ON LOVE; PART CDLXXIII
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
GoodWill IS Love in Action
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
The Gospel of Thomas
These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke. And Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.
(96) Jesus [says]: “The kingdom of the Father is like [a] woman. She took a little bit of yeast. [She] hid it in dough (and) made it into huge loaves of bread. Whoever has ears should hear.“
(97) Jesus says: “The kingdom of the [Father] is like a woman who is carrying a [jar] filled with flour. While she was walking on [the] way, very distant (from home), the handle of the jar broke (and) the flour leaked out [on] the path. (But) she did not know (it); she had not noticed a problem. When she reached her house, she put the jar down on the floor (and) found it empty.“
(98) Jesus says: “The kingdom of the Father is like a person who wanted to kill a powerful person. He drew the sword in his house (and) stabbed it into the wall to test whether his hand would be strong (enough). Then he killed the powerful one.“
(99) The disciples said to him: “Your brothers and your mother are standing outside.” He said to them: “Those here, who do the will of my Father, they are my brothers and my mother. They are the ones who will enter the kingdom of my Father.“
(100) They showed Jesus a gold coin and said to him: “Caesar’s people demand taxes from us.” He said to them: “Give Caesar (the things) that are Caesar’s. Give God (the things) that are God’s. And what is mine give me.“
(101) “Whoever does not hate his [father] and his mother as I do will not be able to be a [disciple] of mine. And whoever does [not] love [his father] and his mother as I do will not be able to be a [disciple] of mine. For my mother […], but my true [mother] gave me life.” 14
While the idea of giving and having as these are expressed in the closing saying from John’s Gospel in the last essay is a mysterious one, it can become the backdrop for the 0ne hundredth saying that we are now discussing. This saying is a part of the Master’s apparently vocal prayer near the end of His days with us in the world and, as we have previously surmised, this is likely offered aloud for the benefit of the disciples. Previous to this the Master said many words that showed His intimate relationship with the Father including those most misunderstood words that “I and my father are one” (John 10:30). He also tells us of the Father’s Oneness with the disciple as well as His own and, a few verses further on from our saying yesterday, Jesus tells us of our own inclusion in this Unity. From the last post we read:
“For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them” (John 17:7-10).
Here we see the criteria for this sense of Oneness, that the disciple receives His words which are of course the word of God. And this IS an important part of this experience, that one receives His word which IS NOT just in the hearing and the believing but it IS in the DOING. Here we also see the reality of this idea of possession; there is no real possession but rather a relationship founded in keeping His words; we are His by virtue of keeping His word and in this we are the Father’s as well. The totality of the relationship IS in the DOING and this the Master tells us saying: “as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do” (John 14:31) and as He then tells us in like manner that “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10). This is the reality of the disciple and we should understand here that this reality is one of realization; it is not a gift nor is it magical, it is based purely in one’s focus upon the divine part of Life, one’s focus upon the things of God. We too are included in this dynamic relationship by way of our DOING and we should understand here that we ARE NOT ever separated from Him in reality we ARE ONLY separated in realization, a realization that comes to us in keeping His words and this is of course by degree. And our part in this ALL is clearly stated by the Master in this same prayer that we read above as He tells the Father:
“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:20-23).
This IS our timeless assurance of our own part in this Divine Drama of Life and here the criteria IS the same and IS stated in the reality that the succeeding generations of disciples are those who “shall believe on me through their word“, through the writings and the teachings of the Eleven and their successors. We must however understand the depth of this criteria as it IS Truly meant to be understood; that in the receiving and in the believing on IS the DOING. It IS in the DOING that we overcome, it IS in the DOING that we are accounted worthy and it IS in the DOING that we can “be made perfect in one” and that we can see ourselves as divine. The Master’s words in John’s Gospel are unlike those of the synoptics as John gives us the more spiritual understanding of the Master and it is unfortunate that at the same time he uses words that are easily misrepresented by doctrines that DO NOT Truly see their depth, doctrines that see believing as that Earthly affirmation based in the carnal minds of men rather than in the fullness of keeping His word which is eloquently stated by Vincent’s saying that this believing on and believing in IS: to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life.4
It IS in this context that we should see the idea that the Apostle Thomas IS presenting in the Master’s words; this is the reality of these words from our subject saying from Thomas’ Gospel that “and he-who-mine is, give-to-me(him)“. Here we should try to see the greater reality of bringing to Him ALL that can realize the Truth as he has taken up such responsibility. We must ever try to understand that the dynamic of our own relationship with the Christ is through the Christ Within; it is through the agency of the Soul’s expression of his own Love and Power that we are keeping His words and that we can be seen as believing on Him. This IS of course the hidden reality, hidden in parable and in proverb and hidden as well in plain sight and this IS, as the Apostle Paul tells us, “the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints“; this IS the reality of “Christ in you, the hope of glory“. There should be no pretense here, the saint IS the disciple, the man accounted worthy, and it IS to these that the mysteries are revealed; it is these “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles” (Colossians 1:26-27). It IS these who are His, it IS these who walk and work in solidarity with His words and His example and it IS these whom He wants in this saying. He does not want the things of the world nor does He want what is ordinarily offered to God by man in the world; He want disciples and this is the reality of His instructions in the Great Commission so called. In these most misunderstood words He calls on those who ARE His to make disciples of ALL men “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).
