“It is as though after two thousand years of Abrahamic religion – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – the unending barbaric violence and moral desolation of humankind has finally brought the whole of our global world to a life-or-death hunger for a new kind of knowing and moral direction.” – Jacob Needleman[1]
In the Gospel of Philip, we find a text attributed to the Apostle Philip, although it is extremely unlikely that he is the true source for what we read there. Nevertheless, there must have been a reason why Philip was selected as the namesake for this Gospel.
What we know about Philip from the Canonical Gospels is that he was the fifth one to be named after Peter, Andrew, James and John. Philip is the disciple who asked Jesus to “show us the Father” in John’s Gospel [14:7-11] which prompted Jesus to respond with “Have I been with you so long, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever sees me has seen the Father…Do you not know that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me?”
In the Acts of the Apostles, Philip is seen as the Apostle to the outcast Samaritans [8:5-13]. They respond to his teachings and miraculous signs and wonders, which include the casting out of “unclean spirits”, and even “put their faith in Philip” and believe in “the good news about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.”
Philip’s power is such that even the local magician, Simon Magus – whom the Samaritans had called “the Great Power of God” – is “amazed…by the great miracles” of Philip and believes in the Gospel and “after being baptized, he did not leave Philip.”
We also read in the Acts of the Apostles [8:26-40], that Philip was the one who was led by the Spirit of God to encounter the Ethiopian eunuch and to baptize him as the first Gentile convert to faith in Christ. Miraculously, Philip is essentially teleported by the Holy Spirit to an unknown location immediately after the eunuch comes up out of the water.
So, perhaps Philip was selected as the namesake for this Gospel text simply because of his significance among the other Apostles. Perhaps Philip had become an example for early Valentinian Christians of the type of Christ-follower who embodied the awakened awareness of the Christ within all of us? We can only guess, unfortunately.
Either way, this Gospel text that bears his name does provoke that “life-or-death hunger” within us “for a new kind of knowing” that transcends the “unending barbaric violence” of prior religious thought.
Early Christians seem to have placed unusual significance on the names of certain Apostles. For example, some scholars have noted that the Gospel attributed to Thomas may leverage the alternate meaning of his name as “the twin” to subtly suggest that he, and by extension all of us, are exactly like Christ.
This seems to correspond with what we read in the Gospel of Judas where the betrayer of Jesus becomes the one to expose an even greater betrayal of Christ by the Orthodox Christians who corrupted his teachings to gain power for themselves.
If this theoretical pattern is true, then perhaps Philip is the perfect Apostle to speak to us of these miraculous insights into the mystical reality of Christ, the Divine union of flesh and Spirit, and the reality of Oneness and non-duality.
[1] Quoted from his Foreword to Jean-Yves Leloup’s book, The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the Gnosis of Sacred Union, pg. viii
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The newest book from Keith Giles, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas” is available now on Amazon. Order HERE>
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper, Coast To Coast Radio with George Noory, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.”
He co-hosts The Heretic Happy Hour Podcast and his solo podcast, Second Cup With Keith which are both available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Podbean or wherever you find great podcasts.
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