Monthly Archives: August 2013

ON LOVE; PART CCCXLVIII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

Our purpose in looking at the Gospel of Thomas is one of both curiosity as to why it appears to have always been considered heretical as well as why many current religious leaders continue to speak against it based upon the less conventional sayings attributed to the Master. Our view is ever that the perception of the Master’s word by religious leaders down through the centuries has been lacking and perhaps these ideas from Thomas are more clearly stated than those of the other gospel writers whom we KNOW and of whose writings we have ever been discovering more and more depth. These ideas however will not consume our essays as we will continue to explore the words of the Master in topics as they come to us in our daily writing and, for sure, we will be comparing Thomas words to those of the other writers in both the gospels and the epistles. Before we begin here however we should clean up some older business that we have been putting aside; first, is our sayings above which we never finished and second is the idea of respect as we find it in those sayings that tells us clearly “that God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34) and which we must extend to our understanding of Love as the Master teaches us.

In our sayings above we have discussed the idea of the nature of the True struggle which is of the high consciousness of the Soul and not of the carnal mind although it IS through the carnal mind that the Life of the man in form must work. Here however is a reminder to us who count ourselves as aspirants and disciples of some degree that we must not look at the struggles of Life from a carnal perspective but from the perspective of the higher Light of the Soul and for the purpose of reframing the struggle away from those carnal thoughts, attitudes and actions which can be seen as the cause of the struggle. Again here we have thoughts that overlap themselves and this is the point of the apostle’s saying; it is in the carnal mind that we find the strong holds and the imaginations and the high ideas generated in the illusion and the glamour of Life in the world. These are a man’s thoughts of his self and his self in the world; thoughts, attitudes and actions that are intended to promote the self in most every way. And Paul tells us just how to do this, to take every thought that comes through the carnal mind and measure its source according to the words of the Apostle James’ Wisdom from above and Paul’s own fruit of the spirit. To hold every thought, attitude and action captive until its source is ascertained and then to dispose of those that are carnal, that are from the world of the personality of man and that are self-serving and self absorbed. Thoughts, attitudes and actions which would find their place in that list of what IS NOT the fruit of the Spirit and what IS NOT Wisdom from above which we KNOW to be those things of and for the self in the world. What are our strongholds is a very personal thing and for each man they are different but they are likely tied to one’s imaginations and to the high thoughts of the self and a man’s actions are largely based in these things. Into the one mind that we have and use in this Life in form comes a steady stream of thoughts of and for one’s Life in the world which are countered in the Life of the aspirant and the disciple by those thoughts from above, from the Soul, which IS the Wisdom from above and the fruit of the Spirit and which are for us the ONLY thoughts, attitudes and action upon which we should act. Here we see the ultimate reality of the apostle’s saying that “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2). In this we find our instruction, broadly stated, that is necessary to reach that goal of being Transformed while in these words to the Corinthians above we have the more practical instruction of HOW to do this and in which we see the struggle with duality as it presents itself to the man who has reached this point in his spiritual endeavor.

This last part is where we had stopped and this because this is a difficult saying to discern. From its placement in this text after these thoughts of self-control which we find in the idea of “bringing into captivity every thought“, we should have some idea of what this means. The apostle’s words “And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled” appear to be a continuation of the prior thought on taking thoughts captive and it is from this perspective that we begin. From the understanding that the apostle IS speaking as the representative of God, the apostle and the disciple of the God of Love and the God that IS Love as the Apostle John tells us, we CAN NOT see a place for this idea of revenge which is alternately rendered as to avenge, to punish and to take vengeance. Two translations of note go so far as to render this as:

• New Living Translation: “And we will punish those who remained disobedient after the rest of you became loyal and obedient.“
• New International Reader’s Version: “Until you have obeyed completely, I will be ready to punish you every time you don’t obey.“

Can we logically see these thoughts from this same apostle who tells us that “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19) and can we not see these ideas of revenge and of punishment as contrary to the very nature of the Golden Rule which makes no allowances for one’s own thoughts but seeks to put each man into the other’s shoes as it says: “as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31) or as this is alternately worded by Matthew who tells us that the Master says: “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). And yet we are confused here, not KNOWING if we are reading other’s thought rightly as we read these translations and commentary such as John Gill’s who says: Not with the temporal sword, as the civil magistrate, but with the spiritual one; meaning either censures and excommunication, which a faithful minister of the Gospel, with the suffrage of the church, has at hand, and a power to make use of, for the reclaiming of disobedient persons; or rather that extraordinary power which was peculiar to the apostles, of inflicting punishments on delinquents, such as what was exercised by Peter upon Ananias and Sapphira, by the Apostle Paul on Elymas the sorcerer, the incestuous person, and Hymenaeus and Philetus, and which still continued with him; it was ready at hand, he could exercise it whenever he pleased, he only waited a proper time ⁸. We can surely see Mr. Gills perspective here and we should understand that his references to the apostles do not qualify in this respect since those to whom the Paul speaks ARE NOT apostles and because the actions here of Peter and of Paul are grossly misunderstood, a subject that we will touch upon in a future essay.

