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Seeking Ancient Wisdom in the New Age: New Age and Neognostic Commentaries on the Gospel of Thomas

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Seeking Ancient Wisdom in the New Age: New Age and Neognostic Commentaries on the Gospel of Thomas SEEKING ANCIENT WISDOM IN THE NEW AGE: NEW AGE AND NEOGNOSTIC COMMENTARIES ON THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS Dylan Burns 1. Introduction Personal identity is negotiated within a complex of social groups, and is formed not only from within a group but also from without.1 It is fragmented,2 each af\ rmation of identity being a separate reference to difference with some “other” social group.3 At times discourses of identity are primarily concerned with differentiation and achieve it by vilifying the “other” in reference to the ongoing discourse about the self; they polemicize.4 This study in polemics and esotericism will discuss how the Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi Codex II, tractate 2) has been appropriated in New Age and Neognostic discourse, in the form of commentaries, in order to fulminate against “mainstream Christianity” and secular culture. In these commentaries a diverse array of fragmented identities (Christian, Gnostic, Jungian, Buddhist, New Ager, scholar, seeker, mystic, etc.) are negotiated in the effort to differentiate the self and its esoteric truth-claims from what is perceived as intolerant Christendom and spiritually vapid popular culture. The Gospel of Thomas offers what James Fernandez terms ‘peripheral wisdom’, which excoriates the perceived center (Christian and secular culture) while relishing the ambivalence of ‘the desire to at once escape the identity constrictions of boundedness’ and, at the same time, ‘to celebrate and privilege the separate identity it confers’.5 Signi cantly, these commentaries criticize the violence and 1 Becker, Deviance, 9–14, 181–189; Cohen, ‘Introduction’, 1. 2 Whitebrook, Identity, esp. 52–55; 82–85; 150–152. 3 Kippenberg & von Stuckrad, Einführung, 157. 4 See also the general discussion of Cancik, ‘Apologetik/Polemik’. For analysis of the necessity of religious polemics in social interaction see ter Borg, ‘Social Importance’, esp. 441–443. 5 Fernandez, ‘Peripheral Wisdom’, 132. 254 dylan burns intolerance of mainstream religion, a charge paradoxically asserted in a polemical and at times venomous fashion.6 I will discuss ve Thomas commentaries, two of which dub themselves ‘(neo)-Gnostic’, although I will argue that they are beholden entirely to New Age interests and speculations. At the conclusion I will brie y discuss some instances where Thomas scholarship (the work of Helmut Koester, Elaine Pagels, and Marvin Meyer) has been appropriated in these New Age commentaries. It is my hope that this section of the paper will contribute not only to the study of esotericism but also to the conversation in Nag Hammadi studies about how the wealth of scholarship produced about the nd has been received outside the academy. Before moving to the Thomas commentaries it is important to de ne the nebulous phenomenon commonly designated as the “New Age”. Following Hanegraaff ’s extensive study of the New Age movement sensu lato, I take it to be a variegated discourse covering holistic science, “channeling”, positive thinking/New Thought, and alternative medicine, uni ed by its concern with a holistic worldview7 as a culture criticism of the fragmented world of modernism and religious sectarianism.8 Its truth-claims are best characterized as “esoteric”, which is to say New Agers commonly employ mystical and secretive language when discuss- ing the holistic knowledge they famously seek out.9 Hanegraaff calls the New Age a ‘secularized esotericism’,10 as it draws extensively from esoteric sources such as Hermetic, Gnostic, and theosophical texts while psychologizing them, interpreting the mystical knowledge of esoteric sources to be the actualization of one’s psyche.11 While not all New 6 For discussion of anti-exclusivist rhetoric in New Age discourse see Hanegraaff, ‘Prospects’. 7 Hanegraaff, ‘New Age Movement’, 372; for an expanded analysis with special attention to holistic science, see idem, New Age Religion, 113–152. 8 Idem, ‘New Age Movement’, 370–371; see also idem, New Age Religion, 515–517; Hammer, Knowledge, 73–78. 9 I here take von Stuckrad’s de nition of esotericism (Esoterik, 21) as truth-claims which engage in a ‘dialectic of secrecy and concealment’ about ‘absolute knowledge’. See also idem, ‘Western Esotericism’, 88–93. 10 Hanegraaff, New Age Religion, 517–521. 11 ‘New Age religiosity is characterized by the double phenomenon of a psychologiz- ing of religion combined with a sacralization of psychology’ (idem, ‘New Age Move- ment’, 378) Jung ‘not only psychologized esotericism but he also sacralized psychology, by lling it with the contents of esoteric speculation. The result was a body of theories which enabled people to talk about God while really meaning their own psyche, and about their own psyche while really meaning the divine [. .]’ (idem, New Age Religion, .
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