Monthly Archives: February 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part XII

We have now gone through several of the New Testament biblical statements that tell us directly of some attribute in the Nature of God. While many do believe that the Genesis account of the creation of man saying that “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27) is a testimony to the idea that man in human form looks like God and therefore God must look like a man, we have understood this quite differently. As we recently discussed, the creation of man in this verse is the creation of the Spirit of man and today we will further define this idea to become that of the Soul of man and these terms, as we have said in the past, we do use interchangeably. In previous posts in this series we have taken apart this verse (ON GOD part V) and we will not restate this here; we will however go on from that understanding to say that the God is a Spirit and God is a Trinity and this is the image in which we are created. The specific mention of creation here is in reference to the manifestation of man in his primary form and that is the form that we call the Soul, the Christ Within and the Inner Man. It remains True as we have said that man is a Spirit because God is a Spirit and, through our understanding of man as part and parcel of the Divine Spirit of God, we should see that man is eternal and infinite as is OUR GOD although the idea of infinity is one that we cannot comprehend except in the view that we are so through our part in God. The creation then is the manifestation of the man as the Soul, the True man in form, that is then born into the threefold body of the human creature, giving it life and consciousness. It is here, as the Soul, that man is without the need of sexual differentiation leading to the confusing words of  “male and female created he them” and this we can see as either both sexes or neither and the potential to become both.

It is interesting to note that most all of the ideas that we can get from scripture are revealed to us when the scripture is pondered upon without prejudice and presupposition of meaning. There are other verses that correspond to this one above later in the Book of Genesis; in Chapter Five we find this at the beginning of the genealogy of Adam to Noah; the text goes thus: “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;  Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created“(Genesis 5:1-2). First we should see here a repetition of the sayings from Chapter One with the addition that God “blessed them, and called their name Adam“. The idea of blessed here is rather undefined as its meaning in English is just the translated word and the meanings ascribed cannot refer to what God would do to or for His creation in man. The lexicon tells us this of the Hebrew word barak which is translated as blessed: to bless, kneel; (Qal) to kneel, to bless; (Niphal) to be blessed, bless oneself; (Piel) to bless; (Pual) to be blessed, be adored; (Hiphil) to cause to kneel; (Hithpael) to bless oneself; (TWOT) to praise, salute, curse² (the parentheses are reference to Hebrew grammatical usage). Can we find anything in this to give us an understanding of what God did to man in barak? Strong’s gives similar understanding as does Vine’s but neither of these give us a Notion of what a blessing may be when it is coming from God^3, 6. We need also look here at the idea that comes from the words “called their name Adam“; this word translated as Adam is actually the word for man or for mankind and it is so translated in many versions of the bible. This word adam is different than the other uses in our saying as those others are for the proper name Adam. Understanding this can we see a twist toward our interpretation. Add also to our understanding  this string of ideas saying that:

• “God created man” From this we get the understanding that we are created by God; this is clear and simple.
• “in the likeness of God made he him” Here, as we discussed above, we have the likeness of God becoming our likeness and not the the reverse as is believed by many. “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24) plus our understanding of the Trinity of God for which there is no specific biblical reference tell us that man is a Spirit and man is a Trinity as well.
• “Male and female created he them” In this we have the idea, as we have said, of both sexes or neither seeing that this reference is to the creation of the True man, the manifestation of Spirit that we call the Soul which is the Second Aspect of man’s personal version or identity as a Trinity.
• “called their name Adam” This is, as we discuss above, a reference to man or mankind and by way of the idea of their name we can consider this a creation of many Souls which is not contradictory to the words from Chapter One saying simply “male and female created he them” as in this case we have no reference point to a quantity expressed in the word them.
• “when they were created” Finally we have a confirmation of the idea that there are more than one; a multiplicity of  what we can loosely call androgynous beings that we are as Souls.

Can we see the sensibility of this approach to the creation of man? We should also see that this understanding does not detract from the next part of this which is the man in form on the Earth. Created as Souls with the Earth as our region of habitation, we are then formed as men with a body and to that body we, as Souls, give Life and consciousness. The first command by God as it appears in the Chapter One is to telling man as Souls and as a creation of more than one androgynous beings is that “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so” (Genesis 1:28-30). Now this is all generally taken to mean the creation of the first human physical man but if this were to be true what then is the meaning of the several points that we elucidate above. To further frustrate the this idea of the first human physical man we have the verses that we began with today from Chapter Five which, as we have said, are, in the first two verses above, a clear repetition of the ideas from Chapter One. Can we understand the command of God telling the created Souls that they have dominion over all.

