Centuries After Luther E-Book

Bruno Johannsson

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Aquinas Edition
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 576

Beschreibung

Unlike Luther who published his theses in the Catholic europe of 1517, the author refers in 95 theses to the globalized and pluralistic world of our times. Each theses is explained with a generally understandable essay of 2-5 pages. Numerous remarks allow readers with scientific interests to go into greater depth. At the end of most theses questions are formulated showing that the author knows what he does not know. At the end of some theses proposals for political action are made such as fighting hunger, diminishing inequality, promoting democracy and reforming the United Nations. Johannsson starts by outlining his conservative view of Christian Theology based on the Bible and some clarifying contributions of Joseph Smith (1806-1844). In the following ten chapters the author attempts to show the great relevance of the Christian point of view for the questions of our time. He indicates the possibility of a compromise between creationism and and the evolution paradigm. His theory of matter, spirit and soul has the potential of bringing natural and social sciences nearer to each other. Johannssons concept of Christian love proves not only to be a fundamental priciple of ethics but also of economics and political science.

Leseprobe

The author

is a graduate economist with studies in philosophy and theology He worked in research and teaching at the University of Saarland and at private schools. He was co-author of a two volume publication about taxes and investment. Other scientific publications concerned retraining decisions and global flight. Bruno’s first English publication is “Come”, a volume of poetry about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It was translated from the German by Hilary Teske. In 2014, Bruno received the jury's award for his contribution to the Philosophy Slam, Chemnitz. Since 2012 he and his wife Thea are co-initiators and moderators of the Café Philo, Chemnitz. They have published five volumes of philosophical dialogues in their own neo-socratic method on the fields of social philosophy, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and anthropology. Five of these dialogues were subjects of broadcasts of Radio Darmstadt. Bruno is Administrator of the English website https://bruno-Johannsson.jimdofree.com.

For Martin Luther and Joseph Smith to whom we possibly owe more than we suspect.

Table of contents

Preliminary Remarks

Luther in his time, the world five centuries later and the future perspective

The inner logic of this book

Invitation to disputation

The theses in their entirety

Remarks on the individual theses

Does He exist and if so, how many? On theology

What is truth and how do I find it? On the theory of knowledge

The cone of knowledge On the theory of science

Spirit and matter On a theory of spirit

Accelerated and directed evolution On cosmology

Highly developed ape or Eli’s child? On anthropology

A state in miniature On psychology and medicine

What should we do? On ethics

Space, time and everything in it On totology

What attracts us? On aesthetics and cultural philosophy

The royal global way On economics and political science

Bibliography

I. Preliminary Remarks

Luther in his time, the world five centuries later and the future Perspective.

The 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 was celebrated globally as a significant event for many good reasons. Even the Catholic Church could have celebrated it as well, because the reformation process has eliminated some grave deficits within that church since Luther’s time. The question as to whether it would have done this at all or within the same time frame is hard to answer. At any rate, Luther may be honoured as a potential martyr: he was ready to die for his convictions. His death as a martyr was only prevented by the power constellation of that time and the protection of the Electors of Saxony. The utterance ascribed to him – which he may, however, not actually have made – has marked the destiny of trend-setting personalities from all ideologies throughout the centuries up until the present: ‘Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.’ This statement might also have been the motto of Jesus Christ Himself, whose servant Martin Luther rightly considered himself to be. If we leave out the second part ‘God help me. Amen’ this utterance also marks the behaviour of millions of believers of other faiths and atheists who have risked their lives for their convictions over the centuries of human history, and are still doing so in our time. I am thinking of dissidents of all shades in the totalitarian systems from Adam on.

The fact that the publication of Luther’s 95 theses had its 500th anniversary in 2017 did in fact inspire me to write this book. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why my theses are only to be understood as a comment on Luther’s theses to a very minor extent. Luther’s theses are mainly concerned directly or indirectly with the practice of that time of buying remission of sins with letters of indulgence. This deficiency no longer plays a role in the Catholic Church of today and therefore needs no further comment. In my writings I agree with Luther’s fundamental statements on the subject of sin and grace with some restrictions and attempt to place them in a broader context. Furthermore, a considerable number of Luther’s theses deal with the role of the papacy at that time. On this point, there have likewise certainly been changes, the extent of which I am not able to assess fully and do not wish to comment on as a non-Catholic, since this is an internal problem of the Catholic Church.

Luther’s theses are completely within the context of his time, which was marked by the largely uncontested rule of the clergy and the Catholic Church’s strong political influence in the Europe of that time. The important parallels to my theses are to be found here. I likewise see the latter in a close context of the time in which they were written, which is, however, after five centuries, marked by secularism and a global ideological pluralism. Seen globally, there is thus not a single ruling ideology in the background but a large variety of ideologies from atheism to world religions and numerous other minor currents. I confront this secular, pluralistic world with the claim from ancient and latter-day Christian revelation that Jesus Christ is the God of the whole Earth and that all philosophy and science, art and politics converge in Him and His doctrine. Instead of ideological conflict, I advocate an “ideological cooperation” and a restoration of all that is good and true from all epochs of human history.

I am not alone in my perspective. It has been the historical viewpoint of Latter-day Saints since Joseph Smith (1806-1844): we find ourselves in the epoch of the fullness of times. It is the last great epoch of human history prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ. This is what I have in mind when I draw conclusions for philosophical and scientific issues of our time on a theological basis. These are entirely my own personal views and not the standpoint of any church or organisation.

