The fear of God

Look at the description of this book.

This is what I came into understanding of independently. Seeing the fear of God in non-idenitifying which also would include self-remembering by default. But to see that as the 'practice' of the Christian. This is why I am in tune with the Puritans (as they really were, not the popular myths and disparagements that come from the world towards truth and on-the-mark knowledge and practice, including the disparaging coming from the very worldly environment of church level Christianity, or, churchianity).

(The link above references the book Puritan Spirituality by J. Stephen Yuille)

Last moments of Christians, last moments of atheists

Here. There is some introductory material you can scroll down through. Overall, the collection of quotes and vignettes sparks memories and evokes foundational thoughts.

Union with Christ sums up the Work and the Faith

Union with Christ. The Work and the Faith once delivered unites at all levels (but most importantly the practical level) in union with Christ.

Elisha said to Elijah that he wanted a double dose of his Spirit, and Elijah said that is a tough road, are you sure?

Union with Christ is a tough road. Developing up the internal scale of increase of being is a tough road.

All the Work practices mortify the old nature and increase the capacity of the new nature and enable one to be to ever greater degree in union with Christ. Not 'degree' in terms of effective for salvation or justification, but on the foundation of that which was earned by Christ alone. On that foundation there are lazy Christians and diligent Christians; the parable of the talents (silver) speaks to this.

Again this is not about justification, it's about making efforts to recover the image of God once you are able to, i.e. once you have regeneration and are converted and have faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and High Priest, and Prophet, and King.

Imagine Elisha whining about what is happening to him after he has asked for a double amount of the Spirit Elijah had been given. You can't whine. You can't complain. No, what happens is not 'fair.' Yes, the world is creepy. Yes, people are devils. But you stepped out of the camp of darkness, and now you've gone and asked for more even. And you've been shown the way.

To teach the Work from inside the faith once delivered you teach it as union with Christ.

Christianity: the real thing that the world knows in a deficient way

See Christianity from a different, perhaps new for you, angle. It is the grand gnostic plan (I'll use that loaded term, gnostic) that is found in non-Christian teachings and beliefs and speculations and so forth, yet it is the real thing. Created on high; fall; drawn back up to a higher level than originally created at. All the mechanics of it are what are described in the Word of God. The world gets it all wrong because the world demands that their vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will have a part in the proceedings.

Christianity is difficult because it is God's plan where man rises while at the same time has his vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will (and hence illusion of liberty) mortified. The plan of God effects this, and is the only way for this to be effected. The goal is to have created beings that aren't mere robots. That have real consciousness, understanding, and will. That have the image of God while at the same time 'knowing the difference.' That have the full image of God after having eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Only Federal Theology (which is three-covenant, Classical Covenant Theology systematized) gets all this right; i.e. holds to the teaching of the 'full counsel of God.' This is not to say that Federal theologians understand it because one needs development that the average theologian never acquires; but lowly, born again Christians who fear only God and hence are able to pursue wisdom are able to get this development. When you are willfully lodged in the Village of Morality, fearing and revering man more than God, you stay dumb. Increase of level of being increases capacity for understanding. To increase level of being you have to provoke your limits so as to then be able to make the efforts to extend your limits. You don't get these opportunities in the Village of Morality. You can't be afraid of any influence or the policing of man.

A Reformation era definition of 'fourth way'

How I got to it is complicated, but Sebastian Franck believed this:

At this time his standpoint was strictly Lutheran, and he attacked the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists. But in his Turkenchronik (1530) his radicalism began to find expression. Here he treats of "ten or eleven nations or sects of Christianity" of which none possesses the full truth, and at the close he intimates that beside the three faiths, the Lutheran, the Zwinglian and the Anabaptist, there would soon arise a fourth, an invisible spiritual Church which would be governed by the eternal invisible word of God without any external means such as ceremonies, sacraments and sermons. Thus Franck appears as the representative of a mystic spiritualism which placed him in strong contrast with ecclesiastical Protestantism.

Ha, ha.....yet...

Wilhelmus à Brakel

[Archiving a comment I wrote to Paul...]

Psalm 141:3 is a good prayer for your effort.

