2024-02-12
I wrote this piece about eight or so months ago. I wrote it in one sitting after drinking two bottles of Robitussin so, naturally, it came out a little too Nestorian. These excesses have since been edited out. enjoy!
וַיִּשַּׁ֥ח אָדָ֖ם וַיִּשְׁפַּל־אִ֑ישׁ וְעֵינֵ֥י גְבֹהִ֖ים תִּשְׁפַּֽלְנָה׃
—Yeshaʿyahu 2:17
The haughtiness of [adam] shall be humbled,
and the pride of everyone shall be brought low,
—Isaiah 2:17
I will be wounded and I will wound.
Amen.
—The Round Dance of the Cross
And Christos said unto Judas:
But you will surpass all of them, for you
will sacrifice the man who bears me.1
The Gospel of Judas, a text in Codex Tchacos, details a scapegoat elevated to the level of the sacred in His killing, thus rendering His death (at the hands of the body social) an ultimate transgression.
Athanasius’s reading of the Gospel is exemplative of this general idea:
Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man's account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection.2
But Judas complicates the narrative. In his good news, he does not figure as a traitor to the apostles or Christos. The whole narrative of sacrifice is overturned. The Crucifixion marks the death of Yeshua, but not of Christos…
* * *
Y”C, while commonly depicted as singular, has also been represented as two in the history of Christian art. The most notable expression of this can be found at Sinai—in Saint Catherine’s Monastery:
Initially, this Christ Pantocrator appears to be an uncomplicated depiction of Y”C. Upon deeper observation, however, we can begin to ascertain a deep dissonance. Most strikingly, the two sides of His face do not match. This is not a mistake. It betrays Y”C’s own unified dissonance. On His right side, Y”C offers his hand in blessing with a passive, docile gaze. Beside His head are the letters “IC”—an abbreviation of ΙΗϹΟΥϹ, or Yeshua. On His left side, Y”C holds the Gospels with a direct, penetrating gaze. Beside His head are the letters “XC”—an abbreviation of ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ, or Christos.
Not only is Y”C Y”C, but He is also IC and XC. He Yeshua. He is Christos. According to this icon, however, he remains One.
Who is IC, XC? Who is Yeshua, Christos? Philip the Apostle gives us an adequate answer in his Gospel:
Jesus is a hidden name, Christ is an open one.
So Jesus is not a word in any tongue but a name they call him.
In Syriac the Christ is messias, in Greek he is christos.
All languages have their own way of calling him.3
Y”C is the naming of an esoteric-exoteric gap, but it goes even further. Yeshua, or IC, is the particular Y”C—the Body or “Temple” that is emptied via a process of kenosis. This emptying of the Temple Yeshua is not from without. It is a self-emptying that identifies with the becoming of the One—the unmanifest, unending One—as tzimtzum. This identity of Y”C with the One is made all the more apparent in various renditions of Christ Pantocrator that began to emerge in the second millennium, such as this one from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:
Although we lose the split face in this depiction, the internal rupture remains—with a key addition. Alongside the “IC” and “IX” on either side of Y”C’s head appear three additional letters: “Ὁ”, “Ὤ”, “Ν”. When conjoined, “Ὁ ὬΝ”4 translates into “the being one”. Yeshua and Christos—IC and XC—are conjoined in the being one. This also seemingly establishes a continuity between Y”C and the God of Moses Who named Himself “Ὁ ὬΝ” at Sinai.
Such reference to Y”C as the One isn’t an unfounded creative liberty. In Revelation, Y”C reveals Himself to John as “ὁ Ζῶν”: “the living one”. Furthermore, in Revelation 4, John describes four beings, or living creatures, around the Throne in Heaven…
Day and night without ceasing they sing,
‘Holy, holy, holy,
the Lord God the Almighty,
who was and is and is to come.’5
In the Greek, the final line reads “ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος.” This has been translated as “the [One] having been, and the [One] being, and the [One] coming.” Once again, we are met with “ὁ ὢν” (uppercase: Ὁ ὬΝ) as a name, or aspect, of Y”C. Y”C is the being One; the One being.
Yeshua is the being-One and Christos is the being-One. It is only in Their unity as the One that They may realize Their truth as kenosis. Yeshua, it has been said, is the Temple that is emptied. Moreover, Yeshua is an aspect of the process of self-emptying—the hidden aspect. He is the Son of Man and He is Man. Christos, or XC, is the universal Y”C—the “spark of light” born of “pure light” that fills the empty Temple Yeshua. Christos is the open aspect of kenosis.
What do ‘hidden’ and ‘open’ mean in this context? As Y”C is the being-One of Yeshua and Christos, He is the Word of sovereignty. John of Zebedee, a student of Y”C, records the being-One—the “I am”—as saying:
The One is
illimitable, since there is nothing before it to limit it,
unfathomable, since there is nothing before it to fathom it,
immeasurable, since there was nothing before it to measure it,
invisible, since nothing has seen it,
eternal, since it exists eternally,
unutterable, since there is nothing before it to give it a name.6
This is the hidden aspect of kenosis embodied in the Temple Yeshua. The name Yeshua realizes unutterable boundlessness insofar as He is emptied. The Son of Man as Nefesh Behamit (the flesh) in His emptiness in the World is the becoming-fullness of the World, for only emptiness (kenoma) can accept fullness (pleroma). Yeshua, then, is the Infinity of the One as manifest in the particular Body.
