Transformation and Translation: "Born Again" into the "Second Creation"

Joining-up a couple of dots from what I've said; when Jesus met Nicodemus and told him that Men need to be "born again" - Jesus meant that we must die first, in order to attain resurrected eternal life. 

And, if we follow Jesus; this second birth will be into the Second Creation;  the creation by Jesus - which is Heaven. 

We must be born again, by resurrection into Heaven: which involves both personal transformation (resurrection); and personal translation (moving from mortal Earth to Heaven). 

** 

John.3 [1] There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: [2] The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. [3] Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. [4] Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? [5] Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

"A chain of loving relationships" - How Christians may help those they love to get to Heaven

I am impressed and convinced by the way that the Fourth Gospel always describes Jesus's love in terms of specific and inter-personal loving relationships.

(This is a very different definition from the more usual understanding of Christian love as ideally having such attributes as unconditional, altruistic, even impersonal.) 

Given that I believe we choose to accept or reject Jesus's gift of resurrected eternal life after our death; this interpersonal understanding of Christian love has helped me to grasp how it is that our love during this mortal life, may help others whom we love to choose Heaven. 

It works as a chain of loving relationships.

In brief; once one person has chosen resurrected eternal life; so long as that dweller in Heaven has had loving relationships with others during his mortal life; then that first person to be saved sets-up a chain of positive influences for those who die afterwards. 

Salvation is always an absolutely free and autonomous personal choice, that can neither be compelled nor prevented.

But if we have had a loving relationship during mortal life with someone who has already attained salvation before we die; then after death, and at the time when we must choose whether or not to accept resurrection, that beloved person will "visit" us - will come into contact with our post-mortal spirit.    

It seems to me that Mormons are correct in their teaching that:

The most powerful incentive for Christian salvation is the desire to continue personal relationships beyond death with those we have loved during mortal life. 

So, when it comes to deciding whether to accept salvation, anyone whom we loved in mortal life (potentially more than one person - but one person is enough) can assure us of the reality of eternal life, its nature, and the presence of those with whom we might to continue relationships. 

There will always be a free choice; but my point is that knowing there is already some particular person whom we have loved that has made the choice of Heaven and who already dwells in that state - could be a positive and decisive influence in favour of accepting salvation.   

As an illustrative example, suppose there was a woman (a grandmother) who was exceptionally loving during her mortal life; loving her husband, children, sons- and daughters-in-law, and grandchildren - and that she accepted Christ's salvation. 

As her husband, children, grandchildren etc. died; she would be able to visit and assure them of what was possible beyond death; of how the loving relationships of mortal life could be continued, and could continue to develop eternally, post-mortally. 

The effectiveness of this influence, would presumably depend substantially on the strength of interpersonal love, during life - and this strength would perhaps (usually) be diluted with succeeding generations, and would cease after two or three generations.

This is where the "chain" aspect comes-in... If the grandmother firstly influenced her daughter to accept salvation; then the daughter would provide her own children with a (potentially more direct) influence of a mother's love (rather than grandmother's), when the time came for the grandchildren to die - and so on down the generations. 

The chain would also potentially branch, with loved husbands and wives - if the one who dies-first accepts salvation, then a loving spousal relationship could provide a link to Heaven.  

Once the "system" had been going for a few generations, it might resemble a web or network, rather than a chain - which would provide (potentially) more robust because multiple possibility of positive personal-loving influences; by which a recently deceased post-mortal spirit may be encouraged or convinced to choose resurrected Heavenly life.

   

The Last Battle by CS Lewis (spoiler alert)

[Aslan said] "Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." 

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. 

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. 

But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Final words of "The Last Battle" - the final volume of the Narnia Chronicles by CS Lewis. 

*

Theologically; I find a great deal to like about this beautiful ending to the seven Narnia books. 

I like that it places the proper goal of our lives in the eternal realm of Heaven. And that Heaven is a beginning, not an end. 

I like that is places Heaven and eternal incarnated life necessarily on the other side of death. That this must be so and cannot be otherwise, is surely a fact of creation - else Jesus would not have needed to die to be resurrected. 

I don't much like the idea that this temporary mortal life is just the Shadow-lands; it must be a great deal more than just Shadows (a secondary and derivative emanation of the reality) - else mortal life would either not be necessary in the first place (just as shadows are not necessary for objects to exist); nor would it be prolonged for so many people - for so many decades. 

No. I regard this mortal life as real, important, eternal too - or, some aspects of it are potentially real, important and eternal. 

And after all, Jesus spent thirty-three years as a mortal Man, before moving on to the next and final stage. 

But classical Christian theology does a poor job of explaining why some people live mortally at all, or for so long; while other persons do not even get out of the womb. 

This is one of those things for which - if it is important to us - we must each work out an answer our-selves. 

None of the available "off the peg" theological explanations will do the job - either by not explaining enough, and not accounting for the necessity and variation of incarnated mortal experience; or by explaining too too much and implying that particular ad prolonged experiences of mortal life are always essential! 

Mercy versus Justice, and Mary the Mother of Jesus

I am still reading Geoffrey Ashe's The Virgin - his dense, fascinating, and very stimulating book about the historical development and meaning of the Catholic veneration of Mary, Mother of Jesus. 

(Ashe was himself a Roman Catholic, and deeply involved with Marian societies - especially the Carmelite Friars' shrine to Mary at Aylesford in Kent.)  

This passage was one I found very striking. Ashe is describing the theology of Saint Germanus, who was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early 700s. 

Mary, Germanus maintains, does not simply put requests to the Deity on matters they could agree about; she actively and successfully opposes him. "You turn away the just threat and the sentence of damnation, because you love the Christians... Therefore the Christian people trustfully turn to you, refuge of sinners." 

The universe is split at the summit. God stands for Justice, and since we are all sinners more or less, most of us have little to hope for at his hands. 

Mary stands for Mercy, and it is only because of her influence at court, not because of love or goodwill on God's part, that Heaven is within reach for more than a handful of human beings...

The Byzantine Virgin seems the only friend close to the throne and the only rescuer from utter awestruck despair...

The Greek church agreed that Mary was indispensable to salvation. An edict issued from Constantinople in 724 condemns anyone who withholds worship from her... 

She is no longer the gentle Lady to whom Christians may turn for help. She is the unique being... to whom they must turn or be in peril of losing their souls forever.    

[From before 1233] the norm of Marian miracles in hardening. The people concerned are apt to be commonplace and sometimes repellent. 

The sole redeeming feature they have in common, "redeeming" quite literally, is their love for the Virgin. This protects them against the consequences of wrongdoing. Her devotees seem able to get away with anything....

It is unfair to treat this mythology as a license to sin; by saving misguided mortals the Virgin enables them to repent. 

But the moral is not always conspicuous... 

The medieval popular Virgin represented the all-too-human, the irregular, the exceptional. She was superior to the system and could break through every rule. Humanity had her on its side in its perpetual protest against divine law and human ordinance. 

For her, every case was a special case. She could draw "her" sinner up out of hell itself, giving him another chance.

Such considerations stimulated various thoughts. One is that - however theologically alien and contradictory the role of Mary in Catholic devotion; the effect of Marian devotion has often been exemplary from what I regard as a strictly Christian perspective (as well as this-worldly-expedient - in terms of sustaining and strengthening the churches). 

I understand the above descriptions to represent a spiritual correction to the not-Christian (i.e. not Jesus-derived) emphasis on Justice that has so often overtaken Christian churches of almost every kind. 

When Jesus is made into a divine ruler of the universe, he has often been attributed with the characteristics of an idealized human ruler in some particular society - hence the de facto primacy of justice, defined legalistically - despite this being multiply-contradicted in the Gospels. 

Furthermore, the tortured theology of Original Sin (which was only required because early theologians made it mandatory to conceptualize and define God as Omni) - led to the weird double-negative explanation of Jesus's work; as having been accomplished by a vicarious sacrifice (torture and death) demanded by Divine Justice to compensate for sin. 

Against this historical backdrop of systemic misrepresentation of the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ's work and the paths to salvation by love of Jesus; Mary seems to have emerged, with the consequence of  re-creating the truth of Jesus's salvation by personal love.

With the difference that the necessary love is displaced from Jesus, to his mother (but his mother having been re-conceptualized to possess the salvific attributes of Jesus). 

