Monthly Archives: August 2013

ON LOVE; PART CCCXLIX

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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1. “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him” (2 Samuel 14:14).
2. “Take heed what ye do: for ye judge not for man, but for the LORD, who is with you in the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts” (2 Chronicles 19:7).
3. “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34).
4. “For there is no respect of persons with God” (Romans 2:11).
5. “Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him” (Ephesians 6:8-9)
6. “Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons” (Colossians 3:24-25).
7. “And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear” (1 Peter 1:17)
8. “Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous” (Deuteronomy 16:19).
9. “To have respect of persons is not good: for for a piece of bread that man will transgress” (Proverbs 28:21).
10. “But if ye have respect to persons , ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressor” (James 2:9).

The above is a history of this precept “that God is no respecter of persons” as it reaches from the Old Testament, in the time of Samuel which is more than 1000 years before the Advent of the Christ, through the New Testament writings of the apostles. The first seven are from the perspective of God, that “there is no respect of persons with God” and the final three are in relation to man, that he “shalt not respect persons“. Now we look at these sayings as they are presented to us and we see the reality that there IS an equality in God’s view of man and while this IS NOT apparent in any view of the world, it IS True from the perspective that naught that we see in the vast disparity in the lives of men is God’s doing….none. Of course this IS NOT the view of doctrines which believe that most all that happens in the Earth is God’s Will and clearly this view is contrary to these sayings or else we are looking at these sayings wrongly. James however clarifies for us that we are looking rightly; the apostle opens his words in the Second Chapter saying: “My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons” (James 2:1). Here James IS instructing us that having “respect of persons” is contrary to following the Master and he then sets out his story about the rich and the poor who may come into one’s presence, that one should not show any difference in how they are treated, no preference to the rich nor disfavor toward the poor. Here, comparing our following of the Master with our beliefs in action, the apostle then brings the conversation to the idea of Love and he creates for us another comparison and he turns the dialogue away from riches and into ALL things imaginable saying: “If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors” (James 2:8-9).

Now these sayings DO NOT go to any great degree of explanation except to say that the entirety of this precept IS intimately tied to Love as James IS saying that if we ARE fulfilling the “royal law“, we are per force not showing any “respect to persons“, we are treating ALL men as we would be treated; we are treating ALL men the same. And so it is then with God and, it IS in understanding these ideas that we can make great progress in our spiritual pursuits. We should understand as well that these ideas are at work in the Kingdom of God as well as ALL Souls are equal and any differences are tied to the the degree of discipleship that one has achieved; this IS NOT the degree that one has been given as that again would show “respect to persons” as the Soul IS the True man, it is the degree achieved. One necessary foundation for seeing these ideas clearly is found in a practical understanding of reincarnation and perhaps this IS why there is so little understanding and acceptance of these precepts in the Christian world yet today. And in these words above from James is where and how this whole concept IS tied to Love; it IS in the Great Commandment and it IS in the Golden Rule that this precept is made abundantly clear and this clarity, even from the perspective of the man in the world, is seen in the simplicity of how each of us desires to be treated by others and, as we said in the last essay, these precepts must be looked as from the perspective of being in one another’s shoes.

Much is said regarding finding God’s Will for one’s Life and this is a concept that is treated differently by different denominations and doctrines. For us, God’s Will is KNOWN by perceiving and hearing the God Within as he speaks to us through our conscience and as a part of the thoughts and ideas that constantly flow through our waking consciousness. As we discussed in the last essay and many times previous, it is our challenge as aspirants and disciples to filter out the wiles of the flesh from the distinctly selfless ideas of the Soul and it is the challenge of the average man in the world to set aside the selfish thoughts as in this IS his True Repentance of coming to the reality of the words of the Master and the commandments of God. Truly understanding that God IS NO respecter of persons and Truly recognizing that in James words above is the essential link between the commandments on Love and the practice of this same treatment in equality toward ALL by us, IS a key to our own Truths and we should add here that should one rise to that place where he fulfills the “royal law” and lives by the Golden Rule, that he will instantly KNOW and understand these things.

