Questions
A. What was the greatest miracle performed by Jesus according to Kardec?
B. Did Jesus have a carnal body or was an agenerate?
C. What strong moral considerations led Allan Kardec to defend the thesis that Jesus had a physical body?
Text for reading
1055. The curse against the Pharisees - Seeing several of the Pharisees and Sadducees who were coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the wrath that must fall upon you? Therefore, produce fruit worthy of repentance; and do not think about saying amongst yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I declare to you that God can make these very stones give birth to sons of Abraham. The ax has already been put to the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not produce good fruit shall be cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Mt. 3:7-10)
1056. My words shall not pass away - Then, his disciples approached him and said, “Did you know that when the Pharisees heard what you just said, they were scandalized by it?” But he answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted. Never mind them; they are blind leading the blind; if a blind person leads another, they both will fall into a pit.” (Mt. 15:12-14). “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Mt. 24:35)
1057. Jesus’ words shall not pass away, for they will be true for all time. His moral code will be eternal, because it contains the conditions of the good that lead men and women to their eternal destiny. However, have his words come down to us free from interpolations and false interpretations? Have all Christian sects grasped their true spirit? Have none of them deviated from their true meaning as a result of preconceptions and of ignorance of the laws of nature? Have none of them made of them an instrument of control to serve ambition and material interests, a stepping stone, not for ascension to heaven but for ascension on the earth? Have all of them proposed as a rule of conduct the practicing of the virtues that Jesus made the express condition for salvation? Are they all exempt from the reproach he directed at the Pharisees of his time? Finally, are they all, in theory as well as in practice, the pure expression of his teachings?
1058. Since truth is one, it cannot be found in contradictory statements, and Jesus could not have intended to give a double meaning to his words. Therefore, if different sects contradict one another, if some regard as true what others condemn as heresy, there is no possibility for all of them to possess the truth. If all had grasped the true meaning of the Gospel, they would have met on the same ground and there would have been no sects.
1059. That which shall not pass away is the true meaning of Jesus’ words; that which shall pass away is what people have built upon the erroneous meaning they have given to those very words. Since Jesus’ mission was to bring God’s thought to humankind, only his pure teachings can be the expression of that thought. That is why he said: Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted.
1060. The cornerstone - Have you never read this in the Scriptures: The stone that was rejected by those who built has become the chief cornerstone; the Lord has done it and it is wonderful in our eyes?
1061. Therefore, I declare to you that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who lets himself fall upon this stone shall be broken, and it shall crush him on whom it falls.
1062. Jesus’ word became the cornerstone, that is, the consolidation stone of the new edifice of the law built upon the ruins of the old. The Jews, the chief priests and the Pharisees rejected that stone; hence, it crushed them just as it will crush those who later misinterpreted it or who distorted its meaning to benefit their ambition.
1063. The parable of the murderous vinedressers - “There was a father of a family, who, having planted a vineyard, surrounded it with a hedge; and excavating the ground, he built a tower. Then, putting some vinedressers in charge of it, he went to a distant region. Now, when harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the vinedressers to harvest the fruit of his vineyard. But the vinedressers seized his servants and wounded one, killed another and stoned another. He sent other servants in greater numbers than the first group but they were treated in the same way. Finally, he sent his own son, saying to himself, ‘They will have some respect for my son.’ But upon seeing the son, the vinedressers said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and then we will be the owners of his inheritance.’ Thus, having seized him, they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When the owner of the vineyard comes, how will he treat those vinedressers? They answered, “He will make those evil ones die miserably and will put other vinedressers in charge who will give him the fruit at the proper time.” (Mt. 21:33-41)
1064. The father of the family is God; the vineyard he planted is the divine law he established; the vinedressers he put in charge of the vineyard are those who should teach and practice the law; the servants whom he sent to them are the prophets whom they murdered; the son whom he finally sent is Jesus, whom they murdered as well. Hence, how will the Lord treat those in authority who prevaricate against his law? He will treat them as they treated his messengers, and will call others who will take better care of his property and who will lead his flock more ably.
1065. That is what happened with the scribes, the chief priests and the Pharisees; thus it will be when he comes again to ask each one to give an accounting for what he or she has done with his teachings. He will take authority away from whoever abused it, for he wants his fields to be managed according to his will.
1066. After eighteen centuries, humankind has reached adulthood and is mature enough to understand what Christ could only touch upon, because, as he himself said, they would not have understood. But what has been the result of those who throughout that long period have been in charge of humankind’s religious education? To see indifference replaced faith, and disbelief became a doctrine.
1067. In fact, at no other time have skepticism and the spirit of denial been more widespread among all classes of society. However, if some of Christ’s words are veiled in allegory, everything concerning the rules of conduct, human relationships and the moral principles that he made as the express condition for salvation are clear, explicit and unambiguous. (See The Gospel according to Spiritism, chap. XV)
1068. What has been done to his maxims of charity, love and tolerance; his recommendations to his disciples for converting others through kindness and persuasion; the simplicity, humility, disinterestedness and all the virtues that he himself exemplified? In his name people have anathematized and cursed one another, and have massacred one another in the name of him who said: All humans are brothers and sisters.