But I don't doubt that this displaced or indirect love was none the less effective in attaining salvation for Marian adherents ; so long as the motives were true. 

The simple heart of Christianity - i.e. resurrected eternal heavenly life to those who follow Jesus - has always been open to the kind of "license to sin" misrepresentation Ashe describes in the second excerpt above. 

This is a kind of parody of Christianity, along the lines of: I can do what I like, be as selfish and gratification-seeking as I like... yet Mary will save me if I love her... 

Such is the exactly the same type of criticism made of Jesus's teaching during his life, by those whose real concern was social order and sustaining the power of their church...

Popular with those who do not really believe that All Men are sinners including themselves; and that no Man good enough for Heaven without first passing through death and resurrection*.

(Or who may regard following Jesus as less a matter of love than of following rules.)

 

The parody is untrue, because it ignores that motivation is primary, and that the love really must come first. 

Salvation is not attained by using love as an excuse to enable the primary motivation of doing evil. That is to put this-worldly gratification first. 

But, on the other hand, salvation really is - not for those who successfully past some test of following some laws; but salvation is for all those who love and desire to follow Jesus more than anything else.

Or, in this instance... love and desire to follow Mary more than anything else - so long as Mary is conceptualized in the way she has been by some ancient (and some modern) Catholic Christians, as described in Ashe's book. 

*I suppose I should state that I regard it as theologically incoherent from a Christian perspective to claim that Mary was conceived and existed without sin, and was assumed into Heaven without going through death and resurrection. The necessity and work of Jesus - and the requirement that we are all  incarnated into mortal life - only makes sense when it is understood that death and resurrection was and is the only way to "fit us for Heaven". Nonetheless (fortunately for all of us!) theological coherence is not a requisite for salvation! 

AI-dolatry among Christians is the flip-side of fundamentally anti-personal metaphysical assumptions

I have commented before about my dismay at AI-dolatry among so many self-identified Christians - specifically their failure to recognise and grasp that the current iteration of "Artificial Intelligence" (which was top-down launched nearly three years ago, at the end of November 2022) is primarily a totalitarian - hence evil - strategy; designed for the accelerating corruption and damnation of Men. 

But vulnerability to AI-dolatry is the other side of a coin which in practice asserts and assumes the abstract impersonality of God and created reality - despite that Christians are supposed to recognize God as a person, as our Father, and we his children. 

That this is "in practice" and almost indifferent to theological theory, is evident from the official Mormon church's positive response to AI, describing it as: "a rapidly developing technology that has significant potential to assist the Church in accomplishing God’s work of salvation and exaltation." 

This despite that the CJCLDS officially regards God as an exalted and embodied Man; indeed as two Men - a Heavenly Father and Mother; which is an explicitly non-abstract primary understanding of the creator and creation that, one might have supposed, should have protected Mormons from AI-dolatry. 

But no. 

The fact is that modern Christians get their fundamental metaphysical assumptions from mainstream society, not from their religion; and our society is bureaucratic hence fundamentally anti-personal, anti-human. 

We have, for many decades, denigrated individuals and their personal judgments and evaluations; and instead given primary moral authority to the impersonal: to system; laws and regulations; process and procedures; voting and committees. 

(And all churches operate internally by these same assumptions; all churches are bureaucratic, procedural, deploy committees and voting at their fundamental levels of decision-making etc. - which of course affects their evaluations.)

It has been a "natural" extension of this abstract-impersonal way of thinking; that the human element ought ideally to be minimized or eliminated - such that computers, robots, "AI" are by their nature potentially superior to humans... 

Supposedly superior because less prone to corruption, error, variation; and (by our false but common mainstream understanding of these terms) more informed, more knowledgeable, more intelligent - hence wiser and authoritative; than any possible human or combination of humans.  

In short: the assertion is that "AI" is potentially superior because (and insofar as) it is not human.      

In theory, Christians ought to be immune to such self-destructive and deluded foolishness - but in practice they are qualitatively as bad as everyone else! (ie. Any measured differences between modern Christians and the mainstream - e.g. in surveys - are merely quantitative, and insufficient to make a qualitative difference.) 

My understanding of this, is that Christians are now reaping the consequences of ancient errors in their metaphysics - in particular of rejecting our spontaneous knowledge that reality is plural and animated: in other words that the ultimate reality includes many living, conscious, purposive and eternal beings - and these are the basis with which divine creation has worked. 

(That is; God created from and by-means-of many pre-existent Beings.)

There was, very early, a capture of the Christianity of Jesus Christ; by a metaphysics of oneness (hence monotheism) - and the adoption of multiple abstract assumptions (which became dogmas) such as: creation from nothing; omnipotence/ omniscience, omnipresence; and the conceptualization of God's creation as including unalive/ non-living aspects such as minerals...

This metaphysics imposed itself upon the simple teachings of Jesus (essentially, the promise of resurrected eternal life in Heaven to those who followed Him) to make a complex systemic religion of this-world and its institutions - in which the essential teaching became obscured, distorted... 

(And indeed all-but denied at times and in some places, such that salvation became so complex and contingent-upon-this-world, as to be regarded as actually impossible for some/ many people.).  

Many centuries downstream; and in the unique and unprecedented actual conditions of our modern society; these have led to underpinning assumptions that dominate (often unconsciously) most Christians - and almost everybody else. 

We see physics or mathematics as the primary reality, and the unalive as existing prior to (what we regard as) living beings - and as life and consciousness as having been made-from and/or added-to dead materials.   

In a nutshell; even those who believe in creation imagine God as starting with non-living materials; then making plants, animal, then Men by adding life, movement, consciousness etc. 

Whereas we ought instead to imagine everything created as alive (and outside it, only incomprehensible chaos); spirit as coming before matter; with matter "condensing" from spirit - so that spiritual life and consciousness are basic, have always-been - and always shall be. 

I think this is how we spontaneously (but mostly unconsciously) come into this world understanding things; and that young children still think this way. And I think the reason for this is that God implanted such knowledge in us, as innate knowledge which we (nearly always) need in order to live well and attain salvation. 

The discarding of our innate animism and pluralism did not matter much when Men spontaneously retained "participation" through into adulthood. 

Because in effect these Men (e.g. in the Classical and Medieval times) continued - but unconsciously and unavoidably - to perceive the world in the same way as young children, or could return to this way of thinking via the methods of religion (ritual, symbol, scripture etc). 

But now we all become alienated through adolescence; becoming cut-off from this innate knowledge and the spontaneous sense of being part of a living world - and from this state of alienation; modern Men therefore consciously need to choose to return to our innate knowledge and understanding. 

And we need to do this conscious act of return for-ourselves, because there are no institutions - not even churches - that will teach or encourage us to do so. 

Not just for-ourselves; but from-ourselves; because it is actually contradicted by many of the actual, here-and-now dominant and mandatory, Christian church teachings. 

And therefore church-orientated Christians (those who regard a church, or any external source, as having primary authority over Christian understanding) are stuck in delusional materialism; including AI-dolatry... 

Which, unless identified and repented at some point, has the potential to lead to their self-chosen damnation.   

My take-home message here, is that anyone who hopes to escape their own self-chosen damnation - which will eventuate for those who follow external "authority" in this actual world, including church authority; would be wise to bring to consciousness, and reflect deeply upon, their most fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

 

If God is already and necessarily triumphant, and everything is alright already - then what are we waiting for?

There is a strong thread in religion of several kinds that asserts everything is alright already - e.g. because God is good and God is omnipotent therefore good is triumphant: here, now, already.

To which the obvious rejoinder is: In that case, what are we waiting for? 

If we are already living in a world of good-triumphant, why isn't this made obvious and explicit? Why doesn't everybody realize it? 

(And as we don't experience things as always good - then surely that of itself means that God is not really triumphant?)

Among some Christians, this triumph is asserted as having been the work of Jesus Christ. Asserted that what Jesus did made the triumph of God complete, or at least inevitable: that by Jesus God has "already" won. And the devil has already lost - but will not admit it. 

There are similar assertions (or so I see them) from oneness spiritualties - assertions that everything is beautiful, virtuous and true - the only problem is that we fail to recognize it. 

For instance, New Age type people often favourably cite the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas: 117 [113]. 

His disciples said to him: "On what day will the kingdom come?" "It will not come when it is expected. No one will say: 'See, it is here!' or: 'Look, it is there!' but the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it."   

