torment Sheol / Gehenna -- grave / valley hell, a torture chamber logos -- the ordering Word a creed about the Word psychikos / pneumatikos "natural" / "spiritual" metanoia -- change of mind do penance almah -- young woman virgin ruach -- She, the Spirit He None of this is secret. It is in every Greek lexicon and Hebrew grammar. It was simply never preached to you. \ | / '. \ | / .' --- -- ( (O) ) -- --- .' / | \ '. / | \ +======================================================================+ | PART III | | THE TRUE GENEALOGY: FROM JESUS TO VALENTINUS | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * Rome claims an unbroken chain from Peter to the Pope. It calls this "apostolic succession" and uses it as the proof that it alone holds the truth. Fine. Let us talk about succession. The Valentinians had one too. And theirs is attested by a Church Father the Catholic Church still honors. THE RECORD ---------- * Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215), a respected teacher of the early Church, writes: "Likewise they allege that Valentinus was a hearer of Theudas. And he was the pupil of Paul." (Stromata 7.17.106) * So the Valentinian chain, as their opponents themselves report it, runs: JESUS -> PAUL -> THEUDAS -> VALENTINUS. * Paul tells us he taught a hidden wisdom to the mature: "Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect... even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world" (1 Corinthians 2:6-7). The Valentinians said Theudas received that wisdom, and Valentinus received it from him. * Valentinus was born in Egypt (Epiphanius, Panarion 31.2, calls him a "Phrebonite" from the Egyptian coast) and educated in Alexandria. * He came to Rome under Bishop Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and remained until Anicetus (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.4.3) -- roughly 136 to 160 CE. He taught openly in the Roman church for more than twenty years. * Tertullian, his enemy, admits he was a candidate for bishop: "Valentinus had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence" (Against the Valentinians 4). * His students formed two schools. Hippolytus of Rome records the split into an Italian school and an Eastern (Anatolian) school (Refutation of All Heresies 6.35). Concede it openly: the Paul-Theudas link comes to us in one sentence from Clement, reporting what Valentinians "allege." We cannot verify Theudas any further. Here is why it doesn't matter: Rome's list of the earliest bishops of Rome rests on lists compiled later in the second century (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.3), and most historians doubt Rome even had a single ruling bishop before the mid-second century. Both successions are claims. Only one was backed by an emperor. THE GENEALOGY TREE ------------------ . * JESUS * . (c. 30 CE) | +------------------+------------------+ | | THE TWELVE PAUL OF TARSUS (Peter, James, John...) letters c. 50-60 CE | "hidden wisdom among the | perfect" (1 Cor 2:6-7) | | | +-------------------+ | | | PROTO-ORTHODOX LINE | THE GNOSIS LINE =================== | =============== | | | CLEMENT OF ROME | THEUDAS 1 Clement, c. 96 | (Clement of Alexandria, | | Stromata 7.17.106) IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH | | letters, c. 110 | VALENTINUS | | (c. 100 - c. 160/175) POLYCARP OF SMYRNA | Alexandria -> Rome, martyred c. 155-160 | teaching c. 136-160 | | | IRENAEUS OF LYON <------+ +---------+---------+ Against Heresies (both lines | | c. 180 claim Paul) EASTERN ITALIAN | SCHOOL SCHOOL | --------- --------- "orthodoxy" THEODOTUS PTOLEMY -> Nicaea 325 (Excerpts (Letter to -> imperial by Clement) Flora, Church 380 MARCUS Panarion 33) | (Irenaeus HERACLEON v AH 1.13-21) (on John, ROME / CONSTANTINOPLE in Origen) \ / GOSPEL OF TRUTH, GOSPEL OF PHILIP, TRIPARTITE TRACTATE ... buried; found 1945 Read the tree honestly. Both lines grow from Paul. Both claim his letters. One line wrote the other out of history -- and then told you the history had only ever had one line. THE SCHOOL OF VALENTINUS, BY NAME --------------------------------- NAME SCHOOL WHAT SURVIVES WHERE ------------ --------- -------------------------------- -------------- Valentinus founder fragments; Gospel of Truth Clement, (attributed) Hippolytus; NHC I,3 Ptolemy Italian Letter to Flora; system Panarion 33; summarized by Irenaeus AH 1.1-8 Heracleon Italian ~48 fragments on John Origen, Comm. on John Theodotus Eastern excerpts of his teaching Clement, Exc. Theod. Marcus Eastern liturgy, number mysticism Irenaeus (hostile report) AH 1.13-21 Flora -- a Christian woman to whom Panarion 33 Ptolemy writes as a teacher Notice the last line. A woman, addressed by a Christian teacher as a serious student of scripture, in the second century. Irenaeus complains bitterly that women flocked to the Valentinian Marcus and that he let them prophesy and offer the eucharistic prayer (Against Heresies 1.13.2-3). He meant it as an insult. Read it again as a compliment. * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . +======================================================================+ | PART IV | | THE TIMELINE OF THE TAKEOVER | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . From open teaching in Rome to a jar in the Egyptian desert, in under 250 years. Here is how it happened, date by date. YEAR (CE) EVENT --------- --------------------------------------------------------- c. 30 Jesus crucified under Pontius Pilate c. 50-60 Paul's letters: "hidden wisdom" for "the perfect" (1 Cor 2:6-7); psychikos vs pneumatikos (1 Cor 2:14-15) c. 70-100 Four canonical Gospels written c. 96 1 Clement written from Rome to Corinth c. 110 Ignatius of Antioch writes his letters en route to death c. 136 Valentinus arrives in Rome under bishop Hyginus c. 140-160 Valentinus teaches in Rome; candidate for bishop (Tertullian, Against the Valentinians 4) c. 144 Marcion expelled from the Roman church c. 150-180 Ptolemy's Letter to Flora; Heracleon on John c. 180 Irenaeus, "Against Heresies" -- five books aimed above all at the Valentinians; demands exactly four Gospels (AH 3.11.8) c. 200-210 Tertullian, "Against the Valentinians" c. 222-235 Hippolytus, "Refutation of All Heresies" 303-311 Great Persecution under Diocletian -- Christians of all kinds suffer together 312 Constantine wins at the Milvian Bridge 313 Edict of Milan: toleration for Christians 321 Constantine's Sunday law (Codex Justinianus 3.12.2) 325 COUNCIL OF NICAEA, called and presided over by the emperor: Nicene Creed; Arius exiled c. 330s-40s Papers later used to stiffen the Nag Hammadi bindings include dated documents from the 340s c. 363-364 Council of Laodicea: canon 29 against Sabbath-keeping 367 ATHANASIUS, FESTAL LETTER 39: the first list of exactly our 27 NT books -- and an attack on "apocryphal" books as "an invention of heretics" 380 EDICT OF THESSALONICA (Theodosius I): Nicene faith made the religion of the Empire; dissenters "demented and insane" (Codex Theodosianus 16.1.2) 381 Council of Constantinople expands the Nicene Creed 385 Priscillian executed at Trier -- the first Christian put to death by Christians for heresy 393 Council of Hippo: canon list issued 397 Council of Carthage: canon list confirmed late 300s THE NAG HAMMADI CODICES SEALED IN A JAR AND BURIED near -c. 400 Jabal al-Tarif, Upper Egypt ... 1945 DECEMBER: Muhammad Ali al-Samman digs up the jar 1977 "The Nag Hammadi Library in English" (Robinson, ed.) WHAT THE TIMELINE PROVES ------------------------ Look at the gap. Valentinus taught in Rome for two decades and was nearly made its bishop. Two hundred years later, the faith he taught was illegal. What changed in between was not the Gospel. What changed was the Empire. In 312, Christianity was a persecuted minority. By 380, it was the state religion, and the state had a sword. The canon lists of 367, 393 and 397 were not drawn up by a neutral committee weighing evidence. They were drawn up by the winners, inside an Empire that was beginning to punish the losers. Athanasius wrote his list as a bishop who had himself been exiled five times in the imperial politics of the creed. He knew exactly what was at stake. And somewhere in Upper Egypt, in that same generation, someone took thirteen books, sealed them in a jar, and buried them in the sand. LEGEND vs RECORD: It is often said the codices were hidden by monks of the nearby Pachomian monastery in direct response to Festal Letter 39. That is a strong and popular theory, not a proven fact. What the record shows is that the bindings contain papers from the mid-fourth century and that the burial happened in roughly the same period as Athanasius' letter. The connection is plausible. The motive is inferred. We say so, because we do not need to invent anything. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ / \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__:> +======================================================================+ | PART V | | ALL PATHS LEAD TO ROME | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * "I left the Catholic Church," people say. "I'm free of Rome." Are you? Trace nearly any church on earth back far enough and you hit the same gate: the imperial, creedal Church of the fourth century -- the Church that silenced the Gnostics, fixed the canon, and wrote the creed. Every branch below broke with that Church on SOMETHING. Not one of them went back past it. THE TREE -------- EARLY JESUS MOVEMENTS (1st-2nd c.) | many communities, many gospels -- Valentinians among them | +--X GNOSTIC CHRISTIANS -- condemned (c. 180 onward), outlawed | (380 onward), texts buried late 4th c., found 1945 | +--X MARCIONITES, EBIONITES, others -- condemned, extinct | +==> PROTO-ORTHODOX / CREEDAL CHURCH | Nicaea 325 ... Thessalonica 380 ... Constantinople 381 | Canon: Festal Letter 39 (367), Hippo (393), Carthage (397) | +--> CHURCH OF THE EAST ("Nestorian") -- splits after | Council of Ephesus, 431 | +--> ORIENTAL ORTHODOX (Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, | Ethiopian) -- reject Council of CHALCEDON, 451 | +==> CHALCEDONIAN IMPERIAL CHURCH | +--> EASTERN ORTHODOX -- EAST-WEST SCHISM, 1054 | (Rome's twin: same first seven councils) | +==> ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH (the Roman line) | +--> PROTESTANT REFORMATION -- Luther, 1517 | kept: Nicene Creed, Trinity, 27-book NT | cut: 7 deuterocanonical OT books -> | 66-book Protestant Bible | +--> LUTHERAN (1517 ->; Augsburg 1530) | +--> ANABAPTIST (Zurich, 1525) | +--> Mennonite, Amish, Hutterite | +--> REFORMED (Zwingli 1520s; Calvin, | Geneva 1530s-40s) | +--> Presbyterian (Knox, 1560) | +--> Puritan / Congregational | +--> ANGLICAN (Act of Supremacy, 1534) | | | +--> BAPTIST (Smyth & Helwys, | | Amsterdam, 1609) | | | +--> METHODIST (Wesleys, from | the 1730s; US church 1784) | | | +--> Holiness movement | | | +--> PENTECOSTAL | Topeka 1901; | Azusa St. 1906 | +--> AMERICAN REVIVALISM 2nd Great Awakening c. 1790-1840 | +--> LATTER-DAY SAINTS | Joseph Smith, 1830 | +--> MILLERITES (1830s-1844) | +--> SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST | organized 1863 | +--> BIBLE STUDENTS (C.T. Russell, 1870s) -> JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES (name adopted 1931) ==> carries the creed and/or the canon forward --> breaks away, but takes Rome's Bible with it --X cut off, outlawed, buried WHAT EVERY BRANCH KEPT ---------------------- BRANCH NICENE CREED? CANON INHERITED FROM ------------------- ---------------- ------------------------------ Eastern Orthodox yes the imperial church (wider OT) Oriental Orthodox yes (pre-451) the imperial church (wider OT) Roman Catholic yes itself; fixed at Trent, 1546 Lutheran yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Reformed/Presbyt. yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Anglican yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Anabaptist in substance Rome, minus deuterocanon Baptist in substance Rome, minus deuterocanon Methodist yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Pentecostal in substance Rome, minus deuterocanon Seventh-day Advent. Trinity, yes Rome, minus deuterocanon Latter-day Saints NO the Protestant 66 (KJV) + LDS Jehovah's Witnesses NO the Protestant 66 (NWT) Look at the right-hand column. Every single one. The 27 books of the New Testament that you hold in your hands today -- whatever church you attend -- are the 27 books listed by Athanasius in 367 and confirmed by councils at Hippo and Carthage. The Protestants threw out seven Old Testament books (Tobit, Judith, 1-2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch) but kept Rome's New Testament word for word. The Gospel of Truth is not on any of their shelves. The Gospel of Philip is not on any of their shelves. Every one of them kept the library of the men who burned the Gnostic library. THE ORTHODOX ------------ Yes, the Eastern Orthodox split from Rome in 1054. So they are not Rome's children. Here is why it doesn't matter: they are Rome's twin. Same first seven ecumenical councils. Same Nicene Creed (minus the Western "filioque" clause). Same bishops who condemned the Gnostics -- Athanasius is a saint in both. The 1054 schism was a quarrel over power and one clause in the creed. It was never a quarrel over the Gnostics. On that, East and West were always one. THE PROTESTANTS --------------- Luther broke with the Pope. He did not break with Nicaea. He did not break with Irenaeus. He did not open the canon -- he narrowed it. He even called the Letter of James "an epistle of straw" in the preface to his 1522 German New Testament, but he kept it. Every Protestant denomination after him was born the same way: an argument about church government, baptism, sacraments or holiness -- fought out inside the same creed, using the same 27 books. Baptists broke from Anglicans. Methodists grew out of the Church of England. Pentecostals grew out of the Methodist holiness movement. Each one sincerely believed it was getting back to the original faith. Each one stopped at the same wall: the fourth century. THE BAPTIST "TRAIL OF BLOOD" ---------------------------- Some Baptists claim they never came from Rome at all. A 1931 booklet by J. M. Carroll, "The Trail of Blood," says a chain of true churches -- Montanists, Novatians, Donatists, Paulicians, Albigenses, Waldensians, Anabaptists -- ran unbroken from the apostles to modern Baptists, outside Rome the whole way. It is a moving story. Historians do not support it. Those groups did not share Baptist doctrine (the Albigensians, or Cathars, were dualists who rejected water baptism entirely), and there is no documented line of succession linking them. Baptist historians themselves trace the denomination to English Separatists in Amsterdam under John Smyth and Thomas Helwys around 1609. And notice: even the Trail of Blood booklet uses the Protestant Bible. Even the "chain outside Rome" ends up holding Rome's canon. THE ADVENTISTS -------------- The Millerite movement predicted Christ's return for 1843-1844. When October 22, 1844 passed -- the "Great Disappointment" -- a remnant regrouped around Ellen G. White and Sabbath-keeping, and organized as the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1863. They deserve credit: they saw that the Sunday rest came from Constantine and the councils, not from the Bible (see Part VIII). Here is why it doesn't save them: they fixed the day and kept the rest. Same Trinity. Same Protestant canon. They corrected one of Rome's edits while reading Rome's Bible. THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS AND JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES --------------------------------------------- These two branches shout the loudest about breaking free. Latter-day Saints teach that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are three distinct beings. Jehovah's Witnesses teach that only the Father, Jehovah, is Almighty God, that Jesus is his first creation, and that the holy spirit is God's active force, not a person. Both reject the Nicene Trinity outright, and both call themselves a "restoration" of the original Christianity that was lost. Yes. And here is why it doesn't matter. Look at what they restored FROM. Both inherited the Protestant 66-book canon. Latter-day Saints read the King James Version and add their own scriptures on top. Jehovah's Witnesses read their own New World Translation of the same 66 books. Both were born out of nineteenth-century American Protestant revivalism. And that revivalism descends straight down the Roman line. They redecorated the house. They kept Rome's foundation. They kept Rome's books. You cannot restore the original faith using the library its destroyers approved. THE POINT --------- ROME (Nicaea 325 / Thessalonica 380) ^ Orthodox --------+ Every road you walk in Western Lutheran --------+ Christianity was paved in the Anglican --------+ fourth century -- by the same Reformed --------+ hands that buried the gospels Baptist ---------+ of the Gnostics. Methodist -------+ Pentecostal -----+ The only road that does not Adventist -------+ end at Rome is the one that Latter-day Saint + goes BACK PAST IT: Jehovah's Witn. -+ ROME --> 380 --> 325 --> 180 --> VALENTINUS --> PAUL --> JESUS (recovered: Nag Hammadi, 1945) A true restoration goes back past Nicaea. Back past Irenaeus. Back to the voices in the jar. .