Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 13:33:50 +0000 From: Bob Schacht Subject: Re: Christology of Thomas? At 11:02 PM 11/30/97 +0000, Thomas Kopecek wrote: >Stevan Davies wrote: > >> >> Is there a tendentious reason for Thomas to have avoided the Christological >> designations of Jesus ubiquitous in other texts? I >> cannot imagine what such a reason would have been. Why then does >> Thomas lack such terminology? Perhaps Thomas was >> written in a time when such words as Christ, Son of Man, Savior, etc., >> were not yet universally used of Jesus. > >I don't call my brother either Dr or President, so why should Jesus' >brother, right? And the audience of the document is the family. Sounds >like a branch of Jewish Christianity, one not associated with those >grandsons of brother Judas, James and Zoker, working away on their 25 >acres in Galilee, and scaring the imperial authorities so much that they >had to be interrogated. For these two were expecting Jesus to come again >and bring that kingdom down from heaven to earth. > Tom, While I agree that GThomas looks like a branch of Christianity, I think you're both missing the point. I did a little numbers thing on the use of "Christ" in the NT: Thomas: 0 Mark: 6 Matthew: 13 Luke: 12 John: 18 ------------- Total: 49 Acts: 15 Romans: 39 1 Cor. 46 2 Cor. 38 Galat. 27 Ephes. 33 Philip. 25 1&2 Thess. 7 Now, my point: Our EARLIEST source is Paul, and Paul is the most Christological of the lot!!! 1 Cor. alone has almost as many references to "Christ" as ALL of the Gospels put together! And the earliest letters of Paul, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, have 7 references to "Christ" even though they are short letters. It has been proposed (primarily by secular scholars, I think) that high Christology in particular, and perhaps Christology in general, should be considered LATE, and a product of the early church, and represents an unhistorical view of Jesus which can therefore be dismissed from consideration. I think this reasoning has been used to date John's Gospel late. On the other hand, because Thomas lacks any references to "Christ", the folks who have convinced themselves of the lateness of Christology have seized upon the Christ-less GThomas as "primitive," i.e., early, precisely because it LACKS references to "Christ". I would dispute this view on two grounds: 1. The highly developed Christology in our earliest documents (i.e., Paul's letters) 2. The Davies theory, published in Jesus the Healer, that Jesus was frequently "possessed" by something which witnesses interpreted as the spirit of God, which laid the basis for a Christological theology *during the lifetime of Jesus*! In fact, Davies devotes a chapter of J the H to interpreting the Gospel of John in this context, so that when Jesus is represented as speaking in God's voice, this can be understood in terms of possession experiences and need not be viewed as an editorial fiction by a late writer. By this view, the early Christologies of Paul and the Gospels represent and EARLY attempt to understand these possession experiences BY EYEWITNESSES and first generation sources. Thus, to me, Thomas's lack of a genuine Christology is highly significant and probative with respect to its exclusion from the canon. There is a significant correlation, I think, between those who want to include Thomas on equal footing with the canonical Gospels, and those who view Christology as a nuisance to be avoided. >> >> Since Thomas attributes the sayings in his document to Jesus, we >> will be able by analyzing those sayings to discern a pattern of >> thought about Jesus. This pattern of thought will constitute the Christology >> (more precisely, Jesusology) of Thomas. >> >> In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus speaks as a wise man does, in the form >> of sayings of the wise, but he is not simply a wise man; >> he sometimes speaks as Wisdom herself. An intimate of God, agent in >> creation, revealer of mysteries, the light within which the >> Image of God is hidden---all these are characteristics of Jesus as >> Wisdom in the Gospel of Thomas. In sum, the Christology >> (Jesusology) of the Gospel of Thomas is a naive but thoroughgoing Sophiology. > Sophiology, I think, is a much better word for what GThomas does than Christology. Unfortunately, "Jesusology" is an awkward word which will probably never become popular, even though some such word is badly needed. I now think that "Thomasine Christianity" is probably a non- sequiter. But we need some word to designate followers of Jesus who did not view him as "the Christ". I think it is conventional to call many of these folks "Jewish Christians", but that label, too, is something of a non-sequiter. There was an important group of such folks, perhaps best described as followers of Jesus in the Jewish Wisdom tradition, who did not think that Jesus was "the Christ". They may have thought that he was uniquely important in other ways, but not this one. I am sure there are people on this list who will regard this as a mere technicality, and others who will point out that by this definition, X% of the "Christians" alive today aren't really Christians. And maybe they're right. Still, as scholars, we are supposed to be choosing our words carefully, and using them precisely, aren't we? Bob ******************************* Robert M. Schacht Northern Arizona University Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. (Where charity and love are [found], God is there) 9th century latin hymn