Why I Am Not An Agnostic

The existence of God ranks among the most important mysteries that anyone can explore. Countless arguments have been made for and against God's existence over the course of human history and, despite centuries of debate, rational disagreement still remains. In light of this disagreement, it is tempting to suppose that we should refrain from drawing any strong conclusions on the matter. The lack of a belief in the existence or non-existence of God, otherwise known as agnosticism, is a position I am inclined to reject. While I do not claim that my view is the only one a reasonable person can hold, I am convinced that there are persuasive reasons to think that atheism, the belief that God does not exist, is true. 

Traditionally, atheists have appealed to the existence of evil or the apparent hiddenness of God in order to make their case. While I certainly think that there are forms of these arguments, such as the evidential argument from evil, that have substantial merit, my primary reason for rejecting theism rests upon the extraordinary power and coherence of an atheistic worldview. Specifically, progress in the empirical sciences has given us tremendous evidence that the concrete, particular things that make up our world are entirely physical. Furthermore, the arguments raised against this claim strike me as unsuccessful. 

Physicalism, the view that every concrete thing is physical, is supported by our discovery that the things we encounter in our world have all turned out to be physical things. Tables and chairs have turned out to be ultimately realized by microphysical particles, along with rocks, plants, oceans, and even ourselves. That last claim is a bit more controversial, but upon reflection, I believe it can be sustained.

One apparent difficulty for the view that we are material beings stems from the peculiar nature of our conscious lives. It seems absurd to suppose that our pains, itches, emotions, and sensory experiences can all be understood as features of the brain. However, when we focus on the way these mental phenomena influence our behavior, its hard to see how it could be otherwise. For example, we know that our pains are what cause us to move in certain ways. When we burn our fingers, we pull our hands away from the heat. But neuroscience has provided a complete explanation of this reaction in terms of activity in our brains. If our mental lives are distinct from brain activity, science gives us a reason to believe that they do not account for our behavior at all. 

But we are not forced to draw any such conclusion. Given that our mental lives influence our behavior and, as science shows, our behavior is fully explained by physical activity in the brain, the natural conclusion to draw is that our mental lives and the activity of our brains are the very same thing. This conclusion is no different from the discovery that heat is identical to certain sorts of molecular motion or the discovery that water is H20. And just like these discoveries, we can reasonably presume that they apply universally. Science gives us reasons to believe that all heat is molecular motion, all water is H20 , and all mentality is physical. 

These discoveries reflect the general picture motivated by the natural sciences concerning the world as a whole. Empirical investigation has consistently revealed a physical foundation underlying everything found in nature. This achievement, in turn, supports a worldview according to which physical reality accounts for concrete reality as a whole. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we have evidence for materialism that is, to my mind, very powerful. 

The implications for theism are relatively straightforward. Given the plausible assumption  that God is a concrete, immaterial being, science provides us with evidence that God does not exist. Of course, this is far from the end of the conversation. As I mentioned earlier, many  intelligent individuals have provided arguments in favor of God's existence and against the truth of physicalism. A complete discussion of these issues would be necessary to arrive at any confident judgment on the matter. My purpose has not been to explain my reasons for rejecting theism. I only hope to have clarified one positive reason for being an atheist. It is the most compelling one I have found. 

[Addendum - My specific definition of physicalism would be something like the following:

Physicalism is true iff 1. Any world that is a minimal microphysical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter, 2. All higher level concrete phenomena are constituted/realized by lower level, physical phenomena, and 3. There is no fundamental mentality. I define "physical phenomena" as any concrete phenomena identical to or ultimately realized by the posits of an ideal microphysical theory ("ultimately realized" is understood straightforwardly in terms of transitive realization). There are substantive questions about how to properly formulate the physicalist thesis but this seems sufficient for my purposes. Ultimately, however, I suspect the best formulation will include reference to metaphysical ground.]