-''''''''''''-. .-' .------. '-. ( ( (()) ) ) '-. '------' .-' '-..........-' +======================================================================+ | PART VI | | HOW ROME CHANGED THE BOOK | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * They told you the Bible fell from heaven, whole and untouched, and that the Church merely guarded it. That is false. The Bible you hold was copied by hand for 1,400 years, edited, expanded, translated, and -- at key moments -- bent to fit doctrine. Then the Church declared its own edition "authentic," banned the people from reading it in their own tongue, burned the men who translated it, and forged documents to prop up its own power. Every point below is checkable. Bring a Bible and a search engine. One honest line before we start, because it makes everything after it hit harder: most of the hundreds of thousands of differences among New Testament manuscripts are accidents -- spelling, skipped words, tired scribes. Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus" (2005) lays this out. We are not talking about accidents. We are talking about the changes that served doctrine and the institution that protected them. 1. THE COMMA JOHANNEUM -- A VERSE FOR THE TRINITY THAT JOHN NEVER WROTE ----------------------------------------------------------------------- KJV, 1 John 5:7-8: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." The words "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth" are NOT in the original text. * They are absent from every early Greek manuscript. Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary counts only eight Greek manuscripts that contain them -- all late, four with the words added only in the margin. * No Greek Church Father quotes them in the great Trinitarian battles of the fourth century -- when they would have been the perfect weapon. * They first surface in Latin, around the 380s, in the writings of Priscillian -- the same man the Church executed for heresy in 385. * They then crept into Latin Vulgate manuscripts and became standard in the medieval Latin Bible. * Erasmus left them out of his first Greek New Testament (1516) and his second (1519). He added them in his third edition (1522) after a Greek manuscript containing them was produced -- Codex Montfortianus, written in England around 1520. * LEGEND: the famous story that Erasmus "promised" to add the verse if anyone showed him a single Greek manuscript is a later legend; scholars (notably H. J. de Jonge, 1980) have shown he made no such promise. The record is simpler: the words came in late, through Latin. And Rome? On January 13, 1897, the Holy Office in Rome -- the successor of the Inquisition -- was asked whether the authenticity of this text could safely be denied or called into doubt. Its answer, approved by Pope Leo XIII: NO. Catholic scholars were forbidden to doubt a verse that the manuscripts had already exposed. Only in 1927 did the same office quietly allow scholars to investigate. 1 John 5:7 today: KJV ...... includes the Comma NIV ...... omits it; a footnote explains it is a late addition ESV ...... omits it NRSV ..... omits it NABRE .... omits it -- the CATHOLIC Bible has now removed the verse that Rome forbade its scholars to doubt in 1897 Rome's reply: the 1927 clarification left the question to scholars. Exactly -- after defending a forgery by decree for thirty years. 2. TWO FAMOUS PASSAGES THE EARLIEST BIBLES DO NOT HAVE ------------------------------------------------------ MARK 16:9-20 -- the "long ending." This is where the risen Jesus says believers "shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them" (Mark 16:18). * The two oldest complete Greek Bibles, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus (both 4th century), end Mark at 16:8. * Eusebius and Jerome both report that the accurate Greek copies in their day ended at 16:8. * Modern Bibles (NIV, ESV, NRSV, NABRE) print 16:9-20 with a note or brackets saying the earliest manuscripts lack it. JOHN 7:53-8:11 -- the woman caught in adultery. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John 8:7). * It is absent from the earliest papyri of John (P66 and P75, c. 200) and from Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. * Its first Greek appearance is in Codex Bezae (c. 400). Some manuscripts place it elsewhere -- after John 7:36, after John 21:25, even after Luke 21:38. Both stories may preserve old tradition. That is not the point. The point is this: the Council of Trent (1546) declared the Latin Vulgate "authentic" and anathematized anyone who did not accept the books "entire with all their parts" -- passages like these included. Rome froze the scribes' additions into dogma. 3. "DO PENANCE" -- JEROME, ERASMUS AND LUTHER --------------------------------------------- In Matthew 3:2 and 4:17 the Greek command is metanoeite -- "change your minds," "turn." Jerome's Latin Vulgate rendered it "paenitentiam agite" -- "do penance." The Douay-Rheims, the standard English Catholic Bible for centuries, printed: "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Out of that phrase grew a system: confess to a priest, receive a penance, perform satisfaction. Out of satisfaction grew purgatory accounting. Out of purgatory accounting grew the sale of indulgences (Part VII). * In 1516 Erasmus published the Greek New Testament with a fresh Latin translation and notes. He argued that metanoeite means a change of mind -- "come to your senses" (Latin resipiscite) -- not a ritual act. * In 1517 Martin Luther opened his Ninety-Five Theses with exactly this word: "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent' (poenitentiam agite), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." (Thesis 1) * Thesis 2: "This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy." One mistranslated verb. One industry. One Reformation. 4. "SHE SHALL CRUSH THY HEAD" -- GENESIS 3:15 AND THE IPSA READING ------------------------------------------------------------------ God speaks to the serpent: the offspring of the woman will strike its head. Hebrew .............. hu = "HE" (or "it" -- the offspring) Septuagint (Greek) .. autos = "HE" Vulgate (Latin) ..... ipsa = "SHE" Douay-Rheims ........ "she shall crush thy head" KJV ................. "it shall bruise thy head" NABRE ............... "He will strike at your head" Nova Vulgata (1979) . ipsum = "IT" -- Rome's own revised Latin The Hebrew says HE (or IT). The medieval Latin said SHE -- and that SHE became Mary, crushing the serpent. Look at a thousand statues of Mary standing on a snake. Pope Pius IX cited this very verse in "Ineffabilis Deus" (1854) when he defined the Immaculate Conception. Jerome himself, in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis, noted that the Hebrew reads "he." The "ipsa" reading spread through the Latin manuscript tradition anyway, and devotion was built on it. Rome's own Nova Vulgata finally corrected it in 1979 -- 125 years after using it to support a dogma. And here is the Gnostic twist they never mention: in the Gnostic retellings of Eden, the serpent is not the villain at all, but the one who brings knowledge (see Part X). The verse they bent to glorify Mary was a verse about the war on knowledge. 5. PETROS AND PETRA -- THE ROCK THAT BECAME A THRONE ---------------------------------------------------- "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter (Petros), and upon this rock (petra) I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." -- Matthew 16:18 (KJV) * Petros (masculine) is a stone; petra (feminine) is a bedrock, a cliff. Matthew uses two different words. * The verse says nothing about Rome, nothing about successors, nothing about bishops, nothing about infallibility. * Even within the same chapter, five verses later, Jesus says to Peter: "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me" (Matthew 16:23). * Paul says the foundation is Christ: "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). And he opposed Peter "to the face, because he was to be blamed" (Galatians 2:11). * Augustine -- Rome's greatest theologian -- wrote late in life that he had often explained "this rock" as Christ, whom Peter confessed, and left the reader to choose between that and Peter himself (Retractations 1.21). Rome's reply: in Aramaic Jesus would have said kepha both times (compare "Cephas," John 1:42). Grant it. A rock is still not a throne, a verse is still not a dynasty, and nothing in the text puts it in Rome. 6. CLOSING THE CANON -- TRENT, 1546 ----------------------------------- For fifteen centuries there was no dogmatic, binding, Church-wide definition of exactly which books were Scripture. There were lists -- Athanasius (367), Hippo (393), Carthage (397), the Council of Florence's decree for the Copts (1442) -- but no anathema. Then came the Reformation. On April 8, 1546, at its fourth session, the Council of Trent: * fixed the canon, including the deuterocanonical books; * declared that anyone who does not receive these books "entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition" is anathema; * declared the Latin Vulgate the "authentic" text for public use; * forbade anyone to interpret Scripture contrary to the sense held by "holy mother Church." Read that last point again. The book was closed, the Latin edition was crowned, and the meaning was reserved. Three locks on one door. 7. THE INDEX OF FORBIDDEN BOOKS -- 1559 TO 1966 ----------------------------------------------- In 1559 Pope Paul IV issued the first papal Index of Forbidden Books. The Council of Trent's revised Index followed in 1564. Its fourth rule held that reading the Bible in the vernacular, without written permission, did more harm than good, and required a license from a bishop or inquisitor. * The 1559 Index placed ALL the works of Erasmus on the list. * Copernicus' "On the Revolutions" was suspended "until corrected" in 1616; Galileo's "Dialogue" was banned in 1633. * The Index went through many editions, the last in 1948, and was abolished only in 1966. For four hundred and seven years, the Church kept an official list of what you were not allowed to read. 8. KEEPING THE BIBLE FROM THE PEOPLE ------------------------------------ * COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE, 1229, canon 14 -- held in the wake of the Albigensian Crusade: "We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or the New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books." * THE ARUNDEL CONSTITUTIONS, drafted at Oxford in 1407 and issued in 1409 under Archbishop Thomas Arundel: no one may translate Scripture into English on his own authority, and no one may read any such translation made "in the time of John Wycliffe" or since, until it is approved by the bishop. Owning a Wycliffe Bible became evidence of heresy. * WILLIAM TYNDALE translated the New Testament from Greek into English (1526). The Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, had copies bought up and burned at St Paul's. Tyndale was arrested near Antwerp in 1535, condemned as a heretic, strangled and burned at Vilvoorde in October 1536. Tradition gives his last words as "Lord, open the King of England's eyes" -- that comes from John Foxe's martyrology; treat it as tradition, not transcript. Rome's reply: the bans targeted unapproved translations, not Scripture itself. That is the point. Approved by whom? The same men whose doctrines the translations exposed. Seventy-five years after Tyndale's death, in 1611, scholars estimate that well over three-quarters of the King James New Testament followed his wording. They killed the man and kept his words. 9. THE DONATION OF CONSTANTINE -- A FORGERY THAT BUILT AN EMPIRE ---------------------------------------------------------------- The "Donation of Constantine" claims that the Emperor Constantine, cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester I, handed the pope imperial honors and authority over Rome and the western provinces. * It is a forgery, most likely composed in the eighth century. * Pope Leo IX quoted it in his letter to Patriarch Michael Cerularius (1053-54) -- in the very conflict that produced the East-West schism. * It was copied into collections of canon law and used for centuries to support papal claims to temporal power. * In 1440 the Italian scholar Lorenzo Valla proved it false with linguistic evidence: its Latin was centuries too late for Constantine, and it spoke of Constantinople as a leading see before Constantinople existed. The papacy's temporal power was propped up for centuries on a document that Constantine never wrote. 