Forest Man

It's common among fundamentalistic Bible believers to view salvation history as an evolution from bad to better. The new covenant in the New Testament is better than the old covenant in the Old Testament, the members of the new covenant holier than those of the old. People had least knowledge about God after the Fall of man, and then knowledge and revelation progressed. And it will all be completed in the Millennial Kingdom. You can even find hints of this view even in the Bible itself, even though it is not usual. Usually the view of the Bible is that history is a history of decline. And that is also my view, and the view of Swedenborg, and all historians of Antiquity. Therefore I suspect that this understanding of the issue that I cited above, is more modern than antique. 

 

It is true that the Book of Hebrews and Saint Paul speak about a new covenant that would be better than the old, but this they only spoke about the legal and political history of the Jews from the time of Moses, nothing about salvation history in general, as it plays out in every country's long history, how modernization has played out, how indigenous people has become civilized. This I'm sure that the historians of the Bible viewed as a decline, not as a progress, not like "civilized Christian modernity was like a new covenant that was better than the old peasant and shepherd Christian covenant". Not at all. Completely wild indigenous people were to them a little like Adam and Eve before the Fall, and everything that evolved out from this state they thought was a Fall. This is the salvation history of the whole fallen world. It is not played out in covenants that become better and better, like the short political and legal history of the Jews, but is played out in the terms of wildness and civilization, wildness and modernity, wildness being the paradise of God, and civilization and modernity being Babylon, the fallen world, the city-world. 

 

So what was the role of Jesus in all this? It was not like he was better than Adam before the Fall. He was the second Adam, not "the real Adam". In paradise, where the perfected beings are, there are no hierarchies. Sinful man cannot understand this when he thinks about the Godhead of Jesus. It was not in being better than the animals or the wild indigenous black Africans in the Forest, those of them who were in the state of innocence (by the way Jesus was also black). No, his Godhead lies in something else. He is chosen by God to be Lord. And as Lord he also suffered most of us all. But the notion that he was somehow better than Adam before the Fall, lies as a foundation for the evolutionistic view on salvation history. He knew more than Adam, knew more than the indigenous African in the forest. He was more than an animal, he subjugated his animal nature. And therefore he gives us the power to know more than the African indigenous people, and become better than them, and ooops, racism is full-blown. And when we know more than the African people, we have the right to subjugate them under us. Ooops, colonialism is full-blown. 

 

But Jesus did not know more than the innocent African holy fool in the forest. Not more than the animals in the forest. No, he was like them. Fully. But he is chosen by God to be Lord, not by being better than the perfect beings in nature, but by having taken upon him the heaviest task of all, the task of redeeming the world with his blood. This does not make him better (we do not think in those terms in heaven), it makes him only worthy of being Lord. In heaven we wish the other ones to be better than ourselves, and do not compare ourselves with other beings. Comparing exists only among fallen beings, and that is also for a reason, because some really are better and holier than other beings. But in heaven, among the perfected beings, we do not compare with others. We do not wish to be better than others. There is no hierarchy there in that sense, only different tasks. We want to be as holy as the atoms in our body, not better than them. And they are countless in the universe. How stupid it is to compare then. When the atoms are living beings in our body, and they all are equal as perfect beings, and we shall be like them when we arrive in paradise. 

 

To understand that Jesus is not holier or do not know more than an atom, or, if there is subatomic particles that are living beings (is the living reality infinitely small? That is a good question. I do not believe it is infinitely big.The living reality is one living being that is the whole universe, the invisible one and the visible one, trillions of light years in diameter, and is what we call "God", and this living being is limited in size. What is beyond that is beyond speculation), Jesus is as holy as them, too. But in this lies his greatness, that he is a human that is in tune with the whole living universe, and is, so to speak, "at the same wavelenght" as all countless perfect beings in nature. So, and only so, he can be their Lord, in that he speaks and thinks like them. But his knowledge is not that of science. Science is an apparatus that is it's own universe and knows little about the real universe, whose heart is love. Jesus' knowledge is the knowledge of love, of babies. He does not understand science. Neither do atoms, and yet they are capable of building our brains. Unfathomable.