The Cost Of "Free" - Thoughts On The Caruso-Dennett Exchange

   This post is a reflection upon "Just Deserts" by Daniel Dennett and Greg Caruso. One can read the original exchange at Aeon by clicking the following link: https://aeon.co/essays/on-free-will-daniel-dennett-and-gregg-caruso-go-head-to-head

  In their recent exchange published by Aeon, aptly titled "Just Deserts", the philosophers Greg Caruso and Daniel Dennett go head to head on the topic of free-will and its relationship to retributive justice. For those who have followed Dennett's storied history with the subject, from Elbow Room (his early defense of compatibilism) to his ongoing(?) debate with Galen Strawson, the prospect of yet another round might appear unwarranted or, even worse, tiresome. Thankfully, Caruso proves to be an able sparring partner, eagerly honing in on the implications of Dennett's position for social policy in a clear and precise manner. 

     For the sake of full disclosure, I should state at the outset that I have always found myself largely convinced by the compatibilist camp on these issues, though I have frequently been disappointed with Dennett's particular style of characterizing it. His go-to examples (repeated in this conversation) such as "the Moral Agents Club" and the analogy to sports seem, by my lights, to place free-will on the foundations of social construction, rather than admit its existence as a substantial, metaphysical phenomenon. To his credit, Caruso provides an effective deconstruction of Dennett's metaphors on this score, repeatedly forcing Dennett to clarify the precise nature of his philosophical commitments. 

     Nevertheless, I could not help coming away with several questions concerning the choice of topics discussed. According to Caruso, "the notion of basic desert", serves as his primary target over the course of the discussion. He takes this notion to serve as the core criterion for determining whether or not an agent proves "truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward" in the retrospective sense that ignores any utilitarian benefit that may be provided in the long run. With this emphasis in mind, Caruso poses the following question to Dennett: "My question, then, is whether the kind of desert you have in mind is enough to justify retributive punishment?"

     I find it curious that Caruso focuses on this point in order to challenge compatibilism, primarily because I can't see how the success of Dennett's position turns on it, regardless of how he replies. For one, it seems as though a robust conception of free-will can remain intact even if it were merely necessary to justify retributivism without being sufficient by itself. One might hold that, even if individuals are truly deserving in virtue of making free choices, we should nevertheless refrain from punishment on consequentialist grounds. Indeed, such a view was explicitly propounded by the Athenian, Diodotus, regarding the question of capital punishment in his speech before the Athenian Assembly:

     Though I prove them ever so guilty, I shall not, therefore advise their death, unless it be expedient... I consider that we are deliberating for the future more than for the present... All, states and individuals, are alike prone to err, and there is no law that will prevent them; or why should men have exhausted the list of punishments in search of enactments to protect them from evildoers? It is probable that in early times the penalties for the greatest offences were less severe, and that, as these were disregarded, the penalty of death has been by degrees in most cases arrived at, which is itself disregarded in like manner. Either then some means of terror more terrible than this must be discovered, or it must be owned that this restraint is useless... (Thucydides 1968:152)

     Caruso is quick to emphasize that his position does not entail being a skeptic about punishment as an institution. As he notes, "free-will skeptics typically point out that the impositions of sanctions serve purposes other than punishment of the guilty: it can also be justified by its role in incapacitating, rehabilitating and deterring offenders." What he fails to properly address, however, is the fact that a parallel argument can be run by free-will realists against punishment by recourse to similar means. My point is not that such arguments succeed or that retributivism is necessarily misguided. I only wish to point out one can consistently reject retributivism without also rejecting a robust conception of free-will and moral desert. Given that this is the case, I remain puzzled as to why Caruso finds it such a pressing issue in the exchange.

