“Theology is everywhere the final phase of mythology. The Christian theology born in Rome is no exception, and mythology transformed into theology signifies that the ancient mode of expression has been converted into a modern mode of thought. This is the cause of the great European error which the enlightened natives of India cannot comprehend when the missionaries reproduce the ancient symbolism made ridiculous by literalization, and assure them they must accept this new version as the one sole divine revelation, or be damned forever. They do not laugh in our face because they half suspect us of insanity, which begets a sort of respect in the Oriental mind.” “In Philo, Paul, John, and the Gnostics, the doctrinal identity is indisputable; yet the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, the fall, the incarnation, the atonement, and the resurrection of the body, were as impossible to the Gnostics of seventeen and eighteen centuries ago as they are to the man of science or the phenomenal spiritualist of our day, because they knew better. The Word, according to Philo, could not become incarnate in corporeal shape. He knows no more of a Christ that could be made flesh than he knew of a Jesus in human form. So is it with the Gnostics, who declared it was not possible that he should suffer who was both incomprehensible and invisible. According to the Gnostics, says Irenaeus, ‘neither the Word, nor the Christ, nor the Saviour, was made flesh. They insist upon it that the Word and Christ never came into this world. Not one of the heretics would admit that the Word of God ever was or could be made flesh. They maintain that the Word was neither born nor did he become incarnate.’ It was impossible that the Gnostics could accept the doctrine of a masculine Logos being made flesh or incarnated in human form. That would not carry them beyond natural procreation, whereas their Logos, or manifestor, who in the male form was their Christ, was the spiritual antithesis and eternal opposite to matter, not a redeemer of the flesh by wearing it. The advent of the gnostic Christ could only be in the mind, the spirit, or heart, according to the organ of communication; could only be manifested by an illumination of the mind, a purification of the spirit, a change of heart in the religious sense; an advent that could only dawn about a Christ that could only come within. The type had no more possible application to an external history, so Saviour then, than it has now after the assumed history; it was a sublimated type, a spiritual ideal that could not be realized in utero. Yet it is identical with the Christ of Philo and of Paul. ‘They speak of him under the name of Saviour and Christ, and patronymically, Logos, and everything, because he was formed from the contributions of all. Some maintain that this Saviour was formed out of all, wherefore he was designated Eudocetos, because the whole pleroma was well pleased to glorify the father through him.’ He was also called ‘all things,’ since he was the sum of all.” Gerald Massey “The Natural Genesis: Concerning an Attempt to Recover and Reconstitute the Lost Origines of the Myths and Mysteries, Types and Symbols, Religion and Language, with Egypt for the Mouthpiece and Africa as the Birthplace” Volume II Page 370
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 15:53:07 +0000
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