The Way Forward: Reuniting Christianity’s Lost Paths

Part 5 of a 5-part series exploring Christianity’s lost path (read previous article here).

“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”

Imagine finding an old family recipe box. Inside, you discover that your grandmother’s famous soup actually had several versions — each relative remembered and preserved a different aspect of how she made it. One kept her special blend of spices, another her technique for preparing the vegetables, and a third her secret ingredient. What if you could bring all these pieces back together?

This is a bit like what happened with Jesus’s teaching, which his earliest followers called “the Way.” Different groups preserved different aspects of his message. Some remembered his Jewish practices and ethical teachings. Others focused on his mystical insights. Still others maintained his sophisticated discussions about the nature of reality.

But around the year 70 CE, something happened that would change everything. The Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and its great Temple — the center of Jewish religious life. For Jesus’s earliest followers, led by his brother James, this was devastating. They had kept alive his Jewish practices while sharing his deeper teachings. Now their community was scattered.

Think of it like a river splitting into streams. Jesus’s original teaching — which he called “the Way” — was like a river that could carry both simple boats and deep-sea vessels. Different groups preserved different aspects of this teaching: James kept the Jewish practices, Paul emphasized spiritual transformation through faith, Thomas preserved the secret teachings, and John created a bridge between Jewish and Greek wisdom. Over time, one stream became the mighty river we now call Christianity, while the others seemed to disappear into the sand.

But rivers that vanish underground often resurface elsewhere. In 1945, Egyptian farmers digging in the desert found ancient books that had been hidden for safekeeping — including the Gospel of Thomas. Three years later, the Dead Sea Scrolls emerged from their desert caves. These discoveries showed us just how rich and diverse early Christianity really was.

How One Path Became the Main Road

Why did one version of Christianity become dominant? Imagine you’re starting a restaurant chain. Would you have more success with a complex menu that requires special ingredients and highly trained chefs, or with simple dishes that any cook can make and any diner can enjoy?

Paul’s version of Christianity had this kind of practical advantage. You didn’t need to follow Jewish dietary laws or learn secret teachings. You didn’t need to understand Greek philosophy. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

We can see this advantage in an early letter of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan (around 112 CE). Describing Christians in his province, he notes they “meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god.” The complex teachings about levels of reality found in John, the secret wisdom of Thomas, the Jewish practices of James — all had been reduced to simple worship and belief.

The Process of Standardization

The transformation of “the Way” into standardized Christianity happened gradually. We can trace it through early Christian writings:

Around 150 CE, Justin Martyr wrote his “First Apology,” explaining Christianity to Roman audiences. His Jesus is primarily the divine Christ whose death brings salvation — Paul’s interpretation. The subtle philosophical teachings of John appear mainly as proof-texts for this view.

By 180 CE, Irenaeus was writing “Against Heresies,” attacking alternative interpretations of Jesus’s teaching. He specifically condemns the Thomas tradition’s emphasis on secret wisdom: “These men falsify the oracles of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of revelation.”

The process culminated in the early fourth century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the Roman Empire’s favored religion. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, bishops standardized Christian belief in a creed — something very different from Jesus’s original “Way” of graduated spiritual teaching.

What Was Lost

We can see what was lost by comparing early Christian texts. Take the teaching about “knowing yourself.” In Thomas’s Gospel, Jesus says: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

The same theme appears differently in John’s Gospel through the story of Nicodemus learning about being “born again/from above.” It’s a teaching about inner transformation, carefully explained through multiple levels of meaning.

But in the letters of Paul, which became Christianity’s standard interpretation, this inner work is replaced by faith in Christ’s saving action: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

The Hidden Survivors

Think of it like a river splitting into streams. Jesus’s original teaching — which he called “the Way” — was like a river that could carry both simple boats and deep-sea vessels. Different groups preserved different aspects of this teaching: James kept the Jewish practices, Paul emphasized spiritual transformation through faith, Thomas preserved the secret teachings, and John created a bridge between Jewish and Greek wisdom. Over time, one stream became the mighty river we now call Christianity, while the others seemed to disappear into the sand.

But rivers that vanish underground often resurface elsewhere. In 1945, Egyptian farmers digging in the desert found ancient books that had been hidden for safekeeping — including the Gospel of Thomas. Three years later, the Dead Sea Scrolls emerged from their desert caves. These discoveries showed us just how rich and diverse early Christianity really was.

Why It Matters

This isn’t just ancient history. The story of how Christianity chose its path raises crucial questions about spiritual teachings:

• How do you preserve subtle spiritual teachings in institutional form?
• What’s gained and lost when mystical tradition becomes organized religion?
• How do you balance accessibility with depth?
• Can different levels of teaching coexist in one tradition?

The early Christian communities answered these questions differently. The Jerusalem church maintained direct connection to Jesus’s Jewish practice. The Thomas community preserved his esoteric teachings. John’s community created a sophisticated philosophical framework. Paul offered a universal message of faith and salvation.

The Way Forward

Perhaps the most important lesson from this exploration is that authentic spiritual teaching isn’t about enforcing uniformity but about maintaining a living tradition that can speak to different needs. Jesus’s “Way” seems to have been deliberately multi-dimensional — ethical and mystical, practical and philosophical, public and private.

The fact that different early Christian communities preserved different aspects of this teaching suggests its richness. While historical forces led to one interpretation becoming dominant, rediscovering these lost voices enriches our understanding not just of early Christianity, but of how spiritual traditions evolve and adapt.

Today, as many Christians deconstruct their inherited faith — questioning doctrines, examining historical contexts, seeking deeper meanings — these early diverse interpretations of “the Way” offer intriguing possibilities. What if, instead of choosing between these paths, we could reunite them?

Imagine a reconstructed Christianity that integrated:

• James’s emphasis on ethical practice and social justice
• Paul’s understanding of transformative spiritual experience
• Thomas’s teachings about self-knowledge and inner work
• John’s sophisticated synthesis of wisdom traditions

Such an integration wouldn’t be about creating a new denomination or institution. Rather, it would be about recovering the multi-layered nature of Jesus’s original teaching method: practical ethics for daily life, mystical practices for inner transformation, philosophical frameworks for understanding reality, and direct spiritual experience.

This wouldn’t be entirely new. Throughout Christian history, mystics, reformers, and teachers have attempted similar syntheses. The desert fathers combined ethical rigor with contemplative practice. Medieval mystics united philosophical depth with direct experience. Modern teachers like Thomas Merton have shown how Christian practice can dialogue with other wisdom traditions.

The challenge for modern seekers isn’t to choose between James, Paul, Thomas, and John, but to recognize how their different interpretations illuminate different aspects of the spiritual journey. Where these streams once diverged due to historical circumstances, they might now converge, creating something both ancient and new: a Way that is simultaneously practical and mystical, personal and universal, grounded in tradition yet open to direct experience.

In rediscovering these lost voices of early Christianity, we might find not just historical insight but a path forward — one that honors both the diversity and unity of spiritual truth. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant all along when he spoke of “the Way.”

This concludes our 5-part series exploring the forgotten history of early Christianity. Thank you for joining me on this journey through the diverse understandings of “the Way.”