That is; we already live in God's Kingdom - but don't recognize the fact. 

But such assertions leave us exactly where they find us - or, rather, someplace worse.

Because, if this-world-now (including entropy, death, evil) really is the triumph of Good/ Paradise/ Heaven and already "the best of all possible worlds"; then we are surely utterly depraved creatures. We Must Be - as evidenced by yours and mine and humanity's universal and chronic inability always and under all circumstances to recognize and live-by this fact. 

Yet it is hard to see how this-world-now can really be good, if Men are not. 

It is pretty extraordinary to imagine the Christian God creating a good world to be inhabited by evil Men... (Especially when these Men are made such as to fail to recognize the goodness of the world.)

Of course, such contradictions and incoherences may be explained-away by stunning and confusing people with soaring abstractions, especially about Time... 

Stuff about things being imperfect for creatures like us living in Time, while past-present-future are perfect for the creator God who is outside of Time (when past, present, future are simultaneous)... 

But surely, as "explanations", these just kick the can regarding why a God asserted to be good and also capable of creating perfection chose Not to, and instead chose to design gross imperfection and evil-proneness - and consign creatures to illusion, decay, death, and evil*.

Either such a God would be not-truly-Omni- or not-truly-Good; yet for such Christians, God is defined as both Omni- and Good. Hence the need for so much ultra-complex and abstract hand-waving... 

I can see the short-term and immediate psychological appeal of these kinds of "all actually is well" assertion. 

They provide a kind of confidence, of being on The Inevitably Winning Side - even though we will personally lose - i.e. we are actually sin-full, and shall suffer evil, get sick, die. 

And I can see that some of this is a kind of garbled understanding of the reality of Heaven 

But really, it's nonsense! Heaven is real, and anyone who wants it can have it, by following Jesus - but Heaven is on the other side of death. 

As for this world; God is the creator, but God is not triumphant here and now, in mortal life, on this earth... 

Obviously God is Not triumphant! If He was triumphant, there would be nothing to discuss. 

That's why Jesus Christ was needed, and why his message was of resurrection.

And Jesus was a Man, who lived (like all that lives) In Time and in a place - so Time is real.

And it is because God is not triumphant in this mortal world and never can be; that we needed Jesus, and why Jesus's message and gift was one of eternal resurrected life. 

To recap: The defects of this mortal life are not illusory, nor can they be removed by adopting a different attitude or making contradictory assertions. 

In sum; the defects of this mortal life are ineradicable.

...Which is why Jesus Christ was needed, why Heaven lies in our future, and why Heaven is on the other side of death and resurrection. 

*I feel that this kind of argument applies to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Jesus's Mother. If God could make a Mary without sin, and if she could attain eternal Heavenly life without dying and resurrecting; surely such a God would the same for all Men? - thereby eliminating the need for Jesus Christ's life and work. The Immaculate Conception refutes the necessity of Jesus. yet I think I can see "what it is getting at" - which is that there really is a divine feminine creator; God really does include woman.

NOTE: The above arguments are what I personally find compelling, or even decisive - but I recognize that they will not work that way for others - especially when fundamental assumptions are not shared. So I am stating how I see things, not really trying to persuade others to agree. 

Perhaps a womanly and procreative aspect of God is necessary for a solid belief in eternal life?

I am re-reading Geoffrey Ashe's fascinating study The Virgin (1976), which is focused on Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ (Ashe was a Roman Catholic) - but takes in the broader perspective of goddesses throughout history, in a non-hostile - indeed sympathetic - fashion. 

He makes the stimulating suggestion that a Goddess was primal in ancient spirituality, because she was the assumed basis of the procreative hence creative; and that some form of female deity is needed for Men really to believe in a life beyond life. 

The idea is that a supreme male deity cannot sustain belief in a full life beyond life. So that when the ruling Goddess goes; the afterlife becomes very partial, ghostly, and all-but irrelevant. 

Male deities could never bestow life of their own nature as the Mother had done. Zeus and his colleagues were immortal, but they did not transmit that quality to their human subjects... 

Through most civilized and semi-civilized lands... death ceased to be a passage to a future life... the dead were no longer pictured as significantly existing. They were reduced to feeble, bloodless shades in a gloomy underworld. For the Greeks this was Hades...

With the fading of the Eternal-Womanly, with her cutting-down or anathematisation, [for the vast majority, with extremely few exceptions] death had become the end with no prospect of rebirth. 

Israel's shift was similar... The Old Testament has no doctrine of survival or return... the dead become shades. They do down to an underworld called Sheol, The Grave.

The sole Israelite immortality is collective... God's chosen community...  

I think it likely that Ashe is "on to something" here. 

In the book; Ashe is preparing the ground for an attempted explanation of the rise of Mary the mother of Jesus as a more and more important focus of Christian faith - recognizing that this phenomenon cannot be accounted for by Scripture, or by the practices of the earlier generations of Christians. 

With Mariolatry (Ashe says) we seem to be dealing with some kind of deep and direct apprehension of spiritual reality, probably coming from grassroots, bottom-up, the "masses". Christian leaders and theologians seem merely to have been trying to explain and validate theoretically something that already was beginning to become important in practice. 

From my own experience; I find it striking that Mormonism included a very strong element of the "Eternal-Womanly" with its dyadic deity composed of Father and Mother in Heaven. 

And - perhaps in consequence? - the "Mormon culture of salvation" was (at least until fairly recently) probably the most vividly lived and believed-in form of Christian afterlife among the major Christian churches. 

The spiritually unsatisfactory and unconvincing nature of one-sidedly masculine, Christianity is something I find very striking. I mean the monochrome hardness, negativity, heartlessness, legalism and this-worldliness of Mary-rejecting forms of Protestantism is something I feel is very evident. It is one reason why England ceased to be "Merrie" with the reformation.

But there is something of this in all of Christianity. 

(And this defect has not-at-all been ameliorated, let alone cured, by the dominant trend towards secular materialism in all the Christian churches, which comes-in on the back of leftist ideology. Spiritual problems can only be made worse by "liberalization" - which is actually and always covert apostasy.) 

Insisting upon the non-sexual nature of God does not work either - this is just an attempt to escape contradictions absences and by raising abstractions; which has the effect of confusing people - and thereby impairing motivations.

Furthermore, the idea and ideals of ultimate transcendence of sexuality point away from Christianity (rooted in Jesus, the divine incarnate mortal Man) and towards Oneness spirituality, where (eventually) every-thing merges with everything else - in a timeless stasis.   

The problem is that it does not really make deep theoretical and theological sense to insert Mary alongside the (masculine) Trinity; and she is therefore always accorded an ultimately secondary and intercessionary" role in creation - no matter how central is her position in everyday worship (eg. devotion to the Rosary, or Marian icons). 

But even worthwhile degrees of habitual lifestyle and provision of psychological comfort are insufficient motivations in a world so dominated by evil-affiliated institutions. 

In our unavoidably self-conscious era; these inner contradictions about Mary have become nigh-lethal to strong Christian faith - as is evident all around us.

 

This is why I regard Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Mariolatry as "on the right lines" but ultimately insufficient and unsatisfactory. 

And, as Ashe described , this requisite kind of development can only come from directly apprehended knowledge - it is not already existent. 

To emphasize: what is required is not something that can honestly be derived from existing Scripture, theology or history.

Furthermore it needs to arise bottom-up; which means from individuals, not institutions.  

If modern Men are to grasp and retain the needful structuring-focus on resurrected eternal life; if we are to live-by knowledge of Heaven; then we will need explicitly to discover and embrace what will be new truths of eternal verities concerning women in relation to creation and salvation. 

"Masculinity" and "femininity" versus the actual person of Mother in Heaven

While I assume that God is Dyadic (a Heavenly Father and Mother) - this is something I have not really grasped, not does it correspond much with daily experience. 

Partly this may be because we Christians are intended to relate primarily to Jesus, rather than the primary creator; but partly it is because I tend to get "hung-up" on inaccurate and unhelpful assumptions relating to principles, rather than persons. 

An example of an unhelpful/ misleading conceptualization would be that of Coleridge's "polarity" between "two contrary forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely ["masculine], while the other strives to apprehend or find itself in this infinity [feminine]". 

