So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90:12
At the beginning of a new year it is only to be expected that our thoughts turn to the subject of time, and the passage of time. Our test is a prayer to the Lord that we may learn to use our time wisely, that we may use our time in this world for the purpose for which it was granted us, namely, in the pursuit of wisdom. We are to count up our days for the purpose of entering into wisdom.
But men say, "What is wisdom?" even as the skeptical Roman, Pontius Pilate, replied to the Lord with the cynical question, "And what is truth?", the implication being that there is no such thing as wisdom or truth.
The only absolute wisdom that really is such is the Divine Wisdom, and this may be defined as the way the Divine love operates. It is the way the Divine love comes forth into act; it is the Divine love being brought forth and manifesting itself. Of the Lord alone is it absolutely true that where there is a Will there is a Way. The Divine will is loving, in fact, Love itself; the Divine Way is wise, indeed it is Wisdom itself.
What the Divine wisdom is may be seen most readily from the Lord's providence. When we look out upon the whole field of nature, the whole natural creation, and see how every creature there has been provided with exactly the right form to perform the use for which it was created, when we ponder the marvelous order and constancy that lies behind the natural world, we catch a glimpse of the Divine love operating; we see something of the Divine wisdom. Even more marvelous is the sight of the Divine providence, that is, the Divine love and wisdom, in history, in the affairs of men, especially in the history of the church. In all that the Lord provides, He looks (in His Wisdom) to the eternal happiness of mankind. He operates in such a way that eternal ends are served by temporal things, by things of time and space. This is but one of the laws of the Divine love, one of the ways in which it acts and manifests itself, one of the predictable and orderly ways in which it operates.
The Divine Word is a repository of wisdom itself. It is the Divine Wisdom revealed, unveiled for man to know and live by. The commandments of the Word are nothing but descriptions of the way that man should live, descriptions of the order of life for mankind. The Old Testament is an expression of the Divine wisdom, because it outlines a way of living. The New Testament is the Divine wisdom revealed, because the same way of living is even more plainly described. The Writings are still more the Divine wisdom revealed, because in them this same way of living is most plainly described.
Wisdom itself, then, is the Divine law and order, and the only wisdom man call attain comes from a life according to that Divine law and order. There is but one way for man to become wise, and that is for him to be touched by the Divine wisdom, affected by it, moved by it, so that it produces, as it were, an image of itself in him. When man's mind and life are an image of the Divine way of operating, then, and then only, does he have true wisdom. The sum of all wisdom for mankind is to love the Lord above everyone else and everything else and to love the neighbor as oneself. When man has these two loves in his heart, he also has wisdom in his understanding.
From this it is evident at once that human wisdom is not to be confused with mere knowledge, and yet at this day the distinction between the two is often blurred and obliterated. The notion is widely prevalent today that the more a man knows, or the more pieces of information he has stored up in his memory, the wiser he is. But a learned man may or may not be a wise man. it all depends on what use he makes of his learning. Knowledges, pieces of information, are not ends in themselves; they are means. They are means of becoming wise, and they are also means of becoming foolish, or spiritually insane. If a man amasses a great stock of information and fills his memory with it for the sake of gaining a great reputation for learning, if he does it for name and fame, wisdom is the last thing that call be ascribed to him. To be moved by selfish and worldly motives only is the very opposite of wisdom. It is folly and insanity itself. If, on the other hand, a man makes his learning a means of loving the Lord and the neighbor, if he is moved by heavenly loves, then he is enlightened and is wise. He looks at all his learning in the light of heaven, and thus has wisdom.
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The Lord taught in two well known parables that to follow His commandments is wisdom for mankind-in the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins, and in the parable of the wise man who built his house upon a rock, in contrast to the foolish man who built his house upon sand. In the latter parable, it is explicitly stated that it is wisdom to obey the commandments, but folly to neglect or refuse to do so. For the Lord said: "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who built his house upon a rock. . . . And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon sand. . . ."*
* Matt. 7;24, 26
Why is it that wisdom is impossible to attain apart from obedience to the commandments? The answer is that it is only by using the commandments like a sword to cut out, evil loves which are all obstacles that good loves can be given by the Lord. To the extent that evils are put aside, to the same extent goods inflow, and with them comes a completely new view of the commandments, an insight into them, an internal view of them, an understanding of their personal significance and purpose; and this is wisdom. Wisdom in itself, as we have already seen, is the Divine law and order. The only way man may achieve any wisdom is to experience something of this Divine law and order, and this he does to the extent that his life, his experience, is in line with the commandments of the Lord. Merely knowing what these commandments are without having experienced them is folly, not wisdom.
Wisdom is the same as truth that is seen from good loves. It is heavenly love in act, manifesting itself. It can be attained no faster than we attain heavenly loves and motives. Wisdom with us is dependent upon our skill in living the regenerate life, and in this connection, it is most instructive to learn that in the original language the word for wisdom used here carries the idea of "skill." No skill is ever acquired without patient application and experience, and it is the same with acquiring wisdom. It must begin with instruction and learning from others and from the Word, but it can not end there. Use and wisdom are inseparable.
As love is the soul of wisdom, so is selfishness the soul of foolishness. It is folly to believe and act as if our life was our own to do with as our whims and fancies dictate. It is folly to acquire things without regard to use, whether we amass worldly riches and goods or whether we store up the mere knowledges of good and truth, the riches of heaven. It is folly to pursue our own happiness and comfort at the expense of others. It is folly to believe that there is no God, and to act according to this belief.
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It is folly to attribute anything of heavenly love and wisdom to ourselves. It is folly to think that we can be wise from our own perceptions and powers. From these examples of what folly is we may know what wisdom is, and this quotation from the Arcana Coelestia summarizes all that has been said: "Wisdom is to behave towards the Lord from the good of love and faith, as little children do towards their parents."*
* AC 6107 (e)
This is the kind of wisdom to which we are to apply our hearts. It is the wisdom of love. What is here translated as "apply" really means "to cause to enter into," so, that our text should read: "So teach us to number our days that we may cause our hearts to enter into wisdom." This is the same as the Lord's injunction: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness: and all these (other) things shall be added unto you."* To seek the kingdom of God is to seek genuine wisdom, for it is the same thing. He who has the kingdom of God within himself, that is, he whose mind is ruled and regulated by the Divine wisdom, is a wise man, as we have seen.
* Matt. 6:33
The teaching that wisdom is a skill and that it is to be sought after allows us to see that time is necessary for the attainment of it. That is why wisdom is so thoroughly associated in our minds with advanced years. The Writings speak of the innocence of wisdom, as distinct from the innocence of infancy. But it is not the mere passage of time that brines wisdom. This can be seen from the fact that two people of the same grand old age may differ greatly in the degree of wisdom they have achieved. Some people of the most advanced age seem to have no wisdom at all, others have much. It is not the passing of time that determines how much wisdom we may have, but what happens in time, how we use our time. It is, therefore, essential for every one of us, young, middle-aged, or old, to ask ourselves whether we are numbering our days in such a way that we cause our hearts to enter into wisdom. After all a mere death-bed repentance or confession of faith is of no avail; it is worse than useless, being nothing else than a hollow mockery.
When we come to consider what it is to "number our days," we can see that this may be understood either literally or in a spiritual sense. In either case, the spiritual lessons are most valuable. Literally, "to number our days" means to count up what we may reasonably suppose to be the time left to us in this world for entering into wisdom. It contains also the idea of setting the days of our life in order for this purpose because to number as used in the literal sense of the Divine Word means to set in order, as in the numbering of the children of Israel. It refers to the counting and reckoning, the general surveying of the people for the sake of learning what resources remain.
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To number our days also suggests this kind of survey and organization.
In the spiritual sense, "to number" is to count up the goods and truths, and this turns the mind in the direction of evaluating qualities, not quantities. The examination of the quality of our loves and thus of our life is to be understood spiritually by "numbering our days." Again, the idea of setting in order, of disposing our loves in their proper subordination, comes to mind. Our sensuous loves are to be ruled by our natural affections, and these in turn are to be disposed under our rational good, which means our good spiritual intentions. When the mind is so ordered, the states of our mind are numbered, (set in order) and we are "numbering our days," for "days" in the spiritual sense of the Word means "states."
All references to times in the Word such as "days", "weeks", "months", "years", are to be understood as references to states of mind. This is because the internal sense is for angels also, and in the spiritual world there is no such thing as fixed time. Instead there is the perception of states. This is the realistic way to look at time, for is it not a fact that time is completely relative to our state? When we are enjoying ourselves time seems to pass quickly, while the same number of minutes spent in doing something tedious seem to have no end. The more spiritual and celestial our loves, the more we are raised above time. The more corporeal our loves, the more we are bogged down in time, and the more impatient we become. Time is essentially a matter of state. That is why "days", when used in the Word, signify states.
In the internal sense, therefore, the prayer in our text is that the Lord may teach us to examine the quality of our loves, or reflect upon our states, so that we may enter more interiorly into wisdom. This subject of self-examination, somewhat concealed here in the internal sense, is mentioned openly a few verses earlier in this Psalm: "Thou (Lord) hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance."* It is by self-examination and consequent repentance (or amendment of life) that we may cause our hearts to enter into wisdom.
* Ps. 90:8
The pursuit of wisdom is the purpose for which we were born into this world of time and space. Our daily life in time gives us ample opportunities for seeking the kind of wisdom the Word describes. If we order it aright, we shall indeed enter into wisdom. The pursuit of wisdom is not often held up to us as a goal at which to aim. The world would rather have us indulge in the pursuit of happiness. But happiness is never more elusive than when it is consciously pursued as a goal. It simply evaporates then.
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It is otherwise with wisdom. In all our days and states, we must pursue it.
But let us not overlook the fact that this must be done from the Lord, not of or from ourselves alone. This whole Psalm is a prayer to the Lord, imploring Him to uncover our secret evils so that we may shun them as sins and become wise. Of ourselves, we can do neither the one nor the other. We can neither see our evils nor repent of them unless we turn to the Lord. He it is who teaches us what evils are, and He does this by means of His Word. He it is who causes us to reflect upon our states and number our days. It is from Him that we have the light to see our evils, and from Him that we have the strength and desire to resist them. That is why we are to beg the Lord to teach us, to show us the way.
Let our constant prayer and endeavor be expressed in these words from another Psalm: "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."* Amen.
* Ps. 139:23, 24
LESSONS: Psalm 90. Luke 12:15-34. Divine Love and Wisdom 73
MINISTERIAL CHANGES LOUIS B. KING 1977
The Rev. Frederick L. Schnarr, who has been serving as Pastor of the Washington, D. C. Society, has been called to serve as Principal of the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. B. David Holm has resigned as Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee, effective August 31, 1977.
The Rev. Douglas M. Taylor has accepted appointment as Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee, effective September 1, 1976.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
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CONVERSATION RICHARD LINQUIST 1977
Searching below the surface of conversation and mapping an outline of its inner structure is the goal of this article. My interest in this exploration arises from a world of words spoken by myself as curator of the Bryn Athyn cathedral and several hundred visitors who inspect its architectural beauty each week. Their apparently endless number of questions have driven me, somewhat in self-defense, to seek enlightenment in my layman's use. Although the word "I" is used more often than seems properly humble, hopefully the use of this study will be to add one more piece to the picture of understanding oral communication.
The most enlightening truth which I found is this:
The mind, which selects words for the body to speak, lives under the heat and light of the sun of heaven. For man is a spirit. From that, he thinks and wills. Wherefore the spiritual world is where man is, and certainly not distant from him. In a word, every man as to the interiors of his mind is in that world in the midst of spirits and angels there; and he thinks from its light and loves from its heat.*
* DLW 92
What a man thinks and loves is revealed in his words. Like mirrors, words reflect both light and heat from the spiritual sun as it shines upon the human mind.
"The Sun of heaven is the Lord, the light there is the Divine Truth and the heat the Divine Good, and those go forth from the Lord as from a Sun."* This sun Which We may see some day as shining outside of us in heaven is actually shining upon our minds today. This truth is sometimes illustrated to me in discussions with visitors to the cathedral. For example, when I am asked about our idea of the Lord, I respond with a description of Him as imaged in man's loves, thoughts, and the going forth of these to serve in a vast kingdom of uses. Then if a visitor exclaims, "Oh, I see," I cannot think of any other light in which he saw except that of the spiritual sun. He could even have closed his eyes as I spoke and seen the truth of the Divine Trinity by the means of the light of heaven.
* HH 117
My words simply gathered together knowledges which he already had in his mind, such as "loves", "thoughts", "uses", and helped him arrange them into a new pattern of truth. The light of heaven then revealed it to the vision of his spirit.
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He saw it as he might see a stone on the ground, perhaps even envisioning its use as an altar.
The conditions of enlightenment which enabled him to see the Lord is outlined in this passage:
That the light in the heavens is spiritual and moreover that this light is Divine Truth may be inferred from the fact that man also has spiritual light and has enlightenment from that light so far as he is in intelligence and wisdom from Divine Truth. Man's spiritual light is the light of his understanding and the objects of that light are truths, which he arranges analytically into groups, forms into reasons, and from them draws conclusions in a series.*
* HH 130
Man has "enlightenment from that light"* of heaven and thereby the Lord who is that Light illumines the thoughts revealed by spoken words. He uses our oral communication to brighten dark areas of the mind. ". . . He teaches mediately by means of the Word, preaching, reading, conversation, and communication with others, and thus by thoughts within oneself about these things. Man is thus enlightened in the measure of his affection of truth from use."**
* Ibid.
** AE 1173
Then if the visitor says: "Tell me more about the Lord," I could hope that he has some "affection of truth from use."* A few rays of morning light from the other world may have awakened him. Perhaps his affections for the Lord, covered since childhood with blankets of falsity about a god with three mysterious bodies, will begin to feel uncomfortably weighted down. Garments of spiritual truth might be offered to him in further discussion so that his spirit can arise and search for his own special path of life, lighted by the sun of heaven.
* Ibid
My job as curator draws me into the process of awakening minds and directing them toward the Lord as He is revealed in written form and as represented by His priesthood. For the past ten years I have been positioned before many people as their first human contact with the General Church of the New Jerusalem. It is a unique position and requires that the curator acknowledge this simply stated truth: "As regards enlightenment, it is all from the Lord, and through the good that is in the man; and such as is the good, such is the enlightenment."*
* AC 4214
Visitors do not yet know this truth and many of them believe that they can absorb all the doctrines of the New Church in one discussion with me. As we talk our minds seem to soar into the light of heaven and yet I wonder if our affections are similarly elevated. "For every man, even the merely natural and sensual, is endowed with an understanding capable of elevation into the light of heaven, and able both to discern and comprehend spiritual and even Divine subjects.
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His understanding is however capable of this elevation only when he hears them or reads of them, or, afterwards from memory speaks of them; for he cannot think of them inwardly from himself."* Also a revelation of this same theme in DLW contains this statement: "From which it is clear that the understanding can be in spiritual light, although the will is not in spiritual heat."**
* AE 1216
** DLW 244
My suspicions about the quality of my own and the visitor's affections can be balanced by an appreciation of the variety of mental states. For example, a visitor may ask only one question about the New Church, not because he dislikes spiritual truth, but because his state is comfortably filled with one truth. He cannot hold anymore at present. Just as a house can hold only a certain number of items so mental homes are limited by the affectional walls which form them. Whether a man lives in a hut or a palace, the light and heat within them can be of the same quality. When he says, "Oh, I see", he may be sitting cross-legged on the floor or calmly on a throne. The basic truth is that each man is enlightened according to the nature of his mind. "Thus enlightenment, which comes from the Lord, is changed into varied forms of light and heat in every individual according to the state of his mind."*
* TCR 155
In an effort to understand and appreciate the spiritual energy in a visitor's mind I tend not to ask: "Do you see what I mean?" or "Do you understand what I said?" What is important to me is what he observed, i.e. what truth the light of heaven revealed to him as I spoke. Therefore I might ask; "What did you see as I described the Divine Trinity?" Not only can he tell me what he saw but also what he felt, for: "Those two, heat and light, or love and wisdom, flow conjointly from God into the soul of man; and through this into his mind, its affections and thoughts; and from these into the senses, speech and actions of the body."* Heat and light can descend into speech.
* Infl; Ch. 6
At this point in the conversation I leave the role of apparent teacher and enlightener and assume that of a student. I do not want to talk anymore, but simply be passive and receptive to the heat and light reflected in the visitor's words. Perhaps I will feel warmth in the variation of his vocal tone and see shining truths in his choice and arrangement of words. For ". . . from the sound the affection is known, and from the words which are the articulations of the sound, the thought is known."* With this information I can form a mental picture of his mind in my imagination.
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This is possible because ". . . all speech perceived by the ear, when it ascents towards interiors, passes into ideas not unlike the ideas sight. . ."**
* AE 1216
** AC 3342
If I see a picture of a friendly spirit within his body I may seek closer contact. Spontaneously I assume that a good affection in me reaches out for what is from the Lord in his mind. Feeling comfortable standing on the front porch of his mental home, I peer through the open door of his words. Inside I see a foyer and inner chambers filled with the morning light revealing beautiful rugs of thoughts which he walks upon. The eye of my mind rests for a moment on a bunch of roses of wise thoughts growing out of a vase of his life's experience. Also the temperature in these rooms is to my liking. I enter. "With those who are in the affection of good, good desires good, as a hungry man desires bread, but with those who are in the affection of truth, good desires truth, as a thirsty man desires water."* Hearing words of welcome I look forward to having a pleasant experience. ". . . in the heat and light of heaven there is an ineffable delight, which is shared."** But wait, did I sense a tone of arrogance in his voice as we talked about the Lord as if we were playing an intellectual numbers game of one or three gods? Did a shadow drift out of a closet? On closer examination those flowers look like plastic imitations. I feel a chill and politely withdraw to his front porch.
* AC 2698
** AR 611
Let us examine the situation: A visitor and I have made noises at each other and understood the messages which they represented, but now I wonder who sent the message. Also I wonder what affection in me now distrusts and fears the visitor's message-sender. I am confused. Everything had looked so good. It is time for self-examination. Does a good affection in me turn away from the darkness of hell in another's mind or does an unregenerate affection within me fear the light of heaven in his mind? (Or if I had sought closer communication perhaps an evil lust in my natural will reached out for falsity in the visitor's mind and courted its presence with flattering and enticing words.)
Why do we reveal our thoughts and feelings to some people and not to others? The answer is found in our love or hatred of another's love or hatred of the Lord. Our love judges another's love. It is a friend or enemy to what we love and we react accordingly in conversation. This concept, I believe, is the basic governing principle in conversation.
The inward reality of speech between two persons is that it involves the needs and interactions of two affectional kingdoms of the mind. We know that adult mental kingdoms are ruled either by a good or evil love.
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Also we know that ". . . the life's love produces from itself subordinate loves called affections, and that these are exterior and interior; and that these when taken together form as it were one dominion or kingdom, in which the life's love is lord or king."*
* DP 194
Every word is a servant in the king's realm. For example, the first words spoken are like advance scouts sent out by the ruling love to probe for information about another's mental kingdom. ("Hello, how are you today?") Facts about another's internal climate are relayed to the king and it reacts by choosing to reveal or conceal its heat and light. In either case he commands a special knight to influence the intellect to select certain words for the other person to hear. With the evil hypocrite, ". . . the life's love with its surrounding internals places beneath itself a deputy, called the love of means, and enjoins upon it to take heed and guard lest anything from its lusts should show itself."* Cunningly he forms clouds of lies under which his evil master hides so that light from the spiritual sun does not reflect off his words and locate and reveal their innate impotence. Concerning the sensuous man we learn that,". . . he cannot bear a ray of heavenly light."**
* DP 109
** DLW 254
But if the ruling love within us worships the Lord it uses its love of means to select words which wisely reveal its heat and light. "The life's love of such also has the love of means as its deputy, which it teaches and leads to act from prudence, and which it clothes with the garments of zeal for the truths of doctrine and also for the goods of life."*
* DP 110
This flame of zeal leads to discussions of a wide variety of uses which are loved by visitors to the cathedral. I try to talk about the uses which they are interested in and am therefore talking about the Lord's kingdom even when not using ecclesiastical terms such as "prayer", "salvation", "charity", etc. We may begin by admiring the beauty of the teak wood doors. Our feelings and thoughts about its external nature are expressed in words. Then we may discuss its use to the cathedral, the use of the cathedral as a place of worship, and then end our talk with a consideration of how we worship the Lord in our lives. Thus speaking about uses is the goal of conversation, for therein the Lord can be seen and loved.
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MARRIAGE COVENANT N. BRUCE ROGERS 1977
(All reference numbers in the footnotes are to the work Conjugial Love unless otherwise noted. Ed.)
The Hope in Marriage
Love truly conjugial, with the promise of its achievement, is an ideal that has inspired the hearts and minds of New Church men and women for generations. Young and old have been deeply affected by the concept, and they have thrilled to the hope of the possibility of its fulfillment in their own' lives. And it is well that it should be so, for the conjugial relationship of a husband and wife is described in the Doctrine as "the precious jewel of human life and the repository of Christian religion."*In and from that union are celestial blessings, spiritual happiness and thence natural delights."** More celestial, more spiritual, more holy, pure and clean than any other love that the Lord can bestow, conjugial love-when genuine-is the fundamental love of all good and heavenly loves, and into it are gathered all joys and delights from their first to their last.***
* 457, 458
** 457, 335
*** 64, 65-69
In such language is the ideal state of marriage described; and, given the innate inclination to conjunction implanted in the sexes from creation,* it is no wonder then that hearts touched by romance, outside of the Church as well, but most especially within the Church because of the doctrine, open with eager expectation of what is most fervently hoped and believed to be, with marriage, an entrance quite literally into heaven on earth. Practicalities are often forgotten, hardships easily endured, discordant and dissentient ideas and feelings either suppressed or ignored. All is given and devoted to love for the sake of love; all is given and forgiven for the sake of conjugial love.
* 157, 37
The Reality
And with some the hoped-for happens, perhaps not as soon as expected, perhaps not quite in the way expected, but still it happens. Love ripens into an inmost conjunction of minds. An interior, spiritual friendship descends into their marriage, bringing with it a mutual desire to do the other every possible good.
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Periodic states of coolness and coldness decrease both in frequency and in intensity, and in their stead come states of increasing warmth and effort to union in all things of life. Happiness, contentment, delight and spontaneous pleasure-these become the testimony to their inward and genuine marriage, and as the delight of their dwelling together increases, they look forward more and more to a continuance of their life together, not only to old age in this world, but to eternity in the world to come.*
* 162, 179, 180, 213-216
With others, however, the case is not so, and with some it can even be the opposite. As the glow of their first romantic love passes, as the dreams of their courtship and wedding give way to the reality of everyday living, and he no longer seems the wonderful man he once was or promised to be and she no longer the loveliest woman in the world, then ardor cools and eventually grows cold.* Disagreements become more frequent and more intense, whether they break into active strife, or are harbored within in states of unhappiness and frustration. Their lives begin to separate, in fact if not in appearance, and each begins to pursue his own goals, to accomplish his own work, to find his own pleasure, spiritually alone and emotionally insulated in the inmost recesses of his heart.** At first a disappointment, and then a burden, if the disjunction becomes severe enough, the marriage can even come to seem a trap, and then thoughts of separation almost inevitably follow, and with thoughts of separation, contemplation of divorce, especially in a time when it is made legally possible and perhaps even relatively easy, and when it may even be encouraged by the bad examples of others.***
* Cf. 236
** Cf. 215
*** 213, 214
Why Marriages Fail
The reasons for such failures of marital love are various, and often not obvious. In general, however, they come down to this that in the world marriages are too often contracted from an attraction of external affections, and not at the same time from an attraction of internal affections-when yet it is internal affections that can conjoin two people in love truly conjugial, and not external affections apart from the internal.* In this, New Church men and women have no special inborn immunity. Romantic love is an intoxicating experience, and clear reason quite easily succumbs to the persuasive blandishments and enticements of merely natural delights. Even earnestly sincere people are susceptible to the siren call, because earnest sincerity is no substitute for sound judgment.
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Physical qualities become more important than personal qualities. Social standing is given higher consideration than spiritual dedication. The need for emotional and perhaps even worldly security overshadows the need for moral and spiritual virtues, virtues from which nevertheless real security can come because they can be trusted. And even when real values are consulted, when choice is based on prudent reflection, so that it is not just external affections which transport the mind, still the internal affections of the proposed partner may not be accurately seen-not necessarily because of any deliberate concealment or deceit, though that can happen too, but simply because this is the natural world, where internal affections do not come readily forth, but can be known, if at all, only with time and long experience.**
* 274, 275
** 227, 272
And so it is that marriages fail. Romantic love, with all of its delights, grows feeble and passes away. The truth is discovered that, as the Doctrine teaches, the first heat of marriage does not really conjoin if that is all there is.* A real, interior spiritual friendship is needed-it is the key to the development of love truly conjugial,** a friendship based on the moral and spiritual virtues of husband and wife that stem from their own special qualities of love and wisdom, between which there is an internal agreement and likeness***-and where that friendship is wanting, marriages contracted before family and friends cannot help but be interiorly sundered in the home.****
* 162, 214
** 55, 162, 214, cf. 180
*** 159, 161, 189, 191, 195, 227, 228
**** 275
Marriages Are Nevertheless to Continue
And yet, despite all of this, we are told that marriages once contracted in the world are to continue to the end of life.* In this, the Heavenly Doctrines stand squarely with the teaching concerning marriage given by the Lord with His own mouth in His first advent, and they confirm that it is a teaching that accurately presents the Divine law and will. "Is it lawful," the Pharisees once asked, "for a man to put away his wife for any reason?" To this the Lord answered and said, "Have you not read. that He who made them at the beginning made then male and female, and said, 'For this reason shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.' Wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."**
* 276
** Matt. 19:3-6; Mk. 10:2, 6-9
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Still, the Pharisees, according to the account given in Matthew, were not satisfied. "Why then did Moses command," they said, "to give a writing of divorcement and so put her away?" And we might ask, Why then has it been permitted in civil law for divorce to be made legally possible for a variety of reasons, and in some places, in some countries, for almost any reason at all? But the Lord said unto them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so."* And He added, "And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her who is put away doth commit adultery."** Or, as it is said in the Gospel of Mary, "Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery."***
* Matt. 19:7, 8
** Matt. 19:9; Lu. 16:18
*** Mk. 10:11, 12
Now this can appear to be a hard teaching, and even the Lord's disciples on hearing it replied, "If the case of the man be so with a wife, it is not good to marry."* Nevertheless, the teaching was not withdrawn by the Lord, nor is it one re interpreted in the Heavenly Doctrines. Rather it is quite clearly affirmed, several times specifically,** and in spirit throughout the doctrine of conjugial love. Save for the cause of adultery, committed deliberately and so purposely by one's spouse, to which are added as related causes open and manifest approaches to adultery to the point of utter scortatory shamelessness, and also malicious desertion for no just cause when it then leads to the deserting partner's commission of adultery, whether from set purpose or not-save for these three causes, which in essence are one, there are no other legitimate grounds for divorce given in the Divine law.*** Despite the interior dissolution of marriages in the home, despite the entrance of states of spiritual cold, despite even indifference, discord, contempt, loathing, aversion, and a host of other evils, both physical and spiritual, marriages are otherwise to continue to the end of life.****
* Matt. 19:10
** 255, 276, 332
*** 234, 255, 468
**** 236-255 and ff. 215, 276
Dealing with the Failure of Marital Love
What then is one supposed to do when faced with a marriage that has become insufferable, when yet there are no grounds for legitimate divorce? In the first place, one is not to try and get around the Divine law and by reasonings explain it away.*
16
The denial of sin is itself the beginning of sin.** Rather one should seek to understand the law and to find means by which to live according to it.
* 332
** TCR 523, CL 588 This is not to say that there are not times when some marriages do become simply insufferable. And in this regard the law is tempered with mercy. Separations both physical and legal may be permitted for a variety of reasons, and even concubinage, Provided that the reasons are just and truly compelling.* The two chapters in the work Conjugial Love on, "Colds Separations, and Divorces" and on "Concubinage" list a number of examples of such reasons, which may become grounds for legitimate separation.** No one is compelled to live with a partner who may have become dangerous, truly irresponsible, or genuinely odious.*** That this does not contravene the Lord's teaching against divorce is because in separation the marriage covenant is not entirely abolished, nor is a new marriage contracted.**** If bound only by a legal relationship, the husband remains nevertheless the husband, and the wife, the wife, and there is kept ever open the possibility of reconciliation.*****
* 251,467, 411, 474
** 252-254,470, 472,473
*** Ibid.
**** 468
**** 289, 475
When internal love has failed, however, a better course recommended in the Writings, if it can be effected, is a marriage of apparent love, friendship and favor.* It is necessary, useful and true, the Doctrine teaches, that where conjugial love is not genuine, it is yet to be affected, even so that it appears as if it were genuine.** Especially is this true when legitimate grounds for separation do not actually exist, or when they may not be truly compelling. To those in the grip of spiritual cold, attempts to effect such a marriage no doubt seem difficult, even impossible, and of course it takes the cooperation of both partners. But the truth is, as the Doctrine also teaches, and as almost anyone can see who considers the matter objectively, that in this natural world, almost all can be conjoined as to external affections, if not as to their internal affections.*** What this means is that almost all marriages, once contracted, can continue to the end of life, even to a degree happily, and perhaps even to every perception quite happily, if a, proper mutual effort is made.**** Worldly interests, worldly uses, even worldly delights-if spiritual ones are lacking-from the common care of children and the rendering of mutual help to the sharing of domestic and other tasks and the pursuit of joint hobbies and pleasures, even the sharing of a joint social life-all these and more can become means of at least an external conjunction, if an effort is made to make them so, and provided that a fundamental courtesy and civility can be maintained.*****
* 279
** 276
*** 272, 277
**** 277, 278, 281:2, 290
***** 277-284 and ff.
17
The Honorableness of Conjugial Simulations
To those who think only naturally, it may be that such conjugial simulations will seem to be hypocritical and merely pretenses. Yet, provided that they are maintained within the home for the sake of the preservation of the marriage, and are not simply theatrical shows put on outside of the home for the sake of others, they are not hypocritical, neither are they merely pretenses.* Rather they are praiseworthy appearances, as the Doctrine calls them, assumed because they are seen to be both useful and necessary;** and that which is done for the sake of use and from a prudent sight of what is properly required is never hypocritical nor a matter of mere pretense. To quote the Doctrine itself:
* 282e, 279
** 279
(These appearances) are called simulations because they exist between those who are dissident in mind, and by reason of this dissidence are inwardly cold. When, despite this, they live a life of mutual association in externals, as is proper and becoming, the friendly associations involved in their living together can be called simulations-but conjugial simulations. Being praiseworthy on account of the uses [they serve], they are wholly distinct from hypocritical simulations, for by them [goods of the home] are provided for. . . . That they are praiseworthy on account of necessities is because without them those goods would be banished, when nevertheless living together is enjoined [on married partners] by covenant and law and is therefore incumbent upon them both as a duty.*
* 279
Especially with a spiritual man, that is, with one who lives a life of religion, are these simulations not merely pretenses. "The reason is that a spiritual man does what he does from justice and judgment. Therefore he does not view the simulations as alien to his internal affections but as coupled with them, for he acts in earnest and looks to amendment as the purpose."* Indeed,
* 280
he has no other intention than an amendment of their life, and on his part this is brought about by wise and refined conversations and by favors pleasing to the nature of the other. But if these fall upon the ears and touch the conduct of the other partner without effect, then, for the sake of the preservation of order in domestic affairs, for the sake of mutual aid, for the sake of the infants and children, and for similar reasons, he has in mind to make accommodations."*
* 282
18
"He is led to these conjugial simulations from justice, and he carries them into effect from judgment";* for all that he does and says, he does and says from justice and with judgment, and in so doing he acts sincerely in humility before what he knows to be right and good. And besides, he desires to believe, if he does not know from doctrine, which is the truth, that conjugial love may exist where it does not appear;** and he desires to believe, and may inwardly even perceive, if he does not know from doctrine, that by a show of love and reconciliation friendship may return, in which conjugial love lies hidden, on his part if not on the part of his partner.***
* 280
** 531
*** 27
The Imputation of Sin
Now in actual fact, mistakes in regard to marriages are made. Not only are initial choices not always made wisely, but separations may at times take place where accommodations might have been found, and divorces and remarriages may take place where legitimate grounds are lacking. To those who would judge others' spiritual worth in this regard, the Doctrine replies, "Judge not that ye be not condemned." "Conclusions about another, as to whether he has conjugial love or not, are not to be drawn from appearances of marriages, nor from appearances of scortation."* Did not the Lord in His advent say to the accusers of the woman taken in adultery, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."** The truth is that in this regard, as in everything else, "everyone is judged after death according to the intentions of his will and the consequent intentions of his understanding, and according to the confirmations of his understanding and the consequent confirmations of his will."*** And these cannot be known with any degree of certainty on earth. One who therefore may appear guilty in this world may very well be absolved in the next.****
* 531
** Jn. 8:7
*** 485
**** TCR 523; CL 453,527
And to those who may find themselves burdened with guilt in this regard on account of past transgressions-not those who make no account of such transgressions, but those who feel a sense of guilt over them, and still more who accuse themselves on account of them, and who cannot for one reason or another undo what has been done-to them the Doctrines offer the counsel that as in the world there are various circumstances which aggravate offenses and make them more blameworthy, so there are circumstances which mitigate and in the other world excuse them.*
19
Even cases of adultery are not all of equal severity, and some may even be described as relatively mild, according to the degree of knowledge and intent present at the time.** Immaturity, ignorance, stupidity, and other like things, may be advanced as legitimate considerations that may soften the offense.*** And besides, by sincere and genuine repentance, a person can change his entire character,**** and from being in a state of hell may come into a state of heaven which will continue after death,***** an option that remains open throughout life on this earth. Therefore the Lord in His advent said to the woman taken in adultery, "Go, and sin no more".****** And so the Doctrines in this connection cite as an accurate representation of Divine law these verses from Ezekiel: "If the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed . . . and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him."******* For "deeds follow the body into the tomb; but the mind rises again."********
* 530
** 485-494, 530
*** Ibid
**** AR 224:9, et al.
***** 530, et al
****** Jn. 8:11
******* Ezek. 18:21, 22; CL 487 ******** 530
Conclusion: The Christian Commandment
Still, the ideal in marriage is a state of love truly conjugial, and failing that, a marriage of apparent love and friendship, with the hope of an eventual reconciliation in which conjugial love may at some time descend, however long it may take, until death may put an end to what man may not otherwise legitimately put asunder. Separations may at times be necessary, and thus also in order, without blame to him who separates for cause. But separations for reasons that are not truly just and compelling are not heavenly, still less divorces on grounds not justified by Divine law, and still less remarriages that follow divorces that are not so justified. Indeed, the latter are in themselves all infernal,* and they are infernal in the doer according to the knowledge and will with which they are done. They are infernal because they are against the Divine law, that in the world marriages are to continue to the end of life;** and they are evils, because they are against the Divine will, that those made by God in His image and likeness should love one another.*** As the Lord said at the Last Supper, when He established the Christian Church, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."****
20
And in so saying, He did not exclude or exempt husbands and wives.***** They too are to love one another, with a love that imitates His love, with a love that indeed derives from His love.****** If there cannot be love truly conjugial, let there be at least charity, a charity that knows the meaning of mercy and kindness, a charity that unites and does not divide, a charity in which there can be at least a little bit of heaven on earth, derived from the Lord in fidelity to His Word. For as the Lord Himself added, and as He said truly, "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another."*******
* 251, 255, 474, et al.
** 276
*** Cf. Gen. 1, 2
**** Jn. 13:34
***** cf. 62 ff., 125, 131, et al.
****** 131, et al
******* Jn. 13:35
FREDERICK EMANUEL DOERING TRUST EDITOR 1977
Applications for assistance from the above Fund to enable male Canadian students to attend The Academy of the New Church at Bryn Athyn, Pa., U.S.A., for the school year 1977-78 should be received by one of the pastors listed below as early as possible.
Before filling their applications, students should first obtain their acceptance by the Academy immediately, as dormitory space is limited.
Any of the pastors listed below will be happy to give any further information or help that may be necessary.
The Rev. Geoffrey S. Childs The Rev. Frank S. Rose
2 Lorraine Gdns. 58 Chapel Hill Dr. R.R. 2
Islington, Ont. M9B 424 Kitchener, Ont. N2G 3W5
The Rev. William H. Clifford
1536 94th Ave.
Dawson Creek, B. C. VIG 1H1
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
21
NEW LOOK AT THE SOUL AND CREATION FOR A SPECIFIC USE KENNETH ALDEN 1977
The nature of the soul is not an idle topic to keep philosophers and theologians off the streets. For a knowledge of this subject can guide us through some of the most uncertain periods of life: choosing a partner in marriage and selecting which jobs, occupations and uses we will perform. The question that recurs throughout adolescence and young adulthood, and for many, throughout life, is this: are we suited to one use, one type of job, one possible conjugial partner, or can we be suited to any use, any type of job, any available regenerating person of the opposite sex, given enough time and effort on our part or is neither the case?
It is my hope that this topic will be considered from causes and not from effects or appearances, for from effects nothing but effects can be learned, and the confirming of appearances is falsification.* The result of such thinking-that the sun and God, for example, come and go while the earth and man are constant, or that there are three persons in God, can be disastrous if applied to life, though it is not damning to those who have merely spoken or thought according to them. Thus my criticism of any theories is not intended to reflect on their proponents.
* DLW 108, 119
The Soul's Specific Nature
Starting with the premise that God is all life, we read:
As the organs of the external senses or those of the body are receptacles of natural objects, so the organic substances of the internal senses or of the mind are receptacles of spiritual objects. Such being the state of man, what has he that is his own! His being this or that kind of receptacle is not what is his own, since this own is simply what he is in respect to reception, and is not his life's own, for by one's own nothing else is meant by anyone except that one lives from himself, and therefore thinks and wills from himself. But that such an own is not in man, and cannot possibly exist in any man, follows from what has been said above.*
* DP 308
I interpret this to mean that man has nothing that is his own in and from himself but that, nevertheless, his being this or that kind of receptacle is what is himself and is his own in the finite sense.
22
In other words, what is as-if-his-own is the receptacle he is, which nevertheless is from the Lord and is properly His.*
* cf. DP 285:2, 309; DLW 6; AC 3938:2
Since God alone is Life and is infinite, this receptacle which is man must be lifeless and finite by itself. Nevertheless, man is given the appearance that life is his own: he is given the faculties that constitute the understanding and will. These are said to be from the Lord and thus Divine and unable to be appropriated by man* and yet it is through them that man is a man.** Along these lines we read:
* DP 285:2
** Ibid.; DLW 30
If by the soul is meant life, then the Lord alone is life; but if by the soul is meant the interior minds of man, then all those organic substances which are proximate, and their beginnings which follow in order, may be called souls; for instance, the natural mind is the proximate soul of the things which are properly of the body; and the spiritual mind is the soul of those things which are properly of the natural mind; and there is a still more interior soul in man, which is the soul of the things which are of the spiritual mind, and of which man is unaware.*
* SD 2756
From these numbers and some which will follow, it might be said that the receptacle of life which is the man is the appearance that life is one's own; for an appearance is not life, is not infinite, and yet, from Life, is able to feel life as its own and so receive it. Moreover, by definition of its being a perfect appearance, it would have complete freedom.* Equating this receptacle with the human soul,** I would stress that the soul is finite and is of organic substance given by the Lord.
* cf. TCR 498; DP 294:2
** Cf. SD 4627:3; AE 313:14; 18:2-5.
From another angle we read:
The things which are inmost in man are those of his soul . . . the inmost things of man are goods and truths, from which the soul has its life . . .*
* AC 2516:2; cf. DLW 394:2
In man, the most general universal, which contains the singles, is the soul: thus it is also the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord: for this continually inflows, and causes the soul to be such as it is.*
* AC 6115:9
From the doctrine that reception is according to the form of receiving vessel,* (eg. TCR 366) it can he inferred that no two men receive the exact same goods and truths (or life) as each other, for no two men are the same or ever can be.** Another way of starting this is to say that there are no two appearances that life is one's own which are the same.
23
If there were two appearances the same, they would indeed be able to receive the same goods, truths, and life because they would appear as their own; however, they would not be two appearances or two receptacles but one for the reason that differences, spiritually speaking, are differences of state (with a corresponding difference of space and time) and sameness of state brings things closer together so that if two things had the same receptacle or state, they could not be said to be two things. Stated simply: if two souls or receptacles were exactly the same so as to be able to receive the same things from the Lord, they would be the same thing. I do not believe this contradicts the teaching that the Divine is the same in each man*** and each thing,**** for it is also said that
* e.g. TCR 366
** cf. DLW 226, 318:2
*** DLW 78, 124, 128
**** DLW 54
With brute animals the case is similar to what it is with men in respect to influxes and correspondences, namely, that with men there is an influx from the spiritual world and an afflux from the natural world by which they are held together and live: but the very operation exhibits itself in different ways in accordance with the forms of their souls and thence of their bodies. . . . So when spiritual light flows into the souls of brutes, it is received altogether differently, and thus actuates them differently from what it does when it flows into the souls of men.*
* AC 3646
Now then, if humans and animals differ because their souls are different receptacles receiving life in a different way, and if the lower souls (e.g. the natural and spiritual minds) receive life differently because of different reception, and if reason demands different inmost receptacles for different men, it seems reasonable to suppose that finites are correspondentially the same in all degrees and that man's inmost soul is different from every other man's (just as his lower souls and body are) and receives life differently. Thus I am saying that every man, from his inmost origin, is different from every other except that it is the same Divine giving him life.)*
* cf. George De Charms, The Primitive of Man, NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1915, Nov., p. 470
The teachings concerning conception and heredity reinforce this idea. We read:
Since, then, man is not life, but is a recipient of life, it follows that the conception of a man from his father is not a conception of life, but only a conception of the first and purest form capable of receiving life; and to this, as to a nucleus or starting point in the womb, are successively added substances and matters in forms adapted to the reception of life, in their order and degree.*
* DLW 6
Note here that it is talking about the inmost receptacle and also that it is said to be conceived from the father, not merely the father's inmost receptacle instantiated in another external.
24
Thus, while it is said that the father's soul is fully in his seed,* there must be some change at conception which produces a second receptacle capable of receiving life.**
* CL 183, 220, 483
** cf. AC 1921:3, 1999; WE 643, AC 3570:4
Since the inmost is conceived from the father and since it forms the things which follow,* it is not surprising that we find the bodies of sons resembling their fathers;** and also their affections-both good and evil apparently, as we read:
* WE 643; TCR 166, AC 2025:4, 4727:2; HH 39
** AC 6716:2
If affections, which are of the love, are thus derived and handed down from parents, it follows that evils are also, for they are of the affections. . . . As the child grows to boyhood or to youth, he comes from that external to interior things, and at length to his father's reigning love.*
* DP 277:2, 4
In continuing the idea that there are specific inmost souls distinctly different from each other, recall DP 285 above (and also DLW 30), where it says that the faculties of will and understanding constitute man, yet are the Lord's. Though these receptacles are said to be formed in the womb,* still it is said that it is by their means (though not by their own life) that the embryo is formed.** We read:
* DP 328:5; cf. also Wis. II:1
** Wis. II:2
. . . Especially the first forms with man are receptacles of love and wisdom, and that the creation of the other things that constitute the man is effected through these; moreover, no effect exists from itself, but is from a cause prior to it that is called the effecting cause; neither is this from itself, but is from a cause that is called the end.
These numbers are strong testification of the individuality of man's inmost, for specific, non-identical bodies are formed by means of or through these inmost receptacles before there is anything of the man's own life involved. In other words, the form of the inmost soul itself is the only thing which could account for the differences in forms of bodies at birth. (I am not denying the effect of nourishment, disease, and drugs on embryo formation: I am assuming these and maternal heredity to be constant for the sake of the argument. Assuming these, I believe there would still be a difference in bodies at birth due to a difference in inmosts.)
Another way of looking at the distinctness of each man's soul is to note that there is a heaven of these inmost receptacles* and that, being a heaven it must have some perfection, and having some perfection there must be distinct parts in it.
* AC 1999:3, 4
Still another way of seeing the distinctness is to realize that any finite thing, a receptacle included, cannot exist without having quality and form.
25
. . . There cannot be a one without a form, and if there is a one it is a form; for everything existing derives from its form that which is called quality. . . . Wherefore that which is destitute of form has not anything whatever of quality, and that which has not anything of quality is also in reality nothing at all.*
* DP 4:2; cf. LJ 12:4
(That man's inmost receptacle is a form.*)
* See DLW 6; cf. DLW 15
Again, if two people had the same spiritual quality and form they would be the same person and in the same things.
There never exists in any one man (in whom yet there are innumerable parts which constitute his body, and innumerable affections which constitute his mind) any one thing quite alike, or identical with any one thing in another man; hence it is that everyone leads a life distinct from the life of another.*
* LJ 13; italics added
Since the soul is in the singulars specific to a man,* and not in those of another man, it might be concluded that the "any one thing" above applies to the man's inmost soul as well.
* AC 2025:4
From the reasoning so far, it is clear that from man's very origin and nature no two men are or can be the same in anything. I do not view this as a restriction on man's freedom because freedom must be in relation to a love. Each love has freedom in all things pertaining to it but is unable to experience any love or freedom which is not itself, very much in the same way that no two people's experiences can be the same though their experience is of the same thing, experience being defined as what goes on inside you in relation to an external event. A specific example is that males cannot have experiences of either feminine affection or thought. It is outside their love and freedom. The closest they can come is to imagine and call forth analogous affections and thoughts which remain, nevertheless, wholly masculine. Moreover, it can be said that no male can want to be at all feminine (other than what he things is feminine) any more than a devil can want to be at all angelic. Such a change would destroy the love, life, and freedom of that individual.
How, then, does a man become angelic from being unregenerate whereas a male cannot become a female? I would say that the male does not have the female loves potential to him, but that both the natural and the spiritual affections are all potentially available to the unregenerate man, potential to his freedom, but that they are not all active and operating in an unregenerate state. Gradually, with the Lord's help, the higher degrees of the man's love can be opened and the lower degrees be made subordinate to them. As a comparison it might be said that a hand which steals is totally opposite to one which receives-in-order-to-give, with no connection between them, yet the hand by itself can be the same hand (right or left, male or female)-it is the subordination which determines the evil or good quality and the opposition of its states.
26
Thus any inmost soul has potentially its own love to the Lord, love to the neighbor, love to the world and love of self and these make a one when properly subordinated. Regeneration involves, not a change of these loves from a love of self to a love to the Lord, but a change in subordination and in the active reigning seat of the man's love and end so that the man becomes completely reformed within the loves potential to him. In our analogy, it was not a case of the right hand becoming a left hand but in its response to life. I hasten to point out that this doctrine is not applicable to life directly, e.g. adultery does not become subordinated to love to the Lord: adultery must be put away entirely. What is subordinated are such things as love of self, pride, love of the sex, etc. Evils and sins cannot be subordinated but must be shunned. Thus it is inverted order as it appears in specific acts and day to day events that are shunned while the component parts are not put away but are thereby given a new order.
Further, if more than one soul were identical with identical loves potential to each, freedom would not be increased but restricted both in the sense that one person's choice would take away that choice from another (since no two things can be the same as referenced above; also see AC 10200:e) and in the sense that there would not be anything that could really appear as one's own. Also it would not account for why there are two sexes or why all regenerate people do not choose to be the governor of the most exalted society in heaven, that being the highest use, and one of the ends of the Lord's will being that man should be as happy as possible.
However, if, as I am arguing the Writings teach, man has a specific soul of specific quality and form, he would have an as-of-self which could appear completely his own and give him complete freedom-especially when it is considered that every quality is of infinite extension* and man's mind is composed of innumerable affections.** No matter where one chose to go, everything which could be experienced would be able to appear as one's own because it "belonged" to him alone in potential. To see that this is so, ask whether anyone really feels restricted by not being able to have the experience of the opposite sex? If it can be assumed that the highest happiness consists in man's feeling life as his own (this being derived from consideration of the three essentials of the Lord's love as given,*** and from the fact that eternal residence in hell is willed above non-existence and that residence in heaven, where life is felt as most distinctly one's own, is willed supremely) it can be seen that those performing different uses in the celestial heaven, or those of opposite sexes, can be equally happy because they are their own love and can perform a use as of themselves which no one else can rightly perform because they are not the same person.
27
Thus while the use may appear more "exalted", it may afford equal happiness to a "common" use. It appears, also,**** that the celestial kingdom does not have governors and therefore, perhaps, no differential exaltation of use in the sense we usually conceive of. But that is another study.
* AE 453
** LJ 13
*** TCR 43
**** HH 213-220
It may be argued that the Lord would have to act differently toward one man than toward another in creating different forms for their souls when yet He is in everything the same* and wills equal happiness for all. This, however, does not disturb me too much at present since it may be our democratic idea of equality which is at fault, and since the Lord willed that there be finites created and this in itself implies a selection from among the infinite, thus an acting differently. Also, it is according to Divine order that no two finites can be alike.** In fact it is said that it is provided that "what is absolutely the same is never found either in the spiritual world or in the natural."*** Further, by creating as-of-selves of distinct qualities, Be is not acting differently, since they are all equally as-of-self, which they could not be otherwise and which I have suggested is the essential of happiness and of creation. Still further, viewed over eternity, there is not really an acting differently toward one than another because "all" forms are "eventually" created, making one, "complete" Gorand Man. Moreover, there may be interesting implications in the teachings that the first of this finite receptacle, the soul, is the Lord's.****
* DLW 181124, 128
** cf. DLW 226
*** AC 10, 200:e
**** SD 3474; DP 285:2, etc.
In a way, it matters little whether you say the Lord created a finite love which chose a distinct form in order to feel the as-of-self, or that the Lord created a distinct form to finite a love so it could feel an as-of-self, except that it is taught that it is through Divine truth that things are created and which causes the soul to be such as it is,* and that seeds, understood spiritually, are truths. Still, neither truth nor good, form nor quality, can exist apart from each other. At any rate, it is sufficient and safe to say here that the soul is finite and of a distinct form from conception on and that the man is distinct from all others on this account.
*AC 6115:3, 4; cf. AC 10334
Specific Uses From Specific Souls
From the preceding discussion and the knowledge that use is the complex, containant, and basis of love and wisdom (or good and truth, quality and form, etc.),* it follows that specific use must come from a soul of specific quality and form.
28
In addition it is taught that nothing is created but uses,** that all things are formed from use, in use and for use,*** that the uses of all things, and from the forms, are the recipients of life,**** that use exists before the organic forms of the body come forth,***** and that love, wisdom, and use inflow into the soul, constituting and propagating man.****** The second to last idea may be applicable to the soul if the last idea is taken into account with the additional knowledge, seen earlier,******* and that the soul is both a form and is organic. These teachings, together with the idea that men are specific creations, forms, receptacles and organs, indicate that there is a specific use associated with each man from his very origin and at the moment of first life and that no others can ever duplicate this use. Further, it is taught that men, spiritually speaking, are forms of their own use,******** that men are distinguished from others by the use loved********* with no-one's uses or delights the same as another's,********** and that man is created to do uses.*********** If it is true, then, that man is a form of a specific use from his inmosts to outmosts it may be that "his" could be emphasized a little more where it says that man is happiest doing use, use being to do the work of his office or employment,************ the works not flowing from one's occupation not being regarded as uses but as alms, benefactions and gratuities.*************
* DLW 213, 230
** DLW 308, 327, 329
*** CL 183:5; SD 3574; AE 1194:2. e
**** DLW 66, 307; Love IV:3
***** AC 4223:3
****** CL 183:4
******* DLW 6; SD 2755
******** AC 9297:4; HH 517:3; AE 1226:8; Love X, XIII: 3, 4, etc.
********* AC 4459:7
********** HH 405:2
*********** TCR 67:2; AC 1103, SD 29228; AE 1194:2, 1226:6
************ AC 7038; DLW 431; CL 6:5, 16:3; Love VI
************* Love XIII.
My general understanding is that a person's occupation is not to be directly equated with his use, absolutely speaking (especially in this less-than-ideal world), in the sense that choice of occupation is often limited and in that it takes time to discover one's use and a corresponding
occupation. Nor do I understand it to be a static, singular thing but a dynamic, ever-expanding and ever-deepening thing which becomes more and more distinct and delightful. (It seems that after death it is only developed by impletion, though.)* So my understanding is not that, "Because you are a stone mason, therefore that is your eternal use," but, "If you are a spiritual stone mason, you are a unique one and hopefully will be working with spiritual stone in this world as well as in the next, the uniqueness and breadth of your use perpetually increasing."
* HH 469:3
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The Diverse Nature of the Soul and of its Uses
This paper, so far, has concentrated on only one side of the mythical blindman's elephant. There is another side we ought to take a peek at before saying we have begun to glimpse man's nature.
It was pointed out above that every quality is of infinite extension* and that man's mind is composed of innumerable affections,** implying that man's specificity as a distinct form has essentially limitless breadth and depth. This implication is reinforced by the teachings that man is a form of all uses with all created uses corresponding to all uses in him,*** that every use is representative of all uses in the whole body,**** that there are both continuous and discrete degrees to every form, use and affection, both spiritual and natural,***** that perfection increases with prior, simple things****** which have innumerable things in them,******* and that a spirit is a complex of all affections, being a least form of heaven.********
* AE 453
** LJ 13
*** DLW 298; CL 18:1, 2; Love V: 4
**** Love XII:4; DLW 311-319
***** Love XI
****** DLW 204
******* DLW 228
********AE 831:2
I see the variation in man relating to his being uniquely specific in these ways: first, there are the general teachings that perfection of anything increases with the number and diversity of the parts making it up;* also, it is taught that the genera and species of man's affections are so conjoined as to act as a one.** Second, by forms of all uses present in man there is communication by correspondence between the man and all societies of heaven.*** Third, there is a teaching that many things must be constant, including the organic forms of the body, for there to be variety.**** In regard to the latter, it is known that the soul of man is both organic***** and constant, at least in the organic sense.******
* as in HH 418:2; DP 4:4
** DP 308
*** Cf. AE 837:2
**** DP 190:1-3
***** SD 2756
****** TCR 366
As an illustration of this constancy, specificity, and generality, let us compare a man to an individual muscle cell in the body.
