Christian as Man #5

Good works are the fruit of justification, not the cause of it.

Good works are defined by three things:

1. They are things God has commanded.
2. They are done in faith.
3. They are done to the glory of God as their end.

The Work (let's say Ouspensky's book The Fourth Way) is all about what good works are and peforming them. When, of course, faith is the foundation and glorifying God is the aim.

Internal-considering (turning the other cheek). Non-identifying (fearing/revering only God). External-considering (do unto others what you would have done unto you). Separation (separation unto the Gospel). Self-remembering (watchfulfulness, be awake). Transforming negative emotion (love your enemies, etc.). Effort (zeal). Etc. And the correlations get deeper when being filled with the Holy Spirit, prayer, fasting are seen in their practical Work language. On and on.

Gurdjieff said the Work is the ABCs of Christianity.

Enough said.

Once you can see it you can see it.

The #5 level is the Christian level. A Christian is a New Man. The #5 level is the beginning of the higher, new level of man. The #4 level is transitional. The #1,2,3 level is the human, all-to-human level everybody is at and starts at.

The #5 level is confusing for a Work person because the language changes. The school cosmos changes as well.

The language is familiar enough because its used by the Man #1,2,3 level (theology, biblical doctrine, etc.), but they don't understand it. Narrow is the way and FEW are they that enter therein. Recurrence softens this reality, yet narrow is narrow for when you are getting there.

And Man #1,2,3 that self-identify as Christian are tripping all over themselves in a menagerie of stumblingblocks. Inevitably. They may be learning something along the way, but it is not the level where knowledge and being become understanding of it.

To get closer to the real school of Christianity you have to get to the 1500s when it was so powerful it could light up whole societies and cultures like Shakespeare's England. Geneva under Calvin was called the most perfect school of Christ. His Institutes of the Christian Religion and Ursinus' Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism are generally considered the two major works of theology of that century. Reading both you feel the school element. The closer you get to modern times (or the farther away from that 16th century) the more shallow and man-fearing (Village of Morality) the works of theology get.

Once you have transitioned through the Man #4 level (of course a rare happenstance) you have to find the school cosmos of the Man #5 level. That is a simplifying process that involves finding what is contained and a language of knowledge and being (doing) at the new level.

Theology - biblical doctrine, that language, doctrine and good works, or godliness - at first will be discovered, but it will be discovered with all the trappings of the Man #1,2,3 level. You can't avoid it. It's a new language for you, and the Men of #1,2,3 realm have put quite a heavy stamp on it.

As you go along you sift all that Man #1,2,3 element out of it and find the school within it. Knowledge, what you do, understanding. The Work enables you to see more to begin with. But you have to have confidence to unmoor yourself from the Man #1,2,3 dock and take to the open sea.

To find that simple, contained school cosmos of Man #5 though you have to have a real, practical understanding of biblical teaching. You have to know what the Word of God is talking about.

Then doing is about glorifying God, in developing in the faith, and in developing in new functions such as what prayer is.

You already have the Man #5 level of being (it is assumed, but...you know, appraise your own situation with honesty). That level is the real Christian realm though. You need that knowledge and being and hence understanding. Then working for the Man #6 level is all about developing functions. Further attaining to the full image of God within. Man #7 is the crown level.