Continuing on in this theme so as to gain an understanding of this whole issue we come to where God makes man a physical being. We must remember that this text is written to be understood by the people in that day which we can consider to be around 1500 years before Christ and this based on the understanding that Moses wrote it. We dare not go further than this as we do not know if there was a verbal tradition that Moses relates to us or if this is directly from the spiritual realm to Moses pen. This being said we come to Chapter Two of Genesis where we find this narrative: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground” (Genesis 2:3-6). In this sequence we should be able to gather a number of thoughts that enhance our perspective:

• “And God blessed the seventh day” This signifies the end of the period of creation. The narrative goes on to tell us that God “rested from all his work” and this is the common translation of the word from the Hebrew word shabath which can also be translated as cease², the more common translation in the King James Bible (KJV). Considering the subject is God, one would think that cease would be the translation insofar as this is GOD who needs no rest.
• Next we are told that “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created” and in this we should see that the subject is the Seven Days of Creation that precede the saying for after this explaining there is a new subject. This saying goes on to say that “in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew“. This is a difficult saying to understand as it was on the Third Day that God created these things that grow; here we can get the idea that God created just to potential for them on this Third Day.
• The next point is cumbersome but it is in line with what else we have discovered in these words on creation; we are here on a day that is after the Seventh Day and after all creation has been done including the assumed creation of man in Chapter One. However, we are told here that “there was not a man to till the ground” which saying we can take hold of to further enhance our premise that this creation of man in Chapter One is actually the creation of the Soul of man, his True manifestation.
• We also get here some information about “no rain” and the “mist from the earth” which, like the idea regarding the plants, is difficult except that perhaps it is giving reason to understand the idea of the potential for the growth. To further this we must also look at the creation of the animals which was on the same Sixth Day in which we read about the creation of man in Chapter One; if these are animals of flesh and bone, what do these creatures eat if after the Seventh Day there is still no vegetation?

Can we see in all this above that the whole of this creation may well have been the creation of the potential for all these things, the putting into motion the necessary energies and forces which would bring these several things about upon the Earth. If our premise on the creation of man as a Soul in Chapter One is firm, then these other thoughts can be firm as well and we can see in Chapter One the creation of the Soul of man and the soul like potential for all vegetation and for every beast. Continuing on in Chapter Two we find the following that helps us to this premise of creation; the text continues saying that:

• “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food….” (Genesis 2:7-9)
• “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15)
• “And the LORD God said , It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof” (Genesis 2:18-19)
• “And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man” (Genesis 2:20-22)

We have broken this down into steps of activity and have left out the references to the Garden and the Trees as this is not our subject for today. Can we see here that man is created as the physical being in these verses and the breath of Life is the Life of the Soul that animates the physical form? Can we see here also that to become a living soul can as well be translated as a living person from this list that we get from the lexicon as definitions for the Hebrew word nephesh: soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion; that which breathes, the breathing substance or being, soul, the inner being of man; living being; living being (with life in the blood); the man himself, self, person or individual; seat of the appetites; seat of emotions and passions; activity of mind, dubious; activity of the will, dubious; activity of the character, dubious². In addition to the bringing forth of man into the Earth we also have the bringing forth of vegetation as we read that the “LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food“. In the next statement we have a redundancy of putting man into the garden but this comes with the explanation of man’s responsibility which, as we see above, is “to dress it and to keep it“. So we have the potential for man on Earth, the Soul, becoming a reality and we have also the potential for vegetation now sprouting up in what is called here the Garden. Next we find that potential for animals which was created on the Sixth Day being made as physical creatures on the Earth. We must realize that we have no way of knowing the length of any of these days nor do we know what there may have been beyond the Garden but we can surmise from all of this a much more comprehensible understanding of creation that that which is commonly understood. We can get the picture here that there is for every living thing on the Earth a archetypical representation that is in some mysterious way before created. For man it is his Soul for the creatures of the Earth is can be some other form of conscious bearing entity and for the vegetation we can only guess; it is really of no significance to us what is the nature of the creature and the plant as these are below our threshold of concern.

Finally we have the making of woman; the physical creation of a body that is the companion to man and which we must understand as just another form that receives the Life of a Soul just as the man. This is all the creation of the physical incarnation of the Soul of man into the bodies of man and woman and this is the creation also of the beast and the vegetation in which dwell the archetypical  entities and all this is told to us in a very much simplified story that does not get into any of the science and the anatomy of it all. Speaking of man, this is the same happening that goes on even to today; the Soul giving Life to the form.

We will continue with our theme in the next post and before we stop for the day let us look at the scripture verse that launched us into this journey through the early chapters of the Book of Genesis: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken , and shall he not make it good?” (Numbers 23:19).

We leave the rest of our list of direct sayings about the Nature of God and will pick this up again in the next post.

This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.

We leave also our Quote of the Day from yesterday.

To the God Who is in the Fire and Who is in the waters;

To the God Who has suffused Himself through all the world;

To the God Who is in summer plants and in the lords of the forest;

To that God be adoration, adoration.

Sh’vet Upanishad, II.17.

Today’s Quote of the Day is from ancient Hindu scripture. This book, the Sh’vet Upanishad, is from a group of books on the Philosophy of God that date back to more that five hundred years before Christ. Like many religious texts, and religions for that matter, there is a great variety of interpretations; Hindu scriptures are no exception. Our selection of this as our Quote of the Day is because it fits well into our discussions in this series called ON GOD and although we take most of our information from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we do believe that all sources of spiritual revelation should be considered. The common Christian understanding regarding God as being outside of His creation is rather opposite of this saying and is opposite much of the reality of Christian Scripture as well. In this saying God is immanent in His creation as He is immanent in man, as the Spirit within the form. In today’s text is some commentary on worship and the lack of understanding that we have regarding the intention of the Christ in our saying from the Gospel of John. Here the word adoration is used; ponder on this.

• ² New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³ Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• ⁶ Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1996