Disputed Statements

Gospel of Thomas, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States An anonymous sayings collection, its dating and independence from the Synoptics debated (critical)

Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, Random House, 1979, treats the Gospel of Thomas's ascription to Didymus Judas Thomas as settled: it is pseudepigraphal, not the work of that figure, and not itself in question. What Pagels identifies as unresolved is a separate, literary critical question: whether the sayings collection is independent of Matthew, Mark and Luke or derived from them, argued by comparing parallel sayings across the texts to judge whether Thomas's versions read as more primitive, suggesting independence and an earlier date, or as abbreviated and adapted from the Synoptic accounts, suggesting dependence and a later one. Because scholars applying that same comparative method have reached different readings of the same parallel sayings, whether Thomas is a first century or second century source remains open, and it is that literary judgment, not the settled matter of authorship, that is genuinely debated.

Source The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels tier 1

Gospel of Thomas, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Ascribed to Didymus Judas Thomas (pseudepigraphal)

Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, Random House, 1979, treats the Gospel of Thomas's ascription to Didymus Judas Thomas as settled: it is pseudepigraphal, not the work of that figure, and not itself in question. What Pagels identifies as unresolved is a separate, literary critical question: whether the sayings collection is independent of Matthew, Mark and Luke or derived from them, argued by comparing parallel sayings across the texts to judge whether Thomas's versions read as more primitive, suggesting independence and an earlier date, or as abbreviated and adapted from the Synoptic accounts, suggesting dependence and a later one. Because scholars applying that same comparative method have reached different readings of the same parallel sayings, whether Thomas is a first century or second century source remains open, and it is that literary judgment, not the settled matter of authorship, that is genuinely debated.

Source The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels tier 1

Gospel of Thomas, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 60

Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, Random House, 1979, frames the Gospel of Thomas's dating as inseparable from the same literary critical question that unsettles its authorship: whether its sayings are independent of or derived from the Synoptic Gospels. Reading the text's own internal character against that comparison, Pagels sets out why the proposed dates span the middle of the first century to the late second: an early date reads Thomas as an independent witness to the sayings tradition roughly contemporary with the Synoptics' own sources, while a late date reads it as a Gnosticising reworking of material already available from the finished Synoptic Gospels. Choosing between an early and a late date is not a separate puzzle from the authorship question; it is the same argument about the text stated in years rather than in sources, which is why Pagels presents it as unsettled rather than narrowing the range herself.

Source The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels tier 1

Gospel of Thomas, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 140

Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, Random House, 1979, frames the Gospel of Thomas's dating as inseparable from the same literary critical question that unsettles its authorship: whether its sayings are independent of or derived from the Synoptic Gospels. Reading the text's own internal character against that comparison, Pagels sets out why the proposed dates span the middle of the first century to the late second: an early date reads Thomas as an independent witness to the sayings tradition roughly contemporary with the Synoptics' own sources, while a late date reads it as a Gnosticising reworking of material already available from the finished Synoptic Gospels. Choosing between an early and a late date is not a separate puzzle from the authorship question; it is the same argument about the text stated in years rather than in sources, which is why Pagels presents it as unsettled rather than narrowing the range herself.

Source The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels tier 1

Gospel of Truth, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Unattributed within the text itself; Attridge and MacRae read the general Valentinian affinities of Codex I as making Valentinus himself a real, though unproven, candidate as author (critical, cautious)

Attridge and MacRae, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, treat authorship and the identification with Irenaeus's "Gospel of Truth" as the same open question stated two ways: if this text is the one Irenaeus knew, its literary and conceptual closeness to the surviving fragments of Valentinus's own writing makes him a serious candidate as author, though they call this "a distinct possibility" rather than a finding. Irenaeus himself, writing closer to the events, names the source as "the followers of Valentinus" rather than Valentinus in person, which is the more cautious reading most scholars still take. Both camps agree on the text's Valentinian character; what divides them is whether that character reaches back to the school's founder or only to his students.

Source The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James M. Robinson (general editor) tier 1

Gospel of Truth, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Assigned by Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 3.11.9, c. 180 CE) to "the followers of Valentinus" rather than to Valentinus himself (patristic, more cautious)

Same debate as the paired authorship fact elsewhere on this page, stated from the other side: Irenaeus's own contemporary attribution to Valentinus's disciples rather than to Valentinus in person. The paired fact's note lays out both positions together.

Source The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James M. Robinson (general editor) tier 1

Gospel of Truth, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 140

The 140 to 180 CE range rests on the same identification question as authorship: if this is the work Irenaeus mentions around 180, composition must fall before that; if it is Valentinian in general character but not demonstrably that specific text, only the school's own mid second century floruit anchors the early end. Attridge and MacRae discuss both readings without choosing between them.

Source The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James M. Robinson (general editor) tier 1

Gospel of Truth, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 180

Paired with era-start-year on this same fact's subject: 180 CE is when Irenaeus writes, which is the latest point compatible with his text being this one. A reading that treats the identification as unproven would not by itself require a later date, only a less certain one.