     Nevertheless, one might argue, even if punishment can be rejected by the free-will realist, it still remains the case that whether or not a person is in fact worthy of praise or blame in any "backward-looking" sense is a question which Caruso can still reject. This gets to the heart of the difference between Dennett's view and his own. For Caruso, the fact that "the particular reasons that move us, along with the psychological predispositions, likes and dislikes, and other constitutive factors that make us who we are, themselves are ultimately the result of factors beyond our control" is one that undermines any legitimate appeal to the kind of responsibility he takes to be required for a person to be truly praiseworthy or not.

     Before proceeding, it is worth asking what would make praise and blame appropriate for a free-will realist in the first place. On the common-sense view of things, what we are doing when we praise someone, for instance, is expressing our approval of their having done the right thing. Crucially, we do not praise someone simply because they did something that just happened to be right. Rather, someone is worthy of praise when they do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. In other words, we praise them precisely because they are adequately responsive to the right kinds of reasons when acting. Of course, again, it must be asked whether or not being responsive to the right reasons is sufficient for being praiseworthy. Must it not also be the case that the reasons in question are responded to freely?

     On this front, I suspect that Dennett would agree with me that the question does not make sense. To say that people are free requires nothing beyond the claim that "in general people are reasonable, are moved by reasons, can adjust their behaviour and goals in the light of reasons presented to them." When individuals adjust their behavior in light of the right reasons, they are praiseworthy. When they adjust in light of the wrong reasons, they are blameworthy.

     Caruso is wrong to claim that the particular reasons that move us are beyond our control. If this were the case, we would not be moved by them at all. He is right, however, to say that "constitutive factors that make us who we are, themselves are ultimately the result of factors beyond our control." The difficulty Caruso faces is simply that this fact provides no obvious reason to reject the reality of free-will. The fact that I am embodied is also a constitutive fact that makes me who I am over which I had no control, yet this fact poses no obstacle for free-will realism. If Caruso wishes to pose such a difficulty, he will have to substantiate the further claim that the reason I chose to act in the way that I did was beyond my control. There is no compelling reason to believe that this is the case.
   
     In his essay "Wide Causation" (1997), Stephen Yablo explores whether or not we can ever truly say that physical events are subject to mental influence. The difficulty for the view that they are comes in the form of what Yablo refers to as "the argument from below". According to this argument, given that a story can be told regarding the causal underpinnings of our behaviour in wholly physical terms, it would seem as though there is simply no room for our mental life to play any causal role. Unfortunately for the free-will skeptic, whether or not this principle is appropriate in some circumstances, Yablo argues, it is not applicable if the relevant higher-order cause and its physical underpinnings stand in a determinable/determinate relation, as mental causes plausibly do with respect to brain states.

     It is here that Yablo finds a powerful wedge for the believer in mental causation by way of the "proportionality principle" According to this principle, it is not enough that something be causally sufficient for its effect in order to hold pride of place as the "true cause". If this were the case, there would be no grounds for preferring the physical brain state to the specific mental state it realizes since both are causally sufficient for their effects. Instead, it is also required that the determinate or determinable in question be proportional to its resulting effects in a way that the state it realizes or is realized by is not.

     To take a simple example, Yablo considers the case of pain. In a specific case in which a specific brain state realizes a specific pain, it is obvious that the brain state is causally sufficient for any of the effects that follow. However, in light of the proportionality principle, it is not at all clear that the brain state should be considered as the cause of its bearer's behaviour instead of the pain. Imagine that one of the subsequent effects is a grimace by the subject. In this case, Yablo points out that "I would still have grimaced even if my pain had occurred in a different microphysical way. Whereas the issue of how I would have behaved had the brain state occurred in the pain's absence cannot even be raised, because the brain state includes the pain." In this scenario, although the determinate brain state is causally sufficient for all resulting effects, it is not clear that it is appropriately proportional to them. One of the effects (the grimace) is more appropriately explained by the presence of pain than the presence of its realizing brain state. Consequently, it is not at all clear that the brain state is the true cause of that subject's behavior, rather than the pain.

