Christianity is undeniably one of the most influential faiths in the world today. A number of reasons account for this immense influence. Besides the fact that it has been around for quite a long time, the foundation that is set by a selection of books that constitute the Holy Scripture has been a major attraction for people. The Bible is as organized as any book can get. This position was made even more effective by the timeless nature of the content in the scripture. The absence of competition made Christians to believe that the books contained in the Bible were the only one available and therefore the Christian story was of authoritative and foolproof singularity. But this has changed due to the sudden appearance of competing texts that contain not only convincing but well articulated positions that mirror the earlier ones. The Nag Hammadi Library tops the list of these new texts. The subtle but yet profound differences have led to the questioning of the foundation of Christianity. How has this happened?
The initial story that nearly every Christian knows is that people who were inspired by the Holy Ghost authored the biblical books. What about the other texts that have appeared? Did different people author them? Did the Holy Ghost also inspire the authors of these new texts? Why were their texts left out? Why do they not contain dramatically opposing views that would have warranted their banishment? These are some of the questions that modern Christians have to deal with when looking at the Christian faith. The fact that these books are not outwardly offensive, but have details that are nearly similar to those in the established scripture leads to questions of fairness, honesty and objectivity in the canonization of scripture. For example, it is difficult to understand why the gospel of Thomas that is now part of the Hag Hammadi library was left out of scripture. In such circumstances, the question that comes up is a whether the Christianity that the world has known all along is the true Christianity or the Christianity that is being spoken about in the emerging texts such as the Nag Hammadi.
Besides the above, the troubled history of Christianity and the presence of different bibles for different Christian churches add to the complication thus raising further doubt on the aspect of true Christianity. There are times when Christians were subjected to inhuman conditions as well as times when some Christian churches subjected humanity to torture especially during the times of the reformation within the Roman Catholic Church. Such happenings lead to questions of whether some influential elements in the Christian faith may have chosen to do away with certain parts of scripture that never supported their agenda; a move that may have prompted other figures to protect by hiding what is now being discovered. Would this be the way the Gnostic texts ended up being buried? There is also the presence of the Apocryphal books of the Roman Catholic Bible whose genuineness is being questioned by the other segments of the Christian family. These books include Tobit, Esdras, parts of Esther, and Maccabbees. It is possible that another denomination may take up the Nag Hammadi library books and add them to their Bible and start using it as the Holy Scripture. All these complications lead to the question of what true Christianity is.
In conclusion, the process by which books are declared sacred and the discoveries of alternative forms of Christian literature such as the Nag Hammadi are possible grounds for challenging the notion of true Christianity.