John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
The quotation found in Howard Schwartz', Tree of Souls, requires some explanation and clarification. In the NT, Jesus is referred to as the veil in the holy temple (the "paroket") separating the holy place from the most holy place. This veil, paralleling the virginal veil of the bride, is torn, at his death, allowing the souls hidden there (the heavenly realm) since "before the foundation of the world" to be freed to enter into the temporal dimension.
We were chosen in him ["in Christ"] before the καταβολης of the world so that we might be holy and pure before him in love since we were predestined as the adopted children of Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 1:4-5.
Whereas the Talmud, and Rashi, speak of these sacred souls being created after the six days of creation, Paul says they were created prior to the katabole (casting down) of the creation. Paul's statement adheres to the "gap" theology that sees a fall occurring between the initial creation of the all things ----in perfection (Genesis 1:1) ----followed by "chaos" (between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis chapter one) after which the six days of creation restore the earth to some semblance of its pre-catastrophic state. In Paul's theology, the souls in the tree of soul were in him, "in Christ" waiting to be born prior to the catastrophe that's labeled the "falling down" (katabole) of the world. Paul is saying that the souls stored in the tree of souls were stored there from the beginning of creation and not afterward. They were created simultaneous to prelapsarian-Adam (Adam Kadmon), and not after the fact (ala the Talmud).
Paul's concept of "adoption" into Christ implies that those who are born into the fall by means of being conceived through phallic-sex, fleshly being, are, by means of rebirth, adopted into the family of God and immediately given one of the souls stored in the Guf, the tree of souls, from before the "foundation" (katabole) of the world. The Christian is born the first time into, and through, the original sin of phallic-sex, so that they must be adopted into the body of Christ, the family of God, and given a new soul through some mechanism distinct from the phallic-sex that entered them into the realm of the dead.
All souls were originally included in Adam's soul. After Adam was created, God showed him all the souls contained within his soul, and all the future generations that would follow. Thus Adam is the source of all souls. That is why on Rosh ha-Shanah, the day that Adam was created, the entire world is judged, for Adam contained within him all the souls of mankind.
Howard Schwartz, The Tree of Souls, p. 162.
Howard Schwartz, The Tree of Souls, p. 162.
Christianity fancies messiah a high priest in the order of Melchizedek in that he offers himself for the sins of all mankind thereby redeeming all of mankind who are able to be redeemed. Nevertheless, doctrinally speaking, there's a fundamental distinction between the salvation procured for the post-lapsarian souls of fallen Adam, versus the souls that were "in Christ" before the falling down of Adam and the world. These souls, or rather those who receive these souls, are, to Christ (messiah) as are those pagans born through jus primae noctis to the tribal lord: they are Christ's own offspring given a new soul just as surely as they acquired their first soul from their human father; they're priests (firstborn sons) of Christ, messianic-priests, making up a kingdom wholly of priest.
Whereas those not receiving one of these holy souls can be redeemed, i.e., their original soul can be redeemed (and thus revived after death), they are not any of them heavenly priests even if they serve in the Levitical priesthood of Israel. Only the souls (and they are numbered) coming from heaven, through the torn curtain of his body, return to the place of their genesis upon death.
John