     It is here that Dennett can (and perhaps does, though not in the same words) help himself to an account of behavioural causation that fully allows for human action to be caused on the basis of reasons. When he claims that "autonomy is something one grows into, and this is indeed a process that is initially entirely beyond one’s control", one could plausibly interpret Dennett as claiming that it is only once the realized mental states which are sufficient for our behavior are the proportional cause of such actions that we can truly be said to have free-will. I suspect that Yablo and Dennett would find each other to be powerful allies in developing a model of precisely this kind.

     The purpose of this excursion was not to argue that Yablo is completely right, or that nothing more is required for a proper explanation of our ability to act on the basis of reasons. I only highlight Yablo's essay as a shining example of the vast array of options which the free-will realist has at their disposal. When I act on the basis of a reason, Caruso might say that this action is itself the result of a vast array of causes which I have no knowledge of or control over. The free-will realist can grant all of these claims without conceding to Caruso's further claim that my actions cannot truly be said to be the result of my own free-will. In short, even if Caruso is ultimately correct, he still has all his work ahead of him if he wishes to show the reality of free-will to be a sham.

     Before concluding, I would like to address one issue raised by Caruso that I find extremely insightful as a reflection regarding the extent to which praise and blame are appropriate even if one recognizes the reality of free-will. Addressing Dennett's claim that the differences between individuals and their choices average out to such an extent that we can reasonably hold each of them responsible for their actions as independent agents, Caruso retorts:

     Luck does not average out in the long run. Those who start from a disadvantaged position of genetic abilities or early environment do not always have offsetting luck later in life. The data clearly shows that early inequalities in life often compound over time rather than average out, affecting everything from differences in health and incarceration rates to success in school and all other aspects of life... as Levy puts it: ‘We cannot undo the effects of luck with more luck’. Hence the very actions to which compatibilists point, the actions whereby agents take responsibility for their endowments, either express that endowment (when they are explained by constitutive luck) or reflect the agent’s present luck, or both. Either way, responsibility is undermined.

     Here Caruso points to a reality that, to my mind, Dennett has completely failed to adequately address. Even if our free decisions are properly explained by our free-will (rather than the chemical underpinnings of our brain, for instance), it still might seem that we are left with a free-will that is wholly irrelevant in a world of unwanted emotions and systematic inequality. Rather than take these as a reason to deny human freedom, I view these undeniable facts as examples of phenomena that can only be properly addressed once we recognize the reality of free decisions.

     If we take free-will as our starting point, there is nothing stopping us from admitting that there are powerful forces at play which influence our choices in sub-optimal conditions. What does it mean to be in "sub-optimal conditions"? It means that one is in a situation where the human ability to rationally recognize and act upon reasons is interfered with by factors external to this rational process. When these factors are systemic, such as when public institutions are systemically biased against a specific race, this fact must be reflected in the ways we praise and blame. Similarly, if an individual is severely depressed, there is an interfering force which affects their ability to properly recognize and act upon reasons. We must recognize the relevance of these factors to judgments of desert without making the unwarranted leap to the conclusion that these factors undermine the very notion of desert itself.

     What is the free-will skeptic to say in such cases? Unlike the free-will realist, they cannot say that the reason these factors matter is because they effect our ability to act freely. Rather, they are forced to view these as examples of the unfortunate truth "that the lottery of life is not always fair, that luck does not average out in the long run..." But this is to miss the whole point of what makes such inequalities reprehensible in the first place. Consider the free-market. The ideal of the free-market was never to create an egalitarian society. Rather, it was to create a society of just inequality in which any differences of outcome were the result of free decisions made on the part of consenting individuals.

     The systemic inequalities of racism and ableism are not just wrong because they are inequalities (although inequality may be intrinsically wrong on its own). They are wrong because they are unjust. Yet, according to the free-will skeptic, what means is there for drawing out the deep difference between these two forms of inequality? If there were no free-will, the unequal results of a utopian free-market and the society we actually live in are just two different rolls from the same pair of dice. It is only once the profound distinction between free action and choices beyond our control is clarified that a meaningful grasp of these injustices can be established. Perhaps Caruso will reply that we can draw the difference in the forward-looking terms of what consequences these two visions of reality would lead to in the future, but that would be to overlook a moral asymmetry which I believe is undeniable and cannot be grounded upon the monolithic reasoning of consequentialism.

