What Did the Apostles Believe
about the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and Atonement for Sin?

New Testament "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." (Mk 19:31)   "Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood...." (Paul, letter to the Romans, 3:23-25)   "For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve." (Paul, first letter to the Corinthians, 15:3-5)

New Gospels "Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) 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 within you and it is outside you." (G. Thomas 3)   "The Savior said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.... He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Peter said to him, "Since you have explained everything to us, tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?" The Savior said "There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin. That is why the Good came into your midst, to the essence of every nature in order to restore it to its root.... He who has a mind to understand, let him understand." (G. Mary, chs. 2-3)   "Judas said to Jesus, "Does the human spirit die ?" Jesus said, "That is why God ordered Michael to give the spirits of people to them as a loan, so that they might offer service, but the Great One ordered Gabriel to grant spirits to the great generation with no ruler over it -- that is, the spirit and the soul."(G. Judas, 53,22-24)

Sunday Evening Discussions with Supper, March 15, 22 and 29, 2009, 5:30-8:00 p.m.

Three newly discovered gospels have changed our view of the early church -- the gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene and Judas.

In these gospels we get a new perspective on the relationships among the early apostles. They reveal -- among other things -- conflicting ideas about the meaning of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the doctrine of atonement (the idea that the crucifixion was a sacrifice of atonement for human sin).

Because these ideas were associated with a debate within the group we know as the apostles, and because the views of some of the early apostles, like Mary Magdalene, were suppressed, we will investigate these previously unknown sources to gain an understanding of this debate, including questions they raise about the authority and credibility of the apostles and the apostolic tradition. Here are some of the questions we will try to answer:

• Why does the Gospel of Thomas lack any story of Jesus' atoning death on the cross and the resurrection? Or did Mark add them?
• Why did the early apostolic church suppress the true story of Mary Magdalene, portraying her instead as a repentant prostitute, and how does Mary, as described in the Gospel of Mary, fight back to regain credibility in the face of rejection by Peter and Andrew? According to the Gospel of Mary, what was Mary's criticism of the male apostles' ideas?
• Was Judas a hero or a villain? How could he be a villain if his role was predestined and necessary to bring about the crucifixion and atonement for sin that were key parts of God's plan for human salvation?
• If Judas was a hero, why does Jesus repeatedly laugh at Judas in this gospel?
• Why did the apostolic tradition prevail, and what does that mean for us?

The setting for these newly rediscovered gospels was the 2nd-century conflict between "apostolic" and gnostic communities of Christians, both of which were working out their views on the above questions and struggling to defend and assert them against their opponents' views.

The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of how this conflict shaped our Christian understanding of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the related doctrine of atonement, and to reconsider for ourselves what these ideas mean.