Reedings.com

Paul Mankowski discredits Pagels' scholarship

In the May 2006 issue of The Catholic World Report, Paul Mankowski, SJ, a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, writes of "The Pagels Imposture" taking to task Elaine Pagels for her devious "scholarship." Since Pagels is an academic luminary, long established as a professor at Princeton University "and since her The Gnostic Gospels underlies Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code "calling attention to her errors is quite important.

Mankowski notes that "Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels is in large measure a polemic against St. Irenaeus" (p. 38) of Lyons and the patriarchal theology of the second century he represents. Looking carefully at her citations, however, it is distressingly clear that she conflates quotations and deletes passages to tailor Irenaeus so as to justify her own Gnostic approach to Christianity. Mankowski provides the Latin text to show how Pagels distorts Irenaeus. "Put simply," he concludes, "Irenaeus did not write what Prof. Pagels wished he would have written, so she made good the defect by silently changing the text. Creativity, when applied to one's sources, is not a compliment. She is a very naughty historian" (p. 39). Indeed, he concludes: "Pagels should be billed accurately "not as an expert on Gnosticism or Coptic Christianity but as what she is: a lady novelist. Her oeuvre is that of fiction "in fact, historical romance" (p. 39).

Years ago I came to the same conclusion regarding Pagels in issue #56 (December 1995) of my "Reedings." So, as the following paragraphs indicate, I fully support Mankowski's judgment and am distressed that Pagels seems to enjoy credibility in academic circles:

Pagals apparently follows a consistent pattern. In general, she seems committed to selecting evidence to prove a pre-determined thesis which supports the political ambitions of gynocentric or gender feminists to find freedom from "patriarchal" authorities. After assessing the importance of the 52 Gnostic texts unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945, she proceeds to argue that until the end of the second century many "Christians" were Gnostic rather than orthodox and were only gradually excluded as males gained firmer control of ecclesiastical machinery, doing so under the guise of establishing theological orthodoxy.

Thus the Orthodox insisted on the literal truth of Christ's bodily Resurrection. To Gnostics, on the other hand, it was a symbol obviously central to the Christian Faith but "not a unique event in the past: instead, it symbolized how Christ's presence could be experienced in the present. What mattered was not literal seeing, but spiritual vision" (p. 11). Gnostics taught (anticipating Rudolph Bultmann) that what mattered was the spiritual truth of Resurrection "our coming to new life with the dawning of individual enlightenment.

As Pagels interprets the documents, it was not until the days of Irenaeus and Tertullian that "Christians" dogmatically insisted on the facticity of Christ's Resurrection. That came about as men in the Church sought to ground the notion of apostolic succession on the fact that Peter was the first witness of the Resurrection. Conveniently ignoring the Roman Catholic Church's central argument for Petrine succession "Peter's confession of faith in Matthew 16 "Pagels constructs a curious counter-case revolving around the fact that women, not Peter, were the first witnesses of whatever happened Easter morning.

In a similar way, she says, the Orthodox managed to impose the creedal confession of faith in "one God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth" mainly to insure the power of male bishops. St Clement of Rome and St Ignatius of Antioch, writing at the beginning of the second century, strongly emphasized episcopal authority. St Ignatius even declared "one God, one bishop," which, Pagels says, "became the orthodox slogan" (p. 35). For the bishops to effectively assert their political power, they singularly elevated God the Father.

The Gnostics, however, sought God in the "depths" of their inner selves. Thus they needed no established hierarchy, no clergy-laity distinctions, for every person discovered God on his own in his own soul. Therein many identified God the Mother as well as Father. One group of Gnostics, following the alleged teachings of Mary Magdalene, prayed: "'From Thee, Father, and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, Parents of the divine being'" (p. 49). Thus God as well as Adam was portrayed as ultimately androgynous "a "dyad," in the view of Valentinus (an influential second century Gnostic). Intent on cementing their control of the Church, the Orthodox (Pagels insists) snuffed out the Gnostic insight that God is Mother as well as Father.