I've been discovering even more clearly how Wilhelmus à Brakel's Christian's Reasonable Service is a unique work for a Work Christian. He doesn't get into Work ideas and practices, but he DOES get into practical matters of being on the Way. And it is all striking to a degree that I couldn't communicate fully here.

Look at the insight on contentment he has that I posted on my Fourth Way blog. That's one example, but it is a massive four volume work and a treasure of similar insight.

He speaks from understanding regarding being in conflict with the world. He has a chapter on prudence that speaks to much that we converse about regarding Work efforts yet from many different angles.

Worth looking into.

If you acquire it used, single volume by single volume, I would acquire volumes 3 and 4 first, speaking from a Work perspective (volume 4 having the most material on practical matters you don't find in systematic theologies, but volume 3 too, it's just that 3 is mostly taken up with a discourse on the ten commandments, but it then goes into the practical chapters like contentment). The first two volumes are worth having, but they cover what most good systematic theologies give you.

Prayer and Fasting vis-a-vis Self-Remembering and Non-Identifying

Here is a passage from Andrew Murray's With Christ in the School of Prayer:

And prayer needs fasting for its full growth… Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible. […] Prayer is the reaching out after God and the unseen; fasting, the letting go of all that is of the seen and temporal.

It gets at the fact that both prayer and fasting in the Bible are practices that are not concretely defined (or, in the case of prayer, are defined as more than one thing).

I got the passage from this short article which is worth reading. The site itself also has other interesting articles like this list of 12 of the most important Christian books.

On Christian contentment, from Wilhelmus a Brakel

This is a strikingly insightful passage from Wilhelmus a Brakel's Christian's Reasonable Service:

"Contentment is a Christian virtue consisting in a correspondence between the desire of God's children and their present condition... The unconverted are to all good works reprobate and are not acquainted with the nature of this virtue. When they perceive it in God's children, they despise it as a low level of intelligence, day-dreaming, stoic insensitivity, and deem them unfit for loftier matters..."

He also notes that in this state:

"...they rest with delight [in God's will and sovereign determination], in quiet confidence, joyfully, and with gratitude, trusting that the Lord will cause the present and the future to turn out to their advantage. This causes them to utilize their present conditions to the advancement of their spiritual life and to the glory of God." Chp. 64 of Vol. 3 - The Christian's Reasonable Service, Wilhelmus a Brakel

Yes, I've received the insinuation of "low level of intelligence" and also "day-dreaming" and probably also something akin to "stoic insensitivity." I know I look strange to the world. Kind of like a living suicide. And there is really no way to explain it without sounding more strange to them. It's actually decisions I've made to not go in the direction of what I deeemed to be a living death. But the world hardly is looking for understanding anyway, it wants to tempt you or to kill you or imprison you at least. You have protection if you walk the high road, so the stand-off exists...

Speaking of ways to read the Bible...

Speaking of ways to read the Bible (Paul discussing it on his blog, and me talking about it here and there recently) I just re-read this post from my '+' blog.

It has the virtues of being concrete, doable, and thorough. Not to mention historic.

One could substitute another doctrinal work for the Decades, if need be. Even Berkhof's Manual of Christian Doctrine would work. There's something about the older, massive, historic work that seems to fit the project better though. Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion would work too.

This 'now, not yet' tension

This 'now, not yet' tension in the life and experience of a Christian is interesting. It seems too Rube Goldberg for anything to do with God's great plan of redemption. You're in Christ, in the heavenlies NOW, yet you are still in the flesh, in the fallen world, waiting for the completion of it all.

Now I know the Bible speaks directly to this waiting period and talks of patience and trial and the positive effects of it and so on. Running your race to the end, all that.

But also there is something in the now, not yet reality of our situation (the tension) that seems to call for being reconciled.

I think we are called to reconcile it by living NOW *as if* we already have all that is given in the consummation. That is the task, so to speak. That is doable, and is what we are called to do. The tension births this that is new.

It is here that all the teaching regarding being and vertical development, level of being, comes in. Presence. We are, for instance, in heaven NOW, so, to indulge resentment now at worldly things is really very beneath us. It's empty. The Bible also has clear teachings on this being and having now everything. Ask and ye shall receive is one.

