THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 165 -
Mark's speech on faith and disbelief.
1
(Cyrenius:) "At this Mark said, on the way here: 'There is no talk of being angry; but nor can it please me either about you if you all want to prove to me quite dryly that I am only talking a pleasure out of pulling the wool over your eyes with these miraculous things in order to cause your downfall. I am no liar and no deceiver, but instead "more than you ever were "a greatest friend of the most faithful truth. What could I possibly gain from pulling the wool over your eyes?! I indeed knew in advance that you would find it difficult to believe, despite the fact that things behave according to the very strictest truth; for I know some virtues of the Pharisees, and among them also their total unbelief in all things divine.
2
How should faith occur among people of the very crudest material kind, whose inner eye of the soul has been suffering for a long time already from the very worst glaucoma?! Yet faith is the eye of the soul, through which the soul admits the spiritual images. The soul begins only gradually to evaluate their worth and purpose within its spirit, just as the physical eye first admits the images of the outer world without being capable of judging the value and purpose of that which it has seen. This often occurs long afterwards through the awakened divine spirit within the heart of the soul. A stone-blind man whose eyes have turned into the densest, darkest matter does not receive any images from the outer world. He has nothing to present to his soul for evaluation and cannot judge the value and purpose of colors. He knows nothing of shadow and light and even less of the form of things.
3
Whoever cannot believe has a blind soul, which he has blinded through his many sins! And that is now, as has been for a long time, the case with all the Pharisees. Therefore, they can only believe what they are capable of grasping with their hands, just as a physically blind man can only come to an anyway poor comprehension of an object by touching it.
4
From what I have told you it should be clear to you how I could know in advance that you, in the blindness of your souls, would hardly accept what you were to see and hear about this. But I thought to myself that the blind would give a seeing leader more trust, because they are very much in need of a leader. But you call yourselves as very blind people seers and consider me "if not exactly blind, nonetheless, which is much worse, to be bad. And that is exactly what does not please me about you at all and shows that your heart must be a very bad one and you yourselves must be the greatest deceivers because you cannot place any trust however artificial even in the very most honorable person at all.
5
You will hopefully see that one cannot possibly be very particularly good to such people; for such people misuse the goodness of those who are often good to them somewhat unconsciously excessively. But now let's go back to the supreme governor and discuss with him what you have seen and heard!
6
There you said to Mark: 'Oh friend, that will go badly for us! He will demand the firmest belief from us; and yet it is truly impossible to believe that all this that we have now seen is simply the work of an instant through the pure will of the Nazarene, and yet here and there we have perceived the clear traces of a chisel on the sculpted stones! That is something enormous, if we are to be forced to believe such a thing as a matter of life and death!'
7
At this Mark said: 'Here no one is forced to anything! But I believe that you will believe it through another sign freely of your own accord! We are now once again among the eminent company. Now go over to Cyrenius then, he wants to discuss further things with you!'"