2 Corinthians 12:2

7. For that there are spiritual creatures in the heavens, all the Scriptures loudly proclaim; and Paul expressly testifies that there are spiritual things when he declares that he was caught up into the third heaven, and again, that he was carried away to paradise, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. But what did that profit him, either his entrance into paradise or his assumption into the third heaven, since all these things are still but under the power of the Demiurge, if, as some venture to maintain, he had already begun to be a spectator and a hearer of those mysteries which are affirmed to be above the Demiurge? For if it is true that he was becoming acquainted with that order of things which is above the Demiurge, he would by no means have remained in the regions of the Demiurge, and that so as not even thoroughly to explore even these (for, acco …

Thus, then, the milk which is perfect is perfect nourishment, and brings to that consummation which cannot cease. Wherefore also the same milk and honey were promised in the rest. Rightly, therefore, the Lord again promises milk to the righteous, that the Word may be clearly shown to be both, “the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end;” the Word being figuratively represented as milk. Something like this Homer oracularly declares against his will, when he calls righteous men milk-fed ( γαλακτοφάγοι ). So also may we take the Scripture: “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ;” so that the carnal may be understood as those recently instructed, and still babes in Christ. …

When we aver that the soul has a body of a quality and kind peculiar to itself, in this special condition of it we shall be already supplied with a decision respecting all the other accidents of its corporeity; how that they belong to it, because we have shown it to be a body, but that even they have a quality peculiar to themselves, proportioned to the special nature of the body (to which they belong); or else, if any accidents (of a body) are remarkable in this instance for their absence, then this, too, results from the peculiarity of the condition of the soul’s corporeity, from which are absent sundry qualities which are present to all other corporeal beings. …

And by war he means the war that is in the body, because its frame has been made out of hostile elements; as it has been written, he says, “Remember the conflict that exists in the body.” Jacob, he says, saw this entrance and this gate in his journey into Mesopotamia, that is, when from a child he was now becoming a youth and a man; that is, (the entrance and gate) were made known unto him as he journeyed into Mesopotamia. But Mesopotamia, he says, is the current of the great ocean flowing from the midst of the Perfect Man; and he was astonished at the celestial gate, exclaiming, “How terrible is this place! it is nought else than the house of God, and this (is) the gate of heaven.” On account of this, he says, Jesus uses the words, “I am the true gate.” Now he who makes these statements is, he says, the Perfect Man that is imaged from the unportrayable one from above. …

IX. He holds that St. Paul had two revelations. For the apostle, he says, does not suppose paradise to be in the third heaven, in the opinion of those who knew how to observe the niceties of language, when he says, “I know such a man caught up to the third heaven; and I know such a man, whether in the body or out of the body, God knoweth, that was caught up into paradise.” Here he signifies that he has seen two revelations, having been evidently taken up twice, once to the third heaven, and once into paradise. For the words, “I know such a man caught up,” make it certain that he was personally shown a revelation respecting the third heaven. And the words which follow, “And I know such a man, whether in the body or out of the body, God knoweth, that he was caught up into paradise,” show that another revelation was made to him respecting paradise. …

But he is greatly mistaken in this opinion. The questions which he supposes to be outside the faith are of a very different character from those in which, without any detriment to the faith whereby we are Christians, there exists either an ignorance of the real fact, and a consequent suspension of any fixed opinion, or else a conjectural view of the case, which, owing to the infirmity of human thought, issues in conceptions at variance with truth: as when a question arises about the description and locality of that Paradise where God placed man whom He formed out of the ground, without any disturbance, however, of the Christian belief that there undoubtedly is such a Paradise; or as when it is asked where Elijah is at the present moment, and where Enoch, whether in this Paradise or in some other place, although we doubt not of their existing still in the same bodies in which they were bo …

20. Finally, He here commits His sheep to the care of Peter, who loves Him, and thrice confesses that love, and then He states that He wills this very John so to tarry until He comes. In which utterance, again, He seems to me to have conveyed in a profound and mystical way the fact that this evangelical stewardship of John’s, in which he is borne aloft into the most liquid light of the Word, where it is possible to behold the equality and unchangeableness of the Trinity, and in which, above all, we see at what a distance from all others in respect of essential character that humanity stands by whose assumption it occurred that the Word was made flesh, cannot be clearly discerned and recognised until the Lord Himself comes. Consequently, it will tarry thus until He comes. …

12. And what does this faith effect at present? What does it by so many testimonies of Scripture, by its manifold lessons, its various and plentiful exhortations, but make us “see now through a glass darkly, and hereafter face to face.” But return not now in thought again to this thy bodily face. Think only of the face of the heart. Force, compel, press thine heart to think of things divine. Whatsoever occurs to thy mind that is like to a body, throw it off from thee. If thou canst not yet say, “It is this,” yet at least say, “It is not this.” For when wilt thou be able to say, “This is God”? Not even then, when thou shall see Him; for what thou shalt then see is ineffable. …

23. Already on a former occasion I have spoken of these ascending and descending angels; but lest you should have forgotten, I shall speak of the latter briefly by way of recalling it to your recollection. I should use more words if I were introducing, not recalling the subject. Jacob saw a ladder in a dream; and on a ladder he saw angels ascending and descending: and he anointed the stone which he had placed at his head. You have heard that the Messias is Christ; you have heard that Christ is the Anointed. For Jacob did not place the stone, the anointed stone, that he might come and adore it: otherwise that would have been idolatry, not a pointing out of Christ. What was done was a pointing out of Christ, so far as it behoved such a pointing out to be made, and it was Christ that was pointed out. A stone was anointed, but not for an idol. …

4. “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom, one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.” What he meant by saying “in His bosom,” he tells us a little further on, where he says, “on the breast of Jesus.” It was that very John whose Gospel is before us, as he afterwards expressly declares. For it was a custom with those who have supplied us with the sacred writings, that when any of them was relating the divine history, and came to something affecting himself, he spoke as if it were about another; and gave himself a place in the line of his narrative becoming one who was the recorder of public events, and not as one who made himself the subject of his preaching. …

8. Accordingly, when the Lord says, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” He means that what they were still ignorant of had afterwards to be supplied to them, and not that what they had already learned was to be subverted. And He, indeed, as I have already shown in a former discourse, could so speak, because the very things which He had taught them, had He wished to unfold them to them in the same way as they are conceived in regard to Him by the angels, their still remaining human weakness would be unable to bear. But any spiritual man may teach another man what he knows, provided the Holy Spirit grant him an enlarged capacity for profiting, wherein also the teacher himself may get some further increase, in order that both may be taught of God. …

11. “I am become feeble, and am bowed down greatly” ( ver. 8 ). He who calls to mind the transcendent height of the Sabbath, sees how “greatly” he is himself “bowed down.” For he who cannot conceive what is that height of rest, sees not where he is at present. Therefore another Psalm hath said, “I said in my trance, I am cast out of the sight of Thine eyes.” For his mind being taken up thither, he beheld something sublime; and was not yet entirely there, where what he beheld was; and a kind of flash, as it were, if one may so speak, of the Eternal Light having glanced upon him, when he perceived that he was not yet arrived at this, which he was able after a sort to understand, he saw where he himself was, and how he was cramped and “bowed down” by human infirmities. …