One such assumption is that habit of thinking of male and female in terms of being specific exemplifications of those abstractions: "masculinity" and "femininity"... Abstractions that are somehow floating unattached beyond time and space, and sort-of imposing-themselves-upon Beings (as it were to make them men, or women)...! 

Really; things must be otherwise. 

Our Heavenly Parents are those two Beings who (in actuality, not by any prior necessity) first committed to eternal love; and on that basis began divine creation. 

It is their two natures, originating as two Beings, that ramify through all of creation since.  

Thus male and female both structure and power creation; but in this personal way - derived from actual living, conscious, developing Beings; and not therefore in terms of abstract metaphysical forces or fields or tendencies. 

As (always?) with metaphysical realities, it is not possible to derive the metaphysics from empirical specifics (such as actual men and women) - nor is it possible to derive any particular empirical specifics from the metaphysical assumptions. 

If the universe truly is derived from a dyadic God; then that universe includes everything that exists, has existed, or could exist - and this reality (this Primary Creation) in which we dwell; includes not just divine creation, but also entropy/death and purposive evil. 

What this seems to mean - among many other things! - is that our experience of Mother in Heaven ought not to be pre-conceptualized in terms of an ideal earthly-mortal Mother, nor any other archetypal female conceptualization. 

Of course, if that is what we have decided in advance that we will find, then that is what we will find - and any female archetype really is there; but only as a selective, hence distorted, part of the reality. 

This stricture applies both to Goddess conceptualizations; and to the Blessed Virgin Mary - whom I regard as ultimately a selective and distorted representation of the reality of the actual person of Mother in Heaven.

(Albeit the veneration/worship of the Mary, Mother of Jesus has - in some times and places - been very valuable as such; and IMO far preferable overall to an exclusively "masculine" conceptualization of God.)

I think the difficulties of you and I experiencing the person of Mother in Heaven are therefore partly due to the nature of God the Creator - who is not personal in this world, in the way that Jesus Christ is personal; partly it is due to the ultimately-dyadic nature of God (and the consequent difficulty of disambiguating Father and Mother, who are necessarily participating-in each-other); and partly due to our usually false expectations concerning what She is like.   

So, what is She like? 

The best answer is: She is like who-She-is. 

...Which can be known - as here on earth - by personal experience, by getting-to-know a person. 

But She is not to be known in terms of exemplifying a list of supposed-female attributes, nor can any list of attributes validly communicate her reality.

What was the divine plan of giving Jesus a claim to be King of the Jews?

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that by descent - either or both from his Father and/or Mother - Jesus had a claim to be the King of the Jews. Yet Jesus stated clearly by his deeds, as well as his words to Pilate that "my kingdom is not of this world, that he was not willing to press his claim, nor to be involved in attempting to restore the earthly kingdom. 

If so, we might ask why it was that Jesus incarnated to parents that gave him a claim to earthy kingship, yet Jesus refused to press that claim - why the one, if not the other? 

What, in other words, was the divine plan? 

It seems reasonable to speculate. And further, if we can make a plausible guess at that plan - did, or did not, the divine plan work-out as God hoped and intended it would?  

Perhaps the intent was that Jesus would be born as a potential earthly king, in order that he would have a claim to be the Messiah awaited by the Jews, which would gain Jesus a much larger and more attentive "audience" than would otherwise have been the case. 

But maybe the divine plan was always that Jesus would re-direct this-worldly and political expectations of a Messianic and Kingly nature, into his message of his new gift of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

The divine plan being that Jesus would be able to argue that although he could be a King of this earth and Messiah to his people - he had a much greater and everlasting gift to offer the Jews and indeed the world. 

Instead of merely a temporary (because mortal) ideal Kingdom; Jesus would save the Jews from the miserable prospect of Sheol, and the Romans from their miserable pagan after-existence; and show the way to a new and better Life. 

If so, it seems that the plan failed. 

Well, as Burns wrote: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men - and presumably God - Gang aft agley. 

Most of the Jews wanted their King and Messiah ASAP - or nothing; and very few people (not even all of the disciples) understood or believed-in what Jesus offered. 

Men are free agents, and plans don't usually work-out as expected. 

Even Jesus's closest followers after his ascension, seemed to want an imminent, then delayed, second coming - with the "promise" of earthly fulfilment of their desire for an ideal mortal Kingdom - more than they wanted resurrection after their present lives.

And things still haven't changed, yet. 

The impulse and motive for divine creation

Kristor at the Orthosphere has written a post in response to mine of yesterday and others by Francis Berger - that asks several questions. These seem to require and deserve a more extensive elucidation than can be done in comments, including an expansion of underlying metaphysical assumptions; so here it is. 

This procedure distorts my metaphysical views, because they are being expressed in response to Kristor's framework of ultimate assumptions - so that, even when I try to elucidate - means that my account is fragmentary and seen from an alien angle. But maybe this is the best that can be managed in the circumstances. 

(Obviously, I usually and by preference express my metaphysical ideas in their own terms, trying to make a model or paint a picture of how reality is structured and proceeds.)

 

From Kristor is in italics - edited by me; my responses follow BC: 

The situation prior to creation that Bruce describes is already a world: a disharmonious congeries of eternal conscious selves, purposive beings who suffer affects, who feel, want, act, and so on, 

BC: That is a correct description of my views

who relate to and influence each other (so that they can love, or not), all more or less ordered to a good, which apparently they can all more or less recognize, and to which they are more or less attracted. 

BC: No. Before creation there is no such interaction or harmonization. 

They are from eternity past together in a temporal – and so, presumably also spatial – milieu, in which they have and prosecute lives, but only messily. 

BC: Sort of... but before creation there is no comparison by which their autonomous lives can be called messy. 

Thus they can apprehend each other, and God, and his creative plan; they can find it attractive, can want to participate in it, and can then actually do so. 

BC: No. I regard the above description as happening after creation has been initiated. 

The question then arises, what is the reason of this world that was running along from eternity past, all on its own, before one of its constituents got started on his creative project – or after, for that matter? If we answer that there is no prior reason it is what it is, that its eternal existence is a brute fact, we have admitted that it is fundamentally unintelligible; for, what has no sufficient reason to be what it is cannot be reasonable, either in whole or in part: for, brute facts are utterly inscrutable, in principle, thus even to themselves. 

BC: Correct. Before creation there can be no reasons, except internally - "privately", within beings. Things Just Are.  

What is not reasonable cannot be a world, or for that matter any such thing as the items we find all around us, and in us. It can be rather only just stuff happening for no reason: the chaos of Democritean atomism, but with the atoms all sentient, solipsistically. 

BC: Yes, pretty much a correct summary- except that having sentient beings/ "atoms" makes all the difference. Divine creation is (pretty much) the transformation from solipsistic to ongoing-creation - insofar as creation has happened (which changes through time, because creation is linear and sequential).  

If we say that this world prior to creation has no cause because it is necessarily what it is, then every detail of it must be necessary; in which case there is in it no freedom, for it is a spatiotemporally extended block, in which nothing really moves or acts, or therefore is. 

BC: No, this is wrong. "Necessity" does not come into it when things Just Are. Things really "move" but only within beings, not between beings. 

What we end up with then is either the pure chaos of brute unintelligible fact, and no world, or else the wholly determined motionlessness of universal necessity. 

BC: No, neither of these alternatives; because they are regarding the primordial beings as if unalive. Starting with beings rather than "things" makes all the difference. 

There is of course a third option: the classical metaphysics of Nicene Christianity, in which God as uniquely eternal and necessary is the sufficient reason for all being, including his own: not a brute fact, but on the contrary the perfectly intelligent and thus intelligible fact, in whose light all other things are intelligible, at least in principle, so that knowledge is possible; and in which creatures are not eternal, but rather contingent upon God, so that as contingent they can change, act, suffer, move, love, learn, grow, understand and be understood, and so forth. 

BC from now onwards: 

This leads on to consider God's motivation for creation.

If God is a unity, there can be no motive for anything. Such a God Just Is. 

But my understanding is that God is a dyad of Heavenly Parents - Heavenly Father and Mother. My understanding is that it is the love between our Heavenly Parents that is the motivation for creation - in a way closely analogous to the spiritually-understood way that love between two (ideal) loving human beings may lead to the choice of initiating pro-creation - that is having children who are loved; and beginning what may be an extended family.

(Of course, mortal human parents are born as already part of an extended and (ideally) loving family. But I am here talking about how this all began.) 

