The Household of God
Volume 2
Rise and spiritual prime of the first world empire Hanoch
- Chapter 164 -
THE FOUR DOUBTERS' PERFECT CONCEPT OF GOD. WISDOM, THE FRUIT OF A LIVING HEART
Thereupon Enoch personally led the four to the most holy Abba and then said to them: "Brothers, look, it is this unknown stranger Who, as I told you before, will give you higher instruction on Jehovah and then also on me. - So listen to Him and follow Him. Amen."
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And Abba promptly stepped among them and asked them: "Since you were offended by Enoch's speech, so much so that your hearts were thereby puffed up in enmity against the high priest, do tell Me what concept you have of Jehovah."
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And the first of the four promptly began to speak and said rather boldly:
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"Good man, friend and brother, it is rather difficult to find a valid answer to your question - but not so difficult to reveal to you our general ideas concerning Jehovah, namely, as they are generally customary with and among us; so listen to them.
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"By God we understand the eternal, exceedingly perfect, Primordial Power filling the whole of infinity in the most clear self-awareness.
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"This power can manifest everywhere, being actually the most perfect, freest will which works according to its own innate ideas developing in endless abundance and greatest clarity in this very same will and its own light engendered by its own incessant activity.
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"Behold, this is our general concept of God. Besides, as to the substantial essence of this endless, infinite primordial willpower, it is too far beyond the sphere of our power of understanding for a valid definition on it to be given.
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"However, speculations cannot and must not ever be set up as tenets.
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"On the other hand, it seems at least to me and some others that this infinite willpower must express itself almost like our love, since whatever we look at bears incontestable witness to this truth.
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"In this point even the inert stone is not silent but speaks as it were through its being: 'Since I love my components, I hold them fixed to my mighty center.'
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"If this is undeniably declared already by a stone, surely all other things are even more living witnesses .. - most of all we men in our self-aware-ness, who were all begotten in mutual love.
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"Having made this great surmise, we also dare to maintain that God in Himself is the purest and most holy love, out of which love He can manifest as Jehovah or as the good, wise and almighty Creator of all things in man, as well as outside of him as likewise a man - albeit always only in the most perfect sense. In man He manifests as the purest love for His own divinity, and outside of man either as a mightily active power or visibly in a perfect human form to which, however, we must not regard Him as bound.
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"Look, dear, good man, friend and brother, this is in general all we know about the nature of God. Now it is up to you to either affirm or attack this our opinion."
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Thereupon Abba said to the four: "Your answer was perfect; for it is in earnest just as you have declared it.
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"But such wisdom is of no benefit whatsoever to you if it is a product of your own reflection or the result of verbal instruction.
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"If such wisdom is to serve for your benefit, it must become either a living, clear feeling in your heart or - which is more preferable - it must go forth from the activity of the heart.
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"Only if one or the other is the case will the thereby awakened innate life force, acting as a constant witness, proclaim loudly to everyone that God is Himself the purest and holiest love, in which no being - least of all the true children of this love - will ever perish.
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"Hence, whoever has not found God in this way, for him God is as good as no God, for He is not a God of life, but merely a God of a human rational speculation which has value only until it is replaced by another.
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"But he who has found God in and out of his life's ground, has found Him in person, and no power will ever be able to displace Him.
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"Look, this is truly how matters stand. Now declare your opinion on Abedam and the high priest Enoch so that I may set you right also in this. Amen."