Prologue
Several
years ago one of my daughters sent me a book by Marcus J. Borg entitled,
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
It was being used on a chapter by chapter basis as a Lenten study guide
by her church. Since they had just begun
to discuss the book, she thought I might like to offer my thoughts on each
chapter of it also in order to help her assimilate the material. [1] It turned out to be an eye-opener for me as
well. So I then resolved, in a more
leisurely fashion, to put some of my own thoughts on paper about this
extraordinary man, Jesus of Nazareth. As
is my wont before starting to write about any subject, I began to do background reading on what others had to say
about Jesus in order to put Dr. Borg's rather unconventional views into
perspective
The first book I turned to was from my own library, one
that I had also received several years earlier from one of my children, who I
suspect was trying to steer my penchant for including Eastern religious beliefs
in my previous essays back into the Christian mainstream. This one, which I had never read, was
entitled, The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey. Although similar to the title of Dr. Borg's
book, he comes at the subject from an entirely different viewpoint. Unlike Dr. Borg, a Jesus scholar who has his doctorate degree in New Testament
from
Next I checked out a book from our local library that was
co-authored by Marcus Borg and N. Thomas Wright, Dean of Litchfield Cathedral
in
His thesis, in a nutshell, is that it matters little
about who the historical Jesus was (who, he believes, was probably born in
Dr. Borg makes a similar point in the concluding
sentence of his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, when he states:
"for ultimately, Jesus is not simply a figure of the past, but a figure of
the present: Meeting that Jesus - the living Jesus who comes to us even now -
will be like meeting Jesus again for the first time."[3]
Still,
I was curious to know more about the historical Jesus and what we could learn
about him from those who had studied in-depth what it was like to be a Jew in
Palestine 2,000 years ago. So I
purchased three VCR tapes comprising a series of programs hosted by
"Frontline" on PBS entitled, The Lives of Jesus (Episode 1 - Jesus the Jew; Episode 2 -
Jesus the Rebel; and Episode 3 - the Hidden Jesus). One of the people featured
in that series was the historian, Paula Fredriksen,
who not only had an in-depth knowledge of the history of the area where Jesus
was born, raised, taught and died 2,000 years ago but had also written a recent
book about him, which I then purchased to supplement the material included in
the TV series.[4]
An excerpt from the introduction to her second
edition will give you a flavor of her approach to what the preoccupations of
Jews were in
"Ancient people in general, ancient Jews in
particular, lived in a world radically different from our own, a world where
leprosy and death defiled, where ashes and water made clean, and where one drew
near the altar of God with purifications, blood offerings and awe. . . . . I
incline now to see the message of biblical redemption as the fundamental factor
shaping Jesus' mission and his supporters' response to him. Both he and they
exist as points along an arc that stretches roughly from the Maccabees [168-37 bc] to the Mishna [circa 200 ad], from the prophesies of Daniel
through the letters of Paul, from the later books of the classical prophets in
the Jewish cannon (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) to the Book of Revelation, which
concludes the New Testament. It is the
arc of a biblical perspective on God and history that scholars have labeled
apocalyptic eschatology; the belief that God is good, that he will not
countenance evil indefinitely, that in the End he will act to restore and
redeem. This is what binds Jesus to his
predecessors (like the Baptizer), his supporters, and his later apostles (like
Paul). No sketch of the economic
conditions of
This perspective from a well-known
historian that what matters most in writing about Jesus is what people before
and after him believed about God and redemption expanded my thinking about the
scope of this essay. I then decided I
should include beliefs about God, the controversy over whether Jesus was God
incarnate or only an exceptional man, and the parousia
(i.e., Christ's second coming) in addition to the circumstances surrounding his
birth, early life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection. But viewing these tapes about Jesus and
reading more about what modern scholars have learned about him from a critical
analysis of the Gospel accounts and recently discovered other documents
required another reassessment of the scope of this essay. There were two major finds of old documents
beginning around the middle of the twentieth century that set biblical scholars
and academicians back on their heels regarding their previous assumptions and
conjectures about the history of the pre-Christian era and the written material
that was circulated among Christian groups in the years following Jesus' death
and resurrection.
The first major discovery of old documents was found in
1945 by an Arab peasant and his brother in
"Why were these texts buried and why have they
remained virtually unknown for nearly 2,000 years? Their suppression as banned documents, and
their burial on the cliff at Nag Hammadi, it turns out, were both part of a
struggle critical for the formation of early Christianity."[8] It also turns out that many of these early
documents were written or transcribed by early (mostly Jewish) Christians known
as Gnostics. What they revealed was an
interpretation of the teachings of Jesus that were often at variance with those
documents being circulated by the followers of Peter, Paul and others that came
to be part of the canon adopted by members of the "Orthodox" branch
of the Christian church. All writings
circulated by the Gnostic groups in
The
second major discovery of old documents was made in 1947 by a young Bedouin
shepherd in a limestone cave carved out of a cliff along the wadis that descend through the Judean wilderness near the
Northwest bank of the Dead Sea. Between
1951 and 1956 ten more such caves containing documents were discovered, all of
which came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The struggle to let scholars and other interested parties obtain
photocopies of the many Hebrew and a few Aramaic documents and shreds of
documents was a protracted one. Many of
the documents were incomplete and thousands of fragments were found along with
those that were found intact. In
addition a number of documents were deliberately shredded by their Arab
discoverers and sold piecemeal to the highest bidders. All told it is estimated that the number of
fragments from the eleven caves totaled more than 100,000.
It
took a number of years even after photocopies were made available to establish
which fragments went with which manuscripts and then to sort them in the proper
sequence in order to recover the original text. The problem of publication was
further impeded by a change in legal control when "all the scroll
fragments housed in the Palestine Archaeological Museum came under the control
of the Israel Department of Antiquities"[10] following
the occupation of East Jerusalem by the Israelis after the Six Day War in
1967. Finally, and certainly not least,
the publication of the scrolls was impeded by what one scholar called "the
academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century"[11] ":Lack of organization and [an]
unfortunate choice of collaborators . . ,[the secrecy rule that restricted
access to unpublished texts and many other academic shortcomings, finally led
to the termination by the Israelis in 1990 of] the thirty-seven-year-old and
ultimately disastrous reign of the international team."[12]
However,
it didn't take long after the original discovery of the first scrolls to
determine that the religious community involved in secreting the documents was
the ascetic Jewish sect of the Essenes.[13] "The
first
Several other documents
discovered previously to those at
"There
is evidence which indicates that, about 70 BC or soon thereafter, an Essene
prophet known as the Teacher of Righteousness had been put to death by the
Jewish authorities because of doctrinal, ritualistic and organizational
heterodoxy; that, in due course, his followers declared that he was God
himself, appearing as a man in Jerusalem, and that his death was an atoning
sacrifice for the elect; that he arose from the grave and returned to heaven;
and that he would send a representative in a few years who would be precisely
the kind of Messiah that Jesus at first proclaimed himself to be. It is [this author's] belief that Jesus had
for some years been a full-fledged member of the Order; and that, wholly
persuaded that he was himself the Messiah expected by the Community, he left it
and preached the Gospel to the public; and that finally, in a revised concept
of his own mission, he declared himself to be the atoning Christ, re-enacted
the role and the passion of the slain Teacher, and proclaimed that in his
eschatological role he would reappear as the last judge and the all-powerful
Son of Man."[15]
Even a
better case can be made that Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist, was an Essene. "Many thoughtful students have in the
past been convinced that both John and Jesus had been Essenes; and many more
think so now. In fact, the evidence
concerning the former seems in some respects even more conclusive. He proclaimed the imminent apocalyptic
kingdom; he inducted his converts by baptismal ritual for the remission of sins; and he denounced
his generation as one of vipers upon whom the vials of heavenly wrath would
shortly be poured forth. He declared
that the wicked would soon be consigned to the unquenchable flames; [and like
the Essene Community] that every one should share his food and clothing with
those less well supplied; and that equality, justice and pacifism must
prevail."[16]
There
are also a number of similarities between some of the early Jewish-Christian
believers and the Essenes. After the
destruction of the
Toward
the close of the Asmonean Jonathan's reign (143 BC)
the historian, Josephus, wrote that "At this time there were three sects
among the Jews, who had different opinions concerning human actions; the one
was called the sect of the Pharisees, another the sect of the Sadducees, and
the other the sect of the Essens."[20] During the entire period of Hellenic [Greek]
domination of Egypt, the Middle and Near East, the Seleucids, with their
capital at Antioch in Syria, and the Ptolemys, with
their capital at Alexandria in Egypt, beginning with their young
"world" conqueror, Alexander the Great, actively sought to
"Hellenize" all the areas under their control. This involved not only their language, arts
and architecture but also their Greek philosophy and culture.. Each of the three major sects of Judaism
absorbed some of these Greek beliefs and philosophy in addition to their
traditional Judaic heritage. "The
noble, wealthy, and successful Jews ...[the Sadducees] had gradually absorbed the Epicurean
philosophy and had continued to Hellenize throughout the Maccabean
War.....The Pharisees based themselves upon the Yahweh prophets; effected an
intricate elaboration of the Law; and drank of Zoroastrian metaphysics and
Stoic philosophy." [21] Very
different though "were the Essenes; for, while purporting to accept both
the Law and the prophets, they proceeded to create a revised law and other
prophets and revelations of their own.
They were neither rich nor powerful, like the Sadducees; nor were they
popular or influential among the masses, like the Pharisees. Instead, they were nicknamed the Holy Ones, because,
throughout all the phases of their evolution, they continued as the repository
of dedicated faith."[22] Their philosophy, like that of the Pharisees,
contained elements derived from Persian
Zoroastrianism but it also contained many elements similar to, if not
identical, to the Greek Pythagoreans.
"Pythagoras
was the first in the western world who devised a complete synthesis
incorporating the central religious elements of several dominant cultures.
Before 540 [BC], he had traveled over the then-known world in his quest for
esoteric knowledge: from Egypt, he derived the concept of the sacrificial
savior-god; from Persia, the Zoroastrian doctrines of dualism and eschatology;
from India, the tenets of incarnation, celibacy, communism, and holy poverty; and
from the Chaldeans his astronomical theories. He also absorbed other elements from the
various mystic-cults, particularly the Orphic.
He then reconstituted all this into a harmonious system, the like of
which had never before been seen."[23]
Perhaps
the greatest difference, therefore, between the "Pious" Pharisees and
the "Holy" Essenes in the years following their withdrawal to
·
Both required long novitiates (from three to five
years) as prerequisites for full membership.
·
Both exacted the most tremendous oaths enjoining
irrevocable secrecy.
·
Both were esoteric orders.
·
Both had their own sacred and exclusive
revelations and their own supreme prophets.
·
Both established degrees or classes of
membership.
·
Both practiced the strictest community of goods.
·
Both were self-supporting, independent communal organizations.
·
Both require each candidate for membership to
sell all his possessions and place the proceeds in escrow with the curator of
the Order during his probationary period.
·
In both, memberships dined at communal tables,
where meals were eucharistic ceremonials.
·
Both required that all participants wear white,
linen robes at these rituals.
·
Both despised earthly riches and condemned all
personal ownership of property.
·
Both enjoined a total love for, and
interdependence upon, their brethren, but utter rejection of all others.
·
Both had affiliated orders of Hearers, or
secondary members, who accepted their beliefs as a theory, but did not live in
communes or practice their celibate-communal discipline.
·
Both condemned sex-desire and repudiated
marriage.