Creation is therefore a concept that arises from love, and includes procreation as well as all the other many ways in which loving relationships between beings of all kinds may become.  

To put matters very simply: there is a Timeline for creation. The primordial situation of autonomous and not-relating beings becomes creation as a consequence of our Heavenly Parents meeting, becoming mutually aware, and committing themselves to eternal love. 

Our Heavenly Parents thus became God, and creation began by God's "interventions" on primordial reality; and to the extent that primordial beings opt-in to live by love. 

This was not the original situation of reality, there was a time when it happened, and it might not have happened. 

Furthermore, beings are usually only partly capable of love; and presumably some beings are incapable of love (and therefore do not participate in creation). 

Thus God's primary creation is a mixed state of love, and not-love. 

And it is this deficit in primary creation that led to the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation, "needed" because Jesus completes the work of creation by enabling Heaven which is the eternal situation of beings living by love; leaving-behind other and evil motivations at resurrection.

**

By Contrast: Orthodox-traditional "Nicene" Christianity perhaps needs to posit a motive for creation - a motive for God creating rather than not; and therefore (sometimes) posits an analogous impetus for creation in the love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - each for the other. 

It is the differences-between the Trinity that enable the love that leads to creation...

However this explanation is made confusing/ incoherent by also insisting that the Trinity are not only different from each other, but also simultaneously the same as each other (because there is only one God). 

(This is required by the insistence on a monotheistic Omni-God creating ex nihilo - such a God cannot be internally subdivided.) 

And furthermore; ortho-trad theology has it that that the "process" of creation (and of love among the Trinity) happens outside of time - so creation always-was-and-is; so there is no "Timeline" of creation. All that is now, ever was and shall be. 

And this is the point at which orthodox Christianity reaches its particular It Just Is assumption - explanations stop at this point.

All metaphysics must reach this point, sooner or later - the point at which we must make assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of reality. 

The goal (as I see it) is to become aware of where this point is reached, to acknowledge this; and to know that here we are indeed making assumptions... 

Which activity is (I suggest) properly called "metaphysics" 

Mary Magdalene and the role of women in Christianity - mundane and cosmic

The role of women in religion can be examined from the point of view of the extent to which it is mundane - i.e. to do with the conduct of mortal life in this world; or cosmic - i.e. concerned with eternal matters and existence outwith this mortal life. 

A cosmic role for women could be a religion where the creator was a woman, or when one or more of the god's was a woman - and there are also other possibilities. 

My main interest is in Christianity. In historical Christianity we can see a cosmic role for the mother of Jesus in both the Eastern and Western Catholic churches. 

And Mormons regard God the creator as a dyad of man and woman - Heavenly Parents who manifested divine creation and (in some literal sense) procreated Men. 

Other types of Christianity among Protestants have essentially zero cosmic role for women; and this applies to Judaism and Islam.  

As regards a mundane role for women - this is seen in terms of supernatural help with everyday life. This could range from a theologically formal role of female saints and other holy women in helping with various problems of life; to all kinds of unofficial, popular and folk beliefs of the same kind; that shade-off into superstitions and "luck" (and may occur even in what are officially strictly monotheistic religions). 

At a further remove, there is the matter of women's role in the various churches. In some religions women have a essential role in churches, but in historical Christianity this has not been the case. 

Sometimes all essential church roles were restricted to men, but in all instances women were inessential to the work of the church. The religion can be conducted entirely without participation of women. 

Another vital aspect relates to Jesus Christ. 

When it comes to a cosmic role for women in the life and work of Jesus Christ, historical Christianity has either had none; or has focused exclusively on the mother of Jesus whose role is probably only of explicitly cosmic significance relatively late in the history of the Roman Catholic Church - with the doctrine of immaculate conception. 

Even the mundane role of women in the usual versions of the life of the adult Jesus during his ministry is minor to the point of being inessential. 

This is (variously) a consequence of taking either the whole-Bible, or the whole-New-Testament (or Synoptic Gospels, or Pauline Epistles) as the major basis for Christian assumptions, and also of deriving core assumptions of church authority, tradition and a lineage of theology and practice dating back to Church Fathers. 

However, my understanding of Christianity is focused upon the Fourth Gospel, regarded as the earliest and most authoritative source of knowledge. 

As such, I see a potentially cosmic role for Mary Magdalene; who I believe to have been the wife of Jesus, and brother of Lazarus - whom I regard as the author of the Fourth Gospel.

Here - in brief - is what I regard as the description of Mary Magdalene's cosmic role in the work of Jesus Christ - using the Fourth Gospel (see this link for further discussion and more detailed referencing): 

The Marriage at Cana (Chapter 2) is a rather garbled and tampered-with account of Jesus's marriage to Mary Magdalene - and it was the time of his first miracle. 

I assume that Jesus became aware of his divinity at the time of his baptism by John; but he did not perform a miracle until he was married to Mary; which marriage therefore implicitly has a cosmic dimension, far beyond any mundane earthly ceremony. 

Jesus encounters Mary on the way to resurrection of Lazarus (Chapter 11) - his profoundest and greatest miracle - the first resurrection. 

Then again at the episode of the mysterious episode of the anointing of Jesus's feet by Mary (Chapter 12) - when he realized and announced that his death was imminent.  

Mary Magdalene was present (with Jesus's mother, other women, and Lazarus) at Jesus's death on the cross (Chapter 19); and was then the first to meet him two days later when resurrected (Chapter 20). 

I take these descriptions - bracketing Jesus's death and resurrection - to imply that Mary had some cosmic role in these unprecedented and eternally significant events. 

The last we hear of Mary and Jesus is when he tells her: I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. 

Which I regard as an anticipation of the continuation of their eternal, cosmic marriage in Heaven, after Jesus's ascension and Mary's resurrection. 

The marvellous originality and profundity of the Mormon theology of eternal marriage

I have given-up on trying to persuade others of the wonders of Mormon theology! Instead, I will here merely vent some of my enthusiasm. 

Even Mormons regard their theology as very-much subordinate to specifics of this world practice in the CJCLDS. 

And hardly anybody else outside the CJCLDS (although, a few!) is sufficiently interested even to engage with the subject - often because of ineradicable ignorant hostile prejudice. 

But for me, I don't know that I have come across any richer source of metaphysical originality and genius across the span of Christendom, as in Mormon theology*. 

One of the greatest insights of Mormon theology was that God (The Creator) is the eternal and loving marriage of Father in Heaven and Mother in Heaven; in other words God is a dyad, not one. 

Properly understood and explored; this can be an astonishingly rich insight into the fundamental nature of reality - transcending centuries, indeed millennia, of false antitheses between monotheism and polytheism. 

The Mormon concept of God can be the basis of a positive metaphysical concept in its own right (not some combination or compromise of pre-existing concepts); as such, it needs to be understood in its own right. 

The Mormon church (the CJCLDS) has confused and distorted matters - in this as in several other ways - by claiming that such eternal "sealed" marriage is possible among mortal men and women, here on earth; and restricted to the administration and approval of the CJCLDS. 

This is understandable, perhaps it is and was inevitable - yet we must distinguish the reality and truth of things, as separable from the compromises and practicalities of organizing and maintaining A Church, in this world. 

But this is not merely something that demonstrably fails in practice (since many sealed marriages have ended in divorce); but is clearly impossible in theory, due to the basic nature of human beings and our life in this entropic and evil world. 

The basic nature of this mortal life cannot be transcended by mortal Men - and the fact of Men organizing into churches. 

Making claims of the church's transcendent power, or that church rules for living are mapped onto post-mortal and heavenly realities, are simply false - because they contradict the nature of this-world; and contradict too the whole rationale of Christianity as entailing death and resurrection. 

We cannot make Heaven on earth - else there would be no need for Heaven.

(And Jesus Christ insisted that there was need for Heaven, and by his work showed why and how.) 

We cannot replicate the eternal realities of Heaven with our mortal minds and bodies - and claiming that we can, acts against the core realities of what Jesus did and why. 

Churches - and their rules and rituals - do not control our access to Heaven; and indeed, the behaviours of church members (since 2020, especially) demonstrates that nobody really believes that they do. 

