(selections from Elaine Pagels. Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation)
1. Romanizing Christianity, Christianizing Rome
Then, by a miracle, many said, less than a year later, on
October 28, 312, Constantine, son of one of the imperial rulers, anticipating
battle the next morning against his rivals for imperial power, suddenly adopted
Christ as his patron. …Constantine said later that he had seen a great omen in
the sky, and then in a dream, that promised him victory through Christ’s sign.
Constantine ordered a copy of that sign—a staff with letters indicating
Christ’s name—to be emblazoned on a banner and carried before his army, and
under this sign he defeated and killed Maxentius, his rival emperor in the
West. The next day he entered Rome in triumph, hailed as emperor. Shortly
afterward, Constantine and his coregent, Licinius, published an edict declaring
Christianity a legal religion and allowing what Tertullian had only dared
imagine—each person free to worship “as seems good to him.”
(...)
Now that Constantine had ended persecution, Christians began
to contend among themselves more intensely than ever. The emperor’s favor
enormously raised the stakes, for after he took Christ as his patron,
Constantine opened his imperial treasuries to rebuild churches previously
targeted for destruction. Christian clergy, once hunted and haunted by fear and
memories of those horribly killed, now received tax exemptions and special
privileges.
(...)
After the year 312, when Constantine first declared his
preference for Christianity, he had chosen to become the patron of those
Christians who called themselves catholic (from the Greek for “universal”).
Within a few years he had adopted their practice of calling all other Christian
groups, along with their clergy, heretics—that is, in effect, sectarians—who,
he now declared, had no legal right to meet for worship, even in private homes,
much less to own churches. In 324 he “legislated an end to all heretical sects”
and ordered that their property be confiscated and turned over to Catholic
Christians.
(...)
Constantine, concerned with managing his enormous empire,
noted with approval that Catholic clergy had adopted the Roman army’s system of
rank, command, and promotion to create effective control over a wide network of
congregations. In this way, Christian leaders Romanized Christianity, while
Christianizing Rome.
2. Revelations, Heretics, and Nag Hammadi
Alexander effectively won the right to supervise not only
the churches in Alexandria but those in all of Egypt. Three years later,
Alexander died unexpectedly, and while a council of more than fifty bishops
gathered to choose his successor, seven others met separately and ordained
Athanasius, the former bishop’s young secretary, as the new head bishop. This
outcome was intensely disputed. Those opposed to Athanasius objected that he
was not even a priest and, at age twenty-eight, below the minimum age
requirement for a bishop…
(...)
Bishops loyal to Melitius immediately challenged Athanasius
by electing a bishop of their own. To their shock, however, the emperor
effectively ratified Athanasius’ election when he sent a message congratulating
him. With this victory, Athanasius confronted the challenge that would engage
him for the next forty-six years: how to weld the disparate believers and
groups throughout Egypt into a single, Catholic (that is, “universal”)
communion.
(...)
…besides schismatic priests and bishops, Athanasius also
confronted thousands of Christians in Egypt, many in the monastic movement, who
had remained independent of his ecclesiastical hierarchy and, in some cases, of
any clergy. How, then, could Athanasius induce all Christians in Egypt to
conform to the complex formulas expressed in the Nicene Creed and herd these
various believers all over Egypt into a single “flock” headed by himself, as
bishop of Alexandria?
(...)
During his long struggle to accomplish this, Athanasius
found an unlikely ally in John of Patmos—especially as Irenaeus had read him.
For as we noted, Irenaeus interpreted God’s enemies, whom John had pictured as
the “beast” and the “whore,” to refer not only to Rome’s rulers but also to
Christians deceived, by the false teacher he called Antichrist, into false
doctrine and into committing evil. Apparently familiar with earlier Jewish
traditions about such an “anti-messiah” (which translates as “antichrist” from
Greek), Irenaeus linked these falsifiers with John’s visions of the beast, to
warn of the danger to God’s people from within the churches as well as from the
outside. Athanasius, who had found an ally in the emperor Constantine,
initially omitted any reference to “the beast” as embodied in Roman rulers.