·
Both taught dualism, predestination, and human
depravity.
·
Both repudiated every form of animal sacrifice.
·
Both practiced the most extreme personal
frugality.
·
Both were supreme pacifists, and died under
torture rather than offer resistance to
force or violence.
·
Both considered themselves the elect of the
Supreme God.
·
Both realized an intense belief and conviction in
a personal and happy immortality and looked forward to death with anticipation.
·
Both taught that man's soul, which is immortal,
is placed in this life in a corruptible body, as in a prison; a theory taught
also by the Platonists and in the Pauline literature.
·
Both worshipped a sacrificed god-man.
·
Both visited an unimaginably fierce condemnation
upon apostates.
·
Both disciplined members for minor violations of
cultic rules and excommunicated them for major offenses.
·
Both emphasized a dedication and separation which
rendered them, as it were, a nation apart.
All these similarities, and
the many more that were listed by Dr. Larson, "confirm the statement of
Josephus that the Essenes (in their maturity) lived a Pythagorean life."[25] It also explains why both Jesus and John the
Baptist (who, as young men at least, were probably Essenes) were at odds with
the teachings and practices of both the orthodox Pharisees and the Hellenizing Sadducees. It further explains why Jesus in the gospel
accounts would speak to the people (i.e.,the
uninitiated) in parables but explain their real meaning to his disciples in
private. ("He who has ears to hear,
let him hear.") Likewise, Marcus
Borg titles one of the chapters in his book: "Jesus - Teacher of
Alternative Wisdom"[26]
In
addition to the differences in philosophy between the various Jewish sects
prior to and during the earthly life of Jesus there were major differences in philosophy in the
post-Easter period between Gnostic Christians and those Christian groups
established by Paul and many of the disciples that received the Holy Spirit on
the day of Pentecost. By the time of Emperor Constantine's conversion to
Christianity in the fourth century AD "possession of books denounced as
heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and
destroyed. . . . But those who wrote and circulated these texts did not regard
themselves as heretics. Most of the
writings use Christian terminology, unmistakably related to a Jewish
heritage. Many claim to offer traditions
about Jesus that are secret, hidden from 'the many' who constitute what, in the
second century, came to be called the 'catholic church.' These Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as
'knowledge'. . . . . But gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge. . . As the gnostics
use the term, we could translate it as 'insight', for gnosis involves an
intuitive process of knowing oneself. . . Yet to know oneself, at the deepest
level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis."[27] As a gnostic
teacher named Monoimus puts it:
"Abandon the search for
God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the
starting point. Learn who it is within
you who makes everything his own and says, 'My God, my mind, my thought, my
soul, my body.' Learn the sources of
sorrow, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate these matters you
will find him in yourself."[28]
Adherents
of Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism would have no difficulty in
accepting this gnostic teaching. Nor would nineteenth
century Transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson;
nor would twentieth century Christian existentialists like Paul Tillich and explorers of the unconscious mind like Carl
Gustav Jung; nor would practitioners of New Age consciousness-raising programs
such as "transcendental meditation" and "A Course in
Miracles"[29]
.
With
all these additional documents now available from the Dead Sea Scrolls and from
the fifty-two texts discovered at Nag Hammadi it became apparent that it would
not be possible to combine all these conflicting philosophies in an essay that
presented only a single point of view.
Therefore, I decided instead to present the various topics about God,
the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus and the parousia
(the second coming) from several perspectives: (1) the familiar or
"orthodox" viewpoint based on a literal reading of scriptures; (2)
the more recent view of scholars who have taken into account both the Dead Sea
scroll documents and those found at Nag Hammadi; and (3) the view
obtained from material variously styled as "wisdom", the mysteries, and from those claiming to be able
to read the so-called akashic records.
Anyone
who has read my previous essays will understand my predilection for looking at
things in groups of three.[30] While it is true there is only one ultimate
reality, it manifests itself in triads: Body-Mind-Spirit; World-Man-God; subconsciousness-ego consciousness-superconsciousness;
matter-light-energy; and so on. An
analogy of trinities connected with the present essay can be seen in the three
predominant Jewish sects at the time of Jesus' birth: Sadducees, Pharisees and
Essenes. As shown above, these groups
respectively adopted some of the Greek philosophies of the Epicurians,
the Stoics and the Pythagorians.[31]
The
founder of Epicurianism was Epicurus (341-270 bc) who
"taught that there were only natural causes. Any belief in supernaturalism he regarded as
a superstition which only a weak intellect could possibly entertain. . . . . With Epicurus man/s chief end is the
attainment of pleasure."[32] Similarly, the Sadducees were the noble,
wealthy, the merchants, and the worldly.
Good and evil were the results of man's own actions. Thus they didn't
believe in fate. Neither did they believe in an afterlife or in the resurrection
of the dead. The Stoics, on the other
hand, eschewed the sensual pleasures and emotional side of human nature and
"taught that one can achieve freedom and tranquillity only be becoming
insensitive to material comforts and external fortune and by dedicating oneself
to a life of reason and virtue."[33] Similarly, the Pharisees, unlike the
Sadducees, viewed the material and
sensual side of life as something to be subjugated and brought under control by
reason and a virtuous life. Also, unlike
the Sadducees, the Pharisees were interested not only in the scriptures
contained in the first five books of the Old Testament (i.e.,the Torah) but also
considered authoritative the writings of the Prophets. "In addition, they believed that Moses
had not only promulgated the written Torah but also a body of oral law that
interpreted the meaning of what was written.
This oral law, called, 'the tradition of the elders' , were eventually
codified in the Mishnah . . . and finally came out in
an expanded addition known as the Talmud."[34] It was also a group of learned Pharisees who
put their official stamp on the authorized canon of the Jewish scriptures at
the Council of Jamnia about 90 AD.[35] Closely
allied with them were the scribes who made copies of the scriptures approved by
the Pharisees. In the New Testament,
therefore, Jesus often condemned both the "Scribes and the Pharisees"
for their over-emphasis on outward behavior. We have already discussed above
the close relationship of the philosophy and practices of the Essenes to those
of the Greek Pythagorians. Thus, the Essenes clearly represented the
inner, secret and esoteric knowledge revealed to only the relatively few men
who after several years of probationary training and study were shown to be
worthy of being fully admitted to their membership.
Now it can be seen why I suggested there was
an analogy between the three sects of Judaism extant during the time of Jesus'
life on earth and the threefold division by which I plan to approach the
sections of the body of this essay. The
Sadducees, similar to the first proposed category, represent the Orthodox or conservative way of
looking at things. Since they only
accept as authentic the earliest scriptures as found in the Torah, they focused
their beliefs on the literal words contained in only those scriptures and
closed their minds to any other manuscripts or points of view (just as certain
Christian groups do today). Although they were certainly not atheists, their
perception of reality focused on this world and gave no credence to the
existence of angels, demons or a life hereafter. Although they had control of the temple in
The
scholars of Palestine 2000 years ago clearly were the Pharisees. They were able to think "outside the
box" of rigidly defined scriptural limits by including the oral tradition
and reinterpreting it as circumstances dictated. This "Pharisaic freedom of
interpretation, based on the oral law, meant that the principle of harmony with
the written Torah could be applied flexibly."[36] Thus, they favorably correspond with the scholarly pursuit of scriptures
contained in our second proposed category.
Although modern scholars, like the Pharisees of old, often include
writings not included in either the Old or the New Testament, they often have
differing opinions on who wrote these documents and their approximate
dates. Many documents, both in and
outside the established canons show signs of being modified by later writers to
support the then current beliefs and philosophies of their readers. Therefore, because of these many
uncertainties and varying opinions of biblical scholars, I felt it necessary to
add a third component representing the
mystic and esoteric viewpoint adopted more than
2000 years ago by the Essenes, viz, the philosophy of the ancient
Pythagoreans. In previous essays I have
referred to this by the name given to it by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz in the seventeenth century - philosophia perennis (the perennial philosophy). It is defined by Aldous
Huxley in his anthology of this philosophy as:
"The metaphysic that recognizes a divine
Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology
that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with,
divine Reality; the ethic that places
man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all
being - the thing is immemorial and universal."[37]
We will discuss this philosophy more fully in
the section on the nature of God. For
the present, however, emphasis will be on the immanent nature and not on the
transcendent nature of the Ground of Being.
Earlier I alluded to the threefold nature of reality, and it is to the
inner or subjective side of this trinity that we now turn our attention. In one of my earlier essays[38] I noted
that when I first received my fifty-four volume set of the Great Books I was struck by the fact that the subject matter
covered in them, indexed in two volumes called the Syntopicon, comprised 102 topics beginning with "Angel" and ending
with "World". Poised exactly
midway between the first and the last category
was the topic of "Man".
Angel-Man-World thus formed a trinity of topics whose middle term was
"Man". The more familiar
trinity of Spirit-Mind-Body springs to mind as do words from Pope's poem, Essay on Man, as he reminds us that man
is "placed on this isthmus of a middle state" between the opposite
poles of Spirit and Matter. In our
proposed exposition the Sadducees represent the worldly, objective and literal
nature of reality, the Essenes represent the spiritual, subjective and mystical
side while the Pharisees represent the balancing function of mind between these
opposing ways of viewing reality.
A
similar analogy of can be made by
considering the threefold structure of the temple in the center of
Finally,
a few remarks are needed to support the inclusion in our proposed third
category of writings by those who obtained their information from the so-called
akashic records. Admittedly, many will look ascant at their very existence and the credibility of
people who claim to have read them.
However, since certain of these writings reinforce a number of events
included in the orthodox view that have been called into question by modern
scholarship, I have chosen to present this material as at the least very
interesting even though it is totally foreign to the more traditional methods
of interpretation and analysis.
"For ease of understanding, the Akashic Records or "The Book of Life" can be
equated to the universe's super computer system. It is this system that acts as
the central storehouse of all information for every individual who has ever lived
upon the earth. More than just a reservoir of events, the Akashic
Records contain every deed, word, feeling, thought, and intent that has ever
occurred at any time in the history of the world. Much more than simply a
memory storehouse, however, these Akashic Records are
interactive in that they have a tremendous influence upon our everyday lives,
our relationships, our feelings and belief systems, and the potential realities
we draw toward us."
It is claimed that "the Akashic
Records contain the entire history of every soul since the dawn of Creation.
These records connect each one of us to one another. They contain the stimulus
for every archetypal symbol or mythic story which has ever deeply touched
patterns of human behavior and experience. They have been the inspiration for
dreams and invention. They draw us toward or repel us from one another. They
mold and shape levels of human consciousness. They are a portion of Divine
Mind. They are the unbiased judge and jury that attempt to guide, educate, and
transform every individual to become the very best that she or he can be. They
embody an ever-changing fluid array of possible futures that are called into
potential as we humans interact and learn from the data that has already been
accumulated. Information about these Akashic Records – this Book of Life – can be found in folklore,
in myth, and throughout the Old and New Testaments. It is traceable at least as
far back as the Semitic peoples and includes the Arabs, the Assyrians, the
Phoenicians, the Babylonians, and the Hebrews. Among each of these peoples was the belief that there was
in existence some kind of celestial tablets which contained the history of
humankind as well as all manner of spiritual information."