     "Just Deserts" is an entertaining an enlightening debate between two learned scholars on the nature of moral responsibility. Daniel Dennett remains at his strongest when highlighting the reasons why his conception of free-will remains the only one worth wanting. Nevertheless, I believe he continues to falter when he appeals to "the ‘forward-looking benefits’ of the whole system of desert" in order to justify a phenomenon of the present. Likewise, Caruso proves to be a welcome arrival to a long and storied debate when he presses Dennett to recognize the underlying commonality between their means of justifying the retributive policies of a community. Although I have raised many points of disagreement between myself and these two participants, I wholeheartedly recommend their discussion to anyone interested in free-will and the proper role of desert.

-Shane Wagoner
   
   



   

Assessing One Of Crossan's "Son Of Man" Arguments.

In The Historical Jesus, Crossan disputes the claim that Jesus referred to himself or someone else as a/the son of man in any kind of apocalyptic sense. He does this by analyzing groups of individual sayings in the NT and apocrypha, claiming that they go back to a common source, and then giving arguments for why the phrase son of man was added on rather than originating with the common source or background. One example of this is his assessment of 1st Thessalonians 4:17 and Mark 13:26.

He argues that when Paul uses the phrase "in the clouds," he is deliberately tying his vision of Jesus to the apocalypticism of Daniel 7:13. He emphasizes, however, that Paul consistently uses the phrase "the Lord" instead of "Son of Man." He claims that it is very significant that the "in the clouds" passage from much later in Mark 13:26 then adds a son of man phrase into the mix. With this example, he begins to lay the foundations for the view that the son of man sayings are a later addition rather than something stemming from Jesus.

His next example is that Matthew 24:30 and Didache 16:6-8. According to Crossan, both derive from a common source but, once again, only one of them (Matthew) uses the son of man phrase. In the Didache, only "the Lord" is used. To summarize Crossan,
"What is of present interest is that Didache 16:6-8 speaks...of the Lord as apocalyptic judge but Matthew speaks of the Son of Man...It is not clear why Didache would omit the title had it been there, but, on the other hand, Matthew 24:30a, preparing for Matthew 24:30b, which mentions the Son of Man from Mark 13:26, could easily or even necessarily have added it. I judge that, once again, the earlier text spoke of the Lord as apocalyptic judge even against a backdrop of Daniel 7:13, whereas the later text changed "The Lord" to "The Son of Man." 

Possible objections: Even if Paul knew about a Son of Man tradition, there are reasons he may have avoided the term. As Paula Fredriksen notes: "The complete absence of the phrase from our earliest written source, Paul, might seem to argue against its role in the primitive apostolic kerygma. But the audiences of Paul's letter's are exclusively Gentile, and his use of Jesus Christ replicates the functional definition of Son of Man. Paul may simply have decided to spare himself and his Greek-speaking communities an unnecessary neologism." Additionally, when considering the same question, Bart D Ehrman comes up with the same reason: "Almost certainly because he was writing to Gentiles who would have no clue what it would mean."

Additionally, regarding the second complex, it is strange that Crossan would try to place the Didache at odds with Matthew when, as L. Michael White notes in From Jesus To Christianity, "it seems to quote most directly from Matthew and social ties to Matthean Christianity have been convincingly argued." In light of Matthew's high level of influence on Didache, it would seem that, rather than drawing from a common stream that Matthew altered, Didache is altering Matthew. Perhaps this is due to a familiarity with Paul's use of "The Lord" rather than "Son of Man?" 