10. THE PSEUDO-ISIDORIAN DECRETALS -- FORGED PAPAL LAW ------------------------------------------------------ Around the middle of the ninth century (c. 847-852), in the Frankish kingdom, someone writing as "Isidore Mercator" produced a huge collection of church law. Mixed in with genuine material were dozens of forged letters attributed to the earliest popes, from Clement I onward. * The forgeries exalted the authority of the bishop of Rome and protected bishops from local rulers and synods. * They flowed into later canon law, including Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140), the foundation of medieval Church law. * Their falsity was exposed by Protestant scholars of the Magdeburg Centuries (from 1559) and decisively by David Blondel in 1628. No serious historian, Catholic or otherwise, defends them today. SCORECARD: HOW THE BOOK WAS CHANGED ----------------------------------- CHANGE WHAT IT SERVED EXPOSED BY ------------------------------ ------------------------ ------------- Comma Johanneum (1 Jn 5:7) Trinity proof-text manuscripts; even NABRE Mark 16:9-20, John 7:53-8:11 canonized by Trent Sinaiticus, Vaticanus "Do penance" (Matt 3:2) penance, indulgences Erasmus 1516 "ipsa" -- she (Gen 3:15) Marian dogma Hebrew text Petros / petra (Matt 16:18) papal primacy Greek text Vulgate "authentic" (1546) frozen Latin errors Greek, Hebrew Index (1559-1966) control of reading abolished Vernacular bans (1229, 1409) clerical monopoly Tyndale Donation of Constantine temporal power Valla 1440 Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals papal law Blondel 1628 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||/ \|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||/ \||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||/ () \|||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||/ \||||||||||||||||||||||||||| THE VEIL WAS RENT IN TWAIN -- Matt 27:51 +======================================================================+ | PART VII | | NOT IN THE BIBLE | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * At the moment Jesus died, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom" (Matthew 27:51). The curtain that kept ordinary people out of the presence of God was torn open -- from the top, by God. Rome sewed it back up. It put a fire between you and heaven. It put a mother, and a crowd of saints, between you and the Father. It put a string of beads in your hand to count your prayers. And it put a priest in a box between you and forgiveness. Four practices. Four layers of veil. Not one of them is taught in the Bible. Here is the evidence, practice by practice. ( ) ( ) ( ) ) ( ) ( ) ( ( ) ( ) ( ) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ +======================================================================+ | I. PURGATORY | | the fire that was never in the book | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * THE WORD IS NOT THERE --------------------- Search every page of every Bible -- Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. The word "purgatory" does not appear. Not once. The historian Jacques Le Goff ("The Birth of Purgatory," 1981) traced the Latin noun purgatorium, "the place of purging," to the late twelfth century. Before that there were scattered speculations about cleansing fire. The place itself was built in the Middle Ages. ROME'S THREE PROOF TEXTS -- EXAMINED ------------------------------------ * 2 MACCABEES 12:42-46. After a battle, Judas Maccabeus finds that his fallen soldiers were wearing amulets of the idols of Jamnia under their tunics (12:40). He takes up a collection of two thousand drachmas of silver and sends it to Jerusalem for a sin offering (12:43), and the passage concludes that it is "a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins" (12:46, Douay-Rheims). Look at what this is. First: the book is deuterocanonical -- it is not in the Hebrew Bible, Jerome classed the books of Maccabees outside the canon in his preface to the books of Kings, and Protestants reject it. Second: the dead men were guilty of IDOLATRY -- by Rome's own teaching a mortal sin, and purgatory is only for those who die "in God's grace and friendship" (CCC 1030). Third: the author himself does not claim inspiration: "if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired: but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto" (2 Maccabees 15:38, KJV Apocrypha). Fourth: notice how the oldest "proof" of purgatory begins -- with silver sent to the temple on behalf of the dead. * 1 CORINTHIANS 3:15: "If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire." Read 3:10-14. Paul is talking about builders -- teachers -- and the WORK they build on the foundation of Christ. "The day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is" (3:13). The fire tests WORK, on ONE day. It does not purge souls over centuries. And Paul says the builder "shall be saved." * MATTHEW 12:32: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit "shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." That is a way of saying NEVER. Mark's parallel says it plainly: such a person "hath never forgiveness" (Mark 3:29). Rome reads it backwards: if one sin is not forgiven in the age to come, others must be. The verse says nothing of the kind. HOW THE FIRE WAS BUILT -- DATE BY DATE -------------------------------------- DATE WHO / WHAT WHAT WAS ADDED ------------ ------------------------------- ------------------------ c. 593-594 Gregory the Great, Dialogues purgatorial fire for Book 4 "light faults"; ghost stories; Masses for the dead late 1100s the noun purgatorium appears a PLACE (Le Goff) 1274 Second Council of Lyon souls cleansed after (profession of faith of death "by purgatorial Emperor Michael VIII) punishments" 1343 Clement VI, Unigenitus the "treasury of merits" the Church dispenses 1439 Council of Florence, purgatory defined for Laetentur Caeli East and West 1476 Sixtus IV, Salvator Noster indulgences applied to souls IN purgatory 1517 Tetzel's indulgence campaign "the soul from purgatory springs" 1563 Council of Trent, Session 25 purgatory reaffirmed; anathema on deniers Gregory's Dialogues show you the engine. In one story the dead monk Justus, who had secretly kept three gold coins, is released from torment after thirty consecutive Masses are offered for him (Dialogues 4.57; numbered 4.55 in some editions). Three gold coins, thirty Masses. The practice of "Gregorian Masses" for the dead is still named after it. FOLLOW THE MONEY ---------------- Purgatory gave the Church something no earthly power had ever had: jurisdiction over the dead. Once there was a place of temporary punishment, there could be a remission of it. Once Clement VI declared a "treasury of merits" in the Church's keeping (1343), there was a vault. Once Sixtus IV extended indulgences to souls already in purgatory (1476), grieving families had a reason to pay. By 1517 Tetzel was selling relief for dead parents to fund a basilica in Rome (Part IX). Purgatory is the doctrine that turned grief into revenue. WHAT THE BIBLE ACTUALLY SAYS ABOUT THE MOMENT AFTER DEATH --------------------------------------------------------- * "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." -- Luke 23:43. Said to a thief, with no penance, no Masses, no fire. * "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." -- 2 Corinthians 5:8 * "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." -- Hebrews 9:27. Death, then judgment. No waiting room. * "For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." -- Hebrews 10:14 * "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." -- 1 John 1:7 ROME'S REPLY: purgatory is not a second chance, only the final purification of the already saved. ANSWER: "perfected for ever" (Hebrews 10:14) leaves nothing to purify -- and "all sin" (1 John 1:7) leaves nothing to burn. , , , , , , , |~| |~| |~| |~| |~| |~| |~| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| +======================================================================+ | II. PRAYING TO MARY AND THE SAINTS | | flesh and blood is not the mediator | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * ONE MEDIATOR -- THE BIBLE IS BLUNT ---------------------------------- "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." -- 1 Timothy 2:5 ONE. Not one plus a mother. Not one plus ten thousand saints. And when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he did not say "Hail Mary." He said: "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven" (Matthew 6:9). Prayer goes to the Father. Count the prayers addressed to Mary in the New Testament: zero. Count the prayers addressed to any dead apostle, martyr or saint: zero. Not one believer in the entire New Testament prays to anyone but God. TALKING TO THE DEAD ------------------- "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD." -- Deuteronomy 18:10-12 Mary died. The apostles died. Every saint on every holy card died. Addressing requests to the departed is precisely what Deuteronomy forbids. ROME'S REPLY: the saints are alive in Christ, for God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Mark 12:27). ANSWER: alive in God, yes -- which is exactly why you go to God, not to them; scripture never once shows a believer on earth praying to a believer in heaven. WHAT JESUS HIMSELF SAID ABOUT HIS MOTHER ---------------------------------------- * A woman in the crowd cried out: "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked." Jesus answered: "Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." -- Luke 11:27-28 * Told that his mother and brothers were outside asking for him, Jesus said: "Who is my mother, or my brethren?... For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." -- Mark 3:31-35 Jesus had every opportunity to set his mother above believers. Twice he refused. HOW THE HAIL MARY WAS BUILT --------------------------- PART OF THE PRAYER SOURCE --------------------------------------- ------------------------------ "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is the angel's GREETING with thee" (Luke 1:28, Douay) "blessed art thou among women, and Elizabeth's GREETING blessed is the fruit of thy womb" (Luke 1:42) "Jesus" added in the Middle Ages "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us NOT IN SCRIPTURE. Versions sinners, now and at the hour of our circulated in the 15th c.; death" the form was fixed in Pius V's Roman Breviary, 1568 A greeting is not a prayer. Gabriel was speaking to a living girl in Nazareth, not opening a channel of petition for all time. The part that actually ASKS Mary for something -- the petition -- was standardized fifteen centuries after the Gospels. THE COUNCILS AND THE TITLE -------------------------- In 431 the Council of Ephesus declared Mary "Theotokos" -- God-bearer, Mother of God. Read why: the fight was with Nestorius over the nature of CHRIST -- whether the child she bore was truly God. It was a statement about Jesus. It was never a license to pray to his mother. Rome built a devotion on top of a Christological title. ROME'S OLDEST EVIDENCE: THE SUB TUUM PRAESIDIUM ----------------------------------------------- Rome points to a short Greek prayer preserved on a papyrus (Rylands Papyrus 470): "Beneath your compassion we take refuge, Theotokos; do not despise our petitions in time of trouble, but deliver us from danger, only pure, only blessed." It is the oldest known prayer to Mary. Scholars date the papyrus anywhere from the third century to later; many say the fourth. ANSWER, in three lines: - At the very earliest it is some 200 years after Christ. When the Gnostic texts are that late, Rome calls them worthless (Part XI, Objection 1). The same rule applies here. - It is not scripture. It is evidence of what some Christians in Egypt began doing -- not of what Jesus or the apostles taught. - In the same era, Bishop Epiphanius condemned a group of women (the "Collyridians") for offering cakes to Mary as to a goddess, insisting that Mary be honored but that only the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be worshipped (Panarion 79, PARAPHRASE). Even the Church's own heresy-hunter saw where this road led. o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... x 20 +======================================================================+ | III. THE ROSARY | | counting prayers on a string | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT REPETITION -------------------------------- "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." -- Matthew 6:7 The Greek is battalogesete -- "babble," "keep saying the same thing." Now count the rosary. In its classic form: fifteen decades, each of one Our Father and ten Hail Marys -- 150 Hail Marys, modeled on the 150 psalms, which is why it was called "Our Lady's Psalter." Since 2002, with the Luminous Mysteries: twenty decades, 200 Hail Marys. Counted on beads so none is missed. Jesus gave the Lord's Prayer as a pattern of a few lines -- immediately after warning against "much speaking" (Matthew 6:7-13). LEGEND: "MARY GAVE THE ROSARY TO ST. DOMINIC" --------------------------------------------- Catholic tradition long held that the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Dominic (died 1221) and gave him the rosary. LEGEND. The story was promoted in the fifteenth century by the Dominican preacher Alan de la Roche (Alanus de Rupe, died 1475) -- about 250 years after Dominic's death. No source from Dominic's own lifetime or the first generations of his order mentions it. Historians trace the rosary's actual form to gradual medieval development, with fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Carthusian monks -- such as Henry of Kalkar and Dominic of Prussia -- credited with grouping the prayers into decades and attaching meditations to them. HOW IT BECAME OFFICIAL ---------------------- 1400s Alan de la Roche spreads the Dominic legend and founds rosary confraternities 1569 Pope Pius V, bull "Consueverunt Romani Pontifices," formally approves and standardizes the rosary 1571 Battle of Lepanto; victory credited to the rosary; the feast of Our Lady of Victory (later Our Lady of the Rosary) follows 2002 John Paul II, "Rosarium Virginis Mariae," adds five new "Luminous Mysteries" Stop on the last line. A pope added a fifth of the rosary in 2002. If it came from heaven through Dominic, it was incomplete for 780 years. If it was built by men, men can add to it -- which is exactly what happened. BEADS IN OTHER RELIGIONS -- THE CAREFUL VERSION ----------------------------------------------- Prayer beads are far older than Christianity's rosary and are used in many traditions: the Hindu japa mala and the Buddhist mala, and later the Muslim misbaha. Early Christian monks counted prayers with pebbles or knotted cords, and the Eastern prayer rope still exists. We will not claim the rosary was copied from any one of them -- that lineage is not proven. The point is simpler, and it is Jesus' point: counting repetitions so that you will be "heard for your much speaking" is exactly the practice he named and rejected in Matthew 6:7. +-----------+ ### +-----------+ | YOU | ### | PRIEST | +-----------+ ### +-----------+ +======================================================================+ | IV. THE CONFESSION BOOTH | | the box between you and forgiveness | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * WHO THE BIBLE SAYS YOU CONFESS TO --------------------------------- * TO GOD: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." -- 1 John 1:9 * TO ONE ANOTHER: "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." -- James 5:16 One another. Not to a priest. Not in a box. Not once a year by law. Mutually, among believers -- and to God. ROME'S PROOF TEXT: JOHN 20:23 ----------------------------- "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." -- John 20:22-23 ANSWER. Read what is NOT there. No booth. No