Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence - Emanuel Swedenborg (sight word books .txt) 📗

have been adduced to make known that although a religious formula about faith alone has been accepted, nevertheless goods of charity, which are good works, are taught everywhere and that this is by the Lord's divine providence, lest the common people be led astray by the formula. I have heard Luther, with whom I have spoken at times in the spiritual world, execrate faith alone and heard him say that when he established it he was warned by an angel of the Lord not to do it; but that he thought to himself that if he did not reject works, separation from Catholicism would not be accomplished. Therefore, contrary to the warning, he established that faith.

259. The merely natural man confirms himself against divine providence in that there have been so many heresies in Christendom and still are, such as Quakerism, Moravianism, Anabaptism, and more. For he may think to himself, If divine providence is universal in the least things and has the salvation of all for its object, it would have seen to it that one true religion should exist on the globe, not one divided and, still less, one torn by heresies. But use reason and think more deeply if you can. Can man be saved without being reformed first? For he is born into love of self and the world, and as these loves do not have any love of God and the neighbor in them except for the sake of self, he is also born into evils of every kind. Is there love or mercy in those loves? Does the man make anything of defrauding or defaming or hating another even to death, or of committing adultery with his wife, or of being cruel to him out of revenge, the while having the desire in mind to get the upper hand of all and to possess the goods of all others, thus regarding others in comparison with himself as insignificant and of little worth? To be saved, must he not first be led away from these evils and thus be reformed? As has been shown above in many places, this can be accomplished only in accordance with many laws of divine providence. For the most part these laws are unknown and yet they come of divine wisdom and at the same time of divine love, and the Lord cannot act contrary to them, for to do so would result in destroying man, not in saving him.

[2] Look over the laws which have been set forth, bring them together, and you will see. According to those laws there is no direct influx from heaven but one mediated by the Word, doctrine and preaching; and since the Word, to be divine, had to be composed wholly in correspondences, inevitably there are dissensions and heresies. The tolerance of them is also in accord with the laws of divine providence. Furthermore, when the church itself has taken for essentials what pertains only to the understanding, that is, to doctrine, and not what pertains to the will, that is, to life, and what pertains to life is not made the essentials of a church, then man is in complete darkness for understanding and wanders like one blind, striking against things constantly and falling into pits. For the will must see in the understanding and not the understanding in the will, or what is the same, the life and its love must lead the understanding to think, speak and act, and not the reverse. Were the reverse true, the understanding might out of an evil and even diabolical love seize on what comes by the senses and demand that the will do it. What has been said may show whence dissensions and heresies come.

[3] Yet it has been provided that everyone, in whatever heresy he may be intellectually, may still be reformed and saved if he shuns evils as sins and does not confirm heretical falsities in himself. For by shunning evils as sins the will is reformed and through it the understanding is, which emerges for the first time then out of obscurity into light. There are three essentials of the church: acknowledgment of the divine of the Lord, acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word, and the life which is called charity. Everyone's faith is according to the life which is charity; from the Word he has a rational perception of what life should be; and from the Lord he has reformation and salvation. Had these three been regarded as the church's essentials, intellectual differences would not have divided it but only varied it as light varies colors in beautiful objects and as various insignia of royalty give beauty to a king's crown.

260. The merely natural man confirms himself against divine providence in that Judaism still continues. That is, after all these centuries the Jews have not been converted although they live among Christians and do not, in keeping with prophecies in the Word, confess the Lord and acknowledge Him to be the Messiah, who, as they think, was to lead them back to the land of Canaan; but they steadfastly persist in denying Him and yet it is well with them. Those who take this view, however, and thus call divine providence in question, do not know that by Jews in the Word all who are of the church and acknowledge the Lord are meant, and by the land of Canaan, into which it is said that they are to be led, the Lord's church is meant.

[2] But the Jews persist in denying the Lord because they are such that, if they received and acknowledged the divine of the Lord and the holy things of His church, they would profane them. Therefore the Lord said of them:

He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them (Jn 12:40; Mt 13:14; Mk 4:12; Lu 8:10; Isa 6:9, 10).

It is said, "lest they should be converted, and I should heal them" because if they had been converted and healed they would have committed profanation, and according to the law of divine providence treated above (nn. 221-233) no one is admitted interiorly into truths of faith and goods of charity by the Lord except so far as he can be kept in them to the close of life; were he admitted, he would profane what is holy.

