DECODING "THE MESSAGE"

Thy kingdom come--"as above, so below."

"As above, so below."[1] That's how the new spirituality defines reality. Between the realities of time and eternity, light and darkness, heaven and earth, material and immaterial, God and man--there's no real distinction or difference. All is one. As above, so below. But before dealing with this concept of spirituality as it relates to the teaching of Scripture and Eugene Peterson's inclusion of it in The Message, some knowledge about the phrase's origin and meaning will be helpful.

The saying seems to have originated within a collection of fourteen books known as the Corpus Hermeticum. According to James A. Herrick, "These Hermetic writings . . . were based on the systems of various philosophers and teachers in Alexandria, Egypt, between A.D. 150-300."[2] Dr. Herrick quotes Wayne Shumaker's statement that, "Hermeticism was basically a Greek contemplative system developed on Egyptian soil."[3] The goal of Hermeticism is to realize, through the practice of physical exercises and the procurement of secret knowledge, a spiritual evolution of soul to ultimately become, as in the case of the legendary Hermes Trismegistus, a god. One of the hermetical writings, The Emerald Tablet, contains the first known mention of the maxim, "As above, So below." So what does this ancient-gnostic-philosophical-contemplative phrase, commonly employed to define the essence of New Age spirituality, mean?

Dennis W. Hauck translates the phrase as follows: "Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing."[4] Note the upper case letters. As the letter "G" is capitalized in God's name, so are, "Below . . . Above . . . [and] One Thing." It is obvious therefore, that the phrase assigns unity and divinity to "everything" that exists. This concept of reality, it is believed, holds, "the key to all mysteries. . . . Macrocosmos is the same as microcosmos. The universe is the same as God, God is the same as man, man is the same as the cell, the cell is the same as the atom, the atom is the same as . . . and so on, ad infinitum."[5] As quoted by Warren Smith in his book Deceived On Purpose, a New Age book defines the saying as follows: "This maxim implies that the transcendent God beyond the physical universe and the immanent God within ourselves are one. Heaven and Earth, spirit and matter, the invisible and the visible worlds form a unity to which we are intimately linked."[6] Thus, the phrase obviously teaches pantheism-panentheism, the worldview underlying the religious conglomerate of what we know to be eastern-mystical-new-age spirituality.[7] That's why Eugene Peterson's continued use of the phrase in his rewrite of the Bible, The Message, is troubling.

The Message reads, "Our Father in heaven, / Reveal who you are. / Set the world right; / Do what's best-- as above, so below."[Emphasis mine, 8] At least three issues, and/or problems, arise for reason of the injection of this mystical and occult saying into the Lord's prayer.

First, why would the paraphraser use such a phrase--so tainted by, associated with, and sourced in a pantheistic and magical worldview--in the first place? Because of the phrase's occult associations, it should have been given no place in the Bible, especially since the Law forbids intentional contact with that world (Deuteronomy 18:9-13). Being the erudite and studied man that he is, surely Peterson must be aware of the phrase's occult undertones. So why would he include it in his version of God's Word?

Second, we should note how Peterson punctuates the words, as above, so below. A dash precedes the phrase. Grammatically, a dash may be used, "To add emphasis to parenthetical material or to mark an emphatic separation between parenthetical material and the rest of the sentence."[9] As such, Peterson makes the phrase to function independent of the request, "Thy will be done . . .." For this reason, the paraphraser seems to mean the phrase to declare a state rather than conclude a supplication. Knowing Peterson to be a most literate man, what "message" was he trying to communicate by separating the phrase from, or making it parenthetical to, Jesus' basic instruction on praying for God's will? Does Peterson not agree that in His teaching on prayer, Jesus distinguished the two different realities of "earth" and "heaven"? Does he mean that the phrase describes as Hauck puts it, "One Thing"?

For the sake of argument, let's assume that "earth" and "heaven" are "One Thing," one reality. Such a belief would make Jesus' teaching on prayer irrelevant. If above and below, heaven and earth, are "One Thing," then why should any disciple needlessly pray for the Father's will to be done "on earth as it is in heaven." If there be no distinction between earth and heaven, then one will would possess one world. Prayer is thereby reduced to a meditative exercise pursued to realize the interconnectedness of below and above, of earth and heaven, and this is the very intent of meditation and contemplation in developing the new consciousness of the New Spitituality!