Source The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James M. Robinson (general editor) tier 1

Governmental Theory of the Atonement, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States A minority position within the tradition

According To Protestant Christianity

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2005) sets out the camps on Hugo Grotius's governmental theory of the atonement. Reformed critics, comparing it against penal substitution's legal logic, hold that if no penalty is actually borne on this theory then nothing objective is accomplished, so the theory collapses into moral influence with legal vocabulary attached. Critics from the other direction hold that if God was free to relax the law and simply forgive, as the governmental theory allows, then Christ's death was unnecessary, and the theory keeps a crucifixion while removing the reason for it. Its defenders, examining Grotius's own seventeenth century legal training, answer that both objections misread his distinction between a private creditor's right to simply forgive a debt and a moral governor's need to uphold the law publicly while still forgiving.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Governmental Theory of the Atonement, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Doctrinal Status Detail

Currently States The governmental theory, framed by the lawyer Hugo Grotius in the seventeenth century against Faustus Socinus's argument that no satisfaction can be transferred at all, treats the atonement in terms of public law rather than private debt or criminal sentence: God as rector accepts Christ's death as a penal example that displays the seriousness of the law without exacting the exact penalty it prescribed, relaxing the law rather than suspending it. Taken up by later Remonstrants, by Wesleyan and holiness theology, and by the New England theology of the Edwardsean divines, it lets a universal atonement and a real cost at the cross be held together, and it occupies a third position criticised from both directions: penal substitution advocates who insist the exact penalty itself must be borne, and Socinians and their successors, whom Grotius wrote against, who hold that no penalty need be borne at all.

According To Protestant Christianity

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Gravitas, Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States A Republican civic value, prominent from at least the second century BCE in surviving political writing such as Cicero's letters and speeches; its origin as an unwritten expectation of public conduct predates any surviving text and is not precisely dateable on current evidence.

Source Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic, H. H. Scullard tier 1

Greed / Avarice (Avaritia), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Rooted in Evagrius Ponticus's eight tempting thoughts, set out from the Egyptian desert monastic settlements of Nitria, Kellia and Scetis around the late fourth century CE, and carried west by John Cassian. Gregory the Great reduced the eight to the familiar seven, greed among them, in his Moralia in Job around 590 CE.

Source The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature, Morton W. Bloomfield tier 1

Green, Colors

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1666

According To Newtonian optics: the seven-colour spectrum

Isaac Newton's own account in Opticks (London, 1704) describes how he arrived at seven spectral colours: his earliest prism observations distinguished five bands, and he settled on seven, adding orange and indigo, by explicit analogy with the seven intervals of the musical octave, a numerological choice rather than a further optical finding. Reading Newton's own text against the continuous gradient a prism actually produces shows the seven-fold division is an interpretive choice about where to draw lines in that continuum, not a count nature supplies; observers from Newton's own time onward have disputed whether indigo is visually distinct from blue and violet at all. Any scheme in this atlas that treats seven colours as given inherits Newton's seventeenth-century analogy to the octave rather than an independent observation.

Source Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, Isaac Newton tier 1

Green, Colors

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1704

According To Newtonian optics: the seven-colour spectrum

Isaac Newton's own account in Opticks (London, 1704) describes how he arrived at seven spectral colours: his earliest prism observations distinguished five bands, and he settled on seven, adding orange and indigo, by explicit analogy with the seven intervals of the musical octave, a numerological choice rather than a further optical finding. Reading Newton's own text against the continuous gradient a prism actually produces shows the seven-fold division is an interpretive choice about where to draw lines in that continuum, not a count nature supplies; observers from Newton's own time onward have disputed whether indigo is visually distinct from blue and violet at all. Any scheme in this atlas that treats seven colours as given inherits Newton's seventeenth-century analogy to the octave rather than an independent observation.

Source Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, Isaac Newton tier 1

Gregory of Nazianzus, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 390

The source gives this death year as approximate (circa), while the birth year is stated without qualification.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Gregory VII, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1015

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Gregory VII, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1085

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Guatemala, Countries

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Legal Status

Currently States The constitution guarantees freedom of religion and recognises the legal personality of the Catholic Church without establishing it; the 1996 peace accords committed the state to respect and protect Maya spirituality and access to ceremonial sites, which remains incompletely implemented.

Guatemala's constitution guarantees freedom of religion and recognises the Catholic Church's legal personality without establishing it as a state church, a formally neutral framework similar to several other Latin American states. Separately, the 1996 peace accords that ended Guatemala's decades-long civil war committed the state specifically to respect and protect Maya spirituality and Maya communities' access to their ceremonial sites, a commitment the State Department's report describes as remaining incompletely implemented, with access to some ceremonial sites still contested or restricted in practice despite the accord's formal commitment. The gap recorded here is between a peace-process commitment made to a specific indigenous religious tradition and the state's documented follow-through on it, a different kind of dispute from the Catholic-recognition question.

Source International Religious Freedom Report, United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom tier 1

Guhyasamaja Tantra, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 700

Yukei Matsunaga's critical study proposes a two phase history, the root tantra developing through the first half of the eighth century CE and reaching its present form by the century's end, a reading supported by the earliest datable external reference, a mid eighth century index by the monk Amoghavajra. Other scholars studying the same evidence caution that the text's actual origin cannot be fixed with confidence, so the eighth century dating is Matsunaga's reconstruction rather than an agreed conclusion.

Source A Critical Study of the Guhyasamaja Tantra (Francesca Fremantle), Francesca Fremantle tier 1

Guhyasamaja Tantra, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 800

Yukei Matsunaga's critical study proposes a two phase history, the root tantra developing through the first half of the eighth century CE and reaching its present form by the century's end, a reading supported by the earliest datable external reference, a mid eighth century index by the monk Amoghavajra. Other scholars studying the same evidence caution that the text's actual origin cannot be fixed with confidence, so the eighth century dating is Matsunaga's reconstruction rather than an agreed conclusion.

Source A Critical Study of the Guhyasamaja Tantra (Francesca Fremantle), Francesca Fremantle tier 1