The Gospel of Thomas: Heresy or Hidden Wisdom?

In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, we explore the Gospel of Thomas, an ancient collection of sayings attributed to Jesus that did not make it into the Bible but still asks deeply Christian questions about wisdom, awakening, and the kingdom within. Rather than romanticizing it as the “real” Gospel or rejecting it as dangerous heresy, we consider how Thomas can be read with discernment as a strange and compelling invitation to seek, wake up, and discover the life of God nearer than we think.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the unintentional heretic. Today we're exploring a gospel that did not make it into the Bible. And depending on who you ask, it's dangerous, heretical, mystical, profound, overrated, or the key to a different kind of Christianity. It's called the Gospel of Thomas. It begins this way These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke, and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down. So right away you know this is not going to read like Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. There's no birth story, no Bethlehem, no miracles, no trial before Pilate, no crucifixion scene, no empty tomb, no resurrection appearance in the way the canonical gospels tell it. Instead, Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Some sound familiar, some sound strange, some are beautiful, some feel almost like Zen Cohen's, and some make it very clear why the church had concerns. But the gospel of Thomas forces us to ask an important question. What do we do with spiritual wisdom that comes from outside the boundaries of official orthodoxy? Do we reject it entirely because it was not canonized? Do we romanticize it because it was suppressed? Or can we take a more honest path? Can we acknowledge its problems and still listen for the invitation it contains? In other words, do we have to throw the baby out with the bath water? And I don't think we do. But I also do not think we need to pretend Thomas is the lost real gospel that the church buried because it wanted power. That's too easy. It's too Da Vinci Code. And history is much more interesting than that. So in this episode, I want to talk about the gospel of Thomas, what it is, where it came from, how it connects with the world of Gnosticism, why the church was suspicious of texts like it, and why it may still offer real invitations into the fullness of life that Jesus taught and embodied. Thomas may not give us the whole gospel, but it does ask some very gospel questions. What if the kingdom is nearer than we think? What if salvation is not simply escaping punishment after death, but waking up to the life of God within us now? What if Jesus came not merely to be worshipped from a distance, but to awaken us into wholeness? The Gospel of Thomas was discovered in 1945 near Naghamadi in Egypt as a part of a remarkable collection of ancient writings, often called the Naghamadi Library. The manuscript we have is in Coptic and is usually dated to the fourth century, though Greek fragments of Thomas had already been discovered at Oxarynchus and are usually dated to the second or third century, and that matters because Thomas was not a modern invention. It was an ancient Christian text circulating in some form in the early centuries of the church. Dating Thomas is complicated. Some scholars see the final form as second century. Others argue that some sayings may preserve earlier traditions, perhaps even independent of the canonical gospels, because Thomas is a sayings collection. It may have developed over time as communities gathered, shaped, and interpreted sayings attributed to Jesus. So the best question may not be, is Thomas early or late? The better question is, what kind of early Christian world does Thomas reveal? And the answer is a diverse one. Early Christianity was not a single, tidy, fully formed system that dropped from heaven. It was a movement. It was a collection of communities trying to interpret the meaning of Jesus, resurrection, scripture, the spirit, embodiment, salvation, authority, and the kingdom of God. And yes, they were also debating Gnosticism. If you listened to the earlier episode on Gnosticism, you may remember that Gnosticism was not one single unified religion. It was more like a family of movements and mythic systems that often emphasize secret knowledge, divine sparks trapped in the material world, and salvation as awakening from ignorance. The word gnosis simply means knowledge, but in these traditions, it meant more than intellectual information. It meant inner knowing, revelatory insight, awakening to one's true origin and identity. And many Gnostic systems were shaped by Platonic philosophy, especially the contrast between the changing material world and the higher spiritual reality. Some Gnostic groups pushed that dualism in a radical direction. They viewed the material world not as good creation, but as a prison or mistake. Some imagine the creator God of the Hebrew scriptures was not the highest God, but a lower, ignorant being, sometimes called the demiurge. In some Gnostic myths, human beings contain a divine spark trapped within the body and the material world. Salvation comes