Christ

Use in the book

Christ joins the book's account of creation to its account of redemption. The end of being redeemed is communion in divine glory, not simply escape from punishment. The Saviour made the gifts before restoring their enjoyment; addressing the crucified Jesus as the giver of creatures reveals creation and redemption as works of the same love. This continuity prevents the natural world from becoming an insignificant prelude to a wholly unrelated salvation.

Yet restoration does not mean sin has made no difference. Heaven and earth are more valuable to the redeemed speaker because their enjoyment has been bought at such a cost. The gift includes renewed friendship with God, the love of people and angels, obedience to holy laws, and above all restoration to the divine image. Christ's love therefore becomes a rule of action. The command to love one another is renewed among sinners under fresh obligations, and the Cross teaches the virtues required in ordinary and public life.

The Second Century also insists on Christ's unique fitness to redeem. The suffering office is too great for angels and is undertaken by the Son willingly. Traherne's defence of its justice stresses willingness, ability, and the exaltation of the sufferer. The argument is explicitly theological; it should not be reduced to an interchangeable example of noble generosity. The one who supplies the pattern of human love is, in the text's confession, also the divine agent of salvation.

Places to read

1. I.5The end of redemption is communion with God in eternal glory.
2. I.61The Cross teaches a comprehensive range of virtues and active love.
3. I.64Jesus is praised for creating the gifts before redeeming the enjoyer.
4. I.76Redemption restores friendship, inheritance, divine likeness, and a renewed command of love.
5. II.33The Son’s unique redemptive office is explained through willing and capable self-offering.

In this edition

First-person prayers address Christ directly, while other passages teach about Him. Preserve these changes of address: a doctrinal paraphrase alone loses the exchange of love that the prayers enact.

An example that gives what it teaches

Christ is not merely an admired model placed before an otherwise self-sufficient observer. His act restores the observer to the very relations in which imitation becomes possible. The reader learns to love people whom the Saviour has already loved and redeemed, and to enjoy a world already prepared and restored. This order matters: moral resemblance is the response to received love, while prayer asks for the power to make that response real. Creation, redemption, example, and inward enabling converge without becoming identical actions. The teacher's lesson is thus inseparable from the gift that establishes the pupil's life.

Use in the book

At pp. 21–2323 one God, one world, one first matter, one Saviour, one faith, one Church, one head and one Stone appear in a single emphatic sequence. Their coordination supports the insistence upon one universal subject in the Art. On pp. 56–572 the relation becomes more carefully differentiated: Magnesia and the Stone preserve and medicinally save the greater World and its fruits, whereas Christ preserves and saves the lesser World, here expressly glossed as the human race. The distinction of domains matters as much as the correspondence.

The book repeatedly narrates the correspondence through particular moments of Christ's life. Herod and the Wise seek the child for opposite purposes; the Emmaus disciples see without recognizing; Simeon recognizes the child before witnessing any miracle. These scenes are not a sequential life of Jesus. Each supplies a test or defence of the chymist's situation: motive, withheld recognition and knowledge before completed effect.

Khunrath anticipates the charge of blasphemy and appeals to the use of natural similitudes by Scripture, the Fathers and contemporary theologians. His formulation nevertheless remains strong. The analogy is reciprocal, and it includes Christ's doctrine, life and miracles. At p. 138 exclusive adherence of heart, faith and life belongs to Christ himself; at p. 184 Magnesia is his symbolic natural likeness. Read together, those statements preserve the distinction between the saving person and the natural subject that bears witness to him. Neither suppressing the daring comparison nor turning it into a literal identification represents the printed argument.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 22Christ is the one universal head of the one universal Christian Church
2. 1599 p. 30The incarnate Word is named in the first announcement of the analogical harmony
3. 1599 p. 56The lesser World is expressly defined as the human race in the comparison with the Stone
4. 1599 p. 138Khunrath names the Son of God and the Virgin Mary and reserves exclusive saving allegiance to him
5. 1599 p. 184The closing prayer identifies Magnesia as the symbolic natural likeness of Jesus of Nazareth

Translation in this edition

Preserve the source's significant variations rather than treating every occurrence as a normalized modern “Jesus.” The p. 138 margin has IESVH where the body has IHSVH, and p. 179 has IHESV. These are witnessed spellings; the present passage alone does not authorize an independently reconstructed cabalistic etymology. The p. 184 phrase about God and Mary admits more than one grammatical attachment, as the edition notes.