Is the Gospel of Thomas Ascetical? Revisiting an Old Problem with a New Theory

It is time for reevaluating the categories that scholars have used to classify the religious literature of the Greco-Roman and Late Antique world. Michael Williams, in his magisterial new book Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, ¹ began the process of serious reappraisal by challenging the modern construct “gnosticism.” He argues that the modern construction of historical gnosticism does not adequately explain the literature generally classified as gnostic and that this categorical insufficiency demands alternative ways of studying and understanding the diverse religious movements of the period. ² My study of asceticism, although independent of Williams’ work, continues that reexamination of categories using the specific case of the Gospel of Thomas and its classification as an ascetical text.

Since the very early years after the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, some scholars almost instinctively have sought to interpret it as ascetical. Asceticism as a category explained some of the gospel’s peculiar sayings, or resonated with the exoticism of the geographical location of its discovery so close to a Pachomian monastery, or accounted for the way that this gospel and other sayings gospels differ from their narrative counterparts. Something about the Gospel of Thomas seemed to demand that it be classified as ascetical. The argument for its ascetical orientation, however, has never received clear articulation nor found wide acceptance. There seems not to be sufficient internal evidence to argue categorically for its ascetical orientation, and yet the denial of any ascetical interest in the text somehow leaves the gospel insufficiently explained.

This paper will revisit the nagging problem of the ascetical dimension of the Gospel of Thomas from a new perspective. I intend first to examine the main scholarly approaches to the question in order to understand the failure of previous attempts to classify the gospel as ascetical. Then I will suggest a new direction for understanding the general principles of asceticism in order to provide a new understanding of asceticism itself and to open the Gospel of Thomas to a new reading. Finally, I will apply a new theory of asceticism to the gospel in order to understand precisely the manner in which the Gospel of Thomas is ascetical. In this way I will visit an old problem with a new theory.

Previous Scholarly Approaches

Scholars explore the question of the asceticism of the Gospel of Thomas under a few broadly defined questions: Does the gospel contain the themes understood by them to be “ascetical”? Is the gospel “ascetical” or simply “gnostic” (where those categories are seen to be mutually exclusive)? Does the gospel conform to the style of asceticism prevalent in the postulated geographical location in which the gospel arose? Each of these strategies presumes that the question of the asceticism of the gospel depends upon the conformity of the gospel’s content to a modern construction of asceticism. These scholars engage in a circular argument in that they develop an image of asceticism, then compare the gospel to that image. The image constructed relates to the overarching themes, the polarity gnosticism/asceticism, or the style of asceticism peculiar to a particular geographical region.

Scholars have reached diametrically opposite conclusions about the asceticism based upon the presence (or absence) of ascetical themes in the gospel. W. H. C. Frend ³ presents the most consistent argument for the ascetical thematization of the gospel by arguing that the gospel promulgates an “advance toward spiritual perfection through the practice of ascetic virtues and repentance” (16) and displays a “stress on the attainment of perfection through complete sexual abnegation” (17). He identifies these virtues as “childlikeness, singleness and simplicity, abstinence, and world-renunciation” (15) as well as “continuous prayer, fasting, and continence” (17). ⁴ Jean-Daniel Kaestli summarizes the negative ascetical dimension of the gospel as its renunciation of wealth, family, and sexuality. ⁵ The scholars who assume a late second-century date for the Gospel of Thomas identify the ascetical propensities of the gospel with the second-century sectarians ⁶ called the Encratites (enkrateia means self-control or continence), whose dualistic theology denigrated...