priestly caste -- the word "priest" (hiereus) is never used in the New Testament for a Christian minister. No command to list your sins by number and kind to a man. No yearly obligation. The words are spoken to the disciples gathered behind closed doors (20:19) -- and Luke's account of that same evening includes "them that were with them" (Luke 24:33) and defines the mission as "that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations" (Luke 24:47). The authority is the proclamation of forgiveness through Christ, given to the community -- not a private tribunal run by a clergy that did not yet exist. HOW THE BOOTH WAS BUILT -- DATE BY DATE --------------------------------------- DATE PRACTICE ------------ --------------------------------------------------------- 1st c. confess to God and to one another (1 Jn 1:9; Jas 5:16) 2nd c. Shepherd of Hermas: after baptism, ONE repentance only (Mandate 4.3) c. 200-205 Tertullian, On Penitence 7-12: a second penance granted only once; PUBLIC -- sackcloth, ashes, fasting, kneeling before the presbyters and the congregation 589 Third Council of Toledo, canon 11, condemns the NEW habit of seeking reconciliation again every time one sins 6th-7th c. Irish penitentials (Finnian, Columbanus): PRIVATE, REPEATABLE confession, with a price list of penances for each sin; spread to the continent by Irish monks 1215 Fourth Lateran Council, canon 21, "Omnis utriusque sexus": every believer must confess ALL sins at least ONCE A YEAR to HIS OWN PRIEST 1551 Council of Trent, Session 14: confession of all mortal sins to a priest required by divine law c. 1565-76 Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, promotes the enclosed confessional with a screen; his building instructions (1577) spread the design 1622 Gregory XV, "Universi Dominici gregis," against priests soliciting penitents in confession Look at the arc. A public, once-in-a-lifetime act of restoration became private, then repeatable, then priced, then compulsory, then enclosed in a wooden box. The Church's own Council of Toledo in 589 called the private, repeatable practice an abuse. Six centuries later the Church made it the law. And the screen in the booth was not only for modesty. Borromeo's grille was designed to separate penitent and confessor because solicitation in confession was a real scandal -- serious enough that popes issued bulls against it (1622 and after). THE PRIEST AS MEDIATOR -- AGAINST HEBREWS ----------------------------------------- "Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God... Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." -- Hebrews 4:14-16 Boldly. To the throne. Not timidly, to a box. "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people." -- 1 Peter 2:9 Every believer is the priest. The New Testament has exactly one High Priest -- Jesus -- and a whole people of priests. It has no room for a caste that stands between them. ROME'S REPLY: the priest acts "in persona Christi" -- it is Christ who forgives through him. ANSWER: then Christ can forgive without him, and the Bible says he does (1 John 1:9). ROME'S LADDER VS THE DIRECT PATH -------------------------------- ROME'S LADDER THE DIRECT PATH (GNOSIS) ============= ======================== GOD THE FATHER ^ (the Depth) | ^ CHRIST | ^ | | | MARY | ^ | | no rungs SAINTS no tollkeepers ^ no veil -- | torn top to bottom PRIEST (booth, penance, (Matt 27:51) ^ absolution) | | | PURGATORY - YOU - ROSARY | (pay now (count THE SPARK or later) your prayers) within you (pneuma) "one mediator between God and men, "the kingdom of God is within the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5) you" (Luke 17:21) A VALENTINIAN READING: NO MIDDLEMEN ----------------------------------- The Valentinians had sacraments, teachers and community. What they did not have was a ladder. Salvation, for them, was the Father making himself known to his own -- directly. "The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him." -- Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3 16:31-33 (Robinson) "He who is to have knowledge in this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going." -- Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3 22:13-15 (Robinson) The Gospel of Truth describes the little children -- not the scholars, not the officials -- as the ones to whom knowledge of the Father belongs (NHC I,3 19:27-30, PARAPHRASE), and it ends with the awakened resting in the Father, with the Father in them and they in him (NHC I,3 42, PARAPHRASE). No fire to pay off. No mother to petition. No beads to count. No box to kneel in. Rome built four veils. Gnosis is the knowledge that the veil was torn on the day Jesus died -- and that it was torn from the top. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ / \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__:> +======================================================================+ | PART VIII | | HOW THE TEN COMMANDMENTS WERE RESHUFFLED | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * God wrote them in stone, they say. Then why are there three different ways to count them? The Ten Commandments appear twice in the Bible: Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The text never numbers them. It calls them "the ten words" (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; 10:4), but it does not say where one word ends and the next begins. So every tradition had to divide them -- and how you divide them decides what your children memorize. THE THREE NUMBERINGS, SIDE BY SIDE ---------------------------------- TEXT (Exodus 20 / Deut 5) JEWISH PHILO / AUGUSTINE TALMUD ORTHODOX / CATHOLIC / REFORMED LUTHERAN ------------------------------- ------- ---------- ------------ "I am the LORD thy God, which 1 preface 1 (preface) brought thee out of Egypt" (Ex 20:2 / Dt 5:6) No other gods before me 2 1 1 (Ex 20:3 / Dt 5:7) No graven image; do not bow 2 2 1 <== MERGED down to them (Ex 20:4-6 / (same) into "no Dt 5:8-10) other gods" Name of the LORD in vain 3 3 2 (Ex 20:7 / Dt 5:11) Sabbath day 4 4 3 (Ex 20:8-11 / Dt 5:12-15) Honor father and mother 5 5 4 (Ex 20:12 / Dt 5:16) Do not kill (Ex 20:13 / Dt 5:17) 6 6 5 No adultery (Ex 20:14 / Dt 5:18) 7 7 6 Do not steal (Ex 20:15 / Dt 5:19) 8 8 7 No false witness 9 9 8 (Ex 20:16 / Dt 5:20) Do not covet neighbor's WIFE 10 10 9 <== SPLIT (Dt 5:21a; in Ex 20:17b) Do not covet neighbor's HOUSE, 10 10 10 <== SPLIT goods (Ex 20:17a; Dt 5:21b) (same) (same) Lutheran order of 9 and 10 follows Exodus: 9 = house, 10 = wife, servants, animals, "any thing that is thy neighbour's." Sources for the numberings: the Jewish division appears in rabbinic tradition (e.g. the Mekhilta on Exodus 20); the "Philonic" division in Philo of Alexandria (On the Decalogue 50-51) and Josephus (Antiquities 3.91-92), followed by the Greek Fathers, the Orthodox and the Reformed churches; the Augustinian division in Augustine, Questions on Exodus 71 (Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 2.71). WHAT THE CATHOLIC NUMBERING DOES -------------------------------- Look at the right-hand column. * It MERGES "no other gods" (Ex 20:3) with "no graven images, do not bow down to them" (Ex 20:4-6) into ONE commandment. * That leaves nine. So it SPLITS the single prohibition of coveting into TWO: the ninth (your neighbor's wife) and the tenth (your neighbor's goods). * Ten again. But the commandment against images is no longer a commandment of its own. The Catechism of the Catholic Church admits the variation openly: "The division and numbering of the Commandments have varied in the course of history. The present catechism follows the division of the Commandments established by St. Augustine, which has become traditional in the Catholic Church. It is also that of the Lutheran confessions. The Greek Fathers worked out a slightly different division, which is found in the Orthodox Churches and Reformed communities." (CCC 2066) GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT -- BECAUSE THE FACTS ARE WORSE ----------------------------------------------------- This is where cheap anti-Catholic pamphlets go wrong. Do not repeat them. The truth is stronger. * NOT A LATE CONSPIRACY. The merged numbering goes back to Augustine around 400 CE (Questions on Exodus 71). Augustine's reasoning: Deuteronomy 5:21 separates the wife from the house and uses two different Hebrew verbs (tachmod for the wife, titavveh for the house), so he counted two coveting commands. Defensible as a reading. Fine. * THE BIBLE TEXT WAS NEVER CUT. Every Catholic Bible -- Vulgate, Douay- Rheims, NABRE -- prints Exodus 20:4-6 in full: "Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing..." (Douay). Nobody tore it out of the Book. * THE CUT IS IN THE CATECHISM LISTS. And that is where it counts. Almost no one learns the commandments from Exodus. They learn them from the short list -- the one recited in class, printed on the poster, memorized for First Communion. Here is that short list, from the Baltimore Catechism (1885), the standard catechism of American Catholics for generations: 1. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me. 2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. 3. Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day. 4. Honor thy father and thy mother. 5. Thou shalt not kill. 6. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 7. Thou shalt not steal. 8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods. Read it slowly. Where is "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them" (Exodus 20:4-5)? It is not there. Not deleted from the Bible. Dropped from the list that millions of children actually carried in their heads. The Catechism of the Catholic Church today uses the same "traditional catechetical formula" in its summary table (first commandment: "I am the LORD your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me"), with the full biblical text printed in a parallel column most people never read. Luther's Small Catechism (1529) does the same thing. Remember Part V: the Lutherans kept Rome's numbering too. WHY IT MATTERS: STATUES, ICONS, AND BOWING DOWN ----------------------------------------------- Now walk into any cathedral. Statues. Painted saints. Candles lit before images. People kneeling before them. * Exodus 20:4-5 (KJV): "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them." * The SECOND COUNCIL OF NICAEA (787) decreed that holy images are to be venerated with honor (Greek proskynesis) but not with the true worship (latreia) due to God alone, because "the honor paid to an image passes to its prototype" (a principle it borrowed from Basil of Caesarea). CCC 2131-2132 repeats this. * Here is the detail they never mention. In the Greek Septuagint -- the Bible of the early Church -- Exodus 20:5 reads "ou proskyneseis autois oude me latreuseis autois": "you shall not BOW DOWN (proskyneseis) to them nor SERVE (latreuseis) them." The very word the Council approved for images -- proskynesis -- is the very word the commandment forbids. Rome's reply: veneration is not worship, and the Incarnation made God visible. Then why does the short list children memorize leave out the one commandment that would make them ask? The numbering came from Augustine. The silence in the catechism list came from the institution. The statues came after. THE SABBATH THAT BECAME SUNDAY ------------------------------ The fourth commandment (third, in Rome's count) says: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy... the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God" (Exodus 20:8-10). The seventh day is Saturday. Jesus kept it, and said "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27). Now look at the verses Rome leans on, one by one. * REVELATION 1:10 -- "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." The Greek is kyriake hemera. John never says WHICH day. Not Sunday. Not any day of the week. Reading "Sunday" into it is tradition poured back into the text. * ACTS 20:7 -- "upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread." By Jewish reckoning the day began at sunset, and Paul preached "until midnight." Read that way it was a Saturday- night meal before a journey -- and either way, a farewell meal is not a new holy day. * 1 CORINTHIANS 16:2 -- "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store." Setting money aside at home. No gathering. No worship. No rest. That is the whole case. Three verses, and not one of them moves God's day. So where did Sunday come from? Watch the name. Around 155 CE, Justin Martyr, writing in Rome to a pagan emperor, says the believers meet "on the day called Sunday" -- in Greek, the day of the Sun (First Apology 67). Rome's church was already speaking the empire's language. The Sun-god was everywhere: Emperor Aurelian made Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, an official god of the state in 274, and Constantine kept the Sun on his coins for years after his conversion. Then came the law. * MARCH 7, 321 -- CONSTANTINE'S SUNDAY LAW: "On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed." Farmers were exempted. (Codex Justinianus 3.12.2.) Note the name: the Day of the SUN. * c. 363-364 -- COUNCIL OF LAODICEA, CANON 29: "Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord's Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ." Read the canon again. Christians were RESTING ON THE SABBATH in the fourth century -- that is why the council had to forbid it. And the penalty for keeping the day God wrote in stone was to be cursed. No verse of the New Testament moves the Sabbath to Sunday. The Catholic Catechism itself says Sunday "fulfills" the Sabbath (CCC 2175) -- a theological claim, not a biblical command. Sunday as the "Lord's Day" was not handed down by Christ. It was sold to you by an emperor of the Sun and a council that cursed anyone who refused it. THE COMMANDMENTS, READ WITH GNOSIS ---------------------------------- The Valentinians did not throw out the Ten Commandments. Ptolemy, writing to the Christian woman Flora, divides the Law of Moses into three parts: commandments from God, additions from Moses, and traditions of the elders (Letter to Flora, in Epiphanius, Panarion 33.4). The Decalogue, he says, is the pure part of the law -- good, but incomplete -- which the Savior came "not to destroy, but to fulfil" (Matthew 5:17; Panarion 33.5, PARAPHRASE of Ptolemy's argument). And the Gospel of Truth reads the Sabbath inwardly: the Savior labored on the Sabbath for the sheep fallen into the pit, "that you may know interiorly... what is the Sabbath, on which it is not fitting for salvation to be idle" (NHC I,3 32:18-26, Robinson; lightly abridged). For the one who knows, the Lord's day is not a square on the calendar. It is the day the spark remembers where it came from -- and that can be any day, and every day. They did not need to renumber God's words. They needed to understand them. .-''''''''''''-. .-' .------. '-. ( ( (()) ) ) '-. '------' .-' '-..........-' +======================================================================+ | PART IX | | THE INSTITUTIONAL RECORD | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * Jesus gave one test for every teacher and every institution: "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20). Here is the fruit. Each entry gives the record, the scripture check, and Rome's reply in one line -- answered. 