Another point to make is that, one of the reasons for regarding the Son of Man sayings as historical is that they do not reflect a necessarily Christian worldview. The "son of man," in many verses (including the current one), can be interpreted as being someone other than Jesus. For this reason it passes the criterion of dissimilarity. If it was added by later Christians, they most likely would have made it more clear that it refers to Jesus. This also give another plausible reason for why the Didache uses the phrase Lord: it removes the ambiguity of the son of man phrase in order to make it clear that the verse refers specifically to Jesus.

Even if single saying about the apocalyptic son of man face obstacles when placed under critical scrutiny, the tradition that Jesus use such sayings is strong when the the cumulative case is assessed. Especially considering such a tradition is independently attested to in Mark, Q, and possibly John.

Judas: The Gnostics and the Critics (Part 2)

The fact that this Gospel still causes conflict today, just as it did when it was first written is amazing by itself. The primary detractor to National Geographic's vision arose mere months after the release of the first translation. April DeConick aggressively argued that the National Geographic team not only mistranslated several key terms and phrases within the Gospel of Judas, but accused them of doing so based on a desire to spark public controversy and address allegedly anti-Semitic passages within the text. These accusations along with the damning critique from authoritative church figures, brought shame upon National Geographic and caused many to question their methods, but was it deserved? N.T. Wright asserted (as I quoted above) that the scholarly hype behind this alternative Judas was simply the product of some academics looking for yet another way to re-invent the Historical Jesus. However, this has been explicitly denied by almost every scholar on the National Geographic team with only one scholar attempting to argue that the Gospel should affect our historic understanding of Jesus' betrayer. A possible misunderstanding could have arisen from small provocative headlines such as Bart D. Ehrman's book: The Lost Gospel Of Judas: A New Look At Betrayer And Betrayed. He also claimed that the Gospel provides an "alternative vision" of Christianity. A few other scholars have made similar statements but, as stated earlier, almost every one has denied any historical merit to the Gospel. Bart D. Ehrman has most explicitly denied it's historical value in both his book and many of his public lectures on the subject. The only conceivable way to claim that the National Geographic team claimed historical value in the text would be the misinterpretation of the provocative titles. As for April DeConick, she and Marvin Meyer (a top member of the NG team) got into a rather extensive online debate over several essays and blog posts where they responded to each other critiques and translations. DeConick's most popular criticisms included: the claim that the NG translation of "spirit" was obviously "demon" and that NG's mistranslation casts Judas in a positive light that betrays the Gospel's intention, the claim that when it is said that Judas is "set apart for that holy generation", the proper translation is not "for" but "from", and the claim that NG was seeking to rehabilitate the Judas character in order to help end the vicious anti-Semitism the character has caused. Marvin Meyer was quick to respond to DeConick's claims (which she published a book on) with an essay of his own titled, "The Thirteenth Daimon: Judas and Sophia in The Gospel of Judas". In this essay and in others he refutes DeConick's claims with statements such as:

- the word daimn (44,21), a term of Greek derivation, is used in the

Gospel of Judas within a statement in which Jesus calls Judas the "thirteenth daimon," and the term may be translated "demon," understood in a negative sense, as DeConick suggests. But with all the references to daimones in Platonic, Middle Platonic, Neo-Platonic, Hermetic, and magical texts, where the term is often imbued with neutral or even positive connotations, it may just as easily be translated as "spirit," as we translated it, or even "god," as Professors Karen King and Elaine Pagels translate it in Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity. Commonly daimones are thought to be intermediary beings that find their place between the divine and human realms.