"In terms of contemporary insights, perhaps the
most extensive source of information regarding the Akashic
Records comes from the clairvoyant work of Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), Christian
mystic and founder of A.R.E.[41]
For forty-three years of his adult life, Edgar Cayce possessed the uncanny
ability to lie down on a couch, close his eyes, fold his hands over his
stomach, and put himself into some kind of an altered state in which virtually
any type of information was available. The accuracy of Cayce's psychic work is
evidenced by approximately one dozen biographies and literally hundreds of
titles which explore various aspects of his information and the thousands of
topics he discussed. When asked about the source of his information, Cayce
replied that there were essentially two. The first was the subconscious mind of
the individual for whom he was giving the reading and the second was the Akashic Records."[42]
The most controversial subject pouring out of
Cayce's subconscious mind was undoubtedly the disclosure that all of us have
lived a number of previous lives - i.e.,
the reality of reincarnation. It should
come as no surprise therefore that the man, Jesus, born in Palestine 2000 years
ago, also had a number of past lives - a total of thirty-two according to the
Cayce readings. No one was more
disturbed by the readings relating to reincarnation than was the conscious
Edgar Cayce. After all he was raised in
a very conventional Christian family, taught Sunday school classes, and since
his youth had made it a practice to read the entire Bible through every
year. But, as the readings continued in
this vein, it became apparent that they didn't contradict what he had been
taught about Jesus but rather enlarged it and showed him to truly be an
incarnation of God, the Father. A number
of people for whom he gave readings had also incarnated in the same area and in
the same period as Jesus lived. Indeed,
it was through their lives that we gain an extraordinary insight into his life
and times. References will be given from
several books that discuss the Cayce readings about this period in much more
detail than can be addressed in this essay.
Their focus on the Essene Community in
Another source of information allegedly obtained
from the akashic records during the period when Jesus
lived is taken from the writings of Levi H. Dowling, who was born in
Having now summarized the genesis and the complex of
factors that were considered in the writing of this essay, let us (at long
last) begin by looking at a threefold approach to understanding the nature of
God.
The Nature of God
In an earlier essay[45]
I examined three basic approaches to the nature of reality: viz, the worldviews as seen through the lenses of science, philosophy
and religion with their respective emphasis on the realms of matter, mind and
spirit. Although each of these
approaches makes different assumptions about the nature of reality, each
endeavors to arrive at an understanding of the ultimate foundation and the
basic truths underlying these premises.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that by whichever approach one
begins with it leads to a common center
To use a common analogy, regardless of the far-flung
"Little flower in the
crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the
crannies.
If I could understand what you
are, all in all,
I would know what God and man
is." - Tennyson
"All are parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is and God
the soul." -Alexander Pope
"Earth's crammed with heav'n
and every common bush ablaze
with God;
But only those who see take
off their shoes.
The rest sit round it and
pick blackberries." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"To see a World in a Grain of
Sand
And a Heaven
in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity
in the palm of your hand
And Eternity
in an hour." - William Blake
Similarly, man, who scriptures tell us
was created in the image of God, finds him (or her) self "placed on this
isthmus of a middle state" poised equally between the poles of God and
Nature. As
When we grow older, we tend to lose
much of our "participation mystique" with Nature. We also tend to lose the inner feeling of the
"numinosum". As Miguel de Unamuno
affirms: "The clearer our consciousness of the distinction between the
objective and the subjective [i.e. the greater our self-consciousness], the
more obscure is the feeling of divinity within us."[49] "Desacralization",
Mircea Eliade concurs,
"pervades the entire experience of the nonreligious man of modern
societies and [consequently] he finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover
the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic societies."[50]
It is only a step in the evolution of
consciousness from the primitive's notion that the world and everything in it
is sacred and alive to one that perceives a hierarchy of powers and spheres of
influence, that is to say, only a step from a belief in animism to one in
polytheism. A theogony,
or family tree, of the gods and goddesses varies with a particular mythology or
culture, but most of them contain a number of incestuous relationships and
extra-marital affairs. They even
interbreed with mortals creating demigods - half men and half gods. The story of gods interbreeding with human
beings is even recounted in the Old Testament:
"And it came to pass, when men
began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all which they chose. ... There were giants in the earth in
those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the
daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men
which were of old, men of renown."[51]
Even the word translated
"God" in the above passage, "Elohim"
in the original Hebrew, is the plural of the word "Elhoa",
meaning a "god" or "celestial being". "Elohim",
therefore, would better be translated as "gods" or "celestial
beings". It is understandable, of
course, that the English translators of the bible "from the original
tongues", who believed in only one God, would be reluctant to render the
creation story in Genesis by: "In the beginning celestial beings created
the heaven and the earth."
Still the story of
creation by celestial beings appears in many ancient civilizations. The Hindus refer to them as "Prajapatis", the Zoroastrians as "Amesha Spentas", the
Egyptians as "mystery gods", while the Greeks, Romans and
Scandinavians named their creative celestial beings after the visible heavenly
bodies. We even continue to honor them
today by using their names for the days of the week - Sunday (Sun); Monday
(Moon); Tuesday (Tyre or Mars); Wednesday (Wodan or Mercury); Thursday (Thor or Jupiter); Friday (Freya or Venus); and Saturday (Saturn). It well may be,
therefore, that the creation story whereby "what is seen was made out of
things which do not appear" [52]and the
ancient stories of gods descending from the celestial spheres to intermingle
with the daughters of men are more than mere mythology and allegory.
In previous essays I wrote
about a widely held belief (at least until the 20th century) called "the great chain of
being". In brief, it is the
conception of the universe as composed of an immense "number of links
ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest kind of existents, which
barely escape non-existence, through evry possible
grade up to the ens perfectissimum"[53]
(the most perfect being, i.e.,
God). In other words, every particle of
matter, every molecule, everything, whether mineral, vegetable, animal, human
or divine, has a spiritual component. Since
we are told that "God is Spirit"[54],
He is, therefore indeed, immanent in all creation. Howver because He
is also the Ultimate Being, the ens perfectissimum, He is the cause of everything that
exists (from ex histani,
meaning to "stand out from").
As the "causeless cause", and the ground of all being",
His nature is therefore also transcendent and ineffable (from in effari,
meaning "not speakable"). As the mystic,
This characterization of God as
ineffable, beyond any human power to imagine or express His nature in words, leads us, like the
medieval theologians who attempted to prove God's existence by negation
("not this", "not that", etc.), until we, like them, are
left with a God of no attributes at all, a "no thing" ( i.e., nothingness). As Miguel de Unamuno
points out: "The anthropomorphic God, the God who is felt in being
purified of human, and as such, finite, relative and temporal attributes,
evaporates into the god of Deism or pantheism"[56]
Yet there are many from various religious traditions who have testified that God is not only transcendent, and
therefore an unknowable "other", but that He is also immanent, and
that He can, therefore, be intimately experienced by all men. St. Paul identifies this immanence as
"Christ within you, the hope of glory"[57];
Hindus as the Atman (the indwelling
God) who is one with Brahman (the God
above all Gods); Quakers experience this immanence as "the Inner
Light"; Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists call it the "Oversoul"; Nietzsche labels it the Superman; and Carl
Jung calls it "the Self" (that Being that encompasses all of the
archetypes dwelling in the unconscious mind).
It is because of this immanence at the
heart of all creation that St. Luke is able to affirm that "He is not far
from any one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being."[58]
Not only is He not far from any one of us, but according to Mohammed's
revelation from the archangel Gabriel (as recorded in the Koran): "We
[God] are nearer to him [man] than his jugular vein." Meister Eckhart,
the Christian mystic, likewise affirms that "God is nearer to me than I am
to myself; He is just as near to wood and stone, but they do not know it."[59] In another of my essays I explained this
ubiquity of Spirit throughout all creation in terms of an entity's characteristic
frequency.[60] Therein an analogy was also made of this
immanence in the hierarchy of nature to the manner in which frequencies of
sound and pictures are transmitted from television cameras to our receiving
sets by superimposing them on a much higher carrier frequency (viz, the television VHF channel). The
reason, as noted by Meister Eckhart above, wood and
stone are not aware of this immanence of God is the result of their lower
frequencies in the hierarchy of being.
The process of creation from the
invisible into the visible realms (now labeled by our scientists the "Big
Bang" hypothesis) begins with the most elementary subatomic particles
which then combine into atoms of hydrogen and helium that form the chemical
composition of all new born stars. It is
only later in their death throes (e.g., a
super nova explosion) that the other 90 or so elements are created that form
the building blocks of all subsequent life on planets such as our earth. However, as will be discussed more fully in
the next section, man is created in the spiritual worlds long before his
appearance here in a body of flesh. In
recent years one of the most respected quantum physicists, David Bohm, has even hypothesized the existence of a deeper,
hidden dimension of reality he calls the "implicate" or folded order
"that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world
. . .[which he refers to] as the 'explicate' or unfolded order."[61] He,
like the writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews, posits "what is seen
was made out of things which do not appear."[62]
Similarly, the ancient Chinese philosophy developed in their I Ching (the
Book of Changes) begins the process of creation by the invisible, active, male,
spiritual forces (called yang) pushing into the visible, passive,
female forms (called yin). The very first verse of the book of Genesis
concurs when it states: "In the beginning God created the heavens [the invisible worlds]
and the earth [the visible universe]"[63]
Another way of grasping the
inter-relatedness between the seen and the unseen components of creation is to
study the ancient symbol, shown below, developed by the Taoists showing the
active and inactive spiritual forces in perpetual and dynamic embrace. Notice
that each half also includes a small portion of its opposite half within it
thus indicating the latent power of each half to eternally interact with the
other in the process of creation. Thus,
decent from the spiritual realms into the worlds of form is only the involutionary half of the process of creation. Recall, for example, the Old Testament story
of Jacob sleeping out under the stars who"dreamed
that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to
heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on
it!"[64] Therefore, "ascending", or
evolution from matter back again into the realms of spirit, is the other half
of the story. Creation involves a never
ending cycle from spirit into matter and from matter back into spirit.
Henri Bergson
confirms this idea when he tells us:
"In the universe itself two opposite movements are to be
distinguished ... 'descent' and 'ascent'"[65]
Cardinal "Nicholas Cusa defined God Himself as a
'complexio oppositorum'[a
complexion of opposites]".[66]
. Similarly, a favorite theme in
medieval alchemy is the "circulatio" or
circulating process. "By this is
meant firstly, the 'ascensus' and 'descensus' ... and secondly the rotation of the universe as
a model for the work." [67] Heraclitus, the
Greek philosopher, taught that over time all things tend to turn into their
opposites. He called this phenomenon,
"enantiodromia", meaning a "running of
opposites". As he explains the
process:
"From the living comes death; and
from the old, youth; from waking, sleep; and from sleep, waking; the stream of
creation and decay never stands still." "Construction and
destruction, destruction and construction - this is the norm which rules in
every circle of natural life from the smallest to the greatest. Just as the
cosmos itself emerged from the primal fire, so must it return once more into
the same - a double process running its measured course through vast periods, a
drama eternally re-enacted." [68]
Another insight into the nature of God
and the creative process can be seen in the circular shape of the Taoist's
symbol. The circle universally signifies eternity; it is
unbroken; it has no beginning and no end and hence is beyond our ordinary,
linear concept of the passage of time. It also symbolizes wholeness,
completeness and perfection. The French
philosopher, Blaise Pascal, in his Pensees states that God is like a circle whose
center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere - thus emphasizing
God's immanent as well as his transcendent nature. To help us understand this idea of God being
"everywhere" and "nowhere" at the same time Professor Borg
introduces us to the concept of panentheism.
