Will reflect and respond in due course.
Question: Is this the result of your own research, or what your teacher told you to say?
The Gospel of Thomas — which proclaims that "the Church is within you" — never made the Holy Scriptures. I imagine because its argument, truthful as it is, is entirely one-sided, from the human point of view.
The statement is correct as far as it goes.
They made a movie out of this, Stigmata. And I like that movie a lot.
Talk to you later! When I get the chance: I have a very sick father-in-law that I must attend to tomorrow....
But I'll be back as soon as I can.
Thank you for writing! (And putting in the paragraph breaks, in columunar form, not less.)
I had never read the Gospel of Thomas before, but did so today.
Spirited irish is absolutely right: This is a gnostic work.
Gnosticism:The Gospel's opening line claims that "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote them down."
The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis "knowledge", gnostikos, "good at knowing"), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know.
I doubt there is anything "secret" about Christianity — it's fully disclosed in the Holy Scriptures. I am not aware of any version of "esoteric" Christianity designed for "adepts," or a superior class of persons who are "in the know." For one thing, all men are equal in the sight of God, for each man is made in His image.
Further, this Gospel is entirely silent on Jesus' Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.
In short, it is simply not a Christian work. It is gnostic through and through.
Why did you bring it up in the first place? Just because a text has the name "Jesus" in it, or is purported to have been written by the Apostle Thomas, does not mean it is Christian. This "Jesus" sounds more like Benjamin Creme.
Oh please, stop wasting bandwidth!
Best wishes, bb