Instead he emphasized Irenaeus’ view that those who follow “the beast” (whom
he, too, identified with Antichrist) are actually those Christians whom he
called heretics.
(...)
Like Bishop Irenaeus two centuries earlier, Athanasius
turned John’s visions of cosmic war into a weapon against those he called
heretics—“Melitians,” “Arians,” or, in his favorite phrase, “Ariomaniacs,” who
“fight against Christ.” Athanasius insisted that Constantine had been right to
promote the council at Nicea as uniquely valid, since there, he said, “all the
fathers” had supported the true faith against the “Antichristian heresy.” When
living in an empire ruled by a Christian who supported his Arian opponents,
then, Athanasius interpreted John’s Book of Revelation as condemning all
“heretics,” and then made this book the capstone of the New Testament canon,
where it has remained ever since. At the same time, he ordered Christians to
stop reading any other “books of revelation,” which he branded heretical and
sought to destroy—with almost complete success. For although Irenaeus, in his
massive book Against Heresies, had denounced such “secret books” two hundred
years earlier, Athanasius knew that many Christians in Egypt either were
unaware of that ancient warning or ignored it. Many continued to copy and read
such books for devotional use, even translating them into Coptic to make them
more accessible. Athanasius had heard, too, that in some monasteries monks read
and discussed such “secret books” both in private and in their communal
devotions. These books have remained largely unknown, since nearly all copies
were destroyed as heretical after the fourth century; but the cache of more
than fifty so-called Gnostic gospels and “secret books” found in 1945 at Nag
Hammadi, in Upper Egypt, survived Athanasius’ order. Although we don’t know
exactly who hid them there or where they had previously been kept, they had
been buried in a sealed jar within walking distance of three monasteries, near
caves where monks went to meditate and pray.
3. Following Pachomus into the Unknown
Pachomius said he had received a divine revelation telling
him to build a communal house that he hoped would become an outpost of heaven
on earth. Claiming his vision’s guidance, he urged others seeking God not to
live simply as “solitaries” but as members of a spiritual community. Pachomius
persuaded a few followers to work with him and build a mud-and-brick house that
could accommodate several hundred men, a building later called by the
paradoxical term monasterium—in effect, a “community of solitaries.”
(...)
Several years later, after this communal house had attracted
many more rural Egyptians, including many experiencing economic hardship, by
offering shelter, food, and work in the setting of a spiritual family,
Pachomius traveled to a village near Nag Hammadi to supervise the building of a
much larger monastery. This one, built to house thousands of volunteers, would
later become the headquarters of a network of nine monasteries that he and his
staff would supervise along the Upper Nile, along with two affiliated
communities of women.
(...)
At the large communal house near Nag Hammadi, fifty miles
north of present-day Luxor, some monks worked in the fields to raise lentils,
okra, and grain, while others washed clothes, cleaned rooms, cooked, baked
bread, and wove baskets and rope to sell at markets in town to support the
community’s needs. New recruits who arrived knowing how to read and write
worked in a room set aside as a library. Some copied Coptic manuscripts of the
Scriptures and other writings, while those who knew Greek translated sacred
writings from Greek into Coptic to be read to the whole community.
(...)
As evening darkened into night, a newcomer seated among his
monastic “brothers” might hear sacred readings from the Scriptures and, since
no New Testament canon had yet been codified, also from books that Athanasius
would condemn as “heretical.” As the reader opened the heavy leather cover of
Codex I, one of the thirteen volumes found at Nag Hammadi, and began to read
the Prayer of the Apostle Paul, written on the flyleaf, a newcomer listening to
evening devotions might have shared in the intense expectation it expresses
(...)
This prayer speaks to those who long for communion with God,
and who hope to glimpse what the apostle Paul called “the deep things of God.”