[3] This nation has been preserved and dispersed over much of the earth for the sake of the Word in its original language, which they hold more sacred than Christians do. The Lord's divine is in every particular of the Word, for it is divine truth joined with divine good coming from the Lord. By it the Lord is united with the church, and heaven is present, as was shown in Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about Sacred Scripture (nn. 62-69). The Lord and heaven are present wherever the Word is read as sacred. This is the end which divine providence has pursued in the preservation and in the dispersal of the Jews over much of the world. On the nature of their lot after death see Continuation about the Last Judgment and the Spiritual World (nn. 79-82).

261. These then are the objections listed above at n. 238 by which the natural man confirms himself against divine providence, or may do so. Still other objections, listed at n. 239, may serve the natural man for arguments against divine providence; they may occur to the minds of others, too, and excite doubts. They are the following.

262. Doubt may be raised against divine providence in that the whole of Christendom worships one God under three persons, that is, three Gods, and has not known hitherto that God is one in person and in essence, in whom is the Trinity, and that this God is the Lord. One who reasons about divine providence may ask, Are not three persons three Gods if each person by himself is God? Who can think of it otherwise? In fact, who does? Athanasius himself could not; therefore it is said in the Creed which bears his name:

Although in Christian verity we ought to acknowledge each Person as God and Lord, yet by Christian faith it is not allowable to affirm or to name three Gods or three Lords.

This can only mean that we ought to acknowledge three Gods and Lords, but it is not allowable to affirm or name three Gods and three Lords.

[2] Who can possibly have a perception of one God unless He is one in person? If it is said that such a concept is possible if one thinks of the three as having one essence, does one, indeed can one, have any other idea than that they are thus of one mind and agree, and yet are three Gods? Thinking more deeply, one asks oneself, How can the divine essence, which is infinite, be divided? Further, how can divine essence from eternity beget another and produce still another who proceeds from them both? It may be said that it is to be believed and not thought about; but who does not think about what he is told must be believed? How else can there be any acknowledgment which in its essence is faith? Was it not because of the concept of God as three persons that Socinianism and Arianism arose, which prevail in the hearts of more persons than you suppose? Belief in one God and that this God is the Lord makes the church, for in Him is the divine trinity. The truth of this may be seen in Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about the Lord, from beginning to end.

[3] But what is thought of the Lord today? Is it not thought that He is God and Man, God from Jehovah the Father of whom He was conceived and Man from the Virgin Mary from whom He was born? Who thinks that God and Man in Him, or His Divine and His Human, are one person, and are one as soul and body are? Does anyone know this? Ask the learned in the church and they will say that they have not known it. Yet it is part of the doctrine of the church received throughout Christendom, as follows:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; and although He is God and Man yet there are not two, but there is one Christ. He is one because the divine took to itself the human; indeed He is altogether one, for He is one Person, since as soul and body make one man, so God and Man is one Christ.

This comes from the Faith or Creed of Athanasius. The learned have not known it because on reading this they have thought of the Lord not as God but only as Man.

[4] When they are asked if they know from whom the Lord was conceived, whether from God the Father or from His own Divine, they reply that He was conceived from God the Father, for this is according to Scripture. Are the Father and He not one then, like soul and body? Who can think that He was conceived from two Divines, and if from His own that this was His Father? If you ask them further what their idea of the Lord's Divine and of His Human is, they will say that His Divine is from the essence of the Father and His Human from the essence of His mother, and that His Divine is with the Father. Then, when they are asked where His Human is, they have no answer, for they separate His Divine and His Human in their thinking and make His Divine equal to the Divine of the Father and His Human like the human of another man, unaware that in doing this they separate soul and body; nor do they see the flaw in this, that then a rational man would have been born from a mother alone.

[5] As a result of the fixed idea that the Lord's humanity was like that of another man, it has come about that a Christian can with difficulty be led to think of a Divine Human, even when it is said that the Lord's soul or life from conception was and is Jehovah Himself. Now sum up the reasons and consider whether there is any other God of the universe than the Lord alone, in whom is the Divine itself, Source of all, called the Father; the Divine Human, called the Son; and the proceeding Divine, called the Holy Spirit; and thus that God is one in person and essence, and that this God is the Lord.

[6] You may persist and remark that