It is known that no two muscle cells are ever alike and that the use of a cell preceded the cell and directed its formation so that it is uniquely adapted to its own place in the muscle tissue. Moreover, it is a descendant of cells very much like itself. Within that cell are many parts with diverse uses corresponding to the uses of the body of which it is a part. It has skins, methods of ingesting and processing foods, methods of excretion, a type of breathing, circulation, reproduction, and many other uses.
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These not only communicate with the uses of the body by correspondence but often in actuality as well: the "skin" attaches to the "skins" of other cells and eventually to various membrane coverings which finally connect to the connective tissue of the skin itself; the food the digestive system processes is ingested and processed by corresponding systems in the cells; and eventually to various membrane coverings which finally connect to the connective tissue of the skin itself; the food the digestive system processes is ingested and processed by corresponding systems in the cells; oxygen and carbon dioxide are handled by both "breathing" systems, liquids are circulated between the two, etc. The variety possible to its constant form can better be seen on the level of the whole muscle where a muscle's form remains constant as well as its limits of functioning, but it can vary unendingly in the amount, strength and speed of contraction.
The following arguments relate the specific to the diverse even further.
Heaven is distinguished into as many societies as there are organs, viscera, and members in a man; and in those, no part can be in any place but its own. . . . The man who suffers himself to be led to heaven is continually prepared by the Lord for his own place, which is done by means of such an affection of good and truth as corresponds with it. In this place also every man-angel is enrolled after his departure from the world. This is the inmost purpose of the Divine Providence respecting heaven.*
* DP 68
This passage has extra force if it is assumed that man is unique from his origin with a unique use suited to a form corresponding to that of his soul. The passage itself may imply a use or place existing prior to a man's exercising any affection by means of which he is led there.* It also may imply that man, by leading himself, can come into a place not his own.
* See also HH 517:3
Now as the human form is such that all the parts make a general whole which acts as one, it follows that one part cannot be moved out of place and changed in state, unless with the consent of the rest; for if one were removed from its place and changed in state, the form which acts as one would suffer. . . . So the Lord acts upon the universal angelic heaven, . . . So too, does He act upon each angel. . . . But it should be well noted that the Lord also acts upon the particulars in man singly, yes, upon the veriest singulars, but at the same time through all things of his form; but He does not change the state of any pare or of any thing in particulars, unless suitably to the whole form.*
* DP 121
Here, too, it might be implied that a man could alter his place in the Gorand Man by his own choice or by the Lord's leading if suitable use would be accomplished by such a change. There are also teachings which say man, by his life, "induces a form on the purest substances of his interiors so that it may be said that he forms his own soul, that is, its quality.*
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That this is not the inmost soul is evident from teachings that man's inmost things are in a most perfect state,** and cannot be injured,*** are near the Lord,**** and are the Lords.***** Further it is said man forms his corporeal and natural soul in the life of the body and the Lord forms the interior and inmost soul.****** While these numbers certainly apply to man's choice among the discrete degrees of his life which heaven or hell he wishes to go to-they may also apply to his ability to choose among the continuous degrees of his life-among the various affections corresponding to all uses of the body. The concept is of a variety within the constancy of the soul's nature.
* AC 5847
** AC 5147, 6135:2
*** SD 2194
**** AC 7910:e
***** SD 3474
****** SD 2794
This latter implication seems reasonable since, if all these affections, corresponding to the extensive continuous degrees of the inmost soul, are available to him as parts of his specific form and use, there seems to be no reason why he could not emphasize any of them he pleased and so alter his appearance and usefulness. This is commonly done in the body by exercising, different amounts of muscle being required in various places for different jobs and skills. A better illustration is seen in this: it is possible for a man to exercise feminine virtues and skills and even upset his hormone system, etc., so as to become very much like a woman physically and socially. While it remains true that he is still masculine in every part by definition of his having a masculine soul, his usefulness has been altered significantly (if not destroyed) from that which was his by creation. My point is that perhaps one can, by exercising and emphasizing various affections and abilities available to him, strengthen the organization of these affections and abilities so as to be the direct embodiment of his own organization or change the organization so as to simulate the organization of someone else and perform their uses, though imperfectly. That men do have wide varieties of states and uses, at least on earth and before they come to their place in heaven or hell, can be inferred from the fact that man as to his spirit is transferred from society to society in both heaven and hell until he eventually comes to his own place.
If it is possible that man's "own place" can be altered in the continuous degrees as well as in the discrete ones, it would offer an explanation for the strong appearance that man has the ability to do so-to perform any use he chooses. It would also offer an explanation, if one is needed, for what happens when some person chooses a place other than the celestial heaven. The argument would run that if every member increases the perfection of heaven, the selection of hell or a lower heaven by a man would detract from that perfection since the place corresponding to his unique soul would never be filled.
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If it were assumed that one's place could be altered by appropriate exercise, then those men who had similarly formed souls could, led by the use of minimizing the implicit detraction from the Gorand Man, emphasize affections that would partially simulate those of the missing spirit. Thus the defect would, like a wound, be repaired with some "scarring" or initial lack of suppleness because of the demands of the situation. The assumption is that there is greater use in having the missing use partially performed, though not as well, than in not having it performed at all. As an analogy we can see that when tissue such as the skin is destroyed, other similar tissue (i.e. skin tissue) can be grafted or grow over to fill the missing use but only with scarring and a less perfect fulfillment of it-though certainly it is better than the open wound.
Further, this theory supports the idea that development in many areas, but organized and concentrated around a specific area, may lead to perfection and be most useful, since this is the theory's model of how the potential uses are organized from the soul's very creation. In no sense should it be inferred that this theory "sticks" man with a circumscribed, static, job.
This theory also offers an explanation for conjugial partners "born for each other." If it can be argued that the order for the birth of all men follows that for those married in heaven* (i.e., that every one has someone for whom he was born, it being assumed that it is only after birth that disorder affects the unition or separation of these pairs), then there traditionally arises the problem for those who believe man is created for a specific use of what happens when one of them, in perfect freedom, chooses a lower heaven or hell.
* CL 316
There is no need to assume that the single angelic partner would have to remain eternally single, settle for a less than conjugial marriage, or be forced to go to hell as well, if it is assumed that appropriate exercise of affections can alter one's place in the other world. In this case the Lord from His foresight would lead the new potential partners to a marriage that would begin to fill the use left vacant. True, the marriage on the planes far above consciousness would not be as perfect but neither would the Gorand Man be. Under the circumstances introduced by the fact of evil, such a marriage would be the most useful and happy marriage possible. And, since it was an as-of-self effort to perform a use that needed doing, and which they were best suited to perform under the circumstances, not only would there be no perception that a spirit was missing from heaven or that their places were altered, but they would be just as happy as if things had been more ideal. Delight is really in willing to perform a use that needs performing, especially if it can be done well. But even if the logical conclusion of this theory sounds non-ideal, the theory encourages a life that will be most ideal, as I will try to show in the next section.
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To sum up: the concept now forming is one of a man specifically and distinctly created so that nothing in him is, or can be, identical with anything in another person, yet who has such variety of parts and scope that they are innumerable and correspond to all uses. My idea of his "specific use" is of a central ability and inclination which organizes all his parts to form a unique "one" suitable for performing unique, nonduplicable services. But since man's choice is between the loves potential to him and shown to him in ultimates, it is possible that he can be led to his own use (which is the inmost of Providence), can lead himself away from this central area and organization, or be led away by the Lord to a new place if the uses of the Gorand Man consent.
Application
The main reason I favor the theory of man's nature presented here, and summed up just above, over those of a strict "man-is-created-for-a-specific-use" or "man-is-able-to-be-a-form-of-any- use," is the application it has to life. To my thinking, the idea that man is able to be a form of any use tends to encourage one's natural desires by the appearance that the best thing to do is simply what you want to do and think you will enjoy. This appearance provides a perfect stage for indulging whims and phantasies that lead to illusory happiness and little which is of use. The idea that man is created for a specific use which he cannot avoid performing can also encourage the feeling that it does not really matter what one does (here, because whatever is done is inevitably within your proper use) and thus the appearance that you might as well do what you please as long as it is not openly evil. Another possibility is that it encourages people to hold onto occupations or dreamed-of occupations excessively long because they have convinced themselves it was their use.
In courtship, too, poor attitudes can be encouraged by these ideas. The appearance that it does not matter whom you marry as long as you are "happy" can be due either to the idea that there are no inherent restrictions in choice and that all it takes is a little time to grow together, or to the idea that whomever you marry is bound to be the right one both because you are so regenerate, and because you fell in love after the pattern of your favorite memorable relation.
While these oversimplified characterizations of the two theories of man's use do not have that dramatic an effect on most adults, the appearances do exist with these theories, and can come up perniciously in the adolescent years when ideals are instilled. If this happens they can stay with the individual tenaciously, possibly subtly influencing his decisions and outlook throughout life or during key decisions.
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Although it is not a perfectly adequate theory theoretically or practically, I find that it tends to add more use of reason to the problems of occupation and marriage. Since you do not know your use, and since you are in danger of developing affections that can alter your place in heaven adversely, there is motivation to figure out what you are useful for and what uses there are that have need of your offerings and not just blithely carry on with whatever is pleasant so long as it doesn't appear "bad". To find out what you are useful for you must assess the abilities, talents, skills, inclinations, desires, and affections the Lord has given you and add them up for your total offering. You must also keep your eye open for uses that need an offering like yours since these are the way by which the Lord can lead you to the place in heaven where you are most needed. Putting your greatest talent and affection where there is the greatest need should also produce the greatest use-which is the real recipe for happiness. And, too, this theory acknowledges that everything-talents, affections, uses, indications-is from the Lord (since they are to be assessed as gifts) and that they are to be used as if they were one's own (since the man must assess them), in a way I think the others may not.
In courtship too, use must be emphasized, for it is the prime indicator of who the two of you are, and how specifically conjugial you may be. Both of you must be looking to the same use so that you will be working together for the same end. It must be a real use-both in and beyond the home, one that will still be there after the children have left-that is the only way to really begin to assess a love to see if it is eternal. You must know what you have to offer and see what the other person has to offer in order to see if there is that use between you. And a focus on use can help in recognizing selfish thoughts by the very contrast. After marriage, of course, if the use was not found to be as common to both of you as originally thought, it is clear that the marriage should be continued as much as possible as if it were. If the Writings urge you to act sincerely, justly, faithfully, etc. in that work in which you are employed, how much more important is it to act so in the use of marriage in which you are. Again, by use in marriage I do not mean occupation as much as a direction of affection and thought applied to some useful expression(s).
Conclusion
As I acknowledged above, the concepts presented in this paper are far from complete. And since some of them are somewhat new and controversial I chose to present them as theories rather than as doctrine. Hopefully they are not my own but are truly from the Lord, thus teaching about realities in life. But even so, I urge their careful scrutiny and discussion lest appearances of truth be confirmed and not the truth itself.
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NEW CHURCH AND PRESENT DAY TRENDS IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY (I) DANDRIDGE PENDLETON 1977
Today's world is a confusion of tongues. Many speak; few understand. Crisis follows upon crisis. The clamor arises on every side: "something must be done!" Yet there is little agreement as to what this "something" shall be. Blame and counter-blame are leveled and discharge their poison across chasms of misunderstanding, prejudice, and fear. And all the while the colossus of doom hulks ever larger, ever more imminent.
Is this a true picture of the world in which we live? Yes; but it is not a complete picture; indeed, it is far from a complete picture, although it would be difficult to substantiate this claim if the various news media were our only source of information.
As New Church men and women, we possess a unique opportunity-an opportunity open to no other group of people on this earth today. For of all the world's inhabitants, we have a revelation of spiritual doctrine from which-if we utilize it properly-we can see the condition of things on the natural plane from a perspective that has genuine balance: a perspective which can enable us to select out of the confusion those elements of human thought and research which are rightly motivated and directed.
Selectivity-this is the word to describe the necessity that lies before you in your confrontation with life. The means, and from these means the ability, to discern and separate the grain from the chaff amidst the welter of men's opinions and arguments. This assumes, of course, that there are those men outside of the New Church who are genuinely motivated in both their intent and their projected results. To recognize these men, these genuine thoughts, opinions, and activities in the world at large, is one of the chief tasks, one of the main challenges, of our generation. It is not a challenge easily met, nor a task easily fulfilled. For the objects of our search, while they do exist, are scattered and obscured like a few kernels of wheat amongst a vast granary filled with husks. It will not be easy, because it will involve a double obligation: we have to direct your energies outward in this quest, while at the same time maintaining and forwarding the internal strength and development of the Church.
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And first we must pierce the swirling cloud of negativism which has so obscured any possible sight of the Lord's providence at work, and any real acknowledgment of that providence.
To dismiss negativism does not mean to close our eyes to the existence and the awful power of evil. It does not mean assuming a pretense that all is right with God's world, that men are "inherently good" (we know that they are not), or a whole host of other wishful falsehoods. It does mean developing a balanced judgment with reference to humanity and its condition. And this judgmental balance, while is true source lies before us for the taking in the pages of the Word, requires more than simply doctrinal knowledge on our part. There must be something positive-something upon which a constructive posture may stand-seen within the many negative factors and conditions which admittedly exist around us. Otherwise our acknowledgment remains a matter of spiritual theory which seems to find little substantiation in the factual world of human affairs. In short, we need confirming evidence, not to acknowledge the spiritual theory, but to contain and strengthen and build that theory into an ultimate, living reality in our own lives.
This evidence is not lacking. The problem is that our eyes are not trained to see the evidence. It will be my purpose, in the next two brief articles, to direct attention to several aspects of this evidence as it is contained in certain trends in modern Christian theological and philosophical speculation-speculation, which on first and surface exposure, seems nothing but shocking and destructive of all that is genuinely religious, but when viewed from the deeper and broader currents of spiritual doctrine opens up to our sight a whole new area of potential for the Lord's leading of men out of darkness into light.
SCANDINAVIAN DISTRICT ASSEMBLY EDITOR 1977
All members and friends of the General Church are cordially invited to attend a Scandinavian District Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem to be held in the Stockholm area on April 8th to 10th, 1977. The Right Reverend Louis B. King, Bishop, presiding.
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ON SWEDENBORG'S BIRTHDAY AND THE CALENDAR GEOFFREY B. MYERS 1977
A book* dealing with the science of Astrology lists the birth date of Emanuel Swedenborg as February 8, 1688. This date would seem to be at variance with the date of January 29th celebrated by the New Church. However, investigation shows the astrologers are quite sound in their reasoning for giving a date ten days later than the traditional. The reason is as follows: in the year 1582 there was calculated to be an accumulated error of ten days in the calendar then in use. This was the so-called Julian calendar authorized by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. To correct this error, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day following October 4th, 1582 should be called October 15th, thus dropping ten days and bringing the calendar back in line. One other slight innovation was made to the old Julian Calendar by Pope Gregory, and this new calendar is the one that we use throughout the world today and is known as the Gregorian calendar. Many people keep distinctive calendars for religious uses but the Gregorian is the official one for civil use. However, in 1582 there was considerable opposition to the Papal decree and while most of the Catholic nations accepted the change, some of the Protestant nations, including Sweden, did not accept it until nearly 200 years later! Therefore January 29th, 1688 in Sweden was still Julian or O.S. (old style) reckoning and this date would correspond to February 8th in our present Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar was decreed to be in use for the American Colonies in the year 1752 and by that time the error had amounted to 11 days. For example: George Washington was born on February 11th, 1732 O.S. but after 1752 his birthday was celebrated on February 22nd.
* Astrological Index to the World's Famous People, by Michael Cooper and Andrew Weaver-Doubleday and Co. Inc., New York, 1975.
Astrologers, being very precise and exacting people, wish to know under what constellation a person was born, or what is the same, what was the position of the earth in its orbit around the sun at the time of a person's birth; so, using their calculations, Swedenborg was born when the earth was in a position as of February 8th, and not January 29th.
To avoid confusion resulting from attempting to calculate the number of days elapsed between two dates, scientists use a system known as 'Julian Day Numbers', these are simply numerically consecutive days commencing on January 1st, 4713 B.C.
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The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac* gives January 29th, 1688 as J.D. #233 7618 and the J.D. # for January 29th, 1977 as 244 3173; so we may calculate that exactly 105,555 days have elapsed since Swedenborg was born until his birthday in 1977.
* The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac for 1971. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
While on the subject of calendars, I wonder if anyone in the New Church has ever thought of a distinctive New Church calendar? As the Old Church starts theirs with the first coming of the Lord into the world, why not a calendar commencing anew with the second coming? After all, the Jews have their own calendar, and the Mohammedans and others have theirs. But if we started a new calendar for the New Church we would have to have new names for the months. The old names of Roman emperors and pagan gods would not do. We could use the names of the twelve apostles whom the Lord sent out into the Spiritual World on the nineteenth of June in the year 1770 (see TCR 791) and as Latin is the original language of the New Church, we could use the twelve Latin names of the Apostles for the months. In the order listed in the twelfth chapter of Matthew they would be as follows:
I. Petre VI. Joannes VII. Thomas X. Thaddae
II. Andrea V. Phillippe VIII. Matthia XI. Sirnon
III. Jacobe-major VI. Bartholomaee IX. Jacobe-minor XII. Judas
The 19th day of June 1977 would read as follows: PRIMUS PETRE, CCVII. A.N.E. (The first day of the month of Peter in the year 207. i.e., 207 years after the year 1770.)-(A.N.E. stands for Anno Nova Ecclesia). We would also need new names for the days of the week. Could we use the seven churches mentioned in Revelation for that?
ANNOUNCEMENT EDITOR 1977
There will be an open meeting of the International Executive Committee of the Sons of the Academy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the weekend of February 5-6, 1977. All members of the Sons of the Academy are welcome.
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CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESS EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
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It has often been remarked that acceptance of the Writings as Divine Revelation depends on two factors: (1) the nature and rationality of the material itself, also "the self-evidencing reason of love" and perception; (2) the credibility and character of the witness of the Lord's Second Coming, Emanuel Swedenborg.
In this stage of the human race and the New Church, these two factors seem to be interdependent in man's states of acceptance. That is, though the first is primary in importance, it can be affected and either enhanced or impeded by the second. This means that when the character and credibility of the witness is questioned, even unintentionally, it has some diminishing effect in the mind upon the Divinity and authority of the Revelation itself.
As an example, if we are unduly, though unconsciously, influenced by the insufficient physical data so far gathered concerning the known planets, we can be misled into supposing that conflicting statements in the Writings in that field are either (1) errors on Swedenborg's part, or (2) that he was deceived by the spirits involved (errors, it may be remarked, which in such case must have been repeated thousands of times), or (3) the physical details given are to be viewed as true only on their inner, spiritual plane.
This writer would not suppose that either of the first two alternatives could be entertained seriously by students who have recently read or reviewed Swedenborg's closely reasoned philosophical works, or who are familiar with the various stages of his development in his preparatory transitional period (1744-1748).
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References to these are numerous, and can be furnished on request. And, as an aside, it is curious to find that scientists of top flight will only observe that life and human life as we know it, (a VIQ-Very Important Qualification) cannot exist on certain other earths, due to the absence of amino acids, the scarcity of atmosphere and oxygen, the extremes of temperature, etc.
We come, then, to the third alternative. And this involves the idea that, though the witness must have been aware of the fictitious character of the natural details given by spirits, he still, and deliberately, included these for the sake of the spiritual sense, perhaps being "commanded by the Lord" to do so, as in the case of the Memorable Relations.
Whether we agree with this theory or not, one thing should be considered by both its proponents and opponents: viz. that it can open the door wide for all kinds of irresponsible speculations, and the interpretations of self-intelligence. It can also become an intellectual evasion called, in the vernacular, "a cop-out!" Our individual understandings are so limited that, failing to understand the external details of the sense of the letter, we are tempted to "flee to the mountain" rather than patiently awaiting further information and an increase in intellect.
We are here in no sense demeaning the laudable attempts of anyone who is trying to see and grasp the inner significances of such materiel. We are, however, suggesting that it is questionable to do so from an assumption that the witness, though being fully cognizant after 12 years of spiritual-world experience, deliberately continued to include such details; we are, of course, referring to the Earths in the Universe, published in 1758 after the last judgment, and containing substantially the same material as in the Arcana Coelestia and the Spiritual Diary. We would also suggest that we might be in danger thereby of removing or damaging the literal sense, the foundation, basis and containant without which the spiritual sense perishes.
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LIFE AFTER LIFE ERIK E. SANDSTROM 1977
Dear Editor:
It is evident from numerous comments in New Church publications that the book Life After Life, by Dr. Raymond Moody has had a remarkable impact on New Church men and women. The same appears to be the case in regard to the book by Dr. Kubler-Ross.
The Article entitled "Another Confirmation," by Dr. Wilson Van Dusen* brings out the value that the world of experience has to offer to corroborate and confirm what the Heavenly Doctrines have revealed to mankind. We should all be grateful to Dr. Van Dusen in his unstinting efforts to bring the light of doctrine to bear on the realm of human psychology.
* NEW CHURCH LIFE, NOV., p. 484
He mentions the slight anachronism between the two sets of evidence. The evidence presented by Dr. Moody in Life After Life, is that experiences of a spiritual kind begin with the loss of consciousness, and the entry into a "dark tunnel." This finds no verification in the Doctrines. The being of light attested to by scores of personal witnesses, Dr. Van Dusen feels could be the celestial or spiritual angels which Swedenborg encountered in his unique journey. Also relatives and friends were encountered earlier than in Swedenborg's account, since such family reunions come only after resuscitation is completed, and man has entered into his first state in the World of Spirits.* On this anachronism, Dr. Van Dusen expresses his view, that the "Three days would seem more symbolic of a full change into the spiritual world, rather than a necessary period of time. . . . The process is also swifter (taking place in seconds, not days) than Swedenborg implied."**
* HH 494
** NEW CHURCH LIFE, NOV., p. 486
Now we have to face what constitutes Revelation. Would anything be revealed which man can find out for himself? Swedenborg experienced resuscitation from the dead, something which no one, all of Dr. Moody's witnesses, or Dr. Van Dusen himself inclusive, has experienced. Dr. Van Dusen does however admit that every witness, himself inclusive, "comes back," or is sent back. Therefore, they never reached the experience which Swedenborg, under Divine guidance, recorded.
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I am in no way denying the value of the evidence supplied by Dr. Moody, Dr. Kubler-Ross, or Dr. Van Dusen. But the two sets of evidence are not comparable, but should be regarded as sequential. Swedenborg was not led to describe the first stages of the withdrawal of the spirit from the body, including the encounter of relatives and friends, and seeing the 'being of light'. Presumably, even the Lord knows that this falls within the realm of common experience, and thus has no need of being revealed. Instead, Swedenborg was led to experience the actual revival, the crossing over beyond the point of return, and to describe the spiritual forces at work in a subjective and most powerful way. This description is, and always will be, unique,-until that is, we all become witnesses to it, once and once only in our "life-time".
Sincerely,
ERIK E. SANDSTROM,
London, England
INTERNAL SENSE IN THE WRITINGS N. J. BERRIDGE 1977
Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:
I was greatly delighted with Dr. Van Dusen's communication on "An Internal Sense in the Writings"* partly because I happened to read it immediately after rereading Rev. P. V. Vickers' book, God-Talk and Man-Talk.** In that book Paul Vickers places much emphasis on the emptiness and variability of terms and on the need to experience the real things that the terms stand for (or represent or correspond to) and it seemed a specially meaningful experience for me to come at the same time to two such different expressions (i.e., Vickers' and Van Dusen's) of the same thing. As a further example of the parallelism of thought I note that Paul Vickers says our state of mind is of wanting and reasoning together. Man, he says, is not a thinking machine, the wanting side is the real person (ch. 3 sec. A.) Wilson Van Dusen, quoting from his article Love in Understanding,*** says that "we should always act simultaneously with our feeling and understanding." (P.V.V. indicates that we cannot help doing so!)
* New-Church Magazine, Vol. 95 No. 676 p. 41 (General Conference of the New Church, 20 Bloomsbury Way, London) 1976.
** God-talk and Man-talk, (General Conference of the New Church) 1970
*** NEW CHURCH LIFE, September 1975.
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One cannot but feel the unlimited scope for studies of this nature ("I have set before you an open door") but brevity is essential for prompt communication. I will therefore be content with an expression of gratitude to both authors (and to the Lord) and merely record some of my own responses to Dr. Van Dusen's article. Comments that appeared at first original eventually turned out to be re-wordings of points already made or briefly touched upon by Dr. Van Dusen, but perhaps my pedestrian approach will be of use to other plodders.
(1) I suggest the reading of the whole of AC 3057 as it seems easier to understand the whole than a part. However it doesn't actually state that its inner sense is your experience of it.
(2) "The rest is removed outside the city." No! The doctrinals (= conclusions from memory knowledge) form the city. The generals (camels) which are to receive influx are removed to a place outside the city.
(3) ". . . look foolish to those who . . . reject this personalizing of doctrine." The Writings are very clear that the doctrines must be lived, so how can any-one who believes them "reject this personalizing of doctrine," without embracing "faith alone"? Of course they may not like to call it an "inner sense"
(4) "The inner sense of the Writings is my actual experience" and a little later "The inner sense of the whole of the Writings is our actual experience of the truth of the Writings". As what the Writings say is true it must be possible for us (or some of us) to experience it. Some may feel that such a level of experience is beyond their reach or their state of regeneration and that it would be presumptuous to suppose that they could reach it. But it should be noted that the word "reformation" is used in AC 3057 and this is a state before regeneration. Add to this that there are so many levels of the internal sense of the Word, the Writings giving "very few things," and it seems reasonable to suppose that the least of us can receive something from everything.
(5) In the Word there is a marriage of good and truth. So both good and truth are in the Word. But how can good be there? It is easy to see the truth (if you agree with it) but the good is not obvious. In this respect it is useful to remember that the Word is not the book nor the marks on the paper nor the images in our minds that these marks evoke but it is the Lord flowing into the concepts and ideas that these images produce, as far as such a flow is possible. Where the ideas are predominantly of self such flow will be minimal; where they are of good loves the flow will be generous and full.
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A full and generous flow will be of feelings-such things as gratitude, peace, joy, humility, love, wonder and worship-all things of good-and the truth in the sense of knowledge, fact, and logic does not flow in, but these things (learned via ultimates) are made alive by the feelings that are flowing in.
So I think the internal sense that Wilson Van Dusen has experienced is the influx of the good and as such it is not just another de-coding. There is no question of "another Swedenborg" (c.f., Roy Nicholls)* to explain the inner sense of the Writings. This sense of good or love is particularly unlimited-again an open door-we are on the threshold and it is only our own finiteness which can limit our experience.
* New Church Magazine, Vol. 95 No. 675 p. 29.
I believe that as a Church we have scarcely begun to understand what the Writings really mean, which is to say that the implications of the doctrinal side have yet to be fully worked out. Even more so are we as yet only at the beginning of appreciating that other sense-the appeal to affections. Yet whether we appreciate it or not it has surely already exerted a powerful effect on many people. Is it not this which causes us to study and try to understand and then apply the Writings?
What makes W.V.D.'s thesis so attractive is that he is stating (as he himself says) what has been quite obvious to many for a long time but yet has not been put clearly into words, namely that "All religion has relation to life." All religion! When this means all the Writings it is a very difficult thing to put into a few words.
Dr. van Dusen knows, probably better than most of us that belief in a thing (e.g., your own courage and strength; conversely your own sickness) can produce, or at least tend to produce the thing believed in, hence the power of suggestion and autosuggestion. This is a law which appears to operate weakly in the natural sphere but powerfully in the spiritual sphere. The Lord provides many instances of the power of faith.
So it seems that when we believe from love then what the Word and the Writings say happens to us-e.g., our camels kneel-or we mount up with wings as eagles. As W.V.D. indicates this is how the Second Coming of the Lord takes place. This explains how the Second Coming can occur "by means of a man". One can now see how the Second Coming which seemed a rather abstract and metaphorical term could eventually become the most real thing of ones life, and how the Lord can come again individually to each of us.
N. J. BERRIDGE,
Reading, England
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GENTLE WARNING LEON S. RHODES 1977
To the Editor, NEW CHURCH LIFE
While thanking NEW CHURCH LIFE for the fine article by Dr. Wilson Van Dusen, "Another Confirmation" on the challenge arising from the best-seller "Life After Life" (Moody), I feel the need to add a few comments.
The General Church Extension Committee, Rev. David Holm, Chmn., and others have been enthusiastically organizing to use the current surge of interest in the subject of dying experiences as testimony of Swedenborg's revelation. Within but a few months there is an appreciable increase in the acceptability of the New Church teachings about spirits and the reality of life after death. It is to be fervently hoped that this phenomenon will, as Dr. Van Dusen indicates, introduce many to the Writings and to the New Church.
Our enthusiasm as we look forward to this potential growth, however, must be balanced with a look back into our history. The inescapable fact is that the New Church has been obstructed, held back and diverted by recurring periods when the doctrines were overshadowed by spiritism. The most would be learned by a careful study of our history; next best would be to read even a few pages from "The New Church In The New World" (Marguerite Beck Block)-especially pages 130-140; at very least we will be reminded of periods in our history that we overlook at our peril.
The acceptance of Swedenborg's revelation has too often become corrupted by spiritism, faith healing, hypnosis and disorders, encouraged by the acceptance of the influences of the spiritual world. A careful look at the history of the New Church will show that it flourished and influenced many thousands of people in past periods-then waned and sputtered when the doctrines were mingled with personal attempts to duplicate Swedenborg's experiences.
In actual fact, Swedenborgians were major contributors to the growth of spiritism and Mesmerism (Hypnosis) called "Animal Magnetism," and the records show too many enthusiastic New Church leaders who injured the New Church by such involvement. Read "New Church In The New World" on how the New Church in Germany was injured by Hofaker, in England by Count Grabianka, Mrs. Anna Mowatt and William Schlatter. "The History of Spiritualism in America is generally assumed to have begun with the Rochester rappinas, 1848, but spiritualistic phenomena are mentioned in New Church writings much earlier."*
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The New Jerusalem Magazine printed a series on "Open Intercourse with the Spiritual World",** and spiritualists claimed Swedenborg as their leader in being the first to communicate with departed souls.*** The strange story of Andrew Jackson Davis and Thomas Lake Harris should be read-and we can remind ourselves that within the past few months we have again been troubled by enthusiasts who assert that they are in contact with Swedenborg.
* Block, p. 132
** Block, p. 133
*** Ibid.
Our Church history has somehow fostered many strange offshoots including some within the Academy movement, though in general it seems that a merciful Providence has allowed the memory of the Church's strangest periods to lapse into dormancy so that they could be forgotten and our ideas begun afresh. We see emergence of some of these ideas from time to time, and-hopefully, without in any way discouraging the great potential of this new prospect for evangelization-I would simply put forth a few words of caution at the same time as expressing appreciation for the useful and orderly ideas now winning recognition around us.
LEON S. RHODES,
Bryn Athyn, Pa.
"WHAT HAS GOD REVEALED!" ROY NICHOLLS 1977
TO THE EDITOR:
In your issue of March, 1976, page 94, the Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz writes under the above heading thus:
"Had the astronauts been greeted by men on the moon, there would be no problem for New Church people . . ." This surely is not correct!
I understand as a matter of doctrine, that there are inhabitants in or on the moons and planets of our solar system. Now surely matters of doctrine must only be accepted in a state of freedom?
If astronauts had been confronted by moon men, we would be under compulsion to believe that there are men in or on the moon!
I must express my surprise that an ordained minister of the New Church should suggest that possibly Swedenborg's statements-"I was told by the angels," and "it was stated from heaven," etc., could be merely "figures of speech."
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Mr. Nemitz quotes: "Some spirits came to me, and it zeras stated from heaven that they were on the earth nearest the sun, which on Earth is called the planet Mercury."* Does Mr. Nemitz accept this statement? Apparently not! Continuing, he seeks to discount this and other statements made by angels and spirits, according to Swedenborg, by suggesting that they could or would "therefore be nothing more than merely human conclusions," or possibly figures of speech.
* EU 10; cf. AC 6808
To my mind, this is a most dangerous line of thought!
Mr. Nemitz quotes from the SD, when yet he must appreciate this was "Swedenborg's notebook," as he says. Clearly it was written in the formative years, why doesn't he quote from the AC? I submit four numbers:
Since, by the Divine Mercy of the Lord, the interiors that are of my spirit have been opened to me, and I have been enabled to speak with those who are in the other life, not only with those who are from this Earth, but also those who are from other earths, therefore, since it was my desire to obtain this knowledge, and as the things it has been given me to know are worthy of being related, it is allowed to relate them at the close of the following chapters. I have not spoken with the actual inhabitants of the earths, but with spirits and angels who had been inhabitants there; and this not for a day or a week, but for many months, With open instruction from heaven as to whence they were . . .*
* AC 6695
There are spirits who in the Gorand Man have reference to the memory; they are from the Planet Mercury.* (No hesitation here!)
* AC 6696
I was informed that the inhabitants of the moon represent in the Gorand Man the ensiform or exiphoid cartilage, to which the ribs are joined in front . . .*
* AC 9236
That there are inhabitants even in the moon, is well known to spirits and angels, for they often converse with them; so likewise in the moons or satellites round the planet Jupiter, and round the planet Saturn . . . for they are likewise planetary orbs, and where there is an orbe there is man, for man is the end for the sake of which a planetary orb exists, and nothing has been made by the Supreme Creator without an end . . . The angels also say that an earth cannot subsist apart from the human race. . .*
* AC 9237
In the Divine Love and Wisdom there is what I regard as the most wonderful Divine Revelation on the initiament of man Swedenborg there relates that the actual beginning of man in the womb is as it were a primitive brain with three degrees, and from this brain, the whole complete body is formed. With regard to this revelation Swedenborg states:
This was discovered to me by the angels, to Whom it was revealed by the Lord . . . There was seen as it were, a least image of a brain with a subtle delineation of somewhat of a face in front, with no appendage . . ."
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Also, "This gibbous part, which was a type of brain on the least scale, was also divided into two as it were beds. . . and it was told me that the right bed was the receptacle of love, and the left bed the receptacle of wisdom; . . . Moreover, it was shown in the light of heaven, which shone with favoring effulgence, that the campages of this little brain within, as to make and fluxion, was in the order and in the form of heaven, and that it's outer campages was in direct opposition to that order and that form.
After these things were seen and pointed out, the angels said, that the two internal degrees, which were in the order and in the form of heaven, were the receptacles of love and wisdom from the Lord; and that the exterior degree, which was in direct opposition to the order and the form of heaven, was the receptacle of hellish love and insanity; because man by hereditary corruption is born into evils of every kind; and that these evils reside there in the extremes.*
* DLW 432
Now, as we know, this was written over 200 years ago. The man in the street of that time, as also of today, would reject this as utter rubbish! Just fancy a man claiming the angels had told him that a primitive brain is first formed in the womb, and from this primitive brain, the complete body with all its organs is formed in nine months. Would our friend Rev. Nemitz have thrown this out as a scientific inaccuracy? He appears to wish to water down, or suggest other ways of understanding the Writings, so they will conform to present scientific ideas.
Since Swedenborg's time, the science of embryology has revealed that the first thing which happens in the womb after conception, is that a collection of cells form themselves into a hollow ball with three divisions-a primitive brain-and from this the whole complete body with all its organs is formed over a period of nine months! We must not act on the principle that acceptance of the Writings must depend upon present-day scientific ideas, held mostly by atheistically-minded men. Strictly scientific knowledge is another matter! Modern scientific knowledge can be used to refute completely the theory of evolution! A few years ago, the general idea of science was that there was no life in any other part of the universe except on this earth, when yet today my newspaper has a column headed: "Proof grows about life on Mars." It reports: "The American space geologist, Professor Leon Silver said yesterday that the evidence for life on Mars is growing." Further down, it says that: Professor Silver is the consultant to the scientists at the jet propulsion laboratory in California controlling the Viking experiments, and that "Professor Silver, who worked on the site selection program for Viking 1 and 2, has high quality photographs which show deep river channels and erosion by liquid."
Now just suppose that some years ago, we had rejected Swedenborg's statement of life on Mars as not conforming to scientific ideas. Where would we be?
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I cannot think that future space men will ever be permitted under Divine Providence or Permission, to catch a moon man, or a Mars man. This would compel a belief in what Swedenborg states. But I think it is possible that men of science will be allowed to obtain sufficient knowledge which will allow us rationally and reasonably to think there is life on the planets, etc.
But what is worrying me, is just what part of the Writings is Rev. Nemitz prepared to accept as Divine Revelation, and what not?
For instance, which of the "I was told by the angels," and "it was stated from heaven," and "I was informed," and "With open instruction from heaven as to whence they were," (relating to inhabitants of other earths.) Also, "This was discovered to me by the angels," and "It was told me." Yes, I must ask, which of these will Rev. Nemitz accept as revelation, and which will he reject as possibly being "mere figures of speech."
It is the same with the "Memorabilia." There is a tendency in some quarters to put a discount on these as possibly not being true. Yet we know that Swedenborg has stated to a friend "The Lord has commanded me to publish them."
As a New Church man of over fifty years standing, I accept what Swedenborg has stated as a Divine Revelation, and this without reservations!
I cannot possibly believe that the Lord, with His mercy and foresight, would allow His Divine Revelations to be at the mercy of the human failings of angels or spirits when they were instructing Swedenborg. If I did this, I would pick and choose just what I wanted to take, and toss aside other portions, and this I think would be wrong.
I most fervently believe that the Writings do really consist in actual fact, of the Lord's Second Coming in Truth, and must be defended at all times.
My friend, Rev. Nemitz, absolutely nothing personal is intended hereon, I only desire to keep the record straight.
ROY NICHOLLS,
Sussex, England
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"WHAT HAS GOD REVEALED!" KURT P. NEMITZ 1977
Editor, NEW CHURCH LIFE:
I sympathize with the concern expressed by Mr. Nicholls, who recently wrote saying that he feels the faith of the New Church will be weakened by my suggestion that perhaps Swedenborg was mistaken about the name of the planets from which certain spirits he spoke with had originated.
Inquiries concerning the validity of certain things in the letter of Divine revelation must be made with reverent caution. Such investigations must be made with the heart-felt plea that the Lord will guide us to see the actual Divinity of His Word.
But such investigations have to be made, for needless to say there is a problem. Not only does it appear highly doubtful that there are people on our Moon-although Swedenborg thought he spoke with spirits from the Moon, the Heavenly Doctrines explanation about how the Lord instructs man make one wonder how the Lord, even through His angels, could have told Swedenborg the name of a planet. (The general teaching on this latter point being that "the Lord teaches everyone by means of the Word. He teaches from the knowledge which a man already possesses, and does not directly impart new knowledge.")*
* TCR 208
And so, while Swedenborg does write that he was "told from heaven" which planet spirits came from, still his account in the Doctrine itself shows him gathering knowledge about this as if of himself. We read: "In a state of wakefulness I was led in the spirit by the Lord to a certain earth in the universe, accompanied by some spirits from this globe. . . . From their speech, and from their peculiar manner of apperceiving things earth; for they differed altogether from the inhabitants of our solar and explaining them, I discerned clearly that they were from another system."* Here we see Swedenborg making observations and drawing conclusions about the identity of this particular earth, as if of himself. A bit of scientific deduction. But I am sure that when such a scientific conclusion flashed into Swedenborg's mind, devout man that he was he attributed it not to himself but felt it had "come from heaven."
* EU 129
And yet withal he may have made a sincere scientific mistake in his identification of some of the planets whose inhabitants he met.
A mistake in the Writings, which are the Word of the Lord of the Lord for His New Church! For a person who loves the Lord and His Word this may sound appalling, but is it? If there are scientific inaccuracies in the Writings, do these really detract from the Divinity and authority of the Heavenly Doctrines in their pages? Does it really matter after all if Swedenborg made an honest mistake about the name of some planet?
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Of course not. For wherein lies the Divinity of the Writings-and of the first two Testaments for that matter? Is it not in the spiritual truth they contain?
It is the "spirit" that liveth and hath power with man, the spirit of Divine love and wisdom. This is what has been revealed in and is being communicated to man by the Divine Word.
It is explained in the Arcana Coelestia that
The Word of the Lord is like a body that contains within it a living soul. . . . "The things of the sense of the letter are similar to those which are with man while in the body, namely, to the data in the memory that comes from the things of sense, which data serve as general vessels that contain interior or internal things within them. From this it may be known that the vessels are one thing, and the essentials contained in the vessels are spiritual and heavenly-and these in no wise come into view except by the internal sense. This will be clear to everyone from the mere fact that many things in the Word are said according to appearances, and indeed according to the fallacies of the senses, as that the Lord is angry, that He punishes, curses, kills, and many other things; when yet in the internal sense they mean quite the contrary. . . . And yet to those who from simplicity of heart believe the Word as they apprehend it in the letter, no harm is done while they live in charity. The Word teaches nothing else than that everyone should live in charity with his neighbor, and love the Lord above all things. Those who do this have in themselves internal things; and therefore with them the fallacies taken from the senses of the letter are easily dispelled.*
* AC 1408; author's italics
One wonders if that which is said about the identity of the planets mentioned in the Writings may not rightly be classed with those "many things in the Word . . . said according to the appearances, and indeed according to the fallacies of the senses"-which fallacies may (with internal men) be easily dispelled.
That such factual matters as now concern us are not the source of the Divinity of the Word is clear from the following explanation in the Arcana, where the Divinity of the details regarding Abraham's family is discussed:
What was sent down by the Lord (i.e. the Word) is Divine in all things in genera and particular, thus not as to the historical facts, because these are the activities of men, but only by virtue of those things which lies deeply hidden and contained in the historical facts, all of which in general and particular treat of the Lord and of His kingdom. The historical parts of the Word are distinguished above all other histories in the universe on this point: they involve in themselves such contents.*
* AC 3228
Surely this principle applies also to the scientific facts in the literal sense of the heavenly doctrines which the Lord has sent down through His servant, Emanuel Swedenborg!
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It would be truly (and sadly) irrational for a New Church person to let his or her faith in the divinity of the Heavenly Doctrines be shaken by the absence of men on the Moon and by possible other, similar inaccuracies or fallacies in their letter. "The posterior things of the Word," we are taught, "must be viewed from what is interior, if this is not done, nothing of what is Divine is seen."* "Unless a man's thought can be elevated above sensuous things . . . he cannot understand any interior thing in the Word."**
* AC 3416
** AC 5089:2
It is the spirit in the interior of the Word, that is, the very Truth of the Word, that is the source of the Word's Divinity and authority. And the Word is regarded as Divine by a mature adult and has authority with him insofar as that Spirit of Truth is perceived by him. We are told, "faith is an acknowledgment that a thing is so because it is true. For he who is in real faith thinks and speaks to this effect: 'This is true, and therefore I believe it.' For faith is related to truth, and truth to faith."* We believe what is said in the Writings not because Swedenborg has said that the matter is thus and so, but because we see that what is written through him is indeed the Truth. We are affirmative because it is the Lord speaking, but believe because-from Him-we see.
* F 2
KURT P. NEMITZ,
Englewood, Colo.
P.S. Should anyone be interested in reading my address to the Council of the Clergy on this subject, I shall be glad to send him a copy of it.
IN OUR CONTEMPORARIES Henry W. Reddekopp 1977
THE DIVINE: AUTHORITY OF DOCTRINE
(From the Western Canada New Church Bulletin, July, 1976, by the Editor, the Reverend Henry W. Reddekopp.)
If we believe in the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem as Divine Revelation, then it is wrong to invalidate any part of them by voting on what to accept and what to reject. It would be just as wrong then to determine by vote what parts of the Old and New Testament Revelations we should omit or change in favor of our own inclinations. Swedenborg tells us, "Doctrine should be drawn from the sense of the letter of the Word and confirmed by it.
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This is because in it the Lord is present, and teaches and enlightens . . ."* It is not permissible then to determine by vote what parts of the Old and New Testaments we shall omit or change.
* TCR 229
What I am leading up to is the ordination of women into the ministry. It is contrary to Holy Scripture and to the Writings of Divine Revelation upon which the New Church is founded. This is a very controversial issue which need not be if it were rightly understood. It is often interpreted to mean that women are inferior to men which is far from the truth. Of the two sexes the Lord did not create one inferior or superior to the other. or more or less intelligent than the other. Women have certain virtues that men lack, while men have certain qualifications that women need. Only a woman has a mother's touch in the care of her children. One sex is not complete without the other. A woman is of a tender gentle disposition with a soft voice. It can be said of a woman that "she is beautiful." but this is never said of a man though he may be comely or handsome. At an early age his voice begins to change to a deep strong tone, and a beard begins to grow on his face. Men and women are not only physically different, but their minds function differently. There is a reason for this.
The Lord created each sex with two distinct faculties which are called in the Writings the "Will" and the "Understanding." These terms are as yet not very well known or understood, so for convenience I will call them love and intellect. These two faculties act independently of each other although we are not aware of this until the Writings draw it to our attention. They function in reverse order in the two sexes to make one truly Man and the other truly Woman. In a man the faculty of the understanding or the intellect leads over his love or affection; and in a woman the faculty of love, or affection, leads over her understanding. This makes a man and a woman compatible. They complement each other and one makes up for the deficiency of the other. This makes a married pair truly one, and they are sometimes seen in heaven as one angel.
The reason why it is proper only for a man to be ordained is because a man, by ordination represents the Lord Who is always addressed in masculine terms. "For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."* A woman represents the Church which is always referred to in feminine terms. To bear this out let us look at the following: "And I John saw the holy city New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."**
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A mother bears and nourishes her child, so we go to our Church as a mother for spiritual nourishment. We need only to look at the symbolic picture of the woman (clothed with the sun) about to bear a child, to know that she represents both the Church and a mother.*** This no doubt has inspired the suitable words in our beloved hymn, "O Mother dear Jerusalem."
* Isaiah 9:6
** Rev. 21:1
*** Rev. 12:1
If we have faith and believe what Swedenborg saw and heard in the spiritual world we would not encourage the ordination of women. We would wish no person of the gentle sex to come into such a deplorable state as he describes in his Spiritual Diary.*
* SD 5936
EDITOR
ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
Announcements
General Church of the New Jerusalem
The Annual Meetings of the Council of the Clergy and of the Board of Directors of the General Church have been scheduled to take place in the week of March 7-12, 1977, at Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.
NORBERT H. ROGERS,
Secretary
APPLICATIONS FOR ADMISSION TO THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH COLLEGE EDITOR 1977
All Students:
Requests for application forms for admission to The Academy College for the 1977-78 school year should be made before January 15, 1977. Letters should be addressed to Dean E. Bruce Glenn, The Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009, and should include the student's full name and address, the name and address of the school he or she is now attending, and whether the student will be a day or dormitory student. Please see the Academy catalog for information about dormitory requirements.
Completed application forms and accompanying material should be received by Dean Glenn's office by March 15, 1977.
BOYS SCHOOL AND GIRLS SCHOOL
New Students:
Requests for application forms for admission to the Academy Secondary Schools should be made for new students before January 15, 1977. Letters should be addressed to Miss Morna Hyatt, Principal of the Girls School, or Mr. Donald C. Fitzpatrick, Jr., Principal of the Boys School, at The Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009. Letters should include the student's name, parents' address, the class the student will be entering, the name and address of the school he or she is now attending, and whether the student will be day or dormitory. Please see the Academy catalog for dormitory requirements.
Completed application forms and accompanying material must be received by the Academy by March 15, 1977.
Old Students:
Parents of students attending the Girls School or Boys School during the 1976-77 school year should apply for their children's re-admission for the 1977-78 school year before March 15, 1977. Letters should be addressed to the Principal of the school the student is now attending.
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PURPOSE OF RELIGION Rev. GEOFFREY S. CHILDS 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII FEBRUARY 1977 No. 2
(JOY IN RELIGION)
Thou shalt cause me to hear joy and gladness. (Psalm 51:8)
Man is all too aware of the reality of hereditary evil. But our hereditary evil is not us! The Lord promised, after the flood, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done. During all the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."* At the fall, the evil hereditary will was separated, and the Lord opened up a new life for each person in his separated understanding. Here again man could become an angel! Despite the hereditary evil affecting his imagination, still this evil could be silenced. There would always open up to man seedtimes and harvests, the warmth of summer after winter, the sparkle of the early morning after the night. Man is not condemned because his hereditary will is evil; this danger was removed at the flood. By putting heavenly loves in the understanding during childhood, the Lord opened a free path to heaven for each human being.
* Gen. 8:21, 22
False religions deny this. Many would have man feel guilt-that he is condemned with Adam, That in man there is nothing but what is worthy of shame, that man is fashioned in evil. But what kind of a God does this imply? An angry and vengeful Father: petty, and imaged after the worst in man himself. Yet the Lord is a God of Love and Mercy!
Religion on earth is not meant to be sad. It is not supposed to offer only shame and repentance. The purpose of the Lord is a heaven from the human race. Therefore, religion points the way to joy, its ultimate goal is joy in eternal use.
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The 51st Psalm conveys this reality, without masking the other reality that evil causes suffering.
Behold (O God) Thou desirest truth in the inward parts; and in the hidden part Thou shall make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall he whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide Thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a firm spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation.*
* Ps. 51:6-12
This shows the reality of temptation, through which man becomes an angel. But it points to the goal, the purpose of religion: "restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation."* Heaven is a place of fantastic joy-inward joy that courses through every heart beat of the angels, and is infilled and filled again in the creativity of uses. Their happiness is such that Swedenborg simply could not describe it adequately-the love and joy of an angel are so intense they move even harkened spirits. The "joy of salvation" is not only the fine feeling of regeneration (joy as the clothing of a loving use); but the Lord also gives this joy throughout life, here and there, in needed measure-to buoy man along in the process of rebirth.
* Ps. 51:12
To imply that regeneration, that rebirth, is always easy would be a lie. Temptations are a part of this process; and in temptation there is despair; there has to be despair before evil can be removed. The psalmist also writes in this same song: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."* In the heart of a temptation man feels this may about himself; that he was "shaped in iniquity." This particular verse, in the glorification series, refers to the Lord's temptation, the "mother who sinned" being mother of hereditary evil; the infirmities He derived from the mother.**
* Ps. 51:5
** PP: LI: 1-5
But temptation is only one part of life. To stress it as the all of life is untrue; it: is what the hells would have us do, to lead us to discouragement and giving up. To ignore temptation altogether is extreme; a false buoyancy-a euphoria that is unreal. But the genuine balance is to look to the sunlight; to the Lord Who is the Sun of heaven. To look to the sunlight, even though it is known that there is unhappiness in temptation. The angels always turn their faces to the Lord. And the man who trusts the Lord can do the same, praying that the Lord will help him in his lower states.
The song requests: "make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice . . . Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation."
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Another translation of this is given in the Writings: "Thou shalt cause me to hear joy and gladness; the bones which Thou hast bruised shall exult, where the 'exulting of the bones which were bruised' signifies recreation through truths after temptation."* Man feels deepest joy at times in childhood, especially secretly and tenderly in infancy. This joy is derived from the innocence and peace of the highest angels; and in itself this joy is absolutely unshakenble. If man does not lose this inmost joy through deliberately doing evil as an adult, then it gives him the ultimate security. The highest angels are present with man in that delight, and no devil dares to approach it closely, not even the genii in the lowest hell.
* AC 3812:7e
And the tremendous joy felt on occasions in childhood is not wiped out forever upon entering adult life. It is true that remains are indrawn to the interiors our protection. But if a young adult looks to the Lord, and shuns evils as sins, those interior affections constantly attempt to inflow, and have their times of moving perception. The states of the conjugial, felt so surely on occasion, are a descent of love from remains-conjoined with the joy of the conjugial itself. In friendships that are honest and open there is this trust and touch of what is interior from the Lord. In states of work, honestly and conscientiously done, there is inmostly a presence of remains inflowing, and new remains quietly being built. As long as evils are shunned as sins against the Lord, the joy of heaven filters through in various ways-mostly in terms of contentment with God, and contentment with one's interior lot.
Within this there is the "joy of the Lord's salvation." Such joy should characterize a New Church life on earth, because a New Churchman is fortunate enough to know that he will live after his physical body dies-live spiritually in a heavenly body in an inner world of such astounding hope and promise. To find this, a New Churchman has to follow the Lord.
There is no need to go around in sorrow! As far as is possible to a man, the Lord wants life on earth to be happy. 'The direct teaching of the Lord is that man "need not go about like a devotee with a sad and sorrowful countenance and drooping head, but may be joyful and cheerful."* It is pathetic that we need to be told this; that man may be joyful and cheerful! Good spirits and angels would have man be spiritually happy. It is evil spirits that take away his joy, and therefore undermine man's purpose to serve the Lord. There is a powerful influx of false guilt through false conscience that the Writings speak about directly,** and false guilt has to be exposed as the joy-killer.
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There is also the endeavor of the hells to have a fixation on hedonism-on joy apart from use-this too kills genuine joy. Thus man must turn to the Lord Himself, and request: "restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation."