The reader would probably conclude with the exclamation that the scribe had
added to the prayer—“Christ is holy!” Then, turning to the Secret Revelation of
James on the next page, he might begin to speak, in effect, in the words of
Jesus’ brother James as he answers a seeker’s request
(...)
Instead of being told that one can learn about Jesus only
from what the apostles wrote and handed down in their writings, the Secret
Revelation of James invites the believer to commune directly with “the living
Jesus”—even challenges one to become like him. Rather than being put off with
simple answers, the novice is encouraged to ask bolder questions:
(...)
The newcomer might have to wait for the next session, on
another night, to hear readings from the Gospel of Truth, which follows next in
the same volume and speaks to these questions, offering to reveal “the true
gospel.”
(...)
Hearing such sources read aloud, most likely on successive
nights—in gatherings for devotions that might conclude with the group praying
together and sometimes embracing before sharing the sacred meal—the novice
might be moved to hear the final teaching in Codex I speak poetically of whence
we came and where we are going. For the Tripartite Tractate that concludes the
book we call Codex I expands what the Gospel of Truth had sketched out: how, in
the beginning, each of us—and all beings in the universe—came forth from God,
the Father, “like a young child, like a drop of water from a spring, like a
blossom from a vine.” Although originally all were linked together, the
Tripartite Tractate, like the Gospel of Truth, tells how they became scattered
and separated, then turned arrogant and violent, lusting for power, fighting to
dominate and kill one another, as people do in the outside world. Those
gathered in the monastery, hearing this account, could see themselves as God’s
children, whom Christ had brought back and joined into one community so that,
as this final teaching concludes, they might “help one another” as they seek to
be reunited with “the One filled with love, through his holy spirit, from now
through all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
(...)
Some scholars who first read these texts after their
discovery in 1945, noting how they diverge from orthodox tradition, assumed
that monks would have collected such writings only to refute the heresy they
found in them. More recent research suggests, however, that early in the fourth
century, before Athanasius’ campaign to reform the monasteries had succeeded in
making them conform their teaching to orthodox doctrine, many monks might have
seen these diverse writings pointing in the same direction as the great
pioneers of their own monastic tradition. Athanasius knew, of course, that
monks in the federation based at Nag Hammadi looked above all to Pachomius,
their monastic “father,” who urged them to press into the unknown, seeking the
Holy Spirit’s guidance, as he did himself, while countless others looked to
Anthony of Egypt, that great pioneer of the spiritual life.
4. Replacing Experiential Anthony with the Life of St. Anthony
Anthony, born in Egypt around 250, had given up the wealth
and hundreds of acres of land he had inherited when his parents died to live
alone in the desert seeking God. In his later years, after he had become a
mentor to monks all over Egypt and a legend throughout the empire, he wrote
letters addressed to his “dear children” who sought to follow his example.
Anthony encouraged them to undertake “fasts, vigils, exertions and bodily
disciplines” until “the guiding spirit begins to open the eyes of the soul,”
since the purpose of such exercises was to discover one’s true self in God.
(...)
Although influenced by Plato and by the brilliant Christian
teacher Origen, Anthony speaks in these letters to his “brothers and sisters”
with utter simplicity, stressing the practical results of living the “angelic
life”: “whoever harms his neighbor harms himself … but whoever knows himself
knows all things … and whoever is able to love himself loves all.” Because what
matters most is receiving the Holy Spirit’s guidance and coming to know
oneself, Anthony offers no doctrines that he requires believers to learn, and
no beliefs that he demands they accept. Instead, as the scholar Samuel Rubenson
says, since “the chief criterion is experience,” Anthony “invites and implores
the reader to discover and understand himself.”
(...)
When Athanasius set out to unify Christians all over Egypt
into a single communion, then, he had to deal not only with Pachomius’
federation, which had expanded by 360 C.E. to include twelve communities
housing thousands of men and women, but also with another network of
monasteries initially loyal to his old rival Melitius, as well as lesser-known
groups of Christians living in private houses, individual shelters, and
monasteries that have left fewer traces. Leaders in such groups, as well as
freelance teachers and “fathers” like Pachomius, tended to resist attempts to
intervene in their affairs, much less to control them. As monks set out to
build new houses in territory that bishops and priests claimed as their own
dioceses, they often clashed with the Catholic clergy.