It is clear to me that many people will say that I am turning back the wheel of history. I would answer with a modification of this image: history resembles a running race that started in a stadium and will end in a stadium, like the marathon at the Olympic Games. I already thematised this perspective with regard to Jesus Christ’s thousand-year reign in the following poem, which was published in German in 1976:

The stadium is already beckoning

Twittering of birds and beating of wings.

Even the roaring of squadrons is drowned.

Children are playing in the garden in front of the house.

At the window a tulip is flirting with a crocus.

Is morning still going round in a circle?

Contours are bathing in milky mist,

melting into the eye over floods of tears.

Buds have already swollen up

to fling out the blossom

before the face of the world.

Is the circle already casting spirals?

By the surging sea the city is greening,

and where the wilderness still dwells,

a garden is ready to bloom.

Soft currents are streaming into the lake.

Women are camping on the shore,

where a lion is crying its first tears

because the sweet lamb is sprawling before it.

The stadium is already beckoning,

in which the circle is rotating,

in which the race will end.

(From Bruno Johannsson (2017): Come. Poems. Eliza Editions 1. Translation from the German by Hilary Teske, Twenty Six in the Publishing Group Random House, Norderstedt, p. 58)

The inner logic of this book

My reflections are based on theological convictions (cf. Theses 1 to 30), which are, however, only partially questioned, proved or substantiated. This “partially” already results alone from the essay style, which dominates the main text. Neither should the extensive footnotes lead to the false conclusion that the theses are scientific, theological deductions in a strict sense. This is not the case, simply because I did not systematically take account of all the theological discussions within Christianity during the past centuries.

The theological basis which is my starting point is itself, in turn, founded on the canon of Judeo-Christian scriptural records. In single cases, I am able to take a brief look at Islamic and Hindu thinking. However, this is extremely limited due to my lack of intensive study of the scriptures of these religions up to now. By Christian canon I understand first of all the Old and New Testaments as sources of “ancient revelation”. In addition, there are the standard Latter-day Saint works, which I classify as holy scripture and occasionally call “new revelation”. They consist of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price (see Bibliography).

Concerning the books of the Bible, I am aware that the problems of scriptural records and translation are mostly rather difficult. The numerous translators have sometimes taken great liberties so that I have decided to use the interlinear translations from Hebrew and Greek available in the German language. From this they were translated as literally as possible into English. The result sometimes differs from the King James Bible.

As far as the reliability of the mentioned sources is concerned, evaluating them is ultimately an act of faith from case to case, requiring inspiration. I cite the witnesses of Christian theology over the centuries to testify to the fact that the books of the Bible are, for the most part, sources to be taken seriously. As an outstanding individual personality in this host of witnesses, I would first of all like to mention Martin Luther, who translated the Bible into German. I also appreciate the work of the 47 scholars who worked on the King James Version of the Bible. Another important witness for me is Joseph Smith, who corrected and supplemented parts of the King James Version but fundamentally accepted it. Last but not least, my respect goes to by the Catholic-Protestant commission that in 1980 produced the Einheitsübersetzung [standardised German Bible translation], which is also approved and used by Latter-day Saints in Germany. For the Old Testament there is the additional testimony of Jewish theologians of past centuries. Also Jesus Christ Himself and John, Peter and Paul directly or indirectly recognised and referred to the Books of Moses and the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. However, I not only want to list the Messiah, His prophets, priests and scribes as witnesses but also millions of “simple” believers, who over the centuries have borne testimony in word and deed to the validity of the holy scriptures. Seen from this perspective, I am not alone when I basically trust these sources and derive my theological foundation for reflections on philosophy and various sciences from them. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the foundation of this book is faith and not science in the meaning of this concept in our time.

When I present Christian theology filtered by transmission and translation as the quasi axiomatic basis of my reflections, I am aware that it is an unusually complex and problematic basis in a logical sense. However, I can mitigate this situation by reducing the whole of Christian doctrine to one person and one principle – the person of Jesus Christ and the principle of love. As I will explain in more detail, they are like two sides of one and the same coin. In the principle of love, the whole of Christian doctrine relating to the diversity of life is reduced to a single principle, as Jesus Himself formulated it in Matthew 22:40. In the person of Christ, in turn, this principle is perfectly embodied and realised, as John says in his first epistle 1 John 4:16: “God is love…” Through this reduction, which is firmly prescribed in Christian tradition, the axiomatic basis of my reflections again becomes very straightforward.

In deducing consequences for individual scientific disciplines, we arrived at the selective contributions in this book on the theory of knowledge, theory of science, cosmology, anthropology, psychology, medicine, aesthetics, sociology, economics and political science. In three cases we might speak of relatively new paradigms, which are fit to be theoretical foundations for further scientific research. This first of all concerns a theory of spirit lying between natural science and esotericism (cf. Chapter D). Furthermore, a comprehensive concept of a theory of civilisation is proposed (cf. Chapter I). My ethical reflections also have a fundamental character without claiming to be novel individually (cf. Chapter H).

As the essay form has been selected, the reader naturally cannot expect a logically exact deduction, as was tendentially the case, for instance, in medieval scholasticism or – on a different basis – with Ludwig Wittgenstein. Whilst every word is, in principle, significant for me in the formulation of the individual theses, the subsequent essay is marked by a relatively spontaneous orbiting round the theses. I may sometimes also lose sight of my theological basis to some extent. However, I hope that it repeatedly becomes noticeable as food for thought and as a corrective vis-à-vis the prevailing theories in the fields of the philosophical disciplines and individual sciences listed above.