* HH 358
** DP 141
The final major work of the new Revelation, written by the Lord through Swedenborg, is The True Christian Religion. This book is described by the Lord as containing "the universal theology of the New Church."* One of the universals of the New Church given in this work is that: "The Lord imputes good to every man, but hell imputes evil to every man."** "That the Lord imputes to man good and not evil, while . . . hell . . . imputes evil and not good to him, is a new thing in the church."*** In the letter of the Word it is often said that God is angry, or takes vengeance, hales, damns, punishes, casts into hell, and tempts, "all of which pertain to evil, and therefore are evils."**** These things are in the letter of revelation, but when the internal sense is revealed, these appearances of the letter are changed into genuine truths, which are "that the Lord is never angry, never takes vengeance, never hates, damns, punishes, casts into hell or tempts."*****
* Title, TCR
** TCR 650
*** Ibid.
**** Ibid.
***** Ibid.
". . . The Lord cannot do evil to any man, consequently He cannot impute evil to man; for He is Love itself and Mercy itself, thus Good itself."* Not even an angel imputes evil to any man-an angel always lifts up into good. Yet it is strange that many religions on earth do the opposite of the Lord and the angels. Many religions make man feel continually guilty, and impute evil to him. They work on shame, imprisoning man in his own evil. But the direct teaching is that the Lord does not do this! "The Lord imputes good to every man, but hell imputes evil to every man."** This is worth repeating, because something of this imputing evil to man his probably crept into the New Church. Any imputation of evil to man in the New Church would be inadvertent-because the appearance is so strong that to impute evil to man is correct. But in other religions, and even as a danger to the New Church, the imputing of evil to man has come from love of dominion. That is, the priesthood of a dead theology desires to dominate its church-to achieve dominion over the souls of its followers. One way to do this is to make its believers feel guilty-and then the priesthood says-we alone have the way to lead you out of our guilt, serve us, and we will free you. This domination is Babylon, the love of dominion through worship, and it has captivated many priesthoods.
* TCR 651
** TCR 650
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There are times when guilt, felt guilt, is absolutely essential to man. This is when he has committed an evil knowingly. If he does not feel guilty then, and admit his evil as a sin against the Lord and shun it prayerfully-then his guilt is real, and it will condemn him eventually to hell. But if man is trying to shun evil, and look to the Lord, he is not guilty. He need not feel guilty about hereditary evil tendencies-these are not from him but from hell. He need not feel guilty about the nature of hereditary love of self-this too is from hell and not from the man. To ascribe these things to hell is the truth. And it is the way to restore joy to religion-joy that the Lord would have man feel so deeply.
There are spirits who are called "conscience mongers" who specialize in making man feel guilty and unhappy about external things; who put all of religion into external rituals and external habits-thus trapping man in a gloomy world. These spirits from hell are to be shunned as what they are: petty dominators! It is as the Lord said: "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."* Mary is the love of truth for its own sake-the love that leads to heaven, and leads away from false external anxieties.
* Lu. 10:41, 42
"There is actually a sphere proceeding continually from the Lord and filling the entire spiritual and natural worlds which raises all towards heaven. It is like a strong current in the ocean, which unobservedly draws a vessel. All who believe in the Lord and live according to His precepts enter that sphere or current and are elevated; while those who do not believe are unwilling to enter. . ."* "Jesus said, When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto Myself."**
* TCR 652:3 ** Jn. 12:32
To enter this current is to find religion as the Lord intended it-to be lifted up towards Him and His arms. That there are things that would block this current, we all know. Yet the Lord can remove these, as we turn to Him and away from our lower selves. "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness . . . Thou shalt cause me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast bruised shall exult. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit with me . . . Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free spirit."* Amen.
* Ps. 51:1, 8, 10, 12
LESSONS: TCR 650-653; Luke 10:41, 42; Psalm 51
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APPROACHING THE HOLY SUPPER "WORTHILY" Rev. LORENTZ R. SONESON 1977
We are told in the Writings of the New Church that the Lord commanded only a few external observances, to replace the representatives of the Jewish Church. The two sacraments of our worship are baptism and the holy supper; baptism, that by it regeneration be remembered, and the holy supper, symbol of the Lord and His love for the human race, and the reciprocal love of man to Him.*
* AC 4904:3 Throughout Christendom the holy supper, or communion, is regarded as one of the most important externals of worship. The very act when observed or partaken creates a solemn sphere that is overpowering. In spite of the fact that direct statements are made in the gospels concerning the holy supper and its institution by Divine command, it carries with it an air of mystery. Part of the confusion, perhaps, is because of the language used in describing the historic last supper in the gospels. The bread was broken and distributed to the disciples and then was referred to as "My body, this do in remembrance of Me." And when the cup, containing the wine, was passed after the supper, it was offered with the words, "This cup is the new testament in My blood which is shed for you."*
* Lu. 22:19, 20
Over centuries of celebrating the holy supper, the church presented many different concepts of its purpose to the laity. Even today the holy supper, or as it is called, the eucharist, is taken with the idea of remembering the passion of the cross, which subsequently followed the disciples' first communion. About 1000 A.D. the doctrine of transubstantiation crept into the mass. This mystical belief, that the bread and wine are actually changed into the blood and flesh of the Lord, still lingers in the Catholic Church. This miracle, however, claims to change only the substance of the sacrament, but not the appearance.
As a result, many have doubted and rebelled against such a mystery of faith because it eludes their understanding. For others, it merely centers their interest and attention on the miracle rather than the true meaning of the holy supper intended by the Lord.
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When the Reformation came, this miracle of the mass was rejected. The protestors also discarded the greatly feared teaching that excommunication meant eternal damnation. Being excluded from the communion table, they taught, held no such frightening ramifications; though many groups will only offer it to their members-a "closed communion." In addition, they restored wine to the communicants table, so long withheld from the public. Some extreme prohibitionist reformers ruled out the wine, offering only unfermented grape juice.
But in all churches that recognize the holy supper as a sacrament, the act itself is yet considered one of the most holy forms of external worship. The sanctity and holiness of the Word itself has been doubted, yet the holy supper has survived. The reason for this, we are told, is because in these brief but most solemn moments the worshiper is centering his attention on the Lord Himself, without distraction. As a result, he perceives the sphere of heaven close at hand.
"For the sake of this affiliation with angels and at the same time conjunction with the Lord, the Holy Supper was instituted, the bread of which is heaven becomes Divine Good, and the wine Divine Truth, each from the Lord. Such correspondence exists by creation to the end that the angelic heaven may make one with the church on earth, and in general the spiritual world may make one with the natural world, and the Lord may conjoin Himself with both at once."*
*TCR 238
Another concept, universally associated with the holy supper is the doctrine of repentance.
"Can there be anything better known in the Christian world than that man ought to examine himself? For everywhere, in empires and kingdoms, whether in those adhering to the Roman Catholic or to the Evangical religion, before approaching the holy supper, men are taught and admonished to examine themselves, to recognize and acknowledge their sins, and to live a new and different life."*
* TCR 526
But common sense dictates that the mere tasting of the bread and wine cannot in itself cleanse the evil soul. The act, then, must be symbolic of something else. The natural food must correspond to the essential spiritual food that feeds the heart and mind of the communicant. A sincere worshiper knows that a merciful Lord alone can see into the heart of the repentant, and provide the nourishment he needs. The confession of sins, privately, before one's Creator has a definite cleansing affect on the conscience. But as in every trespass in life, confession of one's guilt is only the beginning. It must be followed by a life that is amended for the confession to have meaning.
Worshipers in the New Church, however, are occasionally disturbed by the teaching given in the Writings that one should approach the holy supper table worthily.
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Their honest self-examination prior to the sacrament leads them to believe they are not worthy to partake. Often they find themselves painfully aware of some evil that they have confessed to many times in the past, preceeding communion. Each time they examine themselves they find little or no progress in shunning that evil. Their sense of guilt forces them to conclude that they are indeed, "unworthy."
The Writings define 'worthily' in these terms: "Those come to the holy supper worthily who have faith in the Lord and charity toward the neighbor, that is, who are regenerate."* Both honesty and modesty prohibit some from acknowledging that they are actually regenerate. They even question whether there has been any improvement over the years, when old familiar evils still seem to flourish in their lives. Their guilt is heightened, perhaps, because they have not even practiced self-examination prior to the service itself.
* TCR 722
For those who exclude themselves from partaking of the sacrament for this reason, it is indeed unfortunate. Their motive may be sincere, but it is misguided. It reflects a lack of understanding of the purpose of this most holy act of worship. When any teaching is observed to the exclusion of all others, heresy results. This is particularly true in the case of this sacrament.
Examination and confession, of course, are essential and prerequisite. But if one lingers in this state, without turning to the Lord for both instruction and help to move on from there, one falls back into the hands of the hells. Evil spirits enjoy prodding our memory of trespasses. They entice us to dwell on our evils. Their ambition is to make us feel both helpless and hopeless. Their goal is to create doubt, hesitation, and eventual immobility. Their cunning approach intends to take away our trust in a merciful and forgiving God who alone can remove the evil from us. By keeping our imperfections before us they hope to blind our understanding with remorse and self-pity.
However, the Lord through His angels endeavors to show us the next step. Once we admit to our failings and short comings, we are to turn to the Lord for the strength and insight to combat the hells. Admitting to our own weakness is initial; but acknowledging that the Lord alone is omnipotent is crucial. When we continually reaffirm this belief by approaching the holy supper table to receive symbolically His good and truth, we are released for the moment from the grasp of the hells. The very act of reaching out for His spiritual food, represented by the bread and wine, invites a heavenly sphere. His presence during this most holy act of worship restores our vision of His Divine Human Form.
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Our very presence at the table, on bended knee, should be a sign to ourselves that we are reaching out for His love and wisdom. When we place ourselves before His altar with the understanding that we are hungry and thirsty for His spiritual nourishment in our lives we initiate "worthiness." If our approach is sincere, we are acknowledging God; we have faith that He will feed us; that He will guide us in a life of charity-the three means of worthily enjoying the holy supper.*
* Ibid.
When we feel the attack of the hells that suggest we are unworthy to approach the Lord for His help, we are asked to reflect on the angels of the highest heaven. We are told that these celestial beings, who have regenerated to the highest degree, cast themselves prostrate on the ground when they acknowledge their unworthiness before the Lord. They are far more aware of their own evils than we are (AC 4801:2) but they also recognize that the Lord will feed them, strengthen them, and fill their lives with the delights of heaven.
Nearly every one of us practices acts of charity toward the neighbor every day. This is not difficult, for our livelihood and reputation depend upon our living so. All that the Lord asks is that we continue doing this because He has commanded it in His Word. But our own determination to live such a life according to His Commandments is not sufficient. The life of true charity requires spiritual food to sustain us. When we seek this nourishment from His Word and in prayer, symbolically portrayed in the act of the holy supper, we are infilling this external act of worship with the essential internal.
Partaking of the sacrament is very much like opening a copy of the Word. There is nothing miraculous in our life, observable to the senses when we open the pages of the Sacred Scriptures or the Writings. Neither is there a perceptible change when the teachings enter our thoughts. But we are assured that if we search the Scriptures for help and enlightenment to guide our lives, not only are all of the heavens present with us offering enlightenment, but the Lord Himself is immediately present with us.
Therefore, if we consider ourselves worthy to open His Word for spiritual food, so should we avail ourselves of the holy supper. And just as we must continually feed the natural body, so do we need continual nourishment from His Word for our spiritual body. Active and regular participation in the eucharist, (which means "thanksgiving") is a powerful reminder that the Lord alone can feed us this heavenly food. His presence with us during this most holy act is intended to re-affirm this great and essential truth. The external eating of the bread and drinking of the wine stimulates and strengthens our desire to live a life of internal worship.
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But we must take the initiative. We must open His Word; we must approach the table He has prepared for us. For as He tells us: "I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open, I will come in and will sup with him and he with Me."*
* Rev. 3:20
ACADEMY ANNOUNCEMENTS VARIOUS 1977
The College of the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn, Pa., will conduct intensive courses in religion for credit during the summer of 1977. Each course will meet four hours a day for ten days (Monday through Friday for two consecutive weeks), the equivalent in classroom hours of a regular term course. Depending on the preference of a majority of applicants, the courses will be held either June 13-24 or August 22-September 2. Applicants may take one or two courses; in either case the fee for the two weeks will be $120. Arrangements for housing and meals will be announced.
Tentative courses include the following: Divine Providence, Conjugial Love, the Basic Doctrines of the New Church, and the Moral and Spiritual Life. The numbers registering will determine which courses will be given. A minimum of twenty registrants in all will be required to hold the school.
All who are secondary school graduates and are baptized into the New Church or actively interested in its doctrine and life are eligible to apply. Applications should be made to the Dean of the College, Academy of the New Church, P. O. Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa., 19009, by March 15, and should indicate a choice between the two summer periods noted in the first paragraph above, and also a preferential list among the courses tentatively offered.
E. BRUCE GLENN, DEAN
At its meeting of December 10th, the Board of Directors of the Academy unanimously confirmed the appointment of Dr. Robert W. Gladish as Dean of the Academy College, submitted by the President.
Also, the Board of Directors unanimously affirmed the President's recommendation that the title of Associate Professor be granted to Dr. Gregory L. Baker.
At the Board of Director's meeting it was announced that the Academy Investment Committee, when rated against 109 other prestigious colleges for a 10 year period, ranked 2nd; for a 5 year period, ranked 3rd; and last year ranked 1st.
ALFRED ACTON, PRES.
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ANGELIC METHODS OF INSTRUCTION-A SURVEY OF MEMORABILIA Rev. DANIEL GOODENOUGH 1977
(An address to the Council of the Clergy, March, 1975.)
This study has a number of origins. Since I came to the Academy I have enjoyed a continuing friendly debate about the relative merits of lecture, discussion and other teaching methods, in religion and other subjects. Over the past five or ten years, and probably longer, various pastors have tried a number of different methods of instruction. In the last couple of years the question of the affections in education, while always a major consideration in New Church discussions about instruction, has received increased emphasis and debate. As ideas about education ferment among us, the question arises, how do angels teach?
We are familiar with some methods open to them which are unavailable to us. Their use of representations in teaching both children and adults,* the spotting of maidens' clothes to signify spiritual blemishes** and many other educational techniques in the other world give the angels some real advantages over the clergy on earth! Perhaps we may learn from such representatives that we need not fear visual and dramatic aids to teaching, if they are used wisely. Christmas Tableaux have seemed to be a highly effective way of teaching, and some would cite pageants and other dramatizations of religious subjects. Use of visual ultimates would seem to rest not only upon angelic example, but also upon a very solid doctrinal basis-the extensive teachings about natural, even sensual ideas as a necessary foundation for spiritual ideas.***
* HH 335 ff
** SD 5664
*** AC 2209, 2520, 2553, 3310, 4280, 5110, 9025, 9300; SD 3605
The purpose of this study, however, is to examine particularly those methods of instruction used in the other world which may shed light upon our own instructional efforts. While there is preaching in all the heavens, surprisingly few examples are given in the Writings of preaching during worship. Our focus will rather be on instruction outside of worship.
I claim no great expertise in the memorabilia, many volumes of which I simply did not have time to study.
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I surveyed the teaching methods rather in all the memorabilia in the True Christian Religion, Conjugial Love, Apocalypse Revealed, Brief Exposition, and the two volumes of Posthumous Theological Works. While there were many duplicates, I found over 130 different memorabilia. (More than one third of the True Christian Religion consists of memorabilia.) I am indebted also to a collection of passages on education circulated in the Academy Religion Department by the Rev. Mark Carlson. I assume we share in our background a bedrock of doctrine about the importance of instruction; a number of valuable studies on the doctrine of instruction have appeared over the years. Without instruction, man cannot become man.
Methods of instruction may seen a rather mundane and external subject, and relatively unimportant to our essential uses. I have come to believe, however, that much of the criticism directed at the clergy and the Church is really directed at our methods, although the critics usually do not realize this. There are those who criticize us for being cold, purely intellectual and abstract, narrow-minded, indifferent to the realities of life in the world, and relying upon our own merely human authority and interpretations rather than upon the authority of love. In fact I believe the General Church and its clergy are not any of those things, and I think there is abundant evidence that we are not. Yet I think we may often not communicate effectively what we are and what we stand for, and when we communicate ineffectively, we are criticized for things we are not. People should tell us, "I don't understand what you're getting at, or how this follows, or how that works." Instead they (or rather some of them) tell us we are cold, purely intellectual, narrow, indifferent to real life and falsely authoritarian.
When for example, we make a presentation that does not convey well the good and truth of doctrine, people do not understand and are not inspired, and so they say, the Church is too cold, intellectual, abstract, etc., etc. But all that has happened is that our instruction has not served to convey good and truth to them, and they would be much more accurate, and much more helpful, if they criticized our method-"But what is the application?" "I didn't understand the doctrinal points." "Could you give some examples?" "I lost track because it was too long," or too involved, or too repetitious, or too familiar. When they instead tell us we are just too cold, intellectual, narrow, etc., they only distract us from the real reason for many of their criticisms-our methods and effectiveness in teaching. To take another example, there are those who say, Doctrine is just not relevant. That is ridiculous. Nothing is so relevant as doctrine. What they may really mean is, this or that doctrinal point that you made, I do not understand; I don't see how it is relevant.
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I submit, therefore, that in concerning ourselves with method-which may seem relatively mundane and unimportant-we are in fact dealing with the source of some of the misleading criticism we have heard.
Some may question the use of the memorabilia in developing principles about teaching. The sheer bulk in pages of descriptions of Swedenborg's spiritual experiences suggests that this material is meant to be used. To treat the memorabilia as the skeleton in the New Church closet is to dismiss an enormous amount, and a great richness, of available teaching. The Writings themselves give considerable emphasis to the memorabilia.
"The fact that I converse in the spiritual world with angels and spirits, and that I have described the states of heaven and hell, and the life after death; and further, the fact that there has been disclosed to me the spiritual sense of the Word; besides many other things-is worth more than all these miracles. . . These are evidences that this has been granted for the sake of the New Church, which is the crown of all the churches, and which will endure forever. Being in the spiritual world, seeing the wonderful things of heaven, and the miserable things of hell; and being there in the very light of the Lord in which are the angels, surpasses all miracles."*
* Inv. 39, cf. 43
Elsewhere Swedenborg wrote that the memorabilia "were in the place of miracles; and . . . without them men would not know the quality of the book."* Moreover, the fact is that the angels are excellent teachers, and not only their ideas but their methods as well seem to put into practice the doctrines given in the Writings.
* Docu. II, P. 915; cf. Docu. p. 66, II pp. 239, 242, 409, 414-416; Int. 2; Coro. Sum.
AN INTELLECTUAL EXPERIENCE
Perhaps the most striking feature of learning in the other world is that it is an intense intellectual experience. With rare exceptions angels and good and evil spirits care deeply about the ideas they face. Good and evil alike are eager to learn new ideas, even disagreeable new ideas, they are eager to discuss and debate them, they are eager to explain at length why an idea they do not like is wrong. They spend very little time beating around the bush, but like to get straight to the intellectual point. They pay little attention to the person of the speaker, but care enormously about whether his ideas are of value or not.
Moreover, when they speak, they usually present very thoughtful and involved ideas. Even in heated debate there is little speaking off the too of the head, but expression of deep and well considered ideas. Sometimes the angels explain a point briefly, sometimes they hold forth at considerable length to elucidate a difficult idea, but always the thrust is to make manifest the true ideas relevant to the subject. (I assume that when an angelic speech is translated into many words in the Writings, this reflects a complicated spiritual idea presented by the angel; when an angelic speech is translated into few words in the Writings, this usually seems to mean a relatively simple, uninvolved idea presented by the angel.
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Thus there would seem to be sort of a rough correspondence between length on paper of an idea, and its spiritual complexity; something of the same is true of our writing and thinking in this world.) The sheer volume and fullness of angelic instruction in ideas is memorable.
Of course spirits' remarkable facility with ideas stems largely from the loss of the natural body and the great increase of the perceptive powers enjoyed after death. Even so, their preoccupation with ideas is remarkable. Both good and evil seem to care more about what ideas are true, about what ideas are false, and about understanding ideas, than about nearly anything else. Their ideas are their life and they struggle for the right ideas precisely because they understand that ideas have consequences and meaning in life. Even deeply abstract ideas matter to them, although on the whole somewhat less to the evil than to the good. Of course the evil reject true ideas and spew forth falsities which they call truths; but with few exceptions they care as much as the good about having ideas which to them are true. Spirits' awareness that all ideas have practical consequences probably explains why they are so ready to discuss and debate. Most spirits seem readier to object and argue about ideas than we on earth. Those on earth who believe ideas are irrelevant would seem to be in for a rude awakening in the other world. It will be a strong intellectual experience.
The methods of instruction used are of great diversity, as we shall see. Lengthy speeches, short speeches, discussions, questions and answers, debates, contests and other techniques are used, but always the focus is on learning and seeing true ideas. Generals are taught first, then particulars.* Sometimes rewards are given out for wisdom, yet these do not seem to matter a great deal to spirits; spirits seem to care a great deal more about reaching a satisfactory intellectual conclusion than about getting rewards.
* AC 4269, 5454, 245, 2395
While spirits and angels usually argue forcefully against ideas they disagree with, angels do not force anyone's opinion and allow falsities to judge themselves. They do not punish evil-sayers, although frequently from their truths the evil judge themselves. Good spirits sooner or later see the truth of the angels' ideas, and evil spirits sooner or later separate themselves from the truth. One spiritual angel disarmingly admitted to Swedenborg that his wisdom seemed arcane and mystical to some, but not "to us."* The truth, he implied, speaks for itself.
* CL 76:7
Angels also respect the freedom of their listeners.
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Rather than throwing out their opponents, they patiently listen to them and then carefully and fully explain what the truth is. Evil spirits, in contrast, cannot tolerate dissent and they frequently rage against and throw out their intellectual opponents. Evil spirits are very careful about whom they let into their assemblies, and often restrict the free speech of those who disagree. Guards frequently bar the gates of the assemblies of the evil, and even sitting in such a gathering must be a scary experience. The evil seem more willing to listen to others, however, when they are not all collected together.
Angels, however, seldom keep out anyone from assemblies of listeners in the world of spirits. Heaven is restricted, but not gatherings below heaven. One possible exception seems to be that where the sphere of conjugial love is active, unchaste spirits are refused admittance. This is apparently because all spirits are so readily attracted when the subject of discussion is conjugial love, and provision needs to be made to protect chaste spirits and the overall sphere.* Swedenborg himself once had to undergo searching scrutiny before being admitted to congratulate a new bride and groom.**
* CL 316ff.
** Ibid.
In other cases, however, the angels seem almost shockingly permissive. One foul-mouthed spirit blasphemed marriage and bragged about his adulteries till other spirits rebuked him. But an angel used a novel method of silencing him-he invited him to come and see heaven for himself: "I will show you in a living way what heaven is, and what hell (is). . ."* Profane falsity answered disarmingly, even gently, by an invitation to explore the truth for oneself. The blasphemer had only shouted the louder when rebuked by the bystanders, but from patient instruction his eyes were opened. Many other instances occur where angels tolerate negative ideas, but argue patiently, firmly against them, always respecting their adversary's freedom and inviting him to explore the truth for himself.** This serves not only for instruction but also for judgment of the evil. That evil and falsity judge themselves when exposed to the truth, seems to be a principle universally applied.
* CL 477:3
** cf. CL 500
The angels' willingness to allow falsity to be expressed verbally is especially remarkable in view of the great prevalence of numerous bystanders who listen intently to the various debates that go on. Bystanders are very often present, but they seem not to be harmed by false ideas, provided they also hear the truth. Bystanders say little themselves, but they listen well and learn a great deal. How many people are bystanders is seldom clear, but the general impression is of quite large numbers.
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Perhaps this suggests that in many human discussions, the majority are satisfied to listen and learn in silence. Certainly many spirits seem to be able to learn without themselves being involved in discussion. Or often bystanders will say nothing for a long time, and then in chorus they affirm some truth which they have come to see during a long discussion. Swedenborg himself learned an enormous amount as a silent bystander. Once he prayed to the Lord to talk with certain spirits, and then when they appeared he was entirely silent as the spirits talked among themselves.* Bystanders are anything but indifferent; they are thinking rather than speaking, and when they do occasionally speak it is clear they have been intent on the subject from the beginning; they sometimes understand the truth more clearly than the speakers. In general they each understand the subject according to their own loves.** The applications to teaching on earth would seem obvious.***
* TCR 696
** CL 55:2 *** On bystanders: cf. TCR 16, if, 72, 137, 162, 334, 386, 390, 506, 518, 696, 697; CL 55, 417
Angels, then, do not try to force learning on anyone. They present the truth and allow everyone to see or reject it at his own pace, from his own love. It is probably the same principle of the freedom of the learner that lies behind another very common tool of instruction-learning from experience. Spirits, like Swedenborg, and like men on earth, learn an enormous amount from experience. But it is significant that in the memorabilia, when experience results in learning, it is nearly always accompanied by instruction from angels. As a matter of fact experience seems to be instructive primarily with good spirits. The evil seem to learn little from experience, primarily because they do not heed the instruction that accompanies it. Some spirits can not even learn from experience that they have died!
Experiences, then, are of enormous value in instruction, but not by themselves. A great many pages are devoted to the spiritual experiences that Swedenborg and others witnessed, precisely because of this learning value. Very often an experience precedes direct instruction, and then angels explain what the experience really was about to spirits whose interests have been perked. At least as frequent is instruction followed by experiences, which then confirm and illustrate the lessons of instruction. Thus experiences serve to arouse interest, to confirm teachings, and to illustrate them by living examples. In the memorabilia they seem to be not a mere adjunct of learning, but an essential element. Experiences enable spirits to see the truth for themselves-yet not apart from the accompanying careful direct instruction.
73
Some spiritual experiences seem to be dangerous, and there seems to be little the angels can do to protect the evil from these dangers.* The good often seem to be protected by good from within, when they witness dangerous happenings, but this is not always so. Angels are usually close to the good, and this helps to protect them and to enlighten them in the meaning of the experience. The enlightenment of truth seems to be the principle means of protection during negative experiences. Protection of the good involves not an overt external defense, but the very real power of the light of truth.
* HH 550, 577
This light of truth is apparently what continually protects Swedenborg himself, although sometimes he must also be accompanied by angels for his protection. Warnings are sometimes given Swedenborg about experiences. Once he and two angels were warned to approach some evil spirits "from the east, lest we should enter the mist of their delusion, and have our understanding and at the same time our sight beclouded."* Once he is told to wait for angels to accompany and enlighten him before visiting the "O how learned" crowd.** An angel prepares him with instruction before he is allowed to visit conjugial partners of the Golden Age, and in lesser degrees before he visits the good Silver, Copper and Iron Ages. When, however, he visits the evil age of iron mixed with miry clay, the accompanying angel offers considerably more instruction and explanation than previously.*** Good by itself, then, seems not to protect, but good accompanied by truth. Swedenborg's own care about protection should show us that negative experiences can be dangerous, but if the light of truth is conjoined in man with a love of good, they need not be feared and are in fact instructive. (This of course does not apply to any evil experience.)
* TCR 662:5 ** TCR 332
*** CL 75, 79, 42, 156e, 208, 444
The reason for this usefulness seems to lie in the value of seeing contrasts. The showing of contrasts is so common in angelic instruction that any number of memorabilia could illustrate it. Probably the best known example is the visit to the imaginary heavens, at the beginning of CL. The contrast to good is usually presented not by the angels directly, but by the learner himself witnessing some evil. Similarly our own presentations about actual evil that contrasts with good seem to be much less convincing to our listeners than their own witnessing of evil-provided their experience is accompanied by instruction in the truth. One reason for contrasts is so that the truth may stand out more clearly from its opposite. Moreover, contrasts encourage man to think more rationally and deeply, so that while he is working out his doubts, the truth extends itself to other ideas and becomes pliant to good.
74
"Hence it is that as soon as in the other life any truth is presented before good spirits by a manifest experience, there is soon afterward presented something opposite which causes doubt."* Without sight of contrasts, truth tends to become hard, cold, persuasive, and devoid of relation to other truths. "All perception of a thing is according to reflection bearing on the distinctions that come from contrasts. . . ."**
* AC 7298:2 ** AC 7812, 410:2, 4172e, 6144; DP 130:2, 168, 150-153, 219:3; TCR 661; CL 267-269; SD 468
The angels constantly use contrasts by utilizing their learners' own experiences with evil. Our learners here on earth hardly seem devoid of experience with evil, and I wonder if we might not make more use of them, for contrasts, than we do. So common is this method that it may be said that the angels just do not teach without it. Even those who die as infants are educated by means of contrasts.*
* HH 342, 343
Equally common, of course, is the use of the Word-not as a method, but as source of light, as authority, and as fountain of truths. The angels continually cite Scripture-which seems to be written on their memories much more permanently than upon ours. The evil pay little heed to the Word, and the angels use it much more frequently with the well disposed than with the negative. Thus the angels do not use the Word so much to prove points (although this is sometimes done) as to show the truth. In one particularly interesting example, with apparently well-disposed spirits who disbelieved the Word has a spiritual sense, the angels brought forward an enormous number of passages from the natural sense that simply were incomprehensible without the spiritual sense. After facing these passages, the spirits were convinced. Then the angels taught them how to learn from the Word.* Similarly, a major theme running throughout angelic instruction is that man should go to the Word to receive eternal life-that is, the angels do not merely use the Word themselves: they encourage everyone to do so and they teach how.
* Verbo V
The frequent use of the Word ultimates the law of Divine Providence that man should be led and taught by the Lord from heaven by means of the Word, and from doctrine and preaching from the Word, and this to all appearances as of himself.* To be taught from the Word is to be taught by the Lord Himself. Man is "taught immediately from Him when this is done from the Word. This is the arcanum of arcana of angelic wisdom."** Such a central truth is not neglected by the angels and must not be on earth. Like the angels, we may serve as means, but all true teaching is done by the Lord-provided that His Word is used.
75
The angels know that unless they from the Word, the Lord will not teach their learners.
* DP 154; AE 1173
** DP 172
The explanation of this law of Providence shows the important role played by man's own reflection. And so we find it in the other world. Sometimes conversation or instruction simply ceases for reflection. (How useful this could be on earth!) During one heated debate, an angelic spirit simply stopped talking, looked around, saw his listeners' hesitation, and then continued on at length.* In an assembly of solefidians Swedenborg once suddenly interrupted proceedings and in a loud voice asked two questions and waited. After a short silence they rejected his thinking, and he then replied at length.** Another time he asked some solefidian preachers whether they wished to bring on themselves the curse of Judas. They apparently could say nothing and left to think and discuss by themselves*** (another effective example is given in CL 355, 356). The most striking instance of the importance of reflection is the case of the English writer whom the angels challenged on faith alone. They told him to inquire and see if faith could ever produce charity. The writer meditated along these lines every day for a year, seeking always to reason charity as a product of faith, and in the end he was convinced that this could not be done.**** His real learning came from reflection, though this was preceded by instruction.
* TCR 335; 6
** TCR 503:5 *** LJ post. 214, CL 355, 356
**** LJ post. 213
Reflection is usually unseen by others, but it plays an enormous part in human instruction in both worlds. There is abundant doctrine why this is so, and many pages would be needed to do this subject justice. One general reason for the importance of reflection is that knowledge of a truth is not an understanding of it. Once Swedenborg wondered why almost no Christians understood a certain essential truth, although they very well knew and verbally acknowledged it. Yet "They have never understood it. The reason is that they have not given it any thought. . . ."* Accordingly man is urged to form "for himself" ideas concerning the things he learns; "for without an idea, nothing remains in the memory otherwise than as an empty thing. Consequently things are added thereto, and fill up the idea of the thing, from other knowledges. . . . The confirmation of the idea itself by many things causes not only that it sticks in the memory, so that it can be called forth into the thought, but also that faith can be insinuated into it."** In other words, man cannot just learn; he must think about what he knows or, the Writings make abundantly plain, he retains nothing.
76
"By 'learning' is signified to perceive interiorly in oneself that it is so, which is to understand, and so to receive and acknowledge; he who learns otherwise learns and does not learn, because he does not retain."*** Therefore man is told he must "ponder over" the truths he learns from the Word, or else they are not part of him.**** Teaching at the Academy provides abundant examples. The angels frequently seem aware that their instruction is only the beginning of real learning, and that their hearers must do a lot of thinking before they understand.
* DP 153
** AC 2831; Cf. 2803, 9300
*** AR 618
**** DP 233:7, 8
There is an important reason why this is so, and again we have time only to summarize the most essential teachings. The understanding teaches the will, but the will leads the understanding.* When, according to the law of Divine Providence, the Lord teaches man by means of the Word, the as-of-self element is present through man's own reflection; for in reflection good in man leads the understanding to see truths.** "For the Lord does not openly teach anyone truths, but through good leads to the thinking of what is true, and unknown to the man He also inspires the perception and consequent choice that such a thing is true because the Word so declares. . . Thus the Lord adapts truths according to the reception of good by each person. . ."***
* LJ post. 329
** DP 174; AE 1173-1185
*** AC 5952; cf. 5934, 4096
Good is the only around in which the seed of truth will grow, and it grows as man thinks. Without good, man is simply unteachable, because however much he learns, he will not, from his own thinking, be led to understand the truth. "The man who is acquainted with all the goods and truths that can possibly be known, and does not shun evils, knows nothing; for his evils absorb them and cast them out. . . ."* A man in evil simply cannot know anything true because of his inability to be led to enlightenment during reflection. It is a hard but necessary saying, growing out of the fact that man is his love. But "when a man shuns evils as sins he daily learns what a good work is. Cease, therefore, from asking in thyself, 'What are the good works that I must do, or what good must I do to receive eternal life?' Only cease from evils as sins and look to the Lord and the Lord will teach and lead you."** No instruction can succeed unless it relies upon the Lord's leading from good to truth in reflection. "No one is ever instructed by means of truths but by means of the affections of truth; for truths apart from affection do indeed come to the ear as sound, but do not enter into the memory; that which causes them to enter into the memory and to abide with it, is affection."***
* AE 1180
** AE 979
*** AC 3066
77
MASTERS OF ACCOMMODATION
Angelic instruction, then, while an intensely intellectual experience, by no means ignores the affectional side of man. Accommodation to individuals' states does not mean, for the angels, an appeal to the affections apart from the understanding. The truth is not watered down, and the angels are unafraid to teach truths which they know will seem incredible or perhaps very cruel at first hearing. Thus their appeal to their hearers' affections is usually not obvious, but it is not the less real for being subtle. Their accommodation seems principally to consist of presenting the particular truth which relates to the hearer's state, and in such a way that the hearer can understand it. They are willing to accept their hearers' diverse states including evil states, as a beginning, but then they seek to instill understandable truth which can improve those states. They are, of course, in clear perception of the states of spirits, and their awareness of the states they face seems to determine how they go about presenting truth. Thus the angels do continually appeal to affections, and most exquisitely so, but always leading by truths to truths. We, of course, cannot perceive our hearers' states with anything like the angels' exquisite sense, but the principle of awareness of a hearer's state seems so essential to angelic instruction that it would seem to be a pre-requisite for any successful teaching.
The doctrine of accommodation is extensive.
"Although the doctrine of faith is in itself . . . above all human and even angelic comprehension, it has nevertheless been dictated in the Word according to man's comprehension, in a rational manner. The case herein is the same as it is with a parent who is teaching his little boys and girls: when he is teaching, he sets forth everything in accordance with their genius, although he himself thinks from what is more interior or higher; otherwise it would be teaching without their learning, or like casting seed upon a rock. The case is also the same with the angels who in the other life instruct the simple in heart: although these angels are in celestial and spiritual wisdom, yet they do not hold themselves above the comprehension of those whom they teach, but speak in simplicity with them, yet rising by degrees as these are instructed, for if they were to speak from angelic wisdom, the simple would comprehend nothing at all, and thus would not be led to the truths and goods of faith."*
* AC 2533:2
"Everyone is taught according to the understanding appropriate to his own love; what is taught beyond this does not remain."* "He who by investigations has not acquired for himself some idea concerning these things, receives but a faint idea, if any, from description; for a man receives only so much from others as he either has of his own, or acquires for himself by looking into the matter in himself; all the rest passes away."**
78
"Without an idea from what he knows and feels in himself a man cannot think. . . ." *** "A religion that is not accommodated is not received."****
* DP 172:5 ** AC 3803
*** AC 9300; Cf. TCR 208
**** DP 256; also see AC 2301, 3388, 3470:2, 6333, 8920; TCR 370; CL 295; AE 14, 1177
The angels' awareness of their hearers' states is reflected beautifully in their application of the principle just quoted from AC 2533-they frequently begin With easy doses of doctrine, allow it to be absorbed, and then by degrees present more and deeper material, as the listener's understanding is enlightened and his interest activated. (TCR 623 is an excellent example.) It is interesting how often instruction begins with short speeches interspersed with discussion, and then develops into longer and involved speeches by the angels. Swedenborg often instructs spirits in this way. (TCR 280, for example.) Long conclusions are as common as short, cautious, gentle introductions. When a hard saying is presented, it is usually (not always) preceded by discussions, various experiences, and other preparatory instruction. Free response is always allowed and very often encouraged, but seldom demanded.
In contrast Martin Luther demonstrates how not to teach. In the other world he was given a house in the central hall of which
he set up a kind of throne, somewhat elevated, where he took his seat. Those who came to listen to him,. . . he arranged in groups. He assigned to places nearest himself those who were most favorable to his opinions, and to places behind them those who were less favorable. He then spoke continuously, but occasionally allowed questions, for the purpose of resuming the thread of his discourse from some new point.*
* TCR 796
Sounds rather boring, and instruction usually is boring if the teacher is more interested in his own ideas than in the response he is evoking. The angels are intensely interested in true ideas, but they seem to be not less interested in their learners' responses. (TCR 623 again illustrates this well.) Accommodation is, after all, the outgrowth of love, and from their love angels cannot but do everything possible that their learners may receive truths with affection.
Some, however, apparently have little interest in ideas. TCR 185 describes Swedenborg's visit to a snowy region where a preacher praised the beauties of solefidian mysteries. No one understood anything but they all thought the sermon excellent. When Swedenborg sought to carry on an argument with the priest, he was not even answered, and everyone went home intoxicated with paradoxical mysteries. Similarly he could not really discuss ideas with the Quakers, who believed the Holy Spirit taught them directly.*
79
From the memorabilia it would appear that indifference to doctrinal ideas is fairly rare, as most spirits are affirmative or negative to specific ideas, but not indifferent. But where indifference to ideas reigns, there seems to be little that anyone can do even to spark an argument. The causes of indifference seem to be evils of life, the belief that faith cannot be understood, and the belief that truth flows in from within apart from knowledges learned from without.** Of course it is possible that there are vastly more indifferent spirits than appear in the memorabilia. Societies of exterior friendship are said to be very numerous and their members also seem to be bored with any significant ideas.***
* LJ post. 58; cf. AR 716
** Cf. AC 4096:2, 3; SD 6029
*** AC 4804
More common than indifference is the negative attitude. Here the angels show their charity above all by compelling no one, but respecting everyone's freedom of thought. "Compulsion does not reform, because it inroots nothing. . . ."* "What is received in a state of compulsion does not remain but is dissipated."** "Compulsion in things of a holy nature is dangerous. . . ."*** The angels meet negative attitudes rather by calm, patient instruction in the truth. Often they instruct at considerable length when it is perfectly obvious their adversaries will reject the truth. It sounds like non-accommodation, but in fact their instruction gives evil spirits a chance to judge themselves, and it also serves to enlighten interested bystanders who might otherwise remain confused.
* AC 7007:2
** AC 5854
*** AC 4031; see also AC 1937, 1947, 2880, 6071:5; DP 129-153, 176; AE 1150
Sometimes negative attitudes need more than plain instruction. It is common for angels first to lead spirits out of disorder, then to instruct them in the truth.* A, angry, self-assured group of clergymen were told by Swedenborg to learn the laws of Divine order and they would see their faith was a Gordian knot in a desert. This added fuel to the flames, till a voice from heaven simply told them to restrain themselves and first hear what order is. They then settled down and were instructed.** Another time an angel told some spirits, in the course of lengthy instruction, that they would not be able to understand unless they reversed their state. Then he concluded by listing briefly all the beautiful things he was not going to tell them, presumably till their attitude improved. This resulted in at least a temporary reversal of state.*** After patiently hearing a torrent of falsities, the angels told some evil spirits that they were sensual because they were evil. "We therefore excuse you." But the angels also made plain to them that they must be removed from evil or they could not see the truth.
80
This temporarily occurred and conversation proceeded.**** Some Moslems, negative to Christianity because of false Christian dogmas, first were shown the falsity of those dogmas, then they became receptive and were taught.***** Accommodation then is not a watering down of the truth,****** but a careful, sensitive selection of the particular truths that meet the potential learners' problems and doubts. While evil and falsity stand in the way, they are met by truths, wisely chosen from awareness of human stares.
* TCR 733
** TCR 74; cf. 134
*** CL 355, 356
**** TCR 77
***** LJ post 95; Cf. 32, 224
****** Cf. CL 481
The angels' concern for their learners' affections is perhaps best illustrated by the very frequent use of questions. Sometimes the angels question, sometimes the learners question, but one purpose always seems to be to arouse and maintain interest. One period of instruction was introduced by some angels inviting, "Let us have an exchange of speech by questions and answers; for where a subject is taken in solely from hearing, the perception of that subject does indeed flow in, but unless the hearer think of it from himself and ask questions, it does not remain."* The principle here seems to be that in all Divine worship "man should first will, desire and pray, and the Lord then answer, inform and do; otherwise man does not receive anything Divine. . . . The Lord gives them to ask, and what to ask; therefore the Lord knows it beforehand; but still the Lord wills that man should ask first, to the end that he may do it as from himself, and thus that it should be appropriated to him. . . ."** Similarly, when it is desired to strengthen someone's affection, it is customary to refuse him at first in order that he may urge again, from deeper affection.*** So do teachers in both worlds, by questions, pauses and occasional demurrals, encourage learners' affections to be stimulated.
* CL 183:2
** AR 376
*** AC 4356, cf. 2338e.
The use of questions by the angels is extremely common. Discussion often results, which is instructive for the good and generally useless for the evil. (The evil never really learn anything.) The good learn a lot from discussion, but the discussion is usually guided by angels and accompanied by or mixed in with instruction. Discussion is sometimes almost conversational; sometimes it involves long speeches and formal replies. For example, after the angels said, "Let us have an exchange of speech by questions and answers," there resulted lengthy and deep questions followed by lengthy and involved replies by the angels, with very little real discussion. Questions and discussions are used in a great variety of ways, the constant apparently being the desire to develop interest and response. With the good, discussion is nearly always informative and successful. With the evil, it seems to serve little use but judgment.
81
Questions are especially important at the beginning of instruction. A great many times Swedenborg was taught after first having a question. The angels seem to be particularly sensitive to states at the beginning of their meetings with potential learners, and they are extremely careful in how they accommodate in introducing new ideas. (Two good examples are in TCR 355, 748) When he once received an unusual reaction to his thinking from two angels, Swedenborg paused to ask them where they were from. After they briefly explained their personal background, he was able to accommodate the truth to them more sensitively.* A great many examples could be adduced to illustrate the value of questions and answers in accommodation, especially at the outset of instruction.
* CL 444
One common use of questions is to ask spirits for their ideas on a subject before instructing them. When some celebrated philosophers asked Swedenborg his views on creation he replied, "Do you first tell me what you think." After making considerable foolish response, the learned were eventually open to hearing the truth, at least temporarily.* Some angels visiting a school first questioned the students and then instructed them in the meaning of their replies.** When Swedenborg saw a representation, an angel first asked if he knew what it meant; Swedenborg replied, "Partly," and the angel then taught him at length.*** Newcomers to the spiritual world are often asked "what they think of the life after death." The angels hear out their silly replies before saying, "Welcome, we will show you something new, that you have not known. . . ." Then they teach them.**** And angels will listen, with smiling countenance, to ridiculous replies about some subjects two or three times before asking spirits if they believe those things from faith of heart, from historical faith of tradition, or from indulgence of the imagination. When the expected outrage ensues, the angels courteously answer, "it does no harm for you to believe thus, but that it is not so, you shall hereafter be instructed." Interest, instruction, conversation and learning result.*****
* TCR 79
** TCR 113:4
*** CL 270
**** 5 Mem. I.
***** Mem. III.
It may seem insensitive, but in fact such an approach gives learners to feel their beliefs are not being ignored; then their self-confidence is abruptly shaken and their interest is peaked. The success of this method must be as much from its unexpectedness as from its argument. Surprises are rather common when angels approach spirits in falsity. Surprise itself does not teach, but it arouses interest; it is hard to be bored when you are surprised.
82
Occasionally the questions and replies preceding instruction involve elaborate assemblies, division into separate groups, serious meditation and discussion on a difficult subject, and carefully developed answers. These answers are likely to be all wrong. Very clearly the angels' purpose in posing questions in this way is to have the learners themselves face the complexity of the problem at hand and realize they need to be instructed. When instruction follows, it is well received by the good; the evil man separate themselves.* In other words, the questions and discussion often are used not so much to get right answers, but to arouse a desire for the truth. At other times an angel may pose a question and then answer it himself.** (For other examples of angels asking for their hearers' ideas before they instruct, see TCR 16, 160, 731 ff.; CL 55, 294; AR 716.) As with other forms of question and discussion, this method works well with the good because they want to learn.
* TCR 664-666
** TCR 387; Additions to TCR
Affirmative spirits are frequently told to discuss subjects in groups and then to produce a conclusion. Sometimes an angel directs them by reading the Word and starting their thought in the right direction, sometimes the angels leave the groups to themselves, although instruction in the truth nearly always comes eventually. When stupid answers are given, the groups themselves may reject them.* The less wise usually defer to the more wise in such cases, and again affection of learning and openness to the truth are stimulated by discussion. (For interesting examples, see TCR 48, 661, 188; CL 103-114, 330, 331.)
* TCR 188; CL 106
A variation of this method involves affirmative individuals being told to present the truth on their own.* Once after an experience with some conceited intellectuals, accompanied by angelic instruction, Swedenborg was told to form a conclusion, which he did. An angel then taught him further.** And on one occasion Swedenborg taught some boys who were then able to try out their new learning on their usual teacher.*** The angels seem to be acutely aware of the importance of individual affections and of reflection as of oneself in learning. Response is seldom mandatory, but is continually encouraged and asked for.
* CL 381-384
** TCR 334
*** CL 329
In one memorabilium, response in fact becomes mandatory.* A highly elaborate assembly is set up-a gymnasium "where youths are initiated into various matters" of wisdom. Clergy, judges, wise young men, and an audience of listeners are all present. To the dismay of the students the head teacher asks a very difficult question, and though the youths protest that this question is beyond anyone to fathom, the judges insist it be answered.
83
Five young men give five very cautious answers and plead that they really do not know the solution. They speak humbly and well, but are all incorrect, three of them devastatingly so. The last speaker (who is closest to the truth) concludes by appealing to the wise to open up this eternal mystery.
* TCR 697
The head teacher then gives a lengthy answer which fully settles the question. He makes no reference to the five wrong answers; presumably they need no specific correction because the speakers clearly want to see the truth. He does not even correct the clergy who applauded one of the worst answers. He argues against no one, he simply presents the truth in all its fullness and complexity.* The entire episode is a magnificent learning experience, like any good examination. Especially interesting is the use of an impossibly difficult question, and insisting that the hopeless learners try to answer it. Their efforts are not entirely futile as they seem to learn from their attempts, but how ready they become to hear the truth! Could there be a more effective method of teaching the affection of humility?
* Ibid.
Affection of the truth does not mean just getting excited about it, and the angels encourage learners to be patient and take their time in learning. "Think about what we have said," they say.* "Wait until later to learn about some things."** Sometimes information is withheld, although the angels would like to tell more.*** Full instruction is sometimes delayed till an experience enables it to be understood.**** One novitiate was refused a direct answer to his question and instead was told to go and inquire what delight is.***** As one angel, eager to teach more, said to Swedenborg, "Enough for the present. Inquire first whether these things are above the common understanding. If they are, why more? but if not, more will be disclosed."****** Patience is central to accommodation.
* TCR 73, 459, 4611661
** TCR 332; Cf. 621
*** CL 2081270; cf. 355
**** CL 79; TCR 741
***** TCR 570
****** CL 270
Occasionally the angels face spirits who have special personal difficulties in seeing the truth. For example, a company of spirits pray on their knees, that they may speak face to face with angels and disclose the thoughts of their hearts. At once three angels appear and invite them to tell the thoughts of their hearts. The spirits lament that they just do not know whom to believe, since all the different sects claim sole truth. They sincerely express their anxiety. But what do the angels reply?
84
"Read the Word and believe on the Lord, and you will see the truths that will enter into your faith and life. All in the Christian world derive their doctrine from the Word as the one and only source." Two spirits object they have read the Word but do not understand it. The angels say, "Then you did not approach the Lord who is the Word, and you have also previously confirmed yourselves in falsities." They then instruct the spirits at considerable length, with a fair amount of discussion. In the end the spirits are enlightened and have been greatly benefitted.*
* TCR 621
In a similar occurrence three young novitiates converse with some angelic spirits and make plain their problems in understanding spiritual values. Finally they exclaim, "O how dry is the joy of heaven. What young man can then wish for heaven! Is not [chaste love of the sex] barren and void of life?" But the angelic spirits simply laugh and reply with instruction, and when the novitiates continue to object, the angelic spirits indignantly reply, "Because you are not yet chaste, you are entirely ignorant of what chaste love of the sex is." This is followed by further instruction, and as the meeting continues the novitiates grow affirmative and end by learning a good deal. It is interesting that the beautiful ideals of conjugial love are presented only after the novitiates display an affirmative attitude, and with the admonition that they think more deeply.*
* CL 44
On another occasion some Gentiles told Swedenborg how sad they were that the Divine never appeared to them, when yet they think. and speak about the Divine. They wished that if there were a God, He would send them teachers. But they had long waited in vain, "lamenting that perchance He had deserted them, and that thus there seemed nothing else for them but to perish." But angels told the Gentiles the problem was their own unwillingness to believe God had taken on a Human, "and that until they believed this, God cannot be manifested to them, nor can they be taught, because this is the primary thing of all revelation." Conversation and instruction followed, and the good Gentiles received the truth.*
* LJ post. 129
It is notable that in the three examples just cited, the angels turned the conversation away from a self-pitying concern for one's own problems, to the true ideas which could remove the problem. They respect freedom and listen well, but do everything in their power to change false thinking. The spirits were told in effect, forget about yourselves, think instead about these truths.
Moreover, angels are not always outwardly warm. Rather than sympathize with the evil, rather than condemn or punish the evil, they teach and debate them.
85
Often they are indignant at falsity. One angel who listened to a collection of nonsense about the Trinity was silent with astonishment a long time. Then he bluntly asked, "Can the Christian world be so insane?" Anyone, he said in effect, can see how stupid these ideas are. With that, he launched into rebuttal.* And when Swedenborg once had the misfortune to ask what wisdom has to do with woman, he was suddenly surrounded by wise men who jested and laughed at his ignorance before explaining.** Insensitivity? More likely it was just what Swedenborg needed. (For further instances of angelic indignation at falsity, compare TCR 568; CL 82, 268, 293, 481; 5 Mem. III.) Angels delight in teaching, discussion, debating, even confrontation, because these are the arenas in which they can accommodate the truth they love to human states.
* TCR 134
** CL 56
CONCLUSION
In heaven and the world of spirits the truth in the end prevails of itself, as it is carefully accommodated. Those who do not like it, rail against it and separate themselves from it. The angels use no one method, but an enormous variety, and they have a great deal to say. Running throughout their methods is respect for and insistence upon the truth, and considerable care in accommodating it, from awareness of their learners' particular states. Even the different methods have variations within them, so that no two sessions of instruction ever seem to be the same. Perhaps their great variety in teaching methods is itself an important lesson.
SWEDENBORG SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION HILARY PITCAIRN 1977
The 80th Annual Meeting of the Swedenborg Scientific Association will be held in the auditorium of Pendleton Hall, Bryn Athyn, Pa., on Monday, March 28, 1977, at 8 p.m. Brief reports and the election of a President and members of the Board of Directors will be followed by an address by Dr. Thomas W. Keiser entitled, "Remnants of an Ancient Curse."
All interested are cordially invited.
HILARY PITCAIRN, SECY.
86
SICKNESS AND REGENERATION Rev. GEORGE DE CHARMS 1977
"No one is reformed in a state of bodily disease."* This is a remarkable statement. If taken at face value it would seem to indicate that few people at the present day could be saved. Physical illness is widespread, and relatively few are entirely free from its effects. The quotation therefore cannot possibly mean that any illness whatever precludes all possibility of regeneration. There are many degrees of physical disability. Many people overcome serious handicaps by heroic effort and determination, giving evidence thereby of a character to be admired. Those who are blind, or deaf, or unable to speak, still manage to perform valuable services. Even some who are bed-ridden have been known to accomplish remarkable results as for instance in the field of art or literature, and thereby have succeeded in contributing to the uses of society. Even those who can do none of these things have demonstrated a spirit of charity, overcoming the temptation to self-pity, and showing deep concern for others, and an unselfish regard for the neighbor. By this means alone they have given valuable service to those who know and love them. It is clear therefore that the interference of physical illness with regeneration must be relative. But relative to what?
