|
parthens
101 posts Location:
n.a. |
11/13/2014 14:42"man of man" or "man of God"For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Bible Lesson 17
The 1st edition of Science and Health tells of this great struggle with one's self as a war between the "man of man" and the "man of God."
The word for "lust" quoted above is "epithumos." "Epi" is a prefix that intensifies, concentrates the energy of the meaning of any word to which it's connected. So, while "thumos" alone means "passionate desire," "epithumos" means "intensely passionate desire," desire that's utterly off the charts, as it were.
It was of man-of-man's ravenous ambition to enslave others in the world of matter, ultimately to fictionalize man-of-God beyond recognition, that Paul warned the early church in Acts 20: "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them." (Needless to say, this has been the fate of many churches, most especially the Boston-dominated Christian Science movement.)
Mrs. Eddy speaks of the fulfillment of Paul's warning of out-of-control ecclesiasticism also, but on a broader scale:
[139] "The decisions by vote of Church Councils as to what should and should not be considered Holy Writ; the manifest mistakes in the ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and the three hundred thousand in the New, — these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some extent the inspired pages."
[526] "The first mention of evil is in the legendary Scriptural text in the second chapter of Genesis.
[522] "The first [chapter] assigns all might and government to God, and endows man out of God’s perfection and power ... [while the] second record unmistakably gives the history of error in its externalized forms, called life and intelligence in matter."
[545] "The translators of this record of scientific creation entertained a false sense of being. They believed in the existence of matter, its propagation and power. From that standpoint of error, they could not apprehend the nature and operation of Spirit. Hence the seeming contradiction in that Scripture, which is so glorious in its spiritual signification."
[531] "The mythologic theory of material life at no point resembles the scientifically Christian record of man as created by Mind in the image and likeness of God and having dominion over all the earth."
[525] "In the Science of Genesis we read that He saw everything which He had made, 'and, behold, it was very good.' The corporeal senses declare otherwise; and if we give the same heed to the history of error as to the records of truth, the Scriptural record of sin and death favors the false conclusion of the material senses."
It is our job in this world to help the world come to favor a different conclusion, to reach the true conclusion, derived from the spiritual senses. It is our job to un-fictionalize the true man as never before: first in ourselves, and then in others: to de-mythologize the immortal man of God that glorifies God only. It is our job demonstrate that "it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," and for Himself, not for ourselves; to demonstrate to a world that "we are His people, the sheep of His pasture," not another's; for every other pasture is a pasture of "man-of-man," a pasture of tares, a pasture of tyranny.
Edited by parthens - 11/14/2014 14:05
|
