Dr. Elaine Pagels

History of the Ware Lecture

In 1920, Harriet E. Ware of Milton, Massachusetts, bequeathed a gift of $5,000 for non-restricted use to the American Unitarian Association. On the evening of May 24th, 1922, the first Ware Lecture was presented at the Arlington Street Church in Boston. It was given by Rev. Frederick W. Norwood, pastor of the City Temple, London, England. At the time, the lecture was said to have been "established in honor of the distinguished services of three generations of the Ware family to the cause of Pure Christianity." Since then, the lecture has been given every year but two (1945 and 1950). Past lecturers have included Reinhold Niebuhr, Henry Steele Commager, Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rollo May, Alvin Toffler, Jesse Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Norman Lear, and many others. More on the Ware Lecture

4073 Ware Lecture

Speaker: Dr. Elaine Pagels, Professor of History, Princeton University

Sponsor: Planning Committee

Prepared for UUA.org by: Jone Johnson Lewis, Reporter; Margy Levine Young, Editor; Nancy Pierce, Photographer

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Please note: The full text of the Ware Lecture is not available for online reading.

For the first time, the same person was selected as the awardee for the Melcher Book Award and as the Ware lecturer. The program opened with the book award, as the Rev. Phyllis O'Connell read from the book award [full text ], citing how Dr. Elaine Pagels has "given clarion voice to long-lost and long-suppressed expressions of earliest Christianity" and has planted "whole new gardens of theological possibilities."

President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Rev. Dr. William G. Sinkford, introduced the evening's Ware lecture [full text], which, he said, is a way to "provide a kind of outside view to our faith community," to be "outside our comfort zone" as Unitarian Universalists, but thereby to deepen our own faith understandings.

Referring to the discussions over the last two years responding to his call for a "language of reverence" for Unitarian Universalists, Sinkford suggested that he himself was "looking for some help from this Ware lecture."

Dr. Pagels began by describing her own upbringing: Protestant "in a tradition that's pretty boring." She fell, for a time, "in love with" evangelical Christianity, and then fell out of love with it.

An important influence on her work came in 1945 when not only the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, but another sealed jar with over 51 ancient writings, including the Gospel of Thomas, which was first published in 1959. The first reaction of scholars was to treat them as heretical, and project their assumptions about heresy onto the texts. By the time Pagels got to graduate school, she recounted, scholars were rethinking the place of these gospels, as well as the four canonical gospels.

Pagels described the gospels as "like listening in on an argument," where different communities asked "What's the good news about Jesus?" She outlined ways in which the gospels of Thomas and John are similar: each assumes familiarity with the stories such as are found in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; each presents knowledge beyond that found in the public preachings of Jesus; each deals with the Kingdom of God as an "actual ongoing spiritual reality here and now"; each stresses a metaphor of light for God and for Jesus.

Yet they differ, too. In Thomas, the "good news is that Jesus manifests divine light – and so do we," Pagels said. The author of John "knows the kind of teaching in Thomas," Pagels added, and "writes a gospel to set people straight." In John's gospel, Jesus is the "only-begotten son" and Jesus is God incarnate, while the rest of us are nothing like God. John's gospel even turns Thomas into a character who has no faith, "missed the meeting" where Jesus was revealed after the crucifixion, and finally "gets it" that Jesus is Lord and God.

From the second through fourth century, the ideas in John are developed while those in Thomas are forgotten or suppressed, suggesting John's approach is "the only possible truth," which, Pagels said, "impoverishes Christianity."

Pagels, during her lecture, moved around the stage in an animated presentation, and occasionally called for specific slides of the sayings from the Gospel of Thomas to be displayed on the screen as she explained them. At the end of her talk, she asked that we "open our conversation" with some questions from the floor.

In that period, Pagels addressed such issues as Mary Magdalen and women in ancient Chrsitianity and the Trinity's history. "What's striking," she said in response to the latter topic, "is that there were Christians for 300 years before there was a 'doctrine of the Trinity'."

Sinkford came back on stage to thank Pagels for her "entirely engaging" talk, commenting that as far as he could see, "no one has left the hall." She remained after the talk to sign copies of her latest book.

Books by Elaine Pagels:

Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003)
The Origin of Satan (reprint: 1996)
The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (reprint: 1992)
The Gnostic Gospels (reissue: 1989)
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

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