1069. They have made a jealous, cruel, vengeful and biased God out of the one he proclaimed to be infinitely just, good and merciful. To that God of peace and truth thousands of victims have been slain by burnings at the stake, torture and persecution in a way that the pagans never sacrificed to their false gods. They have sold prayers and the favors of heaven in the name of the one who drove the merchants out of the Temple, and who said to his disciples, “Give freely what you have received freely.”
1070. What would Christ say if he were to live among us today? If he saw his representatives pursue the honor, wealth, power and luxury of the princes of the world, while he, more of a king than all the kings of earth, made his entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey? Would he not be right in saying to them: What have you done to my teachings, you who worship the golden calf, who offer most of your prayers for the rich and few for the poor in spite of my having said to you: The first shall be last and the last shall be first in the kingdom of heaven? Even though he is not here in the flesh, he is here in spirit, and like the lord in the parable he will demand an accounting from the vinedressers of the product of his vineyard when harvest time comes.
Answer Key
A. What was the greatest miracle performed by Jesus according to Kardec?
The greatest of the miracles that Jesus performed, the one that truly attests to how highly evolved he was, is the revolution that his teachings have caused throughout the world in spite of the limits of his field of action. Actually, Jesus – obscure, poor, born in the humblest circumstances amongst a people with no power, nearly ignored and without any political, artistic or literary influence – preached for only three years. Throughout that short span of time he was unacknowledged, slandered, treated as an imposter and persecuted by his fellow citizens; he had to flee in order not to be stoned to death; he was betrayed by one of his own disciples and denied by another; he was abandoned by all of them at the moment he fell into the hands of his enemies. He practiced only the good, but that did not protect him from the malevolence that turned the very services he rendered against him. Condemned to a death reserved for criminals, he died ignored by the world – contemporary history is silent on this account. He wrote nothing; nonetheless, aided by a few individuals who were as obscure as he was, his word was sufficient to regenerate the world; his teachings slew all-powerful paganism and became the flame of civilization. Against him was everything that makes human beings fail, which is why we have said that the triumph of his teachings was the greatest of his miracles, while at the same time it proved his mission to have been divine. If instead of social and regenerative principles, founded upon humankind’s spiritual future, he had offered posterity only a few extraordinary phenomena, perhaps today hardly anyone would recognize his name. (Genesis, Ch. XV, item 63.)
B. Did Jesus have a carnal body or was an agenerate?
Jesus had, like every man, a fleshly body and a fluidic body, which is attested by the material phenomena and the psychic phenomena that marked his existence.
Jesus’ stay on the earth entails two periods: the one which precedes his death and the one which follows it. In the former, from the moment of conception to birth, everything regarding his mother happens as it does in the normal conditions of life. From his birth until his death, everything about his acts, his language and the various circumstances of his life reveals the unequivocal characteristics of corporeality. The psychic phenomena that occur in him are unexpected but there is nothing abnormal about them, since they can be explained by the properties of the perispirit, and may be found in differing degrees among other individuals. After his death, on the other hand, everything about him reveals a fluidic being. The difference between these two states is so noticeable that they cannot be compared.
The corporeal body has the properties inherent to matter per se, properties that differ essentially from those of the ethereal fluids. In matter, breakdown occurs because of the rupture of molecular cohesion. A cutting instrument can penetrate the physical body and divide its tissues. If the organs essential to life are attacked, the body stops functioning and death follows, that is, the death of the body. Since this cohesion does not exist in fluidic bodies, life does not lie in the functioning of special organs; disorders analogous to those of the physical body cannot be produced. A cutting instrument or any other can penetrate a fluidic body like a cloud of vapor without causing any sort of lesion. That is why bodies of this kind cannot die and why fluidic beings called agenerates cannot be killed. After the death of Jesus, his inert and lifeless body was entombed like any other body and anyone could see and touch it. After his resurrection, when he was ready to leave earth behind, he did not die again; instead, his body rose, dissipated and vanished without leaving a trace – obvious proof that that body was of a different nature than the one that perished on the cross. Hence, one must conclude that if Jesus could die it was because he had a body of flesh. (Genesis, Ch. XV, items 64 and 65.)
C. What strong moral considerations led Allan Kardec to defend the thesis that Jesus had a physical body?
If during his life Jesus existed in the state of fluidic beings, he would have felt neither pain nor bodily needs. To suppose such to have been the case is to take from him all the merit of the life of privation and suffering that he chose as an example of resignation. If everything in his life was only an appearance, all the events of his life, his repeated statements regarding his death, the dolorous scene in the Garden of Olives, his prayer to God to remove the cup from his lips, his passion and death – everything up to the last weep when he delivered up his spirit – would have been only a vain sham of deception regarding his true nature and meant to create a belief in the illusory sacrifice of his life, a farce unworthy of a simple and honest man, and more reasonably unworthy of such a highly evolved being. (Genesis, Ch. XV, items 66.)
