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Understanding Biblical Symbolism


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REDEMPTION OF THE SOUL

A symbol of the substitution of the Divine perfection for the soul's imperfection, by paying the price of involved potential perfection in order to make perfect the evolved actual imperfection of qualities and souls. The price paid being the Divine Self-limitation in matter.

"Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things... But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you." - 1 PETER i. 18-20.

"Blood being a symbol of the Divine Life, the shedding of this Life is the Divine Sacrifice.

'The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.'" - REV. xiii. 8.

It is the involution of Spirit into Matter. This is the origin of the indwelling Christ, who becomes the redeemer as he rises in the soul from a state of latency, or death, to a state of actuality or life. The indwelling Christ is the Archetypal Man foreordained as the Prototype within humanity becoming manifest in each soul at the present period of evolution.

"There is an indwelling Christ who redeems the soul from sin and fills it with his own life." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., Christ Arisen.

"The glaring contrast between earthly suffering and imperfection on the one part, and heavenly bliss and purity on the other, lies at the heart and core of the philosophy of the Orphics and Pythagoreans. Hence came their longing for purification, for atonement and final redemption. The goal they aimed at was hard to attain; a single earthly existence was not enough to cleanse the soul... A long series of palingenesis formed a kind of continuous pilgrimage, extending through thousands of years, and interrupted and embittered by the penalties suffered by the soul in the pool of mire. Late, if at all, the soul was freed from its labours, and returned to the starting point of its journey. As a pure spirit once more, it re-entered its home and rejoined the brotherhood of the gods." - T. GOMPERZ, Greek Thinkers, Vol. I. p. 129.

"Redemption is the full compensation both to God and to the universe for all that is undergone and suffered by and through Creation. And it is brought about by the return from Matter of Spirit to its original condition of purity, but individuated and enriched by the results of all that has been gained through the processes to which it has been subjected; results which, but for Matter, could not have been. That through which we are made perfect is experience, or suffering; and we are only really alive and exist in so far as we have felt. Now of this divine and indispensable ministry of experience, Matter is the agent." - The Perfect Way, p. 43.

"I should like to be informed who was ever made spiritually rich by notions of an outward Christ? No, Christ is the inward spiritual Being or Life that God has sent now into us, to be the actual Redeemer of this our natural being, from its low estate, and to raise it up, I say, joint heirship with Himself." - JOHN WARD, Zion's Works, Vol. VII. p. 3.

"Redemption is the making good of what we have made ill, and it contains two necessary ingredients — relief and reinforcement — and in Christ we have both. Here on earth we are immersed and stifled in matter, and in moral darkness and stupor — all to a great end. And we have to be got out and brought back somehow to that whence we came. If we were left only to ourselves we never should get out or up; it is because of our vital indefeasible relation to Christ that we can hope to come victoriously through into divine liberty and joy." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm., The Divine Mystery.

 

See Also

ADOPTION
ARCHETYPAL MAN
ASCENSION
ATONEMENT
BLOOD OF THE LAMB
BONDAGE
CHRIST
CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST (Gospels)
CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS (Gospels)
EVOLUTION
EXPERIENCES
INCARNATION (Souls)
INCARNATION (Spirit)
INVOLUTION
LAMB OF GOD
LIBERATION
RANSOM
RE-BIRTH
REGENERATION
REINCARNATION
REMISSION
SACRIFICER
SALVATION
SPIRIT
URNS (twelve)
VICTORY