(...)
When Athanasius sought to overcome resistance from monastic
establishments, he chose a more effective strategy than accusing their most
respected leaders of demonic possession. Instead he effectively coopted the
most famous of them—Anthony—by writing an admiring biography picturing Anthony
as his own greatest supporter. Since Anthony had died, Athanasius had a
somewhat free hand, and his biography turned Anthony into a model monk—a model,
that is, of what the bishop wanted monks to be. For in his famous Life of
Anthony, the sophisticated and fiercely independent teacher known from his
letters disappears, and Athanasius replaces him with his own vision of an ideal
monk—an illiterate and simple man. So while Anthony’s letters show him to be
educated in philosophy and theology, Athanasius pictures him as someone who
despises educated teachers as arrogant men who are ignorant of God. And
although in his letters Anthony never mentions bishops, clergy, or church
rules, Athanasius pictures him instead as a humble monk who willingly
subordinates himself to the clergy and “the canon of the church.” Athanasius
also depicts Anthony as one who hates Christian dissidents as much as he
did—and who, like the bishop himself, calls them not only heretics but
“forerunners of Antichrist.” Far from acting as an independent spiritual
mentor, Athanasius’ Anthony pleads with the bishop to not allow anyone to
revere him, especially after his death. As the biography ends, Athanasius
pictures Anthony bequeathing all that he has—his sheepskin cloak and his outer
garment—to Athanasius and the bishop’s trusted ally, Bishop Serapion of Thumis,
to show that Anthony regarded them as his spiritual heirs and trusted them to
guard his memory. Athanasius’ Life of Anthony became hugely popular and widely
read throughout the empire, even inspiring Saint Augustine and his friends, who
read it in Italy long after Athanasius wrote it, to become monks themselves; it
continues to influence people who choose monasticism even today.
5. Wisdom Going Underground until the Atomic Age
Athanasius did not stop with his Life of Anthony, but went
on to take more active measures to influence, and finally control, the
monasteries. When Pachomius died of plague in 346, plunging the federation into
a leadership crisis, Athanasius intervened.
(...)
Unlike Pachomius, who had tended to avoid Athanasius,
Theodore, widely regarded as more pragmatic, had maintained frequent contact
with the bishop. When Theodore finally took charge as leader of the federation,
he formalized connections between the monastic federation and the church
hierarchy, deferentially addressing Bishop Athanasius, along with the deceased
Pachomius, as “our father”—that is, as a respected mentor from whom he accepted
direction.
(...)
A few years later, in 367, when Athanasius wrote a famous
Easter letter telling Christians what henceforth they could hear, teach, and
discuss—and what to censor—Theodore gathered his monks together and had the
bishop’s letter read aloud. Recognizing that the bishop’s letter mandated major
change, Theodore had it written out in large letters on the monastery wall.
(...)
Yet in that famous Easter letter in 367, Athanasius goes on
to say that even establishing a fixed New Testament “canon” is not enough.
Because he has heard that “the heretics” boast “about the books they call
‘apocryphal,” Athanasius orders that no one is to discuss or teach, much less
read, what he calls the “empty and polluted” books written and revered by
people “who do not seek what benefits the church.”
(...)
We do not know exactly what happened in response to
Athanasius’ letter. What we do know is that, whether in response to this letter
or to later denunciations of writings associated with Origen, some time after
Theodore ordered the bishop’s letter to be copied onto the monastery wall at
Nag Hammadi, someone—perhaps monks resisting the bishop’s order—took more than
fifty sacred writings, including gospels and secret “revelations,” packed and
carefully sealed them into a six-foot jar, and buried them for safekeeping near
the cliff where they were discovered nearly fifteen hundred years later, in
1945, and came to be known as the Gnostic gospels.
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