The Gospel of Thomas by Jean-Yves Leloup

Author:Jean-Yves Leloup
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2011-10-22T04:00:00+00:00

Initiation means a passage through all these levels without denying or neglecting any part of the process. For example, we can read the Song of Songs as a tale of erotic romance between a shepherd and shepherdess, or as a symbolic story of the love between God and Israel or between Christ and the Church. Still another interpretation is that of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John of the Cross: It tells of the love affair between God and the soul, of the mystical union of the created and the uncreated.

This example illustrates a hermeneutic approach that respects all levels of meaning of scripture. Unfortunately, it is seldom practiced today, just as it was apparently seldom practiced in the time of Yeshua of Nazareth. By then the Torah had become a restrictive and guilt-producing body of rules and laws, instead of a law of freedom that could save human beings from what was most harmful and destructive in themselves and in the world.

Yeshua also reproached the scribes and Pharisees for turning the Word to their service instead of serving it. Indeed, it is possible to use scripture to gain personal power and dominate others—surely one of the most dangerous and perverted of powers. While pretending to speak in the name of God, offenders work on the minds of their recruits with manipulation disguised as guidance. This power has nothing to do with the true power of the Word, which is that of ever-greater love and service.

The knowledge communicated by sacred texts is one of attention and simplicity, as indicated by the following words of this logion: “[B]e as alert as the serpent and as simple as the dove.” A gnostic is not a person with any special knowledge, but rather a simple human being with a clear and open heart and no self-concern or self-importance, someone who is attentive to what is in front of him or her. The gnosis taught by Yeshua is one that develops a meditative attitude toward what is, an attitude that is nondualist, nonrationalizing, and free of projection and judgment. Gnosis is simply seeing things as they are.

There is a remarkable beauty in Yeshua’s image of serpent and dove. The serpent crawls upon the earth while the dove flies in the sky. Thus we are told to ground ourselves on earth without losing touch with our thrust upward into the skies. To hold both these animal qualities is to realize the union of opposites, of earth and heaven.

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