"Panentheism
is very different from pantheism, with which it is often confused. Pantheism
(without the en) identifies
the universe with God; God and the universe are coextensive (literally,
'everything is God'). Pantheism affirms
only God's immanence and essentially denies God's transcendence; though the
sacred is present in everything, it is
not more than everything. But panentheism affirms both transcendence (God's otherness or moreness) and immanence (God's presence). God is not to be identified with the sum
total of things. Rather, God is more
than everything, even as God is present everywhere. God is all around us and within us, and we
are within God."[69]
Another analogy concerning the nature
of God can be made using the symbolism of the circle. The origin of the circle,
like the origin of the universe, lies in that unmoving, unchangeable point at
its center. God therefore is sometimes
referred to as the Unmoved Mover, the invisible, unchanging Being at the heart
of all creation. Modern cosmology affirms
that the universe, like a circle generated by a single pebble dropped in the
center of a still pond, continues to expand outward in all directions since its
initial creation some 10-15 billion years ago.
Unlike the God of Deism, however, he is not uninvolved in all the
subsequent creation. As noted above, he
is immanent in every aspect of the creation as well as being transcendent over
it. God can then indeed by envisioned
as being at the heart, at the center, of all conceivable levels of
existence. Thomas Mann describes this ubiquitous center
thusly:
"The world hath many centers, one for each created being, and about each
one it lieth in its own circle. Thou standest but
half an ell [about 21 inches] from me.
Yet about thee lieth a universe whose center I
am not but thou art."[70]
In a similar vein the third century Christian
writer and teacher, Origen, wrote:
"Understand that thou art a second world in minature,
and that the sun and the moon are within thee, and also the stars."[71]
Likewise, Pythagoras in the sixth
century bc
"taught that both man and the universe were made in the image of God;
that both being made in the same image, the understanding of one predicates the
knowledge of the other. He further
taught that there was a constant interplay between the Grand Man (the universe)
and man (the little universe)."[72]
So not only are we created in the
spiritual image of God but also in the image of the universe. Man, therefore, is sometimes called the
microcosm (the little universe) of the macrocosm (the universe as a whole). On
the ubiquity of God's immanence, like Pascal's center of the circle which is
everywhere, it was the seventeenth century German philosopher, "Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibnitz , the most universal scientific
genius of modern times"[73]
who posited that a spiritual center lies in the heart of every atom, every
molecule, every cell, every organism, every star, and every galaxy as well as
within the soul of every man - in short, within the heart of all existences in
the cosmos. He called these metaphysical or spiritual centers,
"monads" To explain his famous doctrine of the "Pre-established
Harmony " between all substances he states that: "All matter is . .
composite, and thus even the smallest particle is a fully organized world;
every part of the divine machine of Nature is, in its turn, a further machine.
. .[Thus] the so called material world must be regarded as an aggregate of
immaterial units [which possess perception and volition]. Hence the philosophical interpretation of the
universe has inevitably to be given in terms of final causality, i.e., of the purposive activity of the
ultimate simple elements [i.e., the
monads]."[74] Even earlier in 1584 it was the Italian
philosopher, Giordano Bruno, six years before he was burned at the stake by the
Venetian inquisition, who wrote that "Deus
est monadum monas" (God is the Monad of monads).
Since, as Pascal stated, God is like a
circle whose circumference is nowhere (i.e.,
a Being infinitely great) and a universe that for all we know is likewise
infinite in its extent, we can envision man as being at the center of a
gigantic "X" whose spiritual (i.e.,
heavenly) nature goes upward without limit and whose material nature
similarly extends downward without any known limits or boundaries. Alternatively, we can express man's central
position between these opposite poles as a trinity of God-Man-Nature or as one
of spirit-mind-matter. His position can even be expressed as a trinity of
Father, Son and Holy Mother by recalling that the Latin word for matter is materia and for mother is mater - one being the neuter gender and the other the feminine
gender of the same root Latin word.
In another of my essays I developed
the trinitarian nature of all reality.[75]
For example, when the fertilized egg of a mammal (including the human mammal)
begins to subdivide and multiply, it first separates into two types of cells -
the ectodermal and the endodermal
layers. The middle layer, the mesodermal, then develops from and between the other
two. From the ectodermal
cells arise the outer layers of the animal, including the skin and the nervous
system From the endodermal
cells evolve the internal organs and the alimentary canal. Lastly, from the mesodermal
cells are developed the connective tissues, the muscles and skeletal framework.
Similarly, in each of the trillions of cells making up our physical bodies
there are three processes continuously at work: anabolism, catabolism and
metabolism (performing the three functions of cell creation, destruction, and
the preservation of a balance between them).
It is hardly a coincidence then that in the Hindu trimurta
of three persons that constitute Brahman (their God above all gods) Siva is
called the Destroyer, Brahma is called the Creator and Vishnu is known as the
Preserver, the balancing function between the opposite forces of destruction
and creation. In an analogous manner
Jesus distinguishes between his nature and that of the Father by saying:
"I am the true vine [the preserver of the vine] and my Father is the vinedresser
[the one who prunes the vines]."[76]
Although Christians and Hindus believe
that there are a trinity of persons within the Godhead, both declare belief in
a single "God above all gods".
In fact, most major religious bodies today are monotheistic. For example, this fundamental declaration in
Judaism is made by Moses during the forty year sojourn of the Jews in the
wilderness of Sinai - "Hear, O
The meaning given to the name Yahweh gives us another insight into the
nature of God. Originally, Hebrew was a
consonantal language, which made it difficult for the scribes to translate the
written language into a spoken one. A
group of scholars called the Masora did this by
inserting notes in the margins or above or below the Hebrew text. It is uncertain when this practice
began. However, "according to some
Jewish writers the notes in some cases are as old as the time of Moses."[79]
In any event "innumerable scholars contributed to this work, which ceased
circa 1425."[80]
The name of God in Hebrew consists of the four letters Yodh, He, Waw (or Vau),
and He which are usually transliterated into English letters by either YHWH
or JHVH (These four consonantal letters
are called the "tetragrammaton".) In the King James version the name of God is
usually translated simply as "the Lord". It is also sometimes
translated by the insertion of vowels in
the two versions of the tetragrammaton above as
either yahweh (YaHWeH) or Jehovah (JeHoVaH). The meaning of the Hebrew word for God or the
Lord was given to Moses at his first encounter with God at the "burning
bush" when he asked God:
"If I come to the people of
Thus, the nature of God is
closely related to that which we humans call self-consciousness or
self-awareness. Similarly, the word
"AM" is the first person singular, present indicative of the verb
"to be". That same verb in Latin is esse from which derive such English words as "essence",
defined in philosophy as "the inherent, unchanging nature of a thing, as
distinguished from its attributes or its existence". The highest essence in ancient philosophy was
called the "quintessence" because it was the fifth and highest
essence above the four basic elements of earth, air, fire and water. It was, therefore, thought to be the
substance of all heavenly bodies and latent in all things. That quintessence we call God thus underlies
all that which is manifested or has existence in the created universe. It
(rather than simply a "He") is the rootless root of all that was, is,
or ever shall be. "It is of course
devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested,
finite Being. It is 'Be-ness' rather
than Being, and is beyond all thought or speculation."[82] Still, because each of us is created in the
image of God, His nature is immanent as well as transcendent. However, even before the unmanifested
and unknowable One can bring the visible universe into manifestation, a
pre-cosmic, pre-configuration must take place in the invisible realms. As Lao Tsu, the
founder of Taoism, in the 6th century bc expresses it:
"The
Tao is forever undefined. Small though
it is in the unformed state, it cannot be grasped. . . . . [Then] The Tao
begot one. One begot two. Two begot three. And three begot the ten thousand
things."[83]
Even in the heavenly realms,
therefore, the unmanifest "root of all
being" must separate itself into two opposite, yet complementary
principles that ultimately will become the basis for all future creation. We illustrated this division earlier in the
symbol of the Tao showing the two forces of yin
and yang joined in dynamic
embrace within the circle of eternity.
In more familiar words we can think of this original dual nature as
male-female, Father-Mother, active-passive, subjective-objective, or
contracting-expanding forces. How these
dual forces combine to produce a third being can be illustrated in the
formation of
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the
only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from
Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the
Father, through him all things were made.[86]
So
the only Son of God was begotten by the Father in the heavenly realms as a
spirit being.[87]
It is to the nature of this Heavenly Man (i.e.,
the only Begotten Son) that we now turn our attention.
The Heavenly Man
The question of whether Jesus the
man was the "only begotten Son of the Father" from the moment of his
birth and questions relating to "soteriology"
(i.e., the saving work effected by
the actions of the Christ manifested through the man Jesus) will be discussed
later in this essay. Therefore, the present section will focus primarily on the
nature of the Heavenly Son, the Christ, who represents one of the three
co-equal members of the Christian Trinity.
The Trinitarian nature of the One
God was not explicitly taught in the New Testament, but in several places Jesus
is seen as having a unique relation to the Father. For example, when Jesus asks his disciples:
" 'Who do you say that I am?' Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ,
the Son of the living God.' And Jesus
answered him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to
you, but my Father who is in heaven.' "[88] Similarly, the Spirit of God is manifested in
many places in the Bible - primarily through the prophets in the Old Testament
and as an ever present reality among the "born again" believers in
the communities formed after the death, resurrection and ascension of
Jesus. The indwelling of the Spirit was
foretold even prior to Jesus' death when he told his disciples: "the
Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name [after I am no
longer with you] will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all
that I have said to you."[89]
Then on the day of Pentecost,
following the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples "were all together in
one place. And suddenly a sound came
from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where
they were sitting. And there appeared to
them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance."[90]
Thus, for Christians the Trinity is
composed of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all coequal members in the One
transcendent and ineffable God. The
doctrine of the Trinity in Christian liturgies is found today, for example, in
what is known as the Nicene Creed after its original formulation at the Council
of Nicaea in 325 ad.
However, the final clauses concerning the Holy Spirit were not added
until the meeting of the Council of Constantinople in 381 ad. Nevertheless, controversy continued over
whether the Holy Spirit proceeded directly from the Father or also through the
agency of the Son. It wasn't until the
Council of Toledo in 589 ad that the decision was made to add the filioque clause to the effect that the Holy
Spirit came "from the Father and
the Son"(emphasis added) and not from the Father only. This assertion resulted in a breach between
Eastern and Western Christianity that persists even today.
The Trinitarian nature of God is not
exclusively a Christian doctrine, however. The names and attributes of the three
coequal members of the Trinity differ from one culture or religion to another,
but some preceded Christianity by hundreds, and perhaps in some cases by
thousands of years.
Religion
or Culture 1st
Person 2nd Person 3rd Person
Egyptian
Osiris Horus
Hindu Shiva
Vishnu Brahma
Zoroastrian
Ahura-Mazda Mithra Ahriman
Scandinavian
Odin Thor Freya
Druidic
Taulec Fan Mollec
Grecian
Ouranos Kronos Ea
Notice that the middle member in
each of these various trinities represents the reconciliation or balance
between the other two members who are opposite in nature. For example, in Hinduism, Siva is the
Destroyer and his opposite is Brahma the Creator while Vishnu performs the
balancing function of the Preserver.
Several of the middle members are also offspring of the other two
members of the trinity. Thus, in the
Grecian trinity, Kronos (whose nature is time or
motion) is born from the union of Ouranos (God of Heaven)
and Ea (Goddess of Earth); and in the Egyptian trinity Horus
is the son born from the union of his father, Osiris
and his mother, Isis.