Broken-spirit Christians

I've got a good term for real Christians: broken-spirit Christians. Broken in their vanity, worldly pride, and self-will. Broken in their worldly illusions and desires and demands. Broken in their fear and reverence of man.

Starting over

Sometimes you need the liberty to just start over. Throw off baggage and start anew. It's not really starting from scratch, but in terms of feel it needs to be.

I need to, for instance, load up on influences that are at least reasonably new to me.

And get into some fast work. You know, no screwing around, fast, zealous, doing things.

For instance it's new to me to see Protestantism as a 'school.' So to see it in history, throughout history, as a school, using influences I now know about, is new. 'Protestantism' sounds like a banal, or pedestrian, or boring name, but if you know it basically means the school of individuals who confess and give witness to the Word of God (the very Word of God itself) you can see the power and centrality of that school.

There were two historians of the Reformation who really caught this vision and wrote in an almost prophetic style on it. J. A. Wylie and J. H. Merle D'Aubigne. Both are very prolix, but the latter tremendously so. The only thing by Merle D'Aubigne I have is a smaller work on Oliver Cromwell called The Protector. Of course J. A. Wylie's great work is The History of Protestantism. Also, his various shorter works on the Pope regarding it being the antiChrist are worth reading as works of spiritual warfare.

Everything for me vortexes (if that is a word) into spiritual warfare. Knowledge and understanding of the Bible; knowledge and understanding of biblical doctrine, the deep archetectonic understanding that is the Covenant of Redemption from eternity to eternity; knowledge and understanding of the Work; the most important things that come to fruition at death; the most needful things; the whole armour of God; development of level of being; union with Christ; it all involves spiritual warfare. That is the practical point of convergence while in this world.

Seeing Protestantism as a 'school' - getting back to the first subject above - allows me to run through worldly history from a deeper, perhaps more meaningful, angle. There is even deeper history, which is the history of redemption, which is what you find in the Bible and in works of biblical doctrine, but that also plays out in real time in the era between the first and second comings of Christ, and seeing Protestantism as 'school' is an angle on that history that is new to me...

Reading the Bible

There is something about reading and getting parts-in-relation-to-the-whole understanding of the Bible that is difficult to capture; and difficult to do.

I.e. difficult to put into a formula.

Here's a problem as I see it (even though I'm actually just throwing down rambling thoughts): zeal is a key to getting understanding of the Bible. A zealous approach. The zeal, or super-effort, is the part of your effort you dedicate to God, like a part of your crop, and God rewards you more for it. But the problem can be this: the Bible is so big that it's difficult to see how you can apply zeal to it. If you start to approach all 1,189 chapters in some unique way you immediately get shut down by the scale of the effort. It's not practical. It's not practical to keep up a zealous effort that will take that long. (Or, maybe it isn't? Just do it?)

Also, the Bible seems to defeat approaches that involve 'outlining', or reading outlines maybe. Maybe it doesn't defeat ME doing the outlining work. It certainly does defeat when you try to take shortcuts by relying on other people's outlines and notes though. Maybe that is it. The Holy Spirit wants you to do your own work. In this sense there is no waste of time involved regarding 'reinventing the wheel.' With the Bible it is good and needed to reinvent the wheel. For each individual.

Of course the work the Bible does in regeneration (the Spirit works through the Word usually) gets done pretty much initially, in first readings and so on. And of course basic, completed complete readings get it all into, in ways you don't know even as you are doing it.

But when one looks to consciously devise a project or effort to really get full understanding, or, become 'mighty in the Word', it is difficult.

Maybe prayer really IS the key. Asking God (the Triune God, but maybe the Holy Spirit as Illuminator specifically) for understanding of His Word. Deep, complete understanding.

Then approaching the text in a meditative state. A third state of consciousness. Having higher energy in you when you engage the Word of God enabling there to be more communicated and understood.

That still leave the sheer scale problem. The massive number of pages and chapters and books. Which means there is no getting around the virtue and necessity of the complete reading effort. Maybe not always done in the same way, but complete nevertheless.