The One is boundless and immeasurable. His divine nature rests in its indeterminacy. At the same time, however, the One is verily One. He is the particularity of boundlessness. He is immeasurable, and yet He is measured. The One is measured in His manifestation as the Word-become-Flesh. This is the open aspect of kenosis embodied in Christos. The name Christos realizes measured particularity insofar as He is fullness entering emptiness. The Son of God as Yechidah (the divine spark) in His fullness in the World is the becoming-empty of the Infinite, for as emptiness accepts fullness, fullness identifies with emptiness. Christos, then, is the finitude of the One as measured by the Temple Yeshua… “I wore Jesus.”7
The Messengers who were before us had these names
for his: Jesus, the Nazorean, messiah,
that is, Jesus, the Nazorean, the Christ.
The last name is Christ,
the first is Jesus,
the middle name is the Nazarene.
Messiah has two meanings, both “Christ” and “measured.”
Jesus in Hebrew is “redemption.”
Nazara is “truth.”
Christ has been measured.
The Nazarene and Jesus are they who have measured.8
Yeshua, Son of Man, is the full Infinity of the One manifest in particular emptiness. Christos, Son of God, is the empty finitude of the One manifest in universal fullness. Christos has been measured by Yeshua and the One (Nazarene; truth). This is how the Infinity of God becomes the finitude of the World. The Word Christos, following the Ratzon (will) of the One, is manifest as Flesh/World in order that the One may realize Himself as the One by constricting His Infinity to a monadic point. There is no One without Christos-as-Yeshua. There is no Christos without Yeshua. Y”C is God and God is Y”C.
“We would not know what is ineffable, we would not understand what is immeasurable, were it not for what has come from the father.”9 In the Apocryphon of John, the One (described as the Holy Spirit) expresses Himself as light which begets light as a spark in the form of Y”C the Autogenes (the Self-Begotten) via the Holy Spirit (Barbelo). Y”C the Autogenes is described as “the self-conceived god” Who “created everything by the word.”10 “The holy spirit brought the self-conceived divine child of itself and Barbelo to perfection, so that the child might stand before the great, invisible virgin spirit as the self-conceived god…”11 The constriction of the One toward the creation of Creation required that the One emanate Himself from Himself as Christos, following His divine Will toward creation which is His Essence.
The name of the father is the son. It is he who, in the beginning, gave a name to him who came from him, while he remained the same, and he conceived him as a son.12
Christos is the name of the Father of all, the One, and is the One as He has doubled Himself so that He may realize Himself as Himself through Himself. The unnameable One is named by Himself in His reflection into His Self which He is not, and yet is. Yeshua, however, is the name of Creation and, more specifically, the World in its corruptibility. And yet, because Yeshua is incorruptible, His assuming of the World as the flesh fundamentally kills it… “Jesus came to crucify the world.”13
Yeshua came to crucify the World because He is the World. It is through Yeshua that the World could come to be through the constriction of the One and its emanation out of itself unto finitude. The body of Yeshua is the body of Man. Yeshua is the body of the one who struggles with Elohim. This is made clear when we return to the Book of Isaiah in which it is said:
The haughtiness of [adam] shall be humbled,
and the pride of everyone shall be brought low,
“Adam”, here, stands in for “People”, for the original Hebrew uses ‘adam’ (אָדָ֖ם) which translates into ‘earth’ or ‘soil’, for adam is World and Kingdom (Malkhut).
The flesh of the World was ready to accept the name of the Holy Spirit because from the realm of pleroma—from fullness—comes Sophia the Christos. The Apocryphon of John details how the first human, the perfect human, was emanated by the Ratzon and Logos of the One Who is the self-conceived Autogenes. This human was Geradamas—Adam Kadmon or the heavenly Adam; Pigeradamas (the anointed)—and he knew the poiesis of the Word Christos and revered Him. Seeing this, Sophia, the wisdom of afterthought (epinoia) brought forth her own creation out of herself through the idea of the Autogenes. In the absence of the Will of the Holy Spirit, however, the progeny of Sophia was corruptibility and darkness through which another, imperfect Adam is born.
Yeshua the Christos, it is said, is the spirited adam with a new bearer. Y”C is the perfection of Man (tikkun ha-adam) and is the flesh of Man as such in His being as Yeshua. The old covenant was fulfilled through Him. Israel, as he who has wrestled with God, was marked with death:
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.14
However, in the death of adam through Y”C, Israel was consoled through the Crucifixion of the Body of Christos Yeshua:
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.15
And thus Israel who was adam was punished but through this became the Body of Christos—Ecclesia. The Holy Spirit is embodied:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.16
Consequently, we must return to the role of Judas in the Crucifixion. While it was he who gave up Y”C, he did so knowing that it was not Christos Who would be sacrificed, but Yeshua as the World and as adam as Israel.
“My god, my god, O lord, why have you abandoned me?”
He said these words on the cross.
But not from that place. He was already gone....17
Yeshua died, but the Christos remained the One as the Holy Spirit Whose Body was maintained in Ecclesia. This is the truth of the eternal life of the Word—the Word embodied in the Flesh Who lived before Abraham18 and lives on as the Head of the Church Whose Body is Ecclesia.
1 The Gospel of Judas, in The Gnostic Bible, p. 153.
2 Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, p. 16.
3 The Gospel of Philip, in TGB, p. 284.
4 Rev. 1:18.
5 Rev. 4:8.
6 The Secret Book of John, in TGB, p. 159-160.
7 Three Forms of First Thought, in TGB, p. 220.
8 The Gospel of Philip, in TGB, p. 291.
9 The Secret Book of John, in TGB, p. 160.
10 Ibid., p. 163.
11 Ibid.
12 The Gospel of Truth, in TGB, p. 274.
13 The Gospel of Philip, in TGB, p. 293.
14 Deut. 21:18-21.
15 Luke 2:25.
16 1 Cor. 12:12-13.
17 The Gospel of Philip, in TGB, p. 299.
18 John 8:58.