Christianity is not just about Jesus Christ; it is built upon several other realities:
1. We inhabit a creation - the world is created.
2. The creator is a God, i.e. a personal God (not an abstraction)
3. The creator God is loving towards all the Beings of creation (God might be otherwise, but is not)
In sum: Jesus operates in the context of reality being the creation of a loving (hence necessarily personal) God.
Jesus is necessary because of the nature of creation: Creation takes place in the midst of primordial chaos.
Primordial chaos is primal Beings existing without love - without coordination, without harmony; each Being a world unto Himself.
This is why our mortal reality (termed Primary Creation) is subject to Entropy. Entropy is the spontaneous tendency of creation to revert to primordial chaos. (We experience Entropy in terms of disease, degenerative change, and the inevitability of death for all Beings)
Jesus offers the possibility of permanent and complete escape from entropy and the threat of chaos.
Evil is the rejection of creation.
Evil therefore came after creation.
Evil entails the rejection of love, since love between Beings is what makes creation - creation is the harmony of Beings.
The first evil is called Luciferic.
Luciferic evil is the assertion of a Being's selfishness ("my" self is all that matters) and the rejection of Love between oneself and other Beings.
Luciferic evil therefore aspires to use (therefore not destroy) creation; to use creation in order to serve its own selfish will and personal gratification.
Luciferic evil does not aspire to the damnation of other Beings (i.e. to make them reject resurrection into Heaven); it tends to be indifferent to the spiritual fate of other Beings.
A Luciferically-evil Being, exploits ruthlessly and without love: desires that any and all other Beings will serve his personal satisfaction.
In a sense; a Luciferic Being desires that creation will serve his will. This is why he is not against-creation as such.
It could be said that Luciferic evil hates God (is anti-God; because God is loving), and is indifferent to Jesus.
The second evil is Ahrimanic.
Luciferic evil tends to develop into Ahrimanic evil; because Luciferically evil Beings band-together in mutually beneficial alliances, in order more effectively to exploit other-Beings.
Ahrimanic evil is an alliance of the selfish.
Ahrimanic evil is anti-God, which it inherits from Luciferic evil; and Ahrimanic evil is in addition anti-Jesus.
Thus Luciferic = anti-God; whereas Ahrimanic = anti-God plus anti-Jesus.
Therefore the alliance of the selfish will organize, manipulate and coerce other Beings, aiming that these other Beings will reject salvation: will reject the offer of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven.
In sum; while Luciferic evil desires the exploitation of Beings; Ahrimanic evil desires the damnation of Beings.
Ahrimanic evil desires damnation because it is more spitefully evil than Luciferic evil. It's desires are not just for selfish gratification; but also for the immiseration of others.
It could reasonably be said, therefore, that Ahrimanic evil is a greater evil that Luciferic; wanting not just its own satisfaction, but the stripping of satisfaction from others.
This is why Ahrimanic evil has tended towards depersonalization via bureaucracy.
The Ahrimanic aim of omni-surveillance and micro-control is not just a positive aspiration for domination; it is also actively directed-against the freedom and agency of other Beings.
Yet Ahrimanic evil of-itself does not aim at the destruction of other Beings: it aims at domination, not destruction.
It wants a universe of miserable slaves.
(Indeed; including the "enslavement" of animals, plants, earth and heavenly bodies, and indeed the "mineral" world; permanent utter domination of every-thing, rather than to kill every-thing.)
And the Ahrimanic desire for damnation of other-Beings is a consequence of being against Freedom and Agency. Salvation is, after all, an eternal choice for resurrected Men to participate in divine creation; which absolutely entails their agency and freedom.
The third evil is Sorathic.
Sorathic evil is anti-creation; it aspires ultimately to reduce creation to chaos.
Sorathic evil is directed against all kinds of creation; it is against not only positive Good, but also against Luciferic and Ahrimanic evils - insofar as these seek to exploit or enslave creation.
Sorathic evil can be considered a completion of the motivational shift from Luciferic to Ahrimanic evil, which is a shift from seeking personal gratification by using other Beings, to a type of personal gratification that enjoys the utter domination of other Beings.
A qualitative shift from hedonism, to spitefulness.
Sorathic evil moves on from the desire to dominate the whole of creation, to the desire to destroy all of creation - including oneself, insofar as we all are products of divine creation.
The Sorathic can be seen as a purely negative form of evil, found in Beings that have lost all capacity for positive personal satisfaction, and can only enjoy destruction.
To summarize: Luciferic evil is pro-creation and anti-God because anti-Love.
Ahrimanic evil is pro-creation and anti God (anti-Love) and also Jesus (anti-salvation).
While Sorathic evil is "anti-" all manifestations of creation - including anti- all Beings (including anti-God and anti-Jesus Christ); also anti-Love, and anti-salvation.
Sorathic evil tends to chaos; but it is not pro-chaos.
Ultimately, Sorathic chaos is the negation of creation; the end-result of being anti-every-thing...
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Note on Sin = Entropy and Evil; Salvation being from both Entropy and Evil
Entropy (termed "Death") and Evil are, together, what is called Sin in the Fourth Gospel.
Jesus came to save us from Sin - that is, to offer us the chance to reject Sin eternally; live without-sin eternally.
Thus resurrection into eternal Heavenly Life saves us both from entropy including death (as well as disease and degenerative change); and simultaneously saves us from evil of all kinds.
Resurrected Eternal Life in Heaven in therefore the Second Creation; which is derived from Primary Creation but operating entirely and eternally on the basis of Love, and without entropy or evil - because Sin is left-behind at resurrection.
2 comments:
You have expressed this in many different ways over the years, yet this post is exceptionally lucid and inspired. It connects the dots in a comprehensive and, more significantly, comprehensible manner. The insight regarding Lucerific evil not being against Creation but using Creation to serve a selfish will was particularly clarifying for me.
1. "Better to reign in Hell than to serve on Heaven."
2. "And because he had fallen from heaven, and had become miserable forever, he sought also the misery of all mankind..."
3. "Thus saith the Lord concerning all those who know my power, and have been made partakers thereof, and suffered themselves through the power of the devil to be overcome, and to deny the truth and defy my power— They are they who are the sons of perdition, of whom I say that it had been better for them never to have been born; For they are vessels of wrath, doomed to suffer the wrath of God, with the devil and his angels in eternity;"
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