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    Jonathan Morrow

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    What Are the ‘Lost’ Gospels and Were They Left Out of the Bible?

    In 1945, fifty two papyri were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Lower Egypt and some of these texts had the word ‘gospel’ in the title. Now Scholars have known about these and other 2nd – 4th century documents for a long time, but only recently has the general public been introduced to them. This has caused quite a bit of controversy and speculation. Why?

    Our culture is generally skeptical of authority and enjoys a good conspiracy theory; sprinkle in some high definition documentaries around Easter and Christmas with titles like ‘Banned Books of the Bible’ and the recipe for confusion is complete. Was there a cover up by the Church? Were we lied to about Jesus?

    These so called ‘lost gospels’ fall into two categories: (1) New Testament Apocrypha (2) Gnostic writings.

    Apocrypha means ‘hidden things’. These writings tried to fill in the gaps about two periods of Jesus’ life—his childhood and the three days between his death and resurrection. The motivations for these works ranges from entertainment to the comprehensive redefinition of the Jesus revealed in the 1st century writings of the New Testament.

    The first time I heard about these ‘lost gospels’, it honestly made me nervous…until I read them. The juiciest of the apocryphal writings is probably the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Here are some things I discovered about Jesus’ childhood: he called a child an “unrighteous, irreverent idiot” (3:1-3). Another child bumped into Jesus, which aggravated him so much that Jesus struck him dead (4:1-2). Evidently those who provoked childhood Jesus fell dead a lot (14:3). No, I’m not making this up.

    Then there are the Gnostic writings. Gnosticism can get kind of complicated, so here is a chart to help give you the basics of how different it was from the worldview of the New Testament (the Greek word gnosis means ‘knowledge’).

    Orthodox Christianity

    Gnosticism

    Only One God and Creator

    Multiple Creators

    The World, Body, Soul, and Spirit are Good

    The World and Body are Evil. Only Spirit and Soul are Good

    Jesus is Fully Human and Fully Divine

    Jesus Only Appeared Human; He Was Only a Spirit Being

    Jesus Came to Restore Relationships Broken by Sin

    Ignorance, not Sin is the Ultimate Problem

    Faith in Christ Brings Salvation (available to all)

    “Special Knowledge” Brings Salvation (available to only a few)



    The two most popular examples of Gnostic writings are the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas (yes, that Judas). Scholars are still debating Judas’s role in the betrayal of Jesus in this new gospel, but it is clear that he gets special access to some secret revelation from Jesus that the other disciples did not have.

    The Gospel of Thomas wins the most scandalous passage award: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven’” (Saying 114). Again, not making this stuff up. Both of these documents were written long after the time of Jesus and his earliest followers.

    The bottom line. These gospels were not lost to the early church; early Christians knew about them and rejected them for good reasons (cf. Irenaeus in A.D. 180). While historically interesting, these so called ‘lost gospels’ offer us nothing significant about the historical Jesus. The writings in the New Testament are still the earliest and most reliable witnesses to the words and works of Jesus.

    For more on this and other issues exploring the truth of Christianity, see:

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    Is Methodological Materialism Good For Science?

    Here is a helpful post by Philosopher of Science, Angus Menuge:

    Should science by governed by methodological materialism? That is, should scientists assume that only undirected causes can figure in their theories and explanations? If the answer to these questions is yes, then there can be no such thing as teleological science or intelligent design. But is methodological materialism a defensible approach to science, or might it prevent scientists from discovering important truths about the natural world? In my contribution to The Waning of Materialism (OUP, 2010), edited by Robert Koons and George Bealer, I consider twelve of the most common arguments in favor of methodological materialism and show that none of them is convincing.

    Of these arguments, perhaps the most prevalent is the “God of the gaps” charge, according to which invoking something other than a material cause is an argument from ignorance which, like a bad script writer, cites a deus ex machina to save our account from difficulty. Not only materialists, but also many Christian thinkers, like Francis Collins, worry that appeal to intelligent design commits the God of the gaps fallacy.

    As I argue, however, not only is an inference to an intelligent cause not the same as an inference to the supernatural, it is a mistake to assume that all gap arguments are bad, or that only theists make them. If a gap argument is based solely on ignorance of what might explain some phenomenon, then indeed it is a bad argument. But there are many good gap arguments which are made both by scientific materialists and proponents of intelligent design. For example, there is a gap between the fact of dinosaur extinction and processes known to be at work on earth at the time. Materialist scientists reasonably proposed that asteroid impact would bridge the gap, and went on to find independent confirmation of this hypothesis (shocked quartz in the Cretaceous boundary). Likewise, there may be a gap between a student’s musical ability and the CD he produces, leading one to conclude that he relied on the creative intelligence of other artists, something confirmed by further study of the tracks on the CD.

    As Stephen Meyer has argued in his Signature in the Cell, intelligent design argues in just the same way, claiming not merely that the material categories of chance and necessity (singly or in combination) are unable to explain the complex specified information in DNA, but also that in our experience, intelligent agents are the only known causes of such information. The argument is based on what we know about causal powers, not on what we do not know about them.

