Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”

–The Gospel of Thomas
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That’s pretty wild stuff. More like a set of Zen koans. I wondered where such words came from and what relationship they might have had to Jesus.

Later I learned that “Thomas” was was part of the Nag Hammadi archeological find in 1945 which revealed a number of scriptural writings never before seen. Since then scholars have been working over the texts and trying to fit them with other Judeo-Christian works. They still haven’t settled on answers for “Thomas.”

What does emerge, though, is that current Christianity, in all its forms, descended from a particular line of orthodox Christianity which, for better or worse, won out and suppressed other forms, particularly the Gnostics. That’s a long, complicated story with plenty of unknowns and I’m no authority.

Kate:

Quite so. I had forgotten that distinction. I would have been correct had I said “Thomas” was small-a apocryphal.

In any case, my intent was to prevent readers from assuming that “Thomas” was an authorized book of the Bible.

I finally came to a better understanding and appreciation of this after reading Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual; followed by Tom Holland’s Dominion.

Two observations:
1. Original sin twists our hearts inward such that whatever reason I need to protect or expand myself & my interests is reason enough. I can’t remember the original speaker here…”The world is not a battlefield but an auction yard. Every day a bid is made for our allegiance & given the right price; we’ll sell.” We’ve noted 1984 enough here for Winston’s many confessions to be in our memories. He ratted out his lover & confessed to anything they asked to save himself. One of my ethics professors used to say “Never say ‘never'” whenever we’d be studying some atrocity & someone would say, “I could never do that.” Yes you could. If the stakes were high enough.

Now…you can reject the Christian understanding of original sin, & ok…but you can’t argue it’s completely corrupting influence (I won’t go so far as the Reformed theologians & use ‘total depravity’ but the witness of Genesis 3-9 ought to be instructive) Or Matthew 15:18-20 for a partial New Testament witness. We could trade Biblical references & other historical ones all day.

“most people won’t shoot a baby”…Boss we live in the world of free & plentiful abortion on demand. Happens every damn day. And many of those who “won’t/don’t” facilitate & support. Sorry…that dog won’t hunt.

2. “The real question is why some choose evil, and whether they are able to recognize it as evil, and how many of them will do this.” The notion of “choice” is what seems folly to me. We live move & have our being in a Western world shaped by 2000+ years of Christianity. Folks may reject Jesus & his claims but it’s nonsensical to reject the civilizing influence He & his followers have had on the Western world. We have been more inculcated toward good than evil. We have been trained to see our neighbors as ourselves. We have, in past generations anyway, embraced the “golden rule.” Some of us grew up praying in schools & especially at football games. 😉

Those many who “choose” the good do so because we have been taught to see some intrinsic value to doing so…and when doing good is costly we are reflecting at some level a sacrificial gift of love that we may not even acknowledge or comprehend…but it still shapes us.

The real question, for me anyway, is “Are those of us who can arguably see ourselves on the side of good, prepared to defend that good to the extent that we must AND stop short of perpetuating evil in doing so?” You often quote “A Man for All Seasons”…that! To “cut a great road through the law to get after the devil” is a mighty temptation.

See what I wrote in response to stan, here. I’ll repeat it.

stan:

I was with you until this point – when you wrote:

“And where they get even closer to crossing the line into evil is that they have a mountain of evidence available every day to know that these vicious slanders are not true. They believe the worst because they want to. They live with and work with family, friends, neighbors, fellow workers, and others who vote for the other party. They know that this imputation of evil is false.”

They know nothing of the sort.

First of all, most Democrats I know don’t believe everyone who votes for Republicans is evil. They believe they support and enable evil without being aware of it, and that some Republicans are evil. Secondly, for most of them their source for information about what people on the right say and feel and think is the MSM, which they do not realize is full of lies. Most of them still think they are getting unbiased news, and they are surrounded by people who think the same so why challenge that viewpoint? They “know” that a source such as Fox is full of lies, and everyone they know “knows” it too. Lastly, especially in deep blue cities, they do NOT “live with and work with family, friends, neighbors, fellow workers, and others who vote for the other party.” For most of the people I know, I am probably the only person on the right that they know. They know I’m not evil, but they certainly don’t “know’ that I’m typical in that regard.

Although, as I already said, they don’t think everyone on the right is evil, just that they are enabling evil without realizing it.

I repeat: the WWII resistance was a good cause. It had need of lying. I fail to understand the relevance of your reasoning.