In the synoptic gospels this idea is presented differently and while the story is fuller this realization that we see here is further hidden in the idea of giving “unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). This difference is likely found in the audience of the saying; in the synoptics it is the unknown Jew, the disciple of the Pharisees and the Herodians, spy according to Luke, who asks and the purported reason is that they would trick the Master into saying something against the Romans; in Thomas this question is asked by His disciples who deserve and get the deeper understanding.
The next saying, the one hundred first, is a variation upon those words that define the disciple in Luke’s Gospel and the similar but different presentation that is offered by Matthew. Here in Thomas there seems an attempt to clarify the idea of hate presented earlier in saying fifty five and by Luke and, in this clarification, perhaps give that same understanding that we get from Matthew; we do not imply here that Thomas is changing the Master’s words but that he is offering us the ideas that he recollects and understands regarding this subject of discipleship. As we use the combined ideas of Luke and Matthew to understand this saying and the use of the word hate, Thomas injects these same ideas into this single saying. The end part of this saying IS unclear as noted by the brackets above and there are some ideas offered by the translators to fill in blanks caused by missing sections of the text in the original manuscript. The various translations of this saying are:
- <Jesus said:> “He who does not hate his father and his mother like me cannot be a [disciple] to me. And he who does [not] love [his father] and his mother like me cannot be a [disciple] to me. For my mother [ . . . ], but [my] true [mother] gave me life” (Blatz).
- <Jesus said>, “Those who do not hate their [father] and their mother as I do cannot be [disciples] of me. And those who [do not] love their [father and] their mother as I do cannot be [disciples of] me. For my mother [. . .] But my true [mother] gave me life” (Layton).
- “He who has not, like me, detested his father and his mother cannot be my disciple; and he who has loved h[is father a]nd his mother as much as he loves me cannot be my disciple. My mother, indeed, has [. . .] because in truth she gave me life” (Doresse).
- “Whoever does not hate his [father] and his mother as I do cannot become a [disciple] to me. And whoever does [not] love his [father and] his mother as I do cannot become a [disciple to] me. For my mother […], but [my] true [mother] gave me life” (Lambdin).
- “Whoever does not hate his [father] and his mother as I do will not be able to be a [disciple] of mine. And whoever does [not] love [his father] and his mother as I do will not be able to be a [disciple] of mine. For my mother […], but my true [mother] gave me life” (Patterson and Robinson).
- “Whoever does not hate [father] and mother as I do cannot be my [disciple], and whoever does [not] love [father and] mother as I do cannot be my [disciple]. For my mother […], but my true [mother] gave me life” (Patterson and Meyer).
- “Whoever-hates-his-[father] not, and-his-mother, in-my-way, he-can-become-[disciple] to-me not; and whoever-loves-his-father not, and-his-mother, in-my-way, he-can-become-[disciple to]-me not; > (for) my-mother, (—), she-[begot-my-body(?)] [forth]; [my-mother], hwvr, true, she-gave to-me The-Life” (Interlinear Version; original).
The later Interlinear Version agrees with this except they do not render the bracketed words after the (—) at all but give some notes as the end; we should note here as well that the (—) represents an unknown word that is not rendered by any. Looking at what these translators say we could agree with the basic conclusion that there is a comparison here of His birth mother versus the Truth of Life as His True mother and this can be seen similar to our comments on the ninety ninth saying where we read about His birth mother coming and His telling that it is those of divine expression who are His True mother. We will pursue this as we go. The available commentary on this saying includes:
- Marvin Meyer writes: “‘my true [mother]’: perhaps the holy spirit, who may be described as the mother of Jesus in such texts as the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of the Hebrews, and the Gospel of Philip. Thus the conundrum presented in the saying (hate parents and love parents) is resolved by positing two orders of family and two mothers of Jesus.” (The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, p. 105).
- Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman write: “The substance of this saying has already been provided in Saying 56 [55]. Here, however, Jesus explicitly states that he himself hates his (earthly) father and mother (see Saying 96). The repeated phrase, ‘cannot be my disciple,’ comes, like most of the saying, from Luke 14:26. What he said about his mother (who gave him life?) cannot be recovered from the broken text. Perhaps he said, as in the Gospel of the Hebrews, that his mother was the Holy Spirit. The statement about loving father and mother may refer to loving the Father and the Holy Spirit. Verbally it is quite close to Matthew 10:37: ‘He who loves father or mother more than me cannot be my disciple.’ The sense is quite different, however. On ‘father and mother’ see Saying 102 [105].” (The Secret Sayings of Jesus, p. 189-190).
