2 Second Promise: You will be like a king
LG2
Jesus said:
Let he who searches continue searching
until he finds
and when he finds
he will be shocked
and being shocked
he will wonder
and he shall be king over the All.
And as king he will regain his peace.
Gnostics is not a belief, we said in the explanation of the previous logion. But what then? Gnostics is a way. The Gnostics were called “the people of the road” in their time.
You can also say that the gospel of Thomas and other Gnostic texts are a kind of travel description. The texts tell you, according to the gnostic Valentinus, where you come from and where you will go:
Whoever has gnosis, knows where he came from and where he will go. He knows, as someone who was drunk has become sober again, and, having come to himself, has put his affairs back in order. (Gospel of Truth 16)
In the previous logion you were told that you will not taste death if you find the meaning of the secret words. The Thomas gospel is also a kind of adventure novel about an exciting search for a hidden treasure.
You will only be able to find this treasure if you continue to search diligently and not give up too quickly. Keep looking, this logion says. Also be prepared that you will be shocked when you find it.
Being ‘shocked’ or ‘stunned’ (Greek: ekplèxis) by a story is a traditional, positive appreciation in Greek classical rhetoric of a good argument, for example of a Sofist defending a defendant before a court. Saying to the audience that they will be “shocked” is a way of claiming: listen, this is an argument that will provide, with the help of arguments, an insight that you did not have before, so that you will see that the facts of a case completely different than you originally thought. Moreover, it will be so natural with what you actually already knew that you will be surprised that it only now penetrates you.
That of course also applies to the previous claim in Logion 1 that you will not taste death. You may have thought that eternal life is promised there after physical death, but no, that turned out to be meant differently.
Now it is claimed that you will be like a sovereign prince sitting on your inner throne, ruling over the All, once you have found it. That is not wrong either. What does that mean now?
The inner kingship is a common theme in the Western mystical tradition.
The Roman Catholic Church Father Bishop Chrysostomos (347 – 407), for example, spoke about the “royal quality of the soul, which possesses itself”.
Thérésa van Avila speaks about “the throne in the inner palace”.
It was also a general theme in classical antiquity, that royal quality of the soul. That quality was called with the word autonomy. That comes from the Greek words autos = self and nomos = law. A king used to be a legislator and judge. An autonomous person is therefore a king in the sense that he sets himself the law but also judges himself. A morally autonomous person is his own legislator and his own judge.
Whoever, as said here, will be like a king is therefore someone who judges himself, according to self-imposed laws.
In his book “The ascent of Mount Carmel” the mystic Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591) says:
There is no law for the righteous anymore because he is himself a law.
This autonomy was even seen as an important characteristic of Christians in early Christianity, and not only in Gnosticism! Bishop Chrysostom wrote:
Beloved, we have no power over your faith, and we do not command these things as your lord and master. We are appointed for the preaching of the word, not for power, not for absolute authority. We fulfill the function of advisers in the service of your own interest. The counselor gives his own opinion, and does not force the listener, but leaves this complete freedom of choice to what has been said. The counselor can only be blamed for not saying what was said to be said.
Chrysostom had the misfortune to be a contemporary of Augustine of Hippo, Saint Augustine in the Roman Catholic Church. He saw nothing in this liberty. By Augustine, Chrysostom was banned. Chrysostom died poor and lonely.
There are all kinds of good reasons to believe that the spiritual freedom confessed by Chrysostom was a characteristic of early Christianity, because it was precisely that freedom that offered the opportunity for charity. If we wanted to love our neighbour as ourselves, it requires a will decision. Such a decision can only be taken by a free person.
However, Christianity later modeled itself on Augustine, with man as a sinful being, incapable of any good and inclined to all evil, as an unfree slave to his sinful nature. The Gnostics, the Christian freethinkers, were persecuted as heretics and finally, with the mass murder of the Cathars in the thirteenth century, removed from Western history.
In the Thomas Gospel, the royal quality of the soul, that is, spiritual freedom, is seen as an essential aspect of the Gnostic path. But that freedom is not an end in itself. It is only a condition for something else, for something that really matters, namely the life practice of love.
Love and freedom as an inseparable couple
Because of that royal quality, it is surprising to know what the word Christ originally means. It is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for “anointed one.” With that word the kings were referred to in the Jewish tradition. They were an “anointed of the Lord.” But that word was also used as an indication of the future Messiah the saviour of the Jewish people. That saviour of the Jewish people was supposed to be a king, so was the expectation, but then a worldly king.
In Gnostics, “the Christ” lives in within a human itself. And that means not only that human are there own saviour, their own Messiah, but also that human are king over themselves.
So you can also read the word Christ nature as “the royal quality of the soul.”
At the time the Thomas Gospel was written, the view that autonomy was the royal quality of the soul was a general theme in classical culture. This autonomy was seen as a natural quality of the human soul. What is Thomas saying here? If we go the way of gnostics, we will learn to connect on that path with that natural, universal human quality of the soul, the Christ nature, or the royal autonomy, the spiritual freedom.
And why would that be? Because then we can freely impose the law of love on ourselves. Just as the personal nature of human and the Christ nature form twins (see the prologue), freedom and love are also regarded as an inseparable couple in Gnosticism.
Love is not obediently following commandments.
Love is the moral touchstone of a free human.