Christ's Passion and the deaths of martyrs, she continues, were similarly elevated by Orthodox power-brokers to secure their positions! They insisted their followers believe "that Jesus was a human being, and that all 'straight-thinking' Christians must take the crucifixion as a historical and literal event" (p. 75). That would demand that they trusted in Christ's efficacious suffering, paying the penalty for their sins, rather than discovering their own enlightened and personalized path to salvation.

Thus by the end of the second century, two groups of "Christians" had developed radically different understandings of the Church. The Orthodox had clearly "objective criteria" "creed, clergy, rituals. Consequently, it followed that "outside the Church there is no salvation." The Gnostics, however, relied on more subjective, "qualitative" factors "knowledge, inner experiences, personal relations. Self-knowledge, experiential consciousness of the divine, "becoming Christ," qualified Gnostic adherents as "Christians."

"It is the winners who write history "their way," Pagels declares (p. 142). Whether or not Pagels et al. will be "winners" in the current historiographical war, I'm not sure; but she surely writes history her way! Let me illustrate by a careful examination of the only "Father" who receives high marks from Pagels: St Clement of Alexandria. He is, she says "a striking exception to the orthodox pattern" (p. 67). I carefully studied her presentation, comparing her assertions with Clement's texts.

In her first quotation (from Clement's Christ the Educator, I, 6 {42-44}), Pagels collapses 20 sentences into what appears to be three consecutive sentences with two ellipses indicating the excision of sections within a sentence (p. 67). Such devious "quoting," of course, enables one to prove whatever one desires! Her second quotation (ibid., I, 4) is simply unrecognizable in the "Ante-Nicene Fathers" or "Fathers of the Church" translations. Again she blends together phrases which lead the reader to believe they're straight-forward sentences in the original text. Pagels' third quotation, apparently a misprint in the footnote, refers one to a non-existent chapter in the text!

Pagels contends that "Clement characterizes God in feminine as well as masculine terms" (p. 67), resting her case on his statement that "The Word is everything to His little ones, both father and mother, educator and nurse" (I,6,42). Clement's statement is part of an extensive, highly allegorical discussion of milk as spiritual food. To be precise, Clement characterized the Word, not God, as "father and mother." Repeatedly he insisted that "the Blood of Christ is milk." Thus, the sentence following the above quotation (one of the many deleted by Pagals) says: "'Eat My flesh,' He says, 'and drink my Blood.' He is himself the nourishment that He gives" (I, 6, 42).

Still more, Clement insists: "In all these various ways and figures of speech is the Word spoken of: solid food, flesh, nourishment, bread, blood and milk. The Lord is all these things for the refreshment of us who believe in Him" (I, 6, 47). An honest reading of Clement shows that he constantly addresses God as "Father" "never as "Mother." Anyone concluding, with Pagels, that Clement "characterizes God in feminine as well as masculine terms" brought that presumption to the text, for it's clearly not evident therein!

Consequently, my in-depth study of only two pages of Pagels' "scholarship," leaves me both dismayed and astounded! Either she deliberately distorts the data or is incredibly sloppy in her methodology. I'm now persuaded she distorts whenever necessary to support her political agenda, the neo-Gnostic wing of the feminist movement. In her mind, the Gnostics tried to liberate women (and of course enlightened men), freeing them to devise their own brand of salvation, resembling in many ways the depth-psychology of Carl Jung so popular in today's Gnostic circles.

In their revolt against orthodoxy and its authoritarian structures, many moderns, Pagels says, find Gnostics worthy mentors. It's obvious that the Gnostic pattern for Christianity, open to unorthodox understandings of the Resurrection, women priests and bishops, the universality of the Gospel, etc. may give alternative routes to God which are preferable to those historically afforded by orthodox churches. But to claim such notions are "Christian" disregards the clear witness of historical sources.