* DP 142
The number we have quoted continues by stating that sickness makes regeneration impossible because "the reason is then not in a free state." Free choice between what one believes to be right and what one is impelled by natural disposition to think, say, or do-this is the essential requirement of regeneration. It is further said that "the state of the mind depends upon the state of the body. When the body is sick the mind also is sick, by removal from the world, if not otherwise." Here it is implied that even in sickness of the body, the mind may not be seriously affected except by removal from the world. Such removal is relative, and may even be so slight as to be inconsiderable. Many who are ill nevertheless continue with their work and succeed in maintaining their place in society. As they do so they must exercise free choice in order to determine whether they will follow the dictates of conscience or yield to the impulses of the proprium. It cannot then be said that they are removed from the world.
87
Of course it is obvious that when the mind is directly affected, and when man's reason is impaired, free choice is impossible. It is also true that in general, when the body is sick, the mind is also to some extent affected. But surely it is not always true that this affect upon the mind is such as to prevent a clear recognition of the difference between right and wrong. What is clearly meant is that so far as the mind is not balanced there can be no free choice. Thus it is said in the same work, "No one is reformed in a state of disordered mind because this takes away rationality, and consequently freedom to act according to reason." Reference is made to abnormal states of "melancholy, spurious conscience, hallucinations of various kinds, pains of mind from misfortune, anxieties and mental sufferings from bodily disease."* All these warp man's judgment, and make it impossible for him to discern the difference between right and wrong. Here again there are many degrees of mental aberration. The ability to judge rationally may in some cases be only partially inhibited. There may be states and times when the mind functions normally, even though at other times it is insane. It is important therefore to take these varying conditions into account in considering these two numbers of the Writings.
* DP 141
Furthermore it is clear that what is here referred to is man's part in the process of regeneration: yet this is very small indeed when compared to the part which the Lord plays. Regeneration is a Divine work. It is performed continuously from man's birth even to his death without the slightest interruption. It goes forward when man is asleep as well as when he is awake, and when he is sick as well as when he is in health. It is the constant operation of Divine Providence leading man secretly from earth to heaven, just so far as man is willing to follow.
Man's part in regeneration, on the other hand, is confined to his conscious choice between what he believes to be true, and what his inherited nature prompts him to think and do. This choice is not possible if the mind is not in perfect balance. Man continually upsets the balance, but the Lord protects it and perpetually renews it, calling upon man again and again to exercise judgment according to reason. This is man's essential responsibility, and one which he alone can perform. Only as he chooses to think and act from conscience in full freedom can the Lord operate secretly to promote his regeneration. This is the life of religion which is not possible if the mind is sick and unable to think rationally.
That states of bodily illness and of mental disorder are used by the Lord to promote man's spiritual welfare, and this in secret ways of which man can have no knowledge, is evident from what the Lord Himself said when He was in the world.
88
When the Pharisees asked His disciples why their Master ate with publicans and sinners, the Lord said: "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick . . . I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."* There are spiritual diseases from which man must be healed by the Lord. These are represented by the natural diseases which the Lord cured during His life on earth. These same spiritual diseases are all related to physical ills by correspondence, as the ancients well knew. Therefore they spoke of exercising charity toward the halt, the lame, the blind, the deaf, lepers and those possessed of evil spirits. If men afflicted by these spiritual diseases could not be healed, regeneration would indeed be impossible. But this, as we have indicated, can be done only by the Lord through the secret operations of His Providence. If man is to participate in this Divine work, his mind must be whole. He must be able to make certain judgments in complete freedom. But the opportunity to do this must be provided even at times when he is not in perfect health. If this were not so, who could possibly be saved?
* Matt. 9:12, 13
As a matter of fact, even when man is sick and incapable of sound judgment, the Lord uses illness as a means of opening new opportunities for free choice. Thus we read:
If one is told that interior thought. is to think from truth, and that interior will is to act from good, he does not at all apprehend it. Still less that the interior man is distinct from the exterior and so distinct that the interior man can see as from a higher position what is going on in the exterior man and that the interior man has the capacity and the ability of chastening the exterior, and of not willing and thinking what the exterior man sees from phantasy and desires from cupidity. These things he does not see so long as the exterior man has dominion and rules; but when he is out of that state, as when he is in some depression arising from misfortunes or illness, he can see and apprehend these things, because then the dominion of the external man ceases. For the faculty or ability of understanding is always preserved to man by the Lord, but is very obscure with those who are in falsities and evils, and is always clearer in proportion as falsities and evils are lulled to sleep.*
* AC 5127
The point of special interest here is that when the external things with man are quiescent, or as it were put to sleep by depression, or by illnesses of various kinds, although man cannot then consciously contribute to regeneration, nevertheless the opportunity is given him to reflect, and to consider where he is going, taking counsel with himself as to his future. In such ways a misfortune or an illness may bring about a complete change in the direction of a man's life. The Divine Providence in this can often he seen very clearly later on. In such ways the Lord uses bodily or menial illness as a means whereby to promote man's regeneration.
89
In this case as in all others, a true understanding of the Writings is not to be gained by the perusal of a single number, but rather by comparing this number with teaching elsewhere given. It is true that when the body is sick the mind also is sick, and sound judgment is not possible. But it is not true that illness always inhibits sound judgment; nor is it true that man cannot, under certain circumstances regenerate in spite of physical and even mental disabilities. Even where this is not possible, the Lord still uses sickness of both mind and body as a means toward the furtherence of man's regeneration.
Here we would repeat that even in extreme illness, under stress of great pain it is possible for man to turn away from self, to have deep concern for others, and to have regard for the Divine will. This may be inspired by fear, and by inward concern only for self, in which case it is purely temporary and will he forgotten as soon as the pressure is lifted from the mind. But it also may be entirely genuine, arising from the remains of infancy and childhood. If so it will be an expression of regeneration already begun before illness struck, and in this case it will remain permanently after the crisis is past.
SOCIAL LIFE Rev. DOUGLAS M. TAYLOR 1977
(First of a series of classes.)
Introduction
A great deal of teaching is given from Heaven in the Writings concerning social life-usually called the Diversions of Charity-and concerning their relation to the life of religion.
It ought not to surprise us that recreation should be included in the life of religion, because, after all, all religion is of life, and the life of religion is to do the good thing. There is not a single area of our life that should not be touched and interpenetrated by the good of charity received from the Lord. Even our social life should spring from heavenly charity or goodwill towards the neighbor. Otherwise, it is not distinctive New Church social life.
90
If the Lord, in His love and wisdom, has revealed these principles of social life for the sake of our eternal happiness, it is surely our part to read them in the Writings, think about them with a view to understanding their implications and applications, and then strenuously bend the will to apply these principles to our life. There are applications to our own private life and also to our corporate life as a society of New Churchmen. In this series of classes we intend to study these teachings in the following order:
The Ideals of Social life; The Abuses of Social Life; and Applying the Principles.
THE IDEALS OF SOCIAL LIFE
In the section on the diversions of charity in the posthumous work called simply Charity many examples are given under the heading: "Various enjoyments and pleasures of the bodily senses, useful for recreating the mind."* They include such things as social conversations in which various matters are discussed, whether public, private, or domestic; also walks in the outdoors which delight the sense of sight by means of beautiful views and the splendors of palaces and houses, trees, flowers, gardens, moods, and fields, not forgetting people, birds, and flocks. Also for the sense of sight are various kinds of theatrical plays, which present "moral virtues, and turns of fortune from which something of Divine Providence shines out." We will leave aside the question of whether or not this is a Divine criterion for selecting the kinds of plays (or movies or television shows) that we should select to view. It is, of course, a relatively easy thing for a New Churchman to see something of the Divine Providence shining through in any dramatic performance. All that is necessary is to believe in the Divine Providence and think from that belief. But what does a New Churchman do when dramatic performances exhibit immoral vices in place of moral virtues! How much recreation of the mind can be achieved by wallowing in the hells?
* Char. 189
For the sense of hearing there are harmonies of music and of singing that "affect the mind according to their correspondence with the affections; and besides these, seemly jests, that expand the mind." The fact that "seemly jests" are said to "expand the mind" seems to imply that unseemly jests narrow the mind. A little reflection shows that this is indeed true. The most narrow-minded people are those who delight in unseemly jests. Their minds are confined to a very narrow rut indeed. But seemly jests expand the mind and are included among the diversions of charity.
91
For those whose work is predominantly of an intellectual character "diversions useful for recreating minds" include "various kinds of manual work exercising the body and diverting the mind from its regular activities." That particular example illustrates what is meant by diversions of charity; they divert or turn the mind from its regular activities and thus provide it with a change. The same effect is produced by the reading of books giving opinions of history and philosophy if these things give delight. Even the reading of "the news in newspapers" is included in the list of diversions of charity that can be enjoyed by individuals with or without company.
The diversions of charity that require company include "banquets, feasts, and meals, with the cheerfulness attending them; and in addition, games at home played with dice, balls, or cards; dancing, too, at weddings and festive gatherings. These and similar things are diversions useful for recreating minds."
In the True Christian Religion treatment of the corporate diversions of charity "dinners and suppers of charity" are given prominence. They exist, we read, "only among those who are in mutual love from similarity of faith."* Note that there must be two things: mutual love and similarity of faith. Similarity of faith does not of itself produce a sphere of mutual love or charity at a dinner or banquet. These "feasts of charity," which were customary with the Christians of the early Christian Church, have rightly been taken as an ideal of corporate social life in the New Church. It would be hard to find a better ideal at which to aim than the picture given in the number in True Christian Religion from which we have already quoted, which goes on to say: "At table they conversed on various subjects, both domestic and civil, but especially on such as pertained to the church. And because they were feasts of charity, whatever subject they talked about, charity with its delights and joys was in their speech. The spiritual sphere that prevailed at those feasts was a sphere of love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor, which cheered the mind of everyone, softened the tone of every voice, and from the heart communicated festivity to all the senses. For there emanates from every man a spiritual sphere, which is a sphere of his love's affection and thought therefrom, and this interiorly affects his associates, especially at feasts. This sphere emanates both through the face and through the respiration."
* TCR 433
As well as feasts of charity the members of the early Christian Church had social gatherings which are described as "assemblies of charity, because there was a spiritual brotherhood."* For this reason they called themselves "brothers in Christ."
92
These social gatherings were also, we read, "a consolation in the adversities of the church, seasons of rejoicing on the account of its increase, recreations of mind after study and labor, and at the same time opportunities for conversation on various subjects; and as they flowed from spiritual love as from a fountain, they were rational and moral from a spiritual origin."
* TCR 434
Now, the question is, Why were these things enumerated in such detail in the Writings? Surely, we all know what activities recreate the mind. Why do they have to be listed like this in the pages of Divine Revelation!
That would not have been at all necessary had not certain sections of the Christian Church fallen into a puritanical attitude with regard to social life. There were those who frowned upon dancing, for example; and in the most extreme cases they felt a little guilty about any festive atmosphere. Since the Writings had to be addressed first to the Christian world, it was important that the activities constituting the diversions of charity should be enumerated, so that there could be no doubt about them.
The Heavenly Doctrine is not at all puritanical, nor is the ideal New Church that is raised upon it; nor should the organized New Church be any different. On the subject of "various enjoyments and pleasures of the bodily senses useful for recreating the mind," we have seen what is set forth in the Doctrine of Charity. In the Arcana Coelestia, regarding: pleasures we read: "No one is forbidden to enjoy the pleasures of the body and its senses, that is, the pleasures of possession of lands and wealth; the pleasures of honor and office in the state; the pleasure of conjugial love and of love for infants and children; the pleasures of friendship and of communication with companions; the pleasures of hearing, or of the sweetness of singing and music; the pleasures of sight, or of beauties which are manifold, as those of becoming dress, of elegant dwellings with their furniture, beautiful gardens, and the like, which are delightful from harmony of form and color; the pleasures of smell, or of fragrant odors; the pleasures of taste, or of the flavors and benefits of food and drink; the pleasures of touch. For these are most external or bodily affections arising from interior affections."* The teaching is also given that "no pleasure ever exists in the body unless it exists and subsists from an interior affection, and no interior affection exists except from one more interior, in which is the use and the end."** With regard to interior affections it is further said that those of them which are living "all derive their delight from good and truth; and good and truth derive their delight from charity and faith, and in this case do so from the Lord, thus from life itself; wherefore the affections and pleasures therefrom are living. And since genuine pleasures have this origin, they are denied to no one.
93
Indeed, when they are from this origin their delight indefinitely surpasses delight not from this source, which is in comparison unclean."***
* AC 995:2
** AC 994:2
*** AC 995:3
The quality of our social life or recreation depends, then, upon the use or end in view. It is a diversion of charity only if charity is within it, that is, if it proceeds from charity or love towards the neighbor. The use is what imparts the quality. What, then, is the use of social life?
The Use of Social Life
In general, the use of social life is that it recreates or refreshes the mind so that the love of use is renewed. The purpose is that one may return refreshed to one's employment. The Writings point out and experience confirms it that "there is an affection in every employment, and it bends the mind (animus), and keeps the mind (mens) intent upon working or applying itself, and this latter mind, if not relaxed, becomes dulled, and its desire loses its keeness; just like salt when it loses its saltness and is consequently without any savour or stimulus. It is also like a bent bow, which, unless it is unbent, loses its force it derives from its elasticity. It is precisely the same if the mind (mens) is kept a long time in the same ideas without any change."*
* Char. 190
The mind spoken of here is the rational mind, in which are our intentions or ends. This cannot be kept continuously on the stretch, intent on the same ideas without any change. Sooner or later it longs for rest; "and when resting," we read, "it descends into the body, and there seeks its delights corresponding to the mind's (mens) activities."* Note the emphasis os relaxing the tension of the mind, the tension that comes from intending to do some work. It is important for the sake of carrying out our employment or form of use effectively and with the right spirit or motive that the mind be diverted from time to time from its usual thoughts and affections. In this way it is re-created and refreshed. Recreation or social life is also important for the mental or psychological health of the mind. There is a number in the Spiritual Diary that states this openly. Speaking of certain mental diseases, including melancholia (which seems to be what we would call today "a nervous breakdown"), the passage says that such things "are dispelled by varieties and thus by mingling with societies."**
* Char. 191
** SD 3625
As we have already seen, the use of dinners and suppers in the Church is that the people of the Church "might heartily enjoy themselves, and at the same time be drawn together."*
94
They are also "a consolation in the adversities of the Church, seasons of rejoicing on account of its increase, . . . and at the same time opportunities for conversation on various subjects."**
* TCR 433
** TCR 434
It may perhaps be thought that these teachings concerning the use of various kinds of social life are all of them matters of common perception or common sense. Who does not know that relaxation and rest are necessary after each day's work and after each week's work? Who does not see the need for an annual vacation? Who does not know that an unhealthy state of mind is the result of a lack of variety in our thoughts and affections?
We do indeed know these things from experience; as we also know from experience that murder, adultery, theft, and false witness can destroy society unless restrained by external compulsion and punishment. However, these evils were forbidden in the Ten Commandments in order that they might become also laws of religion. It is similar with the teachings given in the Writings on the subject of the Diversions of Charity or social life. An entirely new duality-a spiritual quality-pervades them when they are regarded as laws of religion. Obedience to them is then obedience to the Lord, rather than obedience to common sense. We can and should be led by the Lord even in our social life.
Social Life or Diversions of Charity?
Of course, everyone has social life; even criminals enjoy social life. But the quality of our diversions arises from the love that rules the mind. "As is the mind within them, from the head," we read, "so are the delights-pure or impure, spiritual or natural, heavenly or infernal; for inwardly in any of the body's sensations there is the will's love with its affections, and the understanding brings about a perception of the delights of these affections. For the will's love with its affections makes the life of each one, and from it the understanding's perception makes sensation; this is the origin of all delights and pleasures. For the body is a connected chain-like work, and a single form. Sensation communicates itself like a force applied to the separate links of a chain, and like a form made up of continuous chains."*
* Char. 191
It is clear from that teaching that for social life to be a diversion of charity, there must be charity or love towards the neighbor in it. This is what imparts the quality to our social life, and makes it truly distinctive.
95
We have seen that change and relaxation are means of returning refreshed to our employment or form of use. The various forms of social life could perhaps be called diversions of employment. But the work on Charity makes the point that really "they are diversions of the affections from which each one carries on his employment."* Such as is the affection from which we do our work, such is the quality of our social life. This is stated explicitly in the work on Charity, as follows: "It can he seen that the diversions are various in accordance with the interior affection in them; and that they are one thing if an affection of charity is in them, another thing if an affection for position only is in them, another if an affection for gain only is in them, another if done only for the sake of sustenance and the necessities for living, another if only for the sake of a reputation, to become celebrated, another if only for what they earn, that they may increase their wealth, or that they may live in comfort; and so on."** There is a teaching that could well give us pause. Our social life (private or corporate) is certainly a matter to be reflected upon reflection being defined in the Writings as "attention to a thing,"*** "the mental view of a thing, how it stands, and what is its quality."**** It is so easy to enjoy social life unreflectingly without attention to its quality.
* Char. 190
** Char. 192
*** SD 2221
**** AC 3661
Since we are discussing the ideals of social life, let us now turn to what is said in the Writings concerning social life in which there is an affection of charity, or recreations that follow work done from charity. The key passage on this subject is: "In those who have an affection of charity, all the diversions set forth above serve it for recreation. . . . The affection of use abides inwardly in them, and, while thus resting, is gradually renewed. A desire for one's function breaks off or ends those things."*
* Char. 193
"A desire for one's function breaks off or ends those things"! That is a good test of the quality of our social life. Does a desire to return to one's work, an interest in resuming where we left off, does this flow in from heaven after our recreation? If it does, all is well. If it does not, then this is a sign that something is out of order in our life.
It is impossible for us to generate this desire from ourselves. After all, it is a spiritual love of use that can come from the Lord alone. "For the Lord inflows from heaven into (these diversions)," the passage continues, "and brings about the renovation; and He always gives an interior sense of gratification in these diversions, of which those who are not in an affection of charity know nothing.
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He breathes into them something as it were fragrant or sweet only perceptible to oneself. It is said, fragrant, by which is meant spiritual pleasantness; and it is said, sweet, by which is meant spiritual delight. Pleasantness is said of wisdom, and of the understanding's perception therefrom; and delight is said of love, and the will's affection therefrom."
Note that this pleasantness and delight, coming from the Lord, are spiritual and living; for that reason they are completely unknown to those who are not ruled by an affection of charity. They do not know what they are missing. The "interior sense of gratification" enjoyed by those who are moved by charity has to be experienced in order to be understood; nor could it be described in words that mean anything to those who are not receiving the good of charity from the Lord. How different it is with them is set forth in the conclusion of this passage: "With those who are not in an affection of charity, these things (the pleasantness and the delight) are not present, because their spiritual mind is closed; and in so far as they recede from charity, their spiritual mind, as far as the voluntary part is concerned, is as if all stuffed up with glue."
What is Charity?
In order to gain a fuller idea of what is meant by the diversions of charity, let us briefly review some of the leading teachings concerning charity or love toward the neighbor, since this love must be within the diversions.
In the spiritual idea of the matter, the neighbor that is to be loved is good and truth received from the Lord. Loving the neighbor does not mean simply loving the person of the neighbor, but loving the good that is in him. Since the only genuine good that anyone has is from the Lord, loving the neighbor amounts to looking to the Lord in one's neighbor.
Every individual is the neighbor to the extent that, as far as we can tell, he is receiving good from the Lord. As we look to the Lord in the neighbor, we are drawn closer to the person. For it is the Lord who is the source of all unity. It is self that is the cause of disunity and disturbance.
But an individual person is not the only recipient of good from the Lord. The neighbor, that is, good from the Lord, can be seen in a much wider range of recipients than that. We can find it in a group or society of people, and having found it, we are to focus upon it. We are to look to the Lord as received by a group of individuals. We may also find good from the Lord in our country-if not spiritual good, at least moral and civil good. It is upon this that we are to focus our attention, for it is the presence of the Lord in the country.
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It is the same with the whole human race, and with the Church as an organization, even with the Lord's kingdom in the heavens-good from the Lord received in these things is the neighbor that is to be loved.
To love the neighbor means to seek to develop what is good in the neighbor-from the restricted even to the most extended degree. Developing or fostering what is good means performing uses to the neighbor, "doing what is right in everything that one does, and doing one's duty in every employment."*
* HD 101
A distinction is always observed in the Heavenly Doctrine between charity and the works of charity. Charity is a matter of the will, of the affections. It is a matter of wishing well to the neighbor, wishing to benefit him, considering his welfare, a matter of giving to him, of being of use to him. This desire can come only from the Lord; it must flow into us. Only as we have received this outgoing love, this love of the neighbor, only to that extent are our actions the good works of charity. In other words, no one can do good that is really good from himself; only as if from himself. He can do good that is really good only from the Lord, from the good of charity flowing in from the Lord.
Hence it is that the first thing of charity is to look to the Lord and shun evils as sins against Him. We look to Him whenever we think of something He has revealed in His Word, particularly when we have in mind to do what He commands. It is not a matter of the thoughts of the understanding only, but also our will must come into a state of order, so that it can be a receptacle for the good of charity that proceeds from the Lord. The only way to do this is to shun our evils for the one only reason that they are sins against the Lord. This is the only way by which they are removed, that is, forgiven. Only as evils are removed can the good of charity inflow from the Lord. This is a vital aspect of charity that is frequently overlooked. Until a person does shun his evils as sins, he does not do genuine good. He is not conjoined with the Lord, and so is acting from himself. He sees self in everything that he does and says. Whoever is looking to self is not looking to the Lord, and yet looking to the Lord is the first thing that we must do.
So it is that the second thing of charity-to do what is good-is an effect of the first. As we have already seen, good cannot be done until evils are shunned as sins against the Lord. This brings the Lord into it. Then man does what is good from the Lord. This is the only genuine good.
98
Hence the Doctrine of Life from the New Jerusalem explains that in proportion as anyone shuns murders of every kind as sins, in the same proportion he has love towards the neighbor.* In proportion as anyone shuns adulteries of every kind as sins, in the same proportion he loves Chastity.** In proportion as anyone shuns thefts of every kind as sins, in the same proportion he loves sincerity.*** In proportion as anyone shuns false witness of every kind as sin, in the same proportion he loves the truth.**** All these good things that are done from the Lord in proportion as we shun evils as sins are the whole end and purpose that the Lord has in view for us. They are genuine good works of charity.
* 67-73
** 74-79
*** 80-86
**** 87-91
Now, one of the most practical teachings of the New Jerusalem concerning charity is that loving the neighbor is not a part-time activity. Being charitable does not begin or become possible only when we have finished our day's work. It is meant to go on all our waking hours. It is to be the soul, the motivating force, in our daily work. Any occupation, congenial to us or otherwise, can be a form of use, a means of loving the neighbor by serving him, a means of serving the common good, a means of increasing the reception of what is from the Lord. The same is true of any office or function in which we serve.
It is comparatively easy to do good work for special occasions, to give help where help is needed. But to be charitable in our daily work requires real devotion to the Lord and His Word. In the little work on Charity many illustrations are given of ways in which people in a variety of occupations can love the neighbor as themselves. In every case, they must first look to the Lord and shun evils as sins against Him, and so in this way honestly, justly, and faithfully carry out the duties of their occupation. In each case also the main theme illustrated with a variety of occupations is that whoever would love the neighbor must work for him as he would for himself. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
So our work or occupation is the first and most important area of our life that must be pervaded by charity. But loving what is good is meant to interpenetrate every aspect of our life-our external worship, our benefactions, and our obligations.
The external acts connected with worship (either at home or at church) are meant to be signs of charity, or expressions and manifestations of it. Those who have charity at heart and who love the neighbor from the Lord, find great delight in the things of worship because these things help them express their love for the Lord and for the good that goes forth from Him and is called the neighbor. For them external worship is truly a sign of charity.
99
Similarly, those who love the neighbor from the Lord and not from self-love delight in doing acts of kindness to others. These benefactions include all the good works done outside of our employment. Provided we are looking to the Lord and shunning evils as sins, and making our occupation a form of use, there is charity in the doing of alms, such as visiting and helping the sick, contributing to worthy causes, and giving to the poor. But no one is saved from hell by deeds like that alone; there must be genuine charity within them. However, they should be done when called for if we are to live the life of charity.
Another part of life that should be infilled with charity is the matter of our obligations-such as the conscientious payment of debts, the keeping of promises, the payment of taxes and customs duties, taking care of the property of others, especially if this is borrowed, and in general seeing to our responsibilities. This covers a very wide area of our life, but there is no part of it that is not to be touched by charity towards the neighbor.
These, then, are the ideals at which we must aim if our social life is indeed to be a diversion of charity. Whatever may be the forms of our social life, they will be living only to the extent that they have a genuine essence or soul-charity or love towards the neighbor with all its ramifications. In the New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine charity is defined as "doing right in everything one does, and doing one's duty in every employment."* "Charity . . . is acting prudently and to the end that good may result."** "Charity, therefore, is as internal affection, from which a man wills to do good, and this, without question of recompense; the doing of it is the joy of his life. With those who do good from internal affection, there is charity in everything they think and say, and in everything they will and do."***
* HD 101
** HD 100
*** HD 104
The distinctiveness of New Church social life comes from its essence as well as its form. There must be in it "mutual love from similarity of faith."* Let no one feel depressed, downcast, or defeated by the thought that these ideals are unobtainable. Let us rather be inspired to strive all the harder to attain them by imploring the Lord for help, as we do in all other matters of the life of religion. "With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."**
* TCR 433
** Matt. 19:26
100
NEW CHURCH AND PRESENT DAY TRENDS IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. II Rev. DANDRIDGE PENDLETON 1977
Our purpose in this series is the investigation of several of the prevailing tenets of modern-day Christian theological and philosophical thought. The reason for making this investigation is that New Church men and women may realize something of the unique opportunity and obligation which we all face in the world of today and tomorrow, the world in which we must work and grow and make our contribution to the New Church in its rise with men.
The first of these prevailing tenets in present-day Christianity that I will discuss is the so-called New Morality. This position first received detailed outline several years ago in a book titled Situation Ethics written by Joseph Fletcher-a book which has raised a tremendous storm of controversy in Christian circles. Very briefly stated, situation ethics is based upon two main contentions, both of which go against the traditional Christian concept. The first is that all good or evil is to be defined according to the situation, both environmental and personal, in which a man is at the time of committing any physical act. The second follows from the first; because it is the situation which supposedly defines essential good or evil, there can be no absolute, authoritative, statement of what is good or evil, right or wrong. Killing in certain situations is to be judged an evil act, in other situations a good act. The same would be the case with all of the Commandments-stealing, profaning, committing adultery, and so on.
In this position a true or a false one? Let us think carefully and selectively, from the teachings of the Writings.
The fact is that there is truth in this situation-ethics position-a truth which can be seen to stem from what the Writings teach; truth which can be seen as to its origin in the New Testament and the Old Testament, both of which Mr. Fletcher has utilized and cited extensively and convincingly in his book. It is true that a man is judged spiritually, in the eves of the Lord, according to the external and internal situation of his life at any given moment. In this, the new morality, or situation-ethics, propounds a truth that is genuine, and which is an advance over the old Christian dogma.
The problem, and the falsity, of situation-ethnics is that it denies the existence of any authoritative statement of good and evil outside of man's own experience.
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Its proponents have failed to see the further truth that the situation only Qualifies the Divinely authoritative teaching concerning good and evil in its application to man's spiritual life. Thus they make the situation the complete authority; and each man becomes, in effect, his own God. God, if He exists, does not give definition to essential rightness and wrongness in human life; man does, in subjective judgment upon life as he views it and as he happens to feel about it at any given moment. Thus, interestingly enough, from a genuine, but partial insight, considered as though it were total insight, the whole point and purpose of Divine Revelation is swept away and the very authorship of God in relation to man becomes an empty parody.
Now remember that our aim in discussing subjects such as this is to see what genuine value there may be in them, and from this what possible Evidence we may see of the way in which the Lord can lead men back toward the light, step by step.
One genuine outcome of this, and many other present day changes of outlook in Christian thinking is that the old Christian doctrine-which the Writings declare to be totally falsified in every essential-is being dismantled and washed away in the tide of new thought.
Secondly, more and more men ale thinking, ale searching for answers, realizing that the old Christianity no longer provides adequate solutions to today's problems.
Thirdly, and most specifically to our present series, is the fact that a step in the right direction has been taken under the situation-ethics position. There is the recognition that good and evil are imputed to a man, not simply on a rigid external basis of judgment from which there can be no deviation but according to his own, peculiar conditions of life.
Let us not mistake this right step as evidence of the New Church coming into existence with men; it is preparation for the New Church. Nor should one overlook the great falsity-the step in the wrong direction-perpetrated by this same situation-ethics: the implicit denial of Divine Authority in human life, if not in creation. But at the same lime we should see that in the midst of the falsity, a truth has come to light-a truth which somehow, in ways that we cannot possibly imagine, will be utilized by the Lord, woven subtly into the torn fabric of men's spiritual life, in such a way as to gradually lead the race back to spiritual sanity. And let us reflect, long and deeply, upon ways in which we, as New Church men and women, can apply our knowledge and our activities to those genuine elements of human thought in the world at large-in order that we may better see how our unique contribution may be made to the stream of Providence as it bears all men in its current.
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NEW CHURCH LIFE
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In the course of our reading of the Writings of the New Church, we may often come across passages which test our understanding. For the Lord there, as in other parts of the Word, sometimes uses seeming paradoxes to lead and teach. At times, perhaps too often, we are tempted to see the statements as errors. But nonetheless, we ask ourselves if we are really understanding the literal meaning of what is being said. And this may involve considerable time and patience on our part. We de not want to believe hastily that the instance is an error. And this is good. If we find that we cannot solve it, then we lay it aside for a future time, when we may be given more enlightenment.
We are slowed down and rendered cautious if we remind ourselves of a number of facts regarding the witness and seer. For example, we may be reminded of the fact that Swedenborg was endowed in the Divine Providence with a unique combination of natural and spiritual gifts.
Among the natural gifts were:
1. One of the finest minds of his day and age.
2. Training and honing of this mind in the techniques of scientific experimentation, observation, critical analysis and the application of natural reason.
3. By virtue of a wide experience, much knowledge of a great variety of fields.
These were natural gifts through heredity and environment. And added to these later, with respect to the Divine Revelation of his later life, were two spiritual gifts which equipped him for the reporting of his observations of the spiritual world:
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1. The ability and techniques of "trying [testing] the spirits" as to their veracity and accuracy.*
* I Jn. 4:1, Thes. 2:3; I Cor. 12:10; cf. Rev. 2:2
2. A perception from the Lord as to selection, choice and expression of the observed material gathered. This can easily be seen by anyone who closely compares the material in his notebook * with the material in the later Writings seen through the press by the author himself.
* Spiritual Diary
Let us be more specific as to the first of these spiritual gifts,-the ability and techniques of "trying [testing] the spirits," "whether they are of God or man," "whether their words be true or false."
On April 5, 1744, Swedenborg records that the Lord appeared to him that day. Afterwards, he was much troubled by this, and we find him reminding himself to "try the spirits" in connection with it,-as to whether it really was the Lord, or a deception by the spirits, or an illusion on his part. So we see his awareness of this necessity, which may have been in his mind much before this time.
* Journal of Dreams 51-56
Some time later in the Word Explained, we find him writing of the difficulty of explaining the process in these words, "This was of such frequent occurrence with me [the hidden substitution of an evil spirit for a good one, and vice versa] that, in the beginning, I was never able to know whether it was an evil spirit or a good [one], except from the series of his sayings, and thus until he had been explored. Because this is unknown, it cannot easily be explained to the understanding."*
* WE 1928
Notice the phrase "in the beginning," as it plainly indicates that as time went on, Swedenborg must have acquired the ability of instant discernment of the quality of the spirits with him, also as to whether they were deceiving him or innocently giving him misinformation. Then, some 3000 numbers, possibly a year later (1746), he has found the words to explain the whole process.*
* WE 4919-20
Such is one of the specifics of all that which imparts caution and patience to us in our faulty understanding of Divine Revelation. We may realize that our first impressions of statements made therein are not to be trusted. Perhaps if we added up our own instances of thinking that this or that item therein must be a mistake or that Swedenborg was deceived, and added to them the many times others have pointed to other things which they considered mistakes we might find that the total could lead to that nullity as to doctrine and that agnosticism as to all truth which marked the death of the first Christian Church, and which is obvious in the Christian world of today.
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Finally, we may note that, by his own testimony as early as 1758, Swedenborg had had repeated conversations with 100,000 people in the world of spirits.* Presumably this includes hundreds from other earths and other ages. Can we therefore presume that he was deceived or misinformed in so many conversations, granting his natural and spiritual endowments!
* LJ 15
LUTHER'S CONVERSION RICHARD R. GLADISH 1977
To The Editor:
Perhaps not every reader of New Church Life has noticed what this reader notices only after half a century of reading the Writings: namely, that our revelator, Emanuel Swedenborg, became the doctrinal teacher of Martin Luther in the other life, and eventually changed the latter's ideas about faith alone.
It had been my impression that Martin Luther, though a great leader, was so stubborn and attached to his doctrine of Faith Alone that it was doubtful whether he could live in a heavenly society. The Continuation Concerning the Last Judgment, written in 1763, states:
I have heard and seen Luther many times . . .He has often wanted to recede from his faith alone, but in vain; and therefore he is still in the World of Spirits . . . where he sometimes suffers hard things.*
* CJ 55
I have heard Luther . . . cursing faith alone, and saying that when he established it he was warned by an Angel of the Lord not to do so; but that he had thought within himself that if he did not reject works there would be no separation from the Catholic religiosity, and therefore he had confirmed it in spite of that warning.*
* DP 258:6
The Spiritual Diary (1747-65) shows us a Luther loving to argue and dispute and foment disturbances, but also who had eventually undergone vastation.* I gather the impression of a teachable though headstrong person who had a feeling for good works and charity, but who came into the persuasion that only the slashing sword of faith alone could sever the reformed from the tough body of Catholicism.
* SD 5103, 5104, 5106
But it is only in the True Christian Religion (written from 1768-1771 and published 1772) that we hear the more final word on Luther. Here we read that the Prince of Saxony, defender of Luther while on earth, had often reproved him . . . for separating charity from faith, and for declaring faith to be saving and not charity . . . but that Luther had replied that he could not do otherwise on account of the Roman Catholics.*
* TCR 769
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And the same number declares:
It has been told me by the examining angels that this Leader was in a state of conversion above many others who had confirmed themselves in justification by faith alone, because in his childhood, before he had entered upon the Reformation, he had imbued the dogma of the pre-eminence of charity; for which reason also, in both his writings and his discourses he has taught of charity so excellently; and it resulted from this: that the faith of justification with him had been implanted in his external natural man; but had not been rooted in his internal spiritual man.
The process of Luther's conversion is told in TCR 796. When he first entered the Spiritual World, true to form, he vehemently defended and propagated his dogmas, and he became a leader of a growing multitude from earth who agreed with and favored his views. For a time he verged into persuasion, bordering upon enchantment, as he held court over the growing throngs of Faith Aloners from earth. Though he was forbidden to use persuasion, he continued to teach his followers by other means up to the time of the Last Judgment (1756-57). About a year after the Last Judgment, Luther heard that Swedenborg though in the natural world, was speaking with those in the Spiritual World, and he came to speak with Swedenborg.
At first when he heard from Swedenborg of the end of the former church and the beginning of the New Church, "he was exceedingly indignant, and railed." The passage continues,
But as he perceived that the New Heaven (increased) . . . and that the number of those who resorted to him daily diminished, his railing ceased; and then he came nearer to me and began to speak with me more familiarly; and after he had been convinced that he had not taken his principal dogma of justification by faith alone from the Word, but from his own intelligence, he suffered himself to be instructed concerning the Lord, charity, true faith, free-will, and redemption; and this solely from the Word.
At last, after conviction, he began to favor, and then to confirm himself more and more in the Truths from which the New Church is being established. At this time he was with me daily; (emphasis added) and then . . . began to laugh at his former dogmas as at such things as are diametrically contrary to the Word . . .
And Swedenborg thereafter heard him say, ". . . I do wonder that one raver (himself) should have been able to produce so many other ravers. . ."*
* TCR 796
Apparently from this, Luther remained in the World of Spirits for over 200 years from his death in 1546 till the Last Judgment, acting as a kind of leader for Protestants coming into that world.
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Not till a year after the Last Judgment did he begin to doubt his former persuasion, and then after considerable vastation, come for daily instruction from Swedenborg, which ended with his renouncing of the dogma of Faith Alone and the adoption of the Faith of the New Church.
We think of Swedenborg as a teacher, largely through his writings, in this world, but here we see him as a powerful teacher in the spiritual world as well. So powerful, indeed, that he was able to convert the hard-headed founder of Protestantism himself.
RICHARD R. GLADISH
IN OUR CONTEMPORARIES Rev. Michael Gladish 1977
The excerpt below comes from the New Church Courier, "from the General Church in Australia and New Zealand"; editor: Rev. Michael Gladish; June, 1976 issue.
The writings for the New Church: Part of "The Word"?
"The Old Question"
The following is an excerpt from a paper prepared for publication in 1961 by the Rev. Donald Rose. The original paper was an attempt to define and clarify the differences between the General Church and the "New Church in Australia," however, the scope of the portion quoted here goes far beyond denominational distinctions Not only does it give every committed New Churchman something to think about, but it may also provide that "special insight" needed to show our interested friends that there may indeed be more to the "Bible" than time-honored tradition allows.-Editor.
* * * *
An Insight Into the General Church View of the Writings
The question as to whether to accept the Writings as coming from the Lord in the same sense that the Old and New Testaments have come from the Lord has been argued for generations. What has been proved by the prodigious flow of words exchanged by the champions of the two opposing positions? For all the skill and fervour of their arguing, they do not seem to have convinced each other.
Perhaps the history of this argument has proved one thing to those of us who today find ourselves still on different sides of the question.
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Perhaps it has shown us that the two views exist and that reciting our side of the argument is not likely to make the other side disappear. And if we have learned that we cannot persuade each other, perhaps we can try to understand each other.
Instead of launching into the age-old argument I would like to try here to give an insight into one side of it. This will not result in the reader's adopting this side, but it can give him help in understanding it.
I would invite the reader to take himself back through the centuries to imagine himself discussing another question with certain similarities. Imagine the time when the New Testament had recently been written. To many people of that time the word "Scripture" had one definite meaning, the same meaning it had for their fathers and grandfathers. The question of what books made up Scripture had been definitely settled centuries before. But the New Testament came to be accepted as part of the Scripture to be read in churches and eventually to be bound in the same volume as the Old Testament.
Listed below are distinct points of argument that might have been raised against this acceptance of the New Testament. Each one may be compared to similar points in the question of accepting the Writings.
Ten Arguments Against Accepting the Gospels as Part of the Word
1. The Gospels do not call themselves the Word of God. They do not claim to be part of the Bible or to be Holy Scripture, therefore we should not accept them as part of God's book.
2. The Gospels speak about "the Scriptures," and this implies that they themselves are not part of them. In various ways "the Scriptures" seem to be spoken of as a fixed entity. It is said that "the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). We should not, then, presume to call the Gospels part of the Scripture.
3. The Old Testament, being the Word of God, must contain infinite truth. To add the Gospels to this would be to try to add to the infinite, which is impossible.
4. At the beginning of Luke it is said: "It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write . . ." Luke understood what he wrote, but the prophets did not understand what they wrote; thus there is a marked difference between the Gospel of Luke and the Word of God. Moreover, Luke implies that he was prepared to write what he wrote, and it is therefore not to be called the Word.
5. It is said of the teaching contained in the Gospels: "They were astonished at His doctrine" (Matt. 7, Mark 1). We must draw a distinction between "doctrine" and the Word. The doctrine is distinct from the Word written through the prophets.
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6. It is expressly said in Deuteronomy: "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it" (4:3). Would we not be violating the commandment of the Word if we added the Gospels and bound them in the same volume?
7. It is said in the Gospels that Jesus opened the Scriptures (Luke 24), and the teachings in the Gospels open up the true meaning of the Old Testament. We may therefore compare the Gospels to a key. They are not the Word, but they open the Word to us.
8. In the Gospel of John we find the words "I suppose" (21:25), besides many parenthetical explanatory sentences by the writer of that Gospel. This is not the "Thus saith the Lord" which we find in the prophets. This marked difference prevents us from calling the Gospels "the Word."
9. We seem to have a definitive list of "all the Scriptures" in Luke 24:27, 44. This includes the books of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. Surely if the Gospels were part of the Scriptures they would have been included in this. But they are not, and this definitive passage does not allow us to accept them as such.
10. After the Gospels were written John seems to have been exiled for proclaiming the truth. He was on Patmos "for the Word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ" (Rev. 1:9.) Does this not show a distinction between the "Word of God" as it has existed with us for centuries, and the testimony we have now been given? We revere both, but must not accept them in the same way. Etc. etc. etc.
Five additional Arguments Against Accepting the Book of Revelation as Part of the Word
1. The very first verse shows that this book is "revelation." Revelation is one thing; the Word or Scripture is something else.
2. "And I John saw these things and heard them" (22:8). We have here "things heard and seen" by John. This is not the same as Scripture.
3. "What thou seest, write in a book" (1:11). John did write by the Lord's command, and the first verse shows that he is entitled to the name "servant of Lord," but his spiritual experiences ("I wept much") and his inspiration are different from the Word.
4. One of the seven angels talked with John, saying. . . (21:9). John did have conversations with angels, and he has recorded matters of angelic wisdom, but this is not the same as the Word.
5. John wrote in Greek, while the time-honored Scriptures were written in Hebrew and were holy in every jot and tittle. Etc. etc. etc.
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We would not agree with any of the arguments mentioned above. This does not mean that the reader must take a giant leap and conclude that similar arguments against a way of accepting the Writings are invalid. The purpose of making the above list is to give a special insight; for if the reader will review each argument and realize that it could be very persuasively phrased and eloquently enlarged without affecting him, he may see in a new way why it is that members of the General Church seem so little affected by all the things that have been said against their wall of accepting the Writings.
OHIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY LOUIS B. KING 1977
Announcements
The Third Ohio District Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem will be held May 13th to 15th, 1977, in the Cleveland area, the Right Reverend Louis B. King, Bishop, presiding. All members and friends of the General Church are cordially invited to attend.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
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ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS EDITOR 1977
March 7-12, 1977
Monday, March 7
10:30 a.m. Headmasters' Meeting
11:00 a.m. Heads of Academy Schools Join Headmasters
2:30 p.m. Worship
3:00 p.m. Opening Session, The Council of the Clergy
8:00 p.m. Consistory
Tuesday, March 8
8:30 a.m. General Church Translation Committee
10:00 a.m. Session II, The Council of the Clergy
12:45 p.m. Small group luncheons
3:00 p.m. Session III, The Council of the Clergy
6:45 p.m. Dinner for ministers and their wives
Wednesday, March 9
8:30 a.m. General Church Publication Committee
10:00 a.m. Session IV, The Council of the Clergy
3:00 p.m. Session V, The Council of the Clergy
6:45 p.m. Social Supper for ministers
Thursday, March 10
10:00 a.m. Session VI, The Council of the Clergy
12:45 p.m. Small group luncheons
Friday, March 11
10:00 a.m. Session VII, The Council of the Clergy
3:00 p.m. Board of Directors of General Church
5:00 p.m. General Church Corporation followed by organization meeting of Directors
7:00 p.m. Friday Supper
7:45 p.m. General Church Evening
Saturday, March 12
10:00 a.m. Joint Council of the General Church
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YOU CAN BE A "JOHNNY APPLESEED" V. C. ODHNER 1977
Some of you may have heard of the Bookstore Programme that the General Church Extension Committee has undertaken to place missionary editions of the Writings in commercial bookstores.* For those interested in participating as Placers, the books are obtained without charge from the Extension Committee and placed on consignment in the bookstore, which receives a 40% commission on each sale. 60% of the selling price is than returned to the Extension Committee
Over 200 books have been sold under this programme in the last year and we are hoping with further organizational work continuing on an international basis, to "plant" a lot more "seeds of truth" which will bear fruit far into the future.
If you think you can be persistent and diligent in such an endeavor, please write or contact me for details so we can fully explore this missionary programme. If you are presently selling on your: own, let me know of your efforts-we may be able to help
V. C. ODHNER
937 Doherty Road
Galloway, Ohio 43119
614-878-2442
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WINGS OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH Rev. DAVID R. SIMONS 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII MARCH 1977 No. 3
Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away and be at rest. Psalm 55:6
The inmost aspiration of the human heart is to ascend to heaven. From his very soul man longs to rise above himself, to put off the limitations of time and space, of ignorance and inability, and to progress to better things. From within, life from the Lord urges each one of us towards perfection-to the higher life for which we were created and to the only life where we can find the "rest" of complete fulfillment, satisfaction and peace. From our inmost being each one of us, in prayer or desperation, cries out in the words of the Psalm, "Who will give me wings as of a dove! For then I would fly away where I may dwell."
Physically man has ever sought to fly. The infant reaches up with eye and hand for satisfaction. Crawling is not enough; he must pull himself up to stand erect. What is higher attracts and he is soon climbing-trees, hills, mountains. What is above and beyond fascinates and lures him on. One height surmounted brings others into view. There is no satisfying his desire for wings.
Birds have a special attraction. They are symbols of life uplifted and free. Their ability to fly above the earth, almost to disappear in the upper or where vision is extended immeasurably, have brought vicarious delights and awakened ambition which led man to discover wines for himself and Bight which has extended into outer space. But man, created as he is to mount to heights of internal perfection, can never be content with the conquest of space. His soul can find no permanent rest in external achievement. For it longs to "fly away" on higher planes of life.
Curiosity is the soul reaching out for wings with which to fly. The love of knowing, the love of understanding, and the love of being wise are the soul expressing its desire to "fly away", to rise ever higher, where by knowledge, intelligence and wisdom its vision may be extended immeasurably and where it may find a place where it may dwell.
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Every man has, after birth, an affection for knowing and through this he acquires knowledge by which his understanding is gradually formed, enlarged and perfected . . . (and) when man from an affection of knowing, has become intelligent, he is led not so much by the affection for knowing a, by an affection for reasoning and forming conclusions on the subjects which he loves (And) when this affection (for understanding) is raised to spiritual things-(the truths of the Word)-it becomes an affection for spiritual truth. (The mind is then) affected by truths, (wishing) to know them, and when found, to drink them in from the joy of affection (and in this way is led to genuine wisdom).*
* DLW 404
Knowledge, intelligence and wisdom which relate to spiritual things can become the "wings of a dove" by which man is led to his dwelling place in the angelic heavens.
Because they have the power to fly and because they can rise high above the earth and see for great distances, birds in the Word correspond to man's powers of understanding and thought.* "Birds in general signify man's thoughts . . . and each species something in particular; (for example because certain birds) fly high and have sharp sight, (they signify the highest kind of thinking), rational (thought)."** "A dove signifies the truths and goods of faith with one who is to be regenerated,"*** and "the wings of a dove signify the truths of faith (from the Word)."****
* AC 595
** AC 3901
*** AC 870
**** AC 8764
The wish expressed in this Psalm to "fly away" might seem to be a negative thing, a "death wish," the longing to escape from the discouraging realities of natural existence (a wish all too familiar to those who have lost their spiritual perspective and long for release from the responsibilities and burdens of life.) The truth is, however, that this Psalm expresses the noblest aspirations of the human heart. It is in essence a prayer, a prayer for redemption, for new life which can come by spiritual rebirth, regeneration. It is a prayer that our lives may be elevated, that we may see the things of heaven, and that we may find our spiritual home.
To "fly" spiritually is to have one's mind raised above the things of this world and to see things in the perspective of spiritual truth. The power to fly can only come from the Lord who has provided the wings of genuine truth in His Word.
The teaching is that "to fly" in the spiritual sense of the Word, "signifies circumspection and presence,"* that is, the ability to look around, reflect on things, look at them from a new point of view, from new heights, and to have the things seen become present.
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For what is seen becomes present in our minds. In the spiritual world, which is the world of the human mind, we are taught that "when any person or thing appears far away, and an angel or spirit desires from intense affection to . . . (see and) examine him he is at once present there. The same is true of thought which is man's internal sight."** What this means is that when man longs to "fly away", when he "desires from intense affection" to know about heaven, and when he thinks from the truth about heaven, then-although at first it may be far distant from his life-heaven will become present, or what is the same thing, his mind will be elevated into heaven. He will spiritually fly.
* AE 282:10
** Ibid
That the inmost prayers of the human heart to "fly away" may be answered, that man's longing to know spiritual truth may be satisfied, that man may be given the powers of spiritual flight, the Lord has mercifully provided a revelation of spiritual truth. The Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem, given for the establishment of a New Christian Church, are mighty "wings" by which the rational mind can be elevated to the heights of angelic intelligence and wisdom. They are the truth that guides "into all truth."* Because Emanuel Swedenborg, "servant of the Lord Jesus Christ" was elevated to see into the spiritual world, into heaven and into hell, and because through him the spiritual sense of the former Scriptures has now been revealed, therefore all who read with sincerity and intelligence will have their minds uplifted to see all things from the heights of heavenly wisdom.
* Jn. 16:13
Of his own elevation into spiritual light Swedenborg says:
That the Lord manifested Himself before me, His servant, and sent me to this office, and that He afterwards opened the sight of my spirit and so has introduced me into the spiritual world and has granted me to behold the heavens and the hells and to converse with angels and spirits, and this now uninterruptedly for many years, I testify in truth; likewise, that from the first day of that call I have not received anything that pertains to the doctrines of the New Church from any angel, but from the Lord alone, while I read the Word.*
* TCR 779
What this new truth does for the mind is clear from the following: ". . . To interpret the spiritual sense (of the former Scriptures) from the truths of (these new) doctrines, opens heaven, because that is the sense in which the angels are: and so man, by means of it, thinks together with angels, and thus conjoins them to himself in his intellectual mind . . ."*
* Verbo VII:20
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These Writings teach that man is a twofold being. He has a will and an understanding. The will from birth is impure, loving nothing but self and the world, for
nothing else appears before his eyes, consequently nothing else occupies his mind. . . . This love could not be separated from its impurity, Unless man had the power to fly away, that is, to raise his understanding into the light of heaven and to see how he ought to live in order that his love, as well as his understanding, may be elevated into wisdom.*
* DLW 429
The elevation of the understanding into the light of heaven is not to be an escape from our external responsibilities and discouragements. The knowledge of spiritual truth does elevate the mind above the cares and anxieties of everyday living; it does bring heaven present in our lives, for to know and think about a thing brings it spiritually present with us. Still the whole purpose of wings is that the body may fly; the whole reason why the understanding was created to be elevated above the will is that the will may be purified and elevated towards heaven; the whole purpose of truth is good and use.
Love and wisdom apart from use are only fleeting matters of reason, which fly away if not applied to use. Love and wisdom separated from (use) are like birds which fly over a great ocean, until wearied with their flight they fall down and sink. . . In (use, however, love and wisdom) make for themselves a dwelling place and foundation where they may rest as in their home.*
* TCR 67
"Good is to truth as the body (of a bird) is to its wing. A body without wings cannot (fly), but with their aid (it flies). Moreover in the Word the body corresponds to good and the wings to truths and also to the powers of good through truths."*
* AC 9514
Man is born natural (we read) but in the measure in which his understanding is raised into the light of heaven, and his love is raised conjointly, he becomes spiritual (For) love cannot elevate itself Unless it knows truths, and these it can learn only by means of an elevated and enlightened understanding; and then so far as it loves truths in the practice of them, so far it is elevated.*
* DLW 422
Inmostly considered, the words of this Psalm are the Lord's own prayer for deliverance from His enemies. For His life on earth was a continual struggle against the forces of evil which culminated in the passion of the cross. It was to the "Father," His Infinite Soul which is Divine Love Itself, that He cried out. For the Lord, when in the world, went through two states in the progress of the Glorification of His Human:
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a state of exinanition (emptying Himself) and a state of union,. . . His state of glorification . . . The state of exinanition is described in the Word in many places, especially in the Psalms of David and also in the Prophets, and particularly in Isaiah where it is said that He emptied His soul even unto death.* This (was the) state of humiliation before the Father; for in it He prayed to the Father . . . Moreover, except for this state He could not have been crucified. Put the state of glorification is also the state of union . . . when He said the Father and He are One, that the Father is in Him and He in the Father, and that all things of the Father are His; and, when the union was complete, that He had . . .'all power in heaven and on earth.'**, ***
* Isa. 53:3
** Matt. 28:18
*** TCR 104, 105
It was to the Father that the Lord cried out for deliverance, saying: "Give ear to My prayer, O God, and hide not Thyself from My supplication. Attend unto Me and hear Me . . . My heart is sore pained within Me; and the terrors of death are fallen upon Me, and horror hath overwhelmed Me. And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest . . . I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest . . .As for Me, I will call upon God; and the Lord will save me . . . (and deliver) My soul in peace from the battle. . ."* Amen.
"To fly" in reference to man signifies circumspection and at the same time presence, because sight is present with the object that it sees; its appearing far away or at a distance is because of the intermediate objects that appear at the same time, and can be measured in respect to space. This can be fully confirmed by the things that exist in the spiritual world. In that world spaces themselves are appearances, arising from the diversity of affections and of thought therefrom: consequently, when any persons or things appear far away, and an angel desires from intense affection to be with such, or to examine the things that are at a distance, he is at once present there. . . . This is why "flying" is predicated of the understanding and of its intelligence, and why it signifies circumspection and presence. Apocalypse Explained 282:10.
