{"id":1016,"date":"2012-09-06T10:44:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T14:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2017-03-21T09:58:41","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T13:58:41","slug":"the-second-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/?p=1016","title":{"rendered":"RS30: The Second Coming?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A:\u00a0 I’d like to return, if we could, to the idea of a “genderless divine essence.”\u00a0 You’ve pointed out in our discussions that the apostle Paul had an understanding of God which blended both Jewish Essene beliefs and Hellenistic philosophical beliefs — especially Plato’s teachings.\u00a0 So somehow Paul ends up with an understanding of the Divine where there’s both a genderless divine essence — Spirit (pneuma<\/em> in the Greek) — and<\/em> a male God.\u00a0 How can Paul’s God be both male and genderless?<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Plato had this strange mix, too.\u00a0 Would it help if I told you Plato was also a member of the Seekers of the Rock?\u00a0 That both Plato and Paul worked for the same organization?<\/p>\n

\"b12architecture_interiors001<\/a>

Plato’s Cave? Is this really a helpful metaphor for understanding life on Planet Earth? (photo (c) Image*After)<\/p><\/div>\n

A:\u00a0 Plato wrote his books over 400 years before Paul wrote his.<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 The Seekers of the Rock have a long history.\u00a0 Which is no surprise when you look at the history of other religious movements.\u00a0 When Plato wrote, his job was to try to pull Greek thought in the direction of the Seekers’ own agenda.\u00a0 When Paul wrote, his job was to try to pull Hellenistic thought (which included Jewish influence) in the direction of the Seekers’ own agenda.\u00a0 The heavy influence of Platonism, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Platonism on Christian theology is no accident.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 One thing I noticed when I read Plato’s works for my Master’s thesis is the infuriating blend of monism with dualism.\u00a0 It’s, like, make up your mind, buddy!\u00a0 Are we “all One” or are we split between dualistic poles of “good and evil”?\u00a0 How can it be both at the same time?\u00a0 I know we’ve talked about this before, but I still find it exasperating.<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Gnosticism in all its forms is an attempt to reconcile the inherent conflict between monism and dualism.\u00a0 Paul was a proto-Gnostic thinker, in the language of recent scholarship.\u00a0 In many ways, the raging debates about Gnostic heresies in the early centuries of the church were fights between Paul’s own “Platonic” brand of Gnosticism and the more floridly mystical brands of Gnosticism that sprang up from Paul’s and John’s teachings.\u00a0 Both brands — the orthodox Pauline position and the Gnostic heresies — were attempts to explain how we can all “be One” and at the same time be forced to deal with the problem of evil in the world.<\/p>\n

Anybody who starts with the idea that we are “all One” — the idea that each soul is a fragment of the Oneness, a fragment that’s seeking union and blissful dissolution in the cloud of knowing\/unknowing — will be forced, logically speaking, into the dualistic position.\u00a0 Otherwise how do you logically explain why you and your neighbour aren’t the same?\u00a0 How do you explain why men and women are different from each other in many ways?\u00a0 How do you explain evil and injustice and wars of oppression?\u00a0 If you insist on maintaining the monistic position of Oneness, nothing in the world makes sense.\u00a0 Nothing.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 Yet Paul’s group — the Seekers of the Rock — have continued to hold onto this position all this time.\u00a0 When are they going to get the idea they’re wrong<\/em>?<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Not any time soon.\u00a0 They think they’re saving the world from the evil forces of chaos, etcetera, etcetera.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 So is this supreme cloud of knowing\/unknowing the same thing as Paul’s Spirit, Paul’s “genderless divine essence”?<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Well, they would<\/em> be the same in the ideal universe (Plato’s realm of perfect Forms).\u00a0 In the ideal universe (the healed and restored universe which Paul and the Seekers believed they were rebuilding) all the lost and broken bits of Oneness would return to their rightful places in the “region above the heavens,” as Plato described it in Phaedrus<\/em>.\u00a0 According to Plato and the other Seekers, this is the region where the One True God lives, “being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates.”*<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I can see from this description that the Seekers’ One True God is very big and bland and boring, kinda like a featureless cloud of hydrogen and helium atoms somewhere out in space.\u00a0 But Plato doesn’t actually say that this “being which really is” is genderless.\u00a0 So is the One True God of Paul and Plato genderless?\u00a0 Or is this Oneness male?<\/p>\n