through receiving secret knowledge that awakens the soul to its true divine origin. Now there are gifts and dangers here. The gift is that Gnosticism takes inner transformation seriously. It recognizes that ignorance can be spiritual bondage. It understands salvation not merely as legal acquittal, but as awakening. It asks whether human beings have forgotten who they are. It asks whether religion can become external, performative, and dead while the soul remains asleep. And these are all good questions. But the danger is that Gnosticism can become anti-body, anti-creation, elitist, and detached from the concrete suffering of the world. If salvation is escaping a material world, well, creation is diminished. If only those with secret knowledge are saved, spiritual elitism follows. If the body is a prison, incarnation becomes a problem. And Christianity, at its deepest level, is incarnational. The word became flesh, not merely an idea, not merely a secret teaching, flesh, body. So when we come to Thomas, we need to be nuanced. Thomas is often called Gnostics, but scholars debate whether that label fits neatly. It does not contain the elaborate Gnostic myths of the demiurge or Aeons or a full anti-creation theology in the way that some other Nagamadi texts do. It's probably more accurate to say that Thomas has affinities with mystical, esoteric, and some Gnostic patterns of thought, especially its emphasis on hidden sayings, inner discovery, and salvation through understanding. So no, Thomas is not simply the Gnostic gospel in a simplistic sense, but yes, it shares a world with early Christian movements interested in secret wisdom, inner illumination, and the discovery of divine life within. And this is where Thomas gets interesting. Because Thomas begins not with a command to believe, but with an invitation to seek. In saying number two, Jesus says, Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel and will reign all over. And that's not sentimental spirituality, that is wisdom teaching. Seek, find, be disturbed, marvel, be transformed. I love that sequence because it's spiritually honest. Real seeking is not always comforting. Sometimes when you find what you're looking for, it disturbs you. You begin asking questions you can't unask. You discover that the God you inherited was too small. You discover that certainty was functioning as fear. You discover that some of the things that you were defending were not actually the gospel. And at first, that can be deeply unsettling. But if you stay with it, disturbance can become wonder, and wonder can become freedom. That sounds very much like the Jesus of the canonical gospels, too. The first or last, the last or first. Lose your life to find it. The kingdom is like a mustard seed. The kingdom is like yeast. Love your enemies, take the log out of your own eye. These are not just moral commands, they are consciousness shifting sayings. Cynthia Bourgeois describes Jesus as a wisdom teacher who does not simply tell us what to believe, but teaches us how to see. His sayings break open ordinary consciousness and invite us beyond ego, fear, rivalry, scarcity, and self-protection. Thomas leans heavily into that dimension of Jesus. It presents Jesus less as a miracle worker or apocalyptic judge, and more as a revealer of hidden wisdom. Does that mean Thomas gives us the whole Jesus? No. This is one of the limits of the text. Thomas has very little interest in narrative, Jewish context, the cross, resurrection, embodied healing, justice, or the communal life of discipleship. The canonical gospels give us a fuller, earthier, more embodied Jesus. But Thomas does preserve something Christians should not ignore. Jesus as wisdom teacher, Jesus as one who awakens, Jesus as one who reveals that the kingdom is not simply somewhere else. One of the most famous sayings in Thomas is saying number three. If your leaders say to you, look, the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, it is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and outside you. That's extraordinary. It resonates with Luke 17, where Jesus says the kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, because the kingdom of God is among you or within you. Now the kingdom is not merely private spirituality. That would be too small. Jesus' kingdom is social, political, embodied, communal, and cosmic. But Thomas pushes against the religious instinct many of us know too well, the tendency to externalize God completely. God is over there. The kingdom is later. Authority is outside me. Truth is possessed by the leaders. Holiness is mediated only through the institution. Thomas says, look closer, look within, look around. The kingdom is inside you and outside you. Many religious systems teach people to distrust themselves. Do not trust your heart. Don't trust your body. Don't trust your conscience. Don't trust your compassion. Trust the authority structure. Trust the approved interpretation, trust the system. Of course, we need scripture, tradition, reason, community, spiritual direction and correction. The self is not infallible. Every impulse is not the Holy Spirit. But there is also a kind of religion that keeps people spiritually immature by teaching them that their heart and