Jakob Bohme
Jakob Bohme
Jakob Böhmewas a German Christian mystic and theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme; in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth24 April 1575
CountryGermany
Men should friendly confer together, and offer one another their gifts and knowledge in love, and try things one with another, and hold that which is best, and not so stand in their own opinion as if they could not err.
If men would as fervently seek after love and righteousness as they do after opinions, there would be no strife on earth, and we should be as children of one father, and should need no law or ordinance. For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience.
All that men will serve God with must be done in Faith, viz. in the Spirit. It is the Spirit that maketh the work perfect, and acceptable in the sight of God. All that a man undertaketh and doeth in Faith, he doth in the Spirit of God, which Spirit of God doth co-operate in the work, and then it is acceptable to God.
All strife concerning Christ's testaments cometh hence that men do not understand that Heaven wherein Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. They understand not that he is in this World, and that the World standeth in Heaven, and Heaven in the World, and are in one another, as Day and Night.
All men who give up themselves in obedience unto God, they are received in Christ's obedience, viz. in the fulfilling of the obedience, the Jew and the Christian, and so likewise the heathen who has neither the law nor Gospel.
As the science of every thing is in the formed Word, so also is God's will therein: That same expressed Word is in the angels, angelical; in the devils, diabolical; in man, human; in beasts, bestial.
A true Christian, who is born anew of the Spirit of Christ, is in the simplicity of Christ, and hath no strife or contention with any man about religion.
The pure Deity is in all places and all corners, and present every where all over: the birth of the holy Trinity in one essence is every where: and the angelical world reacheth to every part, wherever you can think, even in the midst of the earth, stones, and rocks: as also hell and the kingdom of God's wrath is every where all over.
There is nothing in nature wherein there is not good and evil; everything moveth and liveth in this double impulse, working or operation, be it what it will.
We are children of the eternity: But this world is an out-birth out of the eternal; and its palpability taketh its original in the anger; the eternal nature is its root.
If we incline our wills in true earnest singleness to God, then we go with Christ out of this world, out from the stars and elements, and enter into God; for in the will of reason we are children of the stars and elements, and the spirit of this world ruleth over us.
Love is higher than the Highest. Love is greater than the Greatest. Yea, it is in a certain sense greater than God; while yet, in the highest sense of all, God is Love, and Love is God. Love being the highest principle is the virtue of all virtues; from whence they flow forth.
When the Soul that is sprung from God's Word and Will is entered into its own desire to will of itself, it will run in mere uncertainty till it return to its Original again.
Just as a drop of water in the ocean cannot avail much; but if a great river runneth into it, that maketh a great commotion.