In two of the trinities shown above
the third member is neither a female entity nor an apparent agent of creation
but rather is a personification of evil - viz, Ahriman and Mollec. Remember, however, the reference made earlier
about the similarity between the etymology of the Latin words for
"mother" (mater) and for
"matter" (materia) Likewise, earlier reference was made to
alternative names for the Trinity of beings - viz, Father-Son-Holy Mother, Spirit-Mind-Matter, or God-Man-Nature (or
Mother Nature). Recall also the earlier
discussion about the process of creation representing the involutionary
or downward half of the cosmogonic cycle whereby
entities from the spirit realm cascade down in successive stages until they
reach the level of the material world.
Recall too that Satan, once an
angel in the heavenly realms, was expelled from heaven and sent down to earth
where he still reigns today. He is also
known as Lucifer (meaning "the bearer of light") and was associated
with Venus, the morning star.[91]
Light is also associated with knowledge.
Remember it was Satan in the form of a serpent that gave Eve the apple
from the tree containing the knowledge of good and evil. Immediately after eating it Adam and Eve were
"sent forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which they
were [originally] taken."[92] Since Satan was responsible for giving Adam
and Eve the fruit containing the
knowledge of good and evil, he too was sent to earth by God just as Prometheus
in Greek mythology (whose name means “forethought”) was sent to earth by Zeus
for giving men the “fire” (or knowledge) denied to them by Zeus. Along with
knowledge of good and evil Adam and Eve acquired knowledge of self – i.e.,
self-consciousness. Satan himself also
acquired this awareness of self which was the proximate cause of his being
expelled from
Regardless of the sexual
orientation or other characteristics of the various members of these and other
Trinitarian concepts of God, all three are involved in the process of
creation. Remember the steps outlined by
Lao Tse above: “From One came Two; from Two came
Three; and from Three came the Ten Thousand things.” Thus, even before the
earth was created the first manifestation of the unmanifest
was the production in the heavenly realms of the active and the passive, the
positive and the negative, proto-time and proto-space, the interior and
exterior, the subjective and objective
realms of being, and the separation of male and female natures. The result of
this initial clash of opposites is the production of light – The Cosmic Christ,
the Only Begotten Son. In the Hebraic
creation story the combination of Heaven and Earth produces Light.[95]
Similarly, in the Nicene creed quoted above the "only Begotten Son"
of the Father is characterized by "Light from Light", and elsewhere
Jesus, speaking as the Christ man within him, claims: "I am the light of
the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light
of life."[96] One author connects the production of light
not only to life but also to intelligence and to the process of creation
itself:
“Light is life, and life is intelligence,
or Spirit. It is energy. It is motion and activity – and it is the power
of God. By it and OF it all things were
created – the universe – the stars – the worlds – and mankind.”[97]-
Similarly, John's gospel begins with
identifying this heavenly man with God, his Word and light:
In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God. All
things came into being through him, and without him not anything came into
being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of
all people. The light shines in the
darkness and the darkness did not overcome it .[98]
The translation of “Word” in the
opening verses of John’s Gospel above is from the Greek word, logos, meaning “reason” or “the rational
principle in the universe”. Its first use in a philosophical or theological
sense was by Heraclitus of Ephesus in the sixth
century bc.
“This notion of The Logos was further developed by Stoic philosophers
over the next few centuries. The Stoics
spoke of The Logos as the Seminal Reason, through which all things came to be,
by which all things were ordered, and to which all things [eventually]
returned.”[99] The most extensive use of the concept of the
Logos was made by Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jew who lived around the
time of Jesus. He used the word, Logos,
more than 1,300 times in his writings.
“Of particular note are his references to The Logos as the Divine Reason
by participation in which humans are rational; the model of the universe; the
superintendent or governor of the universe; and the first-born son of God. Although there is no direct evidence that
John ever even read Philo, it seems clear that the concepts he articulated were
firmly in the mind of the evangelist when he wrote his gospel.”[100]
As noted above, another attribute of
the Logos or “Divine Reason” is intelligence - not the human type but the
cosmic type, i.e., omniscience. Our word intelligence is derived from two
Latin words: inter and legere meaning “to choose between”. Therefore, the Heavenly Man is not only
omniscient but also omnipotent; that is, he has the power to chose between all
possible alternatives. Since we are
created in His image, we too have the power to choose – commonly called
“free-will”. It is because of this
innate nature that
Another attribute of the Divine
Logos, akin to, but not the same as, reason or intelligence is “Divine
Wisdom”. Several books in the Old
Testament are referred to as “wisdom writings”.
These are the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. “In addition, there are a number of poems,
now included in the Psalter or the prophetic collections, which apparently came
from the circle of
All of these collections of writings, however, can be
separated into two distinctively different types. On the one hand are those writings primarily
found in the Book of Proverbs that contain practical, common sense ways men by
which men should conduct their lives while nearly all of the other books cited
comprise what more properly can be called “Divine Wisdom”. Dr. Borg defines the first type as
“conventional wisdom” and the second type as “alternative wisdom”. He tells us that there is a consensus among New Testament
scholars that Jesus was a teacher of alternative wisdom, one that subverted or
undermined the conventional wisdom taught and practiced by the orthodox Jews of
his day, viz, the Pharisees and Sadducees. The conventional wisdom of his day was an
elaborate set of rules and prescribed behavior that differentiated the Jew from
all other religions and beliefs. It was a world of “do’s” and “don’ts”
originally framed around the ten commandments laid down in the covenants given
to Moses on
in the more than
1,200 years following the exodus of the Jews from their some 300 years of being
virtually slaves in
Not only, however, was Jesus a teacher of
alternative wisdom, but in many ways he was also the embodiment of Divine
Wisdom. Just as the gospel of John
identifies the man, Jesus, as the incarnation of the Divine Word (i.e.,the Logos)
or Reason of God, so do other New Testament writers associate him with the
Wisdom of God. For example,
commonly refer to
this personification of wisdom by the name of Sophia since it
is commonly used as
a woman’s name in English. Just as a
member of some of the
Trinities listed
above who had feminine names were involved in the process of
creation, it should
come as no surprise that the Sophia (i.e.,
Wisdom) of Judaism plays a similar role.
For example, in the book of Proverbs, Chapter 8 she says:
Yahweh
created me at the beginning of God's work, the first of God's acts
of
long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the
first,
before
the beginning of
the earth . . . . . When God established the heavens, I was there . . .
. . .
When God marked out the foundations of the earth, I was beside God as
a
master worker.
In the intertestamental
book of Sirach (written circa 180 bc) Sophia
again speaks of her
origin:
From eternity, in the beginning, God created me and for eternity I shall
not cease to be.
In another intertestamental
book, The Wisdom of Solomon, written
near the time of Jesus, she even takes on some of the attributes usually
associated with God. Thus, she claims to
be "the fashioner of all things" and the "mother of all good
things." Then, in a remarkable
passage, she is spoken of as:
.
. . . a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile,
clear, unpolluted, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent,
humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing
all, and penetrating through all spirits . . . .
Like God she is everywhere present
(i.e.omnipresent),
all-powerful (i.e, ,omnipotent) and
the sustaining source of life. “She pervades and penetrates all things, is a
breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty
and a reflection of eternal light.”[114] This characterization of God as a woman
reinforces an alternative formulation of the Holy Trinity, previously
suggested, of Father, Son, and Holy Mother.
Also, as pointed out in other Trinitarian depictions, the middle member
then becomes the reconciliation or synthesis or these two polar opposite
natures. “Thus, the language about Sophia
[the Wisdom Woman] is not simply a personification of the
Wisdom of God [but
also] a lens through which divine reality is imaged as a woman.”[115] She, therefore, can readily be thought of as
a co-equal member of the Holy Trinity. (In some early Christian circles the Holy
Spirit was also thought to be female.)
Dr. Borg reinforces the idea of the feminine nature of God when he
reminds us that when God is characterized in the Old Testament as having mercy that the Hebrew, as well as the
Aramaic, word can also be translated as
compassion (from two Latin words meaning to “feel with passion”).The
feeling or emotional component of our human nature is more often associated
with a woman rather than with a man.
Even more to the point, the Hebrew word is the plural of a noun that in
its singular form can mean womb, thus
emphasizing the feminine nature of being or feeling compassionate.[116]
Since the Heavenly Man is a
synthesis or composite of both the nature of the Father (i.e., the vinedresser) and the Holy Mother, it can readily be seen
why Jesus as the incarnation of Christ, the Heavenly Man, so often emphasized
God’s compassionate and loving nature (i.e.,
his feminine side) in his teachings and in his miracles of healing and even of
restoring to life those who had died.[117] Indeed, his emphasis on love was central to
his teaching and mission on earth. When,
for example, he was asked by one of the Pharisees what was the greatest
commandment in the Jewish law, he replied:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first
commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor
as Yourself. On these two
commandments depend all the law and the
prophets.[118]
Likewise, John in one of his
letters reminds us that the essence of God’s nature, and therefore of his “Only
Begotten Son, is LOVE:
Beloved, let us love one
another; for love is of God, and he who loves is
born of God and knows God; He who does not love does not know God;
for God is love.[119]
Thus, not only does the Heavenly
Man embody the Wisdom of God but also his compassion and his Love. He also, like the Wisdom Woman, Sophia, is
involved in the creation of the world, its downward or involutionary
half of the cosmogonic cycle that culminates in the
creation of Adam (from the Hebrew word for mankind). He not only is involved in
his creation but remains within his soul as a seed that has the potential of
leading him back again after his descent into a mortal body to the Father. The path from mortal man back to the immortal
Heavenly Man is thus placed within Adam (i.e.,
mankind) from the very moment of his creation. Remember from our discussion of
the nature of God that he is immanent in creation as well as transcendent. As
his only begotten Son, the Christ Man is not only present at man’s beginning (i. e.,as Alpha) but he remains within
him as an inner guide throughout the evolutionary half of the
cosmogonic cycle as
well. He then becomes the “way-shower”
or the path by which
man, if he chooses,
can find his way back from the mortal to the immortal, Heavenly Man, who
therefore is both the Alpha and the Omega, man’s beginning as well as his
end. Jesus then, speaking as the Christ
within him, can rightly say:
“I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father
but by me.”[120]
The Father concurs in this exalted
position of his Son when we read
in the gospel of
John these well-known words:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”[121]
This verse, one of the most quoted
in the New Testament, implies, of course, that the Only Son of the Father was
the incarnation of the Christ in the man Jesus.
Yet the characterization of Jesus as the Christ, the “only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father” was not officially adopted in what became the
Nicene Creed until the Council of Nicea in 325
– nearly 300 years after his crucifixion, death, resurrection and
ascension. In the interim there were a number of beliefs about who Jesus really
was that challenged this eventual formulation. For example, there was a belief
in the first century ad called “Docetism” that
believed that reality consisted of either spirit or matter. God, therefore, as
Spirit could not be associated with matter. Thus, they could not accept a
literal interpretation of John
An earlier well-known Christian writer, who
held views similar to those later
espoused by Arian, was Origen (circa 185-254). “He may well have been the most accomplished
biblical scholar of the early church.
His accomplishments as an exegete and student of the text of the Old
Testament were outstanding. He was a
voluminous writer whose works include letters, treatises in dogmatic and
practical theology, apologetics, exegesis, and textual criticism.[124] He wrote over 250 works. “He taught the
principle of the threefold sense, corresponding to the threefold division of
the person into body, spirit and soul, which was then a common concept. He was a Platonist and endeavored to combine
Greek philosophy and the Christian religion.