conscience are not trustworthy guides. So when compassion begins to challenge the system, they're told to distrust the compassion and trust the authority structure instead. They are given a personal relationship with God, but an outsourced lens for seeing the world. Thomas pushes back against that. It asks, what if awakening to God includes awakening to the divine life already stirring within us? Not because the ego is divine, not because every desire is holy, but because we are made in the image of God, because the Spirit dwells within, because Christ is not only an object of belief, but a life to be embodied. This is where Thomas can be read alongside the contemplative tradition. Richard Rohr often says that the true self is who you are in God and who God is in you. That's not ego inflation, it is ego surrender. The true self is not the small self that grasps, competes, performs, and defends. The true self is the self hidden with Christ in God. Thomas often sounds like he's trying to awaken people to that deeper identity. Saying 70 is one of the most powerful examples. If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. And that line has haunted me for years. It's not canonical. It's not something I would build a doctrine on by itself, but a spiritual wisdom, it rings true. How many people are slowly destroyed by never bringing forth what is within them, by never speaking the truth, by never allowing love to mature, by never grieving, by never trusting their vocation, by never becoming who God created them to be, by leaving the image of God buried beneath fear, shame, approval seeking, and religious performance. There is a way of hiding from our own soul that becomes destructive. And there is a way of bringing forth what is deepest, truest, and most God breathed in us that becomes salvation. Again, we have to be careful. In some Gnostic systems, the within can become an elitist secret spark that separates the enlightened from ordinary embodied life. And that's not where I would go. But read through Jesus, through incarnation, through resurrection, through love of neighbor, this saying becomes a profound invitation. Bring forth the compassion buried under fear. Bring forth the courage silenced by approval. Bring forth the mercy your theology tried to suppress. Bring forth the truth your soul knows but your ego avoids. Bring forth the life of Christ within you. Because what we refuse to bring forth does not simply disappear, it turns inward, it becomes resentment, anxiety, bitterness, rigidity, and sometimes even cruelty. That's spiritual wisdom. And the church needs spiritual wisdom. Another famous saying is number 77. I am the light that is over all things. I am all. From me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood, I am there. Lift up a stone, you will find me there. Now, depending on your theological instincts, you may hear that and think that sounds pantheistic. And maybe it can be read that way, but I hear something close to the cosmic Christ tradition. John 1 says that all things came into being through the Word. Colossians says in Christ all things hold together. Ephesians imagines all things gathered up in Christ. The prologue of John does not give us a small Jesus, it gives us a logos through whom the universe exists. So when Thomas says split a piece of wood, I'm there, lift up the stone, and you will find me there, I hear an invitation to see the world as charged with divine presence. Not because every object is God in a flattened sense, but because nothing is outside the sustaining presence of the logos. Thomas can become a corrective to a disenchanted faith. So much Western Christianity has trained people to imagine God as far away, above the clouds, outside the world, intervening occasionally, mostly watching, mostly judging. But the mystics keep saying something else. God is not elsewhere. God is the depth of here. Julian of Norwich sees a hazelnut in her poem and understands that it exists because God made it, loves it, and keeps it. Tear de Chardin sees Christ as the divine presence drawing all creation toward fullness. Thomas belongs somewhere in that larger stream of awakening, even if we do not canonize it. It tells us to look again. The divine is not absent from wood, stone, body, breath, earth, life. The world is not spiritually empty. The kingdom is inside you and outside you. The light is everywhere if we have eyes to see it. Now, we also have to be honest about the parts of Thomas that are troubling. The final saying, saying 114, has Peter saying, Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus responds with language about making Mary male so she may become a living spirit like men. It's a strange and it's a troubling saying. Some scholars interpret it symbolically, arguing that male represents unity, spiritual fullness, or restoration beyond ordinary gender categories. Others see it as evidence of the misogyny present in some early Christian and ascetic circles. Either way, it's not a saying we should rescue too quickly. This is why we do not need to romanticize Thomas. Some of it's beautiful, some of it's strange, some of it reflects spiritual insight, some of it reflects ancient limitations, and maybe that's exactly how we should