God Hides in the Least Obvious Places - Luther on the Hidden God

God hides beyond every speculation in order not to be found outside the preached word who is Jesus Christ incarnate. The result is to find God in wrath, and thus to find our end in the feeling of death where there is nothing more that we can do. In that place God seems absent, hostile, and always demands something more.

The hiding behind the masks of creation itself, we recall, is a response to our first attempt to hide from God. Thus God is hiding there not only so that original sin’s enthusiasm will not attempt to leave the world and enter majesty itself. God also hides in order to hold humans in preparation for the time and place when they are driven to find God where God would be found, in mercy not wrath.

Luther on the Hidden God
STEVEND. PAULSON

I found this to be a very good read. Rarely do you find thoughts like this.

Here's another quote I found interesting:

“Unbelief makes a judge and enemy out of a God and the Father....Faith makes a God and Father out of an enemy and judge.”

I find myself often guilty of the former, but God always leads me to the latter. Knowledge of good and evil requires both swings of the pendulum. It kind of makes you wonder what is in store for us after we know; when God is all in all.

I find another related quote from the Tripartite Tractate. I have read this many times before, but in relation to the linked document, it all makes so much sense.

The Father brought forth everything, like a little child, like a drop from a spring, like a blossom from a vine, like a flower, like a [...], in need of gaining nourishment and growth and faultlessness. He withheld it for a time. He who had thought of it from the very beginning, possessed it from the very beginning, and saw it, but he closed it off to those who first came from him. (He did this,) not out of envy, but in order that the aeons might not receive their faultlessness from the very beginning and might not exalt themselves to the glory, to the Father, and might think that from themselves alone they have this. But just as he wished to grant that they might come into being, so too, in order that they might come into being as faultless ones, when he wished, he gave them the perfect idea of beneficence toward them.

If you bother to read the link above, the words of the Tripartite Tractate ring true by comparison. Very interesting to read as we see the division in the world. I also find this part interesting in relation about the Logos:

The Logos was a cause of those who came into being and he continued all the more to be at a loss and he was astonished. Instead of perfection, he saw a defect; instead of unification, he saw division; instead of stability, he saw disturbances; instead of rests, tumults. Neither was it possible for him to make them cease from loving disturbance, nor was it possible for him to destroy it. He was completely powerless, once his totality and his exaltation abandoned him.

Those who had come into being not knowing themselves both did not know the Pleromas from which they came forth and did not know the one who was the cause of their existence.

The reason this is so interesting is the comparison of Yahweh not being able to control humanity. To this day, we are all out of control by comparison. Perfection ends in total chaos. What do we find at the end of the road? The perfect Hidden Father, as described in the opening of the Tripartite Tractate.

Astonishing! The Father, Hidden to the end, yet there the entire time. Even more astonishing, mercy to the Son (Yahweh). If he forgives Yahweh, humanity has it made. God the Father is amazing in every way!

"There's no more brilliant light than that which follows complete darkness." From the movie, "The Cafe."

1 Corinthians 2:9

However, as it is written: "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived" -- the things God has prepared for those who love him--

Forgive the Son as the Son forgives us. Do you see it yet?

It's all about the Father seen through the suffering of the Son. Suffering is a gift revealing eternal bliss apart from it. One cannot exist apart from the other.

Of course the question remains how it is that in the same mask of creation one finds the place for faith and the other the place for blasphemy? The answer is not by embracing nature more fully or by increasing our effort so that we make something more out of our work than we have mustered before. The answer is the arrival in created flesh of the second person of the Trinity, who alone can silence the despairing question, “Why?” God’s hiding and so his self-giving is not ex - hausted in the giving of the Father in creation: “Therefore the Son himself subse - quently gave himself and bestowed all his works, sufferings, wisdom, and righteousness, and reconciled us to the Father, in order that restored to life and righteousness, we might also know and have the Father and his gifts.”

If you have read my threads, you can see what God is actively doing in my doubting and speculative heart. Again, simply amazing! Maybe I am the only one that sees it. No matter.

This is God’s second hiding, and it too has the double effect. Those who hear God’s unthwartable will in Christ for them no longer are merely in the room of faith, or have a place for faith, but are fixed in faith, and are certain that the work of Christ is for them. They no longer speculate about God’s will in general because they have it in particular. This was the whole purpose of Luther noting that God outside Christ, outside the word, is an impenetrable power who holds our lives in his hands and is hiding his will from us. He does not want to be found outside Christ. He wants to be found in Christ, but must “hide” a second time in order to fly below our radar which is set for what we take to be “spiritual” things above. He comes where we did not expect him, under the sign of his opposite, in suffering, death, opposition to the law, ungodliness, and shame.

Today, we will see the rest of this story:

There the Father attacks the power of evil that has usurped his world, and finds the way to give himself to us in words a second time. God wants to be found in the words of promise in Christ that give new life. Otherwise God will rule his world by destroying those who seek him unclothed in words.

Read on to find the third hiding place. What an interesting document, but what does it all mean?

If the Father and Mother can save the Son, so to can he save you. The cross is the reason. If you realize what I have shown in my other threads about the Son (Yahweh), then you realize that we will all be saved. If he saves the first (Aleph) and last (Tav), he saves us all. He will not fail to save his Son.

What a twist to the story!

If you read my earlier thread on Yahweh Gone Wild, you may have read the story of the Presumption of the Youngest Aeon. What you don't know is then contained in this thread--The Hidden Father.

From here, the entire story of the fall of the Presumption of the Youngest Aeon is told in the pages of the Tripartite Tractate. I have read this document many times, but never realized what it was saying. I would encourage you to read this if you have ever enjoyed my threads. It's the story of the youngest Son of God and the Father's will that the first born would fall into a corrupt Aeon, only to be rescued by the compassion of the other Aeons. WOW! The missing link to the story. It's too long to put here, so I will simply link.

Start reading at 74:17, or the Presumption of the Youngest Aeon. Amazing! I will do more threads on this story.

Of all the excluded middles I have found, this one takes the cake.

Tripartite Tractate

a reply to: AlephBet

You say that GOD can be found in wrath and our death but while that can be true it is importannt to note that a child of GOD can not be found in the flesh during death. He has the power to remove us from ourselves in that moment. I just thought it should be noted that when we find the faith to choose his will then we are saved from much pain. s+f

so i finally clicked that link. the tripartite thingie. if its possible to earn a degree in kissing ass, the author of that thing probably has a masters in it. half of that page is almost literally just complimenting his chosen deity over and over and over again. its the definition of SYCOPHANCY. and that is your overwhelming inspiration for your last two or three threads. color me unsurprised.