He developed the idea of Christ as the Logos, or Incarnate Word, who is
with the Father from eternity, but he taught also that the Son is subordinate
to the Father in power and dignity. This
latter doctrine and others, such as that of the preexistence of the soul, were
severely criticized by many of Origen’s
contemporaries and by subsequent writers.”[125] However, his belief in the preexistence of
the soul wasn’t formally declared a heresy by the Church until the second Council
of Constantinople in 553 ad. Since
several references quoted in later sections of this essay require an
understanding of the nature of the soul, we now turn our attention to that
subject. Parenthetically, the reader should recall that it wasn’t until the
middle of the nineteenth century, 300 years after Nicolaus
Copernicus published his monumental work in 1543, that the Church recognized
that the earth revolves around the sun.
Perhaps then, after nearly 1,500 years, it is time to revisit the orthodox
belief concerning the preexistence of the soul.
The Soul – A Missing Link
Before addressing the life (and even
conceivably some prior lives) of Jesus, his birth, childhood, ministry, death,
resurrection and ascension let us address the nature of the soul as an entity,
not only within man but also the role played by it in the creation and
maintenance of both the visible and invisible realms of being. Let’s begin then our discussion with a couple
of dictionary definitions:
Soul: (1) The animating and vital principle in
man credited with the facilities of thought, action, and emotion and conceived
as forming an immaterial entity distinguished from but temporarily
coexistent with his body.
(2) Theology: The spiritual
nature of man considered in relation to God, regarded as immortal, separable from
the body at death, and
susceptible to happiness or misery in a future [disembodied]
state.
-
American Heritage Dictionary
Yet we are told in the Book of Acts
that “In him [God] we live and move and have our being”[126]
The soul then, as defined above, is an entity that exists between man and God.
Recall, as noted in the last section, that the Christian writer, Origen, believed and taught the then common concept of man
being composed of “spirit, soul and body” with soul being the intermediate
entity between spirit and body. This
Trinitarian view of man was also taught by Plato and other Greek philosophers
hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus.
A number of later philosophers also believed in the reality of the
soul. For example, Rene Descartes, the
well known French philosopher of the seventeenth century, who was the first to
articulate the separate nature of body and mind, maintained that “there are
three grades of being: Body, Soul, and Mind or Spirit”[127] He also comes down squarely on the side of
the reality of mind and soul and its superiority to the body and material
things. Following his famous
declaration, Cogito ergo sum (I
think, therefore I am) he declares that “the soul, by which I am what I am, is
entirely distinct from body . . . . and even if the body were not, the soul
would not cease to be that it is.”[128]
George Berkley, the Eighteenth century Irish philosopher, went even further by
denying the reality of matter and “would not speak of himself or other men as having souls, but rather [as their] being souls.”[129] Even today all of the major religions (except
for Buddhism) believe in the reality of the soul. An insight into the nature of
the soul was expressed by the Nineteenth century American philosopher, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, when he addressed the graduating class of the
"Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in
it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think'. .... He felt respect for Moses and the prophets; but no unfit tenderness at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour and the man that now is; to the eternal revelation in the heart. Thus was he a true man. Having seen that the law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. Boldly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was God. Thus was he a true man. Thus is he, as I think, the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man."[130] In one of Emerson’s essays, The Oversoul, he tells us more about the nature of soul and its superior status to the ordinary man of everyday life:
"If we consider what happens
in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in
the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade - the
droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it on
our distant notice- we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten
into knowledge of the secret of nature.
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an
organ,
but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of
memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not
a
faculty,
but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect
and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie - an immensity
not possessed and that cannot be possessed.
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and
makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade
of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating,
drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself,
but misrepresents himself. Him we do not
respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his
action, would make our knees bend. When
it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his
will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins
when it would be something of itself.
The weakness of the will begins when the individual would be something
of himself. All reform aims in some one
particular to let the soul have its way
through
us; in other words, to engage us to obey."[131]
But the concept of “soul” is not
to be confined just to mankind. Recall
that Pythagoras in the 6th century BC taught that both man and the
universe were made in the image of God.
Also recall that Origen believed that man was
a microcosm of the macrocosm “and that the sun and the moon are within thee,
and also the stars.”[132] Similarly, in Alexander Pope’s poem, An Essay on Man, he tells us that:
All are parts of one stupendous whole, whose body Nature is and God the
soul.[133]
So, the universe and everything
within it, including man, have souls. As
discussed earlier in the section on The Nature of God, a spiritual center, the
monad, lies within the heart of all levels of creation from atoms, to molecules,
to all inorganic matter, plants, animals, men and even to angels and other
invisible entities in the heavenly realms.
God is therefore immanent in every aspect of His creation as well as
transcendent over it. Spiritual (i.e., the I AM) consciousness thus
pervades the universe both that which is perceptible to our senses and
scientific instruments and that which is not perceptible to them. The soul we are discussing in this section is
merely the vehicle by which these spiritual monads are made manifest. Naturally, since soul is of a spiritual
nature, it cannot be seen by our physical senses or measured by our
instruments. Since man is created in the image of God, his fundamental or
essential nature is also spiritual, not physical. Recall, for example, the belief expressed
earlier by the Irish philosopher, George Berkley, that men do not have souls but rather they are souls.[134] And the apostle Paul concurs: “The first man Adam was made a living soul;
the last Adam was made [by God] a
quickening spirit.”[135]That
which survives the death of the body is not a physical body but a spiritual
body. Although as Christians we know
that “at the last trump the trumpet shall
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible. . . For this corruptible
must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.”[136], we do not have to wait
until “the last trump” is sounded to become aware of our immortal nature.
While it is true that in this
life we inhabit a physical body, it is also true that this outer sheath we don
does not represent our real self. To
paraphrase a popular expression: We are not a physical being having a spiritual
experience, but rather we are a spiritual being having a physical experience. As
Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being
renewed every day. For this slight
momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are
unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are
unseen are eternal. For we know that if
the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.[137]
As difficult as it may be for the
average westerner to conceive, we have been walking around with a nonphysical
body all of our life and with the higher triad which it contains much longer
than that. It is this spiritual triad,
one that is a reflection of the Trinitarian God in whose image we are created,
that this section has been trying to describe, viz., the human soul. So let’s examine some of the evidence that
has been accumulated, not by philosophers or theologians but by scientifically
trained professionals, on the existence of a nonphysical body and the evidence
that we, viz. our souls, have
experienced a number of incarnations before the life we are now living.
Eastern religions such as
Hinduism have long taught the existence of a sheath, called by them the linga sharira, that
underlies and forms the basis of the physical body. Not only does such a sheath
pertain to the human body but to all things that are manifested in our three
dimensional world. This next higher
dimension is called by them the “astral” plane which in turn forms only the
lower reaches of the unseen worlds (called by them the akasa) that contain a record of all the events that
have occurred since the beginning of time.
Twentieth century scientists, like particle physicist, David Bohm, mentioned earlier[138], have come to the
conclusion that this physical world is like the projection of a picture taken
by split images of a laser of a three dimensional object on a two dimensional
photograph called a hologram. An amazing
feature of the hologram is the ability of any portion of the photograph when
viewed with a laser (or sometimes even with a bright light) to reproduce the
original object in three dimensions. Not surprisingly, the image so projected
from a hologram is a “virtual” image (viz.,
one that appears to be where it is not.
You can move your hand right through a holographic projection). This holographic model adds credence to the
Eastern religious belief that the nature of this world is nothing but maya (i.e.
illusion). It forms the basis for Bohm’s
hypothesis of what he calls the implicate (or folded) order underlying and
forming the basis of the explicit (or unfolded) order for this three
dimensional world.
The feature of any piece of a
hologram being able to produce the entire three dimensional object photographed
is called by scientists the principle of non-locality. This leads to Bohm’s hypothesis of the
indivisibility or wholeness underlying the entire manifested universe. Not only does this explain why sometimes an
electron can be explained as a particle and sometimes as an electromagnetic
wave, but also at some level why consciousness itself is also non-local. As touched on here earlier[139], and discussed at some
length in others of my essays, the concept of the great chain of being “was
long one of the most famous in the vocabulary of Occidental philosophy, science
and reflective poetry; and the conception which in modern times came to be expressed
by this or similar phrases has been one of the half-dozen most potent and
persistent presuppositions in Western thought.”[140] By now then phrases such as God as the ”Monad
of monads”, of man as the “microcosm of the Macrocosm, of both man and the
universe “being created in the image of God”, of the poets’ declarations that “Earth’s crammed with heav’n
and every common bush ablaze with God”, or “To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower” and “All
are parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is and God the soul” should be resonating in your ears. Similarly, you should see why previous
Trinitarian formulations such as body-mind-spirit and World-Man-God were joined
with hyphens and not commas.
However, even in the world of quantum
physics this hypothesis of non-locality applies only to the implicate (i.e., the hidden or folded) order and
not to the explicit order of our everyday world of three dimensions. Similarly, in the realms of consciousness the
perception of the unity and harmony of all levels of creation only appears at a
level above that in which we spend most of our lives here on earth. However, the awareness that each of us has an
etheric body that on occasion is separable from our
physical body has not only been known to certain individuals but to entire
cultures for many centuries. This
experience, in which an individual’s conscious awareness appears to detach
itself and travel to some other location, is commonly called an “out-of-body
experience” or an “OBE” for short. Such
notables as “Aldous Huxley, Goethe, D. H. Lawrence,
August Strindberg, and Jack London [have] all reported having OBEs. They were
known to the Egyptians, the North American Indians, the Chinese, the Greek
philosophers, the medieval alchemists, the Oceanic peoples, the Hindus, the
Hebrews and the Moslems.”[141] A recent study of “488 world societies – or
roughly 57 percent of all known societies – found that 437 of them, or 89
percent, had at least some tradition regarding OBEs.”[142] It has been estimated that roughly one out of every five people now
living will have an OBE at some point in their lives.
A related phenomenon that has
received a considerable amount of attention and research in recent years is the
“near-death-experience”, or “NDE” for short.
Like the OBE, the NDE phenomenon has a long history to support it. NDEs “are described
at length in both the eighth-century Tibetan Book of the Dead and the
2,500-year-old Egyptian Book of the Dead.
. . The Venerable Bede gives a similar account
in his eighth-century work, A History of the
In a typical example an
individual has a near fatal accident, heart attack or other life threatening
event that places him or her in an emergency room at the local hospital. While the doctors and emergency workers are
trying to re-establish a heartbeat to the dying person on the table, he
“suddenly finds himself floating above his body and watching what is going
on. Within moments he travels at great
speed through a darkness or a tunnel. He
enters a realm of dazzling light and is warmly met by recently deceased friends
and relatives. Frequently he hears
indescribably beautiful music and sees sights –
Current research by
scientifically trained professionals supports not only the continuation of life
beyond the death (or near death) of the physical body but also the belief in
the pre-existence of the soul before its entry into the present life of an
individual – in other words, it supports the widely held belief by Hinduism and
other eastern religions in the reality of reincarnation. Before presenting the findings of a few of
these recent studies let us examine the historical basis for the church’s
current position on the subject.
Innumerable authors, philosophers and poets
down through the ages, regardless of whether they were pagans, Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, Jews, or Christians, whether
devout or sceptic, have expressed an interest or a belief in the
ideas of the preexistence of the soul and its periodic return to a body of
flesh. Early Christian divines such as as Justin Martyr,
Jerome, and even
In later years many have expressed thoughts similar to
those early Christians just mentioned.