At this point, I would like to address a word to those of my readers who have neither emotional nor intellectual access to the Christian way of thinking, particularly that of Latter-day Saints. I have complete understanding if they lay down my book immediately. On the other hand, it would be absolutely conceivable that they might benefit from reading it and possibly even realise that in deducing my consequences for the individual sciences I sometimes reach similar conclusions as, for example, a Catholic theologian, an orthodox Jew, a Muslim or an atheistic humanist. The spectrum I cover in this book in fact ranges from Jesus Christ over Martin Luther and Joseph Smith to Karl Marx.

Invitation to disputation

“Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.“1 These are the words with which Luther introduced his theses, as was consistent with the academic custom of his epoch. Times and customs have changed and nowadays live disputations rarely take place at universities, apart from the doctoral examination procedure. Technical communication possibilities now move in completely new paths due to the development of the Iinternet and they have also been used in this project to a certain extent. The existing version of this book is intended to undergo a significant improvement with the aid of its readers by 31 October 2017. First of all, every reader is invited to send comments, criticism, proposals for improvement, bibliographical references including scriptural references, etc. to [email protected]. Please do not forget to state the chapter (A to K), thesis number and, if possible, the number of the paragraph within the essay (not indicated in the text). The latter is, of course, only necessary when the comment relates to a concrete passage of text.

If the feedback exceeds a certain amount, the author reserves the possibility not to react to all the argumentation in detail. At his advanced age, this is a matter of time and energy. However, at this point I would like to express my warmest thanks to those who have taken time to read my book and give feedback. Should a reader succeed in prompting the author to change a thesis or an essay on a thesis, they will in any case be informed and mentioned by name in the second edition of the book unless they expressly ask for this not to be done. The second – and hopefully considerably improved version of this book – is to be published on October 31, 2017 if possible. It is hoped that it will be a document for the ideological cooperation I advocate in the book.

The above invitation to a process of communication will hopefully also make it clear to the reader that I am aware of the following fact: I do not know what I do not know and today consider some things to be knowledge which will one day prove to be errors. The limits of my knowledge are also indicated by the questions found at the end of most of the essays. They are an invitation to the reader to let me have this information. If this knowledge does not exist at all, it is an invitation to researchers to instigate appropriate projects.

A significant deepening of the critical reflection in some of my individual theses already exists in the form of 32 long philosophical live dialogues conducted and recorded by Thea Johansson and myself in the last few years. They are now published in five volumes which are available worldwide through www.amazon.com. If you enter “Thea and Bruno Johannsson” all five volumes are presented with reading samples and the details of the print and e-book editions. In the philosophical dialogues, Thea and I have taken turns in playing the role of midwife in the Socratic sense and helped bring a large number of our thoughts to light.

The possibility of disputation is give by the means of my English homepage .https://bruno-johannsson.jimdofree.com/contact. As far as my time permits I will be eager to answer and to discuss. Thea Johannsson will help me though she has another opinion in quite a number of subjects.

Thea Johannsson also read the present work and influenced it by making numerous comments. Besides her, there was only one other person who had a view of the entire text and pointed out some errors: this was Hilary Teske, who was ready to translate the book into English without having any guarantee that an interested publisher would be found. Thanks to her, it is hoped that this work will be published in German and English almost simultaneously.

My special thanks go to Prof. Dr. Herbert Giersch and Prof. Dr. Olaf Sievert, two of my academic role models who have practised and familiarised me with the not so widespread thinking in theses; they both worked at the Saarland University and were both long-standing Chairmen of the Board of Experts for the Assessment of Macroeconomic Development.

Last but not least my thanks go to my Father in Heaven, to his Son Jesus Christ and to the Holy Ghost who have exercised their special kind of cooperation to influence me in writing this book. In many, many prayers I have tried to secure this influence. Yet the probability is high that there are still mistakes in it. Please put them down to my personal weakness and let me know your opinion on the website above.

Bruno Johannsson

April 2021

1http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html (2015)

II. The 95 theses in their entirety

A) Does He exist and if so, how many? On theology

1. Eli is the supreme God of our universe.

2. Eli is immortal.

3. Eli has eternal life.

4. Eli is permeated with love and radiates love to the universe.

5. Eli lives in a specific place in the universe in the midst of a celestial civilisation created by Him.

6. Eli worked out His immortality and eternal life Himself.

7. Eli created many civilisations in our universe.

8. Eli’s creations resemble primal evolution but are directed and accelerated in time.

9. Eli exercises His rule in the universe through the holders of His priesthood.

10. Eli is the first man. We are his children.

11. Jesus Christ is Eli’s son in spiritual and physical respects.

12. Jesus Christ is the God of this Earth under Eli’s direction.

13. Jesus Christ assisted in creating Earth and plays the central role in perfecting it.

14. Jesus Christ is the same person as Jehovah (Jahweh).

15. Jesus Christ atoned for the sins of the world.

16. Faith in Jesus Christ makes eternal life possible.

17. The Holy Ghost has a spiritual body in God’s image.

18. The Holy Ghost “mothers“ the Saints.

19. Lucifer is one of Eli’s spiritual sons, rebelled against his Father and was expelled from heaven.

20. Satan and his devils do not have bodies of flesh and bones but can enter such bodies under certain conditions.

21. Satan and his devils are indestructible spiritual beings.

22. Satan and his armies cause the evil on this Earth as long and as far as Eli allows them to.

23. There are many gods, but only Eli is allowed to be worshipped.

24. Every person on Earth has the possibility of becoming a god.

25. Human history is a drama unfolding under Eli’s direction, in which the actors play themselves without knowing their roles completely.

26. The fall of Adam, the first and second coming of Christ and the Last Judgement are the central events of human history.