What have I concluded?

1. An approach with zeal is needed.

2. Doing your own work regarding outlining and notes and so forth.

3. Prayer for understanding is key.

4. Being in the third state of consciousness, and having previously accumulated higher energy in you to use while engaging the text.

5. Complete readings, maybe not always having to be done in the same way, is the foundation.

I'll add two more after reading this:

6. Memorizing, and keeping a commonplace book on the Bible.

7. Doing what the Bible guides one to do. This develops understanding in terms of Knowledge + Being = Understanding.

Practical union with Christ

What does it mean to be in practical union with Christ? This is the one thing that the faith drives towards and has meaning in terms of being in the Kingdom of God and having liberty from and protection from the Kingdom of Satan. In other words, when it comes down to the reality of being a Christian it is actual union, in real time, with Christ (with the Triune God) that has practical meaning regarding salvation.

Faith effects this, but I am talking here about how this union is effected in a real way. Christians historically leave this subject in mystical realms and language, but when you know the Work you can see and effect the union with Christ practically.

You have to use the categories of prophet, priest and king. This is the image of God that you share with Christ.

The way you effect union with Christ as a prophet is to engage His Word and develop by degree in real understanding of it.

Along with that you practice in real time the priestly function of loving your enemies and forgiving your debtors so that God will forgive you your debts. (For a Work person this is understood in practical language and practices such as not internally-considering.)

And with all of this you develop as a King, as you, by degree, win and consolidate more and more inner command in your inner being, or inner domain. The language of the Work makes all this practical (otherwise I'm just talking like any mainstream Christian who has yet to enter the school level).

Real development of understanding based on the Word of God is a real, practical way you are in union with Christ, to greater and greater degree. And then kingly presence and inner command and priestly sacrifice (sacrificing your suffering, fake suffering or not) is how you develop internally to the Real Internal Presence that approaches Christ. Accumulating higher energy via self-remembering is also working with the Holy Spirit which puts you in union, or connection, with Christ. Not grieving the Spirit (provoking your limits and extending your limits for being able to not grieve the Spirit) is how you develop greater real union with Christ.

Prayer as communication effects and develops union with Christ as well, in the midst of all the above.

You'll experience what Christ experienced when He was in the world. This is part of real union with Christ.

In all the above I am referring to the union a believer has with Christ that is built on the foundational union effected by effectual calling and regeneration and conversion (having faith in Jesus and repentance for sin). Justification is by faith alone. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Once justifified and a child of God, you are still in this fallen body and this fallen world, and you don't stop living and striving to recover fully the image of god. It's not required for salvation, it is the fruit of saving faith and justification.

1. Connecting with Christ, or being in union with Christ, by greater and greater degree - or degree of 'deepening' of that union - regarding being a prophet corresponds more to the 'spiritual or mystical' union Christians have recognized over time. This has to do with language and communication. The Word of God, meditation, prayer, presence.

2. Connecting with Christ, or being in union with Christ, by greater and greater degree - or degree of 'deepening' of that union - regarding being a priest corresponds more to the 'experiential' union Christians have recognized over time. Experiencing in this life, in real time, in contact and conflict with the flesh, the world, and the devil, what Christ Himself experienced. This has to do more with sacrifice and suffering and the giving up of vanity, worldly pride, and self-will. Loving one's enemies as a self-sacrifice that garners God's forgiveness of our own debts.

3. Connecting with Christ, or being in union with Christ, by greater and greater degree - or degree of 'deepening' of that union - regarding being a king corresponds more to the 'incarnational' union Christians have recognized over time. This has more to do with the actual battles, internal and external, that occur when the Holy Spirit is present within one and our flesh (Old Man) fights it, and the world gives us friction, and the devil himself takes notice of us because of it. The Holy Spirit was given in 'full measure' to Jesus, but He is the only human being that could handle the full measure (or 'without measure') of the Spirit. A Christian has to develop by degree in being able to handle more and higher amounts of the Holy Spirit within oneself by provoking one's limits and then struggling to extend those limits. This is the work of the king part of the image of God. You develop as a king as you gain more and more inner command and unity of the disparate parts of your inner being. (The school language of the Work is needed to understand this.) This process is the incarnational union where we are made one with Christ and partake of His nature. We are deified, in the language of the Eastern Orthodox, by the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, recovering by degree fully the image of God - and more - lost in the fall of Adam.