For example, there are the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge
in
Two relatively recent examples of
research being done by professionals in this growing field of parapsychology
are from the work of two professors of psychiatry: Dr. Joel Whitton
with the University of Toronto Medical School and Dr. Ian Stevenson with the
University of Virginia Medical School.
Dr. Whitton’s work has extended over several
decades. “To conduct his research [he] gathered together a core group of
roughly thirty people. These included
people from all walks of life, from truck drivers to computer scientists, some
of whom believed in reincarnation and some of whom did not.”[146] His basic research approach was to hypnotize
his subjects and then use age regression techniques to elicit memories from
their unconscious minds about recollections they had, if any, prior to their
birth in this life. As a trained
clinical hypnotist he was careful not to ask questions of his subjects that in
any way would lead them to fantasize or make up responses just to please the
hypnotist or be influenced by any questions that might reveal his belief about
the reality of the soul’s pre-existence. In spite of these precautions each of
his subjects, whether they initially believed in reincarnation or not, recalled
a number of past existences, some as many as twenty or twenty-five in
number. Other studies by similarly
trained professional hypnotists “have shown that over 90 percent of all
hypnotizable individuals are able to recall these apparent memories. . . .
[Many of Professor Whitten’s] subjects also experienced profound psychological
and physical healings as a result of the traumatic past-life memories they
unearthed and gave uncannily accurate historical details about the times in
which they had lived. Some even spoke
languages unknown to them.”[147]
Like Professor Whitten Dr. Ian
Stevenson has spent more than thirty years researching the subjects of
reincarnation and pre-existence. He has
collected and analyzed thousands of cases from all over the world “and to date
has published six volumes on his findings. . .. Instead of using hypnosis
[however] Stevenson interviews young children who have spontaneously remembered
apparent previous existences. . . . Generally, children are between the ages of
two and four when they start talking about their ‘other life’, and frequently
they remember dozens of particulars, including their name, the names of family
members and friends, where they lived, what their houses looked like, what they
did for a living, how they died, and even obscure information such as where
they hid money before they died and, in cases involving murder, sometimes even
who killed them. Indeed, frequently
their memories are so detailed Stevenson is able to track down the identity of
the previous personality and verify virtually everything they have said.”[148]
At the risk of beating a dead horse
to death, let us examine once more the
relation between the human soul and the soul of God. Earlier we quoted Pascal’s apt simile that
“God is like a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere.”[149] We then introduced Leibnitz’
concept of a spiritual “monad” at the center of all created things, invisible
as well as visible, and the Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno’s description
of God as the monadum monas (the
Monad of monads). Lastly, we introduced the concept of “panentheism”
that posits God’s otherness as well as his universal immanence. Since the Heavenly Man represents God’s “only
begotten Son”, who sits at the right-hand of the Father and is a co-equal
member of the Trinity composed of Father-Son-Holy Spirit and since all of us
were originally created in God’s image as spiritual beings, we too as souls
have this same divine heritage. As the
German mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote in the
fourteenth century: “God is forever begetting the only begotten.” However, in most of us this divine heritage
has been overlain by so many incarnations in which we allowed our God given
free will to be used for selfish purposes that we have forgotten our true
nature. Therefore because it is God’s
will that not a single soul should perish[150]
it was necessary for the Heavenly Man (the Christ) to be born as a man to show
us the path of return to the Father’s house. (“I am the way, the truth and the
life, no one comes to the Father but by me.”[151]).In
the beginning all men were conscious of being sons of God and full participants
with Him in the creation of the world. For example, when the Lord answers Job
out of the whirlwind He says:
“Where
were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. . .[about
the time] when the morning stars sang
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. . . You know, for you were
born then, and the number of your days is great.”[152]
Even though the Sadducees didn’t believe
in the resurrection of the body or in anything supernatural, the Pharisees
believed not only in an eventual bodily resurrection but according to Edgar
Cayce (in one of his trances) they also believed in souls being reincarnated. A
number of passages in the Old Testament can also be interpreted as supporting
the periodic return of a soul into a new body.
For example, one of the psalms tells us that “The
Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time
forth and for evermore.”[153];
and in the book of Revelations the risen Christ tells John: Him that overcometh
will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.”(emphasis
added)[154]
At the close of the book of Malachi
he prophesizes that God will send “the
prophet Elijah again into the world before the great and terrible day of the
Lord comes.”[155] In the New Testament Jesus goes even
further than Malachi by announcing that Elijah had already returned as John the
Baptist:
“Truly,
I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than
John the Baptist; . . . and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who
is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”[156](emphasis
added)
That the idea of reincarnation was
not unknown in biblical times even to the disciples of Jesus can be deduced
from their asking him about the reason why a certain man had been born blind: “Which did sin, this man or his parents?”[157]
Obviously, the only way the man could have sinned was to have done so in a
previous existence.
Finally, let us use an analogy using
the “Great Chain of Being” referenced earlier.
It is now widely accepted that the physical body of man has a long
evolutionary past. It is composed of a hierarchy of lesser entities, viz., atoms, inorganic and organic
chemical molecules, amino acids, proteins, cells, and organs. The human body is at the top of an
evolutionary chain beginning with the lowly cell and progressing through the
various stages of animal life until finally reaching perhaps some 500,000 years
ago the species called homo sapiens, or
thinking man. Each level in the hierarchy is built upon the foundation of
earlier and more primitive levels.
Similarly, that entity called the soul contains a number of lesser lives
that appear from time to time in a body of flesh. As Shakespeare tells us “All
the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances and
one man in his time plays many parts.”[158]
Previous Lives of the Master
In order to put this section in
proper perspective it is necessary to make the distinction between Jesus, the
man, and the Heavenly Man, the Christ.
Jesus was a man born circa 4 bc in
Some contemporary Jesus scholars,
however make a distinction between the “historical Jesus” and the “Jesus of
faith”. One of these scholars, Marcus J.
Borg, uses the terms the “pre-Easter Jesus” and the “post Easter Jesus” to more
clearly distinguish between Jesus, the man and Jesus, the Son of God, who was
elevated by the body of believers in the early years and centuries following
his death and resurrection to his status as “the Only Begotten Son of the
Father and a full member of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. Indeed, it was after reading his
book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First
Time, in which he makes a compelling case for the basis of this distinction
that provided the impetus for my writing this essay[160].
The material from the Edgar Cayce readings and books based on
these readings that form the primary basis for this section do not deny that
the Jesus who was born in Israel 2000 years ago was (or at some point during
his life on earth became) the Christ (i.e.,
the Heavenly Man and the Son of God), but it extends the time period
required to make the transition from his first appearance on earth as a mortal
to his eventual return to His Father’s house after his resurrection. (In fact, according to the Cayce readings, it
took his soul thirty-two incarnations before completing his cycle of
appearances here on earth.) Since he is
for Christians the role model by which we are shown the destiny each of us may
ultimately attain, it is not surprising that his first incarnation on earth,
according to Cayce, was as the first man, Adam.
Thus he may truly be called the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last
man. It is worth recalling, however,
that the Hebrew word translated as “Adam” can also be translated as
“mankind”. It is not surprising
therefore that the Cayce material relates that Adam (i.e., mankind) first appeared on earth in five separate
locations. Each of the five locations ‘represented
a different race of man (red, yellow, white, black and brown).[161] The readings explain, though, that only one
of these incarnations was by the soul of the man who later appeared on earth as
Jesus. The other four incarnations were
by souls who were also “sons of God”. As
noted earlier, when the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, he reminded him
that he should have remembered “when the morning stars sang together and all
the sons of God shouted for joy [as co-workers with Him during the creation
because Job was] born then and the number of your days is great.”[162] Similarly, Edgar Cayce, in one of his
self-induced trances, tells us:
All souls were created in the beginning
and are finding their way back whence they came.[163]
Recall also that
the Heavenly Man (i.e., the Christ
and the Only Begotten Son) is a member of the Holy Trinity and therefore a
cosmic character on an equal footing with the Father and the Holy Mother. As such, he is a prototype of the ideal human
being who combines both male and female natures. Consequently, Cayce tells us that the first
man (Adam) and the first woman (Eve) were twin souls who were created as
spiritual beings in the heavenly realms prior to their incarnation on earth in
bodies of flesh.
Many religions and earlier
civilizations not only have creation myths but also have stories about heavenly
beings incarnating in human forms and how they, or their descendants,
eventually return to the heavenly realms.
In one of my essays I use the example from Greek mythology of the god
Prometheus, who made human beings out of clay but was subsequently chained to a
rock on a mountain top by Zeus as a result of his stealing fire (i.e., light or knowledge) from the
heavenly realms and bringing it down to mankind. Then after thousands of years of imprisonment
on earth he was finally released by Hercules (Greek Heracles) and was allowed to
return to immortal life with the other gods.[164] . In
Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a
Thousand Faces, he gives hundreds of examples of a folk-hero who receives a
call to adventure, begins a perilous journey and after many trials and
tribulations discovers a lost treasure or hidden truth that he brings back for
the benefit of his people. He shows how each of these tales represents what he
calls a “monomyth” whereby the hero becomes a
symbolic carrier of the destiny of every man.
A similar example is found in the New Testament when Jesus reminds his
followers:
I
came from the Father [the world of spirits] and have come into the world [of matter]; again I am leaving the world and going [back] to the
Father.”[165]
Similarly, the Christian story
condenses into one life the descent of the Heavenly Man to be born of the Virgin
Mary by becoming impregnated by the Holy Spirit as the man, Jesus, 2000 or so
years ago. As an adult he then undergoes
the trials and temptations faced by all men and after his death by crucifixion
overcomes his mortal nature by his resurrection from death and subsequent
ascension back to the spirit world from which he originally came. He thus combined in one life what takes most
men at best a number of lives to achieve.
His one life thus symbolizes, like Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, the journey
of everyman, who must undergo trials and temptations in this world in order to
bring back to his fellow men the treasure he has discovered (in this case, the
nature of God and his heavenly kingdom) before being permitted to return to his
Father’s house.
Before listing some of the previous
incarnations of the soul of Jesus let us speculate on the number of souls that
may be required in the universe to perform a similar life cycle on planets that
may be similar to our own. It was only a
few hundred years ago that men believed that the earth was the center of the
universe and that all the sun, moon, planets and all the stars revolved around
it. The universe, as we now know through
the use of modern telescopes, space probes and other scientific instruments is
incredibly vast wherein our sun, although the center around which the earth and
the other known planets revolve, is only one star among the now estimated 200
to 400 billion other stars in our own little corner of the universe known as the
Milky Way galaxy. Even with conventional
telescopes we have been able to identify thousands of other galaxies and in
recent years by the use of radio telescopes we have been able to hear, however
faintly, the background radiation that accompanied the “big bang” at the
creation of our universe now estimated to be about 15 billion years ago. As little as 300,000 years after that initial
gigantic explosion, wispy matter could be seen that confirms the formation of nebulae and stars at a very early stage. By use of the Hubble telescope in orbit above
the atmosphere of the earth we have been able to focus on a very small section
of space that is like looking through a soda straw eight feet long. Even in that minute section of space many
galaxies can be identified. It has been
estimated that there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe If we then multiply this number of galaxies
by the lower level of 200 billion stars estimated to be in our galaxy, we
arrive at the staggering number of at least 20 sextillion stars in the
universe. (That’s 20 followed by 21 zeros.)
