The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 95 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 10 (part 2)
8.
1.) "The name Jesus was incorporated into the image of eternity as a future Christ, that it may become a redeemer of men, and out of the dying in the wrath regenerate them again into the pure being of divine and paradisiacal power." ( Stiefel , ii.
74.) "The word which God spoke in regard to the power that was to bruise the head of the serpent, was a spark of love from the divine heart of God, and therein has the Father from eternity seen and elected humanity.
In this spark of divine love-light the whole world was to live, and Adam was already therein while his creation took place, as is also expressed by Paul (Eph.
i.
13), where he says that man was elected in Christ before the foundation of the world was made." 1 ( Three Principles , xvi.
107.) As long as Adam had not ceased to resemble God, the Redeemer within him did not render Himself perceptible.
This, however, took place immediately after the fall.
2 "From all eternity stood the name Jesus in immovable love in man as the image of God.
But when the p.
202 soul lost the light, then the Word spoke the name of Jesus into what was movable; into the faded ens of the heavenly world's substance." 1 ( Grace , vii.
34.) "Before the fall Adam received the divine light out of Jehovah; that is to say, out of the one only God, wherein was hidden the name of Jesus .
But during the time of suffering when the soul fell, God manifested the treasure of His glory and holiness, and by means of the living voice of the Word He incorporated Himself with the divine fire of love into the eternal image, representing the banner of the soul, which she was to follow as a guide.
But if she was not able to penetrate therein, being as one dead relatively to God, nevertheless the divine breath penetrated into her, and warned her to stop her evil activity, so that its voice might again begin to become active within the soul." ( Grace , vii.
32.) "As Adam manifested in himself the centre of wrath, God instituted opposition to evil, and manifested in him the power that bruises the heel of the serpent, which heretofore, at the time when sin had not yet appeared, had been hidden (latent) in the power of God, and in Jesus as the love of God, in divine unity." 2 ( Stiefel , ii.
161.) The power of the future Redeemer became first of all active in Eve.
3 "The in-speaking of the devil, wherefrom evil will originated, took place in Adam while he was still man and woman, and yet neither the one nor the other, but an image of God.
From Adam it penetrated into Eve, p.
203 who began to sin.
Then occurred the in-speaking of God, and this took place at first in Eve as the mother of all mankind, and opposed itself through her to the consciousness of sin that had begun to be manifested in Adam." ( Grace , vii.
47.) "Not in the tincture of man, which represents the fiery essence, did the word of promise desire to become incorporated, but in the tincture of the light, in the virginal centre, which was to generate magically in Adam, in the celestial substance of the holy generatrix, because in that tincture of light the fiery soul-essence was weaker than in the fiery nature of man." ( Mysterium , xxiii.
43.) "Not through Adam's fire-tincture was this event to take place, but in and through Adam's light-tincture, wherein the love was burning that had become separated from him to constitute woman, the mother of all mankind.
The uncreated luminous quality of the divine, sometimes experienced directly in mystical states; illumination as revelation.
[auto] The text repeatedly references light imagery, stating the world was to live in a 'spark of divine love-light' and noting when the soul lost 'the light'.
Fragments of divine light or spirit trapped inside material bodies, awaiting liberation and return to their source.
[auto] The passage explicitly describes a 'spark of love from the divine heart' and a 'spark of divine love-light' in which Adam existed before creation.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
Adam is described as the 'image of God' wherein the whole world was to live, reflecting the cosmic structure in the human.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The goal is to 'regenerate them again into the pure being of divine and paradisiacal power', indicating transformation into divine nature.