Lazurus, come forth!
The resurrection within Christianity of the Hindu and Buddhist spiritual life, to which the church owes the arising of the whole monastic movement and the founding of religious orders in late antiquity, is not the last event of its kind in church history.
Others followed according to the law that all truth and love of the past that have timeless values are called back out of the realms of forgetting, sleep and death into the daylight of Christian spiritual life through the call that from age to age reminds, rouses and awakens.
Through this call sounding forth from Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, saying ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ – the most noble and valuable aspects of pagan antiquity were also resurrected.
The Platonic and Aristotelian treasury of thought arose radiant in transfigured form and inspired great spirits of the church to take up the philosophia perennis, in which lay the task of lifting up the chalice of pure human thinking and sacrificial offering to divine revelation.
For this was the essential aim of the scholastics: the raising up of the chalice of crystal clear human thinking upon the altar of Godhead – the Godhead manifesting in divine revelation.
Lazurus, come forth!, Valentin Tomberg
…for the history of Christianity is not that of adjusting to world progress – it is the story of the return of the Prodigal Son, ie, humanity, to the Father’s House. its path is not so much a forming of the future as a resurrection of the past – not indeed the mere return of the past, but the reawakening of its eternal core of truth in all its greatness and nobility.
As the fall of the human being into sin was a descent from the heights of consciousness of the everlasting Presence of God, so does the way of reascent lead through the same stages by which the descent was made – that is, throgh the stages of resurrection of the past.
And the future of the world, its end, the Last Day, is not the final triumph of the progress of natural evolution, but the state of the resurrection of the whole of the past. The Last Day is no specific ‘day’ of the last year of the world, but is the ever present process of resurrection that culminates in the resurrection of the eternal ‘first day of creation’.
It is the primarl creative Word: ‘Let there be light!’ t hat forms the essence of the Last Judgement. yes, the world passes away – and simultaneously it is resurrected. The eternal creative Word: ‘Let there be light’, is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and the eternall present (Revelation xxi, 6).
Thank you for all of your posts, especially your poetry and excerpts from our friend from beyond the grave. Your writing is welcomed and helpful, and I’m writing to encourage you to continue. Having arrived at the Meditations — and all that comes with it — I’m grateful to find other travelers.
Kind regards,
LA
That is such a kind thing to say and do, thank you, I am also grateful to find others on the road and hoped, when I created this site, that it would help to do just that. I’m very glad if you have found something in it and are enjoying the messages from our friend. I have read the book many times and found so much to treasure, no matter how often one opens it there seems to be something new inside.
Cx
Indeed, I’ve also found endless treasure in the Meditations. I should also note that the related threads upon which you tug and also very welcome.
I’ve enclosed a link that may be of interest, an essay from Emil Páleš regarding evolutionary theory:
http://manhog.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-came-across-this-translation-from.html
Best regards,
LA
your posts are fabulous! thank you 4 taking ur time