Dear Cyd.." Everlasting punishment is antithetical to a just and loving God ". This introductory statement really says it all. This is true Gnosis and if one allows one's heart to absorb and " feel " this simple powerful " knowing " it will change you in a deep and positive way with how you relate to the world and others. The negative emotional burden it removes is quite astounding. Your series of breaking down some of Hart's very erudite theology are wonderful. Your gift of simplifying but not veering away from Hart's original concepts and thoughts astound me. In my opinion you have done justice to Hart's remarkable writing on this topic to help us better understand the message. Perhaps Hart has no awareness of your posts on this , but I would think if he did he would feel an appreciation. His message and yours have always been about Love. Thank you Cyd, and thank you D.B. Hart. Amen.
Well, gosh. Thank you for the high praise, Gabriella. I've been wondering if our tour of Hart's book has been at all welcome, and here you say it has.
My ego wants to share that I'm a straight-A student, and my writing has always stood out from whatever cohort of students I've been a part of. It is obviously a blessing and talent from the Father--I can take no credit for it. I am using that gift to advance the Gnostic Gospel, which appears to be my calling. I am so glad to have you here and to read your encouraging words.
This is precisely the philosophical problem I had by the age of 11:
"God is infinitely good, perfectly just, and inexhaustibly loving, and that, on the other, he has created a world under such terms as oblige him either to impose or to permit the imposition of eternal misery on finite rational beings is simply to embrace a complete contradiction. All becomes mystery, but only in the sense that it requires a very mysterious ability to believe impossible things."
But it was going to be "good for us", so it was made into doctrine...
"It may offend against our egalitarian principles today, but it was commonly assumed among the very educated of the early church that the better part of humanity was something of a hapless rabble who could be made to behave responsibly only by the most terrifying coercions of their imaginations."
Having read that in full, and thoughtfully, I am not sure that "Good", "evil" and "free will" are actually clear concepts when we drill down into them hard.
It feels like there is a personality-of-evil, which feeds upon the anguish of sentient beings ("loosh"), but whence has this arisen in this cosmology? It feels different in a polarized way from good, different from the-absence-of-good...
Yes, my good sir. The purpose of my Gnostic Reformation substack is to explain these concepts that were originally part of the Christian gospel but were stripped out in order to subjugate the "hapless rabble" as Hart so eloquently puts it. The personality of evil which feeds on the loosh is what we generally refer to as the archon named Satan, whereas the Demiurge is simply the amnesiac god that is 100% ego and fallen from the Logos. Evil is not a trait, but rather the absence of the quality of Good. The archonic personalities are shadows of the aeonic personalities--they are the absence of the aeons, or angels if you will. The purpose of the much maligned Christ is to instantiate the Good within our material universe in order to "remind" us and the Demiurge that we come from Above and will return to Above. This is the message of the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. I so appreciate your comments, John. They help me clarify what needs to be shared.
Dear Cyd.." Everlasting punishment is antithetical to a just and loving God ". This introductory statement really says it all. This is true Gnosis and if one allows one's heart to absorb and " feel " this simple powerful " knowing " it will change you in a deep and positive way with how you relate to the world and others. The negative emotional burden it removes is quite astounding. Your series of breaking down some of Hart's very erudite theology are wonderful. Your gift of simplifying but not veering away from Hart's original concepts and thoughts astound me. In my opinion you have done justice to Hart's remarkable writing on this topic to help us better understand the message. Perhaps Hart has no awareness of your posts on this , but I would think if he did he would feel an appreciation. His message and yours have always been about Love. Thank you Cyd, and thank you D.B. Hart. Amen.
Well, gosh. Thank you for the high praise, Gabriella. I've been wondering if our tour of Hart's book has been at all welcome, and here you say it has.
My ego wants to share that I'm a straight-A student, and my writing has always stood out from whatever cohort of students I've been a part of. It is obviously a blessing and talent from the Father--I can take no credit for it. I am using that gift to advance the Gnostic Gospel, which appears to be my calling. I am so glad to have you here and to read your encouraging words.
This is precisely the philosophical problem I had by the age of 11:
"God is infinitely good, perfectly just, and inexhaustibly loving, and that, on the other, he has created a world under such terms as oblige him either to impose or to permit the imposition of eternal misery on finite rational beings is simply to embrace a complete contradiction. All becomes mystery, but only in the sense that it requires a very mysterious ability to believe impossible things."
But it was going to be "good for us", so it was made into doctrine...
"It may offend against our egalitarian principles today, but it was commonly assumed among the very educated of the early church that the better part of humanity was something of a hapless rabble who could be made to behave responsibly only by the most terrifying coercions of their imaginations."
Having read that in full, and thoughtfully, I am not sure that "Good", "evil" and "free will" are actually clear concepts when we drill down into them hard.
It feels like there is a personality-of-evil, which feeds upon the anguish of sentient beings ("loosh"), but whence has this arisen in this cosmology? It feels different in a polarized way from good, different from the-absence-of-good...
Yes, my good sir. The purpose of my Gnostic Reformation substack is to explain these concepts that were originally part of the Christian gospel but were stripped out in order to subjugate the "hapless rabble" as Hart so eloquently puts it. The personality of evil which feeds on the loosh is what we generally refer to as the archon named Satan, whereas the Demiurge is simply the amnesiac god that is 100% ego and fallen from the Logos. Evil is not a trait, but rather the absence of the quality of Good. The archonic personalities are shadows of the aeonic personalities--they are the absence of the aeons, or angels if you will. The purpose of the much maligned Christ is to instantiate the Good within our material universe in order to "remind" us and the Demiurge that we come from Above and will return to Above. This is the message of the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. I so appreciate your comments, John. They help me clarify what needs to be shared.
Thank You, Cyd. Happy to be specific about what is not completely clear to me.
;-}