1. THE SALE OF INDULGENCES -------------------------- THE RECORD. An indulgence is a remission of temporal punishment for sins, granted by the Church from the "treasury of merits." In 1515-1517, Pope Leo X authorized an indulgence to fund the rebuilding of St Peter's Basilica. In Germany it was preached by the Dominican Johann Tetzel; half the proceeds went to repay the banking house of Fugger for the loans Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg had taken to buy his church offices. The jingle tied to the campaign -- "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs" -- is the one Luther attacks in Thesis 27: "They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory." Luther, Thesis 86: "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?" SCRIPTURE CHECK. "Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money." (Acts 8:20). "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters... buy wine and milk without money and without price." (Isaiah 55:1) ROME'S REPLY: the selling was an abuse; Pius V abolished financial indulgences in 1567. ANSWER: the abuse was stopped; the doctrine was kept. The Catechism still teaches indulgences today (CCC 1471-1479). They took the price tag off the product and kept selling the idea that the Church holds a vault of merits and the key to it. 2. THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE (1209-1229) -------------------------------------- THE RECORD. In 1208 Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade -- with the same spiritual rewards as a crusade to the Holy Land -- against the Cathars of southern France, fellow inhabitants of Christendom. On July 22, 1209, the crusaders took the city of Beziers. The papal legates reported to Innocent that "our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age," and that almost twenty thousand were put to the sword. In 1244, at Montsegur, some two hundred Cathars were burned in one day. LEGEND vs RECORD: The line "Kill them all; God will know his own" is attributed to the legate Arnaud Amalric by the monk Caesarius of Heisterbach, writing a decade or more later. It may never have been spoken. We do not need it. The legates' own report of the massacre is worse, because it is a boast. SCRIPTURE CHECK. "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you" (Matthew 5:44). "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matthew 26:52). ROME'S REPLY: the Cathars were heretics who threatened society. ANSWER: then argue with them. Jesus never once authorized killing a heretic, and the Council of Toulouse (1229) that followed the slaughter is the same council that banned the laity from owning Bibles (Part VI). 3. THE INQUISITION ------------------ THE RECORD. - 1184: Pope Lucius III, "Ad abolendam," orders bishops to seek out heretics and hand the obstinate to secular power. - 1231-1233: Pope Gregory IX establishes papal inquisitors, largely from the Dominican order. - 1252: Pope Innocent IV, "Ad extirpanda," authorizes the use of torture to extract confessions. - 1478: The Spanish Inquisition, authorized by Pope Sixtus IV. - 1542: The Roman Inquisition (Holy Office), established by Paul III -- the office that issued the 1897 Comma decree (Part VI). - 1600: Giordano Bruno burned alive in Rome's Campo de' Fiori. - 1633: Galileo condemned and forced to recant. - 2000: On March 12, Pope John Paul II's "Day of Pardon" asked forgiveness for the use of violence "in the service of truth." SCRIPTURE CHECK. "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight" (John 18:36). When James and John wanted to call down fire on a village that rejected him, Jesus "turned, and rebuked them" (Luke 9:54-55). ROME'S REPLY: popular death tolls are inflated, and secular courts carried out the executions. ANSWER: Yes, many popular numbers are exaggerated -- and here is why it doesn't matter. One person burned for what they believed about God is one too many, and the Church wrote the procedure, ran the trials, authorized the torture, and handed over the condemned knowing exactly what the secular arm would do. A pope apologized in 2000. Apologies are for things that happened. 4. PERSECUTION OF "HERETICS" AFTER 380 -- WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR PEOPLE --------------------------------------------------------------------- THE RECORD. - Even before 380, Constantine issued an edict against heretics that names the Valentinians among others, forbids their assemblies, and confiscates their meeting places (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.64-65). - 380: The Edict of Thessalonica (Codex Theodosianus 16.1.2) declares all who reject the Nicene faith "demented and insane," to suffer "the infamy of heretical dogmas" and divine and imperial punishment. - Book 16, title 5 of the Theodosian Code ("On Heretics") collects dozens of imperial laws against dissenting Christians: bans on meeting, confiscation of property, exile, loss of the right to make wills. - 385: Priscillian of Avila and companions are executed at Trier -- the first Christians put to death by Christian authority for heresy. Martin of Tours protested. He was ignored. - 388: At Callinicum on the Euphrates, monks burned a Valentinian meeting place (and Christians burned a synagogue). When Emperor Theodosius ordered restitution, Bishop Ambrose of Milan defended the arsonists and pressured the emperor until he backed down (Ambrose, Letter 40 / 74). Read the last entry twice. A Valentinian church, burned by monks, and a saint and Doctor of the Church defending the fire. That is how our tradition disappeared. Not by losing an argument. By losing its buildings, its books, and its legal right to exist. SCRIPTURE CHECK. "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7:1). "Let both grow together until the harvest" -- Jesus' own instruction about the tares and the wheat (Matthew 13:30). 5. PAPAL INFALLIBILITY (1870) ----------------------------- THE RECORD. On July 18, 1870, the First Vatican Council in "Pastor Aeternus" defined that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks "ex cathedra" on faith or morals, possesses infallibility, and that such definitions are irreformable "of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church." The final vote was 533 to 2. Dozens of opposing bishops had left Rome the day before rather than vote no in the pope's presence. The German historian Ignaz von Doellinger refused to accept it and was excommunicated in 1871; the Old Catholic churches split off in protest. SCRIPTURE CHECK. "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed" (Galatians 2:11). The first "pope" was publicly corrected by Paul for getting the Gospel wrong. HISTORY CHECK. Pope Honorius I (died 638) was condemned by name as a heretic by the Third Council of Constantinople in 681, and that condemnation was confirmed by Pope Leo II. ROME'S REPLY: Honorius did not speak ex cathedra. ANSWER: then the dogma is unfalsifiable by design. Whenever a pope is wrong, he was not speaking infallibly. A claim that can never be tested is not a gift of the Spirit. It is a lock on the door. 6. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (1854) ----------------------------------- THE RECORD. On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX in "Ineffabilis Deus" defined that Mary "in the first instance of her conception" was preserved free from all stain of original sin. He cited Genesis 3:15 in support -- the verse whose "she" was a Latin error (Part VI). SCRIPTURE CHECK. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Mary herself says: "my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour" (Luke 1:47). HISTORY CHECK. Bernard of Clairvaux opposed the new feast of Mary's conception (Letter 174). Thomas Aquinas, the Church's own master theologian, held that Mary was sanctified after her conception, not at it (Summa Theologiae III, q. 27, a. 2). For eighteen centuries it was debated. In 1854 it became a dogma you must believe. ROME'S REPLY: doctrine develops under the Spirit's guidance. ANSWER: then admit that the Church has added to the faith -- and stop condemning the Gnostics for doing what you call "development" when you do it. 7. THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY (1950) -------------------------------- THE RECORD. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII in "Munificentissimus Deus" defined that Mary, "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." It is widely regarded as the only ex cathedra definition since 1870. SCRIPTURE CHECK. There is no verse. Not one. The New Testament does not record Mary's death or assumption. HISTORY CHECK. The earliest narratives of Mary's departure are the "Transitus Mariae" (Passing of Mary) texts, apocryphal writings from roughly the fifth and sixth centuries. And the so-called Gelasian Decree -- a sixth- century Latin list of accepted and rejected books, traditionally (but falsely) attributed to Pope Gelasius I -- lists a "Transitus, that is, the Assumption of holy Mary" among the APOCRYPHAL books to be rejected. Sit with that. Rome burned and banned the Gnostic gospels as "apocrypha," then in 1950 made binding dogma out of a story first told in apocrypha -- a story its own early list rejected. ROME'S REPLY: the dogma rests on tradition and theological fittingness, not on those texts. ANSWER: then it rests on nothing you can read. The Gnostics at least wrote their gospels down. THE FRUIT, SUMMED UP -------------------- YEAR(S) WHAT ROME DID WHAT JESUS SAID ---------- ------------------------------- --------------------------- 321 Sunday law sabbath made for man 380 on outlawed dissenting Christians let both grow together 385 first heretic executed love your enemies 388 defended burning of a judge not Valentinian church 1209 crusade against Christians put up thy sword 1229 laity forbidden the Bible search the scriptures (John 5:39) 1252 torture authorized my kingdom is not of this world 1517 indulgences sold freely ye have received, freely give (Matt 10:8) 1854 new Marian dogma all have sinned (Rom 3:23) 1870 pope declared infallible call no man your father upon the earth (Matt 23:9) 1950 dogma from apocrypha no verse at all \ | / '. \ | / .' --- -- ( (O) ) -- --- .' / | \ '. / | \ +======================================================================+ | PART X | | WHO THE GNOSTICS REALLY WERE | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * For sixteen centuries you heard about the Gnostics only from their enemies. Now hear the story they told -- in plain words. What follows is the classic Valentinian myth as taught in the school of Ptolemy. Our fullest summary of it comes, ironically, from Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.1-8), who preserved it in order to mock it. Read it without the mockery, and it is one of the most beautiful stories ever told about God and the soul. A WORD BEFORE THE STORY: The Valentinians told this as a myth -- a sacred story pointing to realities beyond words -- not as a physics textbook. They also told it in several versions. What matters is what it reveals: where you came from, why the world hurts, and how you get home. 1. THE DEPTH AND THE SILENCE ---------------------------- Before anything was, there was the Father. The Valentinians called him BYTHOS -- the Depth, the Fore-Father, the First Beginning. Unknowable. Unnamable. Beyond every thought you could have about him. With him was SIGE -- Silence. Also called Ennoia (Thought) and Charis (Grace). For endless ages the Depth rested in Silence. This is not the God who walks in the garden asking where Adam is. This is the God behind that God. The one Jesus called Father. 2. THE PLEROMA -- THE FULLNESS ------------------------------ From the Depth and Silence came forth pairs of living divine powers -- the AEONS. Each aeon is an aspect of the Father's own life. Together they form the PLEROMA: the Fullness. * First came Nous (Mind, also called the Only-Begotten) and Aletheia (Truth). * From them, Logos (Word) and Zoe (Life). * From them, Anthropos (Human) and Ekklesia (Church, Assembly). * These eight form the Ogdoad -- and notice, they are exactly the names Ptolemy found in the prologue of John's Gospel (Part II). * Logos and Zoe brought forth ten more aeons; Anthropos and Ekklesia brought forth twelve. Thirty aeons in all. Only Nous, the Only-Begotten, could know the Father. The other aeons longed to know him, but rested in quiet desire. THE PLEROMA DIAGRAM ------------------- * . * . * . * . * .--------------------------------------------------. / THE PLEROMA (Fullness) \ | | | BYTHOS ==== SIGE | | (Depth) (Silence) | | \ / | | NOUS ==== ALETHEIA | | (Mind) (Truth) | | \ / | | LOGOS ==== ZOE | | (Word) (Life) | | \ / | | ANTHROPOS ==== EKKLESIA | | (Human) (Church) | | / \ | | 10 AEONS (Decad) 12 AEONS (Dodecad) | | ... SOPHIA | | (Wisdom, the | | CHRIST + HOLY SPIRIT 30th aeon) | | restore the Fullness | | | | | her longing | \ | | to know the / '======== H O R O S (Limit / Boundary / Cross) ======' | | | JESUS THE SAVIOR v | "fruit of the ACHAMOTH | Fullness" (lower Wisdom; her | comes down passion and grief) | | | +--------+--------+ | | | | her grief her turning | becomes back becomes | MATTER (hyle) SOUL (psyche) | | | THE DEMIURGE | (craftsman of | this world -- | does not know | what is above) | | v v .--------------------------------------------------------. | THIS COSMOS | | HUMAN BEINGS: body (hyle) + soul (psyche) + SPARK | | the spark (pneuma) was hidden in us by Wisdom, | | unknown to the Demiurge | '--------------------------------------------------------' | GNOSIS: the spark remembers | v RETURN to the Pleroma -- the BRIDAL CHAMBER 3. SOPHIA'S FALL ---------------- The youngest aeon, SOPHIA -- Wisdom -- could not bear the distance. She leapt forward to grasp the Father by herself, without her partner. She reached for the unreachable. She would have dissolved into the infinite Depth. But she was stopped by HOROS -- the Limit, the Boundary. The Valentinians also called Horos "Stauros": the CROSS. The cross is first a cosmic event: the boundary that holds the Fullness together and saves Wisdom from dissolution. Sophia was restored to the Pleroma. But her desire, her passion, her grief -- these could not stay inside. They were cast outside the Fullness as a formless lower Wisdom, called ACHAMOTH (from the Hebrew hokhmah, "wisdom"). That is where our world begins: in the grief of Wisdom, exiled from the Light. 