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 58 -
The influence of love on the mind.
Raphael says, "But friend, you are getting a little annoyed about something that you are only accusing me of doing; how can you think of me that I am an opponent of the correct understanding of man?! If I say to you that you should now find the Nazarene here with your sharpness of understanding, I did not want to suggest with that that a very bright understanding is not satisfactory by a long shot, but instead above all the mind, love, the action of seeking and finding Him must take over, who is the highest love Himself! Intellect must certainly not be lacking; but first of all must be love! Without that pure Intellect can do nothing in itself!
2
Everything does not depend on the person of the Nazarene, neither on the fact that you are making Him into a god in your enthusiasm for magic, but instead everything depends on what your heart says about it!
3
If you had the correct degree of warmth for it, you would have already recognized the Nazarene and would not need to ask me about Him; for love finds love soon and easily. But until now the cold, if even very sober intellect or reason was ruling in you, and so you still need to ask after Him who is so near! Do you think that I want to speak a word to the blind superstition that you Essenes are now cultivating the most? Oh, how crudely you are mistaken in me!
4
If I say that the pure worldly understanding is not enough, than I have as good as said that a much higher, purely spiritual recognition must come to the worldly reason in order to be able to recognize the very highest. But if I want to suggest that to you very tangibly, how can you as a clear thinker make the accusation that I am an opponent of reason and only see the true donkeys and oxen as capable of a higher recognition?! Don't you see how far off course your pure worldly common sense has been shot?!
5
Behold, in all important civil living circumstances the people have invented very wise laws among themselves and also sanctioned them; but among them there are also some which have a very cruel face, like for example most of the penal laws.
6
Some individual has committed a crime against the law, mostly out of ignorance of such a law. The arm of the law seizes him and leads him before the strict chair of the judge who knows all laws. If this man then judges according to pure worldly reason, he will sentence the defendant to death according to the CODEX POENITENTIARUM without any mercy.
7
But if the judge has also a warm and loving heart besides his wakened worldly and legal understanding, he will make corresponding allowances in the cold worldly reason and say: The law, perhaps created so very carelessly more out of tyrannically domineering passion cannot find a full use here, can it?! For a provable full ignorance of some existing law must be taken into consideration here!
8
For if a person stands on the roof and sees another person lying on the ground below, jumps on him with a bad will in order to kill him or at least to cause him serious bodily harm, then such a person is to be punished with all severity for his terrible willfulness. But if a person falls from the roof simply out of lack of care, but fatally injures a person lying below on the ground or casually passing by, he is fully innocent of such a calamity, and it is the job of a judge to decide which circumstances was the reason, through which a person was made into an evil-doer!
9
If a foreigner, fully unaware of our writings, language and our laws, soon and easily breaks one of our laws right on entry into our lands, we should then arrest him and make him aware of our laws through an interpreter. Only if he breaks the laws that have been made known to him can he then be consequently punished for them. It is not right to say that ignorance of a law that once exists as sanctioned in a land should not be excused to anyone; for how should someone observe a law that he can prove he has never heard anything about?
10
Look and judge yourself now: Which of the two judges has judged the right and truth "the first, who followed the letter of the law to a T with his cold reasoning, or the second, who in his heart as a person bore a just compassion for the sinner and thereby demanded the lack and foolishness of the law to be brought to light?"
11
Roklus says, "Obviously the second!"
12
Raphael says, "Good! But what raised the judge's insight and strength of understanding?"
13
Roklus says, "Obviously the love in his heart which woke him to the compassion for the sinner! He didn't want to damn the sinner, therefore he began to check everything all the more closely and thereby came to a number of circumstances which benefited the sinner."
14
Raphael says, "Well and correctly spoken! But what follows from this now for every person other than common sense very awake in all things, circumstances and directions will receive the correct insight through all sorts of knowledge and experiences when he is warmed by love in his heart and is ever more brightly illumined by the ever brighter shining flame of love. Did I become an opponent to reason if I made you aware only through certain hints how your sharp intellect is very significantly lacking in actual sharpness and you should raise it with true love for Him that you are now seeking and previously did not seek nearly as much as you have said just now?!"