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On the other hand, The Gospel of Thomas includes within in it something that is hard to find in Greek philosophical notions of a soul-a myriad of Jewish and Christian rituals, including baptism, eucharist, and meditation-that served as a technique for receiving religious visions and from which the monastics received the gnōsis that transforms them into immortal beings. The most famous logion is almost a command to enter psychoanalysis:

Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you. (Logion 70)

We can see that this Logion, in context, is not exactly about the necessity of psychotherapy. It was a challenge to search for the truth in meditation. Those who found recognition within also recognized that they were the elect. Logion 70 is just as much about the group that recognized the truths contained in these arcane sayings-and only that group-because the “elect,” the maskilim, those who knew of the Daniel 12 prophecy. It was those who will become the angels and the stars. And this means that the community that produced the Gospel of Thomas had an entirely different understanding of how to missionize the Gospel. There was no apostolic tradition; there was no physical presence; there was no empty tomb and no polemic of doubt with the Jews. Only those who really experienced Jesus in the spirit were converted. Instead of the physicality of the apostolic tradition, we had the ascetic and mystical exercises of a group of monks. The only goal of the Logia was to lead the mystical adept to the visionary presence of the Christ, which could be stimulated by studying and meditating on these gnomic and puzzling phrases of Jesus.

The notion of faith (which is critical to both the Gospels and Paul) has disappeared, and in its place gnōsis, the vision, and subsequent transformation became paramount. For Paul, faith meant confidence that his visions would come true. For the Gospels, faith meant trust in the transmission of the canonical tradition through the apostles. Here, faith disappears and is replaced by gnōsis (saving knowledge), attained by the mystic through visions. It is as if Paul’s visionary Christianity, instead of being the mark of a special prophet, had become the explicit goal of all ascetics.42 The spiritual process must be completed in this life: “Jesus said, ‘Look for the Living One while you are alive, lest you die and then seek to see him and you will be unable to see (him)’” (Logion 59).

These early Christians set about to find the legitimate authority to become the successors to Jesus-namely, the authority of gnōsis. We can contrast their spiritual authority with the other Christian understandings of authority. Paul suggested that the principle of authority was faith, but his understanding of faith in Christ meant faith that his vision was the key for understanding the meaning of Christ’s resurrection. The Synoptic Gospels said, to the contrary, faith is primarily the acceptance of the authority and teachings of those of us who learned from those who learned at the feet of Jesus. It is a concrete, fleshly chain of tradition that was passed from teacher to pupil.

The community of The Gospel of Thomas may have started from the same assumptions as Paul’s writing, but took their interpretation to the opposite extreme. Or they may have started from another, independent Thomasine interpretation of Christianity. We do not know. But we know what they thought: Only those who actually see the vision of the Savior will be transformed. It is not faith but the knowledge (gnōsis) of God found in visions that brings salvation. It is to them that the true status of angels, stars, and elect is given. Like the intellectuals of a Greek philosophical school, they stressed the individual nature of salvation, the mind must figure it out for itself, with the help of the meditations that Jesus left. And the nature of the community appeared to have been very loose, a group