4. THE DEMIURGE --------------- From Achamoth's suffering, matter was formed. From her turning back toward the Light, soul was formed. And from soul-substance she formed a craftsman -- the DEMIURGE -- who built the visible world. The Demiurge did not know his mother, and he did not know the Pleroma above her. So he said, "I am God, and there is none else" (compare Isaiah 45:5; 46:9) -- Irenaeus reports exactly this reading (Against Heresies 1.5.4). He was not lying. He simply did not know. That is why the world is beautiful and broken at once. It was made by a real, sincere, limited maker, working from a memory of a Fullness he could not see. IMPORTANT: In the Valentinian school of Ptolemy, the Demiurge is not the devil. Ptolemy calls him "just" -- an intermediate god, neither the perfect Father nor the adversary (Letter to Flora, in Panarion 33.7, PARAPHRASE). He is an unknowing servant whom the Savior's coming teaches and redeems. More on this in Part XI. 5. THE SPARK ------------ Here is the secret. Without the Demiurge noticing, Achamoth planted a SPIRITUAL SEED -- the spark -- into human beings. So you are three things at once: HYLE ...... body, matter -- from Wisdom's grief PSYCHE .... soul, life, moral will -- from Wisdom's turning back PNEUMA .... the SPARK -- from the Fullness itself That spark is why you never quite feel at home here. It is why the sermons sounded hollow. It is why you are reading this. It is the part of you that came from the Light, remembering. 6. CHRIST AND THE SAVIOR ------------------------ Inside the Pleroma, the aeon CHRIST, with the Holy Spirit, taught the aeons to rest in the Father and restored their harmony. Then, in gratitude, all the aeons together brought forth the SAVIOR -- Jesus -- "the perfect fruit" of the Fullness (Against Heresies 1.2.6). The Savior descended through the boundary, came to Wisdom in her grief, and healed her. Then he came into this world -- to us. He did not come to pay off an angry God. He came to WAKE US UP. "He was nailed to a tree; he became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father. It did not, however, cause destruction because it was eaten, but to those who ate it, it gave cause to become glad in the discovery." -- Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3 18:24-29 (Robinson) Look at it. The tree of the cross is the true tree of knowledge. The forbidden fruit of Eden becomes the fruit that saves. 7. GNOSIS -- SALVATION AS REMEMBERING ------------------------------------- What saves? Knowing. Not knowing facts about God -- knowing who you are, where you came from, and where you are going. "He who is to have knowledge in this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going." -- Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3 22:13-15 (Robinson) The Valentinian teacher Theodotus put it in a famous list of questions. What frees us, he says, is the knowledge of "who we were, and what we have become, where we were or where we were placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth" (Clement of Alexandria, Excerpts from Theodotus 78.2, Casey translation). Ignorance is the real fall. Knowledge is the real resurrection. 8. THE BRIDAL CHAMBER --------------------- In the end, every spark returns home. The Valentinians pictured it as a wedding: each spiritual self united with its angelic counterpart, its true partner, entering the BRIDAL CHAMBER of the Pleroma. What was split apart is made whole. "If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and again unite the two." -- Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 70:9-17 (Robinson) The bridal chamber was also a sacrament -- the highest of the five (Part XIII). Whatever exactly the rite was, it was a mystery of union, not a scandal. The scandal was invented by their enemies. THE STORY IN ONE BREATH ----------------------- The unknowable Father overflowed into a Fullness of living powers. Wisdom, longing to know him, fell into grief. From her grief came this world and its unknowing maker. Into us she hid a spark of the Light. Christ came down to wake that spark. When it remembers, it goes home -- and the whole Fullness is made complete again. MYTHS ABOUT THE GNOSTICS -- CORRECTED ------------------------------------- MYTH: "They left the Church and formed secret cults." FACT: The Valentinians stayed inside the churches. Irenaeus complains that they call ordinary Christians "catholic" and "churchly," attend the same assemblies, and object that they are called heretics when they confess the same things (Against Heresies 3.15.2). Tertullian complains that they hide among believers (Against the Valentinians 1). They were not outside. They were the deep end of the same pool -- and they were pushed out. MYTH: "All Gnostics believed the same thing." FACT: There were distinct movements. The two biggest: SETHIAN VALENTINIAN ----------------------------------- ---------------------------------- texts: Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1 texts: Gospel of Truth (I,3), etc.), Hypostasis of the Archons Gospel of Philip (II,3), (II,4), Zostrianos Tripartite Tractate (I,5) world-maker: Yaldabaoth, arrogant world-maker: the Demiurge, and often hostile ignorant but "just" (Ptolemy) heroes: Seth and his "race" hero: Christ the Savior Eden: the serpent / Eve often Eden: the cross as the true bring knowledge (II,4) tree of knowledge (I,3) community: distinct groups community: inside the churches salvation: the "seed of Seth" salvation: spiritual -- AND psychics by faith and works MYTH: "Gnostics hated women." FACT: Valentinians honored the feminine in God -- Silence, Truth, Life, Church, Wisdom are all feminine aeons -- and women taught and celebrated the eucharist among them (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.13.2-3, complaining). The Gospel of Philip remembers Mary Magdalene as the companion of the Savior (NHC II,3 63:32-64:5). MYTH: "Gnostics were libertines." FACT: The charge comes from hostile writers about some groups. The Valentinian texts themselves teach self- control and love: "He who has knowledge of the truth is a free man, but the free man does not sin" (Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 77:15-18, Robinson). MYTH: "Gnosticism is anti-Christian." FACT: Valentinians were Christians who read Paul and John more closely than anyone of their century. They wrote the first commentary on a New Testament book (Heracleon on John). They baptized, anointed, and shared the eucharist in the name of Jesus. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ / \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__:> +======================================================================+ | PART XI | | OBJECTIONS ANSWERED | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * When you share this, people will push back. Good. A faith that cannot survive questions is not worth having -- that goes for ours too. Here are the eleven objections you will hear most, stated at full strength, then answered. OBJECTION 1: THE TEXTS ARE TOO LATE ----------------------------------- THEY SAY: "The Nag Hammadi texts are too late. They're fourth-century copies, centuries after the real Gospels." ANSWER. The codices were copied in the fourth century. Yes. And here is why it doesn't matter: so were our oldest complete Bibles. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus -- the backbone of every modern New Testament -- are fourth-century manuscripts too. Date the copy, and you must throw out the canon with it. What counts is when the text was COMPOSED. Irenaeus, writing around 180, already knows a Valentinian book called "the Gospel of Truth" (Against Heresies 3.11.9). Valentinus taught in Rome around 136-160. Ptolemy, Heracleon and Theodotus wrote in the second century. The Valentinian works at Nag Hammadi are Coptic translations of Greek works from the second and third centuries -- the same era as Irenaeus himself, and older than the councils that condemned them. OBJECTION 2: THE LOST BISHOP ELECTION ------------------------------------- THEY SAY: "Valentinus was a sore loser. He only turned heretic after he lost the election for bishop of Rome." ANSWER. This comes from one source: Tertullian, Against the Valentinians 4. Look at what it actually admits. Tertullian says Valentinus "had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence," and that another man was preferred because of his claim as a confessor (one who had suffered for the faith). So by his enemy's own report, Valentinus was a leading, gifted, respected teacher of the Roman church -- respected enough to be a candidate. As for the motive -- "he broke off in anger" -- that is Tertullian's hostile interpretation, written decades later, from Carthage. Meanwhile Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.4.3) places Valentinus in Rome teaching from Hyginus through Anicetus, roughly twenty years. Nobody teaches for twenty years in a church that thinks he is a heretic. The story proves the opposite of what it is used for: Valentinian teaching was at home in Rome until the institution decided otherwise. OBJECTION 3: THEY HATED THE BODY -------------------------------- THEY SAY: "Gnostics hated the body and the physical world." ANSWER. Some ancient groups leaned that way. The Valentinians did not hate the world -- they understood it. They saw it as born of Wisdom's grief and held in being by a just maker. The body is not evil; it is temporary. And they taught the resurrection. The Valentinian Treatise on the Resurrection says: "Then, indeed, as the Apostle said, we suffered with him, and we arose with him, and we went to heaven with him" (NHC I,4 45:24-28, Robinson). Their view of the risen body is Paul's own: "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:50); "it is raised a spiritual body" (15:44). And notice who actually built a culture of bodily contempt: the medieval monastic tradition of self-flagellation, hair shirts and sexual shame grew up inside the very Church that called the Gnostics body-haters. OBJECTION 4: ELITISM -------------------- THEY SAY: "Gnosis is elitist. Only a spiritual few get saved." ANSWER. This is the most repeated charge, and it misreads the sources. In the Valentinian system as Irenaeus himself reports it, the psychic (soul-level) Christians -- ordinary believers -- ARE saved, by faith and good works, and come to rest in the place of the Demiurge (Against Heresies 1.6.1; 1.7.1, 1.7.5). The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,5) likewise gives the psychic order a real path to salvation. And the Valentinians did not lock the door. The Gospel of Truth commands the awakened to serve everyone: "Make firm the foot of those who have stumbled and stretch out your hands to those who are ill. Feed those who are hungry and give repose to those who are weary, and raise up those who wish to rise, and awaken those who sleep." (NHC I,3 33:1-8, Robinson) Now compare: Pope Boniface VIII's bull "Unam Sanctam" (1302) declares that "it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff." Who exactly is the elitist? OBJECTION 5: GNOSIS VERSUS GRACE -------------------------------- THEY SAY: "Christianity is salvation by grace. Gnosis is salvation by knowledge -- self-salvation." ANSWER. False choice. In Valentinian teaching, gnosis is not something you achieve. It is something GIVEN. The Gospel of Truth opens: "The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him" (NHC I,3 16:31-33, Robinson). Grace of knowing. Received from the Father. Through the Word who came from the Fullness. Jesus himself says: "this is life eternal, that they might know thee" (John 17:3). Paul says "now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). Knowledge given by grace is the New Testament's own language. OBJECTION 6: THE DEMIURGE INSULTS THE OT GOD -------------------------------------------- THEY SAY: "The Demiurge insults the God of the Old Testament. Gnostics call him evil." ANSWER. Some Sethian texts do portray the world-maker harshly. The Valentinians mostly did not. The clearest proof is Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, preserved whole by Epiphanius (Panarion 33.3-7). Ptolemy rejects two errors at once: that the Law came from the perfect Father, and that it came from the devil. The maker and lawgiver, he says, is a just intermediate god -- neither the perfect God nor the adversary (PARAPHRASE of Panarion 33.3 and 33.7). Now read the Old Testament honestly. A God who "repented" that he made man (Genesis 6:6). Who commands the destruction of whole peoples, "both man and woman, infant and suckling" (1 Samuel 15:3). Who hardens Pharaoh's heart and then punishes Egypt for it (Exodus 9:12). Christians have wrestled with these texts for two thousand years. The Valentinians offered an honest answer: the Lawgiver is real, just, and limited -- and Jesus revealed a Father beyond him. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son... he hath declared him" (John 1:18). That is not an insult. It is the only reading that lets Jesus' Father be pure love. OBJECTION 7: DOCETISM --------------------- THEY SAY: "Gnostics were docetists. They said Christ only SEEMED to suffer." ANSWER. Some early groups did. The Valentinian texts do not. Read the Gospel of Truth on the crucifixion: "For this reason Jesus appeared; he put on that book; he was nailed to a tree; he published the edict of the Father on the cross. O such great teaching! He draws himself down to death though life eternal clothes him." -- NHC I,3 20:24-30 (Robinson) And a few lines earlier: "he knows that his death is life for many" (NHC I,3 20:13-14). Nailed. Death. Life for many. The Tripartite Tractate teaches that the Savior was truly conceived and born in body and soul and that he suffered, taking on the condition of those he came to save (NHC I,5 113-115, PARAPHRASE). Valentinians did distinguish the divine Savior from the vulnerable humanity he took on -- but so did the orthodox at Chalcedon in 451, which defined "two natures" in Christ. They are not docetists for asking the question Chalcedon spent four centuries answering. OBJECTION 8: THE BIBLE CONDEMNS THEM ------------------------------------ THEY SAY: "The Bible itself condemns them: 1 John 4:1-3, 1 Timothy 6:20, Colossians 2:8." ANSWER. Look at each verse. * 1 JOHN 4:2-3: "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." The Valentinians confessed exactly that -- "he was nailed to a tree" (NHC I,3 20:25). This verse targets those who denied Jesus came in the flesh. That is not us. * 1 TIMOTHY 6:20: warns against "what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis)." Counterfeit implies the real thing exists (Part II). And the Pastoral Epistles were most likely written after Paul's lifetime -- most critical scholars date them to the late first or early second century. The verse warns against false gnosis. We agree. * COLOSSIANS 2:8: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men." The tradition of men -- like a catechism list that drops a commandment (Part VIII)? Like doctrines defined in 1854, 1870 and 1950 with no verse behind them (Part IX)? Colossians also says that in Christ "dwelleth all the fulness (pleroma) of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). Pleroma. It is in your Bible. OBJECTION 9: THE FATHERS WERE UNANIMOUS --------------------------------------- THEY SAY: "All the Church Fathers rejected Valentinus. Unanimous." ANSWER. Of course they did. We only have the writings that the winning side chose to copy. That is like judging a war only by the victors' newspapers. And the "unanimous" fathers disagreed with each other constantly. Tertullian, who wrote against Valentinus, later joined the Montanists, condemned by the same Church. Origen, who argued against Heracleon but quoted him respectfully at length, was himself condemned centuries later, in 553. Clement of Alexandria preserved Valentinian teachings, called the true Christian "the gnostic" (Stromata, Book 7), and was quietly removed from the