VII Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead).

The First Sermon 
"The dead came back from Jerusalem, where they did not find what they were seeking. They asked admittance to me and demanded to be taught by me, and thus I taught them:
Hear Ye: I begin with nothing. Nothing is the same as fullness. . . The nothing is both empty and full. . .
The Nothing, or fullness, is called by us the PLEROMA. . .
Differentiation is creation. . . 
Our essence is differentiation. . ."^1a*

The Second Sermon
"During the night the dead stood along the walls and shouted: 'We want to know about God! Where is God? Is God dead?'
--God is not dead; . . .God is a quality of the Pleroma . . .
All things which are brought forth from the Pleroma by differentiation are pairs of opposites; therefore God always has with him the Devil. . .
There is a God about whom you know nothing . . . We call him by his name: ABRAXAS. . .
Abraxas is activity . . .
He is active non-reality . . ."^1b*

The Third Sermon
"Abraxas generates truth and falsehood, good and evil . . . with the same word and in the same deed.
. . . Abraxas . . . is the cosmos; its genesis and dissolution. To every gift of God-the-Sun, the devil adds his curse. . .
Such is the terrible Abraxas. . .
He is deceitful reality."^1c*

". . . But what does man possess that God does not have? Because of his littleness, puniness, and defencelessness against the Almighty, he possesses . . . a somewhat keener consciousness based on self-reflection: he must, in order to survive, always be mindful of his impotence."^2a

"But what is Job’s guilt? The only thing he [Job] can be blamed for is his incurable optimism in believing that he can appeal to divine justice. In this he is mistaken, as Yahweh’s subsequent words prove. God does not want to be just: he merely flaunts might over right. . ."^2b

". . . Job stands morally higher than Yahweh. In this respect the creature has surpassed the creator. . . Yahweh must become man precisely because he has done man a wrong. He, the guardian of justice, knows that every wrong must be expiated, and Wisdom knows that moral law is above even him. Because his creature has surpassed him he must regenerate himself."^2c

"Yahweh’s intention to become man, which resulted from his collision with Job, is fulfilled in Christ’s life and suffering."^2d

"What kind of father is it who would rather his son were slaughtered than forgive his ill-advised creatures who have been corrupted by his precious Satan?"^2e

"Like Job, he [John] saw the fierce and terrible side of Yahweh. For this reason he felt his gospel of love to be one-sided, and he supplemented it with the gospel of fear [the Book of Revelation]: God can be loved but must be feared."^2f*

* Italics in the original.

¹ Stephan A. Hoeller. The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead. Stephan A. Hoeller, 1982. Publication made possible with the assistance of the Kern Foundation. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, a department of the Theosophical Society in America.
^a  The First Sermon, at 44-48.
^b  The Second Sermon, at 48-50.
^c  The Third Sermon, at 50-52.

² C. G. Jung. Answer to Job. 50^th-Aniversary Edition. Translated by R.F.C. Hunt. Bollingen Foundation, New York, NY, 1958. Princeton University Press, 1969 (2^nd Edition), 1973 (Editorial Note). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
^a II, at 13.
^b II, at 16.
^c VI, at 43.
^d VII, at 47.
^e X, at 56.
^f XV, at 88.

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