The Many Faces of Christ by Philip Jenkins

Author:Philip Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465061617
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2015-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

THE DUALIST THEOLOGICAL PACKAGE was deeply rooted in scriptures; indeed, in quite a complex mixture of writings old and new.

At least in part, Dualists relied on familiar canonical scriptures, especially the gospels. Orthodox believers had long protested against heretical misuse of scripture, although reasonable people might disagree as to whether the standard, approved readings of such passages were automatically correct and self-evident. As far back as the second century, Irenaeus complained that “in like manner do these persons patch together old wives’ fables, and then endeavor, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions.” Medieval Dualists likewise creatively rooted their doctrines in scripture. One reason that heresy spread so rapidly among the Bulgarians and other Slavic peoples was that they already had vernacular translations of the scriptures at an early date—from the ninth century, long before their Christian counterparts in Western Europe. This removed a potent obstacle to quite ordinary believers both gaining access to biblical texts and interpreting them in their own way. In turn, these interpretations passed easily to congregations in Western Europe.24

Dualists could cite a surprising number of texts to support the idea that the Devil is the Lord of the present world. Bogomils cited the Temptations in the Wilderness to prove that the Devil held power over the world, or else he could not have offered it to Jesus. Jesus himself speaks of the Devil as Lord of the World, and the canonical Book of Revelation likewise offers several passages that can be read to justify Dualist theology.

Many of the texts commonly used since the Reformation to support predestination also lend themselves to Dualist purposes, especially the frightening parable of the wheat and the tares. Although rarely a popular sermon text today, this parable has inspired and puzzled readers through the centuries. Following on directly after the much more famous parable of the sower, this story tells of a man sowing good seed in a field. In the night, an enemy sows tares (weeds) among the wheat, and the two kinds of plants grow up together. The farmer tells his servants not to purge the tares immediately, or they will certainly damage the wheat in the process:

Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

In a Dualist reading, the world and its people include the materials of both Light and Darkness, between whom there can be no compromise. They will exist together until the God of Light, or perhaps Christ himself, intervenes directly in the world, to separate out the forces of Light and to bring salvation. For the children of Darkness, which includes the institutional church, there is no hope, only the prospect of fire.25

The presbyter Cosmas reports another distinctive reading, presumably of the story of the Prodigal

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