27. Under Eli’s direction, Jehovah has steered human history by means of revelation and personal intervention.

28. In God’s view, human history is marked by alternating apostasy and restoration.

29. In the final millennium Christ will preside on Earth and lead His people to perfection.

30. The unchaining and rechaining of the adversary, the Last Judgement and the transformation of Earth will take place at the end of the millennium.

B) What is truth and how can I find it? On the theory of knowledge

1 Truth is the particularity of an image of something that represents its being as well as possible with regard to a specific objective.

2 Every language generates and restricts possibilities of creating true images.

3. An improvement in the state of knowledge in many cases requires an improvement in language.

4. A person’s knowledge is greater, the more favourable the balance of true and false images is in their mind.

5. Knowledge can be acquired through communication or research.

6. All knowledge that will ever exist on Earth existed in the universe before planet Earth was created.

7. The research methods devised to date are not sufficient to generate all vital knowledge.

8. Divine revelation is the form of communication with the greatest chances and risks.

9. Eli has given every person a conditional promise of receiving personal revelation.

10. Perfect knowledge of something requires superior intelligence of the knower over the known, or at least equal intelligence.

C) The cone of knowledge On the theory of science

1. Every phenomenon is in principle the subject of science.

2. How narrowly the term “science” is apprehended depends on the claims made on the methods and results of science.

3. The system of the sciences can be depicted as an expanding cone.

4. Philosophy forms the tip of the science cone.

5. Theology is the science with the greatest potential to influence other sciences.

D) Sprit and matter On a theory of spirit

1. Spirit is the smallest component ofmatter.

2. Spirit is contained in all components of matter hitherto scientifically proven.

3. Spiritual elements have the character of chips.

4. There are at least two types of spiritual elements.

5. Spiritual elements can be organised into spiritual bodies.

6. Spiritual bodies can be free or bound within physical bodies.

7. Free spiritual bodies can move in solid, liquid or gaseous substances.

E. Accelerated and directed evolution On cosmology

1. The fundamental principle of our universe is the love of God.

2. There is a large number of different civilisations in the universe.

3. In the universe there is or was a primal earth, on which life developed through full evolution.

4. Our Earth is a – possibly modified – copy of planets already existing in the universe.

5. Prior to the formation of the Earth’s natural structures, the related spiritual structures already existed.

6. Our Earth is a mix of divine intervention and natural evolution.

7. Our Earth is destined to become a celestial system.

F. Highly developed ape or Eli’s child? On anthropology

1. Every mortal human after Adam is a dual being.

2. A mortal human is a caricature of their eternal identity.

3. A human is a microcosmic image of society.

4. Subjectively perceived freedom is based on a lack of selfknowledge.

5. Human life is a drama in which the main actors do not know their roles.

G) A state in miniature On psychology and medicine

1. There are at least two parties in every soul.

2. The ego is the central organ of the soul.

3. Perfection requires willingness to forgo health and life.

4. Holistic and sustainable help must take account of the interdependence of an individual’s emanations and strengthen their ego.

H) What should we do? On ethics

1. Good is what corresponds to God’s will in a certain situation.

2. Any deed that fulfils the conditions of all-embracing love is good.

3. God’s commandments bridge the deficits of the respective state of science.

4. God’s commandments are like stars in the night on the way to the highest summit.

5. Love is the mother of all other virtues.

6. Family bonds can be heavenly bonds.

7. Anyone who simply lets themselves go can easily fall into a trap.

8. The royal way is a narrow path through valleys of humility to summits of joy.

9. Freedom is not unbounded even above the clouds.

10. To everyone their own world!

I. Space, time and everything in it.

On totology

1. The Garden of Eden can serve as a model of a closed, static and harmonious civilisation.

2. The degree of harmony in a civilisation depends on the ideologies of those active in it to a great extent.

3. Pluralism and multiculturalism are cornerstones of lived spiritual freedom.

4. Government authorities should behave as neutrally as possible in the competition of ideologies.

J. What draws us onwards? On aesthetics and cultural philosophy

1. The multiplicity of cultures is based on a broad spectrum of aesthetic inclinations, which are partly stamped by ideology.

2. The classic ideal of good, truth and beauty will mark the culture of the millennium.

K. The global royal way On economics and political science

1. More goods can sometimes mean less welfare.

2. The emotionally suggestive parts of product advertising are ethically questionable.

3. A positive work-leisure balance can lead to a considerable enhancement of welfare.

4. Dramatic gains in welfare can be achieved on all levels by redistribution.

5. Global elimination of death from poverty needs to have much higher priority.

6. Rights of self-determination need to be further developed on all levels in all nations.

7. Fair rules for international competition of ideologies should be established worldwide and enforced by the UNO.

8. Democracy and free-market economy are important transitional forms on the way to the millennium.

9. Democrats of all countries unite!

10. Economic progress should not have losers in the long run.

11. The Marxist principle ’From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ can only be realized in a civilization characterized by love.

III. Remarks on the individual theses

A) Does He exist and if so, how many? On theology

1. Eli is the supreme God of our universe.

It was in Jerusalem on Mount Golgatha. Jesus of Nazareth felt the hour of His death on the cross approaching. It must have been a feeling of particular loneliness that moved Him to cry out: “Eli, Eli, lema sabachtani?”2 Matthew adds a Greek translation, which translated literally into English runs: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” At any rate, the word “my” was added by Matthew. It is, at least, not mandatory to translate “Eli” as “God.” Although the name Eli refers to Jesus Christ’s divine father in this case, it is also a Hebrew-Jewish proper name, by which, for example, the priest who trained the prophet Samuel was called.3

In a situation of extreme hardship, Jesus Christ revealed the name of His father in heaven - Eli. I would like to use this proper name because it makes it particularly clear that it concerns a specific person, who has specific attributes and acts in a specific way.4 At the same time, this situation teaches us that God the Father and His son Jesus Christ are separate individuals. What sense would Jesus Christ’s cry make if this was not so? In this book I will have several more opportunities to make this important fact about the nature of the Christian godhead plausible. For the design of the rest of this book it means that I may – or, in fact, must – also devote separate chapters to separate persons.