(They are merely too concerned at the implications of acknowledging they don't believe - which double-negative is not the same as - and much weaker than - positive belief. )

So, to understand the profound truth of the Mormon theology of God, requires that Mormons (as well as other Christians) set-aside the confusions related to how such spiritual realities are crystallized into material and mortal terms here in our lives on earth. 

Yet, our aspirations can and should be heavenly and spiritual - even as we acknowledge that their practice is mortal and corruptible (not just corruptible, but actually inevitably corrupt-ed - to some degree, sooner or later - by entropy and death - even when not by evil). 

(Thus the desire and aspiration towards eternal marriage in the Mormon sense is a new (as of 1830) beautiful and life-enhancing one - and a vital corrective to the destructive (indeed nihilistic) "mainstream" Christian doctrine that marriage is necessarily a temporary expedient that is dissolved by death, combined with the assertion that "there is no marrying in Heaven".) 

This aspiration is true and good; although eternal marriage cannot be actually attained until after we are resurrected and have become wholly and eternally committed to live by love. 

It requires resurrection to be able to make eternal commitments; for the reason that resurrection is itself the foundational eternal commitment - i.e. to live wholly by live (and leave-behind sin). 

Earthly marriage, and the innate desires and motivations we have in relation to it - even when we may be unable to find it during this mortal existence, provide the basis for understanding the reality of Heavenly marriage; and of the original, originative, creative nature of God (originating, that is, in love - with creation, including but not restricted to procreation, understood as a manifestation of love.)

When Joseph Smith had his vision of the dyadic nature of God, he was both a prophet and a philosopher of genius; but when he tried to make this vision a concrete reality among the members of the new Mormon church, he was merely a gifted and able leader, a kind of "king and judge" perhaps. 

Furthermore, the nature of God as from a Heavenly marriage need not be, and I think is not, a template for every man and woman - past, present and future. 

Christianity is for individual persons, and entails that each individual person affiliates to divine creation; I don't see that this entails that everybody ultimately wants the same thing - indeed that would seem vanishingly unlikely. Since each is unique - surely there will "always" be genuine exceptions? 

(As well as those making excuses to justify special treatment!) 

And what we be the point of a creation consisting of everybody doing the same thing! Multiplicity would then have no function or reason!

Another of Joseph Smith's great prophetic insights was that Heaven was A Family, in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. And a loving family - even here on earth - can and often does incorporate many kinds of life-motivations and self-chosen roles, among its loving members. 

Resurrected and eternal individual men and women will develop what is distinctive in their original and innate nature - and this may or may not lead them into eternal marriage of a kind analogous to that of God, our Heavenly Parents and the Primary Creators, and thence to procreating spiritual children - in the way that Joseph Smith seemed to regard as the proper goal of all people. 

I include this, not because I am necessarily correct in contradicting this particular aspect of Joseph Smith's revelations - but as example fo how we ought to engage with them, as realities.

Realities we may know-about now, and experience temporarily and partially in mortal life; but realities that are only do-able in resurrected post-mortal life    

 

*For all its essential insights (at least, they have been essential for me) there are significant deficiencies in Mormon theology. Two of the most important are an incoherent and double-negative understanding of Jesus's real vital importance and the true nature of his work, which error was (apparently) inherited from mainstream Protestant theology. Another mistake - I believe - is also inherited; which is to regard the Holy Ghost as a separate personage from Jesus Christ - which (as with mainstream Christianity) makes the HG into a nebulous abstract entity with no clear provenance or role. 

Ultimately; there is no Duty to love God (an uncomfortable but necessary truth)

The developments of human consciousness over the past two thousand years have exposed what are often experienced as some uncomfortable truths about the Christian's ultimate relationship to God. 

At the time of Christ, Men did not experiences themselves as fully differentiated individuals - life was (to a significant, often large) extent; experienced as a group-member. 

And society was organized in the same way - men were classified by nation, tribe, caste, occupation, family-membership etc. -- and these relationships were mandatory and governed by duties on both sides. Duty was, indeed, a foundational virtue in such societies. 

The existentialist feeling, first articulated specifically in the early 21st century by Heidegger, of experiencing oneself as having been "thrown" into this world - without consent; seems to have been almost-entirely absent. Men came to consciousness already belonging "in" the world, in their situation; and accepting the duties thereof.

Duty was necessary (or, at least, expedient) because in a society thus organized; those who shirked their duties were coercively transferring responsibilities onto other Men's shoulders. 

The undutiful were parasitizing on the group - and thereby benefitting (perhaps thriving) at the expense of the dutiful. 

This leeching behaviour could not be allowed to expand beyond some small size, or else the group would inevitably be destroyed.  

In such societies the Christian religion, like other religions, was often treated as a matter of group membership. 

In Anglo Saxon or Viking England, when the King became Christian, it was felt to be natural and inevitable that all his subjects underwent mass baptism - and believed. Just as the warrior or peasant was bound to his Lord by bonds of mandatory duty, a duty which he would often embrace as his primary ethic; so he experienced the same kind of relationship with God.   

But over the past centuries, Men's minds have changed. Modern Man's consciousness Just Is extremely different. 

Men can, and often do, differentiate themselves from whatever group of which they find themselves members - or choose some other group with which to affiliate. Furthermore (especially in The West, but to some degree everywhere); there is little or no sense of duty in such relationships; and little reciprocity felt on either side. 

This decline of inner-duty has - in practice - had many deleterious effects; and will probably contribute to the destruction of Western civilization. Yet (as the other side of the same coin) these Western societies only exist and used-to thrive; as a consequence of the same changes in human consciousness away-from the group and towards individuality, that are now destroying them. 

But - to understand this ancient mind-set requires that - although we now know that duty and love can be separated (and indeed Just Are separated); for these Men of the past, the two quite naturally went together. 

This happened then in much the same way as it does even nowadays for (most) young children in close families: the young child conflates love of parents with duty to parents.

And the mother and father does the same with each child. Thus a loving mother of a baby would say it is her duty to feed and care for the child - but also she wants to do so; and, so long as love is constant, does not need to be coerced by a sense of duty. 

A loving mother would be annoyed and insulted if her care for her baby was assumed to be motivated by fear of laws, or a sense of duty to The State. 

In other words: love transcends duty. 

(And this is the core of the lesson for Christians.)

Love renders duty unnecessary - and indeed reveals duty to be an alien intrusion. 

And therein lies the rub! In practice; some mothers do not love their babies; and then her proper care may be imposed from externally - made a matter of enforced duty. 

And even the most loving of mothers - someone who has (insofar as this is possible) made as strong a commitment to love their child as she is capable of making - may find that there are times and situations when that love wavers; and then a sense of duty may be needed to 'step-in' temprarily until love resumes. 

Yet to place duty as the primary motivator for child-care instead of love - on the basis that in this mortal life love cannot always be relied-upon; is at best (and even when genuinely motivated for children's best interests - which is apparently very seldom to judge by the high rates of child neglect, abuse and exploitation in institutions) a social expedient. 

An expedient needed in this mortal life where sin contends with virtue - but far from ideal. 

Certainly duty is not the ideal basis for the best child care. We can easily imagine - and probably have experienced - a much better basis: namely love.

And this is why Christians should not - nowadays - discuss God in terms of duty. To the modern consciousness, this gives an utterly false picture of the desired nature of the relationship between God and each Man. 

This relationship between God and Man is ideally one of mutual love. 

On the side of God it is already one of constant and eternal love; and it is for each Man to choose whether or not he desires to return that love, to make love mutual. 

But, the tough truth is that love cannot be coerced; it must be given, over and again, moment-by-moment - and lower values such as duty, obligation, or avoidance of guilt, or expediency - should not be the basis of that love. 

And Christians should not urge them either - because that is to devalue our relationship with God. 

The same choice comes to all modern adolescents. After natural development (aided by social corruption) takes them to a point of detachment from parents, often a degree of hostility; the adolescents or young adults must choose whether or not to love their mothers and fathers. 

While dutiful behaviour can be externally imposed, to some degree, on adolescents and adults; and while they can can be psychologically manipulated by playing-upon negative feelings of duty, guilt etc; we readily recognize that this is ultimately counter-productive. 

Unless love is freely given from a positive impulse, from the depths of oneself, and by choice - it is just some kind of expediency - and not Christian. 

 And yet, at the same time, we recognize that in this mortal world of change, decay, death and evil; we cannot rely on love to be continuously active. We cannot be sure to hold-to eternal commitments in this mortal life.

