The Only Good

Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." Mark 10:18

1 The Good, Aesclepius, is exclusively in God, or rather: God is The Good, in all eternity. That is why The Good is necessarily the cause and essence of all motion and of all genesis: nothing exists that is without The Good. The Good, in perfect equilibrium, is surrounded by a static force of manifestation: it is the entire plenitude, the Primordial Fount, the Origin of all things. When I call that which sustains everything 'good', I mean The Good, which is Absolute and Eternal.

2 This attribute belongs only to God, for there is nothing He lacks, so that no desire for possession can make Him evil. There is nothing He might lose and at the loss of which He might be grieved, because sorrow and grief are a part of Evil. There is nothing stronger than He that might be able to wage war against Him, nor is it keeping with His nature that indignity might be brought down upon Him. Nothing excels Him in beauty and thus arouses Him to the love of the senses. Nothing can deny Him obedience and thus move Him to anger. There is nothing wiser than He which could thus arouse His covetousness.

3 As none of these emotions is to be found in the All-Being, there is nothing to Him other than The Good. And just as none of the other characteristics can occur in such a being, likewise The Good cannot be found in anyone else.

4 All the other qualities occur in all other beings, in the small as well as in the large, in each of them in a specific way, and even in the world, the greatest and most powerful in all manifested life: for all that has been created is full of suffering, because genesis itself involves suffering.

Where there is suffering, The Good is certainly absent. Where The Good is, there is certainly no suffering whatsoever. Wherever day is, there is no night, and wherever night is, there is no day. That is why The Good cannot dwell in what has been created but only in the non-created.

But since all matter participates in the non-created, it is also part of The Good. In this sense the world is good, insofar as it likewise brings forth all things it is, as such, good. But in all other respects it is not good, being also subject to suffering, and changeable, and is the Mother of creatures subject to suffering.

5 Human standards of goodness are obtained by comparison with evil. What is not evil beyond measure is here considered to be good, and what here is held to be good is the smallest part of evil. Therefore, it is impossible, here, for what is good to be free from contamination by evil. What is good, here, is affected by evil and ceases to be good. Thus, this good deteriorates into evil. That is why The Good is in God alone; yes, God is The Good.

6 In men, Aesclepius, The Good can be found only in name but nowhere as a reality. In fact, that is impossible, for The Good cannot find a place in a material body which on all sides is stifled by afflictions and arduous exertion, grief and desire, passion and delusion, and images of the sense.

7 However, worst of all, Aesclepius, is that everything to which man is driven, by what I have mentioned, is here considered to be the greatest good, instead of an extraordinary evil. The passionate desire of the belly, the instigator of all malice, is the error which keeps us here remote from The Good.

8 Therefore, I thank God for what He has revealed to my consciousness with regard to the knowledge of The Good, which is not be found in the world. The world is saturated with evil, just as God is filled with the fullness of The Good, or The Good with the fullness of God.

Corpus Hermeticum, Book 10, verse 1-8

From "That The Good Is To Be Found In God Alone And Nowhere Else" - The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis, Vol. III - Jan van Rijckenborgh

If you wish to know the attributes of God, there it is. Verse 2 is especially enlightening.

Compare the description in verse 2 with the account given of the "God" of the Old Testament, who is jealous, vengeful, wrathful, deceitful, murderous and cunning. Then follow that by a comparison with "The Father" spoken of by Christ in the New Testament, Who is both Giving and Forgiving in nature.

The foregoing should help you to identify which of these two testaments is referencing the One True God and which chronicles the exploits of a powerful nature-aeon, one that the churches have spent two thousand years deceitfully teaching mankind to believe is the One True God, The Only Good.

~ g
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