The First Christians -- Mystics Supreme?
by Brian Robertson
© 2003 Brian Robertson, all rights reserved
Stuck in the midst of the Gospel of Mark is a mystery that's rarely been mentioned from the pulpit. It occurs in Mark 14:
51 Now a certain young man followed Him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body. And the young men laid hold of him, 52 and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked.
What are we to make of this strange event which jars the entire reading experience, the verses coming completely out of left field only to be dropped without comment and without continuing? Various groups have pointed toward it as some kind of odd behavior on Jesus' part, but the truth behind it opens a fascinating journey into an entirely new strata of early Christianity.
To follow this thread, we can start with Morton Smith in 1958. While researching in a monastery near Jerusalem, Smith discovered a copied letter from Clement of Alexandria, one of the most important of the Church Fathers. Clement (c. 150 - c. 215), mentioned not the familiar Gospel of Mark, but rather a different, secret gospel that Mark had written in Alexandria, and Clement said it was "for the use of those being perfected" and it would "lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden...."
No less startling, Clement quoted from the Secret Gospel of Mark in which the tale is told of a young man who, like the Lazarus story, was raised from the dead but who comes to Jesus "wearing a linen cloth over his naked [body]. The quote also explains that Jesus spent the night with the man, teaching him "the mystery of the kingdom of God."
What we have, then, in the popular Gospel of Mark are the poorly edited remnants of the Secret Gospel. It's enough to make your head spin. First and foremost, one has to ask, what was this mystery? Beyond that question, there is another -- what exactly was going on in the beginnings of Christianity that tie it to Christian Mystics? Most importantly, some say, 'are you saying there were various opinions as to Jesus' teachings and, indeed, to Jesus himself within the very foundations of what we call the Church or Christianity?"
Yes.
Of exactly what this mystery was, no one can say. Interestingly enough, there is a passage in the Gospel of Thomas in which the various disciples are speaking and the following passage takes place:
Jesus said to his disciples: Make a comparison to me, and tell me whom I am like. Simon Peter said to him: Thou art like a righteous angel. Matthew said to him: Thou art like a wise man of understanding. Thomas said to him: Master, my mouth will no wise suffer that I say whom thou art like. Jesus said: I am not thy master, because thou hast drunk, thou hast become drunk from the bubbling spring which I have measured out. And he took him, went aside, and spoke to him three words. Now when Thomas came to his companions, they asked him: What did Jesus say unto thee? Thomas said to them: If I tell you one of the words which he said to me, you will take up stones and throw them me; and a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.
There is more to this, of course, but first it will help to get our bearings. The purpose is to center on a more correct picture of Early Christianity, even with the sidetrips inserted that show fascinating asides, such as the Thomas piece above.
Both Thomas and the Secret Gospel of Mark are brought up here to hopefully surprise you -- to give you a sense that the beginning century or two were not unified march of Orthodox Christianity, to show that there has been within Christianity in its earliest forms the very seeds of mysticism and things which were not meant for the great numbers of people in the movement. This has nothing to do with some elite group, but rather variance of temperment in spiritual matters.
Again, contrary to what one may have learned or simply assumed, Christianity did not pass directly from Jesus of Nazareth to Paul to Rome to the Reformation to today. What may seem like a relatively seamless history was anything but that. Most scholars today agree without a doubt that the relative "thick-headedness" of the disciples as shown in the NT -- never quite getting the message and having to ask continually of Jesus -- is part of a larger indication that these different men held and eventually taught different versions or understandings of just who Jesus was and wasn't.
These differences magnified as communities sprung up around the original Apostles in those early times. For one, there was the Church of Jerusalem which was headed by James, the brother of Jesus. Indeed, if one reads James in the NT, one sees a striking differences from, say, Paul, in which James emphasizes the value of works over faith, of active Christianity as opposed to dogmatic acceptance. Also, when the writings of James and the sayings attributed to Jesus are placed side by side, one cannot help but get the sense that James was listening and learning with Jesus spoke. There are not, to my eye, similar echoes in the works of others represented in the NT.
James, of course, was in favor of the existing Jewish laws and keeping those laws. Not so with Paul's churches, who saw little reason to do anything but push onwards beyond the restrictions and requirements. From the glimpses we see of Peter, he is obviously of the opinion that Jesus was "a man, attested to by God" in which the intrinsic divinity of, once again, Paul's view is at odds. Add to that the Johannine community that produced the statement of faith/essay we call the Gospel of John.
Now, with the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, one adds yet another identifiable community that, as can be gleamed from Acts and Paul's letters, joins the disagreements and different understandings. Paul himself is shown as constantly writing to various faith groups to change their viewpoints to match his own.
Clearly, to this we must also add the group known as the Gnostics, a community of believers whose ideas ranged from spiritually unique to out and out bizarre. The concept they proposed would mean that Jesus' secret teachings were the path known as gnoisis, or knowledge, and that it was indispensible for the full follower of Jesus to know these things. The concept of simple faith was fine, but incomplete, and even Jesus was quoted as saying that he used parables for the masses but special teachings for those closest to him.
There is no need to get into the specific, odd beliefs that Gnostics held that make it a little strange when people simply embrace some of the idealsl today and champion Gnosticism. Suffice to say, they include the concept that the world of matter, our world, is intrinsically evil and since God couldn't make that world, God didn't make it. Instead, a lesser God created the world and demanded allegiance, for, the gnostics said, why else would God say, "I am a jealous God..." unless there was some sort of threat from another, more real God?
Carried to the extreme, the concept was that in the Garden of Eden story, the God who spoke was the lesser God while the snake comes out more of a hero, a messanger of the True God who wished these people to know of Good and Evil so that the demigod could be exposed.
As I mentioned above, regardless of the fascinating sidetrips that are beyond our scope (except for mentioning here and there), the point that surrounds it is important -- Christianity has gone from rather varied understandings of just who Jesus was and what he taught and it has travelled through dogmatic creations and edicts until it seems to maintain a unified front in the emerging Church as it became identified, one that is blatantly from Paul's particular -- but not the only -- beliefs and interpretations.
Likewise, there are fantastical metaphysics and what is called hermeticism that muddies things further, and while these are well worth study, they are not part of what we are discussing here in terms of the Christian Mystic, although there can and has been some crossing of the two differing approaches.
What is critical is that out of the differences and the range of beliefs about the teachings and meanings of Jesus -- James, Paul, Peter, the Gnostics, John -- we have a remarkable range. If, in those first few years, there was such variance regarding Jesus and most of it in no way resembles official doctrine and Christianity today, it's imperative to look at some of the "strains" of development in those beginning times.