We may be fooled by cunning evil-propaganda, warped by social pressures that we are too weak to withstand, become diseased, or broken by life... Many adverse possibilities may supervene. 

We can decide what we want here-and-now; but only make eternal commitments in and for the life to come after death. 

It was part of the gift of Jesus Christ to make this possible. He made it possible for us to choose the ideal of love, and by resurrection to enter a situation where all is regulated by love; because love is eternally mutual among all who dwell therein; and that love is unopposed by sin, by death, or by expediency. 

For such reasons, it seems to me that modern Christians should clarify their own understanding of this existential reality of the gratuitousness of love; and also grasp that while love may be our ideal in this mortal world...

Love can be (but can only be) full and everlasting in the resurrected life beyond death: in Heaven. 

And that is a world that has transcended duty. 

The character of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel

The author of the Fourth Gospel (who I believe to be the risen Lazarus) is the only person in the Bible who claims to be a witness of the last three years of Jesus's life and teachings, and a disciple. 

He is the only one who knew Jesus personally, loved and was loved-by him; and so is (presumably) the single person in the best position to provide a true account of Jesus's character during the period of his ministry, death and resurrection. 

In the first Chapters of the Fourth Gospel, there is initially more about John (the Baptist) than Jesus, and more of his words. 

Jesus only gradually gets-into the narrative from a few phrases of reported conversation with the disciples and his mother, and the account of the 'scourging' of the Temple; until the interaction with Nicodemus. 

Even from these snatches of conversation, it seems that Jesus is enigmatic, even mercurial. He does not answer direct questions; but instead responds with a further question, or a 'riddle' or a 'story'. 

This, together with the violent actions at the temple, depict Jesus as a confrontational personality: very much "in your face", regardless of whoever he is currently interacting with.  

But there is another side: Jesus as Prophet. These prophetic utterances are often prefaced with "Verily, Verily, I say unto you..."

The first is during the meeting with Nathaniel in Chapter One: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. 

Jesus here introduces the term "Son of man" for himself*. Again we can see that - even when teaching directly - by modern standards Jesus's speech is what we moderns might term poetic or symbolic (i.e. it means more than it says, and means several things at once). 

The truth of such prophetic statements is occult: i.e. hidden, non-obvious to mundane understanding. Thus; when teaching spiritually, Jesus employs a spiritual - unworldly, unpractical - form of language.   

Then, in Chapter 3, when when Jesus meets Nicodemus, we get a great outpouring of such vatic teachings. 

We get, indeed, the essence of Jesus's work and message distilled in its entirety. 

And different versions of this core-teaching recur several times throughout this Gospel - sometimes encapsulating in a verse or two; sometimes in an extended parable-teaching, such as "the feeding of the five thousand" or The Good Shepherd. 

The impression of Jesus as a character in the Fourth Gospel is very striking indeed! 

He is volatile, unpredictable, moody; fearless, elusive, direct, kind, harsh, empathic, highly intellectual, simple like a child - each as he discerns that the occasion demands. 

(A word for this personality type in the classical-medieval astrological system is "Mercurial" : as described by CS Lewis in The Discarded Image, and explicated by Michael Ward in The Narnia Code.)

And then Jesus may suddenly - as it were - stand tall and speak from the great prophetic heights of one who is the 'only begotten Son of God".

...Which I take to mean the first and only among all of God's children who fully understands, and is in full accord-with The Creator's divine purposes and will. 

The One who is uniquely capable of offering a path to all men, all those who are (unlike himself) 'sinners - out-of-accord with God and desirers of death... 

Offering all such men a path to everlasting life on the far side of death when they are Born Again; all this by the simple act of 'believing on' Him! That is (approximately) knowing who He is, and following him to Heaven - but after death, by being 'born-again' or resurrected:

[16] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. [17] For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. [18] He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

The "already" of to be "condemned already", means that this is not a threat of punishment - but a rescue from the otherwise inevitable fate of men before the time of Jesus: which was to die and descend, as discarnate "ghosts", to witless and depersonalized mere-existence in Sheol/ Hades/ the underworld. 

(There to await the coming of Jesus, and the coming of choice.)

Hell only emerged after Jesus, because Hell is the choice of those who know, but reject and oppose Jesus's offer and gift of resurrected eternal Heavenly life - which is a very different matter from passively having-imposed the default state of Sheol. 

* Chapter 3: [12] If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? [13] And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. [14] And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: [15] That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 

Jesus is here saying, in vatic-poetic mode - that he himself is the Son of man who 'ascended up to Heaven' - when baptized by John and becoming fully-divine albeit mortal; having come 'down from heaven' as a man in perfect accord with God the Father; and therefore 'which is in heaven' even as he speaks with Nicodemus (heaven being a place or state of those Beings whose natures are in full and eternal harmony with God's creative will).  

Note added: It is often said that Jesus wants us to become more like him. The implication is that we ought to behave more like Jesus; model our behaviour on that of Jesus. I don't see it, it would anyway be impossible; and I do not believe it is true. Jesus wants us to believe-on and to follow him - but surely not to behave like him, nor have characters like his character. The essence of Christianity is resurrection, which is a wholly-good and eternal restoration of our-self! Heaven is full of unique characters, each contributing something unique hence vital: not populated by Jesus-copies! (Which would, if true, be redundant and render eternal life futile.)  

Heavenly Parents and the dyadic/ one-creator God - an update

As I have often written, but not recently, I believe that God is dyadic - consisting of a Heavenly Father and Mother, a man and woman who are (in some sense) incarnate and not spirits. 

This is the Mormon understanding, and reading about Mormon theology was where I first came across it. 

I am not trying to persuade other people that I am right; but I shall here consider why I personally believe this, and what it is that I believe. 

In the first place it is due to what might be termed intuition; in the sense that when I first encountered this idea, my heart seemed to jump and warm; as if I was discovering something true, good and with great possibilities of more-good. 

There was an immediate and positive sense... not so much that this was true, but that I wanted this to be true - this came before my conviction that it was true.  

Following this I read more about Mormon theology, and realized that the dyadic, man-woman nature of our Heavenly parents was just part of an entire metaphysical understanding of creation (including procreation - the creation of beings including people) as something dynamic, interactive, developing, evolutionary, open-ended, and expanding. 

In other words, that creation itself was creative (and therefore creation was not, as I had previously assumed, a done-thing, a closed accomplishment, a finished totality - once-and-for-always.) 

I then began to explore the implications of these ideas for myself; using concepts I got from William Arkle (and his reflections on God's motivations for creation); and Owen Barfield, including Barfield's accounts of the 'polar' philosophy of ST Coleridge. 

I was also building on a longer-term fascination with 'animism' - with the (apparently innate and spontaneous) tendency to regard the world (the universe) as consisting primarily of beings - all of whom were alive, purposive, conscious - albeit in different ways, at different scales and timescales etc.

The motivation for creation, and why God should have created this kind of creation, was something I had found difficult to grasp (none of the usual explanations made much sense to me). But when I conceptualized God as the loving dyad of a man and woman, then it seemed obvious why such a combination would have wanted to create - including others who might eventually become like themselves.   

Furthermore, it did not seem possible that creation had arisen from any state of oneness of self-sufficiency, since this would make creation arbitrary; nor could creation arise from a tendency towards differentiation, because that would lead to meaningless-purposeless chaos. 

There must (I felt) have been some kind of original 'polarity' - in abstract and physics-like terminology, there would need to be at-least two different kinds of 'force', the interaction of which would be creation. Coleridge (also Barfield and Arkle) saw this in terms of a 'masculine'-tendency for expansion and differentiation; and a 'feminine'-tendency for one-ness and integration.  

But in terms of my (non-abstract) preferred metaphysics of beings and animistic assumptions; 'masculine' and 'feminine' simplifies to just a primordial man and a primordial woman; this would mean two complementary, unlike-but-of-the-same-kind, beings; the love of whom would lead to a desire for creation.  

(In the same kind of way that - in this mortal life - love of man and woman usually leads to a desire for procreation.)

At some point I validated this understanding by means of meditative prayer; by refining and asking a simple question, feeling that this question had 'got-through', and receiving a clear inner response.  

In summary; the above account is something-like the sequence by which I desired, concluded, became-convinced-by, the metaphysical assumption of God as Heavenly parents; by some such mixture of feelings, reasoning, and 'feedback'. 