If each star has only one habitable planet during its life cycle that
reaches a human population equal to that currently on earth ( over six billion)
that would mean there would be 6 billion times 20 sextillion people in need of
salvation (i.e., 120 followed by 30
zeroes).
The only way to deal with a problem
of this magnitude is to hypothesize an
incredible number of souls in the unseen world of Heavenly Hosts to deal not
only with the problem of bringing salvation to
this number of people but also of a corresponding number of Sons of God
to assist in the process of creation.
Perhaps we can now better appreciate why the Hebrew word, elohim, used in the book of Genesis could just
as readily have been translated into English by the word, “gods” or “celestial
beings” rather than simply as by the word, “ Lord “ or “God”. In spite of this
proliferation of possible numbers of creatures similar to ourselves on other
planets throughout the universe and the numberless Sons of God required in its
creation, the dichotomy between the concepts of polytheism and monotheism, i.e., between many gods and one God, is
only an apparent one. Simply recall that
the God above all gods is both immanent throughout all of creation as well as
transcendent over it. To paraphrase
Pascal: “God is like a circle whose center is everywhere and whose
circumference is nowhere.” Recall also
that before the process of creation can take place the Unspeakable, Transcendent
Root of All Being must begat One, who then begats
Two, who then begats Three from which the process of
creation can then proceed.[166] This three-in-one is none other than the
Heavenly Man, the Cosmic Christ, the Logos, without whom, as John’s gospel reminds us, “was not
anything made that was made.”[167] Likewise, the Nicene Creed affirms that this
Heavenly Man is “the only Son of God . . . begotten, not made, of one Being
with the Father, [and] through him all things were made.”[168]
However, there is always a mystery
connected with opposites like ”transcendent and immanent”, “immortal and
mortal”, “one and many”, and “universal and particular”. That is why there is
always a need for a third idea or concept to reconcile them. The essence of the ancient mysteries taught
by so-called esoteric schools and societies, by various philosophers and even
by some religious groups is to be able to transcend these irreconcilable
opposites. From the standpoint of this
essay the reconciling element is the son
of God who descends to earth in the form of a
man to be as a role model and teacher of the way by which each of us may
return to the home of ‘Our Father which art in heaven” from which each of us as
souls left to pursue our own desires many years ago. The parable of the prodigal son is a perfect
example of one who left his father’s house and wasted all of his father’s
inheritance before awaking to his deplorable state. He than sought to find his way back home and
beg his father’s forgiveness. His father not only forgave him but gave him his
best robe, a ring for his finger and shoes for his feet. He even killed a fatted calf in order for all
to eat and make merry. When the son who had never left his father’s house
objected to this treatment of the prodigal, his father replied: “It is fitting
to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive, he was
lost, and is found.”[169] We are all like the prodigal son and hence in
need of a savior. As
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God”[170]
It is not surprising therefore that
a number of the incarnations of the soul of the man, Jesus, were extraordinary
men who exemplified the powers of God working through them. For example, in the seventh generation after
his life as Adam the soul of the Master, according to the Cayce records,
reincarnated as Enoch. The Old Testament
doesn’t tell us much about him other than that he was the son of Jared, that he
was the father of Methuselah, had other sons and daughters, and that he lived
to be 365 years old before God took him without tasting death.[171] The New Testament makes two references to
him. The first one merely repeats the
story told in Genesis:
By
faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not found,
because God had taken him. Now before he
was taken he was attested as having pleased God.[172]
The second
reference reveals him to be a prophet who warns about the Lord’s judgment on
all who have forsaken his ways and commandments:
It
was of these also that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied,
saying, “Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads to execute judgment on
all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which
they have committed in such an ungodly way, and all the harsh things which
ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”[173]
It is understandable then that an
apocryphal book belonging to the intratestamental
period also bore the name of Enoch.[174] It thus forms a part of what was referred to
earlier in this essay (page 2) as “apocalyptic eschatology”. In fact the translator of the book claims the
its “influence on the New Testament has been greater than that of all the other
apocryphal and pseudoepigraphical
books put together . . .[and that its doctrines had] an undoubted share in
molding the corresponding New Testament doctrines.”[175] Not only is it probable that the quotation
above from the book of Jude is based on this book of Enoch but some “biblical
scholars believe it contains the earliest recorded revelation of the second
coming of Christ. [It is also] considered to have been Paul’s constant
reference book; John was quite affected by Enoch, especially in Revelation; and
Peter’s letters in the New Testament reflect considerable influence of Enoch”[176]
Closely related to, and quite
possibly the same entity as, the legendary Enoch is the god-man known to the
Egyptians as Thoth, to the Greeks as Hermes or Hermes
Trismegistus (the thrice blessed) and to the Romans
as Mercurius (i.e.,
Mercury). Later writers “believe Thoth to have been a great Egyptian king, a teacher of
mankind who left books of magic and mystery behind him.”[177]
The Edgar Cayce readings place both Hermes and the incarnated soul of the
Master in
Another incarnation of the Master
was as Melchizedek, the prince of
“And Melchizedek , King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; And blessed be God most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!’ And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.”[179]
In this encounter
with Melchizedek two acts were performed
which much later became very important to both Jewish and Christian traditions:
the payment of tithes and the sacrificial nature of bread and wine when
furnished by the priesthood. At the last
supper Jesus had with his disciples before his death and crucifixion he
specifically instructed them that the breaking of bread symbolized the breaking
of his body and the drinking of wine symbolized the shedding of his blood
“which is shed for many”.[180]
His name appears again in a
prophetic psalm that uses the name “Lord” to describe both God and his Messiah
(i.e., the Christ man). Jesus himself uses this psalm, ascribed to
David, to show the Pharisees that the Messiah was a universal being that stood
between David and the Lord and that he could therefore not just be his lineal
descendant.
Now
when the Pharisees were gathered together Jesus asked them a question saying:
“What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They
said to him, “the son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David,
inspired by the [Holy] Spirit, calls him Lord, saying:
The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand till I put
Thy
enemies under thy feet”.[181]
“If
David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a
word, not from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.[182]
In the New Testament letter to the
Hebrews the author confirms the connection between Jesus (as the resurrected
Christ or Messiah) and his likeness to the earlier high priest, Melchizadek who is described as being “without father or
mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days or end of life, but
resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever.”[183]
We are also told by the entranced Cayce that Melchizadek
was the author of the book of Job, which, as noted earlier, is considered one
of the books of “Wisdom” literature in the Old Testament.
The next two incarnations move from
the legendary roles of Enoch and Melchizadek to two
of the key figures in the dramatic story of Jacob’s sons and their families
migrating from Canaan to Egypt (circa
1,700 bc) and then their dramatic return after having
lived for three hundred or so years as virtual slaves under the control of
various pharaohs. These key incarnations were as Joseph and as
Joshua.
The story of Joseph, as told in the
book of Genesis, is a familiar one. His
father Jacob (later renamed
After spending several years in
You meant evil against me; but God meant
it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they
are today. So do not fear, I will provide for you and your little ones.[186]
Joseph lived to be one hundred and
ten years old and was buried in
I am about to die; but God will visit you
and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob.[187]
“Admittedly, the biblical story of
Jacob and Joseph contains elements of folklore . . . . . . Nevertheless, the
biblical account is more than fiction.
In its broad outline, as well as in many of its details, it agrees with
the historical setting of the second millennium B.C.”[188] According to the biblical account “the time
that the people of
The story of their eventual
deliverance out of Egypt by Moses is also a familiar one: - his being placed among the reeds on the bank
of the Nile as a baby to avoid the Pharaoh’s edict to kill all the newborn sons
of the Hebrews; his subsequent discovery and adoption by the Pharaoh’s
daughter; his flight as a man across the Nile into the land of Midian to avoid being killed by the Pharaoh after he had
killed an Egyptian for beating a fellow Hebrew; his marriage while living there
to one of the daughters of Reuel (also known as Jethro); and his encounter with God (YHVH) at the burning
bush, that the fire did not consume, who spoke to him saying:
I
have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their
cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down
[to earth] to deliver them out of the hand of that land to a good and broad
land, a land flowing with milk and honey . . . [Therefore] Come, I will send
you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of
Egypt.[192]
According to the biblical account
the eighty year old Moses finally succeeded (after the many plagues Yahweh
caused to be inflicted on the Egyptians) in leading not only the descendants of
Joseph’s family but also “a mixed multitude”[193]
of other peoples, all of whom were known by the name of habiru, which was “probably equivalent to the biblical name Hebrew [who]
belonged to the larger floating class of semi-nomads to whom established groups
applied [this] descriptive term.”[194]
The biblical account states that in number there were “600,000 men, in addition
to women and children”[195]
which would have meant that there were possibly a total of 2.5 to 3 million
people involved in the exodus out of Egypt. However “this is obviously an
exaggeration, for it does not square with the information in Exodus
“Hereafter, Joshua is often found in
the company of Moses, and he is referred to as Moses’ ‘minister’ as they
approached
In order to make strategic plans for
the conquest of
Take
Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him;
have him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the
congregation, and commission him in their sight. You shall give him some of your authority ,
so that all the congregation of the Israelites may obey.”[202]
Having made an unsuccessful attempt to
enter Canaan from the south while Moses was still alive, Joshua decided to
begin his attack on the Promised Land by
crossing the Jordan river from the east side
thus driving a wedge between the north and south territories of
Canaan. He chose a spot just north of
the
“The city of
“A long time afterward, when the Lord had
given rest to Israel from all their enemies round about, Joshua summoned all Israel their elders and
heads, their judges and officers, and said to them, ‘I am now old and well
advanced in years; and you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all
these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for
you. Behold, I have allotted to you as
an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the
nations that I have already cut off, from the
Following the allocation of the conquered
lands of Canaan among the twelve tribes of Israel there developed a loose
confederation that was held together not only by the annual observation of the
Passover celebrating their deliverance from slavery in Egypt but also by the
not infrequent requirement to band together militarily to repulse or subdue
attacks from other groups outside of their tribal confederation, Although there was no central ruling
authority during this period, there was a successive reign of twelve judges
until the establishment of a monarchy.
This transition from a loose confederation of tribes to a more
centralized form of government was necessitated by the introduction into the
coastal area of
In
addition to David’s military victories it was crucial that he unite the loose
confederation of tribes that existed under King Saul and also that he
centralize the worship of Yahweh which was at the heart of that which
distinguished the people of
Even after the death of David and the crowning
of his son, Solomon, as king of
It wasn’t until Cyrus of Persia conquered
One of the key figures in the rebuilding
of the temple and refurnishing it was one of the high priests named Jeshua (also called Joshua in the books of Haggai and
Zechariah. The two names are actually the same; Jeshua
is the Aramaic form of the Hebraic word “Joshua” and the same as the Greek word
“Jesus”). As Edgar Cayce in one of his
trances tells us: “ Know that the same soul entity that became Jesus born in
Bethlehem was Jeshua who reasoned with those who
returned from captivity in those days when Nehemiah, Ezra, Zerubbabel were factors in the attempts of the
reestablishing of the worship of God, and that Jeshua,
the scribe, translated the rest of the books written up to that time.”[218]
Another incarnation of the soul of Jesus
named by the entranced Cayce was as Zend, the father
of Zoroaster. The date of Zoroaster’s birth is uncertain but c current
book by a well-known historian believes that he lived around 1,200 bc.[219] Although the religion that he founded is
practiced by fewer than 200,000 today largely by the Parsis
in
.