- the Coptic verbal form porj= e- (46,17) may be translated as either "separate/set apart for" or "separate/set apart from" in the Gospel of Judas, in spite of Professor DeConick’s suggestions. According to the gospel, Judas asks Jesus, "What is the advantage that I have received? For you have set me apart for—or from—that generation." Walter E. Crum’s Coptic Dictionary (271b-272a) gives both "be divided from" and "be divided into" (reflecting the Greek aphorizein [etc.] eis) as possible 3 meanings of prj e-. So initially we translated the phrase at 46,17, which differs from the usual construction in the text and codex (prj ebol e-/n- = "separate/set apart from"), with "set apart for," though a footnote in the critical edition gives the alternate translation "set apart from," and Rodolphe Kasser’s French translation reads "tu m’aies séparé de cette (présente) génération-là." While I have indicated elsewhere that I also am increasingly inclined to translate this difficult Coptic phrase as "set apart from," the fact remains that either translation is possible. Karen King and Elaine Pagels are in agreement on this point.

And in response to the "deliberate" mistranslations, Meyer states: In her Op-Ed piece, she writes, "Perhaps the most egregious mistake I found was a single alteration made to the original Coptic. According to the National Geographic translation, Judas’s ascent to the holy generation would be cursed. But it’s clear from the transcription that the scholars altered the Coptic original, which eliminated a negative from the original sentence." There is hardly a more damning accusation that one can make against one’s fellow scholars: that we deliberately altered the Coptic text for our own purposes, and hindered the scholarly quest for understanding. Nothing could be further from the truth, as anyone who has observed us and our work, including Professor DeConick, knows. I can only hope that, if given the opportunity, Professor DeConick would be willing to retract a defamatory charge that somehow came out wrong. Now the same accusation has been picked up by The National Review, which repeats Professor DeConick’s indictment. That is, alas, the way slanderous comments get around. In The Thirteenth Apostle DeConick goes on to offer a conjecture for how we arrived at the earlier reading, guessing that we assumed an otherwise unattested abbreviation of a Greek verb. I recalled nothing of the sort. Hence, I called Gregor Wurst in Augsburg, and he assured me that he had recently contacted DeConick to tell her that she had misunderstood our translational decision, which was based on a normal Coptic idiom found in Crum’s dictionary. But now that too is in print.

     These responses at least show that the accusations DeConick has made are not nearly as well substantiated as the press would lead us to believe. Not to mention the vast majority of translation issues that were addressed in the Critical edition of the NG release. Ironically, DeConick and others seem to be aggressively critiquing these scholars for what appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a completely legitimate attempt at translating and releasing the Gospel of Judas for the public. Debate and disagreement over certain translations and beliefs is not only inevitable but healthy. The ability to do so is what has helped scholarship progress for centuries, but let us not resort to such violent and humiliating accusations against scholarly integrity before thorough discussion on the topic at hand. The Gospel of Judas is a bittersweet example of how lack of communication between a (undoubtedly) flawed National Geographic team and other scholars lead to a rift in the relations between these academics based on unsubstantiated (but well publicized) claims.

Judas: The Gnostics and the Critics (Part 1)

Hey guys, sorry it's been so long since I've posted! Life's been crazy and I just haven't gotten around to generating any new content. However, I did finish an essay I've been working on for HBU so I'll go ahead and share that! (There's some font malfunctions but, other than that, it should be pretty readable...I'm lazy... anyways, enjoy!)