Common names for Eli are “Father in Heaven”. “God the Father”, “the Almighty,” etc.5 The name “Elohim,” which is frequently used in the Old Testament might also be a plural and is thus ambiguous as far as assignment to a specific person of the godhead is concerned. Therefore I have decided to use the name Eli revealed by Jesus, which is unencumbered in every respect.6

For Him I feel the deepest reverence, which is intended to be expressed in the small formality of capitalising the personal pronouns which refer to Him. At the same time, I have the feeling that He not only wants us to recognise Him but also to speak with Him in a clear language. Questions are the beginning of all knowledge. Eli would like us to ask Him clear and courageous questions with regard to things we do not understand. This book contains more questions than theses, and some of the theses are meant to be more like trial balloons, inviting the reader to engage in constructive “disputation,” just as Luther intended.

We humans were created in Eli’s image. This admits the converse conclusion that He is also similar to us. For instance, He is a dual person like all mortals: His spirit resides in His body of flesh and bones. Unlike us mortals, His body and His spirit are, however, inseparably connected with each other. That means that Eli is immortal. He has overcome death. This immortality is the same as that which His son Jesus attained for Himself and all humans by overcoming death through His resurrection.

Eternal life is to be distinguished from immortality. It implies immortality but is much more than that. It is the existence of a deity. Eli has eternal life. He bequeathed it to His son Jesus Christ after the latter’s ascension to heaven at the latest. Through Jesus Christ, He offers the entire human race after Adam the possibility of inheriting eternal life. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says; “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect“.7 Here one of the many features of eternal life or of Eli’s divinity is mentioned, namely perfection. This encompasses all virtues, headed by love. John says; “God is love.”8

Filled with this love, Eli directs our Earth’s fortunes. Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, who are separate persons from the Father and bring about Earth’s purpose on Eli’s instructions, are filled with the same love. In the gospel of John, Jesus often emphasised that He was acting on behalf of His Father.9

Modern revelation clearly indicates that our Earth is far from being the only one of Eli’s creations. The civilisations He has created in addition to Earth are as numerous as the sands of the sea.10 There is extraterrestrial life in the truest sense of the word. We will see it with our own eyes after our resurrection at the latest and possibly become part of it. Eli literally has power over this entire universe.

“For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords“.11 Eli in no way claims to be the only God in the universe. However, He claims to be the most powerful God on account of His unequalled intelligence and requires to be worshipped as such alone. Apart from the first and second commandments, there are numerous scriptures in the Old Testament about this. The sentence “You shall have no other gods before me“12 can be understood to mean “There are gods under me but you shall not place them on the same level with me and you shall worship me alone”. This is the deeper meaning of the “monotheism” of the Abrahamic religions. Only the most high God Eli is to be worshipped.13

Open questions:

1. How far does Eli’s power extend in our universe? For instance, does He also have power to influence the expansion of the universe?

2. Do parallel universes exist and if so, are they also subject to Eli’s authority?

3. Does the hierarchy of the gods have more than two levels and if so, how do the levels differ?

2. Eli is immortal

Immortality, which Eli has achieved and promised us, consists of His body and spirit no longer being able to be separated against His will. We call the separation of body and spirit death. Eli can no longer be forced into this. His being is of a dual nature in the sense that His spirit resides in a body “of flesh and bone.” He has a distinct identity with a name, about which I have already spoken. He is not prone to sickness nor is He subject to any aging process. His body, at least, is a stationary system. He possibly has no blood and a different metabolism from a mortal body. He exists in a perfect, “glorified” state. 14 He has the exact number of cells belonging to Him in the places provided for them. In a bodily respect, Eli cannot either progress or regress anymore.

Eli’s spirit consists of “light.” This indescribably bright light (cf. open question 4) has, at least to some extent, been experienced by people who saw Eli in a vision, such as Stephen, John and Joseph Smith. This light is represented - not inaptly - in the pictorial images of some confessions as a halo or aura of glory. When Jesus says “The glory of God is intelligence”15, He makes a close connection between Eli’s light, glory and intelligence. The conversation between Eli and Moses recounted in the “Pearl of Great Price” calls Eli the most intelligent being of all. If Eli is perfect16, His intelligence has to be perfect as well. That would mean that He cannot make any more progress in this respect. However, Eli’s potential for progress at any rate consists in His goal to “bring about the immortality and eternal life of man”17, i.e. pass on His achievements to more and more new generations of

His children, thus civilising the universe or, in other words, effecting progress in the universe and, hence, in His kingdom.

Open questions:

1. Can an immortal being deliberately bring about a temporary separation of body and spirit? For example, after His resurrection can Jesus Christ still appear as a spirit, thus temporarily divesting Himself of His body?

2. In which way are the spirit body and the physical body interlocked?

3. Can an immortal, resurrected being walk through walls, as we normally presume a pure spirit is able to?

4. Is there any kind of metabolism in an immortal body? What part is played by the blood vessels and organs of excretion?