And so this IS our point; that while the idea of respect from the perspective of favor, of holding one man above another, is not in the Way of God and must not be in the Way of the man who believes himself to be keeping the words of the Master; while the man in the world must not show this respect for any, he must at the same time show the utmost of respect to ALL. Can we understand this idea? Can we see that this second understanding of respect IS Love, that it is an expression of GoodWill which IS Love in Action, that it is the outer sign and symbol of a man’s Love for his neighbor, his brother and the stranger who qualifies as both? There is a reality in our use of this word that must be understood, to show this respect on the first part is of the self, of the world; and it is a word of division while the respect on the second part is of the Soul, it is the reality of Love expressed by the aspirant and the disciple in the world; this respect IS a word of unity. Both sides here are tied to Love; on the one to NOT “have respect to persons“, NOT to divide and separate and see any one over another which is the expression of that Love for one’s neighbor and the Golden Rule that shows every man in the same light as the self who expresses these commandments;  on the other is the very expression of Love which IS an expression of respect; respect to others that allows them to the same freedoms of expression that one allows for himself, to offer the same consideration to ALL men that we expect for ourselves…..this IS Love.

Turning now to the Gospel of Thomas; in the last post we repeated some words from the bible website biblegateway.com to show the Christian reaction to this gospel and its author. Here today we are repeating an excerpt from an introduction to this gospel from The Gnostic Society Library. While the first gave us the doctrinal reasons for NOT accepting this work as it is presented, this second gives us Gnostic reasons for why it should be accepted. The Gnostic Society tells us:

There is a growing consensus among scholars that the Gospel of Thomas – discovered over a half century ago in the Egyptian desert – dates to the very beginnings of the Christian era and may well have taken first form before any of the four traditional canonical Gospels. During the first few decades after its discovery several voices representing established orthodox biases argued that the Gospel of Thomas (abbreviated, GTh) was a late-second or third century Gnostic forgery. Scholars currently involved in Thomas studies now largely reject that view, though such arguments will still be heard from orthodox apologists and are encountered in some of the earlier publications about Thomas.

Today most students would agree that the Thomas Gospel has opened a new perspective on the first voice of the Christian tradition. Recent studies centered on GTh have led to a stark reappraisal of the forces and events forming “orthodoxy” during the second and third centuries. But more importantly, the Gospel of Thomas is awakening interest in a forgotten spiritual legacy of Christian culture. The incipit (or “beginning words”) of Thomas invite each of us “who has ears to hear” to join in a unique quest:

These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke,
and that Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And He said:
“Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death.”

Before we begin with our first sayings from the Gospel of Thomas which we will write with saying numbers as it is presented in our copy but without the verse numbers which is as we do with the other gospels and epistles, let us look a bit at what exactly Gnostic means. First from the two camps, the Gnostics themselves and from the doctrinal church both Catholic and Protestant and then from the secular dictionary.

The Gnostics tell us that Gnosticism is:

“Gnosis” and “Gnosticism” are still rather arcane terms, though in the last two decades they have been increasingly encountered in the vocabulary of contemporary society. The word Gnosis derives from Greek and connotes “knowledge” or the “act of knowing”. On first hearing, it is sometimes confused with another more common term of the same root but opposite sense: agnostic, literally “not knowing”. The Greek language differentiates between rational, propositional knowledge, and a distinct form of knowing obtained by experience or perception. It is this latter knowledge gained from interior comprehension and personal experience that constitutes gnosis. In the first century of the Christian era the term “Gnostic” came to denote a heterodox segment of the diverse new Christian community. Among early followers of Christ it appears there were groups who delineated themselves from the greater household of the Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and his message, but a “special witness” or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this experience or gnosis that set the true follower of Christ apart, so they asserted. Stephan Hoeller explains that these Christians held a “conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life.”