- Funk and Hoover write: “Verse 1 of this saying, by itself, could have been voted pink, as a similar saying was in Luke 14:26. But here the first saying is joined by its opposite (v. 2), which makes it a paradox. One cannot both hate and love parents at the same time. The rest of the saying in Thomas is fragmentary, but enough remains to suggest that Thomas was making a distinction between two different kinds of mothers and fathers. The Fellows had to conclude that Thomas has revised an authentic tradition and developed it in some new but unknown direction.” (The Five Gospels, p. 527).
- J. D. Crossan writes: “In all cases where Thomas has two or more versions of a synoptic aphorism, one is usually more gnostic than the other. So also here. Gos. Thom. 101 ‘is a doublet of Saying 55. That part of its text which is parallel to the Lukan account of hating is almost identical with Saying 55. Its additional material seems clearly to be a more developed gnostic interpretation of the saying: hat this world, love the spiritual’ (Sieber: 121). For my present purpose, it is less important to discuss this gnosticizing tradition of the triple-stich aphoristic compound than to note that, now the cross saying has completely disappeared inside the family one, save for the common Coptic term behind ‘in My way’ (55) and ‘as I do’ (101). But Gos. Thom. 101 still retained the triple-stich format of the aphoristic compound. He even retained the double-stich parallelism of Aphorism 113 [Mt 10:37 // Lk 14:26], but the second stich is now in antithetical (hate/love) parallelism rather than in the original synonymous parallelism (hate/hate). Gos. Thom. 101 is a gnosticized redaction of Gos. Thom. 55.” (In Fragments, p. 136).
We have no help here in these comments and the idea of the Holy Spirit, while True in many ways, is based in the doctrinal understanding of this Aspect of God and makes little sense in this regard from our perspective. The fifty fifth saying which we read as “Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple of mine. And whoever does not hate his brothers and his sisters (and) will not take up his cross as I do, will not be worthy of me“, was noted by Grant and Freedman as being a combination of the verses from Matthew and from Luke which we repeat here for clarity:
- “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37-38).
- “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple…..So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27, 33).
This relationship was considered because the fifty fifth saying used both ideas together, being His disciple and being worthy of Him, but here in this saying it is ignored or is not seen as pertinent by the commentators. We however see the relevance in the way that the Master addresses Love and hate in this respect; that He both Loves and hates His mother and His father and perhaps the key words in this one hundred first saying is not in this Love and hate but in the framing of this to say “as I do“. While the Master does not specifically say how it is that He Loves them and hates them, these ideas can be taken from the totality of His teaching and we can point here to the greater reality of the ninety ninth saying for example. There we find the great line of demarcation between the carnal lives of men and the spiritual; we find the carnal lives are essentially the lives of the thinking and feeling form in the world while the spiritual lives are those of the man who keeps His words; there we find the Master’s rejection of His mother and His brethren from the perspective that this relationship IS of the world and while His mother and His brethren may be disciplic, it is on that basis that He would have relationship with them and not on the basis of their Earthly relationships. As we have said in past essays, this family relationship and sense of Love is one of the more difficult ideas to understand and the Master here in this saying from Thomas makes yet another attempt to show us a reality that most do not want to see nor to break as this IS one of the first and strongest of Human bonds.
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 are using yet another mantram as our new Quote of the Day and this is again one that we have posted many times. Here in the form of an affirmation we should be able to understand the intent which IS to make these realities as part of our everyday thinking and our everyday understanding of our nature. Here again, as we see in our words above on the Mantram of Unification, we have the same dynamics: Love, service and healing. Here however the motivation IS more upon the idea of service and when we can see that this service is offered in Love and that this service IS one of healing we can Truly understand this affirmation.
Affirmation of the Disciple
I am a point of light within a greater Light.
I am a strand of loving energy within the stream of Love divine.
I am a point of sacrificial Fire, focussed within the fiery Will of God.
And thus I stand
I am a way by which men may achieve.
I am a source of strength, enabling them to stand.
I am a beam of light, shining upon their way.
And thus I stand.
And standing thus, revolve
And tread this way the ways of men,
And know the ways of God.
And thus I stand.
From previous posts we repeat that today’s Quote of the Day is called the Affirmation of the Disciple and is spoken from the perspective of the Soul and not from that of the man in form. It is the Soul that we are in this life on Earth, housed in this ‘temple’ of flesh and it is the Light of the Soul that must flow through this ‘temple’ in order that we may say with the Christ “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33) which is our goal and our destiny. Speaking then as the Soul we affirm our reality and true existence in God and in His Three Aspects of Light and Love and His Will. As this Light and Love and Will flow through our conscious personalities and forms we, as disciples, take on the nature of the second stanza being able to offer to the world a better way through our service and our Love for all, encouragement to righteousness through our strength of purpose, and the Light which shines in accordance with the Master’s instructions to “Let your light so shine before men” (Matthew 5:16) and illuminates the Path. Finally we realize that we are standing in this world and walking as men but, as conscious Souls in form, we know the way and the ways of God and are able to say with the Christ that “I am not of this world” (John 8:23).
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 14 The Gospel of Thomas; Translated by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson; http://gnosis.org/
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