5. What properties of chemical and physical information does the light that pervades and envelops Eli have?

6. To what extent can information and attitudes be communicated by the light emanating from Eli’s presence?

3. Eli has eternal life

As already mentioned, eternal life is much more than immortality. All people who ever lived on Earth obtain immortality in the form outlined above. They acquired this in pre-earth life by deciding for Jesus Christus and against Lucifer. According to revelation, however, only part of the human race after Adam will inherit eternal life. 18 This is the life of a god with the attributes already described. In Eli’s case, it is the existence of the supreme God of the universe, in which He can move freely. On account of his concrete dual body, He may possibly only be able to be in one place at one time (cf. open questions further below). New revelation indicates that He has at least one seat of government within the universe. This is a celestial body with much higher properties than those our Earth possesses at the present time.19 In this concrete place, He is the centre of the highest heavenly civilisation. Important earthly personalities such as the apostle John, Stephen and Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were permitted to get a glimpse of this world and reported on it.

Eli communicates with all His creatures in the universe in the spirit of love. Communication with the beings existing in heaven in His presence is particularly intensive – in an inconceivable manner. A special friendship, which is possibly the highest in the universe, links Him to His Son Jesus Christ. The highest form of marital love links him to His wives, although very little specific information has been revealed about this in the Christian field20, except that we are a fruit of this love21 and are invited to follow Eli on His paths and have eternal families and eternal increase. All souls that ever lived on Earth and all that exist in Satan’s realm are Eli’s children. They are present to Him, and He knows them and loves them with perfect love, regardless of whether they believe in His existence or not or whether they love Him or hate Him. Eli Himself is sealed in love and cannot hate. Thus, He is sealed in all virtues that ensue from love. His acts are perfect service to His creatures. What He wants to do He also does. His way is the royal way.

Open questions:

1. What technologies does Eli employ to move around the universe?

2. Is it true that Eli can only be in one place at one time?

3. What possibilities does Eli have to adapt His body to nonheavenly conditions?

4. What properties does Eli’s sexuality have and what part does it play in His life?

5. What dimensions does eternal increase have and what part does Eli play in it?

4. Eli is permeated with love and radiates love to the universe.

When John says “God is love“, he means that Eli perfectly realises the theological concept of love in His person. Love is the central attribute of the spirit which permeates Him and which He radiates. Just as there is no dark side to His soul, there is nothing in His person that is not marked by love. This divine love is, naturally, a great mystery. However, He would like us to fathom and experience it, since He has given it to us as the highest commandment through His Son Jesus Christ.22 Eli’s love means that He wants all His creatures to progress, particularly His children, who were created in His image. He expresses this to Moses in the already quoted sentence: “This is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” The divine attributes outlined above are just the ones He would like to pass on to His children and literally bequeath to them. When we think of the sentence “The glory of God is intelligence,” we recognise that there is a close connection between Eli’s love and intelligence, with one being conditional on the other. Eli’s intelligence cannot be grasped by our intelligence quotients, but is of a holistic nature, like His love and the light that permeates Him. Since all His acts are emanations of His spirit and He is in complete control of His body, all His acts are marked by love. The more one understands Eli’s works, the more one understands divine love. Some day it will be perfectly understood only by someone who has attained to it themselves and, in this respect, is perfect as our Father in heaven23 is, or, in other words, someone who has attained to eternal life. Jesus says in the gospel of John:“ That is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ.” 24 If Eli would like us to attain to eternal life, that, at the same time, means that He would like us to know Him as He is.25

Open questions

1. In what way is love sealed in Eli so that He also remains in it or must remain in it?

2. What is the mixture of rationality and emotionality in His divine love?

3. Is Eli equal to the other Gods in love or is His love greater or the greatest?

5. Eli lives in a specific place in the universe in the midst of a celestial civilisation created by Him.

According to the already cited report in the Pearl of Great Price. Abraham had a vision of the heavenly body on which Eli has His home and His seat of government. The visions of Stephen, John, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon possibly relate to this place in the universe. I will call it the central celestial body, meaning not the sun but the central celestial body in our universe. We can only make inferences concerning the technical, natural and scientific properties of this body. It is said that one day on this body is equivalent to a thousand years on Earth.26 Concerning Earth, it is prophesied that after the Last Judgement it will be transformed in such a way that it will thereafter be part of heaven and will thus be able to accommodate a civilisation resembling the one on the universal central celestial body. The present Earth will be “rolled together as a scroll” and will be a gigantic crystal after its transformation. The seer stones Urim and Thummim, possessed by the priests in ancient Israel, are a similitude of this.27 We can cautiously conclude that the central celestial body in the universe is also a kind of Urim and Thummim, albeit of a higher order than Earth.2829

The common idea of heaven among those who only believe a little in its real existence is that there is definitely social life there. Latterday prophets have repeatedly confirmed this, particularly by proclaiming the continuation of marital and family relations after death.30 We could expand this spectrum of relationships to include friends and acquaintances and even animals. Joseph Smith assumed that he would meet his horse again in heaven. Only enemies will be absent in the heavenly civilisation, where every soul is steeped in benevolence. If we do not unlearn our hostile attitude in time, we will have no place in the celestial world. Our earthly enemies must either be converted or we will be removed from their influence, provided we are eligible for the heavenly civilisation.

Open questions

1. In which galaxy is the celestial body where Eli reigns over the universe?

2. What are the natural scientific features of this body?

3. To what degree is the heavenly civilisation hierarchical?

4. Does the absence of privacy apply only from top to bottom but also from bottom to top?

5. What are the roles of sexuality, marriage and family in this civilisation?

6. Is the heavenly civilisation a “stationary system”31?

6. Eli worked out His immortality and eternal life Himself.

What may seem blasphemy to many Christians is, in fact, nothing but profound knowledge of Eli’s nature, which He himself revealed to the later prophet Lorenzo Snow around 1840 and which was confirmed by Joseph Smith, the prophet in office at that time. It was summarised by Lorenzo Snow in this sentence: “As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may be.”32 There is proof of the second part of this statement in several Bible verses, for instance, the postulate already cited in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Eli’s perfection was already described above. To what extent a human can achieve this perfection is set out in the anthropological theses. In the context of the present thesis we are dealing with the first part of the above statement: “As man is now, God once was.” With regard to the prevailing theology of most Christian confessions, this sentence is revolutionary: it would revolutionise theologies if it was accepted.