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THAT WE MIGHT BE SANCTIFIED Rev. CLAYTON PRIESTNAL 1977
The hour was at hand and the Lord knew it. Soon would come Gethsemane, the trial before the Sanhedrin, and the final agony on Calvary. A sad and solemn hour it was. As a prelude to these momentous events, so imminent, so crucial, and as a closing benediction to His ministry, the Lord lifted His voice and uttered a prayer so filled with Divine Love and Wisdom that it will be a source of spiritual strength and enlightenment to men and angels alike foreover. Any single part of the Lord's intercessory prayer would he a fruitful subject for contemplation, but we have singled out the words, "For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth."*
* Jn. 17:19
This brief declaration embodies the entire essence of Christianity. After all the words of Scripture have been read, understood, and formulated into doctrine, this basic truth emerges: the Lord sanctified, that is, glorified His Human, in order that man might become regenerated by spiritual truth. In this statement lies the only hope for man's salvation, individually and collectively.
Had the Lord not come in a finite nature, a nature possessed with all of the inherent weaknesses known to mortal man, and made it totally submissive to the Divine Love which was His Inmost, His very Soul, the human race could not have survived. We mean this literally. Invisible to the eyes of men on earth there had through the ages developed an estrangement between heaven and earth. The inflow of the Divine into the hearts and minds of men had been gradually impeded until the light and love of God could no longer penetrate the callousness of the human spirit. The seriousness of this predicament can be seen in the Gospel accounts of evil spirits who so possessed an individual that he had no control over his acts. Some of these victims dwelt apart in caves, attacked passers-by, and even inflicted wounds upon themselves with sharp stones. Although the Scripture describes only several instances of the helplessness of individuals against these infestations, the overpowering influence of the hells was widespread. The state of mankind was such that only the barest semblance of true freedom and rationality remained. The gravity of the crisis cannot be exaggerated; the radical remedy taken by the Lord, which ended on Calvary, bears testimony to the dire seriousness of the human condition.
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Many people are too little aware of the profound truth that what the Lord did to redeem the human race from certain destruction was absolutely the only means whereby this end could have been accomplished. Had a simpler way been possible the Lord would have taken it. There are those who suppose the Lord had other alternatives open to Him; by a simple display of His omnipotence all the powers of hell could have been restrained, indeed totally annihilated. This was not the case, however. Before the Lord could sanctify the spirit of the disciples and all other members of the human race, He first had to sanctify Himself. This is the clear declaration of the Scripture: "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth."
The significance of the phrase "through the truth" should not be overlooked. The implication of these words is far-reaching indeed. Embodied in the generally accepted Christian faith is the notion that the Lord took upon Himself the burden of man's sins, his guilt, and by this assumption conferred salvation upon all who accept Him as their Savior. This doctrine of imputation is stressed less and less now-a-days, except perhaps among strict fundamentalist but it has left a mark on the Christian faith which has not yet been completely effaced. The Lord did not suffer and die in our stead so that we could have effortless access to salvation. The heavenly state cannot be reached by a process so easy and uncomplicated as that. It is from truth and by truth, and from this alone, that the spirit of man can leave his narrow confined life of selfishness and worldliness and elevate himself with the Lord's help to the higher reaches and freer life of unselfish love.
In His memorable prayer the Lord said, "Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth." The sanctification of the human spirit, which, of course, is relative, for what is finite can never become truly holy, is effected by means of spiritual truth. Let it be remembered, however, that regeneration is not achieved by the simple act of receiving truths into the memory, nor by man's understanding of their import; truths must also be accepted in the heart. It is rather overpowering to realize that the very Book which lies open on our altar, the very words printed on its pages, is the well-spring of all regenerating truths. The learning and living of the precepts veiled in the histories, prophecies, and Gospel records, are the means of attaining angelhood. It is not the words themselves as our eyes scans them on the printed page which constitute the sanctifying power of the Holy Scripture; the Divine Love embodied in them, called in the New Testament "the Father," is what gives them the potency to transform the human spirit. Perhaps man is not sufficiently aware of the fact that the words he speaks contain the very essence of his being, his total personality.
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Needless to say, what an individual utters reflects only a limited, finite mind. The words of the Sacred Book, in contrast, contain within them, in their spiritual sense, the Infinite Love and Wisdom of God. The Lord Jesus Christ was the visible embodiment of Divine Truth; through His life, death and sanctification, He became that Truth on the most external plane of existence. For this reason in Him, the truth made flesh, man finds the source and means of his sanctification.
Observe that the Scripture declares the Lord had to sanctify Himself before He could sanctify others. Surely this cannot mean that what is Divine needed to be made holy! Such a preposterous idea borders on blasphemy It Was the Lord's maternal inheritance which required purification through grievous temptations Even so, it was not the presence of sin in the nature or the Lord assumed from Mary which necessitated the process of glorification. The Lord's entire life, from beginning to end, was blameless, without sin; what His finite nature did possess in full measure was the inclination towards self-love and worldliness It was those same tendencies found in all human beings, namely, to think first of self, to compromise with high principles, and to find fulfillment according to the dictates of the world, which needed to be overcome by the Lord. So perfectly, so completely, did He conquer these frailties that through the Truth He so perfectly exemplified, and indeed became absolutely identified with, He became our Redeemer and Sanctifier.
When the mind endeavors to grasp the significance of the Lord's work of redemption and all involved in it, its magnitude is so overwhelming that the trials and torments He endured seem to lack reality. Was not His Soul the Divine Itself? Could not Divine Omnipotence crush the onslaught of the hells in "one fell swoop"? Be not beguiled by this line of reasoning. If what the Lord encountered and overcame during His earthly sojourn in order to sanctify His Human lacked in the slightest degree seriousness and reality, then there would be no parallel between His glorification and man's regeneration. What a mockery that would make of those valiant struggles weak mortals go through to rise above their acknowledged and self-imposed imperfections. The agony in the Garden of Gethsemane was not the pageantry of a make-believe drama played against the back-drop of Hebrew history; the words of concern and affection for mankind uttered in the gloom of night in the Garden were not spoken from a mind. already completely at one with the Divine; the temptations the Lord suffered were not singular in the sense of being different from our own, although they were intensified far beyond what we could ever endure. If this were not so the disciples, and in fact each one of us, would be more worthy of praise than the Lord. What could be easier than for one without the slightest inclination to do wrong to resist temptation! In truth such a one could not even be tempted.
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Thus the whole process whereby the Lord sanctified His Human was real, genuine, authentic beyond our capacity to fully appreciate or understand in any appreciable measure.
There is always the possibility that our familiarity with the events associated with the Lord's life, which reached a climax on Calvary, has deadened our sense of their reality. Thoughtless, constant repetition of readings and rituals is bound to detract from the reality and significance of what happened long ago in the far-away Holy Land. Perhaps for some it has become a kind of historical pageant, as we have already suggested, with actors playing make-believe roles. To recapture the reality and importance of the Lord's sanctification one needs but learn and apply to life spiritual truths; then he knows the struggles and torments necessary in order to be sanctified. Just think! The very truths the Lord utilized in glorifying His Human are the same truths available to us here and now. The Lord did not have recourse to sources of help which are beyond our reach. The very truths which effectively repulsed the devil when he tempted the Lord in the wilderness early in His ministry are at our full disposal. The same truth the Lord used on that occasion we can use as the circumstance requires: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." The power of this truth has not diminished one iota through the centuries; it thwarted the cunning of the devil then and it can do so just as effectively today. And it is only one of the countless truths by means of which man with the Lord's help can be sanctified.
The Lord does not ask us to resist and conquer foes of the spirit that He has not confronted and defeated. The techniques He used and the weapons He wielded so skillfully are accessible to us by means of the Word. Over two thousand years ago the Lord sanctified His maternal heritage in order that we in this remote day and age can also be sanctified. The knowledge and remembrance of the Lord's labors for man's redemption can give us courage and hope as we struggle with our own Gethsemane and Calvary.
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NEW CHURCH AND THE HOME Dr. BASIL ORCHARD 1977
In the Arcana Coelestia,* we find that the Most Ancient Church was distinguished into houses, families and nations A house consisted of a husband and wife with their children together with some from the family of those who served with them. The reason for this was that the church might be preserved entire; that all the houses and families might be dependent on their parent, and so remain permanently in love, and in true worship. We also learn that house signifies the good of charity. Thus it is a means of insinuating good. We are told that it is the use of a priest to insinuate truths but that goods can be insinuated by anyone in the world.
* AC 470, 471
From our own experience, a house becomes a home only when the sphere of love is brought within it. How much more is this so if that love is Conjugial Love, as taught to us by the New Revelation. All that goes on in such a home is more meaningful if it is in the atmosphere of this most holy love given to man to experience, and if we are striving for its increase and perfection. This love nourishes the development and growth of everyone ill its sphere.
Home is a center of our lives. It is something we come back to, a stable point which gives us direction and identity. It is where, as children we learn the meaning of masculinity, and of femininity the meaning of sharing, charity and consideration for others. We also learn our earliest concepts of the Lord, and our relationship to him. Love, indefinable as it is, is learned clearly there.
Modern behavioral science obviously agrees with this concept and the privacy of the home and family in our lives? as it looks to the home for most of the "causes" for character and personality development, and maldevelopment.
This learning goes on by means of all the learning processes, such as imprinting, repeated associations or conditioning rate and role-playing or imitation. This means that all the principles, all the ideals, and all the ways taught by the Lord through his New Revelation, can be and should be brought forward and applied in the home, for the sake of its quality and thus the benefit of all the members of the family.
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If we stop and think, it becomes clear that in the home, stimulated by love, our first learning occurs, and also that here it is that our most intensive application occurs, of all the principles we have learned.
As adults however, we continue to grow, have new experiences, and learn the Divine Doctrine. This occurs most effectively and rapidly in the company of those whom we love most and from whom we receive love. . . in the home.
Further, in relationships that mean a great deal to us, all events and interactions gain an overwhelming importance, and we are constrained to use charity towards the other family members. This tends to be considered charity, with consideration being given to the ultimate effects of the charity on the recipient.
In a world idealizing "change" and "newness" there is talk of abolishing marriage and the family; talk that these things are old and out of date. Some recommend as the ideal, communes in which the people are communal property, as well as land, buildings and objects. Men and women then would couple as the mood takes or leaves them. Others predict that any relationship should last only as long as there are no disagreements, and that a marriage contract should remain valid for only one year.
People use the present frequency of marriage breakdowns and divorces to justify these opinions and to justify putting less than a supreme effort into marriage-building, and finding family solutions to problems. We, in a knowledge of the doctrines of the New Church, can KNOW with certainty that marriage is an eternal state and that the existence of marriage, and the family throughout the whole gamut of history, shows that they both originate in Divine Order, and thus will endure to eternity.
We are also shown Divine Order in the New Revelation. This can bring order, sense, and comfort to both our lives and those of our children. We can see that a family, turning to the Lord, and loving Him, does not have to choose a ruler from its ranks. Neither husband nor wife need rule. The Lord rules and the whole family is under the authority of His Divine parenting.
What better opportunity for children to learn that age does not give one the "right to have everything one wants," than in family worship where the whole family turns in humble abasement to the authority of the Lord.
The doctrine of use, leaves us in no doubt about priorities. Each person is indispensable and has a place because of his individual use to the family, and to the world. Objects and activities have their place in the hierarchy of importance or of value, not from their monetary value, nor from their scarcity or market value, but from their use.
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Also the whole home and family learn they gain their happiness from doing or acting within their use, or in other words, from being useful.
Finally, the Church teaches that in the sphere of Conjugial Love we look most objectively at, and identify most clearly our evil loves. In Conjugial Love we are able to advance most bravely against those evil loves, and follow most carefully that straight and narrow path of regeneration, which allows the Lord to "make all things new."
Only in this way can we continue to stand with John in awe and wonder to see that beautiful vision, "The Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
IMAGINARY HEAVENS AND CONJUGIAL LOVE Rev. ALFRED ACTON 1977
The imaginary heavens are described in the memorable relation which introduces the doctrinal treatment on Conjugial Love. But before turning to these special heavens, we should be sure we understand what imaginary heavens are, and why we believe it possible to see in the treatment mentioned a specific application to preparation for conjugial love.
First let us define imaginary heavens. The term imaginary heaven to the best of my knowledge exists in but one place in the New Word. This passage in the Apocalypse Revealed speaks specifically of those quasi-heavens which were established at the end of the Christian Church, and which were destroyed at the Last Judgment. We read:
From the time when the Lord was in the world, when He executed the Last Judgment in Person, it was permitted that they who were in civil and moral good, although in no spiritual good, whence in externals they appeared like Christians, but in internals were devils, should continue longer than the rest in the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell; and at length they were allowed to make there for themselves fixed habitations, and also by the abuse of correspondences, and by phantasies, to form to themselves quasi heavens, which also they did form in great abundance. But when these were multiplied to such a degree as to intercept the spiritual light and spiritual heat in their descent from the higher heavens to men on earth, then the Lord executed the Last Judgment, and dissipated those imaginary heavens; which was effected in such a manner, that the externals, by which they simulated Christians, were taken away, and the internals, in which they were devils, were opened; and then they were seen such as they were in themselves, and they who were seen to be devils, were cast into hell every one according to the evils of his life. . .*
* AR 865
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Note from this leaching several interesting facts. Imaginary heavens are in no real sense heavens though they endure for some length of time. Most people in these heavens are not good, they simply live in external order until such time as their internals are exposed and then their factitious heaven is destroyed.
Now although the term imaginary heaven is only used once in the New Word, the concept there described is repeated more frequently. Under the terms First Heaven, prior or former heaven, old heaven, resemblance or image of heaven, quasi heaven, artificial heaven, and factitious heaven we read again and again of those imaginary states which infested the world of spirits midway between heaven and hell at the end of the church.*
* Cf. NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1929, P. 85.
There have been in the world of spirits three such major build-ups of factitious heavens, first at the time of the flood, then at the Lord's crucifixion when judgment was rendered upon the ancient church and finally at the Last Judgment of 1756 and 1757, which was a judgment on Christianity. In each instance of judgment these heavens were broken up and the evil who had held the good in submission to their external control were cast into hell.
Such imaginary heavens will never again infest the world of spirits. The Judgment effected by the New Word constitutes a final judgment which has rendered the possibility of evil spirits taking up permanent abode outside of their proper hells impossible. The teaching of the New Word is clear: The New Church, though perhaps subject to organizational failures will never be cut off. It will never be consummated. The Last Judgment was indeed a final one.*
* Coro. 24
Today men tarry in the world of spirits for a limited period. No longer can devils usurp this intermediate world, though they can and do affect those who are passing through states of vastation there. We read:
All come into [the world of spirits] immediately after their decease, and are there prepared, the good for heaven, and the evil for hell; and some stay there only a month or a year, and others from ten to thirty pears; and they to whom it was granted to make quasi heavens to themselves several centuries; but at this day not longer than twenty years.*
* AR 866
This twenty year period in the work, Heaven and Hell, is extended to a maximum of about thirty years but clearly no longer: "The time (spirits) stay in (the world of spirits) is not fixed. Some merely enter it, and are soon either taken into heaven or are cast down into hell; some remain there only a few weeks, some several years, but not more than thirty."*
* HH 426
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Although imaginary heavens such as those which existed at the end of each succeeding true church can no longer endure, still there are heavens created out of spirit's imaginations, which also qualify for consideration as imaginary heavens. The imagination of man which is part of his external mind provides for man the arena in which he can construct even here on earth realistic images of what he considers to be ideal, that is heavenly. In the world of spirits the concept of heaven imagined here on earth can be graphically presented, that is presented as though it were real, by means of appearances built in the imagination. Such appearances are not genuine, but they are completely representative of the inner quality of the imagined entity. What I mean here is that our imagination because it is exterior to our spirit can serve as does the external mind to give ground to the things we have planted therein. It can make for us a living reality of the things which here on earth are of dream stuff. But the imagination merely furnishes as it were the clothing for inner qualities. It serves to express an imagined love which when exposed via the medium of imaginary heavens may well be rejected. So we see that imaginary heavens are used in the world of spirits as a theater for instruction-a theater in which the particular spirit actor who has imagined that heaven is so completely immersed that he believes all his surroundings genuine. Such are the imaginary heavens described in numbers 2-10 of Conjugial Love. They are imagined heavens whereby spirits were let into the joys of their imaginations and so exposed to the phantasy of their supposed joy.
Such quasi or imaginary heavens exist with good spirits as well as evil. We read:
Spirits who had not as yet been admitted into heaven because of discord, (note these spirits were eventually admitted and so were good, not evil) . . . spoke with me concerning heavenly happiness. Because I was ignorant about it, it was said that there are distinct abodes, where are those who can live conjoined, and they form societies; and there, indeed, from the phantasy or imagination still remaining, heavenly pleasantnesses and delights appear to them to be formed, in which heavenly peace reigns. If they also wish it for themselves, paradises also appear to them to be formed with every variety of trees and fruits; and also cities, palaces, and similar things; but these things are not to be written in this way for the world lest they see heavenly things in phantasies.*
* SD 438
The imaginary heavens of individuals who are basically good are used to instruct them as to what truth is, and this by means of representatives. But what of imaginary heavens used in Divine Revelation?
These too must be for instruction, since that is the purpose of Revelation; and they must also be representative since they are natural descriptions of spiritual phenomena, that is, since they re-present the nature of the thing imagined in the clothing of time and space concepts.
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But the nature of representatives in Divine Revelation is different from the representatives which are used for individuals. These representatives must have universal application, and of equal importance they have been arranged in their order by Divine not human craft. The imaginary representations of the book of Revelation are sufficient evidence to prove this point. John, on the isle of Patmos, through Divine protection to keep him from the potential insanity inherent in looking from earth into quasi heavens saw actual phenomena of the imaginary heavens. The beasts and angels of the Apocalypse were in fact things seen in the world of spirits, things of the imaginary heavens. Of course these things were ordered to teach us specific spiritual truth. Such is the nature of Divine Revelation.
The imagery of the first ten numbers of Conjugial Love is also in large part the imagery of imaginary heavens. It also has been organized by the Lord. But the organization of these representations is as an introduction to a particular doctrinal treatment-a treatment of love truly conjugial. It does not seem too far fetched then, to assume that these imaginary heavens as Divinely ordered representatives call convey to the reader an insight as to introduction to conjugial love itself: that is an insight as to preparation for marriage and the bliss which will follow.
It is my conviction that this is in fact the case. I see in these imaginary heavens an ordered progression of states which when infilled will lead successively to the state described at the conclusion of this introduction, namely the state seen in the description of a marriage in heaven, that is, the state of love truly conjugial. Further, I see this progression applying to man's life on earth; since it is here that the imagination is formed.
Briefly let us review the imaginary heavens described in this series and the order there given. There are two different orders involved. First spirits from the spiritual north, west, south, and east, stated their concept of heaven, and then they were let into their particular imagined joy. The upbuilding state in which each described his concept of heaven differs as to order with the state when each group was let into its particular joy.
There were two groups from the north, two from the west, and two from the south, and a seventh group came from the east, but actually this was a group of angels, not spirits. Each of these groups spoke in order, telling their idea of heaven. The first group from the north felt heaven was simply a place. If man could go to that place he would be happy. The second group also retained the concept of heaven as a place, but knew more of this place. To them heaven was a place for cheerful companionship, sweet conversation, and true friendship.
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The first group from the west saw heaven as a place for indulging the pleasures of the senses. Feasting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then the delight of entertainment through plays and the like were heaven for this group. The fourth group to speak which was the second from the west saw heaven as a paradise where all their senses found gratification. Paradisal joys with delicious fruits to eat, fragrant flowers, and the like, made their imagined heaven. The first group from the south, fifth to speak, saw heaven as a place where they would be boss. To them supereminent dominion, super regal magnificence, and super illustrious splendor were the essential qualities of heaven. The second group from the south saw heaven as a place of adoration-perpetual glorification of God, with solemn festivals, proper worship and song, incense, and all the pomp of high ritual to them were the ingredients which made heaven. The last group to speak was from the east. It consisted of angels who were shocked at the lack of knowledge of heaven which the different companies had exhibited and sorrowed at the state of Christianity which had permitted such unbelief. They were invisible to all the other groups.
Now what might these particular companies represent when considered from the standpoint of preparation for marriage? First consider the two companies from the north. Spiritually the north is a place or stale of ignorance. Those there have no comprehension of genuine truth, but still are in good. We would liken those of the north with the state of childhood. In this state, as regards marriage, a youth is physically ignorant of its ultimate expression. Puberty has not yet made him aware of the reality of sexual love. Yet the remains of good instilled during this period-and the innocence itself of the age-protects the child, and maintains for him a sphere of good.
What are the imaginary heavens of a child as regards marriage? What states exist with him-to which we should appeal. Note how those from the first company of the north regarded heaven. It was a place. If they could but get there all would be well. How aptly this imaginary idea compliments our first thoughts concerning marriage-that is our own first imaginary heavens about marriage. The prince and princess will marry and live happily ever after. Mommy and daddy are married and happy. If the state of marriage can but be reached all will be well. Here we see described the first thoughts we should have of marriage, our first imaginary heaven. Now the second company of the north also regarded heaven as a place, but their concept was a little more sophisticated. Prior to puberty we should develop beyond the state which simply holds marriage as a happy ideal. We must see the marriage in terms of our own concept of what is ideal. Love of the sex is not yet active, the ultimate of marriage is not known in any real way-so the idea of companionship in marriage becomes our ideal.
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As with the second company of the north our imaginary idea of marriage at this state should be one of friendship. The husband or wife of the future should be thought of as a good friend. We should believe that cheerful companionship and sweet conversation will make a happy marriage for us. Spiritual remains of friendship and companionship can be stored here for later use when parents rightly instruct their children, both by example and words.
We turn from the north to the west. Spiritually the west signifies obscure or beginning good-that is the first of love.* With the youth, the first of conjugial love, is love of the sex. So the spiritual west, or the states described by those of the west, should be states immediately following the awakening of love of the sex-the states of early adolescence. Again there are two companies or groups which describe these states. The first saw their sensual pleasure fulfilled in feasting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then in watching entertainment put on by others. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob collectively represent all who are in a state of love, but as used here we can see that the first company of the west saw in these names the representatives of all important people. To them heaven meant association with great men. Here then we see described the state which sees marriage in terms of association with wonderful people. Marriage with a movie star, with a beauty queen, with the best looking girl in the class, with the athlete, and so forth. But even as these imaginary visions are being formed, the state is also one where more looking and less partaking is found. The entertainment by watching plays and the like of the first company from the west is recalled.
* AC 3708; HH 149, DLW 121
The second company of the west saw heaven as a paradise where their own particular sensual pleasures were satisfied. All in this paradise were in the flower of their youth and delighted in all sense experience. Yet it was a paradise: an ideal place to be attained. Marriage from this imaginary vantage is seen in terms of sensual pleasure, but sensual pleasure because it is paradise. In this state we can see ourselves in heaven, not necessarily with some wonderful person as before, but there enjoying pleasures that are essentially sensual. The two extremes of marriage, the inmost and the outmost paradise of the spirit and of the senses are seen as one. So the life of the teenager exemplifies these extremes.
The companies which spoke after those of the west were from the south. Spiritually the south is the source of truth, that is the time when rationality is active. We consider the states described by those of the south to be states arising out of the awakening rational. This first rational is represented by Ishmael in the Word, and is described in these terms:
The first rational, in the beginning, knows no other love than that of self and the world; and although it hears that heavenly love is altogether of another character, it nevertheless does not comprehend it.
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But then, when the man does any good, he perceives no other delight from it than that he may seem to himself to merit the favor of another, or may hear himself called a Christian, or may obtain from it the joy of eternal life.*
* AC 2657
It is not surprising to find those who are caught up in this first rational to see in their imaginary ideal of marriage, dominion. So also did the first company of the south. For them heaven was super-eminent dominion which expressed itself with splendor and magnificence. The idea that a wife or husband will naturally do one's every bidding, that one's own will will naturally predominate because of love, establishes another imaginary heaven with us as we develop toward love truly conjugial. But this heaven is balanced by the second heaven of the south which can almost concurrently operate with the first. Though we may well expect to have our own way in marriage, and indeed would feel that we had no marriage if we did not have our own way, still almost at the same time we want to hold our potential partner up on a pedestal. He or she is definitely the best, the most wonderful person who ever walked the earth. Our marriage will be a perpetual worshiping of his or her wonderful qualities. So also was the second heaven from the south a state of perpetual worship, a state of complete and total selflessness.
The slate of the east, the state of true love, is still invisible to us as we pass through these imaginary ideas of marriage, but it is causing us frustration. Indeed the more we learn about love truly conjugial the more shocked we can become at our former ignorance.
Notice that these states, or imaginary heavens, were simply described at this point in the relation. No spirits had yet entered into them. Though we have built up ideas of marriage, until we enter into marriage, these concepts cannot be tried. They are not yet active imaginary heavens.
Introduction into these heavens will constitute a whole new series, a series that will open to us the opportunity for true instruction as to what is genuine in marriage, a series that is unfolded as each of the six companies of the north, west, and south are allowed to enter into their joy. This series is in another order, with many more details, but one essential theme is present throughout the instruction given, a theme which at once allows us to retain what is wonderful in our imagined ideals even as we discard the phantasy which built them. This theme is that of use. All these imaginary heavens when used for the promotion of use can become true heavens, they can indeed open to us the very gates of heaven, we can, as did those of the six companies from the north, west, and south, pick out our best dreams and allow them to enter into the true heaven where they will witness the heavenly marriage within us that will in turn give us the life of love truly conjugial.
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SOCIAL LIFE Rev. Douglas M. Taylor 1977
A Series of Doctrinal Classes
PART II-THE ABUSES OF SOCIAL LIFE
Introduction
We saw in our first class in this series that charity or goodwill toward the neighbor is meant to interpenetrate every single area of our life. That is the ideal which we must aim at if our social life is indeed to be a diversion of charity. It is a diversion of whatever affection is the motivating force of our life. Whatever may be the forms of our social life, they will be living only to the extent that they have a genuine essence or soul-charity or love towards the neighbor, with all its ramifications. The distinctiveness of New Church social life comes from its essence as well as its form. There must be in it "mutual love from similarity of faith."* When that is the case, the affection of use dwells within it, and is gradually renewed. "A desire for one's function breaks off or ends" the diversions of genuine charity.** As we saw last time, there is the use and purpose of social life-that it recreates or refreshes the mind so that the love of use is renewed, and the person returns refreshed to his employment, whereby he is of use to the neighbor.
* TCR 433
** Char. 190
What happens, though, when there is no charity or love of use! To the extent that charity is lacking, to that extent there are certain abuses of social life, which will be the subject of this class.
Diversions Not of Charity:
We saw last time that the various forms of social life "are diversions of the affections from which one carries on his employment."*
* Char. 193
They are various in accordance with the interior affection in them;. . . one thing if an affection of charity is in them, another thing if an affection for position only is in them, another if an affection for gain only is in them, another if done only for the sake of sustenance and the necessaries for living, another if only for the sake of a reputation, to become celebrated, another if only for what they earn, that they may increase their wealth, or that they may live in comfort; and so on.*
* Char. 192
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Let us look at these affections in turn and see the quality of the social life they produce.
First, with regard to those who have only an affection for position. It is said that
With those who do the work of their function only for the sake of renown, so that they may be praised and promoted, these diversions are similar externally. They work hard, they take pains over their work, they do uses in abundance; not, however, from the love of use, but from the love of self, thus not from the love of the neighbor, but from the love of glory. They can even feel delight in the work of their function; but it is an infernal delight. This, in their view, may counterfeit heavenly delight, since both delights are alike externally. But their delight is full of undelightful things, for there is no rest of the natural mind or peace for them except when they are thinking about renown and position, or are being honored and worshiped. When not thinking about these things, they throw themselves into sensuous pleasures, drunken bouts, luxuries, whoredoms, enmities, and acts of revenge, and slanders against their neighbors if they do not pour out libations in their honor. But gradually, if not raised into higher positions, they loathe their offices and give themselves up to idleness, and become slothful; and when they have left this world they become demons.*
* Char. 194
It is to be noted that this is speaking of people who make a high position in life an end in itself or who love it for the sake of self. But positions of dignity and honor "are spiritual and eternal," we read, "when man regards himself personally as existing for the sake of the commonwealth and uses, and not that they exist for his sake."* It is in no wise forbidden to use positions of honor for the sake of being useful and of extendings one's usefulness.** They contaminate our social life only when they are sought after as ends in themselves.
* DP 220:9 ** See AC 3193:3
Let us now consider those who work only for gain-or, as it could be translated, only for "lucre." Concerning them we read:
In those who only have an affection for gain, these diversions are indeed diversions. but carnal ones, inspired within only by the delight of being wealthy. Such persons are diligent, prudent, industrious, especially when they are merchants and workmen. If they are officials, they take pains over the duties of their office, and sell the uses they do; if judges, they sell justice; if priests, they sell salvation. To them, gain is the neighbor. By virtue of their office they love gain, and they love the gain derived from their office. Those who are in a high office may sell their country, and also betray the army and citizens to its enemies. It is dear from all this what the quality of their love is in the diversions set forth above; these are full of rapine. Moreover, in so far as they are not afraid of the civil laws or public penalties, or afraid of losing the renown that brings them the desired gain, they plunder and steal. Externally they are honest, but internally they are dishonest. The uses they do in their offices and employments are enjoyable and pleasant to them . . . as mice are to cats. They look upon other people as a tiger or a wolf looks upon lambs and sheep, which they devour if they can.
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As for the good of use, they do not know that it is anything. There is an infernal delight and pleasantness in their diversions. They are like asses, not seeing any pleasures in meadows and fields, except as something to feed upon, so long as there is wheat or barley in the ears. But these last things are said of the avaricious.*
* Char. 195
Again, these things are said of those who love gain or lucre as an end in itself or for the sake of self. They do not apply to those who are moved primarily by the love of use, who love use first and foremost and who use riches as a means to being useful. Riches in themselves are never condemned in the Writings. They are condemned only if we set our heart on them and make them to be what is loved above all else. We are taught that dignities and riches are not real blessings, therefore they are granted both to the wicked and to the good.*
* AC 8939, 10775, 10776
Since it is the love of riches as an end that is condemned, it comes as no surprise to read that this love can be present even with those who do not have great wealth.
There are many among the poor who are not content with their lot, who strive after many things, and believe riches to be blessings; . . . they also envy others the good things they possess, and are as ready as anyone to defraud others whenever they have opportunity, and to indulge in filthy pleasures. But this is not true of the poor who are content with their lot, and are careful and diligent in their work, who love labor better than idleness, and act sincerely and faithfully, and at the same time live a Christian life.*
* HH 364
From all these considerations, then, it is clear that when riches are loved before anything else, then there is a strong inclination to indulge in voluptuous and filthy pleasures.
We turn now to the social life of those who "perform their employment solely for the sake of sustenance and the necessaries for living; also . . . those who perform them solely for the sake of a reputation, to become celebrated; and . . . those who perform them solely for what they earn, to the end that they may grow rich, or that they may live in comfort."* Of them the dramatic statement is made that "the diversions set forth above are the only uses."** These are people who live for the sake of entertainment and pleasure, who work only because they have to, because otherwise they would starve or live in misery in this world. For them social life is the whole end of life. They endure the working hours of the day and live for the time when they can indulge in pleasures, which for them are "the only uses." The passage continues:
* Char. 196
** Ibid.
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They are corporeal and sensual men. Their spirits are unclean, being lustings and appetites. They do the duties of their employment for the sake of the diversions. They are beast-men-dead; and duties are a burden to them. They look for substitutes to do the work they ought to be doing; while they keep the reputation and the earnings. When not engaged in the diversions enumerated above, they are idlers and sluggards; they lie abed thinking of nothing else but how to find companions with whom to gossip, eat, and drink. They are a public burden.*
* Ibid
In the continuation of that passage a description is given of their lot after death. It is enough to make almost anyone turn to an earnest self-examination. We read:
All such people after death are shut up in workhouses, where they are under an administrant judge, who daily appoints them the tasks they have to do; and if they do not do them, they are given neither food, nor clothing, nor bed; and this goes on until they are driven to do something useful. The Hells abound with such workhouses.*
* Ibid
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that in the cases we have been considering self is at the very center of their lives. They work only for the sake of self; they play only for the sake of self. Selfish ends are in their employment and also in the diversions of their employment. With them there can be no longing to return to the uses of one's duty or employment. The pleasures of social life have become for such people ends in themselves.
Social Life as An End In Itself
It would be hard to find a greater abuse of social life than this: that it becomes an end in itself. When social life, entertainment, or mere pleasures become the goal of life, there we have the idolatry of externalism. "For idolatry consists," we read, "not only in worshiping idols, graven images, and other Gods, but also in worshiping external things without their internals."* We are also taught that the delight of the natural man separated from the spiritual is in itself idolatrous** Indeed, it is also said that the external separated from the internal is hell.*** External things are meant to be means to internal things. But the essence of externalism is that the means becomes the end, or the means replaces the end. The real end or goal is lost sight of; the whole focus of attention is then upon the means. This can happen in our external worship, where the ritual is meant to be a means to our acquiring internal worship-the worship of the Lord in our life. But to the extent that we love the external rituals for their own sake rather than for the end in view, to that extent we are worshiping the golden calf of externalism.
* AC 4825
** AC 9391:10
*** AC 10489
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The same idolatrous externalism pollutes our social life, when, instead of being a means of recreating the mind for the sake of performing uses, social life becomes an end in itself-the end that is worshiped, our idol. The stark teaching of the Writings is: "Any person or thing that is loved above all things is God and is Divine to the one who so loves."* That passage from True Christian Religion is to be found in the explanation of the first of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before my Face."
* TCR 293
Some very sobering details are given in the Arcana Coelestia concerning those societies in the Spiritual World made up of people who on earth made social life an end in itself. For example, we find this passage: "There are societies that have no end or purpose of use, except to be among friends, male and female, and to have pleasures there, thus seeking their own gratification only, and making much of themselves exclusively, whether at home or publicly, it being all for the same end."*
* AC 4054
The passage goes on to warn us about the harmful influx or influence from such spirits.
As soon as they approach, their sphere begins to work, and extinguishes in others the affections of truth and good; and when these have been extinguished, then these spirits are in the pleasures of their friendship. These are obstructions of the brain, and induce on it stupidity. Many societies of such spirits have been with me (Swedenborg), and their presence was perceived by a dullness, sluggishness, and loss of affection; and I have sometimes spoken with them. They are pests and banes, although in the civil life of this world they had appeared good, delightful, witty, and also talented; for they know the properties of society, and how to insinuate themselves thereby, especially into friendship. What it is to be a friend to good, or what the friendship of good is, they neither know nor desire to know. A sad lot awaits them; for at last they live in squalor, and in such stupidity that scarcely any human apprehension remains. For it is the end that makes the man, and such as is the end, such is the man; consequently such is his human after death.
That passage has no doubt reminded us of the memorabilia in the early numbers of the work Conjugial Love. There we learn the fate of those who from their life actually believed that heavenly happiness consisted of nothing but delightful companionship and entertaining conversations, and of those who, from their way of life in the world, supposed that the joys of heaven and eternal happiness "consisted in feasting with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and after the feasts, sports and public shows, and then feasts again, and so on to eternity."*
* CL 6
In the case of those who thought that social life in the form of companionships and conversations was the joy of heaven, they were let into this heaven of their imagination, and were not released from its inevitable sadness until they were ready to receive the truth-namely, that heavenly joy "is the delight of doing something that is useful to ourselves and to others" and that there are indeed
most joyous companionships in the heavens which gladden the minds of angels, amuse their spirits, fill their bosoms with delight, and revive their bodies; but they enjoy these delights when they have performed the uses of their employments and occupations.
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From these are the soul and life in all their joys and pleasures; but if you take away this soul or life the accessory joys successively become no joys, but become at first indifferent, then as if frivolous, and finally bring sadness and anxiety.*
* CL 5
It was similar with those who made social life an end in itself by regarding heavenly joy as consisting in feastings, sports, and public shows. They, too, became nauseated with what is merely natural in quality separated from what is internal, and begged to be released.
Such spirits are merely sensuous, but we are by no means immune to the influx from them. Another passage tells us that
in sensuous life are many who indulge in the pleasures of the body, and also those who have altogether rejected thought beyond what they see and hear . . . Spirits of this kind abound in the other life at the present day, for troops of them come from the world; and the influx from them prompts man to indulge his natural inclination, and to live for himself and the world, but not for others except in so far as they favor him and his pleasures. In order for a man to be uplifted from these spirits, he must think about eternal life.*
* AC 6201
"He must think about eternal life." When social life becomes the main preoccupation, it becomes almost impossible to think about eternal life, or about anything that is above the natural plane. That is why so many sobering details are revealed in the Writings, so that we may be constantly on guard against making social life an end in itself.
Heaven or Hell?
The cases we have been considering may well be regarded as extreme-including the case of those who are completely regenerated or ruled by the good of charity in their employments and diversions. What has been presented is, in effect, a contrast between heaven and hell; those for whom social life is really a diversion of charity, are in heaven; those whose social life is infilled with affections that are not of charity are in hell.
But where are we? It is most likely that we are in equilibrium between the two. The minds of those living on earth are in the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell. We are free to look upwards to heaven or downwards to hell.
Most probably each one of us is at some point on the highway leading away from the extreme abuses of social life and leading towards the diversions of charity. As we have seen, the quality of our social life depends upon the interior affection or love that rules our life.
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No doubt there are times or states of mind in our life when social life is predominantly for us a diversion of charity. But knowing the human tendency to lapse back, we can readily understand how easy it is to fall into the abuses of social life, how easy it is to indulge in social life unreflectingly that is, without considering its quality in the light of heaven. The teachings in the Heavenly Doctrine with regard to the extreme abuses of social life have been revealed as a stark warning, lest unwittingly and unconsciously (almost imperceptibly) we drift into them. Because the Lord has revealed these things, it is the duty of the priesthood to present them clearly with a view to leading to the good of life. In the final analysis, though, the applications to individual lives can be made only by the individual. But they do need to be made.
In making these applications it is a great help to realize that we can never stand still. We must be going either forward or backward, either regenerating or degenerating. This is equally true of the individual and the organization as a whole. We can never say that we are what we are.
The Lord alone can say that He is what He is. He alone changes not. He is the only Being who does not have to change for the better. Even the angels are perfected to eternity. But the Lord changes not because He is perfection itself. To what would He change? To say that the Lord needs to change in any way is to imply that there is some imperfection in Him. He alone changes not.
The character of a human being-every human being-is never fixed and final. No human being can say that he is what he is. We are always becoming something. The question is, What are we becoming? In which direction are we moving? With regard to our social life, are we moving in the direction of the diversions of charity or towards the abuses of social life?
A general state cannot be changed except by means of particular changes, "by little by little." If we feel that (individually or collectively) se are not moving quickly enough in the direction of the diversions of charity, that general state can be changed only by making particular changes on particular occasions. As we shun as sins against the Lord the particular abuses of social life that we become aware of, He gradually moves us in the right direction and eventually the general state is changed. There is indeed no other way.
Specific Abuses
Let us turn now to some specific abuses of social life.
One of the most prevalent and far-reaching of these is something that seems to be hardly ever reflected upon-lack of sufficient sleep and rest as a result of social life.
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When we recall that the purpose of the diversions of charity is that we may return refreshed to the uses of our occupation, the absurdity, incongruity, irrationality-in fact, the insanity-of enjoying "recreation" into the "wee small hours" of the morning, is so manifest as to need no further comment! We can either be refreshed by social life or be exhausted by it.
Even on the physical plane the need for adequate sleep has long been obvious to all. Who does not know that it is necessary for the renewal of energy and the restoration of the tissues of the body worn out by physical exertion! This is among the basics of physical hygiene.
It may be true that in this respect we are not as far removed from order as some outside the sphere of the Church whose social life regularly imposes such a drain on their physical resources that they yawn their way blear-eyed through the next day, fortified by large and repeated doses of aspirin and alka-seltzer. For the most part, our conscience probably protects us from such excesses. Nonetheless, it does seem that drawing attention to these matters is not entirely a matter of preaching to the converted!
Yet the restoration of the body to a state of soundness is not an end in itself, either. For we read, "Man cannot be conjoined to the Lord unless he be spiritual, nor can he be spiritual unless he be rational, nor can he be rational unless his body is in a sound state."* A sound mind in a sound body can hardly be achieved without adequate sleep and rest. This has been confirmed in numerous psychological studies. One of the most vicious forms of torture is to deprive a man of sleep for an extended period. This is the means of reducing a man's mind to insanity as a prelude to what is now called "brain-washing." Of course, this is an extreme case; but it does show us the direction in which those are tending who deprive themselves of sufficient sleep and rest through an inordinate amount of social life.
* DLW 330
But when we turn to the Writings we learn of even more urgent reasons for adequate sleep. There are spiritual benefits given in sleep, and a corresponding loss and danger to the extent that our sleep is not adequate.
By means of sleep we are given a rest from the infestation of evil spirits. In a passage in the Spiritual Diary it is said that "evil spirits are compelled to sleep when man does, and thus to make it possible for man to sleep, even soundly, although surrounded by evil spirits."* Just how vitally necessary sleep is for the sake of our spiritual life we can conclude from the teaching that "evil spirits have the greatest and most burning desire to infest and assault man while he sleeps; but he is then especially guarded by the Lord; for love does not sleep."** Spirits who attempt to infest a man while he is sleeping are therefore very severely punished, the reason being that "the crime is enormous, from the necessity of man being able to sleep in safety, without which the human race would perish."***
* SD 3232
** AC 1983
*** AC 959:2
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From other teachings we may conclude that the proprium of man's will is quiescent while he is asleep, allowing a transfer of angelic influences from the voluntary to the involuntary.* One passage says quite explicitly that "when the things of man's body and will are not at work, but are quiescent, then the Lord works through his internal man."**
* AC 1977, 3893
** AC 933:3
All these spiritual benefits, then, we surrender in proportion as we allow so-called "recreation" to eat into our hours of sleep. Writing in New Church Life, a thoughtful layman, after discussing the relation between sleep and regeneration, made the same point in these words: "Far be it from me to suggest how another's life should be planned, but do not these facts raise the question as to how far we can ignore the claims of sleep, or interrupt or curtail its duration, and not suffer in body and soul? What have we to do with 'midnight follies' and all the modern practices which invert night and day, robbing their devotees of much of the beneficence of sleep-and inevitably sending in the bill at the end"?*
* NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1927, p. 293
We would also note in passing that when man is in a state of fatigue and weariness from lack of sleep, he is most vulnerable to the attacks of certain obstinate spirits who act upon his weariness and increase it, "even to the utmost impatience."* Now, since impatience is described in the Arcana Coelestia as "a corporeal affection,"** we can understand why it is that impatience is most likely to flare up when we are weary, when the effort to restrain one's self-expression seems too much for us. Impatience means an unwillingness to suffer, an unwillingness to suffer any delay or obstacle to our desires. It has within it many other evils-such as anger, contempt, and often the love of dominion. When impatience erupts into unrestrained speech, it usually shows itself by discourtesy, rudeness, abuse, and hasty judgments that we regret in more tranquil states.
* AC 5721
** AC 3827
Another abuse of social life when it becomes an end in itself is the friendship of love. Reference has already been made to those whose aim in life is to be with their friends, "those who in the life of the body preferred to every other delight that of conversation, and who loved those with whom they conversed, not caring whether they are good or evil, provided they were entertaining; and thus who were not friends to good or to truth."* Such friendships and the perils that accompany them are treated of in The True Christian Religion.**
* AC 3804
** TCR 446, 449, 454, 455
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A further abuse that too often accompanies excessive social life is drunkeness, which is described in the Spiritual Diary as "an enormous sin," for these three reasons: that it makes a man a brute and no longer a man, because it takes away his intellectual faculty, which is what distinguishes him from animals; it brings damage on his body, and so hastens his death; it wastes in extravagance what might be of use to many.* It is also well known that when man's freedom and rationality are in this way impaired, his resistance is often lowered to the sphere of lasciviousness and even debauchery.
* SD 2422
Finally, with regard to corporate social life, the Writings point out that at this day there are indeed assemblies of friendship,
but as yet there are not gatherings of charity; for the Lord says, 'In the end of the age (that is, at the end of the church), iniquity will be multiplied and charity will grow cold (Matthew 24:12)'. This is because the church has not yet acknowledged the Lord God the Savior as God of Heaven and earth, and gone to Him directly from Whom alone genuine charity goes forth and flows in. The social gatherings where friendship emulating charity does not bring minds together, are nothing but pretenses of friendship, deceptive attestations of mutual love, seductive insinuations into favor, and sacrifices offered to the delights of the body, especially the sensual, whereby people are carried away like ships by sails and favoring currents, while sycophants and hypocrites stand in the stern and hold the helm.*
* TCR 434
To be Continued
ESSENCE OF LOVE EDITOR 1977
Charity or love is to will and do. Last Judgment 36:2.
Love in act is that which remains with man. Heaven and Hell 483.
'To love' in the Word means to do uses. Divine Love XIX.
For, what is love without good in effects? Divine Wisdom IX.
But that which anyone does from love remains inscribed on his heart. Arcana Coelestia 10,740.
Wherefore, if ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love.
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NEW CHURCH AND PRESENT DAY TRENDS IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY (III) Rev. DANDRIDGE PENDLETON 1977
The final subject of consideration in this series is known, in theological terminology, as eschatology, the Christian teachings concerning the life after death. Many theologians are presently attempting to redefine heaven and hell in the terms of this world rather than in other-worldly terms, not as places where humans somehow survive after death, but as states of minds and modes of being which begin, find their fulfillment, and have their end, here on earth.
Most Christian theologians agree that their churches' teachings concerning the nature of the after-life have owed more to superstition than to super natural wisdom. As the Jesuit Biblical scholar, John McKenzie of Notre Dame, put it: "The traditional views of heaven and hell are about 95% mythology." Though scholars today regard the vivid descriptions in the Book of Revelation as being primarily imagery, Christianity at one time accepted them as literally true. To early eras, in which life was a cruel trial of disease and despair, there was deep comfort in the dream of heaven as God's good-conduct reward. Now that man has increasingly conquered nature, eternity has become more and more distant. As Italy's Roman Catholic philosopher, Extore Abino, said: "A Certain satisfaction with this world has replaced the aspiration for heaven. A consumer society gives man happiness even if it is superficial. Nobody wants to hear of hell."
The new Christian thought on this subject begins by rejecting the Greek dualism of body and soul. The old idea of a soul that departs from the body at death "makes no sense at all," according to one Catholic theologian. "There is just man, man in God's image and likeness. Man in his totality was created and will be saved." Such theologians emphasize God's presence in the world, and the processes of salvation and damnation as taking place on earth-not somewhere "out there."
In the eschatology, hell is something more believable than a pit of unending fire. To most modern day theologians, hell is best expressed as alienation from God's universal design, and therefore from one's fellow men. "Hell is estrangement, isolation, despair," said Dean Lloyd Kallard of Gordon Divinity School. "Man, a social being, is removed from all that gives meaning and satisfaction."
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Dr. John Macquarrie of Union Theological Seminary, described hell as "not some external or arbitrary punishment that gets assigned for sin, but simply the working out of sin itself, as it destroys the distinctly personal being of the sinner."
Conversely, heaven is now defined as the triumph of self giving-not as some celestial leisure village. "Heaven is cordial, honest, loving relationships" said Dean Kallard. The Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, wrote that "resurrection means not the continuation of life, but life's completion. The Christian hope does not lead us away from this life."
How close these speculations are to the truth-indeed when properly seen, they are true. Heaven and hell are essentially states of mind that "begin and are interiorly fulfilled here on earth." The after life is a "spiritual dimension that emphasizes the noblest traits and aspirations of this life." The vivid descriptions in the Book of Revelation are "primarily imagery." Heaven is not a "good conduct reward." God's presence in the world, and the processes of salvation and damnation as taking place on earth are true and are what should be emphasized in reference to man's spiritual regeneration. Hell is not a "pit of unending fire;" it is an "alienation from God's universal design;" it is a state of "estrangement, isolation and despair." Hell is not "some external or arbitrary punishment that gets assigned for sin." Heaven is "the triumph of self-giving;" it is a, state of "cordial, honest, loving relationships;" it is "life's completion;" and it is true that the truly Christian hope "does not lead us away from this life." In all of this, the new eschatology is an advance in a right direction over the old Christian dogma. But, as was discussed in our previous, second article in reaction to the New Morality, or Situation-Ethics, the problem arises when a truth is seen within a framework of false assumption, which falsity dominates and gives direction to that truth in such a way as to lead men away from the idea of Divinely authoritative God in human affairs. There are other problems and fallacies which arise also; but the most important one is this direction of men's thought away from an authoritative God and an actual, existing, individual life after death and toward an authoritative Man and a life limited to this earth. For this is precisely what the new eschatology does; with all its insights into the truth that heaven and hell are essentially states of mind within man, which are established while man still lives on earth, it leads at the same time to a denial of the human life as actually continuing beyond the death of the body.
This series has presented but a few examples of the new opinions which are revolutionizing Christianity. Within an increasing movement away from God, certain elements which can be utilized by the Lord as means to leading man back to Him can be discerned. This generation faces the most difficult task in this regard ever faced by New Church men.
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For these various new positions are most persuasive, and it is not easy to differentiate between the truth and the falsity in them; yet we must be able to do so; we must become capable of doing so; or our perception of the New Church, both in its own right and in relation to the world at large, will become a hopeless muddle. I have pointed out only one or two of the main fallacies inherent in the subjects we have discussed; there are others. Yet a proper balance in relation to the world's thought cannot be achieved unless we become sufficiently conversant both with that thought and with the teachings of the New Church. There are ideas abroad with which the New Church may safely associate itself, and there are ideas with which the New Church may not safely associate itself; and you, the adult of the New Church must know which ideas are which. At present, they are contained in an indiscriminant mixture-a veritable chaos of truths surrounded and dominated by falsities, with the whole presented as the authoritative pattern whereby men are to guide and from which they are to judge human life-both their own and that of others.
The task is ours. We will not accomplish it by sitting and criticizing the directions in which things are moving. We will have to do something; and our action, if it is to be effective, must be based on knowledge and careful discrimination. There is work for all; the few cannot do it alone. Truly, the harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few. The Church is the Lord's with us; it is not ours. Yet He cannot establish His Church without our receptive participation. Let us put our hands to the harvest.
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton
3405 Buck Rd.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006
Phone: (215) 947-0242
Mrs. Philip Horigan
50 Park Dr.
Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (312) 729-5644
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THEATRE OF THE HUMAN FORM LAUREL ODHNER 1977
THOUGHTS ON THE SPECIAL VALUE OF DRAMA IN THE GROWTH OF A NEW RELIGIOUS CULTURE
(This paper was presented at a reception for friends and supporters of the New Church Theatre Project, January 9, 1977. The New Church Theatre Project has a newsletter describing its current goals and activities. For a copy, write to: The New Church Theatre Project, c/o Gabrielle Echols, 2535 Huntingdon Pike, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006.)
Theatre is the most peculiarly human of all the arts. It needs no tools but the human body and spirit. The materials it builds with are human ideas, affections, and interactions. The Hundu Natyasatraa tells that Brahma, creating the dramatic art, promised it eternal validity, saying, "For there is no learning, no skill, no science, and none of the fine arts, no religious meditation, and no pious deed, which cannot be found in the drama."*
* Quoted in Margot Berthold, A History of World Theater, p. 45.
Theatre can reflect every aspect of human life, not only in what it portrays, but in its very form of portrayal; it uses the actor's whole body, and his whole mind. Work in a theatre magnifies and clarifies friendships, because that work is centrally dedicated to total communication. Theatre has the potential of bringing together all the arts into a unified, harmonic whole. But whatever arts are used on the stage, or omitted, the central and essential figure is the performing human; the life of the theatre is the interaction of the humans portrayed, and the purpose of the play is a married communion of the insights and loves of the actors and audience together. Theatre is the mirror and ultimate expression of the human form in its social aspect.
When I think the words "human form," I tend to think first of arms and legs, eyes and mouth: the shape of an earthling body. But "form" doesn't have to mean "shape." It relates to manner and method, to existence and expression; to the articulation of substance and feeling; and, primally, to the Truth of the Lord revealing Himself in creation. Form is not static: it is the mode of becoming; the dynamic manifestation of substance striving toward effect. The evident movement of Love through its cycle of creation and union is the Human Form.
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Becoming human requires recognition and rejection of self-will, humiliation before God, and rebirth, by His gift, as a new being. This is the cycle we celebrate in worship; kneeling in prayer and confession, hearing His Word, and rising up in song. It is the cycle all creation celebrates in all its cycles and seasons.
Inasmuch therefore as each and all things subsist, that is, continually come forth, from the Divine, and as each and all things thence derived must needs be representative of those things whereby they came into existence, it follows that the visible universe is nothing else than a theater representative of the Lord's kingdom; and that his kingdom is a theater representative of the Lord Himself.*
*2 AC 3483
The Word speaks over and over of creation as a theatre representing the Lord, and of nature as a theatre representing spirit.* What are we given nature for, and what is the purpose of representations? In them is anchored and confirmed the Lord's intent; in His universal theatre He ultimates and manifests His goal for the human race; through temporal appearances He instructs us in eternal truths and prepares us for eternal life. Swedenborg called this "theatre." Its representations are active, with all the appearance of living; they include every sense and human faculty; they correspond to every affection and thought of the spirit, every heaven and hell of man.