Third, adding such an occult phrase to God's Word is troublesome, if not downright alarming. Moses warned Israel, "You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you" (Deuteronomy 4:2; See 4:5.). Ironically, this second Law (Deutero means "second") was given by God to Israel just as the nation was preparing to enter Canaan, a land filled with a magical religion devoted to occult arts and idolatrous practices.

So there you have it! The Message includes a phrase in the Lord's Prayer (as above, so below) that nuances a connection to the forbidden world of the occult, a world which God forbade Israel to have contact with (Deuteronomy 18:9 ff.). All of us would do well to pay attention to Agur's prophecy in Proverbs: "Every word of God is tested; / He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. / Do not add to His words / Lest He reprove you, and you be proved a liar" (Proverbs 30:5-6).

About attempts to unify spiritual reality into a conglomerate-cosmic whole (as above, so below), we ask, "What would Jesus think (WWJT)?" John's Gospel provides clear indication about what Jesus thinks; and that is, cosmic reality is not composed of one monistic whole. By His claim not to be from "earth," but to be from "above," Jesus indicated that there is not one reality, but two: the world "above," the abode of God, the place He reveals to us as heaven; and the world "below," the abode of man, the place we know as earth. About Himself, Jesus announced, "He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all" (John 3:31). Again John records Jesus to have told the Pharisees, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I said therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins" (John 8:23-24). In these statements Jesus declared that, "he and they emerge from two entirely antithetical realms."[10] Then as another commentator put it, "An abyss separates them from Him . . .."[11]

ABC. For reason of the abyss, we need birth from above through Christ. Twice Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3, 7). The words "born again" mean to be born from above. Obviously, the new birth (i.e., regeneration) does not come from below for, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh . . .." (John 3:6a). Salvation never comes from developing something within or below. Thus, we can see, to coin Kipling's phrase, that "above is above" and "below is below," and never the twain shall meet--except of course, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we are confronted with the plethora of teachings and systems of the New Age/New Spirituality, we will do well to obey Paul's injunction to the Colossians: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him" (Not in us!) "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:8-9, KJV).

Pastor Larry DeBruyn

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FOOTNOTES

[1] Ronald S. Miller, Editor, As Above, So Below: Paths to Spiritual Renewal in Daily Life (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1992).

[2] James A. Herrick, The Making of the New Spirituality, The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003) 338.

[3] Ibid.

[4] "Hermeticism," Wikipedia (http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:OR6OS_psqKYJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism+%22as+above,+so+below%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us). Another translation similarly reads, "That . . . which is Above is like that which is Below and that which is Below is like that which is Above, to accomplish the Miracle of Unity." See Christopher Warnock, Esq., "Hermes Trismegistus: Hermetic Philosophy, Astrology & Magic" (http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/hermestrismegistus.html#top).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Miller, As Above, So Below quoted by Warren Smith, Deceived On Purpose, The New Age Implications of the Purpose-Driven Church (Magalia, California: Mountain Stream Press, 2004) 32.

[7] To believe that God is everything is pantheism. God is not the mosquito that bites me on a camping trip. Neither is God in everything, which is panentheism. God is not in the big landscape rock that decorates my neighbor's front yard. To believe that God is everything, or in everything, contradicts the biblical theology that God is individual, personal, and separate from His creation. Pantheism-panentheism is the worldview which lays at the root of idolatry (Compare Exodus 20:4-5a, Deuteronomy 4:15-19, and Romans 1:18-23).

[8] Matthew 6:10, Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002) 1337.

[9] "Basic Manual of Style," The Random House College Dictionary, Laurence Urdang, Editor In Chief (New York: Random House Inc., 1975) 1562.

[10] D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991) 342.

[11] Frederick Louis Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Volume II (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1881) 98. Of the difference between Jesus and the religious Pharisees, Westcott also wrote: "He and they belonged essentially to two different regions; the spring of their life, the sphere of their thoughts, were separated from the spring and sphere of His by an infinite chasm." See B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950) 130.