What did Jesus do? The Fourth Gospel tells us that he came to bring Life Everlasting, Eternal Life if we are Born Again, so this lies beyond death.
Also that Jesus enabled Men to become Sons of God.
Also that Jesus ´baptised´with the Holy Ghost, in contrast to John who baptised with water.
What does all this mean?
If we understand repentance to mean a change of thinking, a new way of thinking, then we could see John´s baptism as a ritual transformation (an initiation) by which Men received correct knowledge and understanding - but (signified by water) knowledge subject to mortal life, and only knowledge but not a change in possibility.
The ´baptism´of Jesus was the change he brought-about in Men´s condition - a permanent, objective change in Men´s thinking, because it was a permanent, objective change in Man´s state.
In other words, Jesus enabled Men to become divine, to become gods - this being the meaning of Sons of God´ - these are lowercase-g gods, like Jesus himself - Men who have become divine.
Therefore to receive Life Eternal or Everlasting means to become divine, because only the divine is ever-lasting, only the divine is eternal. Life Eternal or Everlasting is thus a poetic term, a kenning or trope, meaning divine, the term for being a god.
It is the change from being a mortal Man to a Son of God.
The Baptist could not offer this, but only knowledge of it (of water), but Jesus brought the reality for those who chose to believe-on him (baptism of the Holy Ghost, of the ascended Jesus).
So the message of the Fourth Gospel is that Men can become Gods by following Jesus. Jesus was a Man who became a god, and we can do the same by following him (as sheep follow the Good Shepherd) - from mortal life, through death, to divinity as gods.
To do this, we must love (have faith in, trust) Jesus, then he will show us the way.
7 comments:
Jesus may have given Men the possibility to become Gods, but if he did so, this took effect long before his incarnation on Earth. Recall in John 10 that Jesus says:
33 We are not stoning You for any good work,” said the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because You, who are a man, declare Yourself to be God.”
34 Jesus replied, “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’?
35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came— and the Scripture cannot be broken—
36 then what about the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? How then can you accuse Me of blasphemy for stating that I am the Son of God?
Jesus is referring in John 10:34 to Psalm 82:6:
6 I have said, “You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High"
Note that since time may work very strangely, the actions of Jesus may have had this effect bidirectionally in time, i.e. Jesus's incarnation may have been the "entry point" for this possibility.
-- Robert Brockman
I'm currently reading Growing A Soul on Planet Earth: The Fourth Way and Esoteric Christianity by Ron and Claire Levitan. It gives the Gurdjieffian interpretation of Christianity. I've always been intrigued by Gurdjieff's claim that his teachings are "esoteric Christianity." There is some overlap with what you write here. I would be very interested to read your thoughts on it.
RBII I can´t understand that translation! But I should add that there is nothing in the Gospel to make us question that time is linear and sequential, and I think it is a mistake, albeit common, to try and explain something obscure using something even less understandable.
My understanding is that we are born children of God, hence partly divine, and we have the chance to progress through stages to become divine in the same way as the creator, so as to participate in creation. Incarnation is one step, resurrection another, and there is a transformation by the spirit - Jesus was made divine by the spirit of the creator, we can be made vivine by the spirit of Jesus, the Holy Ghost.
The sequence was different for Jesus, because he became as divine as possible for a premortal spirit, before incarnation, but had several steps still to go when he was born.
Regarding men becoming gods before Jesus. Didn't he say "Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."? This implies that the divinisation of man was only possible after Christ.
@jack. I tried reading G after reading about him in Colin Wilson, but he struck me as untrustworthy, indeed a psychopath!
@William. Of course, many Christians hold that Jesus came primarily to save Men from hell, but I regard that as a terrible error. He came to enable Men to become gods, which is almost the opposite.
@Bruce Charlton
Fair enough. One thing I find interesting is his claim that an immortal soul is not something innate in most human beings, but rather has to be "created" or "earned" through effort. The book by the Levitans reads this interpretation into Paul as well, with his distinction between the "soma psychikon" and the "soma pneumatikon". I notice that some Christian groups are also abandoning the notion that man has an immortal soul, since apparently there isn't much basis for it in scripture; it was imported from Platonism by the early Church fathers.
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