Chapter 3 Summary

According to Pagels, theologians of the Western religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, contend that God is beyond gender. But still, even in the trinity of Christianity, only one of the three principals is genderless (the Holy Spirit). In Judaism, Christianity and Islam's prayer and in worship services, God is supremely masculine in his characteristics. God is "king, lord, master, judge and father." This is in strict contrast to the way that many other religious traditions depict God. In Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, North American Indian, Roman, and East Indian faiths, among others, the feminine principle is a conspicuous component of God's nature, sometimes to the exclusion of the masculine.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Peter tells Mary to leave them because "women are not worthy of life." But Jesus responds by saying, "I myself will lead her, in order to make her male so...