J (smiling):\u00a0 The One True God is male.\u00a0 In fact, he’s the perfect male.\u00a0 The Ideal Male.\u00a0 The Pure Male.\u00a0 The Form of Perfection.\u00a0 The Geometric Form of Order.\u00a0 The template for Oneness.\u00a0 Ultimate Knowledge.\u00a0 Omnipotent Mind.\u00a0 Creation without Chaos.\u00a0 The Source where the apophatic path and the anagogic path become the Perfect Circle outside time and space.\u00a0 The Womb where only pure Truth can be brought forth.\u00a0 The Mirror of Justice.\u00a0 All emotion is eradicated.\u00a0 Love, trust, and forgiveness become meaningless concepts, as meaningless as talking about rain in a village that has only known drought, desert, and harshness.\u00a0 The feminine principle is not so much abolished as swallowed — swallowed and controlled and assimilated — so that all impulses serve the unified purposes of the One.\u00a0 A lot like the Borg on Star Trek, only with a hive king instead a hive queen.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 And this is their idea of science<\/em>?<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 For them it’s the perfect combination of science and religion.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 The part about the supremacy of the mind sounds a lot like Deism.<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 Yes?\u00a0 It’s Deism?\u00a0 The Seekers of the Rock were — are — Deists?<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Yup.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 No wonder these guys seem so arrogant.\u00a0 They actually believe<\/em> they can control the Law of Cause and Effect because God set it up that way for them!\u00a0 God set up the universe then walked away from it, so “the best and brightest” human minds can do whatever they want!<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Yup.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 And God can’t — won’t — intervene.\u00a0 Except for that one time when he apparently sent his only son through the barrier of time and space to anchor that big ol’ pyramid thing.\u00a0 Except you really screwed it up, according to Paul.<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 According to Paul.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 So now they’re waiting for the next small window of time and space when the Logos can once again squeeze through from that higher realm to bring the Truth and reward them for their piety and hard work.\u00a0 Right?<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 You got it.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 And when will this next window take place?\u00a0 When will the Second Coming happen?<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Never.\u00a0 It ain’t gonna happen — not the way think people think<\/em> it’s gonna happen, anyway.\u00a0 Same as the First Coming never happened the way Paul said it did.\u00a0 It’s a myth, a lie, a way to hide the truth about God the Mother and God the Father and all the ways they share their Divine Love and forgiveness with us each day whether we ask for it or not.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 What about all the prophecies?\u00a0 What about the promises in the Bible and other sacred texts about chosen saviours and messiahs and prophets who’ll be coming soon to bring us revelation and salvation?\u00a0 Millions of people rely on the promises of prophecy for their sense of hope.<\/p>\n

J (shrugging):\u00a0 Sorry.\u00a0 Can’t help.\u00a0 The kind of hope promised by Paul isn’t what angels mean by hope.\u00a0 For us, hope means working together with God in trust and free will and healing and forgiveness.\u00a0 Hope believes in the potential of all human beings to be their best selves regardless of what sacred texts say.\u00a0 Hope believes in the power of transformation and change when people accept their own courage and their own inner strengths.\u00a0 Hope is about the present, about seeing the ever-present Birth of Divine Love hiding quietly within each moment and each choice in the currents of Creation.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 So no End-of-Times.\u00a0 No Judgment Day.\u00a0 No coming-in-clouds-with-great-power-and-glory Second Coming.\u00a0 The prophecies are wrong.<\/p>\n

J:\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 Prophecy’s a real bitch, eh?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* From the translation by Christopher Rowe of Plato’s Phaedrus<\/em> (London and New York: Penguin, 2005).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

-2<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A:\u00a0 I’d like to return, if we could, to the idea of a “genderless divine essence.”\u00a0 You’ve pointed out in our discussions that the apostle Paul had an understanding of God which blended both Jewish Essene beliefs and Hellenistic philosophical beliefs — especially Plato’s teachings.\u00a0 So somehow Paul ends up with an understanding of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,71,80,30,18,257,38,59,167],"tags":[296,246],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dualism","category-gnosticism","category-hdm-myths","category-paul","category-plato","category-prophecy","category-prophets","category-realspiritik","category-theodicy","tag-ethical-mysticism","tag-jesus-versus-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2345,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions\/2345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}