What speaks logically in favour of the truth of the first part of the sentence is its symmetry to the biblically justifiable second part: if man has the potential to realise a development at the end of which he will possess divine attributes, a development process towards deity is biblically deemed possible. If we take Eli’s current state as a starting point and relate the same development process to His past, it is to be concluded that He used to be a human as we humans are today.

A further consideration for the plausibility of this is the following: if we bear in mind the increasing speed of scientific and technical progress in the past 200 years and extrapolate this development 100 years, it does not appear absurd to assume that average life expectancy will not only continue to increase but that death will be overcome by a ground-breaking discovery. In the Christian view, death means the separation of body and soul. Consequently, these must be connected to each other during life, namely in such a way that the connection can be broken by murder, sickness, age, etc. If we could succeed in discovering the mechanism connecting body and soul – which brain research is already partly doing – and, in addition, how we can stop the connection being broken, we would have worked out immortality scientifically. The sentence from Snow and Smith implies that this is just what Eli did.

Just as eternal life, as the greatest of all gifts, is far more precious than immortality, it may have been all the more difficult for Eli to bring Himself up to these heights, once He had laid the foundation in immortality. Even some mortals have succeeded in reaching this ethical level once or for a brief time. I am thinking of the many important personalities who appeared in all religions (including atheism) and regions of the world. Eli was also such a great personality among others on a universal scale. His far greater achievement consisted in sealing Himself and others on the level of perfection, i.e. in systematically ruling out a future relapse, as is so typical of us mortals. He has thus realised what we all desire – lasting happiness and joy.

7. Eli created many civilisations in our universe.

Latter-day revelation has confirmed that Eli, to whom we pray as “Father in heaven”, not only presides over this Earth but reigns over countless worlds. “And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for my own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.”33 Worlds were not only created but also dissolved. The creation and decay of formations in the universe, as is the general consensus in astronomy today, was revealed to Moses long before the start of the new era heralded in by Christ’s birth: “For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand…”34 To what extent these civilisations resemble our Earth has not been revealed. But the purpose of their creation is the same as for Earth: “For behold, this is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”35 Eli would like to bequeath what He has achieved to all his children, namely immortality and eternal life. His manifold creations consist only in second place of heavenly bodies and their natural environments. Priority is given to their inhabitants, and, hence, to individual destinies and social processes. It is a question of creating civilisations.

A noteworthy fact in the above revelations is the information that Jesus Christ plays a central part in the creation and government of these countless worlds. He is described as “word of my power,” which corresponds to the introduction to the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and God was the Word. This was with God at the beginning. Everything was created through it and without it nothing was created that has been created.”36 In accordance with the revelations in the Pearl of Great Price, “everything” would refer not only to our Earth but to all creations in the universe and Jesus Christ would be far more important from this universal point of view: under His Father’s direction, He is not only God of this Earth but His Father’s right arm with regard to all creations.37

Open questions

1. How far-reaching is the scope of Jesus’s atonement in Jerusalem? Does it only relate to all the people who will have lived on Earth or does it include beings in the other creations?

2. What position does our Earth have among all Eli’s creations? Is it one of the many countless or does it play a more central role?

8. Eli’s creations resemble primal evolution but are directed and accelerated in time.

One of the fundaments of this cosmological theory is Lorenzo Snow’s perception, which has already been cited: “As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may be.”38 I would like to give the name primal evolution to the development of the universe from its beginnings to the creation of Eli as the first man with divine attributes. It is possible that much of today’s knowledge of cosmic and terrestrian evolution theory applies to this process. Direction of this process by an intelligent being cannot have taken place before a being with the potential to direct existed. Here, the development of a child provides a good example: it is at the mercy of its inner and outer environment in the first hours, days, weeks and months of its life. Processes take place that the child does not consciously steer in any way. At some point in its existence, its first conscious intervention in its surroundings takes place, for instance, when it moves a toy to a different place. The prevailing theory of evolution imagines the development of the first human being on Earth to be like this. Such a first conscious intervention may have already taken place on a level of development which we still assign to apes or another animal species. With reference to the development of the universal prehistoric man and the universe, it says that, with increasing intelligence and will power, initially minimal and then ever greater interventions in the existing environment took place. A main highlight in man’s psycho-physical development – of which our earthly humans still dream – was the perpetuation of his own existence by attaining to immortality. Of even greater importance was the perception and implementation of the central virtue of love with all the good attributes flowing from it. Thus, Eli became the epitome of a “good being,” in which the deeper meaning of the title “God” may even reside.

Long before Eli had attained to immortality and eternal life for Himself, He and His descendants were able to intervene in the environment and shape it. The universe was no longer subject to a purely natural development but was increasingly subject to direction from intelligent beings. In each individual case, the latter had the choice between a laissez-faire approach towards natural processes and intervention depending on their potential for intervening. De facto, they will have sought an optimal combination of both in each case. Whenever a natural process would have taken too long, they took measures to accelerate it. For example, when it would have taken a million years in a new world for a human to have developed to their proficiency level through natural evolution, they accelerated the development by settling their own descendants in the new world. That is exactly what happened on Earth. In place of the prevailing theory of a purely natural evolution, I offer the alternative of a combi-evolution, partly natural and partly directed.