The lexicon tells us that  this Greek word ekdikeo which is rendered as revenge means: to vindicate one’s right, do one justice to protect, defend, one person from another; to avenge a thing to punish a person for a thing ², while Strong’s tells us that it means: to avenge, take revenge; to grant justice, get justice ³. We should note here that these ideas are doctrinal and based in the usage that is found in the New Testament as we read in Vine’s: “from,” dike, “justice,” i.e., that which proceeds from justice, means (a) “to vindicate a person’s right,” (b) “to avenge a thing.” With the meaning (a), it is used in the parable of the unjust judge, Luke 18:3,5, of the “vindication” of the rights of the widow; with the meaning (b) it is used in Rev. 6:10; 19:2, of the act of God in “avenging” the blood of the saints; in 2 Cor. 10:6, of the Apostle’s readiness to use his apostolic authority in punishing disobedience on the part of his readers; here the RV substitutes “avenge” for the AV, “revenge;” in Rom. 12:19 of “avenging” oneself, against which the believer is warned ⁶.

Can we see the difficulty in understanding these ideas and this whether one is speaking about Paul himself as the avenger or speaking of us ALL which is the more likely. Looking then at the preceding thought which tells us to take captive every thought we should get the sense that there are thoughts coming into our minds that are contrary to the Master’s teachings and that the captivity IS to bring them into “the obedience of Christ“. Here again this is a very personal thing and for the man who is enduring the duality of being an aspirant and even a disciple who has not yet ‘overcome’ there is likely a sense of remorse, a sense of continued Repentance, or failure at such that can overcome a man and cause him harm in his spiritual pursuits. Can we see here that the apostles cautioning us that should we not be able to take captive these thoughts, that we should not inflict greater harm upon ourselves but rather wait until we are complete, completely obedient before we address the wrongs we may have done in not successfully capturing a thought, an attitude or an action. Can we see the idea of ‘stay the course’ and don’t give up? And can we see the example given by the Master in the parable that uses this same word ekdikeo:

“And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;  Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying , Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said , Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? ” (Luke 18:1-8).

This is the whole of the parable and we should understand here that this IS a parable, a story that contains a message of spiritual importance and here that message is not the story from the perspective of the king that we are concerned with nor are we concerned about the resultant teaching regarding the idea that God will “avenge his own elect“; we are concerned here with the original premise and how that works out in the story, the moral if you will as regards the widow. It is her persistence that gets her the desired result and it is this that fulfills the premise that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint” and it is this that we should apply to our verse above from 2 Corinthians; that we should persevere, stay the course and faint not. Speaking about abundant grace, the apostle tells us this in a previous chapter which can help us to understand this reality of faint not; he says: “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish , yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Here we have the step by step process that we take to our subject verse where our disobedience should not be our point of concentration but it is the obedience that we must ever pursue.

We went further here than we had anticipated and will put off our discussion on our ideas on respect as we noted above until the next post. Here today we conclude with some words from one of the premier online bible websites; doctrinally based to be sure, it may give us some added insight at to why the Gospel of Thomas is not accepted and has never been accepted as a valid work by an apostle of the Lord. From biblegateway.com on The Gospel of Thomas we read:

The Gospel of Thomas is so named because of its opening line: “These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down” (Blatz’s translation). (The true identity of the author is the subject of scholarly debate.) The Gospel of Thomas was discovered among a cache of other texts near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. Scholars generally place its origin sometime between the 1st and late 2nd centuries.

The Gospel of Thomas is considered to be an example of gnostic literature, a body of religious writing characterized by a rejection of the flesh and the material world in favor of a focus on the spirit. Although gnosticism’s emphasis on the spiritual faintly echoes Christianity’s condemnation of worldliness and carnal living, gnosticism’s rejection of the physical world goes far beyond Christianity’s teachings.

So what is in the Gospel of Thomas? Thomas is comprised of 114 “sayings of Jesus,” some of which are similar to the sayings recorded in the canonical Gospels and some of which are not. Unlike the canonical Gospel accounts, there’s no overarching narrative to the text, which makes its designation as a “gospel” problematic. As N.T. Wright says in his review of the book The Five Gospels:

[The Gospel of Thomas and other gnostic gospels claim to be] proclamations about Jesus, of the same sort as the four better-known “gospels,” despite the fact that they do not narrate the story of Jesus, do not (for the most part) proclaim him as Messiah, do not tell of his death and resurrection—do not, in fact, do the very things which seem, from the Pauline evidence, to be what the earliest Christians regarded as “gospel.”

The authors comments on his personal view tell us:

I read the Gospel of Thomas while preparing this blog post, and to be honest, I found it somewhat boring and unimpressive. Much of what’s said is flat-out better communicated in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and the majority of that which isn’t repetition is confusing and contrary to the Jesus we see in the canonical Gospels. Beyond stylistic issues, a host of theological inconsistencies makes it obvious that the early Christian church was wise to not include it in the Biblical canon.

At this point, it seems fair to ask: will reading the Gospel of Thomas damage or destroy your faith? No—if anything, it strengthened mine, by highlighting the consistency of the canonical Gospel accounts. Christians can take it as further proof that Jesus did live and that many people were actively working to co-opt his message. We should be deeply appreciative of the work the early Church did in making sure the Bible passed down to us did not include everything that anyone claiming to be a Christian wrote. The writer of the Gospel of Thomas exhibits a deep awareness of the oral and written culture of early Christianity. But in the end, it’s an attempt to make Jesus into a different kind of savior that He was.

We can see from these comments that a large part of the heretical classification is found in the presumed Gnostic nature of the writings and that the teaching is objected to because it does not conform to the doctrinal teachings of the church. Here of course is the reason for our intrigue.

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!

• ² New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³ Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ⁶ Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1996
• ⁸ Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com