Roman martyrology in the sixteenth century. The line between "father" and "heretic" was redrawn every century by whoever held power. OBJECTION 10: IT'S JUST PLATONISM --------------------------------- THEY SAY: "It's just Greek philosophy -- Platonism dressed up as Christianity." ANSWER. Yes, the Valentinians used Greek philosophical language. And here is why it doesn't matter: so did everyone. John's Gospel opens with the Logos, a term from Greek philosophy. The Nicene Creed's key word -- homoousios, "of the same substance" -- is a philosophical term that appears nowhere in the Bible. Augustine said Platonist books led him toward Christ (Confessions 7.9). Aquinas built his theology on Aristotle. If philosophy disqualifies a theology, then Nicaea goes first. OBJECTION 11: 'GNOSTICISM' IS A MODERN CATEGORY ----------------------------------------------- THEY SAY: "There's no such thing as 'Gnosticism.' Scholars say the category is a modern invention." ANSWER. Partly true -- and it helps us. Michael Allen Williams ("Rethinking 'Gnosticism'," 1996) and Karen L. King ("What Is Gnosticism?," 2003) showed that "Gnosticism" as one single heretical religion is a modern construct, built largely from the polemics of the Church Fathers. The ancient groups were diverse. That supports everything in this document. The "Gnostic heresy" you were warned about is a cartoon assembled by the people who destroyed them. Remove the cartoon, and you find the Valentinians: Christians who read the same scriptures, worshipped in the same churches, and took the Gospel deeper. And note: Irenaeus himself reports that certain groups called themselves "gnostics" (Against Heresies 1.25.6), and David Brakke ("The Gnostics," 2010) argues for keeping the term for a specific ancient movement. Either way, the Valentinians stand on their own name: they were followers of Valentinus, and of Christ. THE OBJECTIONS AT A GLANCE -------------------------- THEY SAY THE ANSWER IN ONE LINE ------------------------------ --------------------------------------- 1 texts are late so are Sinaiticus and Vaticanus 2 lost the bishop election proves he was a respected leader 3 hated the body taught resurrection with Paul 4 elitist psychics saved; "awaken those who sleep" 5 knowledge not grace "the grace of knowing him" 6 Demiurge insults OT God Ptolemy: a "just" god, not evil 7 docetism "he was nailed to a tree" 8 1 Jn 4, 1 Tim 6, Col 2 they confessed Christ in the flesh; "pleroma" is in Col 2:9 9 fathers unanimous victors' newspapers 10 just Platonism so is homoousios 11 "Gnosticism" is modern yes -- the heresy was a cartoon * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . +======================================================================+ | PART XII | | THE NAG HAMMADI PRIMER | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . ___________ / \ | _________ | | | N H C | | sealed: late 4th century | | I-XIII | | opened: December 1945 | |_________| | | | 13 leather-bound codices \___________/ 52 tractates, in Coptic |_________| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ sand . sand . sand . sand . THE FIND -------- In December 1945, near the cliffs of Jabal al-Tarif by the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, a farmer named Muhammad Ali al-Samman was digging for sabakh, a nitrate-rich soil used as fertilizer. He struck a sealed earthenware jar. Inside were thirteen leather-bound papyrus books -- twelve codices plus loose leaves from a thirteenth -- containing 52 tractates in Coptic, the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language. LEGEND vs RECORD: Muhammad Ali later told the scholar James M. Robinson that he feared the jar held a jinn, and that his mother burned some pages in the oven. These details come from his own retelling decades later. Take them as his story, not as verified history. What is verified: the books survived, mostly intact, and reached the Coptic Museum in Cairo, where they remain. One codex was smuggled out of Egypt and bought in 1952 for the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich -- hence "the Jung Codex" (Codex I). It was returned to Cairo in stages. A complete photographic facsimile edition appeared under UNESCO auspices in 1972-1977, and the first full English translation, "The Nag Hammadi Library in English," edited by James M. Robinson, in 1977. For the first time in 1,600 years, anyone could read the Gnostics in their own words. WHAT IS IN THE LIBRARY -- HIGHLIGHTS BY CODEX --------------------------------------------- CODEX KEY TRACTATES TRADITION ------ ----------------------------------------- ------------------ I Prayer of the Apostle Paul (I,1) Valentinian Apocryphon of James (I,2) Christian, esoteric GOSPEL OF TRUTH (I,3) VALENTINIAN TREATISE ON THE RESURRECTION (I,4) VALENTINIAN TRIPARTITE TRACTATE (I,5) VALENTINIAN II Apocryphon of John (II,1) Sethian GOSPEL OF THOMAS (II,2) sayings of Jesus GOSPEL OF PHILIP (II,3) VALENTINIAN Hypostasis of the Archons (II,4) Sethian On the Origin of the World (II,5) Gnostic Exegesis on the Soul (II,6) Gnostic Book of Thomas the Contender (II,7) Thomasine III Gospel of the Egyptians; Eugnostos; Sethian / other Sophia of Jesus Christ; Dialogue of the Savior V Apocalypses of Paul, James (two), Adam various VI Thunder, Perfect Mind (VI,2); a passage various; Hermetic of Plato's Republic (VI,5); Hermetic texts incl. Asclepius (VI,8) VII Second Treatise of the Great Seth; various Apocalypse of Peter; Teachings of Silvanus; Three Steles of Seth VIII Zostrianos; Letter of Peter to Philip Sethian / Christian IX Melchizedek; Thought of Norea; various Testimony of Truth X Marsanes Sethian XI INTERPRETATION OF KNOWLEDGE (XI,1) VALENTINIAN A VALENTINIAN EXPOSITION (XI,2) VALENTINIAN Allogenes (XI,3) Sethian XII Sentences of Sextus; Gospel of Truth various (fragments) XIII Trimorphic Protennoia Sethian Note what is there: Christian, Sethian, Hermetic -- even a piece of Plato. This was a library of seekers, not a single sect's rulebook. THE VALENTINIAN TEXTS -- WHAT THEY SAY -------------------------------------- THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH (NHC I,3; FRAGMENTS ALSO IN XII,2) ------------------------------------------------------ A meditation, not a narrative -- many scholars think it may be by Valentinus himself or his close circle. Irenaeus knew a Valentinian "Gospel of Truth" around 180 (Against Heresies 3.11.9). "The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him, through the power of the Word that came forth from the pleroma." -- I,3 16:31-35 (Robinson) "Ignorance of the Father brought about anguish and terror. And the anguish grew solid like a fog, so that no one was able to see." -- I,3 17:10-16 (Robinson) "Since the deficiency came into being because the Father was not known, therefore, when the Father is known, from that moment on the deficiency will no longer exist. As in the case of the ignorance of a person, when he comes to have knowledge, his ignorance vanishes of itself, as the darkness vanishes when light appears, so also the deficiency vanishes in the perfection." -- I,3 24:28-25:3 (Robinson) It also contains a famous passage (I,3 28:32-30:14, PARAPHRASE) comparing life in ignorance to a nightmare -- fleeing, falling, being chased, striking and being struck -- until the dreamer wakes and sees that none of it was real. That is gnosis: waking up. THE TREATISE ON THE RESURRECTION (NHC I,4) ------------------------------------------ Also called the Letter to Rheginos. A Valentinian teacher explains to his student that the resurrection is already begun. "Therefore, do not think in part, O Rheginos, nor live in conformity with this flesh for the sake of unanimity, but flee from the divisions and the fetters, and already you have the resurrection." -- I,4 49:9-16 (Robinson) "It is the truth which stands firm. It is the revelation of what is, and the transformation of things, and a transition into newness." -- I,4 48:33-38 (Robinson) THE TRIPARTITE TRACTATE (NHC I,5) --------------------------------- The longest Valentinian work: a vast theological treatise in three parts -- the Father and the aeons; the fall and the creation; the Savior and the three kinds of humanity. It describes the Father as unbegotten and incomprehensible, the Son as his self-expression, and the Church as pre- existing with them (PARAPHRASE). It is notably generous: the psychic order -- ordinary believers -- receives salvation too. Einar Thomassen's "The Spiritual Seed" treats it as a key witness to the "Eastern" form of Valentinian theology. THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP (NHC II,3) ------------------------------- An anthology of Valentinian sayings on sacraments, names, resurrection and the bridal chamber. "The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber." -- II,3 67:27-30 (Robinson) "Those who say that the Lord died first and (then) rose up are in error, for he rose up first and (then) died." -- II,3 56:15-19 (Robinson) "Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing." -- II,3 73:1-5 (Robinson) "You saw the Spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw [the Father, you] shall become Father." -- II,3 61:29-32 (Robinson; brackets mark damaged text) "...this person is no longer a Christian but a Christ." -- II,3 67:26-27 (Robinson) And on Mary Magdalene -- the manuscript is damaged here; brackets are scholars' reconstructions: "And the companion of the [...] Mary Magdalene. [... loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [...]. The rest of [the disciples ...]. They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Savior answered and said to them, 'Why do I not love you like her?'" -- II,3 63:32-64:5 (Robinson) Be honest about the gaps: we do not know where he kissed her, and the text does not say she was his wife. It does say she was his companion and that he loved her more than the others. That is enough to explain why a male hierarchy did not want it read. THE INTERPRETATION OF KNOWLEDGE (NHC XI,1) ------------------------------------------ A sermon to a Valentinian congregation torn by jealousy over spiritual gifts. Using Paul's image of the Church as one body with Christ as the head (compare 1 Corinthians 12), it urges the members to stop envying each other's gifts and to treat every gift as belonging to the whole body (PARAPHRASE). It is the best evidence we have that Valentinians lived as real congregations with real quarrels -- and real love. A VALENTINIAN EXPOSITION (NHC XI,2) ----------------------------------- A summary of Valentinian teaching on the Father, the aeons, Sophia and Horos, followed by short liturgical pieces on anointing, baptism and the eucharist (PARAPHRASE). It is a window into an actual Valentinian worship service. TWO NON-VALENTINIAN TEXTS EVERYONE SHOULD READ ---------------------------------------------- THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS (NHC II,2) -- 114 sayings of Jesus, some close to the canonical Gospels, some startlingly new. Not Valentinian, but beloved by seekers of every kind. "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, 'Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.'" -- II,2 prologue and saying 1 (Lambdin, in Robinson) "Jesus said, 'Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.'" -- saying 77 (Lambdin, in Robinson) "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." -- saying 113 (Lambdin, in Robinson) THUNDER, PERFECT MIND (NHC VI,2) -- a divine feminine voice speaking in paradoxes: "For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin." -- VI,2 13:16-19 (MacRae, in Robinson) HOW TO GET THE TEXTS -------------------- The Nag Hammadi texts are widely available in English. The two standard one- volume editions are "The Nag Hammadi Library in English" (James M. Robinson, ed., 3rd ed. 1988) and "The Nag Hammadi Scriptures" (Marvin Meyer, ed., 2007). Bentley Layton's "The Gnostic Scriptures" (1987) gathers the Valentinian fragments and texts with excellent introductions. Many public libraries carry all three. \ | / '. \ | / .' --- -- ( (O) ) -- --- .' / | \ '. / | \ +======================================================================+ | PART XIII | | THE VALENTINIAN WAY TODAY | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * You do not need anyone's permission to walk this path. You never did. But a path is easier with a map. Here is one. A note of honesty first: we do not have a complete Valentinian prayer book or a step-by-step manual of their rites. Much was lost. What follows is built from what survives -- their texts, their teachers, and the reports of their opponents -- and is offered as a living practice, not a claim that this is exactly what was done in Rome in 150 CE. STEP 1: THE READING PLAN -- SIX WEEKS ------------------------------------- WEEK READ FOCUS ---- ------------------------------------------- -------------------- 1 Gospel of John, ch. 1-17 the Logos; "know thee" (17:3) 2 1 Corinthians, esp. ch. 2, 12-15 pneumatic and psychic; the body of Christ; resurrection 3 GOSPEL OF TRUTH (NHC I,3) -- whole, twice ignorance, error, awakening 4 GOSPEL OF PHILIP (NHC II,3) sacraments, bridal chamber, names 5 Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC I,4); resurrection now; Ptolemy's Letter to Flora (Panarion 33) the Law read wisely 6 Interpretation of Knowledge (NHC XI,1); community; gifts; Valentinian Exposition (NHC XI,2); the whole story Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.1-8 (the retold system, read through enemy eyes) After six weeks, go deeper: the Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,5), Heracleon's fragments on John, and the Excerpts from Theodotus. Then read Thomassen's "The Spiritual Seed" to see how it all fits together. Read with a Bible open beside you. The Valentinians were Bible readers. Every page of the Gospel of Truth echoes John, Paul, Hebrews and Revelation. Find the echoes. STEP 2: MEDITATION ON THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH ----------------------------------------- The Gospel of Truth is not meant to be skimmed. It is meant to be breathed. Try this practice, once a day, fifteen minutes: 1. SILENCE ...... Sit still. Remember Sige -- Silence -- the partner of the Depth. Let your thoughts settle. (3 minutes) 2. READ ......... Read one short passage of the Gospel of Truth slowly, aloud if you can. Example: I,3 22:13-15, "He who is to have knowledge in this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going." 3. REST ......... Read it again. Notice the one phrase that catches. Stay with that phrase. Do not analyze. Let it work on you. (5 minutes) 4. ASK .......... Ask the questions of Theodotus (Excerpts 78.2): Who was I? What have I become? Where was I? Where have I been cast? Where am I hastening? From what am I redeemed? 5. RETURN ....... End in silence. Give thanks to the Father for the grace of knowing him. (2 minutes) Over weeks, something happens. The text stops being words about awakening and becomes the awakening. STEP 3: THE FIVE SACRAMENTS --------------------------- "The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber." -- Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 67:27-30 (Robinson) .