Böhme's doctrine of God and the world resembles that of other
speculative mystics, but he contributes a new element in the great
stress which he lays on _antithesis_ as a law of being. "In Yes and No
all things consist," he says. No philosopher since Heraclitus and
Empedocles had asserted so strongly that "Strife is the father of all
things." Even in the hidden life of the unmanifested Godhead he finds
the play of Attraction and Diffusion, the resultant of which is a
Desire for manifestation felt in the Godhead. As feeling this desire,
the Godhead becomes "Darkness"; the light which illumines the darkness
is the Son. The resultant is the Holy Spirit, in whom arise the
archetypes of creation. So he explains Body, Soul, and Spirit as
thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; and the same formula serves to
explain Good, Evil, and Free Will; Angels, Devils, and the World. His
view of Evil is not very consistent; but his final doctrine is that
the object of the cosmic process is to exhibit the victory of Good
over Evil, of Love over Hatred.[351] He at least has the merit of
showing that strife is so inwoven with our lives here that we cannot
possibly soar above the conflict between Good and Evil. It must be
observed that Böhme repudiated the doctrine that there is any
evolution of God in time. "I say not that Nature is God," he says:
"He Himself is all, and communicates His power to all His works." But
the creation of the archetypes was not a temporal act.
Like other Protestant mystics, he lays great stress on the indwelling
presence of Christ. And, consistently with this belief, he revolts
against the Calvinistic doctrine of imputed righteousness, very much
as did the Cambridge Platonists a little later. "That man is no
Christian," he says, "who doth merely comfort himself with the
suffering, death, and satisfaction of Christ, and doth impute it to
himself as a gift of favour, remaining himself still a wild beast and
unregenerate.... If this said sacrifice is to avail for me, it must be
wrought _in_ me. The Father must beget His Son in my desire of faith,
that my faith's hunger may apprehend Him in His word of promise. Then
I put Him on, in His entire process of justification, in my inward
ground; and straightway there begins in me the killing of the wrath of
the devil, death, and hell, from the inward power of Christ's death. I
am inwardly dead, and He is my life; I live in Him, and not in my
selfhood. I am an instrument of God, wherewith He doeth what He will."
To the same effect William Law says, "Christ given _for_ us is neither
more nor less than Christ given _into_ us. He is in no other sense our
full, perfect, and sufficient Atonement, than as His nature and spirit
are born and formed in us." Law also insists that the Atonement was
the effect, not of the wrath, but of the love of God. "Neither reason
nor scripture," he says, "will allow us to bring wrath into God
Himself, as a temper of His mind, who is only infinite, unalterable,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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