The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 117 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 11 (part 8)
Neither is God measurable, and there has no place of residence been discovered in Him, unless He should establish for Himself such a dwelling in one of His creatures; but even then He remains a whole apart from and beyond such a created being." ( Menschwerdung , i.
8.) In this respect Christ may be likened to the sun, who is also immeasurable in his aspect as a power, but which is nevertheless existing as a separate body in space.
"We may compare the sun to Christ in His aspect as p.
240 a created being, and the whole depth of space may be compared to the Father.
If we then see that the sun shines within the whole depth of space, and sends his heat and power everywhere, we cannot then say that within the depth the power and light of the sun is nowhere outside of the body of the sun; for if the light and substance of the sun were not everywhere, space could not receive the power and light of the sun.
It requires two powers or principles of a similar nature to be receptive of each other.
The depth (of space) contains its light, but hidden (latent).
If it were the will of God, the whole depth would all be sun." ( Menschwerdung , i.
8.) "As the sun shines through all the external world, causing everything to become more powerful and fertile, and as nevertheless the world and the sun are (in their corporeal centres) to be distinguished from each other, so Christ, as a manifested Sun, shines out of (the depth of) Jehovah or Jesus, in the created humanity of Christ.
Jehovah is the eternal divine Sun, and within that Sun has been hidden to all creatures the great Love-Sun of Christ, as a heart in the centre of the Holy Trinity; but by the moving of the Godhead He has become revealed as a holy Sun of divine love." ( Stiefel , ii.
422.) "The sun illumines the world; but this would not be possible if there were not within the depth a similar state of being as that which constitutes the sun.
Likewise the corporeity of Christ is all the fulness of the heavens, as a created being in the person and without the person; but (both) exist in one spirit and one power as one, and not in a state of duality or as two things separated from each other." ( Tilk .
ii.
251,) 1 This unlimited, celestial (state of) being of the Redeemer is nevertheless lower than the Godhead.
"When the Word enters into the one pure element, p.
241 the virginal matrix, it does not become separated from the Father, but remains eternally, and is everywhere present in the heaven of the element wherein it entered, and wherein it has become a new creature, called a 'god.' This very new creature is naturally not born from the flesh and blood of the (physical) virgin, but of God, out of His element (the celestial virgin), and in the power of the Holy Trinity, which remains therein eternally in its fulness.
But the corporeity of the element of that created being is lower than the Godhead, for the Godhead is spirit, and the holy element is born out of the Word from eternity.
Thus the Lord has entered into the servant, whereof all the angels in heaven are filled with surprise.
It is the greatest miracle that has occurred from all eternity, because it is against (human) nature, and could only have been accomplished by divine love." ( Three Principles , xviii.
42.) 1 Footnotes 224:1 The Logos is everywhere, and did not enter from any external locality.
Likewise the body of the sun is everywhere, although it manifests its light only in one locality in the sky.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The transformation of the element into a new creature called 'god' reflects alchemical transmutation.
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
The Word enters the virginal matrix/element to become a new creature without separation from the Father.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
[auto] The text relies on analogies between the sun/space and Christ/Father to explain divine relationships.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The text states it requires two powers of similar nature to be receptive of each other.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
There is a distinction between the Father (depth) and Christ (sun) sending power into space, suggesting a flow of divinity.
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
The text refers to the 'whole depth of space' and an 'unlimited, celestial (state of) being'.
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.
Christ as a created being is compared to the sun shining within the depth of space representing the Father.
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.
[auto] The passage describes the new creature born of God as being 'called a god' through the Word's entry.