Elaine Pagels and the Gnostic Gospels

[YAMISOOLD]

Elaine is the kind of Christian who makes a person want to be a Christian and not wince when they hear the term. I love her insight and her spirit! Thanks for this podcast!

[ann]

Can't believe I found this video...My guardian angel must have led me to it..Has made me feel so much better..I'm going through exactly what you are talking about, feeling hostility from the Christians around me when I tried to open up exploration beyond their limited world... Made me feel sad and lonely. I am looking for my own people! I'm happy to find they are out there and having the same concerns I am. Thank you so much.

[MikeShonVideos]

Us humans are fortunate for BOTH of you...thank you so much for your courage!

[retribution]

Elaine is a joy to listen to. She's my favorite gnostic.

[asteroxfoundation]

Elaine's views on religion and spirituality is refreshing. I grew up in the Princeton region and have had gnostic experiences before ever hearing about Gnosticism. There is a lot going on beyond the material universe that we do not fully comprehend.

[Strong]

It makes me so happy that she is 80!!!! And so alert and brilliant still. Well this is a couple of years old so she was 78 probably. Still really good. Psalm 147 is my favourite for many reasons and now I feel like it will also remind me of her, especially verse 3, God heals the brokenhearted and binds their wounds. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼Amen.

[anitabrown]

I did email Elaine two years ago about meeting for tea since she lives so close to me! I'll try again. She's a gem. Great interview so crucial for faithful people. My takeaway is that people are afraid. Of so much and its unconscious. If we trust our relationship to hearing from our own insight, integrity, soul and the Holy Spirit we discern all at the foot of the cross. Truth is worked out over our lifetimes. And we have nothing to fear.

[L-ng]

Thank you for this encouraging hour. Misses Pagels, I adore you deeply, you are one of the most powerful women on earth.

[liteenergy]

Really great video. Worth watching more than once. Thank you Elaine Pagels, and thank you What If Project.

[harlanlang]

My wife and I just watched this fascinating interview and found it so insightful! I especially liked Elaine's comment that early Christianity saw itself as "The Way", or "The Path". I hope you don't mind me sharing my own experience in life in searching for the Path. "What if?" is a wonderful way to open up to all the possibilities, and it also is the mother of all questions. I was not raised in a religious family, so my family was not a source of spiritual knowledge or fear, but I was curious....and interested as a teen and did join a wonderful church which didn't emphasize fear. But my first year of college I took world history and learned the stories of all the great world religions and "the Path" they provided, and the question inside of me was "What if I had been born in India at the time of Buddha?" Would I have followed that path, because it really seems attractive and insightful. What if I had been born in the right time and location for any of the religions, would those paths have attracted my heart? The answer was yes. My reasoning was, and is, that if God loves all humanity equally, then He will provide a "Path" for them to approach spirituality couched in words and teachings tailored to the culture and spiritual background of that era and location. Sort of like teachers in school tailor lessons to suit the age and maturity of the students. Each teacher knows that she/he is not the last teacher the kids will have, so the kids don't receive all the knowledge the teacher possesses. Our knowledge and learning accumulates over time and we may not remember what our first grade teacher taught us, but it was just as important as any other teacher later on. So there I was, calling myself a Christian but realizing that all of these other religions were equally valid as "The Way", at least to my understanding. I really felt alone spiritually, because I didn't know anybody else with these questions, or maybe people did have them but were afraid to say what they felt.

Then I came across a "Way" which included all the spiritual "Ways" mentioned above. The name of this Way is Baha'i, a name which you may not be familiar with. Baha'is believe in Christ and the Founders of all the great historical religions as being equally valid as "The Path", that this Path gradually becomes overgrown over time with the weeds of superstition and ignorance and needs to be renewed without the weeds. The Path also needs to be widened to accommodate more and broader understandings.

I resonate with your comment about feeling closer to God now even though you're not going to a church. In one sense, God is within us, not somewhere "out there" in the universe. That's my understanding of man being made in the image of God. It's not a physical thing but a spiritual thing. Christians look to Christ as being a perfect reflection of that spiritual reality we call God. He manifests the divine qualities like a perfect mirror reflects the light of the sun. We see the sun in the mirror, but the sun is actually 94 million miles from earth. That's the way I understand Jesus' statement "If you see me, you see the Father". The Baha'i view is that the Founders of World Religions could have made the same statement, and some did. Here's a quote from Baha'i scripture which addresses the idea of the presence of God within:

O SON OF SPIRIT!
I created thee rich, why dost thou bring thyself down to poverty? Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou abase thyself? Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being, why seekest thou enlightenment from anyone beside Me? Out of the clay of love I molded thee, how dost thou busy thyself with another? Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.

I just wanted to give you perhaps more questions! That's what a friend does. Questions are more important than answers, because without the questions, there can be no answers. As a last idea, the Baha'i Faith in my opinion is what Christ would have established had He been living in our age. Baha'u'llah, the Founder of this Faith, wrote over a hundred volumes Himself so that people wouldn't have to rely on hearsay; he abolished any form of clergy; He emphasized that all children must be educated, especially the girls; He put science and religion on equal footing, it's all about what's real; He proclaimed the oneness of humanity, we're all one family; He advised the nations of the world to unite to avoid war; He told us to rid ourselves of prejudices; He let us know what many of us suspect, that women and men are of equal worth and status, deserving the same opportunities in life. The name "Baha'u'llah" is Arabic for "The Glory of God", so it's a spiritual title like Christ is the spiritual title of Jesus.

[RandyAndy]

I really loved the conversation. Also the sensitive and tactful "sures" and "yeahs" from the interviewer. A plea for a more open-minded, Jesus centered spiritual approach and less dogmas. More trust in growing and developing. Thx!❤

[TmanTV]

What an outstanding interview with Elaine Pagels. I have been watching almost every video interview she's conducted. The ending notes of reconciling these new teachings with orthodoxy and current doctrine really helped enlighten the questions I had about doing just that. I feel there is so much more out there about the historical church and Christianity than we have today and she has done an outstanding job at shedding light on these topics in a way that doesn't attack the faith but compliments it and expands upon it.

[AaronandKeelan]

What a beautiful conversation! I just became aware of Elaine Pagels yesterday and am so enamored with the information she has shared, her kindness and depth of knowledge. So intriguing!

[robertlucas]

Very beautiful conversation between you two. Thank you both for your wonderful contributions.

[WWGWWGA]

Elaine Pagels! ❤ Thank you. You and Bart Ehrman were the first to open my eyes and question FREELY! What a journey. 😍

Great interview. Ms Pagels books helped me find the Twin of Jesus. Maybe I read too much into the Gospel of Thomas and Phillip, but it drove me to write a trilogy, after I became a twin. We are all twin spirits of the divine spirit. We need to draw that spirit out of the minutia. Thanks for listening. ron

[MichaelYoder]

Elaine is such a gift! Like Dr. Bart, she makes things easy to understand with a wealth of knowledge and a sense of humour. Thanks! Get her back to talk about Revelation...💞

[MrWishihadagibson]

I hope this project continues for a while. These interviews have been so informative.

[pcreet]

That was awesome! I've only just ben introduced to Elaine and I am blissfully mind blown! Thank you so much.

[rodb]

It's seems that most church leaders and fundamentalists don't want us to find God within us.