Open questions

1. What was before the creation of the universe?

2. How did intelligence come into play, of which it has been revealed that it cannot be created?

3. Is love as an attribute inseparably connected with intelligence?

4. Is evil itself also a form of intelligence, or its antithesis?

9. Eli exercises His rule in the universe through the holders of His priesthood.

One of Eli’s limitations is that He cannot be in two places at the same time on account of his psycho-physical constitution. For operations which appear to make personal presence desirable, He needs helpers to implement His intentions. He endows these helpers with rights, duties and powers so that they can act in His name. The priesthood is such a set of rights and duties connected with specific abilities issued by Eli. It is as eternal as Eli Himself and exists in the universe independent of our Earth.39 The highest priesthood holder known to us is Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God. Christians rightly speak of the high priest’s prayer in regard to John 17.40 The priesthood was already on Earth at the time of Abram; in the Bible Melchisedek is called the “priest of the Most High God.” He exercises one of his most important rights by blessing Abram. Receiving tithing can be seen as a priestly duty as well.41 According to latter-day revelation, the priesthood after the order of the Son of God was already conferred on Adam.42 One of the rights and duties of a priesthood holder is to pass on his priesthood to later generations by the laying on of hands. Priesthood authority very likely came in this way to Melchizedek, whose name has been given to this high priesthood in latter days. It continued to be passed on down to the time of Moses and then was taken from the Earth because of Israel’s rebellion involving the golden calf. What remained was the Aaronic or Levitical priesthood, which included rights and duties of service in the tabernacle or temple. It was bearers of the Aaronic priesthood who finally sacrificed Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Jesus Christ had conferred His higher priesthood on the apostles beforehand. Peter writes: “… you are a royal priesthood…”43 With the death of the last apostle, the priesthood was taken from the Earth and not conferred again until June 1829 by Peter, James and John on Joseph Smith, the first latter-day prophet. The ancient promise repeated in the New Testament and in latter days – to be a “people of kings and priests” – rests on God’s people. In the eons following the Last Judgement, some of these “kings and priests” will be given callings taking them to the worlds of the universe.

10. Eli is the first man. We are His children.

We are often called God’s children, especially in the New Testament. This expression is also common and much used in most Christian confessions. People are probably not often aware of the implications when this designation is used seriously. When a child has the name Miller, its father’s name is also Miller in traditional family relationships. When we give our race the name “man” and at the same time call ourselves God’s children, God’s name must also be “man.” In this very sense, Christ many times called himself the “Son of Man” in scriptural records.

The creation story also speaks for the view of our Father in heaven as the first man, when it is said that Adam was created in God’s image. The similitude of an earthly father and his child also holds here: they are basically very similarly built, namely as humans. In many cases we can, in addition, observe a very specific similarity of face, which distinguishes the biological father from other men. If we assume that we can trace the direct Miller lineage back over ten generations, the oldest Miller we have discovered is the primal Miller, in our state of research. However, there are, of course, actually older Millers.

In the light of theological statements about the genesis of God in the universe, the term “primal man” takes on further meaning: Eli is the first being in the universe that acquired, or Himself developed, the appearance and characteristics of a human in today’s sense. As I already said elsewhere, very many statements of our modern terrestrian, human evolution may possibly apply for this first stage of primal evolution. Eli did not go through this process alone but definitely in the company of similar or identical beings. Eli was the pioneer among them. Due to this superior intelligence,44 He was also part of the next great stage of development towards immortality and eternal life. This second great phase of primal evolution may have lasted eons but at the end there was a god. The evolution theory for gods has yet to be established. It is, to a certain extent, the continuation of the existing evolution theory of humankind.

We might now say that we, as humans, have a lot of developing still to do. But that is not the case. As God’s children, we have inherited Eli’s state of development to some extent. Primal evolution does not need to be repeated. We are literal heirs of God, as Paul formulated it. In a certain way, we carry the potential of a god in us because we are literally His spiritually begotten children. Whether we receive the title of “son” or “daughter” might still depend on other factors.

Open questions:

1. How did the first man become the first God?

2. Do all or only a limited number of God’s childen have the hereditary disposition to become gods?

11. Jesus Christ is Eli’s son in spiritual and physical respects.

Jesus Christ is the person in the universe who is closest to Eli in several respects. Just like all people on Earth, He is a spiritual child of Eli’s, namely the First Begotten. Similarly as with the firstborn child of an earthly father, He is therefore especially close to His heavenly Father. “For my own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me. And by the word of my power, have I created them, which is mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth. And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for my own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.”45 In this case we have to do with an extremely extensive implementation of birthright.

Jesus is not only the firstborn of the Father in a spiritual respect. He also directly owes His earthly body to Him, for among all Adam’s children He is the Only Begotten of the Father.46 Latter-day revelation confirms that Jesus is literally the son of Eli and Maria. Eli visited our Earth in person at the latest when He conceived Jesus.47

In a figurative meaning, Jesus Christ’s closeness to Eli resides in the fact that, together with Michael, He had enforced His Father’s will against Lucifer in the pre-earth existence, that He is the Son with whom the Father is well pleased and who proclaims the Father’s will on Earth and accomplished it through His atonement and crucifixion.

Open questions

1. In what way are children spiritually conceived and born?

2. What part does Jesus Christ play in the creation of the worlds made before Earth?

3. Is it appropriate to describe Maria’s conception as “immaculate“?

12. Jesus Christ is the God of this Earth under Eli’s direction.