* AC 2999, 3518, 5173; TCR 12, 67
Just so, in our finite creativity, we use appearances, representations, and acting-out to communicate to each other the goals for which we strive and the truths we perceive. We use art to express and demonstrate our insights in ways that simple explanation could not achieve. We use imitations of natural events and objects to communicate, not the appearance of the objects, but the thoughts and feelings they represent to us. By acts of secondary (imaginative, or man-made) creation, we open doors for each other into the world of spirit: reflecting the way the Lord opens to the churches the door to the heavens by His revelations. Even the Lord's Word is written, ultimately, in appearances of truth which in themselves, in the letter, are neither living nor true, but which communicate with all fullness and perfection the interior Truth for which they are the body.* "Glorifying the Lord is not a use, but a recreation, for angels glorify the Lord in every use."**
* AC 314, 587-589, 1043
** SD 4773
Our recreations are rites which release us from the separations with which we must daily work: separation of will from understanding, of man from other men, of our efforts from our goals. Dr. Hugo Lj. Odhner wrote of the release of inner tensions brought by the free expression of our spiritual growth in public worship, where the privacy of interior worship can be opened up and shared.
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He expressed the demand of love for symbols, and the representation of conjunction of will and understanding in worship ritual.* E. Bruce Glenn, in "An Inquiry into Aesthetics," thoroughly demonstrates the use of art in releasing us from the confusion of our natural states by raising the understanding to a rational light and ordering our sensuous, affectional experience according to it.** In the rites of worship, in the customs of social gathering, in the patterning of thought and experience by the arts, and in the playing of games, we recreate the various degrees of our minds.
* Hugo Lj. Odhner, 'Externals of the New Church.' (doctrinal classes, unpublished), pp. 35-36
** E. Bruce Glenn, 'An Inquiry into Aesthetics,' The New Philosophy, April 1971.
Even the passive American family ritual of sitting in front of the television, in its perverse way, expresses a release from the separate identity of the individual in his work-day, and his union with the collective consciousness of his society. Television reorients and remotivates our commercial society toward its goals of material consumption; it celebrates the violent and humanistic emotions of the masses. In our nobler arts, we celebrate our higher ideals.
The rites of recreation have several aspects of purpose: they celebrate union; they instruct and clarify the communal awareness; they dedicate our work to an ideal or a goal. By doing these, they renew-re-create-the inspiration and energy from which we work.
Theatre grew out of the rites of ancient worship. rites whose common theme is the transformation through death and rebirth: transformation of the old year through winter into the new year's spring; of the boy into manhood through tribal initiation; and of the God who lived on earth, and died, and was raised up to rule the heavens.* Each of our great cultures has had rituals celebrating the prophetic myths of the Lord's glorification;** and always a civilization's first drama's have grown out of these sacred celebrations.***
* Kenneth Macgowan and William Melnitz, The Living Stage: A History of the World Theater, p. 13.
** Aubrey C. Odhner, The Divine Human Imprint on Myth (unpublished manuscript).
*** Berthold, p. 3
The first play that grew out of the Christian Mass, after pagan theatre had been abolished in Europe, was the Eastre Trope:
'Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o, christiocolae?'
'Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae.'
'Non est hic, surrexit, sicut praedixerat.
ite, nuntiate, quia surrexit sepulchre.'*
* Ibid.
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The priests on the chancel spoke this dialogue between the women and the angel at the sepulchre: 'He is not here, He is risen as He foretold. Go, announce that He is risen from the grave.'
The oldest recorded play scripts are the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, in which the resurrection of the dead rulers and nobles was acted out as part of the burial ceremony. Egyptian drama is said to have reached its height in the Abydos Passion Play of the death and rebirth of Osiris.* The classical Greek theatre grew out of the festivals of Dionysius, god of wine and agriculture, who lived and taught on earth, was slain and descended to the underworld, and was then raised up to Olympus.** American Indian tribes of the Northwest make plays with layered masks that begin as an animal, fall open to show a man, and then open to show the God within; or begin as void or night, open to show the sun, and open again to show the God who caused the sun's light.***
* Macgowan and Melnitz, p. 17
** Ibid., pp. 24-25
*** Ibid., pp. 11-12
And I've found in the Writings a full description of just one play in heaven itself: a representation by angels for children of the Lord rising from the sepulchre and uniting His Human with His Divine. and of His descent to "the lower earth" to raise those bound there up to heaven.*
* AC 2299, HH 281
But the transformation of man is not only the subject of plays. It is the nature and heart and purpose of theatre. The actors in a play-and, by their absorption, the audience-celebrate by their very acting the putting off of self and being made new. Entering a theatre, we put off our everyday natural world to enter a realm of a different order. Theatre lifts us into a freedom to live out our dreams and goals before they are accomplished.
In our times of imitation and play, our states of acting other than we know ourselves to be, we are not deceiving. Acting becomes deception only when the actor takes credit to himself for the virtues and characteristics of the role he portrays, or when he makes evil appear good and good evil. As long as the player sincerely renounces his proprium for the sake of enlightenment and true communication, his playing is honest.*
* For perspectives on this see CL 17, and Glenn, pp. 56-57
What are the purposes of play? Why does man have such a persistent urge to free himself from his own identity and act another's part? Why do we find such delight and power in the acting-out of an event in a state apart from our 'reality'?
Pretending frees us from limits of proprium, space, and time: it gives us a doorway into the world of our thoughts and desires, of our dreams and perceptions-a doorway to each other.
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As God in His revelation is the doorway to, and implement of, God in creation, we in our arts and sciences make the doorway to, and means for, ourselves in our lives and purposes. The childhood games and competitive sports by which we build the basic skills of body and mind are natural gates, natural plays: they have the power of training awareness and reaction, by means of simulation, for real life. The arts in which we re-create the world of spirit and human interaction are likewise a training: not just an informing process, but a powerful tool of preparation by which our affectional associations are built and our awareness of society, and values, thought processes, and spiritual interactions is formed.
Above the games and above the arts is the ritual of worship. In worship it is our relation to God which is being instructed, patterned, ultimated. Worship itself is of life: it does not consist of going to church on Sunday. No more does being a society consist of going to the theatre. But in the way that worship is ultimated in a ritual of worship, social awareness can be ultimated in a theatrical performance, as can skill and fitness in games.
In the rituals of the olden days, these degrees were not separated: plays and athletic contests were part of religious festivals. Probably in the Most Ancient Church there was little need for any kind of ritual, because the awareness of loves and purposes was not separated from the wisdom of how to work to fulfill them. As the separations of natural from spiritual, of degree from degree of the mind, came about, the rites of rejoining and re-creating became separate. And so, as civilizations drew apart from their churches, the arts were separated from worship.
Now, we live in an age where the church and the state are openly sundered; we have become conscious of the chasm between our thoughts and our motives; we have reached a racial coming-of-age in which the will and the understanding are each aware of the other's power. We greatly fear, and deeply desire, a union between them.
But the powers of will and the motive loves that we have inherited, not only individually but as a race and as a civilization, are evil. The only path of a true union of wisdom and love is through the death of the old will, and a rebirth by gift of God of a new will within the understanding.
As we build in our doctrines, our worship, and our individual consciences, we must build also in our civil and social culture a receptacle in the understanding for the new will. We must build not only an ideal of use, and a personal standard of use, but a community of use, which serves not just the segregated, ideal, specific church, but which helps to make room for the advent of a new will in the rational consciousness of our nations.
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Consciousness is an important word here. For what we do in full consciousness, we are fully accountable and in order to be responsible, we must be conscious of what we are doing.* To be conscious means to have the will and the understanding involved together, to act in freedom from rationality.**
* AC 9132, 9140
** DP 176
Rev. William A. Livingston, in 'A Brief Report on the Theatre of Involvement,' wrote,
Theatre is a study of what man is. It is a study of what man does. Furthermore, theatre can be a study of what man can become. A play is something that hurls people into an understanding. Through personal encounter in a theatrical experience, may find insight, may understand, may react, and may act on the basis of the interpretation of life communicated by the theatrical artist.*
* William A. Livingston, 'A Brief Report on the Theatre of Involvement: a project in Theatre-Ministries at the University of Minnesota sponsored by United Ministries in Higher Education,' September 1970.
In other words, theatre can help us, as a society, become conscious of our present state, our potentials, and the consequences of our actions and interactions. A new theatre, skillfully, rationally, and conscientiously developed, could present to the understanding, in affectional terms as well as verbal ones, the wondrous potential that we have for a new will-for theatre unites motive and understanding, presents the nature and effect of motive loves to the conscious, rational mind. Of course, perverted, it can do the opposite: much modern theatre, especially in films and television, is dedicated to enchanting away our consciousness by degrading motives and affections. This is a reflection and tool of the death of our old civilization and the old church that founded it? Is the theatre really dead? Yes, it has been. It should be. It always dies at the end of an age, as the church dies, and becomes wholly sensual, and pointless. But after judgment, filled with the theme of rebirth, it is reborn, to carry the consciousness of the new ideals, the new knowledge of spiritual law and morality, the new marvelous hope of salvation beyond the walls of the church into the whole fabric of a newly woven culture.
The play celebrates consciousness. It is a practice, a rehearsal of consciousness that stretches the understanding, so that going back into real life we can carry with us a new capacity for awareness: it is an exercise in the union and interaction of the will and understanding, of wisdom and love.
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Dr. H. Lj. Odhner, in his classes on 'Externals of the New Church,' said.
Whenever men wish to impress an idea or further a cause they resort naturally to the use of symbolism, realizing without reflecting on it that rational ideas have little permanent power unless confirmed by symbols and clothed in representative forms and procedures, and signified by tokens and emblems.*
* H. Lj. Odhner, 'Externals of the New Church,' p. 44
We act out what we desire to become. We make plays of heroic deeds, of events powerful and beautiful, of the struggles of change and resolution. We make plays of the ideas we wish to be led by; we rehearse and foretell, even to ourselves in our private lives, the actions that will carry us toward our dreams. Anthropologists say that hunters of ancient times made their sympathetic magic by acting out a successful hunt before the hunt began. We worship in church because we want to love the Lord. We play the games of skill because we want to be strong and skillful. Children act out their grownups' world because their goal is to live in it. And we gather in the theatre because we want to be able to share the wholeness of our thoughts: forms and feelings, words, actions, effects.
And what do we as a Church, as a nation, and as a civilization wish to become? A heaven of the human race. A free and rational society of uses. A love and understanding of Truth, a culture grown from the seeds of the Word and led by true doctrines. A humble and charitable people among whom communication of delight is free and articulate. I think we have a responsibility of leadership in making room for these ideals in our world. So let us learn the skills of leadership the arts offer: and because plays can involve all the arts, and all the people of a community, let us learn to make plays for our neighbors of the humble delights of charity; of the depth and complexity of the Lord's revelations; of the importance of truth and freedom; and of the changes and struggles, temptations and victories that are the road to heaven.
If you doubt the power of art to lead the development of a culture, think again of the extent to which movies and television shape our appetites and attitudes, the way our nation's music, dance, and literature encourage us in our technical proficiency and our moral decay. We can hardly exclude these influences from our lives, unless we become hermits-which the Writings tell us plainly is not the way to heaven-but by the power of the true teaching the Lord has granted us, we can counter them. We shall not take over the world in a day, by buying out the TV networks.
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But little by little, building our understanding and our skills, learning the means, and generously exposing to our children and our neighbors the drama of rebirth, we can plant the new thoughts, ultimate the best intentions, give form to the growing awareness of the importance of being human.
DIRECTORY ADDITIONS EDITOR 1977
The two items below, inadvertently deleted from the Directory of the General Church as printed in the December issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1976, should be added:
HEINRICHS, HENRY. Ordained June 21, 1923; 2nd degree, February 8, 1925. Address: R. R. 2, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 3W5. (p. 525e)
ATLANTA, GEORGIA. . . . Rev. Thomas L. Kline, pastor. (p. 529)
SWEDENBORG SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION HILARY PITCAIRN, SECY 1977
The 80th Annual Meeting of the Swedenborg Scientific Association will be held in the auditorium of Pendleton Hall, Bryn Athyn, Pa., on Monday, March 28, 1977, at 8 p.m. Brief reports and the election of a President and members of the Board of Directors will be followed by an address by Dr. Thomas W. Keiser entitled, "Remnants of an Ancient Curse."
All interested are cordially invited.
HILARY PITCAIRN, SECY.
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AUTHORITY OF THE WRITINGS NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address, and business communications, should be sent to the Business Manager. Notifications of address changes should be received by the 15th of the month.
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From its first beginning the unifying principle of the General Church has been that the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg are a Divine revelation and are therefore to be the final authority for the faith and life of the New Church. Because of this both priests and laymen have over the years given much study to the Writings in efforts to discover what guidance they give in this or that matter of faith and life.
In our history we have been criticized even by those who shared our basic belief that the Writings are a Divine revelation and have authority for the New Church. But they limited that authority to matters of doctrine. Other parts, notably the second part of Conjugial Love, they excluded. Their quarrel was that we included those other parts among those having final authority. In essence, our answer was and still is, that if the Theological Writings are a Divine revelation, all must have equal authority, and that humans cannot pick and choose which parts are authoritative and which are not because their minds are finite and therefore too limited to make such decisions as to particulars. We are able and free to determine whether the Writings are a Divine revelation, and if we decide affirmatively, we must accept all they teach. We may question, however, whether we understand their teachings correctly. Indeed, that is what each one should do continually.
We have also been criticized on the grounds that we only say the Writings are the Word and have authority. Our answer, so far as I see it, is that each one must be left in freedom to seek the truths that the Writings teach and apply them to his thoughts and life.
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No priest or layman has the right to dictate how any one else should think or live, however much it may differ with his thinking and cause him distress.
Currently, our position that the Writings are the final authority in the faith and life of the New Church is again being questioned.
On the one hand it is said that that belief locks us into Swedenborg's eighteenth century thinking. My answer is that while the illustrations Swedenborg uses may well be dated and fallible, what they attempt to illustrate is not. If the Theological Writings are indeed a Divine revelation, far from locking us into any natural time period, the truths they teach open the way even to the Lord and are timeless and unlimited.
On the other hand, there is question as to our use of the term authority. I can only think those who question this mistakenly identify the term with domination. Domination does indeed take away from one's freedom. But having authority does not necessarily do so. Claiming that the Writings have final authority means no more than that they are the most reliable guide to what we should believe and do as New Churchmen.
(Guest Editorial) NORBERT H. ROGERS
REVIEW NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
La Sagesse des Anges. A new edited French translation of the Divine Love and Wisdom published by Le Cercle Swedenborg in association with the Swedenborg Society and the Swedenborg Foundation. Paperback pp. 283.
This new French translation done by the same Bruley-de Chazal team as other works of the Writings previously reviewed in NEW CHURCH LIFE, is equally a valid contribution in modern language to French speaking people.
In our random examination of this new edited translation of Divine Love and Wisdom, we noticed nothing to fault except for the cover title, which means the Wisdom of Angels. The title page, however, gives the full title of the work which is Angelic Wisdom About the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom. What we noticed was edited out of the original Latin text was of no doctrinal significance and all were the kind of things any modern translator would do.
Not having anything to fault in this edited translation is rather embarrassing to this reviewer who has some experience in translating and has a reputation of being somewhat of an acerbic critic.
NORBERT H. ROGERS
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IN OUR CONTEMPORARIES John E. Teed 1977
A USTRALIAN
R EADING AND
M EDITATION
S CHEME*
* From The New Age, August-September issue, 1976, p. 28. (John E. Teed)
Will you take up Arms for the sake of the Lord's New Church? This query is addressed to all members and friends, both adult and junior, of The New Church in Australia, and it is sincerely hoped that your answer will be in the affirmative.
The Arms we invite you to take up will be found in this column, our Australian Reading Meditation Scheme. You will recall that Arms, in the Word, correspond to the power of truth from the Lord.
Our first "campaign" will be centered on the work "The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine," the paragraph numbers below corresponding to the paragraphs in that book. "The New Orthodoxy," by the Rev. Richard H. Teed, call also be taken up as most useful additional reading.
We fully realize that circumstances will vary in every home, but this will not matter. What will be of importance will be that the whole of The New Church in Australia will be united in its approach to the Lord through one chosen part of His Heavenly Doctrine. And as we do this we can be sure that it will be with us as it was with Joseph: "the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob" (Genesis 49:24).
The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine.
Chapter 1: The New Heaven and The New Earth, and what is meant by the New Jerusalem.
Open by reading from the Word, Revelation Chapter 21, where The Holy City New Jerusalem is seen coming down from God out of heaven.
1. These two opening chapters bring us face to face with fundamental questions regarding the Lord and His Second Coming, the descent of The New Jerusalem. How are we going to understand these words! Will we think literally or spiritually? Will we think as many still do in the world around us, or will we think as the angels do?
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This is how the angels understand these words: The New Heaven is a New Church in the heavens; The New Earth is a New Church on the earth; and The New Jerusalem is the Heavenly Doctrine of that Church. We can follow through certain facets of The New Jerusalem (this Heavenly Doctrine) as they are outlined in this paragraph.
2. The essential work of this book is to present The Heavenly Doctrines of The New Church. However, before this can be done, something must be said of the passing away of the first heaven and the first earth at the time of the last judgment, we are shown that the first heaven was only imaginary heavens, established in the world of spirits by those who had come into that world since the time of the Lord's Advent, but who had not proceeded finally to either heaven or hell. These false heavens had to pass away at the approach of the new order, the establishment of the New Heaven, which would be composed of all those, both Christian and Gentile, who had lived in faith and charity since the time of the Lord's Advent.
3. For the most part, however, this New Heaven would be made up of those who had died as children, and who had grown up to full angelic stature in the heavens.
4. Once we know what this New Heaven is, we should see how it falls into the order which divides heaven into its three expanses. The highest expanse is made up mostly from those who lived at the time of the Most Ancient Church, and who are principled in celestial love to the Lord. The intermediate expanse is mostly from those from the Ancient Church, who are principled in the spiritual love of charity towards the neighbor. The lowest expanse is composed of those who have lived according to the Doctrines of their Church.
5. And what of The New Earth? The angels understand this as The New Church upon earth. The Lord has always provided that there be a Church upon earth, because its essential use is to conjoin the Lord with the human race, heaven with the world. Such a New Church is now being set up by the Lord. A Church is a Church only when the Lord is known and Divine Truths serve for conjunction.
6. The angelic understanding of The New Jerusalem is that this is the Doctrine of the Church, or, what is the same thing, the Worship of the Church, because we are told, Worship is prescribed by Doctrine. The New Jerusalem is seen as a city and a bride because the Divine Truth which comes from the Lord leads the Church as the Bride into conjunction with Him.
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7. The New Jerusalem is seen coming down out of heaven, simply because that is the origin of the Doctrine that is now being made known: it is from the Spiritual Sense of the Word, which is identical with the Doctrine that is in heaven.
So we are prepared for the Doctrine which is for The New Church, the Doctrine which is to be called "HEAVENLY DOCTRINE," because it has been revealed out of heaven.
Conclude by reading Deuteronomy, Chapter 6, in which it is shown that the Lord reveals truth, the primary truth being that He is the only God, and the call is that this truth shall be obeyed in all states and in every condition of life.
Chapter 2: Introduction to The Doctrine.
Open by reading from the Word, Mark Chapter 12, in which the essential question is, what will be made of the truth that the Lord has given to the world?
8. The importance of this brief chapter is surely that we should examine ourselves and our Churchmanship, to see how we stand against the ideal that is presented.
Two important definitions are given: A Church is at an end when there is no faith because there is no charity. And, alternatively, A Church exists only where the Lord is worshipped and the Word is read.
9. The Ancients lived by the essential Doctrine of Charity, which can equally be called the Doctrine of Life, and by this Doctrine conjoined all Churches, to make one out of many. Everyone was called a Church if he lived in the good of charity, none being indignant if one did not accede to the opinion of another. This is the quality of those whose interiors are open to the wisdom that comes through heaven from the Lord.
That state, however, was followed by decline: man, from being internal, became external, then worldly and corporeal, having little care for the things of heaven, but occupied by the delights of earthly loves and their evils.
How imperative it is, therefore, that life be built again on the teaching of the Lord in His Word that "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; this is the first and great commandment: the second is like onto it. Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself."
Conclude by reading Matthew, Chapter 12, where it shows how worship can become just an empty observance. J.E.T.
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Church News NORMAN HELDON 1977
HURSTVILLE, AUSTRALIA
A Society "on the move" accurately describes the Hurstville Society in the first half of 1976. That suggests progress and no doubt some progress will be a by product. However what is meant is that many members were traveling interstate and overseas for various reasons. The Rev. Michael Gladish also is often on the move in his vast pastorate which includes another country, New Zealand. The Keal family, minus one, went to Bryn Athyn for the weddings of Ian Keal to Wellesley Rose and John Keal to Ellen Smith. Murray Heldon was there too for the happy occasions. Earlier in the year the pastor had attended the meetings of the Council of the Clergy in Bryn Athyn. His reports on these are always interesting. He mentioned for one thing the possibility of the Church's employment of part-time "worker priests."
Now and again Providence brings into our midst an overseas visitor. Miss Joyce Cooper from Bryn Athyn came in February and stayed for a couple of months. We did enjoy her visit. Miss Lori Gladish, the Pastor's sister, came in August and sad to say she did not lose her return ticket and has returned to the U.S.
The 19th of June was celebrated on the day, very happily. The beautiful place cards were the work of an enthusiastic but not very mobile member, Mr. Stan Grocott, who is recovering from serious operations. There was short speech by the Pastor on Missionary work. Missionary work is "people talking with people"; that was his theme. Three New Church films were shown, namely "The Water of Life," "Animals of the Bible," and "Our Faith." They were well received. Those who made the films are to be congratulated, for they are very good productions, and it is to be hoped that this useful work will continue.
The film of the Opera "The Magic Flute" was shown recently in Sydney and was seen by a number of Hurstville members. They were surprised and delighted to note that the visual imagery in many places, obviously has its origin in correspondences. It is also both dramatic and entertaining and shows what New Church film producers might achieve in the future.
The headline news at present (I know it is unusual to put headline news at the end but it is to be expected that "Down Under" we do things differently) is that the front of the Church building is going to be altered. This "face-lift" has been talked about for a long while but now plans are being drawn, estimates received and money raised. It will be more attractive, more like a church and there will be additional space inside. One fund-raising effort worth mentioning was a "progressive dinner." The courses mere served in three homes and the very enjoyable function netted eighty-five dollars profit. The Church alteration inspired ideas for entertainment during the evening.
Also, on Sunday, 21st November, after church, there was a garden party and sale of work at the home of Norman and Ruth Heldon. The spacious lawn was set out with a "mini-golf" course, deck tennis, shuttlecock and other sports, which provided plenty of fun. About 3:30 p.m. two clowns, NOSMO KING (Tom Taylor) and NOPAR KING (Norm Heldon) made their appearance and indulged in some riotous behavior. This may have helped to bring on the thunderstorm that drove everybody inside for afternoon tea. However, the net result was $167.00, with some more to come. With the fund nearing $1500, work should begin in the near future.
NORMAN HELDON
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MIDWESTERN ACADEMY APPLICATIONS EDITOR 1977
Announcements
Applications for admission to the Midwestern Academy of the New Church for the academic year, 1977-78, are being accepted between March 1 and June 1, 1977. Applications should be submitted to Dr. Charles Ebert, Principal, 72 Park Dr., Glenview, IL 60025. The Midwestern Academy prepares 9th and 10th Grade students to transfer to the Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa. A limited number of boarding students from the Midwest District can be accommodated in homes in the Immanuel Church Society. Catalogs available on request. The Midwestern Academy does not discriminate against individuals by reason of race or ethnic background.
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ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH CALENDAR FOR SCHOOL YEAR 1977-1978 EDITOR 1977
ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST SCHOOL YEAR
1977
Sept. 7 Wed. Faculty Meetings
8 Thurs. Dormitory students must arrive before 8:00 p.m.
Registration: Local students
9 Fri. Registration Dormitory students
10 Sat. 8:00 a.m. All student workers report to respective supervisors
Evening: College program/Secondary School Program
12 Mon. Classes commence following Opening Exercises
Oct. 21 Fri. Charter Day
11:00 a.m. Charter Day Service (Cathedral)
9:00 p.m. President's Reception (Field House)
22 Sat. 2:30 p.m. Annual Meeting of ANC Corporation (Pitcairn Hall)
7:00 p.m. Charter Day Banquet (Field House)
Nov. 23 Wed. Thanksgiving Recess begins after morning classes
Student workers remain for 4 hours student work
27 Sun. Dormitory students must return by 8:00 p.m.*
* See special information under holiday regulations.
28 Mon. Classes resume
Dec. 2 Fri. End of fall term
5 Mon. Winter term commences
16 Fri. Christmas recess begins after morning classes
Student workers remain for 4 hours student work
1978
Jan 2 Mon. Dormitory students must return by 8:00 p.m.*
* See special information under holiday regulations.
3 Tues. Classes resume
16 Mon. Deadline for application for ANC 1978-1979 school year
Feb. 20 Mon. Presidential Birthday Holiday
Mar. 10 Fri. End of winter term
Spring recess begins after morning classes
Student workers remain for 4 hours student work
19 Sun. Dormitory students must return by 8:00 p.m.*
* See special information under holiday regulations.
20 Mon. Spring term commences
24 Fri. Good Friday: Holiday after special Chapel Service
May 19 Fri. 7:45 p.m. Joint Meeting of Faculty and Corporation (Assembly Hall)
20 Sat. 2:30 p.m. Semi-Annual Meeting of ANC Corporation (Pitcairn Hall)
29 Mon. Memorial Day Holiday
June 9 Fri. End of spring term
8:30 p.m. President's Reception (Field House)
10 Sat. 10:30 a.m. Commencement Exercises (Field House)
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EASTER PEACE Rev. LOUIS B. KING 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII APRIL 1977 No. 4
Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you, as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. John 20:21.
Easter Sunday celebrates the culmination of the Lord's work on earth. The incidents of that first of Christian Sabbaths represent or symbolize the wonderful things which the Lord here accomplished.
His rising from the tomb on the third day, the sorrow of the women so faithful in their love to the Lord, their joy when the angel of the Lord came and rolled back the stone from the door, the fear and helplessness of the Roman guards when the earthquake sounded, and finally, the wonder of the Lord's appearing to His disciples in the human form in which they had known Him, but which was since glorified-these were the wonderful happenings which show how the Lord, during the whole of His life on earth, had successively and gradually released the power and light of His holy Word, which the Jewish church had imprisoned within its external ritual.
Now the Lord appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, and the first thing He said to them was, "Peace be unto your"
The inmost element of blessedness is peace. There is in fact no blessing apart from something of inner peace. And peace is the product of innocence. And what is innocence but a willingness to be led by the Lord? When we are led by the Lord He sends His peace, inner peace, and we are blessed. So He said when He left the world: "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you."*
* Jn. 14:27
It was because the human race fell away from innocence that inner peace departed, and it became necessary for the Lord to come down and, by glorification, make His assumed humanity innocence itself.
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The Humanity which the Lord put on became innocence by willingly following and becoming united with the Divine itself. So did He unite the human to the Divine in Himself, restoring to the human race that innocence and peace which the evil of their cumulative sin had annihilated. He became the "Prince of Peace" by casting out of His human nature the prince of this world, thus perfecting His humanity and through it returning to men genuine innocence and peace. "My peace," He called it, for it was the sole result of uniting in His person the Divine and Human natures.
In the new will and understanding of a regenerating mind, the Lord's peace is present. It is present because in the regenerating man the Lord works a miracle of rebirth corresponding exactly to that Divine work which He wrought in Himself by glorification. And the peace He gives is not as the world gives it. Worldly peace savors of passion gratified, not conquered. It is temporal, not eternal, external, not internal, infected with enmity, dissatisfaction and deceit.
The Lord's peace which He leaves with man is not one of self-pride or self-satisfied dominion, but the selfless humility and gratitude of one who, with the Lord's help has overcome the world-even as He overcame it for us. And where the Lord's Divine good and truth are united in man there is a blessed delight of self-forgetfulness called peace.
Isaiah prophesied that His Name would be called "The Prince of Peace." Majestic yet gentle, omnipotent yet loving, omniscient yet calm, with absolute conviction He said, "I am meek and lowly in heart." He would wash His disciples' feet, enter the humblest of homes to serve the needy and yet He was a Prince of Peace. "Lord, I am not worthy that thou should'st come under my roof," cried the centurion of great power and wealth. "Depart from me for I am a sinful man O Lord," cried Peter from his fishing vessel. And the same disciple on the night of the Last Supper exclaimed, with vehemence, "Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet." Even the angry mobs of His home province, having backed Him to the edge of a certain precipice in Nazareth with intent to hurl Him down to the rocks below, when they beheld His gentle countenance, fell back in sudden helplessness as He passed quietly and untouched through their midst.
There was no lack of royalty, of power and majesty in Him. A hero of war, a mighty conqueror, a king, He had been called. Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace! How quickly and completely the children of Israel seized upon these names echoed forth from ancient prophecies, to champion Jesus Christ as an earthly king Who would restore their ancient throne and scepter to the House of David.
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But after their self-oriented hosannas had died away, when they realized that He sought no earthly kingdom, no victory over men nor any peace such as the world giveth,-they rejected Him and the rule of His love.
Men will ever recognize physical strength. They will rally around it and sacrifice even their lives to partake of its glory and victory. But the Lord, though He came to establish His power among men, wished to deliver them not from an earthly force such as that of Rome, but from a more malignant bondage of which they were unaware. With His own arm He would engage the enemy of man's spiritual life, the hells. He would be a hero of war but the insignia upon His two-edged sword would be that of "Prince of Peace." Yet men were not-yea, are not anxious to rally about such a symbol. For is it not too discouraging to set aside tangible force and fight from and for the spirit alone? Is there in man's make-up sufficient patience available to conquer evil from love through truth? Are not men prone to shun this kind of inner combat? Is it not more enticing,-yea, delightful in contemplation, to be a prince of this world, to retaliate against force with force and achieve dramatic victory in the eyes of men, to overcome might with might, to glory in the display of outward courage and valor?
How easily the Lord could have succumbed to this temptation. With what ease He could have destroyed His outward enemies with fire called down from heaven! How prudently He could have achieved the whole world, with a single sweep of His arm, but at the expense of its soul or human freedom! And how the hells tried to infect the Lord's love with this desire for earth-dominion. How they tried to substitute the kingdoms of men and their glory for the kingdom of truth and its justice which He had come to establish.
So in the wilderness the Devil took the Lord up upon a high mountain and then to the pinnacle of the temple and urged Him to seek the temporal goals of fallen mankind, promising Him vast kingdoms stretched out before His eyes and the allegiance of myriads of men if He would but worship the Devil. Yet how cheap, how gross would this dominion be to the Son of God. The Lord knew well that the prince of this world the love of earthly dominion and lust of material gain must be cast out; so He answered the tempter and all that he personified, saying, "Get thee behind Me Satan . . . man doth not live by bread alone . . . Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Let us never forget that the Lord came not to be tempted, but to conquer. Temptation was necessary only so that hell might have access to His love and thereby be ordered by His truth.
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The subtlety of this temptation to abandon His love for the human race, for its salvation and freedom, was with the Lord at every step throughout His earthly life. Even the disciples whom He loved continually suggested force as an expedient; such as when two of them urged the Lord to bring down fire from heaven, even as Elijah had done, to punish those who forcefully ejected him from their homes. And remember how Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane drew his sword and smote off the ear of Malchus, servant of the high priest. But the Lord rebuked him for his violence and healed his enemy's ear. And not many hours later an overcast sky was filled with frenzied cries of challenge, "If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him!" So taunted His crucifiers as the Lord hung in physical agony before their eyes. Could He not forsake for one moment the kingdom of the spirit and perform one single miracle to benefit His own worldly comfort, to secure some small measure of peace from affliction-peace such as the world giveth it?
No! Worldly force and comfort and release from physical pain, worldly peace, had no place in His kingdom of heaven. The "lo here" and "lo there" of earthly force and physical victory would never reveal to men the whereabouts of His kingdom of the spirit. For it is hidden deep in the hearts of those who would be persecuted for the sake of righteousness, of those who are of a humble spirit, who would be taught and receive His truth, who are willing to bear hardship and anxiety without feelings of enmity and anger, and without resorting to force,-of such and for such is the kingdom of heaven.
And He Who rules its domain is and was and always will be King of kings and Lord of lords, the Prince of Peace. Prince of Peace! Was this crown won and worn of passivity? Not so,-it was by struggle and pain endured more deeply and intensely than is possible in the natural world, where force is met by force and where honor, reputation and gain are the prizes of victory. Even as Pilate stood face to face with the Lord and judged Him to death, so the Prince of this world will ever attempt to pass judgment upon, condemn and destroy the Prince of Peace.
Yet the more they railed upon Him and abused Him with false accusation, curse and maltreatment, the calmer, the surer, more merciful and forgiving He became. He posed no greater earthly kingdom than Caesar's, but He revealed a higher, ever-lasting kingdom which moth and rust and hatred and might could not corrupt. And to us who intermittently oppose the kingdom of this world, but again and again fall prey to its seductive ways-what a marvel it is that the Lord entirely subjugated every thought and feeling, every word and deed which looked to self and the world.
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Over every form and manifestation of evil the Lord gained supremacy in Himself. Every faculty of the natural mind and appetite of the physical body, every human appearance of truth and every human affection of truth, He subordinated completely to the will of His Infinite love. "I have overcome the world," He said. Who but the Prince of Peace, the conqueror of the world, in Himself could feel only sorrow (genuine sorrow) as Judas betrayed Him with a kiss? Who but the Prince of Peace could remain utterly silent in the midst of false and condemnatory witnesses? Who but the Prince of Peace could look with eyes of pity upon the cruel soldiers who spit upon Him and smote Him with reeds! And who but the Prince of Peace could utter wholehearted forgiveness for those who with profane and sadistic enthusiasm nailed Him to the cross? Who but the Prince of Peace could look into the inner proprial loves of devils and satans, willing to save and uplift them even unto Himself, Sorrowing when they would not!
Such attitudes and actions on the Lord's part were not the restraints of self-compulsion such as you and I are capable of in our better moments, but the sincere expression of Divine love-the inner love of one who had so completely overcome the world in Himself that the Divine love for the salvation of the human race had descended into every degree of His humanity, endowing it with peace, Peace which no earthly power or hatred could destroy. The Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the world, was born on earth, lived, died and rose from the dead to become the Redeemer and Savior of mankind, the Giver of heavenly peace. The human which He put on He made the Divine truth, the Word made flesh. And then He so united the human essence to the Divine essence that it became the Divine good, the Divine love in human form. By so doing He restored to mankind spiritual freedom and incentive to regenerate and become receptive of and responsive to the blessed and eternal joy of genuine peace.
Whenever spiritual victory is won in the Lord's name, as of self, there follows a state of peace.
He who supposes that the external man can be reduced into correspondence without combats of temptation is mistaken; for temptations are the means of dissipating evils and falsities, as also introducing goods and truths, and of reducing the things which are of the external man into obedience, so that it may serve the interior rational man. These things are effected by temptations.*
* AC 1719:3
When man is in the combats of temptations he is by turns gifted by the Lord with a state of peace, and is thus refreshed.*
* AC 1726
Peace, after temptation, is like a spring morning at Eastertime, when memory of the empty sepulcher and all that it connotes makes life vibrant, new and exciting.
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Such peace is not to be confused with man's frail ideas of silence, inactivity or dormancy, but is a joyous re-awakening of all life's creative forces in an effort ever upward to establish and perfect the order and beauty of human uses.
Peace is a time of joy and strength and inner vitality, a time when spiritual truths out of the Word and charitable affections out of heaven, which have lain as if dead in the sepulcher of man's inner memories, awaken into life and come forth victoriously to possess the whole of his conscious being. The soul then feels a joyous strength in the Lord's presence, and complete trust in His omniscient leading.
As the spiritual mind, newly resurrected, expands and extends its order and delight into the natural mind, fears disappear, darkness gives way to light, solicitude for the future melts away and the old contentious self-confidence defers to humble acknowledgment of the Lord Who is risen, into whose hand all power in heaven and on earth has been given.
Standing forth as the visible Lord of heaven and earth, the Spirit of Truth in His Second Advent, the Lord says to all who would worship Him in spirit and in truth, "Peace be unto you! Grace, mercy and peace, from Him Who is and Who was and is to come, be with you all." Amen.
LESSONS: Isaiah 59, John 20:1-21; Arcana Coelestia 4180:5.
LIGHT OF HEAVEN EDITOR 1977
The case is this: Before the Lord came into the world the Divine Itself flowed into the whole heaven; and as heaven then consisted for the most part of the celestial, that is, of those who were in the good of love, through this influx, by the Divine Omnipotence, there was brought forth the light which was in the heavens, and thereby wisdom and intelligence. But after the human race had removed itself from the good of love and charity, that light could no longer be produced through heaven, nor, consequently, the wisdom and intelligence that would penetrate down to the human race. For this cause, from the necessity of their being saved, the Lord came into the world, and made the Human in Himself Divine, in order that as to His Divine Human He might become the Divine Light, and might thus illuminate the universal heaven and the universal world. Arcana Coelestia 4180: 5.
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REALITY OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD Rev. WALTER E. ORTHWEIN 1977
(The Rev. Walter E. Orthwein, who joined the General Church last year, is currently enrolled in the theological school of the Academy, and has been recognized as a minister in the first degree of the priesthood and as a member of the clergy of the General Church. Ed. note.)
WHAT IS REAL?
To the man whose mind is occupied exclusively with the things of the natural world, the spiritual world seems only imaginary, a "myth." The natural man in everyone doubts the reality of the spiritual world and life after death. Although everyone is living in the spiritual world as to his spirit, we are not conscious of the things which appear in the spiritual realm until after the death of the physical body. People report visions, of course, but these are not conclusive evidence of a spiritual reality since they might have been merely hallucinations.
We live in the natural world-this is where our consciousness is focused-and the testimony of our physical senses is very powerful. No matter how reasonable the existence of the spiritual world may be to us-no matter how convinced we may be abstractly or theoretically-we are subject to doubts. If this were not so, the findings of Dr. Moody, for instance, would not have such an impact on us. The experience of people who have been "clinically dead" and then revived is a strong confirmation of our belief in the spiritual world.
Such experiences, however, still are not proof that the spiritual world exists, since they can be accounted for in other ways than as glimpses into a real spiritual world. Perhaps these experiences are only the result of some trick the brain plays as it dies, although the nature of the reports makes it hard to see how this could be the case-for example, accurate reports by the subject of events which took place in another room of the hospital at the time his "death" occurred. Belief in "psychic phenomena" does not necessarily imply belief in a real spiritual world, in any case. Russian scientists have carried out extensive research in ESP, without, presumably, believing in the spiritual world and life after death. They assume thoughts are transferred from one person to another by some as yet unknown material process. Also, animals have been shown to have ESP, and yet they do not have an immortal soul as man does.
In the New Church, we are fortunate not to be dependent upon either blind faith or the experience of men. Instead, we have been given a rational revelation-truths about the spiritual world which have been revealed by the Lord in a form which satisfies the rational mind. The only source of genuine knowledge about the spiritual world, in fact, is Divine revelation. Science can never penetrate into spiritual reality.*
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The Writings describe the spiritual world "from things heard and seen" by Swedenborg, but they are not mere descriptions, for in them the Lord has given us explanations-the "how and why" of the spiritual world-so that we can not only know about it, but also understand it.
* HH 266; DLW 92; SD 3254:2
Evidence such as that collected by Dr. Moody simply serves to confirm what we know rationally from revelation to be true. Even in the realm of science, experiments are designed to confirm hypotheses based upon reason. Science seeks experimental proof for what reason says must be.
The difference between science and religion, in this regard, is that science bases its hypotheses upon observable data, whereas religion bases its understanding of spiritual things upon revealed truth. And whereas science seeks to prove its hypotheses by means of controlled experiments involving detectable material substance, religion knows that spiritual truths are not subject to natural proof. We can, however, see spiritual order illustrated correspondentially in nature, provided the understanding has been enlightened through the Word. The Writings note that there are two foundations-not two sources-of truth: the Word and nature.*
* SD 5709, 5710
Scientific proof of spiritual reality would be destructive of man's freedom, and, furthermore, those who would demand such proof, rather than trust in the Word, would not be convinced by it anyway. "Such especially are in the habit of saying, 'Make me see these things with the eye, or show me scientifically that it is so, and then I will believe.' And yet if they were to see, and if it were shown, they would not believe, because what is negative reigns universally."*
* AC 6015:3
We might note, also, that many facts of science, although based upon observable data, are not themselves subject to sensual observation. Who has ever seen an atom, or the electrons, protons, and neutrons which compose it? Physical evidence for the existence of neutrinos (uncharged particles with a smaller mass than neutrons) was finally obtained-some neutrinos were "caught" and detected scientifically, although they cannot be seen with even the most powerful microscope, of course-but the neutrino was postulated years before. If scientists had not been reasonably certain of its existence, they would not have gone to such effort and expense to search for proof of its reality. To cite another example, Einstein proposed the theory of relativity before any physical evidence for it was obtained, and confirmation of it is still going on at present (by observing the effect of gravitational fields on light traveling from distant stars). Relativity is still not absolutely proved, although recent space exploration has produced more evidence for it.
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This theory has in turn led scientists to postulate the existence of "black holes" in space. (According to Einstein's theory, a ray of light should possess mass, and when emitted by a star will be pulled back by the star's gravity. In the case of a supernova explosion, the matter of a star is squeezed into a very small volume with tremendous mass. Theoretically, the enormous force of gravity on its surface can be great enough to prevent any light from leaving the star, and it becomes invisible-a black hole in space). Scientists are certain that black holes exist, and in great numbers, but only recently have astronomers found even indirect evidence that at least one actually does exist.*
* Natural History Magazine, Jan., 1977, p. 83
The point is that even science accepts as true the existence of things which have not been proved, but which are reasonable deductions. Similarly, we can say that the spiritual world is a "necessary postulate." It must exist, "based upon observable data." This data is not tangible in the sense of being perceptible or sensible by the natural senses (touch, sight, hearing, etc.), but it is tangible in the sense that it is "capable of being realized by the mind." (This is the second definition of "tangible" in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary). The data we are interested in is, not how matter behaves, but how people behave.
The evident nature of man demands the existence of another dimension of life which animals do not have. (Note: the fact that many do not see it does not mean it is not evident. It was always evident that the earth must be round-a child today can give several pieces of evidence, such as the sight of a ship disappearing gradually over the horizon-and yet a few centuries ago even the most learned thought the earth was flat. That they could have known better is shown by the fact that some ancient peoples knew the earth was round many centuries before Columbus). This other dimension of life is what we call the soul or spirit.
It is clear that the physical body is not the person. Why, then, should the person cease to exist just because the physical body dies? It does not follow, unless we say that the personality is just a property of the physical body. It is hard to believe that even evolutionists really believe this.
Animals are governed their whole life by instinct. They never discipline themselves to serve a use. They do not reflect upon their experience or the nature of life and grow wise. They are neither moral nor immoral. What we can see of human nature, what we can observe and know of man's ability to love and understand, clearly separates him from the beasts.
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These human qualities are not properties of the material body, and it is unreasonable to think that at the height of his wisdom, after a lifetime of learning to serve uses for the sake of others, for the sake of ends higher than himself-after a lifetime of abstracting knowledge from experience and growing wise-that then the human being is extinguished when the body dies. Common perception prevents most people from believing that, even when they have no knowledge of the spiritual world.
We can see that man's life in this world is preparing him for spiritual life. The existence of a spiritual world, in which the spirit continues to live after the death of the physical body, is thus a necessary postulate, a "working hypothesis," a reasonable inference.
It is much more than this, of course. I have merely tried to show that it is as reasonable to believe in the spiritual world as it is for science to conclude the existence of material things which have not been proved. Reason does not reveal the spiritual world, but the revelation of the spiritual world is reasonable. That is, it is rational; we can understand it, and see the reasons for it.
As science investigates ever more deeply into the secrets of nature, the question of what constitutes reality becomes more imperative. Every new discovery raises many new questions. There is a growing awareness that reality is more complex than we can imagine. The hidden, inner world of nature is far vaster than the external world which appears before the senses. But the real inner world is the spiritual world; it is within the natural world as the soul in the body, or as a cause within an effect. It is more real, more wonderful and complex, than even the deepest secrets of nature which science has disclosed. As C. S. Lewis said, "the inside is bigger than the outside."
Because the internals of nature are so marvelous, some have imagined that ultimate reality resides there. The discovery of DNA, for instance, is said to have greatly increased man's understanding of the nature of life; and some scientists look forward to a day in the not-too-distant future when they will "create" life in a laboratory. But in fact, all that has been gained is a deeper knowledge of the intricate natural forms receptive of life from the Lord. Apart from Divine revelation, the discovery of DNA does not tell man anything at all about what life essentially is.
Creation is a one. The spiritual world and the material world are actually two parts of one whole; utterly distinct, yet making one by correspondence. The mysteries which are being discovered within matter can help us appreciate the wonder of the still deeper reality of the spiritual world, which exists on a discretely higher plane of life.
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The more science learns about the material universe, the more we realize how limited our knowledge is. We can never "get to the bottom" of natural substance, much less arrive at a final understanding of spiritual substance. Therefore, our focus must be, not on some abstract idea of reality, but on use. Spiritual reality, like natural reality, is best defined in terms of use. The Rev. Hugo Odhner observed:
Swedenborg's interest was centered in the study, not of matter, which in itself is unknowable, but of the form which matter assumes; and, similarly, not of the substance of the spiritual realm, but of the forms which reveal its uses. Yet he never denied that where there is a form, it is the form of a substance.
Similarly, when his spiritual eyes were opened, it is the forms of spiritual existence that he investigates under Divine auspices.*
* Philosophy and the New Church, NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1953, P. 313
We can infer the existence of both spiritual substance and natural substance, Dr. Odhner pointed out, but in addition is it a matter of revelation. "Similarly, the knowledge of God as Divine substance can be drawn as an inference from the need for a final cause of creation, but only revelation can tell of the essence of God, or confirm that He is Divinely Human."*
* Ibid.
In short, we can deduce that the spiritual world must exist, but only revelation can tell us the nature of its existence. Revelation confirms what reason tells us must be, and reason in turn confirms what revelation tells us is. This is assuming there is a well-ordered or spiritual rational, of course. And we must distinguish between consulting the rational as the source of truth, and consulting it for confirmation of truth. No spiritual truth comes from the rational, and the rational can confirm falsities as well as truths. It is a grave error to look to reason to be convinced of spiritual truth, but if there is an affection for truth and a willingness to believe what the Lord has revealed, then reason may usefully be consulted for confirmation, insofar as reason and scientifics are able to confirm.*
* Cf. AC 2538, 2588:3; DLW 351
ESSENTIAL REALITY
"The Divine truth proceeding from the Lord is the veriest reality, and such a reality that all things have come forth from it, and all things subsist from it. . ."* Therefore, whether we are speaking of the natural world or the spiritual world-of human ideas or material objects-the degree to which anything is real depends upon how well it reflects essential reality. In the supreme sense, only God is real.
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He is the only self-existent reality. Everything else subsists or continually comes forth from Him. This is true of spiritual things as well as material ones; of ideas as well as material objects. Both are only more or less perfect images of the only essential reality, which is the Divine of the Lord. Every created thing-natural or spiritual-derives its existence from the Lord, who alone is absolutely real.
* AC 6880; cf. AC 7004:2; 8861 (e), 9410:5
Unless the infinite God were the all, substance itself, and wisdom itself, man would not be anything, thus would be either nothing, or merely an idea of being, according to the visionaries called idealists . . . God created the universe and all things from Himself and not from nothing. It follows from this that every created thing, and especially man, and the love and wisdom in him, are something, and not merely ideas of being; for unless God were infinite there would not be any finite . . . In a word, we are because God is.*
* DP 46
With these thoughts on the origin and nature of what constitutes reality in mind, let us examine some of the statements of the Writings concerning the reality of the spiritual world.
THE SPIRITUAL WORLD IS REAL
The Writings are quite definite in stating that the spiritual world is a real world-more real, in fact, than the material world-as in this striking passage:
The things (spirits) see and feel are not material but substantial from a spiritual origin; yet they are still real because they are from the same origin as the things of the world, with the sole difference that to those things which are in the natural world an accessory has been given from the sun of the world, as an over covering whereby they are material, fixed, set, and measurable. But still . . . those things which are in the spiritual world are more real than those which are in the natural world; for the deadness which is added to the spiritual in nature does not make reality but diminishes it . . ."*
* AE 1218, italics added; cf. DLW 321; AC 3485; SD 4609, 5685-86
The Writings warn us against "idealists" who make nothing to be real, but all things only ideal, even man himself and the things of heaven.* Again and again, the Writings emphasize that spiritual things are actual, real, and substantial. They derive their being from Divine Love and Wisdom, which are substance and form in itself, and in turn they (spiritual things) are the substantial realities from which material things derive their being. "Spiritual things are substantial, and natural things are material; and the latter have come forth, and subsist, from the former, as the posterior from the prior, or as the exterior from the interior."**
* Cf. DP 46; AC 196, 4623
** Can. God IV:8
There is a persuasion which is strongly present in Eastern thought which denies the reality of the material world.
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There is also an extreme belief called "solipsism" which says that the only thing which exists or that can be known is self, or a man's own thought. And there is a tendency among many people to imagine that we can never have any true knowledge about spiritual reality. Reality must always be something "higher" than man could ever grasp; the soul is only an idea or some kind of ether; God cannot be thought of as human, but only as an invisible power or "ground of being." But the fact is that the Lord has accommodated truth to man's mind, and there are true appearances of reality on every plane of life. Perfect and absolute reality is infinite and incomprehensible in itself, but the substances derived from this reality, or from the Lord, and clothed with spiritual or natural forms, do appear before man's mind. And these appearances are real. The material universe is real; the things that appear in the spiritual world are even more real; the love and wisdom which these things represent are more real yet; and the Divine Love and Wisdom which are the source of all things in both worlds are the most real.
The lot of one who had held the idea that all things are only phantasies, and that nothing is real, is described in the Arcana. This extreme "idealist" was seen sitting at a mill, as if grinding meal, with little mirrors at his sides.* The Writings also say that hypocrites are very prone to believe that nothing is real.** They are so accustomed to saying things they do not believe that they come to believe nothing to be true, and so come into phantasies.
* AC 1510
** SD 4353
We also read of the indignation spirits feel because men have no conception of how real the life of spirits and angels is, when the fact is that they are "in the enjoyment of all good things as to all the senses, and this with an inmost perception of them." The same number describes how people who had recently come from the world, and held the idea that there would not be real things in the spiritual world, were shown the homes of angels, and were thus convinced that there were real things there.*
* AC 1630, 1881
The Writings give the following concise definition of "real": "The real is distinguished from the not real in this-that the real is actually such as it appears, and that the not real is actually not such as it appears."* In other words, there are two kinds of appearances: true appearances and false appearances. The things in heaven are true appearances; they actually are such as they appear to be. Hell, on the other hand, abounds in illusions. Devils as well as angels enjoy sense perception, but the devils are misled by their senses; the things that appear real to them are seen as mere phantoms when looked at by angels.
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The devils appear as men to themselves, but as monsters in the light of heaven. "For in the light of heaven everything appears as it is in itself."**
* AC 4623
** HH 553:4
Again, we are warned against the idea that all things are ideal, or only appearances, without substance:
When you enter the other life beware of being befooled, for evil spirits know how to conjure up illusions of many kinds before those who come fresh from the world, and if they cannot deceive them, they nevertheless thereby endeavor to persuade them that nothing is real, but that all things are ideal, even those which are in heaven.*
* AC 4625
The point that the appearances in heaven are real is emphasized in Heaven and Hell 181, where it is noted that "the garments of angels do not merely appear as garments, but are real garments."
CONSTANCY IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
This statement about the garments of the angels makes the things in the spiritual world seem more fixed and permanent than we often think of them as being. The garments do not just disappear when the angels take them off, but are stored, cared for, and worn again. The garments do represent the states of the angels, and change in accordance with their changes of state, but the changes are not so fluid as to cause a sense of confusion, chaos or unreality. The scenery is not kaleidoscopic, with things shifting rapidly from one form to another and blinking in and out of existence.
Now it is true that things in the spiritual world, unlike things on the earth, are created or dissipated in a moment by the Lord.* Nevertheless, there is constancy in the spiritual world, because changes in the visible forms there are in accord with the states of the angels.
* Div. Wis. VII: 5 (2); TCR 78, 794; AE 1211
. . . these appearances vary according to differences of state in the minds of the spirits and angels there; thus times and spaces there conform to the affections of their wills, and the consequent thoughts of their understandings. But these appearances are real in that they are constant according to these states.*
* TCR 29
There is no time and space in the spiritual world, only a progression of states. The angels attend to the present, and as their surroundings conform with their present state, their world must seem very stable. The things that appeared around them were different during a previous state, but, because they are content under the Lord's Providence, their focus is on the present. They are not concerned about what came before or what will come next, and thus live in a perpetual present. The Divine Love and Wisdom do not change.
175
Their reception of it varies as their state changes, but they look to the unchanging Divine, rather than the forms representative of their reception of it.*
* Cf. Div. Wis. VII:5
. . . in the spiritual world all things are as it were fixed, as it were set, and as it were measurable; still they are not so in themselves, for they exist . . . according to the states of the angels and remain according to the same, so that the states themselves and these things make one; wherefore also they are varied according as their states are varied. . . . But the spirits do not reflect upon these changes and variations . . .*
* AE 1218
It is noted, also, that the angels know that the walkways they travel represent changes in their state, but they do not think about this fact.*
* SD 5646
A world in which objects appear or disappear or change in a moment sounds unreal to us because we are used to living in surroundings which do not represent or conform to our spiritual states. In our world, only mirages shift about like this, and so it is hard to imagine a world in which real things act in such a way. But the essential difference is simply that the objects in the spiritual world are more closely connected with their spiritual causes. The same spiritual causes are the origin of the objects in the material world, which are more fixed and permanent because of the very fact that they are more removed from their spiritual origin.