approach non-canonical text, not with fear, not with naivete, but with discernment. There are reasons Thomas was not canonized. It lacks the narrative of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. It is detached from the embodied Jewish story in ways it can become problematic. It leans towards esoteric knowledge in ways it could become elitists. It does not give us the same communal, sacramental, ethical, and historical grounding as the canonical gospels. The canon matters. I'm not arguing that Thomas should be the fifth gospel in the New Testament, but I am arguing that the boundary of the canon does not mean everything outside it is worthless. The church has always read beyond the canon. We read Augustine, we read Julian, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Bonhoeffer, Howard Thurman. We read Rohr, Borgeot, Delio, Merton. We don't treat these texts as scriptures, but we still let them teach us. So why can we not read Thomas that way? Not as scripture, not as secret proof that the church got everything wrong, not as the hidden key that replaces the canonical gospels, that is an early Christian wisdom text that gives us a window into how some followers of Jesus understood awakening, inner transformation, and the nearness of the kingdom. That feels like a healthier approach. We don't have to throw the baby out with a bathwater. We can say this text is not the gospel in its fullness, and also this text may still carry real spiritual insight. That may be especially important for people deconstructing from rigid Christianity. Discovering Thomas can be liberating because it shows that early Christianity was more diverse than many of us were taught. It shows that the canon emerged through history, debate, and discernment. It shows that orthodoxy was not simply a timeless package dropped from heaven, but there's also a danger. Some people leave fundamentalism and become fundamentalists about suppressed texts. They simply reverse the polarity. The canonical gospels are bad, the hidden gospels are good, orthodoxy is control, Gnosticism is freedom. But again, reality is more complicated. Orthodoxy preserves profound truths. Creation is good, bodies matter, history matters, community matters, Jesus' life and death matter, resurrection matters, love of neighbor matters. Texts like Thomas preserve important questions. What does it mean to wake up? What's the kingdom within? How do we move beyond ignorance? How do we discover the divine life hidden beneath fear and illusion? We need both clarity and openness. We need canon and contemplation. We need incarnation and awakening. We need the Jesus who heals bodies and the Jesus who opens eyes. We need the Jesus who feeds the hungry and the Jesus who says the kingdom is within you. Because the fullness of life Jesus embodies is not merely external conformity. It's transformation, awakening, liberation. It's becoming whole. Jesus says in John, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. That's not just life after death. That is fullness of life. A life no longer ruled by fear, a life no longer trapped in the false, constricted self, a life no longer outsourcing the kingdom to somewhere else. A life awakened to God within, God among, God beneath, God beyond, God in the neighbor, God in the body, God in the world. And that is where Thomas can still speak, not as a replacement for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but as a strange, ancient voice asking whether we have mistaken belief about Jesus for participation in the life Jesus came to awaken. Maybe that's the best way to read Thomas, not as secret information for spiritual elites, but as provocation. A text that asks, are you awake? Are you seeking? Are you looking for the kingdom only in the sky while missing it around and within you? Are you bringing forth what is within you? Are you seeing Christ in wood and stone, body and breath, neighbor and enemy? Are you mistaking religion for transformation? Are you worshiping Jesus from a distance while resisting the life he's trying to awaken in you? Those are not heretical questions. They're deeply Christian questions. The danger of Thomas is that it can become disembodied, elitist, and detached from the concrete life of Jesus. The gift of Thomas is that it refuses to let us reduce Christianity to external religion. It says seek. It says wake up. It says the kingdom is nearer than you think. It says Christ is not absent from the world. And if we read it through the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus, through the Jesus who touches bodies, feeds people, confronts powers, and welcomes the excluded, then maybe Thomas can become not a threat to faith, but an invitation into depth. Not the whole bath, not the whole baby, but maybe a voice from the early Christian wilderness reminding us that the life Jesus offers is not simply belief, not simply belonging, not simply being right, it's awakening into fullness. It's discovering the kingdom within and among us. It's learning to see. And maybe even now, Jesus is still saying, Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. Even if someone calls it heresy. Thanks for listening to the unintentional heretic. Until next time, keep asking questions.