The Holman Bible Dictionary tells us this from a standard Protestant perspective:

(Gnuhss sh shssm) Modern designation for certain religious and philosophical perspectives that existed prior to the establishment of Christianity and for the specific systems of belief, characterized by these ideas, which emerged in the second century and later. The term “gnosticism” is derived from the Greek word gnosis (knowledge) because secret knowledge was so crucial a doctrine in gnosticism. Importance of Gnosticism The significance of gnosticism for students of Christianity has two dimensions: the first is its prominence in the history of the church, and the second is its importance for interpreting certain features of the New Testament. Gnosticism emerged in schools of thought within the church in the early second century and soon established itself as a way of understanding Christianity in all of the church’s principal centers. The church was torn by the heated debates over the issues posed by gnosticism. By the end of the second century many of the Gnostics belonged to separate, alternative churches or belief systems viewed by the church as heretical. Gnosticism was thus a major threat to the early church; and the early church leaders, such as Irenaeus (died about 200), Tertullian (died about 220), and Hippolytus (died about 236), wrote voluminously against it. Many of the features of gnosticism were incorporated into the sect of the Manichees in the third century, and Manichaeism endured as an heretical threat to the church into the fourth century. *

The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that Gnosticism is:

The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis “knowledge”, gnostikos, “good at knowing”), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were “people who knew”, and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know. A more complete and historical definition of Gnosticism would be: 

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

However unsatisfactory this definition may be, the obscurity, multiplicity, and wild confusion of Gnostic systems will hardly allow of another. Many scholars, moreover, would hold that every attempt to give a generic description of Gnostic sects is labour lost. ¹³

We should note here that there is little or no agreement here as to what the movement represents and for this we should of course rely upon the Gnostic presentation while looking at the Protestant and the Catholic as the founded opinions of these religious orders. There are volumes available for research on this subject and it would be our guess that the view of Gnosticism today would be a doctrinal perspective that is but loosely connected to the founding traditions. In mainstream Christianity we see the words of the Master and His apostles as the founding traditions and the works of the Church Fathers as the early beginnings of the doctrine that we see yet today albeit changed somewhat by the Reformation.

Webster’s 1828 version tells us this about the word Gnostic: The Gnostics were a sect of philosophers that arose in the first ages of christianity, who pretended they were the only men who had a true knowledge of the christian religion. They formed for themselves a system of theology, agreeable to the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato, to which they accommodated their interpretations of scripture. They held that all natures, intelligible, intellectual and material, are derived by successive emanations from the infinite fountain of deity. These emanations they called oeons. These doctrines were derived from the oriental philosophy ¹.

Viewing Webster’s definition as leaning toward the doctrinal we can see further the way this religion is received in the secular world and, in all of these defining ideas, we can see a strong sense of self and of each promoting their own interests. We close here today with our first excerpts from the gospel; these are the opening line and the first three sayings attributed to the Master.

The Gospel of Thomas

These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke. And Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.

(1) And he said: “Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death.”

(2) Jesus says: “The one who seeks should not cease seeking until he finds. And when he finds, he will be dismayed.  And when he is dismayed, he will be astonished.  And he will be king over the All.”

(3) Jesus says: “If those who lead you say to you: ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you: ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fishes will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the children of the living Father. But if you do not come to know yourselves, then you exist in poverty, and you are poverty.” ¹⁴ 

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

Aspect of God	Potency	Aspect of Man	In Relation to the Great Invocation	In relation to the Christ
GOD, The Father	Will or Power	Spirit or Life	Center where the Will of God IS KNOWN	Life
Son, The Christ	Love and Wisdom	Soul or Christ Within	Heart of God	Truth
Holy Spirit	Light or Activity	Life Within	Mind of God	Way

Note on the Quote of the Day

This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.

We repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita, which goes well with our theme of the God Within, the Soul, which we see as the Christ Within and while this is good in the Christian world and is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God, we should also see in these words below that it does not matter what these divine ideas are called; that it matters not what we call this Inner Man, that he is the same in ALL, he is the Soul.

Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad-Gita

It is difficult to tell just what verses of the Bhagavad Gita the above is from; whether it is a paraphrase or a combination. It is from the book “The Great Initiates” by Édouard Schuré which was originally published in French in 1889 and perhaps it is in the translation of the verses that they become hard to recognize. However, the sheer beauty of the presentation caught my attention and so I share it with you. The Path to the Kingdom is the same no matter what religion one professes.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!

• ¹ Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
• ¹³ The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org
• ¹⁴ The Gospel of Thomas; Translated by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson; http://gnosis.org/
• *  Holman Bible Dictionary, published by Broadman & Holman, 1991.
• ** The Gnostic Society Library http://gnosis.org/