REPRESENTATIVE BUT REAL
The fact that the things which appear in the spiritual world are representative does not at all mean that they are not real. All things of the visible, natural world also represent, on a lower plane of reality, the same Divine things which are imaged in the spiritual world.* The natural world is no less representative, only less perfectly representative.
* AC 2999-3002, 9272
"The universe is a theater representative of the kingdom of the Lord; and this is a theater representative of the Lord Himself."* The spiritual world is thus a distinct degree "nearer" essential reality, or the Divine. (Actually, of course, there is no ratio between the finite on any degree and the Infinite). The Divine is the origin of the spiritual world, and through the spiritual world, of the natural world. "The natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world; when it is said the spiritual world, the Divine of the Lord which is there is meant."** "Natural things exist from spiritual things as effects from their causes. Hence there is a correspondence of all things in the world with those things which are in heaven "***
* AC 3483
** AC 10185
*** AC 8812
176
The things seen in the spiritual world "are indeed representative, like the things sometimes seen by the prophets; but yet are so real that they who are in the other life hold them to be real, and the things which are in the world to be relatively unreal."*
* AC 1116; cf. AC 3485; CL 207:5
Things in the spiritual world appear just as things do on earth. The two worlds appear so alike that men who have died can hardly believe that they are in another world.* But the things in the spiritual world are much more perfect, and there are many more forms of creation there than on the earth.**
* HH 582, 483; AE 304:2; Div. Wis. VII:5
** LJ post. 316-322; SD 6088; CLJ 37; TCR 794; AE 417; LJ 27; HH 176
Appearances in the spiritual world are real because they correspond to the thoughts and affections of the angels, who are real.
For in the heavens all appearances that exist are real, because they are correspondences; for the interiors belonging to the affections and thoughts therefrom of the angels, when they pass to the sight of their eyes, are clothed in such forms as are manifest in the heavens; they are called appearances because they are visible, and they are said to be correspondences and are real because they spring from creation.*
* AE 553:2, 704
Commenting on this statement, Bishop de Charms wrote: "Note that they are not hallucinations, phantasmic projections from the minds of the angels, but substantial Divine creations picturing forth in correspondential forms exactly how the minds of the angels are affected by the inflowing Divine of the Lord."*
* New Philosophy, July, 1959, p. 79.
The things which exist in the spiritual world, then, are not less real because they are created as forms corresponding to angelic love and wisdom, for this love and wisdom are real and substantial. The forms they assume are as "solid" to the angels as matter is to our physical senses. Certain spirits who doubted the existence of the spiritual world were told to believe the testimony of their own senses.*
* SD 3058, 1718; CL 31:2
The things seen in heaven are from a spiritual origin, but those seen in our world are from a material origin; and things from a spiritual origin affect the senses of the angels because their senses are spiritual, as those from a material origin affect the senses of men because they are material. . . . When the things pertaining to the wisdom of the angels and to their love descend into the lower sphere in which angels are as to their bodies and their bodily sensations they are manifested in such forms and types. These are correspondences.*
* AE 926:2; cf. DLW 91; HH 461; LJ post. 323
IMPORTANCE OF BELIEF
Belief in the reality of the spiritual world, and in life after death, is an essential element of our religion.
177
The Writings often mention this belief, or the lack of it, as a sign of the state of faith with men. It could be called a touchstone of faith-not blind faith, but in the sense that belief in the spiritual world is bound up with our whole understanding of the nature of the Lord, of creation, and of man. (The case is similar as with the Virgin Birth. We do not make it a "test of faith" in the way fundamentalists do, but it is an essential part of the New Church doctrine of the Lord).
The Writings explain that the reason there is such ignorance concerning life after death is that people are so worldly minded. The delights of the loves of self and the world take away faith concerning life after death.*
* AC 6853:2, 7490, 8944; DP 274
Man is so created that he can be at the same time in both worlds, the natural and the spiritual. He is in the spiritual world as to his interiors, and the natural world as to his exteriors.* And man's interior is more real than his exterior.** This is why things in heaven are more real than the things of the natural world.***
* HD 36; DLW 83; AC 6055
** SD 4609
*** SD 5685
The simple fact is that our society has faith in science, but not so much in Divine revelation. The evolution of man from apes-an unproved theory-is accepted as fact, while the spiritual world is regarded as imaginary. And yet there is far less reason (and not much more physical evidence) for believing that man descended from apes than for believing that he is a spiritual being who lives after death in the spiritual world. The Writings note that the learned, more than the simple, make man out to be merely an animal.* The new revelation was given because of the danger of this unbelief of the learned infecting also the simple, which has happened to a great degree.**
* AC 3747:2 ** HH 1
Again and again the Writings make the point that the lack of understanding people have about spiritual things is a result of their indifference to them, their preoccupation with the world. Part of the reason why the spiritual world seems unreal to men is that it is not seen to be a matter of any significance.*
* AC 2540, 4018, 4286:5, 4464:4, 4583:3, 6000:3
The fact that we do not fully understand or comprehend the nature of the spiritual world does not mean we should not believe in it-"for if nothing were believed except that which is apprehended, nothing would be believed respecting the things of interior nature; still less concerning the things that are of eternal life. Hence comes the insanity of our age."*
* AC 1630
178
CONCLUSION
In the world, men often mistake the form for the reality, or the dead covering of material substance as the whole of reality. But anyone should be able to see how false this is. Anyone can see that a description of the cover, paper, and type style of a book tells nothing of its essence, that is, the ideas it contains. Anyone who reflects should be able to see that the real person is not the physical body, but the spirit. But for sensual men, ideals, loves, principles, and truths are considered less real than natural things, such as money, fame, and power in the world.
We can know that the spiritual world is real in the same way we can know conjugial love is real. And when conjugial love is known, the view of marriage as only a legal contract or physical union-the view so widely held in the world-is clearly seen to be far less real, essential, and substantial.
Certain spirits once spoke with Swedenborg and said the things provided by the Lord for the angels were phantasies, and said that they wanted money, as in the world, because that was real. Swedenborg was given to reply that he would gladly give up all his worldly possessions if he would be allowed to possess such "imaginary wealth" as the angels have. Their wealth was to use the gifts of the Lord in tranquility and innocence-"this is their chiefest reality, because it conduces to their felicity."*
* SD 3448-49
We might say, then, that whatever the nature of the spiritual world, the happiness which the angels experience there is real, and all other realities are pale in comparison.
Swedenborg wrote "from things heard and seen." The Writings answer the objection that no one has ever returned from the spiritual world to tell us about it."* But we do not just have to take Swedenborg's word for his experiences, for they only serve to illustrate and confirm the rational truths of the new revelation which the Lord has given, which we can see intellectually to be true. Swedenborg was able to be a "spiritual fisherman"-that is, to teach spiritual truths naturally, or in a way that could be grasped by the natural mind.**
* HH 1
** Int. 20
Such a revelation is what is meant by "the rod of iron" with which the Lord would teach all nations.* It can "convince even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced."**
* AR 544
** SS 4
179
SOCIAL LIFE Rev. DOUGLAS M. TAYLOR 1977
A SERIES OF DOCTRINAL CLASSES
PART III-SOME APPLICATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLES
Having considered the ideals and the abuses of social life, we are now in a position to look at some further applications to our life here and now.
It is said "further applications" because we have already seen some in the two previous classes. These will be gathered together in this class and some further applications brought out.
We have seen that our social life is meant to be, no less than any other area of our life, interpenetrated by charity or love towards the neighbor. If our diversions are to be diversions of charity, then our whole life, including our employment, must be lived from the good of charity that flows in from the Lord.
Since this good must flow in from the Lord, since we are not born with it, it is quite obvious that our social life is something that should be reflected upon, that is, that we need to pay attention to it with a view to seeing its quality in the light of heaven. Because it is so easy to drift along in social life without considering what we ought to be doing, therefore it is most necessary that we do examine the quality of our social life both its essence and its forms. As already said, we are not born into charity; we have to be re-born into it.
In so reflecting upon our social life, that is, examining its quality, we have to decide what our yardstick will be. Are we going to look to the Lord and the wisdom that He has revealed concerning charity, or are we going to follow our own inclinations and our self-derived intelligence? The old issue is ever the same: are we going to eat of the tree of life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
If we really do intend to live the life of charity, which is the same thing as performing uses to the neighbor,* there is only one course open to us: to live according to the Lord's precepts.** Let us never forget the teaching that "in their beginnings all uses are truths of doctrine."*** Truths of doctrine, drawn from the Word, are the starting point. "But in their progression", the passage goes on, "they become goods: they become goods when the man acts according to these truths."
* AC 7038
** AC 3249
*** AC 4984
180
To improve the quality of our social life, then, we need in general to practice the teachings concerning charity. In our first class there was considerable emphasis on the teaching of the Writings that the first thing of charity is to look to the Lord and shun evils because they are sins against Him.* Only as we do this are we conjoined by the Lord, from Whom flows the good of charity as evils are removed to the circumference of our mind. As the good of charity flows in from the Lord, we begin to act and speak from Him; w, begin to do the good works of charity. For, as the Writings ask, "What is charity but the good that man does from the Lord? And what is faith but the truth that man believes from the Lord?"**
* Char. 1-41
** TCR 712
The genuinely good works that one does from the Lord, as a result of shunning evils as sins against Him, extend into all areas of our life. The most important area is our work or occupation. Whoever does good from the Lord carries out the duties of his employment sincerely, honestly, and faithfully. There is likewise charity in his benefactions; there is charity in his various obligations-public, private, and domestic; there is charity in his external worship; there is charily in his social file. The sphere of charity pervades everything he does and says. This is equally true of the Church as an organization. As it looks to the Lord and shuns evils as sins against Him, it does genuine, spiritual good in all its activities. All its activities, including its social life, then become forms of use.
The use itself of social life is then clearly seen. It is then universally acknowledged that social life is meant to recreate and refresh the mind, so that the people of the Church return to the uses of their employment, and take them up again with delight from the love of use.
One application of this teaching that has already been mentioned is this: that we may test the quality of our social life by asking ourselves whether or not we experience at the end of it a longing to return to the uses of our employment. If we do experience this, then we may know that our recreation or social life is performing its appointed use. If not, then we had better discover in what ways we are abusing social life.
One of the greatest abuses of social life, as we saw last time, is to make it a, end in itself, to indulge in it for its own sake or for the sake of its pleasures alone. It is hard to imagine any New Churchman or any New Church organization, by an act of deliberate choice, deciding: to make social life an idol. It is not so difficult, however, to imagine an individual or an organization drifting into this unwittingly, imperceptibly. There are so many pressures that urge us in this direction. There is the pull of hereditary tendencies, including the natural inclination to make the means the end-to worship the means as if it were the end-which is the essence of externalism.
181
Playing upon this tendency is the sphere of the world around us, which has been rightly described as "hell-infested,"* and "pleasure-mad."** Even more devastating is the sensuous sphere from the hells, which secretly prompts us to indulge our natural inclinations and live for ourselves alone.***
* Walter Childs, NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1940, P. 430
** Rev. Homer Synnestvedt, NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1916, P. 742
*** AC 6201
The golden calf of externalism can stifle the affection of truth and the affection of good. It is quite capable of breeding a sickly apathy towards the real uses of the Church, and cause more and more people to drift away from it-except as a source of entertainment and social life.
Another application suggests itself here. Should we not be thinking from this principle-that social life is not an end in itself-when we are arranging social functions for our children, either privately or at some church function? Should we not be very careful that we do not convey the impression to them that social life and success in it is the greatest good? Of course, it is true that the life of little children is almost entirely social life and play. But not quite entirely. Happy is the child who learns early in life that doing little tasks and being helpful brings delight. But should there not be a gradual increase in the number and scope of duties and uses (uses, rather than chores) as the child's years increase? If the proportion of duties to delights is in this way gradually increased, there is less danger when early adolescence is reached of the child thinking that social life is a "right" rather than a privilege that has to be earned. The law of heaven is that social life and entertainment follow upon the duties of ones employment. This, too, should be the law of the Church on earth. It does seem important, then, to aim at a just proportion between uses and pleasures, to arrange social life for children so that the celebration of an occasion is not out of all proportion to the occasion itself. Fortunately, school work takes the place for them of the uses of employment, so that it is possible for children to imbibe the principle that play and recreation follow only upon the performance of duties. If they are not taught this by precept and example, they will stare at us blankly when we point to the teaching that social life is not an end in itself.
Other abuses of social life that we considered last time were the lack of sufficient sleep and rest as a result of an inordinate amount of social life. This can easily lead to an increase in impatience, which contains many other evils. We also referred to what the Writings call the "enormous evil" of drunkeness, which takes away a man's intellectual faculty, thus removing what distinguishes him from animals, brings damage on his body, so hastening his death, and wasting in extravagance what might be of use to many.*
182
There was also a brief word about another prevalent abuse of social life-the friendship of love-indiscriminate friendships or infatuations.
* SD 2422
All these abuses, and others not mentioned, arise when social life becomes an end in itself, or when it is regarded as an escape from the duties of our employment. We can see how great an abuse of social life is only insofar as we see clearly the use that it is meant to serve. If we love the use of anything, we can readily see an abuse of it; but if we love the abuse of anything, we simply cannot see the use that is being destroyed-unless our understanding can be raised above our will.
The use of social life, as we have seen, is that we may return refreshed to our employment. This is a universal principle, from which it follows that everyone without exception needs to have some social life or recreation. To some extent everyone can arrange to have some diversions of charity, some changes for the sake of introducing variety into his or her life. Even for those who live alone this is possible, though somewhat more difficult than it is with those who live in a family. Yet everyone needs social life; everyone needs to associate with other human beings.
There are both natural and spiritual reasons for this, the natural reasons having to do with the psychological soundness of our mind, whereby we may be more effective in the performance of our use in this life; and the spiritual reasons having to do with our preparation for heaven. If we are ever to live in a heavenly society, partaking of its joys and adding our contribution to it, then we must learn to live in society on earth. For these reasons, then, everyone needs social life.
It surely follows from this that everyone should be included in the social life of the Church. This, indeed, is one of the reasons that the Church arranges social functions-in the hope that they are, in fact, diversions of charity. All are invited to them, and, generally speaking, all who wish to take part, and are physically able to attend, do so.
But there are those who, by reason of age or imperfect health, are not able to be present and enjoy the general social life of the Church. For them a visit from a friend, not only one in their own age group but also from one outside of their group, is a very welcome diversion of charity. In such a visit there can be mutual love from similarity of faith.* To provide for the needs of people in this position is well-recognized as one of the uses of the Church. But this use, like all others, has to depend upon people willing to support it in actual life, people whose love of the neighbor is strong enough to override their lesser loves and move them to the actual performance of these uses, people whose life is such that, given the willingness, they are able to spare the time or make the time to share something of the social life of the Church with those who, of themselves, are unable to do so.
* TCR 433
183
If everyone in a society is meant to be included in the Church's social life, then all age groups must be provided for. To this end we have social life for very little children, for older children, for young people, and for adults of varying ages.
It would seem to be in order for each age-group to have its own social life-at least some of the time. This provides for the greatest degree of relaxation and "at-homeness". Generally speaking, we all feel most at home in our own age-group. But it would be a sad day if the Church ever came to the point of never providing anything else but separate social life for each age-goup. It seems necessary for the Church to provide as well social life for all age-groups at once, so that all are included together, in the manner of a family. We are fond of saying that the school should be an extension of the family. This is equally true of the Church society. It should be like one big family. After all, we do not want to promote and foster the generation-gap. A Church society that is deprived of general social life is deprived indeed. To have too much horizontal slicing of the families of the Church, so that some members go to one social event, others to another, and yet others to a third kind of social activity seems to be quite harmful to the preservation of family life, to the character development of both young and old, and to the development of what might be called a true social sense in the coming generation. It is normal for the age groups to be mixed together-at least some of the time.
In a small society of the Church this happens often and without much effort. In a large community of the Church this becomes increasingly more difficult to arrange as the numerical size of the community grows. But difficulty is no excuse for not trying. It does seem that we should be trying to foster this general social life-such as we find at our society picnics-as well as social life in separate age-groups.
The principle that all should be included in social life because all need it applies not only in Church-sponsored social life but also in the matter of private entertainment on the part of individual members of the Church. It must be admitted, however, that the application of these principles of charity is more difficult to discuss in a general way when we are considering private entertainment than when considering general social life. This is because there are so many variables to be taken into account.
It is mainly a matter of balance. We certainly should enjoy ourselves in social life, that is, we should get some pleasure out of it; but we should nor please only ourselves-we should give pleasure to others as well.
184
No one could deny that spontaneity is of the essence in social life. Once it begins to be too structured, too organized, too controlled and directed its very soul is killed. There simply must be a certain spontaneity and self-gratification in social life. Otherwise, we do not achieve that relaxation of tension that is meant to be gained from the diversions of charity. It is because we all recognize this that we tend to invite our friends to our dinner parties. We invite people with whom we feel "at home". We invite people who are witty, talented, and entertaining. We invite them because we get pleasure from them. They are our friends.
This is not all bad. With very few exceptions, we cannot be on terms of intimate friendship with everyone in a large society or community. Leaving aside those rare individuals who seem to have the ability of being a close friend of everyone, we have to recognize the need for friendships in small groups. There must be a limit to our circle of friends.
Those who are members of these small-group circles of friendship refer to them by such phrases as "my circle of friends", "my people", "the circle in which I move". However, those on the outside of these circles of friendship, who would like to be included in them but find they are not invited, refer to them disparagingly as "Cliques". It is always the person on the outside who uses the term "cliques". No one every says that he is a member of a "clique".
There is definitely a use in small groups of friends meeting together. What is bad about it, though, is that these groups can become closed corporations, or rigid enclosures, resembling the cast system of India. There is an abuse of social life if we always travel in the same circle, with the same friends, if, when we are invited to a dinner-party, we can guess with almost 100% certainty who the others guests will be! Remember, that social life is meant to provide variety for us.
Surely, it would not be asking too much to see that we always include at least one person or one couple whom we have never invited before, or rarely invite. This application of the principles of charity would seem to flow from the Lord's parable in the Gospel of Luke that we read as one of our lessons. The Lord said:
When thou makest to dinner or a supper, call not thou friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsman, nor thy rich neighbors; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.*
* Lu. 14:12-14
The obvious principle involved here is that in social life, as in other areas of our life, we should also give-hoping for nothing in return.
185
The plain, unpalatable fact is that in many of our societies, especially our larger communities, there are those who are never, or rarely, included in private entertainments given by their fellow New Churchmen. In some cases, it must be frankly admitted that this may well be their own fault. There are those who seem unusually skilled in making themselves socially objectionable. Hosts and hostesses naturally feel that to invite them is to invite social disaster!
But this certainly does not apply in all cases. If it did, the problem would be fairly easily solved. All we would have to do when someone complained that he was deprived of social life because never invited out would be to say: "Perhaps you are too argumentative, too fond of your own opinions", or, "Do you perhaps love the sound of your own voice, and dominate conversations?" or, "Do you always interrupt people? "Perhaps you suffer from 'I trouble', overworking the little pronoun 'I'", or even, "When is the last time you took a shower?"
But life is never as simple as that, nor is the solution to the problem. Other factors are involved. It is not always the fault of the person who receives few invitations. Sometimes it is a very pleasant person, though perhaps not one to be the "life of the party". Sometimes the cause is our own thoughtlessness or our feeling that it is much easier to invite the usual friends. True, it is less difficult; (after all, we do know their phone numbers off by heart.) It is less difficult, but also less charitable in the true meaning of that term. There is less goodwill toward the neighbor in it. But it is usually not deliberate. It is just that it is so easy to become a creature of habit.
Our large communities seem to be made for couples and children. There have been complaints that for those who come through the college age and are still unmarried, there is an uncomfortable feeling of not belonging. However, once they are married, social life seems to begin again and they feel part of the society. This is a problem that needs further study: first, in order to see how widespread it is, and then to see what could be done about it; obviously, it is not in agreement with the principle of charity in social life that there should be any cause at all for such a feeling.
Charity or love towards the neighbor is the essence of New Church social life, its very soul. But it manifests itself in certain recognizable forms of conduct. These forms of conduct we usually call the moral virtues. They are an indispensable part of social life. We must always have both the essence and the form, both the internal and the external, both the soul and the body.
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The moral virtues that particularly apply to social life are sincerity, courtesy or good manners, temperance or moderation-not only in eating and drinking but in conversation. They are all expressions of goodwill toward the neighbor. They are all applications of what has become known as the Golden Rule: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."*
* Matt. 7:12
If we want people to be kind and considerate toward us, we are to be the same towards them; if we want people to listen to us and hear what we say, we must do the same for them; if we want others to treat us with courtesy, we must do the same to them; if we want others to give us an opportunity to contribute to the conversation, then we must grant them the same opportunity. These applications of the Golden Rule in social life are really applications of the universal law of heaven, namely, that influx is according to afflux. Accordingly, we read in the Writings:
With him who does good from the heart, good inflows from heaven on every side, into the heart and soul who does it, and by inspiring inspires it; and then at the same time the affection of love for the neighbor to whom he does good is increased, and with this affection a delight which is heavenly and unutterable. The cause of this is that in heaven the good of love from the Lord reigns universally, and constantly flows in according to the degree in which it is practiced toward another.*
* AC 9049
From that passage it is obvious that the law of order in heaven that is known on earth as the Golden Rule inevitably produces certain moral virtues, certain desirable forms of conduct. These moral virtues are not merely moral virtues. They are from a spiritual origin if we practice that law of heaven for the reason that it is "the law and the prophets".
That reference to the universal law of heaven reminds us of a very important use of social life in the Church-that it serves as a training-ground for life in heavenly societies. We know that in heaven they live in societies, and that one of the causes of their great happiness is that they share with one another the happiness they have received together with the good that flows in from the Lord. If we are to be prepared for life in an angelic society, if we are to be prepared so that we may freely breathe and live in its atmosphere, we must learn to live in a similar way and from similar loves and in a similar atmosphere in our Church societies. For the Church is meant to be a receiving vessel, receiving the loves of heaven, the foundation and basis upon which the heavens rest. Is not this what we pray for when we say, "Thy Will be done, as in heaven, so upon the earth"?
On this very point, in a most interesting article in New Church Life on the subject of "Distinctive Social Life in the Church", the Rev. Cairns Henderson set forth the ideal in the following thought-provoking paragraph:
187
Life in societies is easy for angels, who love the neighbor as themselves; but for unregenerate or regenerating men, in whom the loves of self and the world are still active, it is more difficult. Social life is a graceful, harmonious, and gracious Living with others, and this cannot be achieved without surrender of our native desire to have freedom to do exactly as we please. It requires not only that we shall place the common good above self, but also that we resist the tendency to see as the common good that which we personally desire. It requires consideration for others, thoughtfulness, courtesy, a truly charitable attitude towards their weaknesses. . . .These are all difficult things calling for the subjugation of the proprium.*
* Rev. W. Cairns Henderson, NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1940, p. 25
If social life is to be full of goodwill toward others, then it certainly does require a "truly charitable attitude toward their weaknesses". We often reveal more about ourselves than perhaps we realize by what we say about other people and how we say it. Words are never empty: they contain thoughts, and the thoughts contain affections or feelings that belong to our love. The ideal that is held up before us in the Writings is the conversation of heavenly societies. It is said that it is "love speaking."*
* HH 238
"Love speaking"-that is the ideal, the true order of life for human beings, too. The more nearly we approach to that ideal, the more exquisite and indescribable is the delight of conversation; the further we remove ourselves from the ideal, the more crude the delight. Hence the Lord said: "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things; and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things."*
* Matt. 12:34, 35
Speech or conversation is a Divinely given privilege: a precious gift whose value and use, or power for good, we can best appreciate, perhaps, if we try to imagine what life would be without it, without the ability to express our thoughts and ideas, and our tenderest feelings, by means of the spoken word. Of all the creatures and things made by the Lord our Creator, we human beings alone have the power of speech. Who can deny, then, that it is a privilege and a most priceless gift?
Speech was given for the sake of use, and there are legitimate uses and delights in social conversation, not the least of which is the self-knowledge that comes from examining and reflecting upon our conversations with a view to making them even more useful.
Use is the key, the criterion, the end! There is such a thing as too much talk if use is not regarded as the end in view. Let us be guided by the concept of use and the love of use in all that we say. Use means the accomplishment of a good end, resulting from the marriage of love and wisdom in our minds; it means being an influence for good in the hands of the Lord.
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If we think of use before we speak, that will deal the final death-blow to idle gossip; it will cut down on the quantity of conversation, and at the same time immeasurably increase its quality. In striving to achieve this aim, it may be helpful to remember that among the causes of legitimate separations in marriage is a vitiated condition of mind in either one of the partners which shows itself in the "utmost pleasure in gabbling, and talking of nothing but what is insignificant and frivolous, (and) an unbridled propensity to divulge the secrets of the home."*
* CL 252
The great pity about abuses of social life is that they rob us of the great potential which the Lord has offered for the New Church. They are obstacles to the coming of the Lord's Kingdom.
Some idea of the potential of social life in the Church may be gathered from this passage, which also (further on) contains a warning:
In general, feasts, both dinners and suppers, in ancient times were made within the Church in order that they might be consociated and conjoined as to love, and that they might instruct one another in those things which are of love and faith, thus in the things of heaven. Such at that time were the delights attending their banquets, and such was the end for the sake of which were their dinners and suppers. Thus the mind and the body also were nourished together and correspondently; and from this they had health and long life, and from it they had intelligence and wisdom; and also from this they had communication with heaven.*
* AC 7996
What a wonderful ideal at which to aim! Note that the purpose was "that they might be consociated and conjoined as to love, and that they might instruct one another in those things which are of love and faith, thus in the things of heaven". Where else can we do this than in the New Church? Is not this the most compelling argument for distinctive and distinct New Church social life? Where there is "mutual love from similarity of faith,"* there is a quality of social life that cannot be found elsewhere. There is a spiritual soul within the bodily pleasures, and the diversions are truly diversions of charity. This is the potential of the New Church; it is the end in view; and truly, it is something worth striving for. It is also something worth protecting.
* TCR 433
The need for protecting these heavenly things is brought out in the warning given in the conclusion of the number of the Arcana quoted:
But as in course of time all internal things vanish away and pass into external ones, so also did the purposes of the feasts and banquets, which at this day are not for the sake of any spiritual conjunction, but for the sake of worldly conjunction, namely, for the sake of gain, for the sake of the pursuit of honors, and for the sake of pleasures, from which there is nourishment of the body, but none of the mind.*
* AC 7996
189
That passage is an ever-timely warning of the need for continuing to have something of the Church in our social life. We read a moment ago that the ancients, when gathered together, instructed each other in the things of heaven, so that both body and mind were nourished. In this way their thoughts would pour themselves forth into heavenly societies. On the other hand, we read that "merely natural thoughts, which relate to self and the world and the love of these, and not at the same time to God, (pour themselves forth) into infernal societies."* Here again the practice of the Church in having social life distinct from the societies of the Old Church, where the sphere of merely natural enjoyment is so strong as to be but little different from that of the world at large, is thoroughly vindicated. May we never lose sight of this ideal-of distinctive New Church social life, distinct in essence and in form.
* AE 1092:3
Social life in the sphere of the Church is not the only means of preparing us for life in a heavenly society, but it is a very potent one. It does indeed protect the sphere of heaven from being destroyed by the sphere of the world. That needs to be stressed. The purpose of distinctive social life is not to protect ourselves, but the spiritual, internal things of heaven-the things that be of God, not of man.
Social life in the Church also helps prepare us for heaven by initiating us into co-operation with others in a society, thus producing unity. Any society of the Church is a Greater Man, just as heaven is the Greatest Man. Each one of us can become a form of use, each one of us can contribute to the whole-in the same way that the cells and organs of the body all work together to produce the functioning of the whole. Uses should always come before persons. We are taught that we are not to love the person and from that the use. We should love a person's use and from that his person, and not the other way around.
In social life no less than in other areas of our life the subordination of self to the use of the whole is the answer to many social problems. On this point let us conclude by quoting once again from Mr. Henderson's article, where he reminds us that life in heaven is life in societies: and that if we are to be able to live in angelic societies, we must learn to live harmoniously in societies in this world. He goes on: "Yet the Writings state that this is more difficult for the men of this earth than of any other, because they are so extremely individualistic. They are the most difficult of all to initiate into angelic choirs-into concerted affection, thought, and action. Evidently, then, we need the training-experience that social life in the Church can afford"*
* NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1940, P. 25.
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SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE Rev. ERIK E. SANDSTROM 1977
INTRODUCTION
May I dip my oar in, as regards the on-going debate about life on the planets) For when reading the Heavenly Doctrines and also of the scientific findings, the instinct of human reason is urged to reconcile them to each other. However, let us beware lest we inadvertently precipitate a crisis for the New Church by investigating spiritual matters from things of sense. Let us take sober cognizance of this:
A desire to investigate the mysteries of faith by means of the things of sense and of the memory, was not only the cause of the fall of the posterity of the Most Ancient Church, but it is also the cause of the fall of every church; and hence come not only falsities, but also evils of life.*
* AC 121
I do not wish to infer that we have come into this danger. Who is to judge? There are two worlds, the spiritual and the natural. Whichever is our stand as regards life on the planets, we need only beware lest we use astronomical data to cast doubt on Heavenly Doctrine. For example, we have received opinions on the status of The Earths in the Universe. Some have said that Swedenborg was mistaken, others that he was misinformed; others that the earths are hollow, and the described phenomena are to be found inside the planets; and yet others stating that there must be an internal sense to the whole treatment.
Thus warned, let us not rush at externals, but take time to look at the essentials contained in the work, The Earths in the Universe.
THE SPIRITUAL VANTAGE-POINT
This book was published separately in 1758, but was of course first seen as inter-chapter material in the Arcana Coelestia, and also in the Spiritual Diary. Thus it was written before the Last Judgment which took place in 1757. Now the impact of this event on the rest of the universe, is hard to judge; for it was in the world of spirits of our planet that this judgment took place. Since Swedenborg makes the point that he spoke only with the spirits who were from other planets,* we therefore assume that he met these spirits in their respective worlds of Spirits. After the Last Judgment took place, it is possible that the relationship to other worlds of spirits was affected.
191
Therefore it could be that the spirits from other planets could be visited only at the time they were visited, because by the judgment, new spiritual laws were brought into effect, or rather were restored. Three examples are given in the Doctrines: the time allowed to stay in the world of spirits;** the companions newcomers were not allowed to seek out;*** and the size to which imaginary heavens could grow.****
* EU 2
** HH 426; AR 846
*** LJ 64
**** LJ post. 105
Swedenborg did not speak to any inhabitants of planets either. He did not observe any planetary surface conditions, except on some special occasions through the eyes of spirits in communication with their own inhabitants.* Therefore, virtually everything said about each planet needs to be viewed from the spiritual vantage-point.
* Cf. EU 135, 161
To view spiritually any planetary condition mentioned in the Doctrines entails searching for corroboration by means of the science of correspondences. By applying correspondences drawn from the Sacred Scriptures, we can see whether the descriptions of planetary conditions conform with the actual conditions known to Science, or whether they conform to the states seen in the World of Spirits.
THE SECOND STATE
One law applicable to the World of Spirits, is that man passes through three states on his way to heaven. We must assume that Swedenborg spoke mostly with good spirits from the planets, thus heaven-bound spirits. In which state they were when he met them, the first, second or third, we have no way of telling. But because the second and third states take the longest, we may assume that these were the most common.
The second state is when a spirit has passed through the external life as he had known it from his own planet; and has gradually come into his true internals or interiors, which are truly of his spirit. Gradually his externals known from his earth are replaced by such things as correspond to his true internals. Spirits then appear more and more heavenly if good, or more infernal if evil. Also their surroundings change into scenery corresponding to the spirits' delights.*
* HH 485
How great these changes are, is clear from the fact that well-known people of Swedenborg's day were not recognized until he was informed who they were. Everyone becomes recognizable according to his internal nature rather than external appearance. Finally he does not remember who he was on earth.
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Granted, then, that the spirits from other planets were in their respective worlds of spirits, it stands to reason that Swedenborg saw them as to their true internals, after they had forgotten much of their former terrestrial externals. The spirits therefore spoke about their new externals, which correspond with their internals, as habitual. What they ascribed to their planet, may in fact never have existed in such forms there. Actual planetary conditions are almost certainly not meant by much of what the spirits said of validity on this subject.*
* EU 160
This explanation is the more likely when we consider that most other human races mentioned have more exalted uses in the Gorand Man than we mere earthlings. Our use is rooted in material things. Theirs, being exalted, has less or no concern for natural things, so why should they care to report them? Furthermore, they all enjoyed spiritual sight while on their planets.* The difficulty in keeping spiritual sight and natural sight apart, is profusely illustrated in both Testaments (e.g., Gideon and the angel; the Lord walking on water.) They were perhaps incapable of telling what their surface conditions had actually been like, because even when on their planets, they had seen the familiar scenery of paradisal heavenly societies. Instead, they provided Swedenborg with representative examples from their new externals, which could depict their true internals more accurately than actual earth-conditions ever could.
* EU 120
Can we therefore evaluate what is said of the planetary conditions, or about themselves, in terms of the true internals of the spirits who provided the information?
THE TRUE INTERNALS
The true internal of each planet is given as the use of that planet, or of the spirits from its human race, in the Gorand Man. For example, the use of our planet is to confirm celestial and spiritual truth by natural truth,* or the outer coverings and membranes of the body. It was on account of our earth being of this nature that the Lord could make His Advent at all.** Swedenborg, being an earthling, was qualified to perform the task of revelator of the Lord's Second Advent, and as observer of spiritual things. His mind was equipped to bring spiritual, celestial, yea Divine truths down into natural truths,-but only by enlightenment from the risen Lord. Thus the heavens rest on the literal sense of Sacred Scripture, or on the plane of the sciences of Nature, and in either case on writing and print.***
* SD 1531
** EU 118
*** Cf. EU 113
193
The 'archetype' for bringing internal things down into external, is found in The Apocalypse: the New Jerusalem descending from God, out of heaven, down to the earth. Because our genius is such, the Lord is said to love this earth above others, for on this earth, the Lord's Divine Humanity has actually been witnessed on the plane of ultimate creation.* On only this earth can it be known that God is Man also from science.** Even though our use involves gross matter and natural loves, we can easily come into interior or inner heavens, once our exteriors have been vastated.***
* SD 1531
** SD 4782
*** SD 1531
Once in heaven, our use includes the instruction of the rest of the universe, especially in the Doctrine of the Lord's Advent on our earth.* On our planet alone, we study the universe through telescopes etc and after death we instruct "the universe" on the subject of the Lord's Advent. The Doctrine of the Lord is therefore central in our consideration of the earths in the universe. It is no doubt because of our crucial use, that the Lord is seen by spirits from other planets as He appeared to inhabitants who sate, Him on our earth!** Since we instruct all other spirits from the planets that the Lord has been born on our earth, and since all other inhabitants of planets are in contact with angels from their own human races, we reach the thrilling prospect that the Lord's Advent is by now known throughout the inhabited universe, from one depth of outer space to the other.*** Our Lord Jesus Christ is worshiped as God throughout the universe.
* EU 118, 121; SD 1531
** EU 40, 65, 141, 170e.
*** Cf. EU 118-121
What we see of surface conditions on the planets through telescopes or by space-probes, must therefore be viewed in terms of the unique planetary use of each planet. For each human race, being created especially for a use, must clearly be able to survive whatever planetary conditions prevail! Indeed, any planet's conditions must ultimately correspond to, and thus depend on, what use in the Gorand Man the human race performs.
For example, our use in the Gorand Man is known and so are our earth's conditions! Are they not such that all spiritual, celestial, yea Divine things can be ultimated in the three kingdoms of Nature? The reason why other planets appear so barren and devoid of life may well be that their uses are upwardly oriented. And as each use in the Gorand Man is inborn in all individuals, on whatever planet they are born, it must therefore come to full fruition first by a life on the surface of each planet, and then, after the three states in the World of Spirits, in heaven.
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Clearly, planetary conditions must enhance the use of the inhabitants, however inhospitable they may appear to us.
Let us consider some of the planets mentioned in The Earths in the Universe.
THE PLANETARY USES FROM CREATION: JUPITER
The true internal, or use in the Gorand Man, of Jovian spirits is the imaginative of thought, and their genius is intermediate between the spiritual and the celestial.* What correspondences verify these statements?
* AC 8733
The imaginative of thought occurs curiously enough in the Genesis account of the Deluge. "The imagination of the thoughts of his heart was evil continually."* This signifies that there was no perception of truth and good.** But the Jovian spirits were far from evil. Thus their perception of truth and good was remarkable, seeing that good is of the celestial, and truth of the spiritual. Being intermediate between these, they perceive both.
* Gen. 6:5
** AC 586
Now the spirits from Jupiter said that on their earth they had lived in long, low huts, with blue star-studded ceilings. A sky-blue ceiling would represent truth transparent from good, with references to interior and inmost things.* Truth transparent from good is the spiritual from the celestial, or mediate between them.
* Cf. AC 10184, 9405
Fixed stars refer to knowledges of good and truth, or celestial and spiritual things. Consequently, when disagreement arises between Jovian spirits, sparkling stars are seen.* They regard wandering stars as an ill omen, but fixed stars as a good omen.
* EU 50
May we not conclude from these things, that the description of Jovian earth-dwellings refer in fact to their homes in the world of spirits? What their earth-conditions or houses were like, is not even implied, and may be at great variance with their after-death conditions. Even the conditions for our Most Ancients on earth must have varied greatly from their splendid heavenly condition!*
* Cf. CL 75
We see then, that Doctrine and Science hardly touch on the same area. There is hardly any danger of transgressing the code.*
* AC 127
SATURN I
The spirits of Saturn appeared to Swedenborg "in front at a considerable distance, beneath the plane of the knees."*
195
They are very humble and worship the Lord who often appears to them. Their true internal or use is the "middle sense between the spiritual and natural man."**
* AC 8947
** AC 8953
Why did they appear beneath the plane of the knees? The knees signify the intermediate between spiritual and natural things* and also humility and adoration.** In front signifies facing the east, thus being near the Lord.*** Clearly, these doctrinals verify their appearance in front, beneath the plane of the knees.
* AC 5328:2
** AC 5323
*** AC 9668:3
The use of Saturnian spirits apparently involves communication between the spiritual and natural degrees, for they often appear to be snatched away into heaven and presently to be let back again.* This of course must apply to their state in their world of spirits. Thus their genius is such as to encounter both spiritual and natural things.
* AC 5953
Therefore when Saturnian spirits were beset and abused by spirits from our earth who were merely natural, they had no fear; and by their tranquility they caused our spirits to be tortured until they fled.* This conflict came about because their use is to recede from the natural, but our use is to approach it.
* EU 102
Yet some Saturnians become natural, and worship the snowy light cast on their planet through the great belts surrounding it. Snowy whiteness in fact represents faith separated from charity.* Such faith is merely natural.
* AC 3412:3
The rings of Saturn are obviously a true terrestrial external. The point however is that the light it casts corresponds to the Saturnian use.
MERCURY
"The spirits of Mercury wander through the universe (because) they relate to the memory of things in the Gorand Man, which is continually being enriched." "They relate to the memory of things abstracted from material and earthly things."*
* AC 6925, 6809
Although such wandering clearly applies to the spiritual world, we know that it is possible also in the natural. Did not Swedenborg himself travel the spiritual universe while his body stayed here on earth? The Mercurian inhabitants may be experts in this form of travel, even while they never leave their planet.
A Mercurian woman spirit was seen, wearing a linen cap "artlessly put on, yet becomingly." A man was also seen wearing a tight dull-blue dress, free of wrinkles.*
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Are these externals representative of their true internals?
* AC 7105
A head-dress signifies intelligence,* and linen, truth from a celestial origin.** That a woman was seen wearing such a cap, implies that their love of wisdom (i.e. a woman) consists in being intelligent from accumulations of knowledges. For they love to learn abstract things, and reject and indeed mock natural things. Thus they take such pride in their knowledge, that they end up by not knowing either what celestial or what natural things are.*** Yet their knowledges are from a celestial origin.
* CL 293e.
** AC 9744 ff
*** AC 6814
Is not their love of knowledge, yet their ignorance of celestial things, best represented by a woman with a linen cap, artlessly yet becomingly worn?
Yet they are capable of humility. After ridiculing the art of writing on our earth, they were told that we could become celestial more easily than they.* Thus chastened, they produced a neatly prepared paper of their own! So quick were they to recognize their fault.
* AC 6929, 6930
Their humility is seen as a sinking down of a whirlpool.* Yet their love of knowledges is seen as a crystal globe. Thus they love truths, but make them a matter of mere knowledge, removed from material ideas. Such would be the correspondence of a skin-tight, dull-blue dress.**
* AC 7077
** Cf. AC 592, 10036
MARS
The use in the Gorand Man of Martian spirits, is something interior in man, the mediate faculty between the intellectual and voluntary, or thought from affection.*
* AC 7480
The spirits of Mars were seen to have yellow faces with a blackness of the lower face, which was not a beard. Does this facial appearance relate to their use! Or did they so appear on their planet?
Concerning man's face, we are told: "By the face are signified the interiors which are of the life, thus which are of the thought and affection."* The color yellow refers to celestial together with spiritual good.** The Martian spirits are also said to be of a celestial genius, but they delight in spiritual things, as is evident from their delight in our earthly birds which represent spiritual things.***
* AC 9360
** AC 186
*** AC 7476, 7620-22
197
The blackness of the lower face can refer to the state of innocence from ignorance.* This is a quality to which the Martian spirits are prone. To demonstrate this, they saw one of our birds gradually turn into a black stone,** which meant that they could recede from their celestial state, and come to dwell in knowledges without love.
* Cf. AC 4001
** AC 7622
Since they know that they are capable of such a fall, they love to humble themselves so profoundly that they are as it were outside of themselves; they remain upon their knees until the Lord elevates them and as it were draws them out from hell.*
* AC 7478
Indeed, their humility is part of their use. For humiliation, we are told, can come only from the conjunction of the intellectual and voluntary faculties.* Their use is mediate between these. Therefore their face is also particolored, to represent a curious combination of celestial humility, and the ignorance belonging to corporeal life, to which they are prone. Interestingly enough, celestial wisdom is said to have the ignorance of infancy adjoined to it, and is then called the "ignorance of wisdom."** This ignorance of wisdom, full of humility, seems to describe the Martian genius, and thus also their face.
* AC 3539:3
** AC 10225:7
THE MOON
The lunar spirits have the use of the ensiform or soutiform cartilage, which is at the base of the sternum or breastbone. This cartilage holds the diaphragm and other muscles necessary for volume and tone control in speech.*
* AC 5504
The spirits from the Moon were heard to speak or make noise as of thunder. Is not thunderous noise a most appropriate signal for the use of this cartilage? Even their breathing was described as abdominal, emphasizing the use of the diaphragm, and also this cartilage. For when we speak, our chest reverberates.
Thunder is often heard in the spiritual world, and is from the Divine inflowing into the ultimates of heaven. Thunder signifies the Divine Truth which illustrates and perfects those who are in heaven, while it at the same time terrifies and vastates those in hell.* Spirits and angels are clearly needed to perform this ultimate use of perfecting and terrifying, and some of these could come from our Moon.
* AC 7573
198
CONCLUSION
We can see from these few samples that the descriptions either of the spirits themselves, or of their planets, are consistent with their true internals, which is use from creation. By correspondence we see that the externals apply to the world of spirits, and not necessarily to the planets themselves.
Of the planets mentioned, Mars and the Moon stand out, since they have both been explored by us, and amply photographed. Their lifeless condition apparently has ruled out any confirmation of what is said in The Earths in the Universe. But did we really expect these space-flights to confirm the Doctrines verbatim? The things of sense are far, far removed from the mysteries of faith. Doctrine and science have hardly yet concerned themselves within the same area. Nevertheless, the use of our planet is to bring spiritual truth into natural truth, or Doctrine into life. The Lord, who is Doctrine Itself, was born only on our earth.
So we have not been given The Earths in the Universe to make us look like fools. Instead it is a work that contains a plethora of information, which, if seen from the spiritual vantage-point, can provide the New Church with a truly spectacular view of the universe. That, too, would fulfill our use.
MOONS-PEOPLE OF JUPITER EDITOR 1977
But whether they may not have been from one of the satellites of Jupiter, which, like our moon are surrounded by a different kind of atmosphere (from their primary) and thus that these spirits are a different kind of creatures in such a little world, and possessed of another kind of bodies, I am not sure, though they intimated to me something of the kind; for as I could not have an idea of any sort of men except such as live on earths surrounded by atmospheres, therefore, although ignorant of positive fact, yet I would not decidedly reject the supposition, for corporeal forms are governed entirely by the state of the atmospheres, and many other things pertaining to the earths in which they dwell. Spiritual Diary 1670. (Contributed by Rev. Arne Bau-Madsen.)
Title Unspecified EDITOR 1977
There are more things in heaven and earth than mortal man has yet dreamed. Shakespeare.
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FORGIVENESS THROUGH UNDERSTANDING EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
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Everything that happens in human history, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant, has had its inevitable consequences and permanent effect. Every small choice, every decision, action and word of any individual person, has not only a permanent effect upon him, but on all others. And so, when we consider the immense activity, the infinitely true words, and the inestimable thrust of the Lord's life on earth, together with the inner processes and struggles through which He passed in the pursuance of His goal,-then we can have some idea of their future, inevitable and eternal consequences and effects upon the human race.
The spiritual and genuine joy of the Lord's resurrection on the third day comes to us, in part, by our understanding of the immense things which He accomplished. In part, it comes from a knowledge and perception of His victory in the final conflicts with hell and evil. But the delight also consists in the fact that we can now see, and that we can, indeed, try to, see small and unobtrusive signs of hope and change in the human community.
Thus, by reason of His life and teachings, we no longer have to accept evil as an inevitable and incurable part of the human condition. No more do we need accept crucifixion and death, torture and war, violence and evil and hell, as but the inevitable consequences of all human nature. We can see that unquestioning, unthinking, traditional serfdom cannot be any part of the kingdom of heaven if it is to come on earth. Men can raise themselves above the animal in the cave by charity through truth, and even in devising mannerly codes of conduct and behavior through which they can express and show their inner good-will toward, their awareness of, and their consideration for their fellow-men,-with gentility and love for the human race entire.
200
Perhaps more gloriously than anything, men are now given the means, the opportunity, for an understanding forgiveness toward even the poor, deluded, real villains of society. And such a feeling comes to man, or may come to him, as the crown and climax,-the true joy of the Lord's resurrection,-that he can even experience a little of his Heavenly Father's true Spirit of forgiveness.
Think of how this Spirit of forgiveness would, and will, change the state of human society, how it will, little by little, restore communication, how it will enable men to reach out and touch each other in the age to come. Think of this, and more of the joy of the Lord's resurrection will touch you.
The small-souled skeptic, the mean-spirited atheist, the aggravative agnostic, the agitating anarchist, and the mind-numbing nihilist,-these will not be able to accept the Lord's resurrection, much less its shaking significances, for they would not believe, though one were to rise from the dead, as He did. But we who know of the Lord's first and second comings are called to a high duty and an everlasting happiness, if we will have it so. We are called to a spiritual experience unknown to mankind in all previous ages, and to a complete change of heart and mind which could never before have been envisioned.
"A NEW CHURCH CALENDAR" WILLIAM ROSS WOOFENDEN 1977
To the Editor:
One remark in the article by Geoffrey B. Myers in the January, 1971, issue of NCL caught my attention and I wonder if I may be permitted to comment on it?
He asks, "I wonder if anyone in the New Church has ever thought of a distinctive New Church calendar?" While I am not aware of any effort so detailed as the one he then goes on to suggest, I wonder if he (and your other readers) are aware that for a time at least a distinctive New Church dating system appeared in some publications.
201
Although I have never run across an explanation of the system I refer to, it is my conjecture that it is based on the He Liber inscription in the Brief Exposition, since the scheme seems to turn on the date 1769. Perhaps someone can furnish further details, but my tentative conclusion is that the publications which were so dated were intended to point to the "year of our Lord's Second Advent."
For instance, the Rev. N. C. Burnham's book Discrete Degrees bears on the title page the date "1887 = 118." If one subtracts the latter number from the former, the product is "1769" Or, in the photolithographed Summaria Sensus Interni (Hyde n. 1582) the title page is dated "MDCCCXCVI = CXXVII." Again, by subtracting, we get "MDCCLXIX."
These both happen to be Academy publications, and are the only ones in my personal library which seem to be so dated. Perhaps it was only the Academy which used it in publishing. If so, they seemed to have dropped by it before 1900.
I find it a bit curious that the date 1769 was singled out. One might conceivably make a better case for 1757 (the Last Judgment) or 1770 (New Church Day). Any light you can shed on this in the pages of NCL would be read with interest.
Sincerely,
WILLIAM ROSS WOOFENDEN,
Sharon, Mass.
DOLE TRANSLATION GEORGE F. DOLE 1977
To the Editor:
I am grateful for the varied response to my translation of Heaven and Hell, Norbert Rogers' attention to detail (New Church Life, 1976, June issue, pp. 242-246) is particularly helpful. I would take issue with a number of his criticisms, but my grounds for so doing are certainly technical and probably boring. It seems more appropriate to make two rather general comments.
The first is that English is, so to speak, a self-contained language, with its own distinctive vocabulary and syntax. Because of its mixed parentage and wide distribution, it is a marvelously flexible tool in its own right. My effort as a translator is to translate all the way into English, and more attention was given to syntactic problems than to lexical ones.
The reverse has been the case in the past, I believe, which leads to my second comment. Every translation should be regarded with the kind of affectionate suspicion which Mr. Rogers so nicely exemplifies.
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The present version does reflect my biases; past efforts reflect the biases of their writers. We may, by virtue of familiarity, have adopted some of those biases; we should be ready to examine them.
There is a vigor and clarity to Swedenborg's Latin which I believe has been lost in previous translations and is only dimly reflected in my own. This style and tone may be as much a part of the revealed nature of the Writings as are the individual words or terms,-what the Lord says is loving as well as true. Others have sacrificed this style in the interests of a particular kind of verbal accuracy. There can be no question of the inestimable value of their work; but that value is undermined rather than enhanced if its limitations are not recognized.
However much a reader may enjoy a more completely translated Heaven and Hell, then, its value will be undermined if its limitations are not recognized. Mr. Rogers does point out some mistakes, which have been duly noted and, typesetter willing, will not recur. More important, his comments often reflect the fact that there is a risk in using current English. To me and my dictionary, for example, while "a bond" is a restraint, "to bond" is to join together with virtual permanence and has nothing to do with shackles. My dictionary tells me that: "to conjoin" is "to combine", suggesting a mixing together. The reader would do well, then, to bear Mr. Rogers' comments in mind and to realize that they could be multiplied a thousand fold.
I cannot resist a final disclaimer. Both Mr. Rogers and the New Church Magazine commend "my" successful sentence-shortening and paragraphing. This is not "mine"-basically, I have simply translated Swedenborg's colons and semi-colons into periods, and his periods into paragraphs.
GEORGE F. DOLE,
Sharon, Mass.
"ANOTHER CONFIRMATION" W. VAN DUSEN 1977
To the Editor:
If people are foolish enough to bring Van Dusen into these pages, he is likely to be foolish enough to respond even though he questions the whole process of letters to the editor. If one differs with someone, and would really like to search out differences, why not correspond directly, or better yet visit? No, the author is usually not contacted at all.
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Debating over theological issues also seems to me to miss the fundamental thrust of the Writings-which are for our personal spiritual journey, not to give us theological brickbats. So, reluctantly I re-enter the field.
To E. E. Sandstrom: Perhaps I should have elaborated on the experience of the dark tunnel reported by Moody's subjects. Though the Writings do not seem to confirm this, it is there. One has to go through the experience to see it. As in all things book-learning isn't enough.
In the earliest stage of dying the concerns with this world and others is withdrawn. I recall looking over at the papers on my desk, representing the concerns and work of years, and dismissing them as useless. This is the beginning of the dark tunnel. Next the senses are drawn inward. Awareness of bodily sensation disappears. Yet one is very alive and awake. It feels like being in a dark tunnel, since one is very alive but no longer has sensory contact with this world or even bodily sensation. This corresponds to Swedenborg's "I was brought into a condition of unconsciousness as far as my bodily senses were concerned." In fact, deep in the tunnel, there can be a moment of panic when the subject tries to experience some sensation and can't. This is the same as the trance some people accidentally get into instead of falling asleep. The dark tunnel-like experience is very brief. The entrance into the spiritual world is next. Mr. Sandstrom seems bothered by my reference to three days as symbolic but Swedenborg says the entrance into the spiritual world is immediate. To say only Swedenborg was resuscitated in the spiritual world is to me wrong. The term really means to come alive into the spiritual. I feel to say only Swedenborg experienced anything is to put him on a pedestal, a position he would oppose. If Mr. Sandstrom comes back with a source for this only, I'll come back with an early incident in which it is said Swedenborg thought he was the only one in this, but it was said out of heaven there have been others. It is strange to me when those who profess not to want to elevate Swedenborg say only Swedenborg, and then use this as a reason for not even trying the simple approaches to spiritual understanding he used. I think Mr. Sandstrom and I are in the same argument taken up recently in The New Philosophy.
Let me make it clear. In no field of human endeavor does the mere reading of a good book make one expert. Would one hire a man to build a house who had only read a good book on construction? For me spiritual experience opens the understanding of doctrine. One better appreciates what the Writings say of meditation from having meditated. I can recognize the similarity of Moody's dark tunnel to the Writings from having been through it. From the reading of the texts, without experience, we might be inclined to reject the spiritual of their experience.
