Jesus Without the Miracles

Jesus Without the Miracles is the title of an article in the December 2005 issue of Harper's magazine (sorry, it's not available online, but you can probably find it at your public library). In some ways the article is not much different from other writings that extol the virtues of gnostic texts and dis the canonical gospels. The author, Erik Reece, has a strong personal bias; he grew up in a guilt-laden fundamentalist tradition that helped push his father to suicide. He feels that the sayings of Jesus in the Nag Hammadi text known as the Gospel of Thomas hold more meaning for him, or at least are more palatable to him, than the accounts of Jesus' life in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Reece makes much of the idea that the Gospel of Thomas isn't concerned with the life of Jesus at all, and instead focuses on sayings, many of which are not recorded in the more familiar accounts. There is no mention in this text of any miracle, no mention of Jesus being the Son of God, no salvation, no resurrection. Reece thinks the details of Jesus' life are irrelevant, and can't be known with much certainty anyway. The Jesus I follow isn't only about words and teachings; instead those words and teachings have meaning only in the context of who Jesus is, and living those words is meaningful only in the context of a real, ongoing relationship with Him. This point is more important to me than whether or not the Gospel of Thomas contains authentic sayings of Jesus.

Now, this is where the article really gets interesting for me. Reece points out that this ancient Gospel of Thomas has much in common with another text, by another Thomas: The Jefferson Bible. If you aren't familiar with this work by the Third President of the United States, have a look at the Wikipedia article linked above, or this publisher's blurb at the Beacon Press website.

Thomas Jefferson was living in the White House when he took scissors to the gospels and removed all the miracles. Every single one of them, including the virgin birth and the resurrection. He also removed any other stories or sayings that he felt were inauthentic, using his own good judgment to determine what should stay and what should go. During his lifetime, he didn't allow it to be published, fearing a backlash. It was published in 1903 for the United States Congress, and apparently was routinely given to new members of that body for some years.

I'd just like to pause here and ask you to reflect on this fact. The author of the Declaration of Independence, the President of the United States, sat in the White House, took his figurative black marker, and changed the Word of God. And the way he changed it wasn't just to make all the Divine pronouns feminine or something small like that. He removed the miraculous from the life of Jesus Christ. Then, about one hundred years later, The Government Printing Office of the United States of America published this false gospel at the request of the United States Congress, and that august body then passed it out to new members.

Kinda makes that image of the Christian foundations of this country look a little blurry, huh?

Reece further suggests that the Jefferson Bible ended up being a precursor to the much more ancient Gospel of Thomas. This is because that ancient text spent 1600 years buried in a clay jar in Egypt, so though we had a few references to it in other texts, no one really knew what it said until it was unearthed in 1945. In this way, it could be said that the Jefferson Bible had laid the groundwork among certain thinkers to accept the idea of Jesus' philosophy apart from His life, and apart from any supernatural evidence that He is the Son of God.

Reece calls the Jefferson Bible and the Gospel of Thomas collectively "a peculiarly American gospel." He also discusses the work of Emerson and suggests that together, the ideas of Emerson and Jefferson, though very different from each other, make up a uniquely American view of religion. There is another, much weaker argument running through the article that likens stereotypically strict fundamentalist Christianity to the Hamiltonian vision of a society based on manufacturing, while linking the Gnostic/Enlightenment view of the Gospel of Thomas with Thomas Jefferson's vision of an agrarian society. You'll have to read the article yourself for details on that thread. For now, I'll just say this about it: Horse feathers.

I think this attitude toward the gospel represents the larger mindset of our culture toward Jesus, and it could explain in part the phenomenon of many people praying prayers to accept salvation, but never coming into the fullness of that salvation, that is, the lack of deliverance and healing. While the American church has a history of strength and accomplishment, especially in terms of mission-sending, it is also largely a national church that has been characterized, in comparison with others, by a profound absence of miracles.

What we find in the Jefferson Bible, in the Gospel of Thomas, and in a significant portion of the American church, is a world view that focuses on morality and denies the supernatural, and that specifically denies the miracles of Jesus (either during his life on earth, or now through His folowers). This results in people attempting to follow Jesus in terms of morality or philosophy, but without experiencing His resurrection power. The Apostle Paul calls this "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."