                                             Judas: The Gnostics and the Critics

                                                          By: Shane Wagoner

        In 2001, the invaluable Codex Tchacos finally found it’s way into the hands of a team of experts intent on decoding it’s contents. The Codex had been discovered over 30 years earlier but had only now come into the hands of a team that was ready to assemble the countless fragments and translate what they believed to be the ancient document known as the Gospel of Judas. The process was highly exclusive, with the entire project being kept under lock and key by National Geographic. In a controversial (albeit, highly profitable) move, NG decided to keep the entire document and it’s scans out of the public sphere, thus preventing any real scholarly discussion or analysis outside of their handpicked team. This, along with the sensationalist assertions of an irresponsible media, inevitably led to intense controversy and disagreement over the translation between scholars. The Church responded immediately. Aggressively denying any assertions of historicity, figures such as N.T. Wright and Rowan Williams of the Anglican Church argued that the Gospel’s popularity was the result of a public hungry for conspiracy. As Wright stated, “the enthusiasm for this new ‘Gospel’ lays bare the real agenda which has been driving both what we might call the scholarly ‘Quest for an Alternative Jesus’ and also the popular eagerness for such sensational material that we find in books like Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code.” However, the debate extended far beyond mere dismissal, with scholars such as April DeConick releasing an alternate translation of the Gospel while accusing National Geographic of deliberate mistranslation in an attempt to further their own agendas. In this essay, I will attempt to reaccess the overall goals and results of National Geographic’s mission in light of much unnecessary and, ironically, sensationalist criticism. To begin I will discuss the content and nature of the Gospel itself before proceeding to analyze the contemporary debate surrounding the text. National Geographic’s efforts were a legitimate, admittedly imperfect attempt at releasing the Gospel of Judas to the public and the aggressive criticism they have faced is unwarranted.

                The Gospel of Judas was first referenced by St. Iranaeus in his book Against Heresies in the year 180 A.D. In the book Iranaeus discusses it’s association with the so-called “Gnostic Gospels” and it’s heretical content. Gnosticism was an offshoot of Christianity that infused Christian beliefs with popular Greek (primarily Platonic) thought of the day. It is a line of thought found in other popular 2nd century texts including The Gospel of Thomas and possibly represents the position of certain influential figures such as Paul’s opponents in 1st Corinthians. It focuses heavily on the dichotomy between flesh and spirit, proposing that the physical world as we know it was created by an inferior, cruel god: the god revealed in the Old Testament. Although Gnosticism has it’s roots far earlier than the origins of Christianity, the particularly Christian element of most 2nd Century Gnosticism focused around Christ’s “secret knowledge” that he taught to his followers. This knowledge allowed those who had the “spark of divinity” in them to escape the physical realm and ascend to the realm from whence the came: The Upper Realm of the true God. The Gnostic practices included sexual abstinence, personal poverty, and philanthropy in light of their distaste for the physical world. These beliefs represent the majority of 2nd Century Gnostic communities from which the Gospel of Judas emerged. The Gospel itself reflects some unique thoughts and beliefs that set it apart from other gnostic texts but, due to the wide and diverse nature of Gnosticism during the time period, it is still considered to be firmly within the Gnostic world and mindset.

        The Gospel of Judas opens with Jesus and the disciples sharing a meal together. As the disciples pray, Jesus begins to laugh. When his disciples question his behaviour, Jesus explains that he is not laughing at them, but at the ignorance of which they are victims. They still worship the Hebrew god, not knowing that he is a fraud. When Jesus observes their anger at his comments, he challenges his disciples to stand up and face him. A task none of them are capable of fulfilling except for Judas.  Instead, Judas declares, “You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo” (A Gnostic goddess of the higher realm). It is at this point that Jesus recognizes Judas the ideal disciple and calls him away to reveal to him the “secret mysteries”. On another day, the disciples come to Jesus with a series of visions, which Jesus interprets to reveal to his followers that they are stuck in darkness and are leading people astray with their teachings. The gospel proceeds after a large, choppy portion of missing lines and fragments to a discussion where Jesus gives the primary Gnostic exposition in the text. He continues to explain to Judas the deep and complex Gnostic mythos and Judas's place within this world. He tells Judas that Judas will "sacrifice the man that clothes me." After hearing this, a luminous cloud appears to Judas which he then enters. The Gospel ends with Judas turning Jesus over to the Scribes. the final sequence is an extremely Gnostic piece of storytelling. When Jesus tells Judas that he will "sacrifice the man that clothes me." It is implying that Judas will be the one to release Jesus from his physical bonds. In Gnostic Christianity, Jesus is almost always a divine figure that comes down to Earth in order to bring the secret knowledge of salvation to those who have the spark of divinity in them., so Judas is really playing the hero in this story by freeing Jesus from his flesh now that his mission on Earth is finished (it is assumed).