You can see that in the above the prophet development corresponds with Protestant dinstinctives; and the priest development corresponds with Catholic dinstinctives (generall speaking); and the king development corresponds with Orthodox distinctives. When you have all three - a balanced development - you enter a way that involves all of them and which is a different level. It's not for everybody, but it's available to anybody.

Communion with God

Communion with the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - is the center-of-gravity of the faith. It's what the Work develops as well. It's what you need in life and in death, unless you are in the Kingdom of Satan and want to be there.

Trying to sum up some things...

[17 paragraphs, but not a waste of time. Read piece-meal perhaps over time perhaps, but it has some perspective...]

This is an area where Fourth Way - or Work - challenges one (it challenges me); i.e. seeing that when you enter the Fourth Way you are no longer a part of the Man #1, 2, or 3 ways, and in Christianity this means Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant ways.

I think one can become jealous to defend the Protestant way once one comes to it because it contains the on-the-mark intellectual doctrine (Calvinism, Reformed, Puritan) which is the hardest to come into understanding (and acceptance) of. But to see it as 'all' is of course wrong because you need a balance of development of all the ways (centers).

The Orthodox definitely has the practical level teaching (not the Work, the Work is of the Man #4 level, but the Eastern Orthodox level nevertheless specializes in the practical level teaching - or spiritual disciplines - just as Protestantism specializes in the intellectual doctrine teaching.

The Roman Catholic way is unique in that it is an emotional level, and it is here that the devil seems to want to reside. Probably the passage to higher centers is through here, so the devil makes his camp here. It's also strangely tempting to weak souls. It's also a horror show.

Perhaps the language of the Homeric epics (or Greek teaching in general, or all B Influence up to the summit) enable one to 'get' what that realm has and what one needs from that realm while bypassing the devil's clutches.

I think a striking point above is that though the Orthodox level is the level where the most practical level instruction resides it is STILL not the Work. Mouravieff kind of pulls the Work down to the level of Orthodox Christianity in that sense, wrongly. The Work is the Man #4 level and can only be seen and valued by Man #4.

Another big point above is to see how any of the three levels (1,2,3) can tempt and keep one inside it. I see it for the #3 Protestant level. Once you learn it you still stay around and study and argue and go on and on and on with it. But you have to learn it well, nevertheless. Then don't get stuck in it.

If the practical need is to find a point-of-contact (even for the Man #4 level) it is the Church, for the Roman Catholic; and it is the Bible, for the Protestant (ideally); and it is something else for the Eastern Orthodox (prayer? internal connection via various disciplines?)...

For the 4th Way it is presence.

I find it interesting that spiritual warfare is a subject of biblical doctrine that doesn't make it into Protestant systematic theologies. The Puritans made it their specialty, but that is where they differ from mainstream Protestants. They knew regeneration and the three-front war with the flesh, the world, and the devil. This is a point-of-contact. You are no more in contact with Jesus and the revealed Word and faith and all of it than when in the armor of God in battle with yourself the world and the devil. On the Way.

A dividing line, or antithesis. Separation from the world, and I from 'it' internally. Separation in terms also of being in the Kingdom of Light and not the Kingdom of Darkness. This is a practical way to see the point-of-contact with the Spirit and the Son and the Father. That point-of-contact which will be everything when you are on your deathbed staring into eternity.

The Man #4 (and 5 and up) formula is: make a goal to read the Bible complete a set number of times. Get it into you. The language into you. So it takes root. Then develop using the knowledge of the Work. Discipline. Then become more refined emotionally. Develop more and more inner command. All the provoking of limits and extending of limits. Effected by real time presence (self-remembering for duration, depth, and frequency) and non-identifying. It brings on the battle, then you use the friction of the war to further develop.

You're on the Way, wherever you are in time or space. The school is above you and a cosmos you inhabit (ideally, when it can reach you, i.e. when you are in the third state of consciousness).