All this happened a good while ago (about a decade); since when I have been interpreting things on the basis of this framework, and it seems to 'work', so far.

What the real-life, this world, implications are; include a reinforcement of the idea that the family is (and ought to be) the primary social structure; on earth as it is in Heaven; and a clarification of the nature of creation - starting with the primary creation by Heavenly parents and also including the secondary creation of beings (such as men and women) within primary creation. 

This metaphysics has further helped me understand both why and how love is the primary value of Christianity; i.e. because love made possible creation in the first place, and is the proper basis of 'coordinating' the subcreative activities of all the beings of creation.  

And it helped me understand how creation can be open-ended and expansile, without degenerating into chaos; because it is love that makes the difference.

Also, it helped me to understand the nature of evil; and how evil is related either to the incapacity for love or its rejection. Without love, the innate creativity of individual beings is going to be selfish and hostile to that of other beings: non-loving attitudes, thinking, and actions by beings, will tend to destroy the harmony of creation.  

I don't talk much about this understanding, and I often use the generic term 'God'; because it is difficult to explain briefly and clearly that the dyadic God of our Heavenly parents serves as a single and 'coherently unified' source of creation

But God is two, not one, because only a dyad can create, and creation must-be dyadic. 

And the dyadic just-is the one-ness of God the primal creator.  

Note added: It may be said, correctly, that the above does not depend on the Bible; but then neither does the metaphysics of orthodox-classical theology depend on scripture. We can find resonances and consistencies within the Bible - but assumptions such as: strict monotheism - creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by a God outside of creation and Time, the Athanasian Creed descriptions of the Trinity, God's omnipotence and omniscience, original sin... These are ideas that would not be derived-from a reading of scripture - the most that can be said is that someone who already ideas can find Biblical references that can be interpreted as consistent-with these assumptions. They are (apparently) products of philosophically sophisticated theologians who brought these ideas to Christianity from earlier and mostly pagan (Greek and Roman) sources. Also, these kinds of metaphysical assumption are theistic - to do with a personal god - but not specifically Christian. The salvific work of Jesus Christ (principally: making possible resurrected life everlasting in Heaven) was done within already-existing creation, and Christianity is not therefore an explanation of creation-as-such.   

If every person is innately different, then how come some people strive to be different?

The history of whether people are - or are meant to be - essentially the same, or essentially different, is a matter of metaphysical assumptions and cannot be determined from observations and evidence -- although observations and evidence may be more, or less, consistent with the metaphysics - in different times and places. 

(Men and women, and people of different ages, have always and everywhere been regarded as qualitatively different, at least in this mortal life - until 'officially' the-day-before-yesterday, in a few Western nations...)

From what I can gather of hunter-gatherer spirituality; they regard each person as different and unique; because an unique combination of ancestors (and perhaps animal spirits). 

This is how I feel about people, 'instinctively', spontaneously. Each person that I get to know seems to be unique, with resemblances. There are, for instance, distinct likenesses between my mother, sister, and daughter - such that they are obviously relatives and have an (hereditary, presumably) affinity; but each is a very different person. 

So, from this perspective, everybody is primarily an unique individual - but some people have secondary, more-superficial similarities. 

In this primal set-up; we assume difference; and explain similarity. For example, similarities may be explained in terms of innate attributes (intelligence, personality, size, strength...), heredity, or having had similar experience. 

Traditional religions in agriculturally-based societies posit a very different set-up, however. Such societies tend to regard groups of human beings as having an essentially-identical nature, and from this assumption of sameness they explain differences. 

This goes-with - although not entailed by - the idea that souls are created from nothing at conception - i.e. because souls come into life with no baggage, it is easy to think of souls as starting-out this mortal life identically; only gathering differences throughout life. 

All people may be regarded as essentially the same in origin, or they may be divided into groups such us Us and Them, or castes - aristocrats and peasants, for instance. 

Perhaps more exactly, in agrarian society there is an ideal of sameness. 

For instance; all priests, or all members of a religion, or all citizens of a nation, may have an ideal type toward which they are encouraged to strive; and from which departures are disapproved, and perhaps punished.  

In such religion; it is often stated or implies that Men are created the same, and differences emerge later; and again in the afterlife there is either an identical state for everyone (Sheol, Hades), or else categories of particular people (Valhalla for warriors, saved and damned) within-which there is a single ideal type. 

Traditional Christian Heaven is often depicted and imagined as containing hosts of angels, and of the saved, with little or no differentiation between the individuals - as if ideal Men have returned to a primal and intended sameness. 

In modern society there is an incoherent mess on this issue, as about most things of importance; and I will not attempt to summarize the contradictory nonsense that constitute feminism, or the official views of homosexuality, or the transagenda. 

These are all destructively-motivated power ploys and PSYOPS - not attempts to describe reality. 

In brief, modern society demands total sameness - but the sameness demanded varies according to time and situation. On Tuesday race divisions may be treated as mandatorily homogeneous and primary, but by Thursday it may be about the need for sameness among (biological) men and women - while by Sunday the demand for sameness may related to chosen-identity of men and women.

Overlaps and contradictions between mandatory beliefs are ignored, because the requirement is for obedience to arbitrary whim. More more obviously arbitrary and dishonest the requirement for obedience; the more deeply corrupting such obedience will be - which is the purpose behind it.   

What is important is that - at each momentary demand to regard X and Y as the same - there be total-obedience to the asserted opinion. 

I regard the fundamental truth to be that we are all different in origin and as far back as we existed (which is eternally), and sameness is something either imposed or achieved. 

In traditional society sameness was mostly imposed; and in modern society likewise, with respect to those areas in which the rulers wish the masses to be the-same: eg in terms of obedience to Litmus Test issues.

The situation is that difference ought to be taken for granted, because it is innate; yet at the same time both traditional and modern societies depend on treating groups as de facto identical. So there is an innate tension.   

The modern idea of wanting to be, and displaying, personal difference; is a consequence of society imposing sameness on what are in fact fundamentally-unique individuals - and this desire typically emerges at adolescence, when the child is psychologically detaching from parental control. 

The adolescent therefore feels this innate tension between actual individuality and imposed uniformity most keenly. 

In traditional societies the adult role is more of an externally-imposed 'stereotype' then childhood; and innate individuality rebels against this artificial uniformity. Adolescence is a short phase during which the child is channeled into one or another of the 'uniform' and finite adult roles, as demanded by society. 

Modern ideology pretends to support individuality against this channeling, but actually demands uniformity on key (destructive) issues. The stereotypical roles have been subverted, demonized, and indeed eliminated. 

The consequence is a psychological state of perpetual adolescence - with all the contradictions that implies. The adolescent cannot grow-up, and doesn't want to.   

   

So we get the result that all means of large-scale and and coordinated societal organization tend to - indeed must, operationally-speaking - treat individuals as groups, as categories, as all-the-same. But underneath this is the experienced fact that - when we get to know people - they are all essentially different!

People then feel that they need to assert individuality; and (since these are social-functions) the asserted individuality gets channeled into a finite range of fixed categories...

Leading to the absurdity of standardized patterns of 'rebellion', standard 'rebellious' fashions and behaviours - yet all being claimed as 'self'-expression!

*

I find that I continually need to remind myself that we are all unique individuals, and that therefore - in an ultimate and spiritual sense - we each will have an unique destiny in a world created by God, our loving parents - who regard us each as uniquely as all good parents do of their children. 

A good parent does not want all his or her children to end-up as identical; but for each to fulfill his or her own specific destiny. 

A good family is not held-together by externally imposed uniformity; but by he mutual love of its members, all pointing towards the same loving future in harmony with God's creation. 

We begin and (after resurrection) end as real, unique, individuals; and Heavenly harmony is an achieved product of love - not a state of of imposed uniformity. 

Of course, the defects and practicalities of life on earth mean that this ideal is not attainable on a large scale, or permanently. 

Nonetheless, the ultimate reality of individuality is worth remembering, and that harmonious cooperation of individuals is something striven-for not spontaneous... 

But that the harmony of love is a higher, and happier and more creative, form of cooperation that the imposition of sameness.

We can thus experience Heaven on earth - but not permanently nor continuously. But that experience can (and should) motivate us towards inhabiting Heaven after death.