    Since the inference is based on known causal powers, we learn that the cause is intelligent, but only further assumptions or data can tell us whether that intelligence is immanent in nature or supernatural.It is a serious mistake to confuse intelligent design with theistic science, and the argument that since some proponents of design believe that the designer is God, that is what they are claiming can be inferred from the data, is a sophomoric intensional fallacy. By a similar argument (more…)

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    Young Doubters Exit the Church

    More than in previous generations, 20- and 30- somethings are abandoning the faith. Why? Drew Dyck offers some answers:

    Some striking mile markers appear on the road through young adulthood: leaving for college, getting the first job and apartment, starting a career, getting married—and, for many people today, walking away from the Christian faith.

    A few years ago, shortly after college, I was in my studio apartment with a friend and fellow pastor’s kid. After some small talk over dinner, he announced, “I’m not a Christian anymore. I don’t know what happened. I just left it.”

    An image flashed into my mind from the last time I had seen him. It was at a Promise Keepers rally. I remembered watching him worship, eyes pinched shut with one slender arm skyward.

    How did his family react to his decision? I asked. His eyes turned to the ground. “Growing up I had an uncle who wasn’t a Christian, and we prayed for him all the time,” he said wistfully. “I’m sure they pray for me like that.”

    About that time, I began encountering many other “leavers”: a basketball buddy, a soft-spoken young woman from my church’s worship team, a friend from youth group. In addition to the more vocal ex-Christians were a slew of others who had simply drifted away. Now that I’m in my early 30s, the stories of apostasy have slowed, but only slightly. Recently I learned that a former colleague in Christian publishing started a blog to share his “post-faith musings.”

    These anecdotes may be part of a larger trend. Among young adults in the U.S., sociologists are seeing a major shift taking place away from Christianity. A faithful response requires that we examine the exodus and ask ourselves some honest questions about why.

    Sons of ‘None’

    Recent studies have brought the trend to light. Among the findings released in 2009 from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), one stood out. The percentage of Americans claiming “no religion” almost doubled in about two decades, climbing from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. The trend wasn’t confined to one region. Those marking “no religion,” called the “Nones,” made up the only group to have grown in every state, from the secular Northeast to the conservative Bible Belt. The Nones were most numerous among the young: a whopping 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. The study also found that 73 percent of Nones came from religious homes; 66 percent were described by the study as “de-converts.”

    Other survey results have been grimmer. At the May 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, top political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell presented research from their book American Grace, released last month. They reported that “young Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic rate (30 to 40 percent have no religion today, versus 5 to 10 percent a generation ago).”

    There has been a corresponding drop in church involvement. According to Rainer Research, approximately 70 percent of American youth drop out of church between the age of 18 and 22. The Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be “disengaged” by the time they are 29. Barna Group president David Kinnaman described the reality in stark terms:

    “Imagine a group photo of all the students who come to your church (or live within your community of believers) in a typical year. Take a big fat marker and cross out three out of every four faces. That’s the probable toll of spiritual disengagement as students navigate through their faith during the next two decades.” (Read the rest…)





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    Why Does God Seem So Hidden?

    Why isn’t God more obvious? Or as a student once said to me, “If God wants people to know he exists, then why doesn’t he just show up or write his name in the sky or something?” This is just one of the issues related to the hiddenness of God. We all struggle with making sense of why God seems present and active at certain times but painfully distant and uninvolved at others.

    Well, to the student’s question, I think there are two things we could say. (1) Because God is good and all-loving and because of the kind of relationship He desires to have with those He created, humans have been given enough evidence to either accept or reject Him. We can suppress this evidence (Rom. 1:18-20) or turn from idols to the true and living God (1 Thess. 1:9). God gives us all the freedom to love Him or reject Him.

    If God just “showed up” one day in all his power and glory, people would be compelled to believe. They would have no choice in the matter, but this would destroy the significant freedom necessary for a loving relationship to exist. (2) In addition, God doesn’t want people to merely believe intellectually that He exists (even demons believe in God cf. James 2:19). What God wants is relationship. He wants people to become part of His family.

    So what are we to make of all the verses that talk about God hiding from His followers? Isaiah 45:15 says, “Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (cf. Ps. 10:1; 44:23-24). But why does God hide?

    First we know that God’s desire from the beginning was to be present with humanity in a life-giving relationship. But when Adam and Eve turned their backs on God and His ways, we see God seeking them out while they are the ones hiding (Gen.3:9-10). We also need to remember that the world is not as it ought to be—sin, pain, and death were not God’s original design for creation. It is within this context that God is working out His plan of redemption and restoration. God has His reasons for seeking and hiding.

    Sometimes God hides because people are disobedient or indifferent toward him and this is a form of judgment (cf. Isaiah 59:2; Micah 3:4). Other times God hides for a season so that we will seek Him more earnestly. Unfortunately, this is part of how He teaches us to live dependent and grateful lives.

    Then there are those moments of pain and loss where it is a mystery why God seems so far away. With the Psalmist we cry out, where are you God? (cf. Ps. 88:13-14). Jesus experienced the excruciating silence of God while on the cross (Mark 15:34). Ultimately, Jesus is our example for trusting God when the silence is deafening.

    We can learn to trust completely without complete understanding. And we can rest in the promise that God has given, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart” (29:13 cf. James 4:8).
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