Abstract
As we saw in Chapter 2, Ivan Karamazov suggests that if the Devil is but a creation of human beings, he is actualised in their image and likeness. The reference above from the Gospel of Mark looks for the source of such actualisation in the very heart of human beings. In Mark we find the suggestion that evil arises from the essence of human nature, that there exists in human nature an impulse to evil quite distinct from the influence of the external environment.
And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within and defile the man. (Mark 7:20–23)
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Notes
Stephen Hobhouse’s observations in H. L. Martensen, Jacob Boehme, T. Rhys Evans (tr.) (London: Rocklift, Salisbury Square, 1949) p. xi.
See the foreword of Joseph Stoudt’s Jacob Boehme: His Life and Thought (New York: The Seabury Press, 1968) p. 7.
Koyré, La Philosophic De Jacob Boehme (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1929) p. 72.
Jacob Boehme, Epistles (1730) ch. 12
see Jacob Boehme, The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, John Sparrow [tr][1648 translation], in The Works of Jacob Behmen, The Teutonic Theosopher, Vol. 1 [London: Pater-noster Row, 1764])
I will refer to John Rolleston Earle’s translation of Jacob Boehme, High and Deep Grounding of Six Theosophic Points, in Six Theosophic Points and Other Writings, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958).
Nicolas Berdyaev, Spirit and Reality, George Reavey (tr.) (London: G. Bles, 1939) p. 139.
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© 1992 Michael Stoeber
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Stoeber, M. (1992). The Origin of Evil in Human Nature: Jacob Boehme’s Ungrund. In: Evil and the Mystics’ God. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12653-8_10
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