It's real when you have contact with the actual Word of God. That is *really* a Man #4 thing. As Simon was saying, that really isn't taught in any church, even Protestant. Calvinism and Puritanism, yes, but they are closest to the #4 level (or *were*, modern day Calvinists usually can't even recognize or value the pure and whole traditional text Word of God). Like I've said: it should be a basic, default teaching in every church that a Christian should have a goal to read the Bible complete once, three times, seven times. But it's not, because that is a weird thing (a #4 level thing).

It's also real when your false personality (Old Man) fights back. Limits get provoked, and you are on the battlefield. This is real.

It is also a real thing when you engage B Influences (art, music, imaginative literature, history, philosophy, science, religion) and get understanding and emotional refinement from them. Climb the mountain of them to the summit. *See* the mountain to begin with. See how B Influence resides in a hierarchy.

Prayer is a point-of-contact for the #4 level too, as much as for any of the other levels. Ask and ye shall receive. It's a bold act of a newly adopted child of God. Or a king. A point-of-contact is also meditating on and doing the two great commandments: love God and love your neighbor as yourself (which can correspond with the two conscious shocks of self-remembering and non-identifying when it is most difficult). Also, fearing only God and not man. (With regeneration you are 'in', despite yourself, really, it is God's doing, but that is the five solas understanding that is the necessary foundation that knowing sound biblical doctrine gives you...) - C.




--- ******* wrote:

> I'm pretty clear on where and how Catholicism
> differs to Protestantism but I
> am a lot less certain on how the Eastern Orthodox
> tradition of the early
> Church differs. Orthodox are keen on hesychasm,
> although that itself appears
> to have been an area of dispute in Orthodox history.
> They believe in
> 'theosis' - which actually isn't off-kilter - we
> should all aspire to be
> more Christ like - presumably the point of
> difference is that a Protestant
> does not see 'theosis' as an element of individual
> Salvation where Orthodox
> does. They refute the Spirit coming from the Son,
> Spirit comes only from the
> Father, (the filique controversy). The Great Schism
> appears to be less about
> theological understanding and more of a power
> struggle between Byzantium &
> Rome, or between Greeks & Latins brought about
> through
> language/communication barriers. The most
> controversial issue - and this
> would be much less an issue for the Catholics at the
> time of the Schism -
> the Orthodox does not allow for sola scripture
> because for them the bible
> only exists in the context of the living tradition
> initiated by Christ,
> handed from generation to generation, (apostolic
> succession). Like
> Catholics, the Orthodox did not want the individual
> to approach the Word.
> The Word belongs to the Church. It is interesting
> how the Coptic, Orthodox &
> Catholic Church appear so alike. The 5 solas of the
> reformers make
> Protestants an entirely different breed.
>
> I've just been reading this article on
> western/eastern art and finding
> myself in broad agreement with the author. I
> wouldn't say I necessarily
> agree with the authors description of western art as
> secular - that
> obviously is not true even if you allow that many
> artists painted religious
> works simply because that's where the commission's
> were coming from.
> Nontheless, the issue about transformation seems
> quite accurate. I think as
> a discussion of spiritual art, there are some useful
> points amidst the
> numerous theological pops, although I don't think
> Icons are alone in their
> spiritual display, a lot of celtic art meets the
> same standard and actually
> so too most stained glass work and much sculpture
> and music.
>
> http://www.traditionaliconography.com/webgalleryart.html
>
> Mouravieff's writings come from the Orthodox
> tradition, G had it somewhere
> in his background and if we are to believe it, G
> asked his pupils to go
> search the Orthodox tradition. I've been looking
> over the Praxis website
> again. Outside the Philokalia (which I never read)
> that site is a storehouse
> of Orthodox teachings in english, not that it's all
> free, but it's an access
> point with a 4thWay understanding in the selections.
> There's this freebie (I
> haven't read it yet):
>
> http://www.praxisinstitute.net/Praxis%20Now/Theosis/theosis_contents.htm
>
> Overall though, whilst there are some useful things
> to be found within the
> Orthodox, it really is a variant of the same strain
> as Catholicism.
>