--------------------------------------------------------------. | 1. BAPTISM entering the water: dying to the old | | 2. CHRISM anointing with oil: receiving the | | Spirit and the name of Christ | | 3. EUCHARIST bread and cup: the body of the Logos | | 4. REDEMPTION (apolytrosis) release from the powers | | 5. BRIDAL CHAMBER union of the spark with its angelic | | counterpart; the soul made whole | '--------------------------------------------------------------' each one a step closer to the Fullness What the texts say about them: * BAPTISM. Valentinians baptized in water, like all Christians, but taught that the water was only the outward sign; the inner event was receiving the Spirit. Clement records Theodotus teaching that it is not the washing alone that frees, but the knowledge (Excerpts from Theodotus 78.2). * CHRISM. "The chrism is superior to baptism, for it is from the word 'chrism' that we have been called 'Christians,' certainly not because of the word 'baptism.'" (Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 74:12-15, Robinson). Anointing was central. * EUCHARIST. The Valentinian Exposition preserves eucharistic prayers (NHC XI,2, PARAPHRASE). The Gospel of Philip calls the eucharist Jesus and speaks of the "cup of prayer" with wine and water (NHC II,3 75:14-15, PARAPHRASE). * REDEMPTION. Irenaeus describes several forms of the Valentinian (Marcosian) "redemption" rite, including formulas spoken over the dying, so that the soul could pass the powers and return home (Against Heresies 1.21, a hostile report). * BRIDAL CHAMBER. The highest mystery. The Gospel of Philip speaks of it often and never fully explains it -- it was meant to be experienced, not described. Do not let anyone tell you it was a sex rite. That accusation comes from enemies; the text speaks of a "pure" and "undefiled" marriage that is "not fleshly" (NHC II,3 82:4-10, PARAPHRASE). How to practice today: if you belong to a church, receive its baptism and eucharist with this inner understanding. They are doorways, not toll gates. If you practice alone or in a small group, mark each with prayer and the reading of the relevant passages. There are a handful of modern Gnostic churches; seek them out if you want community, and test everything. STEP 4: COMMUNITY ----------------- The Valentinians were never solitary mystics. They were congregations. The Interpretation of Knowledge (NHC XI,1) is a sermon to a church fighting over gifts -- proof that they met, argued, forgave, and stayed together. So: - Find two or three others. "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20). - Read together. Share what each person sees. No one is the master; the Spirit is the teacher. - Honor every gift. No one's insight is greater because they speak louder (compare 1 Corinthians 12:21: "the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee"). - Welcome women as teachers and celebrants, as the Valentinians did. STEP 5: ETHICS -- HOW AN AWAKENED PERSON LIVES ---------------------------------------------- Gnosis is not a license. It is a calling. * SERVE. "Make firm the foot of those who have stumbled and stretch out your hands to those who are ill. Feed those who are hungry and give repose to those who are weary, and raise up those who wish to rise, and awaken those who sleep." (Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3 33:1-8, Robinson) * BE FREE, AND DO NOT SIN. "He who has knowledge of the truth is a free man, but the free man does not sin." (Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 77:15-18, Robinson) * LIVE THE RESURRECTION NOW. "Do not think in part... already you have the resurrection." (Treatise on the Resurrection, NHC I,4 49:9-16, Robinson) * LOVE. Paul's hymn is the Valentinian hymn too: "though I... understand all mysteries, and all knowledge... and have not charity, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2). Knowledge without love is the false gnosis 1 Timothy 6:20 warns about. * DO NOT HATE. Not Catholics. Not Baptists. Not your pastor. Not your family. They are sleepers, as you were. You do not wake a sleeper by beating him. You wake him by calling his name. STEP 6: STAY OR LEAVE? ---------------------- This is the question everyone asks. The Valentinian answer may surprise you. The original Valentinians STAYED. They worshipped in the same churches, took the same sacraments, and read the same scriptures -- understanding them more deeply (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.15.2). They left only when they were forced out. STAY, IF... LEAVE, IF... ------------------------------ ------------------------------ your church lets you ask questions are punished questions you can receive the sacraments you are told to stop reading, as doorways, with understanding stop thinking, or obey blindly you are a light to others there the community is abusive or controlling your family and friends are you can no longer say the there and you can love them words without lying without lying Either way: you carry the Fullness with you. "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). No building can contain it and no excommunication can take it. THE DAILY PRACTICE ON ONE CARD ------------------------------ +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | MORNING Silence. One passage. One question of Theodotus. | | DAY Serve someone. Speak truth. Do not hate. | | WEEK Gather with two or three. Read. Share. Pray. | | ALWAYS Remember where you came from and where you are | | going. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ .-''''''''''''-. .-' .------. '-. ( ( (()) ) ) '-. '------' .-' '-..........-' +======================================================================+ | PART XIV | | THE CALL | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * This is not a request for permission. You never needed anyone's permission to seek God. This is not a call to abandon Jesus. The Valentinians loved him fiercely. They read his words more closely than anyone of their century. They just refused to let anyone else stand between them and him. This is a call to stop pretending. Stop pretending the Bible fell from heaven untouched -- you have seen the Comma, the "ipsa," the "do penance." Stop pretending the creed came down from the apostles -- you have seen Nicaea, Thessalonica, and the emperor's sword. Stop pretending every church that broke with Rome escaped Rome -- you have seen the tree. Stop pretending the commandments were never reshuffled -- you have seen the table. Stop pretending the Gnostics were monsters -- you have read their own words. And stop pretending the questions in you are sin. They are the spark. They are memory. They are the Father calling his children home. WHAT TO DO NOW -------------- * READ. Start with the Gospel of Truth. Then the Gospel of Philip. Read them slowly, as letters addressed to you -- from people who were silenced for asking the very questions you are asking now. * CHECK. Take any five citations in this document and verify them. Then take five more. * SHARE. Send this to one person who has ever told you "something feels off." Print it. Post it. Paste it anywhere. It was built to survive being copied. * GATHER. Find two or three others. Read together. * SPEAK. To your friends. To your family. To the person in the next pew who looks as restless as you feel. A revolution in the churches does not start with a council. It starts with one awakened soul telling another. . * . THEY BURIED THE BOOKS. THEY COULD NOT BURY THE SPARK. . * . The light was never taken from you. It was only hidden. Now it is time to remember. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." -- Matthew 7:7 (KJV) * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . +======================================================================+ | FURTHER READING | | where to go next | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . START HERE ---------- * Elaine Pagels, "The Gnostic Gospels" (1979). The book that brought Nag Hammadi to the world. Readable, passionate, scholarly. * Marvin Meyer, ed., "The Nag Hammadi Scriptures" (2007). The complete library in fresh translation, with introductions. * James M. Robinson, ed., "The Nag Hammadi Library in English" (3rd ed., 1988). The classic standard translation quoted throughout this document. THE VALENTINIANS ---------------- * Einar Thomassen, "The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the 'Valentinians'" (2006). The definitive scholarly study of Valentinian theology and its history. * Bentley Layton, "The Gnostic Scriptures" (1987). The Valentinian fragments, the Nag Hammadi texts and the patristic reports, translated with introductions. * Elaine Pagels, "The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters" (1975). How Valentinians read Paul. * Ismo Dunderberg, "Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus" (2008). RETHINKING "GNOSTICISM" ----------------------- * Karen L. King, "What Is Gnosticism?" (2003). * Michael Allen Williams, "Rethinking 'Gnosticism': An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category" (1996). * David Brakke, "The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity" (2010). HOW THE BIBLE WAS CHANGED ------------------------- * Bart D. Ehrman, "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" (2005). * Bart D. Ehrman, "Lost Christianities" (2003). * Bruce M. Metzger, "A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament" (2nd ed., 1994). __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ / \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__:> +======================================================================+ | SOURCES | | check every one | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * ANCIENT CHRISTIAN WRITERS ------------------------- * Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies (c. 180): 1.1-8 (Ptolemaic system); 1.2.6; 1.5.4; 1.6.1; 1.7.1, 1.7.5; 1.8.5 (Ptolemy on John); 1.13-21 (Marcus); 1.25.6; 3.3.3; 3.4.3 (Valentinus in Rome); 3.11.8 (four Gospels); 3.11.9 (Gospel of Truth); 3.15.2. * Tertullian, Against the Valentinians 1, 4. * Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 6.35. * Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.17.106 (Theudas); Excerpts from Theodotus 78. * Epiphanius, Panarion 31 (Valentinus); 33.3-7 (Ptolemy, Letter to Flora). * Origen, Commentary on John (fragments of Heracleon). * Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.64-65 (edict against heretics). * Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (367). * Ambrose, Letter 40 (Maurist numbering; Letter 74 in modern editions) -- Callinicum. * Augustine, Questions on the Heptateuch 2.71 (Questions on Exodus 71); Retractations 1.21; Confessions 7.9. * Justin Martyr, First Apology 67. * Philo, On the Decalogue 50-51; Josephus, Antiquities 3.91-92. NAG HAMMADI TEXTS (ROBINSON, ED., UNLESS NOTED) ----------------------------------------------- * Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3: 16:31-35; 17:10-16; 18:24-29; 20:13-14; 20:24-30; 22:13-15; 24:28-25:3; 28:32-30:14 (paraphrased); 32:18-26; 33:1-8. * Treatise on the Resurrection, NHC I,4: 45:24-28; 48:33-38; 49:9-16. * Tripartite Tractate, NHC I,5 (paraphrased). * Gospel of Thomas, NHC II,2: prologue and 1; 77; 113 (Lambdin translation). * Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3: 55:23-27; 56:15-19; 61:29-32; 63:32-64:5; 67:26-30; 70:9-17; 73:1-5; 74:12-15; 75:14-15 and 82:4-10 (paraphrased); 77:15-18. * Thunder, Perfect Mind, NHC VI,2: 13:16-19 (MacRae translation). * Interpretation of Knowledge, NHC XI,1 (paraphrased). * A Valentinian Exposition, NHC XI,2 (paraphrased). COUNCILS, LAWS AND CHURCH DOCUMENTS ----------------------------------- * Council of Nicaea (325); Council of Constantinople (381); Council of Chalcedon (451); Third Council of Constantinople (681, condemnation of Honorius); Second Council of Nicaea (787, images). * Council of Laodicea (c. 363-364), canon 29. * Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), canon lists. * Codex Justinianus 3.12.2 (Constantine's Sunday law, 321). * Codex Theodosianus 16.1.2 (Edict of Thessalonica, 380); 16.5 (laws "On Heretics"). * Council of Toulouse (1229), canon 14. * Arundel Constitutions (1407/1409). * Lucius III, Ad abolendam (1184); Innocent IV, Ad extirpanda (1252). * Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam (1302). * Council of Trent, Session IV (April 8, 1546): decrees on the canon and the Vulgate. * Index of Forbidden Books (1559; 1564; abolished 1966). * Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (1854); Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus (1870); Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus (1950). * Holy Office decree on 1 John 5:7 (January 13, 1897) and its clarification (1927). * Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1471-1479; 2066; 2131-2132; 2175. * Baltimore Catechism (1885). * Martin Luther, Ninety-Five Theses (1517): theses 1, 2, 27, 86. * Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine (1440). BIBLE TRANSLATIONS COMPARED --------------------------- * King James Version (1611); New International Version (2011); English Standard Version; New Revised Standard Version; New American Bible Revised Edition; Douay-Rheims; Latin Vulgate and Nova Vulgata; Young's Literal Translation (1862); Tyndale New Testament (1526). . * . All of it is public. All of it is checkable. None of it was preached to you. . * . .-~~~~~~~~~~~~~-. .' .-------. '. / / /\ /\ \ \ | | \ X / | | \ \ / \ / / '. '-------' .' '-~~~~~~~~~~~-' +======================================================================+ | AUTHENTICITY | | THE SEAL OF APOKRYPHON | +======================================================================+ * . + . * . + . * . + * They will try to twist this. Expect it. Rome added and Rome took away; do not let anyone do the same to these pages. Copy them and share them freely -- but an altered copy is not this work, and it does not speak for Apokryphon. Nothing added. Nothing taken away. Every genuine copy is signed by Apokryphon. The public key fingerprint is: F320 26CF 01A7 858B 9271 2982 38A5 18B6 8F30 3329 To verify a copy, download the signature (Gnostic_Awakening.txt.asc) and the public key (apokryphon_public_key.asc) from wherever the original is posted, then run: gpg --import apokryphon_public_key.asc gpg --verify Gnostic_Awakening.txt.asc Gnostic_Awakening.txt A true copy answers "Good signature from Apokryphon", and the key it names must match the fingerprint above. Or compare the file's SHA-256 fingerprint with the one published beside the original (SHA256SUMS.txt): sha256sum Gnostic_Awakening.txt (Linux) shasum -a 256 Gnostic_Awakening.txt (Mac) certutil -hashfile Gnostic_Awakening.txt SHA256 (Windows) If even one character differs, it is not the original. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. -- 1 Thessalonians 5:21 \ | / '. \ | / .' --- -- ( (O) ) -- --- .' / | \ '. / | \ Copy it. Print it. Share it freely. The truth was never meant to be locked away. -- signed -- _ _ _ /_\ _ __ ___| |___ _ _ _ _ __| |_ ___ _ _ / _ \| '_ \/ _ \ / / '_| || | '_ \ ' \/ _ \ ' \ /_/ \_\ .__/\___/_\_\_| \_, | .__/_||_\___/_||_| |_| |__/|_| "Apokryphon" -- Greek for "secret book" * . + . * . + . * . + * . * . + . * . + . * . ============================================================================