Hi Wil —
That is the difference between Jesus and his Christ self. His Christ self is one with all, just as yours is.
No, that's not what the total text says.
We are sons of Adam, or the sons of man, as St Paul teaches: "The first man Adam was made into a living soul" (1 Corinthians 15:45). Jesus is also a man, taking our Adamic human nature, and is thus, like us, a Son of Man, but unlike us his being derives ultimately from His uncreated essence, God.
St Paul goes on to define Christ as "the last Adam into a quickening spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45), 'last' in the sense of ultimate being — God — not the last man ever to be born. It is this 'quickening spirit' (of God) —
His quickening spirit — that spiritualises us in the ultimate sense, by the union of God with the human soul, which we call deification, by adoption: "but you have received
the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father)" (Romans 8:5), not by virtue of our inherent nature, whereas Jesus Christ is the Son of God by virtue of his divine essence.
When we receive Christ into the soul (an incarnation) we become Sons of God, but unlike Christ it is by adoption of our nature, not by our nature per se.
"Purge out the old leaven (Adam), that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened. For Christ our pasch is sacrificed (by which we are leavened, by the infusion of Him — 'a quickening spirit' — into the human soul)."
(1 Corinthians 5:7)
"If then any be in Christ a new creature," and note we are a new creature in Him, not in ourselves) the old things are passed away (our Adamic self), behold all things are made new (our adopted, deiform, Christic self."
2 Corinthians 5:17
"For in Christ Jesus (the Son of Adam) neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, (as id does for the Adamic human nature)
but a new creature." (the Incarnation of the man-God).
Galatians 6:15
You can't just ignore those elements of the texts that inconveniently refute your thesis.
There is a union of a divine and a human nature in the Incarnation, in theology this is called the Hypostatic Union (hypostasis means to 'stand under'), the human person of Jesus Christ
stands under the eternal divine 'person' as the ontological source of His being. He is the manifestation of the Logos of God, without change, alteration, division or separation. Thus the human person of Christ is the manifest (in human) form of the
Uncreated we term 'God'. Jesus Christ then is the material substance (the physical manifestation) of the divine essence.
In man, we are a hypostatic union of a purely created nature, each human being stands under the
created nature of its universal essence — humanity. Thus the distinction between man and Christ is absolute, He is, in His ultimate ground of being, uncreated (with all that that implies) whereas our ultimate ground of being is a created nature, distinct from all other created natures (dogs, stones, stars, etc).
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Again and again, here and elsewhere in Scripture, the process is the realisation not of our true human nature, which opens onto a purely Adamic or human potentiality, but the realisation of a human nature that is open to a substantial (spiritual) union God (God is a spirit) — remembering that union requires two things to be joined, the divine spirit (pneuma) and the human person (soma, as opposed to sarx, which is the flesh of the soma) not one thing realising itself (that is not a union).
This is what I mean by the reduction of Christianity to a morality — Christ preaches a morality, such as charity, for the sake of God, in that the object of Christian charity is divine union; humanism preaches charity for the same of man only, and not with any divine end in mind.
We
become one with the Father, we are not one with the Father to begin with, as He is.
We are physical beings who, in Him, become spiritual beings; He is a spiritual being who, in the Incarnation, became flesh.
The New Testament is not talking about some abstract spirituality, which reduces to a set of moral values by which a person can be called 'good' (and attain an eternal reward) but the concrete actuality of the Person of Jesus Christ, in whose being we can participate in the Divine Life, an actual and substantial union, and taste the Good in Him, rather than participate in a set of moral vales, and taste 'good' in a relative and contingent manner.
Yes not thru Jesus do we get to the father, bu thru the Christ within.
Actually, through the Holy Spirit we get to Jesus, and through Jesus we get to the Father.
And the 'within' infers its not what we do, but the reason why we do it, our acts come from within when we are mindful.
Christ is not something in you, something else in me, something else in everyone else; nor is Christ parcelled out in bits and pieces among those who seek Him, Christ is the one and same Christ in all of us, which means Christ is greater than us ... and we are called not to seek this reflective and relative goodness in ourselves and in others, but the source of that image that is reflected in each and every soul.
So we must go within, yes ... but we are called to go beyond ourselves, into Him. He says 'follow me' precisely in the same way an explorer follows the river to its source, not to stand in the river and say "I am the river', which may in a metaphorical sense be true, but the river is not the source of the river, but a sign of a source.
I do not seek the corporeal living waters of the Word, as you seem to, but the spiritual source from which they flow.
"For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:22-23)
Christ is in signs (the metaphysical discourse of the Jews) and in wisdom (the metaphysical discourse of the Gentiles), but He is in Himself neither of those two things, He is the cause of them.
You reject Christ, as traditional Christianity preaches Him, because the way of the spiritual life in Christ is a stumblingblock to you, a foolishness.
No the ocean is not the wave, and the wave is not the ocean ...
Absolutely.
but if you capture part of the wave, you get the ingredients of the ocean.
But not the wave ... that's my point. You seek the water, I seek what animates the water.
A wave is a motion in the water
Yes!
In the scope of things the wave is temporal, like our bodies, and the ocean permanent (well yeah, we know it is not, but in our lives it is, and for the sake of discussion it is....and since nothing totally describes G!d this analogy doesn't perfectly either...no surprise there)
The analogy does not fit because you've missed the essential, spiritual, point – no surprises there — if the wave, water in a certain place and time, is analogous to the body, then the ocean is analogous to the universe, the totality of bodies — but I seek Christ who moves the universe, from outside the universe:
"And he said to them: You are from beneath (the ocean), I am from above (the spirit). You are of this world, I am not of this world."
John 8:23
"And the spirit of God moved over the waters" (Genesis 1:2) — Jesus calls us to seek the spirit, not the waters.
Everything is divine, not divinity. It is a word.
And words have meaning, else discourse is meaningless.
You get excited when someone calls your wife's cooking divine? You gonna deny it? Everything is of the father.
Now you're rendering the meaning of words silly. No-one thus claims that my wife's cooking is God. Last night I told the chef in a Thai restaurant that her coconut rice 'was to die for', but I am not prepared to throw myself on my sword for another bowl of rice.
But people eat fugu fish because of the risk ... so one might say 'fugu fish is to die for' and mean it ... go figure!
Go within and seek yourself Wil, but don't stop there!
"Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."
Gospel of Thomas, logion 2.
"Rather, the kingdom is inside of you,
and it is outside of you (so it is more than you). When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
Gospel of Thomas, logion 3.
You know yourself as yourself, and identify what is greater than you, as you, which is illogical.
Look at the text: When you come to know yourself, then you will become known ... by whom will you become known?
"Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is."
The point of seeking is not to find Him in us — which is only ever partial, contingent and incomplete — but to find ourselves in Him — which is eternal, and truly transcendent.
God bless,
Thomas