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Is this not terrible, to use the Writings to reject the spiritual? A recent statement of a friend reminds me of an axiom. After describing a spiritual experience he said, "Please don't spread this around, as I have become convinced that most people have never had a genuine spiritual experience and so are highly suspicious and skeptical of same." My axiom: Those who haven't had spiritual experience find it very doubtful that anyone else has had either. Those who have had some experience recognize it more easily in others. Those who have much experience can recognize forms that are very different from their own, for they have come into the universal.
To Dr. de Maine: The Writings say that the entrance into the spiritual world takes place when heart and respiration cease. If one is not immediately dead, dying takes place from there on and becomes irreversible in minutes. This is the same as saying when one dies they enter the spiritual world. The reverse isn't necessarily true, only the dead know the spiritual world. Indeed it is a major purpose of the Writings to further this.
To Leon Rhodes: I agree on your caution. We have a little boost in Moody, but we simply have too few experts on dying to get too involved.
To N. J. Berridge: Warm greetings. It is so good to find one who sees.
W. VAN DUSEN,
105 Willow Ave., Ukiah, Calif. 95482
NEW CIRCLE LOUIS B. KING 1977
The Kempton Group has been recognized as a Circle of the General Church of the New Jerusalem. The Rev. Martin Pryke is presently the Pastor of the Circle.
LOUIS B. KING,
BISHOP
MINISTERIAL CHANGE 1977
The Rev. Frank S. Rose has accepted an appointment in the Academy as of Sept. 1, 1977, and has resigned from the Pastorate of the Carmel Church as of that date.
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Church News VARIOUS 1977
GLENVIEW, ILL.
Greetings from Glenview.
The vitality of the "new era" is contagious. There is a sphere of confidence, of continuity with the past, a sensitivity to present needs and a hope for future growth.
Our new pastor and his family are very welcome, as are all the other new families. We appreciate the devotion to Church uses which is shown by the Peter Busses, the Patrick Roses, the Charles Eberts, the Brian Keiths and the Harold Cranches. They have faced the hazards of moving to this area from such places as Detroit, Toronto, Bryn Athyn, California, and Durban, South Africa. Durban's farewell gift to the Busses was a tapestry in tawny African colors. It was on display when the pastor and his wife entertained an overflowing crowd at the manse. The Rev. Peter Buss grasps the uses of his office as a whole, and co-ordinates them, using the help of those prepared to do the work. Sometimes he and Mr. Ebert go jogging as they plan work for the school and keep physically fit, as well. Among the older people here are some of the former teachers whose memories of the early days include the setting up of The Immanuel Church and School, the ICS's ninth grade being joined by a tenth, and the Midwestern Academy being founded.
At a recent semi-annual meeting over twenty-four reports were received telling of provision for religious, social and educational needs, as well as for support and care for Church property. A safety patrol is now begun to keep regular watch over the buildings and grounds.
A study course for adults, on The Doctrine of the Lord, is given this year, in addition to the many other special classes. The Women's retreat, held this year, discussed "the wisdom of wives", from both doctrine and application, the clergy preparing the questions, and giving response after free discussion in small groups of women, of the subject of the day.
The Library received, among other gifts, a bequest from the will of Mrs. Amena Pendleton Haines, who wrote "The Golden Heart," and from Archivist Eldric Klein, a first edition of Heaven and Hell. The appearance of the Centennial Book, Toward a New Church University, edited by Sanfrid Odhner, gives many of us an absorbing history of the New Church with which we can relate. Dedicated to Rev. David Simons was the MANC yearbook. For several years Mr. Simons was President of MANC in connection with his service here as Assistant Pastor. Appreciative memories of the Alfred Actons extend even to the very young. One little girl named her dark haired doll, "Mrs. Acton".
The beautiful new MANC Banner was used on the tenth anniversary of Founders' Day. Bishop Louis King and Rev. Alfred Acton returned for the occasion. The weekend festivities followed the pattern of Charter Day, with a processional to a Saturday morning Church service, an exciting sports game in the afternoon, and following the cocktail hour, a delicious meal was served. Dr. Charles Ebert ably served as toastmaster for the evening, and the banquet ended in toasts. Visiting and dancing concluded the evening. (Thanks to the Park News for report.) The two former pastors presented the ideals of New Church Education as Happiness resulting from a life of usefulness to others, and of the preparation for entering upon this life.
Following Founders' Day here and Charter Day in Bryn Athyn, we had the privilege of a visit from five representatives of the Academy.
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Their purpose was to come to know our school, to give counsel toward the setting up of a four year high school here, and to determine how best to have a closer relationship of our present high school with ANC. Rev. Dan Pendleton's address dealt with the mediate goods met with in the high school age, with how to bend, not break the natural interest in competition, or building up a reputation, and so lead to the ideal of usefulness to others. Other visitors from the Academy were Mr. Donald Fitzpatrick, Miss Sally Smith and Mr. George Woodard. The findings of this Committee will supply a useful standard for MANC.
There seem to be a number of ways to cope with common failings, besides tolerance or punishment. One imaginative teacher, when the homework wasn't done, had the pupil climb up a tree and sing. The only difficulty with including this device here, is that the teacher denied that the tree materialized, when I checked on the accuracy of the report. When New Church young people can't be withheld from watching movies founded on Bible history, how can they be prepared to recognize the falsities and evils which may be present in the production? Can they withstand the subtle irreverent spheres? Might we hope that some day such Bible based pictures could be directed from a New Church viewpoint? A wealth of ideas have been showered upon us, and there is need for matching up the abilities and ideas, and the exercise of real freedom to come into a proper and useful life. A friendly and wise counseling of young people beyond the limits of formal education can help with fitting the behavior into harmony with New Church ideas.
Contacts with other Church members has increased, and given us a broader base to appreciate both the differences and the similarities, and learn how to adapt what we have received. When nearly all the persons who represented the Church to us were replaced, it is a happy feeling to see that "the use" goes on.
The Rev. Harold Cranch has come here with the special purpose of promoting the Extension Work in this area. He plans to get in touch with and renew connections with New Church people, who may have become inactive, as well as to follow up contacts with newcomers who have answered the newspaper advertisement, and in general to exercise spiritual charity toward those who want the things that come to us through the Church.
Thanks for the long continued and interesting part the New Church Life has played in our lives.
SUSAN S. HOLM
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Our first news-worthy activity took place on January 24th when Dr. Sig Synnestvedt was the speaker at our Swedenborg Birthday Celebration. He spoke of his work with the Swedenborg Foundation (of which he is a director) and about his trip to Ghana in Africa.
With February came the news that Geoffrey had been called to Toronto.
This was followed by a visit from Bishop King, and the selection of a committee to work with him in choosing our new pastor. After numerous committee meetings, and a second visit from the Bishop-it was accomplished!
The Rev. Mark Carlson arrived with his family in August, and immediately participated in the Almont Summer Camp. We are stimulated by his classes and sermons, and feel very fortunate to have him for our pastor.
Several other families have joined us recently. They are the Hugh Hyatts's, the Kurt Synnestvedt's, the David Nashes in Saginaw, and the Stan Lehne's have returned from England. We also see Nathan Gladish and Kathy Odhner regularly. They are attending Oakland University.
The Women's Guild maintained all its usual activities:
A spring and a fall rummage sale.
Our pot luck supper and Annual Meeting in May. This was held at Helga's, and Walter Orthwein was our guest speaker.
The Tuesday Religion classes were treated to a hike at Stoney Creek Nature Trail. The hike was preceded by lunch at the church.
We had a Shower for our girls leaving for the Academy.
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There was a Pantry Shower for each new family.
The Fall Frolic featuring games for all age levels, decorations, clowns and supper. It was a fun-filled afternoon. A Fall Frolic that will be remembered for a long time.
Gifts for the children at Christmas.
The White Horse Volleyball Team was Champion in its division again in 1976. The White Horse Softball Team went into the play-offs. After the season they invited the Caryndale team to town for a game. This was followed by a cookout for dinner.
The end of the school year brought the announcement of officers for the coming year. We are more than a little proud of our students and their participation.
Karen Childs Factores President Deka Song Leader
Cindy Cook Deka Bouncer
Mark Elder Student Council President
Gail Genzlinger Deka President
Brent Gurney Co-Editor Academian Phi Alpha Secretary
Our Farewell Party for Geoff and Helga was held early in October, and included all ingredients necessary for such an evening-poems, short speeches, songs, gifts, food and warm affections.
We have had two marriages recently. In June Janet Birchman and Larry Paske were married in Troy, and in December, Sarah Schnarr and Craig McCardell were married in Washington.
The White Horse Society is continuing its monthly discussions on New Church doctrine with Oakland University students.
The search for a suitable parcel of land, on which we hope to build a community, has taken untold hours. There have been times when we thought we had found that "perfect location". There have been disappointments, but no giving up on the part of the Committee or the Society. Definite word on this project will have to wait until the next news letter.
We are busy. We are growing. We are always happy to see visitors. Please do not be mislead by our name. We are not in Detroit, and haven't been for 25 years. Our Church is in Troy and most of us live in Birmingham, Royal Oak, or Troy. We will be delighted to see you, and you can count on a bed being available-for one night or one week.
JENN GENZLINGER
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
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RICH MAN Rev. THOMAS L. KLINE 1977
Announcements
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII MAY 1977 No. 5
And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Matthew 19:24.
A young man, hearing the teachings of the Lord, asked of Him, "What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?" The Lord answered that he should keep the commandments. The young man responded that he had kept these things from his youth up, and further inquired, "What lack I yet?" The Lord answered Him, "If thou will be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." We are told the man went away in sorrow after hearing these words, because be had great possessions.
Of all the teaching given by the Lord while He was on earth, the literal teachings contained in this story have been the most difficult for men to accept. In these reactings it seems that it is not enough for a man to merely obey the commandments of the decalogue, but he must also renounce his worldly possessions that he might someday inherit the kingdom of God. Upon hearing these teachings, many have attempted to find ways to lessen the harshness of these words. Some scholars have tried to show that the works of our text have been mis-translated over the centuries, and were originally more lenient. They maintain that the word "camel" was originally the word "rope" and that the "eye of the needle" was originally a small "gateway" or "window." When the Lord said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, they maintain the Lord meant it is easier for a rope to go through a small window, implying that it is a difficult task, but certainly not impossible. But no matter what excuses men have found to avoid these teachings, scholars admit that the words stand as they are written.
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The statement is a deliberately hard saying-it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
In the New Church, with the revelation of the Lord's Second Coming, we see the teachings of this story in a new light. In the revelation now given to mankind, we can see that this story has a spiritual sense, separate from the letter. By a rich man is meant those who are wealthy in intellectual things of the world, those who have an abundance of natural knowledge. The fact that a rich man can hardly enter the kingdom of God, signifies that a man cannot discover the things of heaven and the church solely from worldly knowledge and understanding. It is only when man gives up this knowledge, that is, makes his own ideas subservient to the truths of revelation, that heavenly light can flow in. In the spiritual sense, our text clearly shows us that the only path that leads to heaven is through the truths revealed in the Word. We must approach this truth with humility.
Now there is a temptation for us to be relieved when we hear that there is a spiritual sense to this story. The man of the New Church can find the teachings given in the letter of the Word harsh and difficult. There is the temptation for us to take refuge in the spiritual sense of the Word because we hope that somehow this inner-meaning frees us from the moral and civil obligations of the letter. Just like those men who try to find mistranslations in the letter, we can be tempted to use the abstract spiritual sense as a means of divorcing our life from the moral obligations of the Word. We must be cautious not to abuse the Word in this way.
The Writings tell us that there are many levels of truth in the Word. Is the Word, Divine truth proceeds from firsts to lasts: from the Lord to the very letter itself. From this proceeding, all intermediate degrees of truth spontaneously come into being. Thus, the Word is addressed to every level of creation, both spiritual and natural. The Word is addressed to the angels of heaven who see the most interior truths; it is addressed to the spiritual degree of the mind by truths which are now revealed in the Heavenly Doctrines; and the Word is finally addressed to the natural plane of life by the civil and moral truths which serve; as a foundation. While the man of the church is to be led by the spiritual sense of the Word and to use this revelation as a light to illuminate and understand the letter, he cannot afford to neglect the moral and civil teachings which are found in the letter. These moral teachings must: be seen in the light of the spiritual sense. It is common for the letter to take on appearances of truth. There are many teachings iii the letter which change in meaning when seen in the light of genuine truth.
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Nevertheless, there is a natural or moral plane of truth in the Word, and the man of the New Church cannot neglect this most powerful level. The Writings compare the spiritual plane of life to a house and the civil and moral plane to the foundation of that house. To live the spiritual and internal life and not at the same time the moral and civil life, is like dwelling in a house that has no foundation. It gradually sinks and is rent asunder.
When the Writings treat of the story of our text, they state that there is both a spiritual and a natural sense. As we have seen, the rich man, in the spiritual sense, signifies the mental state of placing worldly knowledges above the truths of the Word. But in the natural sense, the rich man retains much of his literal meaning. The Writings tell us that in the natural sense, the rich are those who have worldly possessions and set their heart upon these. These men cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Thus, to some extent, the man of the New Church has to place himself in the literal context of this story. The Lord asked the rich man to sell all that he had and follow Him. We cannot simply take refuge in the spiritual sense and say that this literal meaning does not apply to us, for as we have seen, the moral teachings of the Word apply equally to the man of the New Church, when these teachings are seen and interpreted in the light of genuine truth.
The Writings tell us that there are three universal loves with man: the love of the Lord, love of the world, and love of self. A unique teaching is that all of these loves are good and are all given to man by the Lord with the intent that they be part of life. The love of the world and even the love of self, are not necessarily evil, they are both loves which are part of creation. For example, the love of self is essential in order that we may have individuality. With this feeling of "self" we could not exist as beings with free-will, able to receive the Divine life. In the same way, the love of the world is not necessarily evil; it was given to us for a use. The love of the world leads the doctor to study the science of medicine that he might heal others. It leads the farmer to plant crops that he might feed his family. In short, the loves of self and the world were given that we might have the means for carrying out the uses of heavenly loves.
An essential teaching concerning these three universal loves is that they are only good, that is, part of the Lord's intent, when they are placed in a certain order. Only when the love of the Lord is first in our life, the love of the world second, and the love of self is last, are these loves good and in their intended order. But when these loves become inverted in any way, there is nothing but disorder. When the love of self is placed first in our life, it no longer serves its intended purpose and we turn inwardly to ourselves. When the love of the world becomes foremost in our life, we turn to greed and avarice, seeking worldly possessions only as ends in themselves, rather than as means of serving the Lord and the neighbor.
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The Writings compare the love of the Lord to the head, the love of the world to the breast, and the love of self to the feet. When these loves become inverted in any way, the whole man becomes inverted and disordered.
When seen in this light, the moral teachings of our text take on new meaning in the letter. The Lord, when he asked the young man to sell all that he had and follow him, asks the man of the church to make his love of the world subservient to his love of the Lord and the neighbor. The Lord asks the man of the church to love worldly things only as a means of serving others. He asks that these worldly loves give up their ruling position in our lives and that these very loves follow the Lord. The literal command of the Lord is addressed directly to each one of us: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." This does not mean that the Lord requires us to do this literally, for as we have seen, the Lord allows worldly possessions and loves so that we might be able to serve the higher uses of the neighbor and the church. But the Lord does ask that we carry out this command in our hearts. The Lord asks that we be willing to sell all and follow Him, because it is only when we are willing to do this that we truly place our love to the Lord above all other things. Each one of us should reflect upon what our answer would be if we were in the place of the young man. Would we be able to give up all the possessions that we now have and follow the Lord, or would we go away in sorrow, unable to obey this one command? By reflecting upon what our answer would be to this question, we can see something of the nature of our loves and their place in our lives.
The Writings tell us that of all earths, the men of our earth are the most external. Our particular genius is such that we have a natural curiosity to focus upon worldly and scientific things. As we have seen, this love is not necessarily evil and it can have great uses. It was upon our earth that the Lord was born as a man, able to reveal Himself even to the natural degree. It was upon our earth, where men were concerned with such worldly inventions as the printing press, that the Lord could make His second coming in fullness. When the love of the world serves the higher loves of the Lord and the neighbor, it can lead toward the most perfect and universal ends.
But the very fact that our particular genius can serve these most wondrous uses, means that these same loves can fall into the most extreme abuses. Because of the external nature of our genius, each one of us is particularly vulnerable to abusing the love of worldly things.
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We do not have to look far to see the hells continually attempting to attack this weakness. How often are we persuaded that by acquiring just one more possession, the state of our lives and happiness will be eternally changed, and how often are we disappointed? Modern society has become more and more founded upon the doctrine of materialism, the idea that the only success in life is material success. It is toward this end that many devote their very lives, giving up all genuine loves. When the loves of the world become the first loves in our life, all other loves are subservient. In short, we become a total slave to the objects of our environment.
We cannot allow ourselves to be swayed by these attacks. The Writings tell us that the hells which inspire the love of worldly things are relatively mild, when compared to such hells as inspire the love of self. Thus, while our genius is somewhat vulnerable to these loves, it is not impossible for us to desist from them, if we pray to the Lord for His help. But we must recognize the fact that these disorders are interior disorders, and they can only be corrected by striving to change our interior loves and attitudes toward worldly possessions. The state of the "rich man" is a state of mind or a state of love, rather than a financial state. In fact, the man who has little in the way of material things is often the most susceptible to the disordered state depicted by the "rich man." The man who has little can be most tempted to long for the material things he does not have, and thus be led to place worldly objects above the uses they perform.
When we are by ourselves, we should reflect and try to discover just what place worldly possessions hold in our lives. In those moments when we see the loves of the world occupying a prominent position in our mind it is our responsibility to desist from them. In such moments, we should consciously strive to place our thoughts on higher things: the uses these objects serve. We should, acknowledging our weaknesses, separate ourselves from those sources which seek to inspire and cultivate material loves as ends in themselves. And lastly, we should seek to co-operate with the Lord, to form new loves, loves to the Lord and the neighbor, striving to place these foremost in our minds.
The Lord has given us these teachings, not so our lives will become inhibited and devoid of pleasure, but so that we might find true happiness and see the true joys of creation. The objects of the natural world are the means or instruments whereby heavenly joys can be brought tangibly before our eyes. What a tragic thing it would be for a man to cling to these objects themselves, these dead instruments, and totally miss the joys that these things were intended to convey.
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It is for this reason that the Lord has revealed these truths, that we might open our minds to the joys of heaven. "If thou be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give unto the poor, and thou salt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me." Amen
LESSONS: Psalm 84; Matthew 19:16-2.6; Heaven and Hell 355.
LEGITIMATE AMBITION EDITOR 1977
It should be said to begin with that a man may acquire riches and accumulate wealth as far as opportunity is given, if it is not done by craft or fraud; that he may enjoy the delicacies of food and drink if he does not place his life therein; that he may have a palatial dwelling in accord with his condition, talk about the affairs of the world, and need not go about like a devotee with a sad and sorrowful countenance and drooping head, but may be joyful and cheerful; nor need he give his goods to the poor except so far as affection leads him. In a word, he may live outwardly precisely like a man of the world, and all this will be no obstacle to his entering heaven, provided that within himself he thinks about God as he ought, and acts sincerely and justly in respect to his neighbor. For a man is such as his affection and thought are, or such as his love and faith are, and from these all his outward acts derive their life, since acting is willing, and speaking is thinking, acting being from the will, and speaking from the thought. So the declarations in the Word that man will be judged according to his deeds and will be rewarded according to his works, mean that he will be judged and rewarded according to his thought and affection, which are the source of his deeds; for deeds are nothing apart from these, and are precisely such as these are. Heaven and Hell 358.
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SELF-EVIDENCING REASON OF LOVE Rev. GEORGE DECHARMS 1977
(Delivered to the Council of the Clergy, March, 1971)
The Prologue to the posthumous work by Swedenborg entitled The Canons of the New Church opens with these words: "At this day nothing else than the self-evidencing reason of love will establish the New Church."
What does this mean? Viewed from the standpoint of psychology, the "self-evidencing reason of love" is the mode whereby love spontaneously produces the light of understanding in the human mind. Without love the mind is in total darkness: but loves are indefinitely various, and as loves differ so do the lights which they produce. In general it may be said that good loves produce true light, while evil loves produce light that is false or illusive. By a "good" love is meant one that arises from a willing reception of the Lord's love as this inflows from heaven and inspires man with charity, or a love of use toward the neighbor. By an "evil" love, on the other hand, is meant a love of self and the world which rejects the inflowing love from the Lord, and inspires man with ill-will toward others, with contempt, jealousy, greed, cruelty, and hatred.
However, no love of any kind by itself can give light to the mind. Knowledges must first be acquired, because light becomes visible only as it is reflected from objects. This is the case with the light of the natural sun which can be seen only as it is reflected from the objects of nature. It is equally true of the light of the spiritual sun which is the light of love. This becomes visible only as it is reflected from knowledges, ideas, or thoughts, which are the objects of the mind. All such objects are derived from nature by means of physical sensation. Yet, of all the material objects in man's environment, only those penetrate the mind to produce consciousness to which one "pays attention", or in which one may be said to "take an interest." By this is meant that a love calls forth from the environment certain sense impressions while neglecting, or "passing by" all others. Those sense impressions which are thus selected and called forth, reflect the light of the love that inspires the mind, and renders it visible. They are perceived as knowledges, and these the love spontaneously orders to form a mental picture, or an "ideal" of the end or goal to which the love aspires, for every love strives for an attainment of some use, in which alone it finds its fulfillment and delight.
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This selection and ordering of sense impressions to produce an ideal toward which to strive is what is meant specifically by "the self-evidencing reason of love."
The light of understanding that results from this process derives its quality primarily from the love that inspires the mind; but this light is modified by the knowledges that alone render it visible. For this reason, even a good love, if reflected from knowledges that are false, or mistaken, will fail to produce a true light of understanding. On the other hand, an evil love will so distort and misinterpret genuine or accurate knowledges, as to lead to a false conclusion. In any case, the "self-evidencing reason of love" will produce no more than a fallible human opinion, which although it is constantly subject to error, will appear as altogether true and reliable.
How then can it be said that "nothing else than the self-evidencing reason of love will establish the New Church?" It cannot possibly mean the self-evidencing reason of any love, whether good or evil. Nor can it mean the self-evidencing reason even of a good love if this is reflected by knowledges that are false. In neither case will the mind be truly enlightened. The only possible reference must be to a glad reception of inflowing love from the Lord reflected from true knowledges concerning God, and heaven, and eternal life.
In the prologue to the Canons of the New Church the inflowing love from the Lord is not defined. What is obviously meant, however, is that Divine gift of love to which reference is made in number 9 of The True Christian Religion. There we are told that "there is a Divine influx into the souls of men" which produces "an internal dictate that there is a God, and that He is One." Because of this dictate, the number continues, "there is in all the world no nation possessing religion and sound reason that does not acknowledge a God, and that He is one." This is the case in spite of the fact that "there are some who deny God, and some who acknowledge nature as God, and some who worship more gods than one, and some who worship images as gods." (Ibid.) This is possible, we are told, because "such have blocked up the interiors of their reason or understanding with worldly corporeal things, thereby obliterating their first, or childhood idea concerning God." (Ibid.)
It has been noted by students who have explored the religious ideas of primitive people in various parts of the world, that, although they worship a number of gods, they invariably acknowledge one supreme deity who governs all the others. In this way Providence has preserved the idea of one God in spite of the idolatry into which men have fallen.
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The fact that there is a "dictate" which is impressed upon every one during infancy and childhood does not mean that any one is born with an innate idea of God. It only means that the idea of One God is spontaneously recognized as true when it is presented. Furthermore, the idea that God is a Man, that He is a Heavenly Father, all-powerful, all-wise, all-loving, and everywhere present is also recognized spontaneously as true, when this is learned from the Word. This is true of all children because of an influx from heaven, received by them in innocence, without question. Such an idea of God is therefore universal among men unless it has been perverted by false interpretations of the Word. In spite of such perversions, something of this idea remains with the simple in all religions. Nevertheless, erroneous opinions concerning God, and concerning the things of religion, appear to those who propound them as "the self-evidencing reason of love." How can it be said, therefore, that "At this day nothing else than the self-evidencing reason of love will establish the Church?"
The answer to this question becomes apparent when we consider what immediately follows in the Prologue. The reason there given is because "they (namely the former churches) have fallen." As a consequence, "The church at this day errs concerning God; it errs concerning faith; it errs concerning charity; and it knows nothing of eternal life; thus it is in thick darkness." It cannot be otherwise because "the whole of religion is founded upon the idea of God, and is according to it." If therefore there is no true idea of God, all things of religion fall into error. Those things concerning God which are not known at the present day, and that must be learned if a new and true understanding of religion is to be established, are then listed as follows:
1. It is not known concerning the Lord (Jesus Christ) that He is the only God, in Person and Essence, in whom is the Trinity.
2. It is not known that faith is nothing else than truth, and it is not known whether that which men call faith is truth or not.
3. It is not known what charity is, nor what evil and good are.
4. It is not known that eternal life is.
Furthermore it must be known that "only in the degree in which the truths of faith become of life do the truths of faith become of faith, and not the least more or less."
The Prologue then concludes with this statement: "in this Work is contained the whole theology of the New Church which is meant by the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse." It should be noted that "The Canons of the New Church" was written in 1769, obviously in preparation for the "True Christian Religion" which appeared in 1772. Although it was not published until after Swedenborg's death, it describes in detail:
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I. The True Nature of God.
II. The True Nature of Jesus Christ, and the Glorification of His Human.
III. The True Nature of Divine Redemption.
IV. The True Nature of the Holy Spirit.
V. The True Nature of the Divine Trinity in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We conclude, therefore, that these are the true knowledges concerning God which must be learned in order that the love of God, which is implanted in every one during infancy and childhood may lead in adult age to a truly religious life, the life of the New Christian Church, whereby the prophecy of "The Holy City New Jerusalem" given in the Apocalypse will be fulfilled.
As Bishop W. D. Pendleton has recently pointed out, not only the Canons of the New Church, not even The True Christian Religion, but the Heavenly Doctrine in its entirety, is "the self-evidencing reason" of the Lord's own love for the salvation of the whole human race. The spontaneous acknowledgment and love of God, such as exists with all infants and children, as reflected from the knowledges concerning God and Religion revealed in the Heavenly Doctrine, is the only means whereby a New and True Christian Church can be established with men at the present day. This is because, in no other way can "the self-evidencing reason of love" produce in the human mind the light of a true understanding as to the nature of God, and as to how He is to be truly worshiped in faith and in life.
LOCAL ASSEMBLY EDITOR 1977
A Local Assembly for the Dawson Creek-Cripple Creek area will be held June 23-26, Bishop Louis B. King presiding.
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FROM A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS Rev. FRANK S. ROSE 1977
(Delivered at Commencement Exercises, Academy of the New Church, June 5, 1976.)
Chancellor Pendleton, President King, Members of the Faculty and Corporation, Graduates, and other friends:
It feels really good to be here, and I do not mean just in this building; I mean in this particular spot in this building. Several years ago I remember coming to the Commencement Exercises and thinking how good it would be to be asked to give the address. At that time I was starting to think of the sort of things I might want to talk about if I were ever asked.
The experience of coming to Commencement is very moving and seems to teach a lot; it provides for a moment of reflection on some of the patterns and forms of life. It is a great experience to watch that long procession come in and to see all the different people as individuals, and to imagine what is going on in their hearts. Before the procession is fully formed it is a delight to see the senior girls around the campus in their beautiful white gowns, and to get some feeling for the excitement of this day. Then there is the fun of watching the graduates come across the wobbly platform one by one to get their diploma and wonder what that means to them, what is going on in their hearts. It is only a very small moment in the process of education, and yet these small moments have a way of summarizing important feelings.
One of the things people reflect on as they see the graduates coming up is that so many of them look like former classmates. If you want to get some idea of what that is like, look around at who is sitting near to you and imagine twenty or thirty years from now seeing variations on those faces and personalities coming up to get their diplomas. If you like, imagine another twenty or thirty years beyond that, only this time it is their grandchildren coming up. That might seem an impossible time scale but in this building right now there are people who are having that kind of experience. They are looking at their children and their grandchildren, and that is a tremendously satisfying experience. It gets you in touch with something of the larger sweep of life. It is a time for reflection, a time to pause in the midst of the hassle and hurry to think of what life is all about, like climbing a mountain and gaining a different vantage point, being able to look back in the valley and see all sorts of details fitting together in a way that you had not realized before.
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At a moment like this we can pause to think of patterns and developments of life, and also reflect on what the things are that are persistently good and beautiful, what the things are that are especially important and powerful. Here today we have people with memories going back before the birth of the graduates, people who have actually talked to the founders of the Academy, people who have come from various parts of the world. Here we have a collection in this slice of time of an enormous variety of states and feelings and memories. The past is very much alive in this present moment and it involves all sorts of implications for the future.
One of the things that is significant about the graduation process is that it represents the accomplishment of a goal. Today we are celebrating the fulfillment of personal ambitions and desires. It is satisfying to accomplish something and this feeling becomes stronger according to the amount of energy, love and sheer time involved to bring that goal to completion. I am wondering what these diplomas will mean to you: Some of you as you come forward will be immensely proud, and the pride that you are feeling is nothing compared to the pride that is out there in the people watching you. Those who come for a college degree realize that this represents even more work and longer-range goals. I think particularly of you theologues finally emerging from your book-filled chambers, trembling perhaps at the enormous changes that are going to come in your life in just a few short weeks. It is going to be very different when you are actually in the work of the priesthood, and I think it is a challenge that you will accept with tremendous joy.
Well, if attaining these goals means something to you graduates, think what it means to the faculty and corporation and to other people who are interested in this great use! Think of the time scale they are operating under, the number of graduations they have experienced! There are people here who have given their whole life to New Church education and who think not only of this particular moment, but of what the implications are in this moment to the future of the church and to your future as individuals. You must know by now that these people care about you. They care what has happened to you here at the Academy and they care what will happen to you five or ten or twenty years from now. They are more aware of the sweep of time than you are. They are more aware of the sort of things that happen in people's lives. They realize that people make mistakes. They are hoping that the mistakes you make will not be too painful or too costly, and that the hurts you suffer in your life will be easily healed.
It feels especially good to me to be here today because I know so many of you personally.
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I have great pride in seeing you. And of course there is a special joy in having a daughter graduating from the Girls' School. To her, I want to say that it means a lot to me to see you here today. We have missed you. But we know that you have received things at the Academy that we could not have given you at home. (It will be nice to have you back again.)
I still think of myself as a young person, of course, although I am beginning to take pride in my advancing years. I search for the grey hairs and other tell-tale signs of maturity. I stand before you partly because I am smarter than some of you. Of course that implies that I am dumber than the rest of you! I have lost something that I had when I was your age. I am not as quick as I was. In some ways I know less than I did when I was in high school or college. Life keeps providing more questions than it does answers. And the gap between what I know-or what I think I know-and what I have yet to learn seems to be growing larger and not smaller. But there are things that have become increasingly clear and I would like to talk about a few of these.
There is a oneness to life. There is a unity and my perception of that unity seems to grow stronger as time passes.
Life is good, and it seems to be more interesting and more enjoyable every year. For one thing it is a relief to have certain questions settled-questions which are perhaps very unsettling to some of you, like who are you going to marry or what your career is going to be. Those questions are resolved for me, although I am finding in my career that I have to rethink continually what my main goals are-what are the things on which I want to focus my energies. In our marriage we find the continual challenge of rediscovering the relationship and rebuilding.
I have found that life includes a good deal of pain and suffering. Although I enjoy pleasure, I find that pain is an excellent teacher. For one thing, by experiencing burdens and by being aware of the burdens of others, we somehow seem to come closer to each other, and that is good. The Lord has a way of blessing us in the midst of sorrow and teaching things which simply cannot be learned in the midst of apparent success. One of my deepest longings is to see how we can come to understand each other better and relieve one another's burdens.
I have grown to have an increasing respect for experience. The Word uplifts me and carries my thoughts into the heavens. My body keeps me in touch with the earth and with the world. And I find that I understand the Word best when I see the connections between its sublime teachings and human experience. It is inspiring to see how the Divine Wisdom of the Word can affect people and touch people in their daily life.
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As I grow older I find that I am more aware of how I need people, and how the Lord teaches me and touches me through others. At times I can see the Lord in them, and I have never met a person who did not have qualities that I could respect and value. Remember the feeling that some people are cool and some just are not cool? Now I find that some of the un-cool people have most beautiful qualities and that the Lord is present somehow in every one of us. I especially need the one person who has given herself to me completely, and I am finding that marriage exceeds my expectations as a source of deep joy and peace. I marvel at the Lord's ability to bless me through that beautiful friendship.
People, events and things are all interconnected. Life is organic. We are all a part of each other. We are constantly affecting each other for good or ill and we are intended to serve each other as parts of the grand man. There is a flow in life that affects us all. At times we feel that in our struggles we are dealing with forces far beyond our power to control. These forces include the individual choices of men and women making decisions as if they were alone, and yet these decisions affect others in very powerful and significant ways. The great force within this flow of human events is the force of the Lord's own power.
If there is one belief that is strongest among all those which I accept now. It is that the Lord is really here, that He has come again, that His love can actually move us and His light can enlighten us. It is possible to see the workings of Providence, not in the present, but in moments in the past that seem to speak very clearly of His care and His love and wisdom. He blesses us along the way. And at times He opens our minds to see farther and understand deeper than we ever did before.
It is my hope, Graduates, that the Lord will lead you to enjoy the feeling of warmth that comes from being loved and respected by others; the sense of worth that comes from feeling that you have something to give, the joy of serving, the security of knowing that the infinite God who created the universe not only created you but cares about you, your present happiness and your eternal welfare. Whatever sense of accomplishment today's ceremony gives you, I would love to see you move on to other goals and other achievements,-to have you come more and more into the harmony and order of life, and in that, experience some of the deep joys of peace and love that say in most convincing ways that the Lord Jesus Christ is with us now. I would love to see you moved to preach this gospel to others so that the promise of the kingdom of the Lord on earth may become more and more a reality to be understood and to be experienced by an increasing number of people in their daily lives, and that you yourselves may come more and more to know what it is like to be part of the kingdom of God.
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MODERN SEARCH FOR THE SPIRIT Rev. HORAND K. GUTFELDT 1977
In January 1977, a noteworthy event took place in California: the entering of a new dimension into the realm of modern science. In the framework of a modern university, a symposium with a number of meetings and series of lectures was held and attracted a wide range of attention. The J. F. Kennedy university in Orinda had invited a galaxy of national experts to speak to the topic, "Psi-Search"-or investigations in the field of non-material or spiritual energy.
Not too long ago, this was confined only to superstitious mediumism, and it would have been unthinkable for any university to sponsor such a series. Even a mentioning of parapsychology in a serious vein could have discredited a scholar for life. Any belief in non-material forces or a spiritual reality was termed a backsliding into medieval superstition. One can see parallels to the events in the life of Emanuel Swedenborg, who was labeled insane by some of his contemporaries, as soon as his contacts with the other world became known.
Still, the majority of today's scholars acknowledge only materialism and only material causes are called "scientific." Even in psychology, a mere mentioning of "the soul" or spiritual processes is generally rejected as an anathema. Generally, shades of a materialistic behaviorism are leading the field in the United States today-not so different from the dialectic materialism beyond the Iron Curtain. Even parts of theology are dominated by a chiefly historical approach, which neglects experience and demythologizes the foundation of Christian belief, the Bible or the Word.
It is all the more refreshing to visit an institution that has dared to turn against the prevalent tide, offering courses in parapsychology, exploring the spiritual aspects of healing and counseling, possible contacts through ESP and many others. The Spirit, which had become homeless in Academe, has found a small place to be accepted. A number of outstanding scholars explored the relationship of Psi and Science, of Psi and Society, and Psi in relation to religious spirituality, An outstanding physicist, Prof. Joseph H. Rush (emeritus, formerly involved with the development of Atomic Energy) spoke on "Parapsychology and Physical Science"; Prof. Dr. J. B. Rhine, the pioneer of the breakthrough of Psi as a science, gave an impressive and touching testimony about the urging he had felt in the beginning of his studies of theology to oppose the overwhelming flood of materialism in modern science, founding a research center for the spiritual nature of man.
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The ". . . reality and value of psychic experience . . ." were dealt with in an objective way in a series of public meetings during the middle of January. Spiritual healing, spiritual communication, transcendent experiences are being explored with increasing openness. It is no longer necessary to explain away what had been described in the Gospels, where experiences of the spirit had to fall under "demythologization."
The concept of Psi may need a few words of explanation: Psi stands for the inferred explanation of phenomena which defy the causal concepts of modern science: Extrasensory perception, (ESE) psychokinesis (moving of material substances through spiritual energy); clairvoyance (perception of events without sense impressions) and prophecy or information about future processes. This may appear abstract, yet there are many instances that do not permit any other explanation; and the probability of chance is often extremely low. Some can be repeated in the laboratory; some are incidental, permitted by Providence, to point to another reality.
Dr. Rhine brought up the questions: is man something more than can be explained physically? What is the place of the freedom of the will? What is the contribution of the great religions to this interpretation? Representatives of the major religions spoke to this topic, and agreed that death and life gain a different perspective, wherever a spiritual reality is accepted.
From a New Church viewpoint, we hardly dare to rejoice. When will the time come, when the nature and extent of spiritual reality and revelation can be discussed everywhere in a scholarly free atmosphere, when spiritual influx may be accepted and explored, when the spiritual nature of man is something that is taken out of the realm of tradition and superstition and brought before the public eye to assert its unquestionable claim of truth?
Two important areas are biology and medicine. Discarding the belief that blind material forces of chance and evolution are supposed to be the only ones to have developed life, in medicine an acknowledgment of the psychosomatic nature of health and disease, of spiritual causation and healing can mean a break with the mechanical therapies that neglect the soul.
A new dimension of reality is moving out of the hiding place, and it is designed to give a new dignity to human beings and to the soul, no more to be regarded as accidental accumulations of protein, but as living, spiritual, organic entities, spiritual bodies with a purpose beyond this world.
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Of course, on this road there are a number of concerns. We must avoid a return of the superstition and magic which penetrated the medieval attitudes on the subject, and the theurgy of 19th century mediumism. A continuous effort was evident during this conference to avoid these pitfalls, and to search in an open-minded and yet critical way.
It is our hope that the leading and pioneering contribution of the New Church will some time be received in a more open spirit. Here we have essential insights to the outlook of a new age-an age of truth and love, where the dark pseudoscientific materialism of the beginning of the scientific age may appear as a superstition of the past, and where the spiritual dimension may become opened-not only in theory, but in living experience of regeneration and growth in love.
HUMAN SPIRIT EDITOR 1977
Man's mind is his spirit, and the spirit is the man, while the body is an external by means of which the mind or spirit feels and acts in its world. That man's mind is his spirit, and that the spirit is the man, can hardly enter the faith of those who have supposed the spirit to be wind, and the soul to be an airy something like breath breathed out from the lungs. For they say, How can the spirit, wizen it is spirit, be the man, and how can the soul, when it is soul, be the man? They think in the same way of God because He is called a Spirit. This idea of the spirit and the soul has come from the fact that spirit and wind in some languages are the same word; also, that when a man dies, he is said to give up the ghost or spirit; also, that life returns, after suffocation or swooning, when the spirit or breath of the lungs comes back. Because in these cases nothing but the breath or air is perceived, it is concluded from the eye and bodily sense that the spirit and soul of man after death is not the man. From this corporeal conclusion about the spirit and soul, various hypotheses have arisen, and these have given birth to a belief that man after death does not become a man until the day of the last judgment, and that meanwhile his spirit remains somewhere or other awaiting reunion with the body, according to what has been shown in the "Continuation concerning the Last Judgment." 32-38. Because man's mind is his spirit, the angels, who also are spirits, are called minds. Divine Love and Wisdom 386.
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ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE GENERAL CHURCH VARIOUS 1977
SECRETARY
During September 1975, through August 1976, one hundred and thirty members were received into the General Church. Three resigned from the church. Six were dropped from the roll. Fifty-two deaths were reported. On September 1, 1976, the roll contained three thousand four hundred fifty-eight names.
Membership, September 1, 1975 3,389
(U.S.A.-2,243, Other Countries-1,146)
New Members (Cert. 6154-6283) 130
(U.S.A.-88, Other Countries-42)
Deaths reported 52
(U.S.A.-36, Other Countries-16)
Resignations 3
(U.S.A.-3, Other Countries-0)
Dropped from Roll 6
(U.S.A.-2, Other Countries-4)
Losses 61
(U.S.A.-41, Other Countries-20)
Net Gain during September 1975, through August 1976 69
(U.S.A.-47, Other Countries-22)
Membership, September 1, 1976 3,458
(U.S.A.-2.290, Other Countries-1,168)
Arizona: Tucson
Mrs. Faye (Anderson) Cella
Mr. Louis Lincoln McCoy
Arkansas: Little Rock
Mrs. Stephen A. Waginor (Jennifer Lynch)
California: Davis
Miss Diane Bell Davis
California: Palo Alto
Miss Barbara Childs Pendleton
California: Redondo Beach
Mr. Carl Durban Odhner
Mr. Kenneth Martin Rumrill
Mrs. Kenneth Martin Rumrill (Janice Lynne Mitchler)
California: Van Nuys
Miss Kim Margaret Campbell
Colorado: Loveland
Mr. Kent Klippenstein
Mrs. Kent Klippenstein (Carol Elaine Carlisle)
Florida: Delray Beach
Mrs. W. B. Jones (Catharine E. Morgan)
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Florida: Fort Lauderdale
Mr. John Douglas Howard
Florida: Lake Helen
Mr. Brent H. Morris
Mrs. Brent H. Morris (Lynne Frazee)
Florida: Miramar
Mr. William Henry White
Georgia: Atlanta
Mr. William Randolph Warley
Illinois: Glenview
Miss Vina Luelle Caldwell
Mr. Eliot Walter Cranch
Mr. Alan R. Fuller
Mr. Mark Junge
Miss Susan Frances Lee
Mr. Russell Hugh Rose
Mrs. Russell Hugh Rose (Kerry Jane Heilman)
Mr. Joel Edmund Smith
Miss Kim Umberger
Miss Susan Margaret Umberger
Maryland: Baltimore
Mr. Charles Edward Doering
Miss Sarah Lynne Schnarr
Mr. Stewart Dean Smith
Michigan: Troy
Mr. Walter Edward Orthwein, III
Mrs. Walter Edward Orthwein, III (Kathleen Ann Williams)
Missouri: Columbia
Mrs. O. T. Coleman (Nadine Mills)
New Jersey: Andover
Mrs. Laurence H. Kaufman (Susan Ebert)
New York: Glenmont
Miss Freya Odhner
Ohio: Lakewood
Miss Lauren Jean Glenn Alden
Pennsylvania: Bryn Athyn
Mr. Mark Edward Alden
Mr. Eric Hugh Carswell
Mr. Alonzo McDaniel Echols, III
Miss Sheila Anne Fitzpatrick
Mr. Mark Alvin Gruber
Mrs. Mary Jane (Gucken) Hill
Mr. Kim Junge
Miss Laurie McQueen
Miss Roxanne McQueen
Mr. Laird Pitcairn Pendleton
Mr. Michael Lowrie Pendleton
Mrs. Michael Lowrie Pendleton (Lynne Horigan)
Mr. Peter Searle Rhodes
Mrs. Peter Searle Rhodes (Roxanne Howard)
Mr. Edward Acton Simons
Miss Theresa Louise Smith
Mr. Justin Cary Soderberg
Miss Loren Gay Soneson
Mr. Louis Daniel Synnestvedt
Miss Helga Roslyn Taylor
Miss Maret Evelyn Taylor
Miss Edith van Zyverden
Mrs. Malcolm Steen Walter (Wendy King)
Mr. Michael Leon Woods
Mrs. Michael Leon Woods (Beth Ann Schnarr)
Miss Jodi Zeitz
Pennsylvania: Erie
Mr. Dennis Eugene Woodworth
Mrs. Dennis Eugene Woodworth (Katrina Martha Wilder)
Pennsylvania: Huntingdon Valley
Miss Jill Noelle Asplundh
Miss Beverly Jean David
Miss Lois Tenley David
Mr. Garth Glenn
Miss Kathleen Glenn
Miss Diane Pitcairn
Miss Lynn Pitcairn
Pennsylvania: Kennett Square
Mr. Bryce Reade Genzlinger
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Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh
Miss Miriam Alden
Miss Helen L. Aye
Pennsylvania: Philadelphia
Mrs. Dennis Jones (Carol Patricia Carey)
Mr. John Allen Muthe
Miss Joan Bea Steen
Mr. Ivan Wille
Mrs. Ivan Wille (Elizabeth Mary Murray)
Pennsylvania: Rydal
Mrs. Edwin Moulton Weeks (Ruth Elizabeth Whittaker)
Pennsylvania: Warminster
Mr. Hans Ulrich Schoenberger
Mrs. Hans Ulrich Schoenberger (Jeri Irene Roschman)
Texas: Fort Worth
Mr. Dalton Wade Lewis
Texas: Lewisville
Mr. Alan Norbert Doering
Virginia: Staunton
Mr. Richard Brent Stroemple
Mrs. Richard Brent Stroemple (Antoinette Ann Scarlino)
West Virginia: Elkins
Mr. John Alan Abele
CANADA
British Columbia: Dawson Creek
Mr. Marvin Daniel Friesen
Mr. Juste Peter Hendricks
Mrs. Juste Peter Hendricks (Beverley Catherine Jane Dickson)
British Columbia: North Vancouver
Mr. Philip James Edwards
Ontario: Islington
Miss Susan Jane Anderson
Mr. Stephen Howard Morley
Mr. Wayne Parker
Ontario: Kitchener
Mr. Paul George Hill
Mr. Daniel Wayne Knechtel
Mrs. Edgar Kubert (Shirley Dian Kubert)
Mrs. Theodore Edward Kuhl (Patricia Valerie McNichol)
Mr. Christopher Paul Lermitte
Mrs. Christopher Paul Lermitte (Adele Nelson)
Mr. Peter Jay Lermitte
Mr. Mario John Maciaczyk
Ontatio: Mississauga
Miss Candace Louise Frazee
Miss Jill Margaret Frazee
Ontario: Parry Sound
Miss Anne Marie Jutras
Mr. Gerard Raymond Jutras
Ontario: Rexdale
Miss Amanda Jane Orr
Ontario: Toronto
Mr. James Hugh Swalm
Ontario: Waterdown
Mr. Robert James Miller
EUROPE
England: Essex
Mrs. Steven John Addy (Brenda Mary Appleton)
Mr. Christopher Martin Bowyer
Miss Mary Hilda Rose
Mrs. Roman Szymbra (Joan May Reynolds)
Norway: Oateras
Miss Anne Fyhn
Mr. Ola Ingeborgt Misvar
Sweden: Kolmarden
Mrs. Inga Britta Stahl
SOUTH AFRICA
Natal: Durban
Miss Marilyn Yvonne Buss
Mr. Clive Leonard Buss
Miss Llyn Moira Gibson
Natal: Pinetown
Mrs. Patrick Andrew Percy Mayer (Gillian Simons)
SOUTH AMERICA
Brazil: Rio de Janeiro
Mr. Geraldo Campos de Roure
Mrs. Geraldo Campos de Roure (Sheila Napier Gracie Nascimento Aimers)
Miss Hermengarda Patricia de Mello Santoro
Miss Norma Beatriz de Mello Santoro
NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand: Auckland
Miss Jennifer Ray Bartle
Mrs. Stephen John Mills (Nancy Synnestvedt)
DEATHS
Acton, The Right Rev. Elmo Carman, December 25, 1975, Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania (75)
Alden, Mr. Karl Richardson, Jr., July 21, 1976, Abington, Pennsylvania (56)
Alden, Mr. Theodore Starkey, January 23, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (58)
Anderson, Mrs. Reginald S. (Olive M. Bellinger), September 25, 1975, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (87)
Asplundh, Miss Alethe, April 12, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (78).
Boothroyd, Mrs. Russell B. (Elsie C. Rolf), October 31, 1975, Escondido, California (88)
Buche, Mrs. Francois (Helene Berthe Nicolet), February 16, 1976, Lutry, Switzerland (86)
Caldwell, Mr. John Pendleton, May 18, 1976, Columbia, Maryland (68).
Campbell, Mrs. Noah B. (Alma Waelchli), January 7, 1976, Allentown, Pennsylvania (88)
Cowood, Mrs. Thomas (Loretta Clipper), January 25, 1976, Erie, Pennsylvania (65)
Cracraft, Mrs. Charles Herbert (Grace Douglas Wright), March 7, 1976, Wilmington, Illinois (82)
Craigie, Miss Vera, July 5, 1976, Thornhill, Ontario, Canada (80)
Cranch, Mr. Eliot Appleton, September 20, 1975, Glendale, California (68)
David, Mrs. L. W. T. (Gladys Theora Kuhl), December 19, 1975, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (15)
Davis, Mr. Edward Armstrong, July 21, 1976, Long Beach, California (61)
Dawson, Mr. Geoffrey Pell, May 4, 1976, London, England (53)
de Charms, Mrs. George (Fedelia Asplundh), March 16, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (84)
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Doering, Mr. Theodore Henry, June 3, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (74)
Gailliard, Mr. Jean-Jacques, April 17, 1976, Brussels, Belgium (86)
Genzlinger, Mr. Gustav, February 21, 1976, Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania (82)
Glenn, Mr. Theodore Null, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, March 7, 1976 (74)
Haines, Mrs. Oliver Sloan (Amena Pendleton), January 8, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (95)
Heilman, Mrs. Otho W. (Greta Odhner), September 21, 1975, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (78)
Heinrichs, Miss Barbara, September 14, 1975, Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada (74)
Hilldale, Mrs. Robert (Elsa Mueller), September 17, 1975, Sarver, Pennsylvania (87)
Horigan, Mrs. Walter L. (Celia Evangeline Synnestvedt), May 13, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (80).
Howard, Mr. Wilfred Horace, February 12, 1976, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania (89)
Johns, Mr. Hyland Richter, July 11, 1976, Richboro, Pennsylvania (87)
Junge, Mrs. Ralph Doering (Carol Childs), Glenview, Illinois (49)
Klein, Mr. Harald Immanuel, May 18, 1976, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania (71)
Kuhl, Miss Dorothyelia, July 2, 1976, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (74)
Lange, Mr. Warren Frederick, April 3, 1976, Langhorne, Pennsylvania (65)
Lewin, Mrs. Walter Ernest (Kate Cooper), date unknown, England.
Lindsay, Mr. David P., Jr., October 4, 1975, Battle Creek, Michigan (52)
Lumsden, Mr. Frederick Hubert David, October 17, 1976, Durban, Natal, Rep. S. Africa (63)
Lumsden, Miss Laura Alice Isobel, date unknown, Durban, Natal, Rep. S. Africa (49)
McGinn, Mrs. Zofia Kowalska, date unknown, Minnesota.
Nakagawa, Mr. Noriyuki, 1975, India (56)
Nillsson, Mrs. Karl Bengt T. (Gertie Anna-Greta Lunden), 1974, Sweden (52) DELAYED REPORT
Odhner, Mrs. Ray (Lina Synnestvedt), October 16, 1976, Santa Cruz, California (69)
Pitcairn, Mr. Nathan, May 9, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (64)
Reichenbach, Mrs. Charles A. (Verna Price), December 12, 1975, Southampton, Long Island, New York (81)
Rennels, Mrs. Viola Wolcott, January 20, 1976, Hatboro, Pennsylvania (79)
Ridgway, Mrs. Robert Melville (Amelia Laura Attersoll), Pietermaritzburg, Natal, Rep. South Africa (90)
Schoenberger, Mr. Homer, August 8, 1976, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (85)
Scott, Mr. George Hachborn, December 13, 1975, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (75)
Smith, Mrs. Winfred (Margaret Hamilton Fuller), July 28, 1976, Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania (79)
Synnestvedt, Mrs. Robert E. (Margaret Elizabeth Tyler), September 9, 1976, Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania (76)
Tebelius, Mr. Bo Georg, February 2, 1976, Uppsala, Sweden (70)
Walter, Mr. John, Sr., January 26, 1976, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (95)
Webster, Mrs. Ronald (Neva Jeanette Churchill), February 17, 1976, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (82)
Witbaard, Mr. Nun Freerk, date unknown, The Hague
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RESIGNATIONS
Campbell, Miss Mary Anna, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Gurney, Mrs. Paula Myers, Trotwood, Ohio
Synnestvedt, Miss Suzanne, Portland, Maine
DROPPED FROM THE ROLL
Boyesen, Mr. Rune T., Sweden
Daum, Mr. Ronald Edwin, U. S. A.
de Padua, Sr. Adiel Correa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
de Padua, Sr. Ariel Correa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Johnson, Mrs. Esther Marie (Soneson), U. S. A.
Taveria, Snra. Guilherme, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
CORPORATION MEMBERSHIP
During the year 1976 the number of persons comprising the membership of the Corporation increased to 431. The changes in membership consisted of:
25 New Members:
Bach, Knud Kistner, Donald O.
Bau-Madsen, Arne Kline, Thomas L.
Boyesen, Ragnar Lindsay, John G.
Brooks, Richard A. McCardell, Willard B., Jr.
Carlson, Mark Reuter, Bruce A.
Clifford, William H., III Sandstrom, Erik E.
Daly, Jean Schnarr, Maurice G.
Elphick, Frederick Charles Schoenberger, Paul M.
Fornander, Ulf Steu Smith, James Spencer
Frazier, Thomas R. Synnestvedt, Peter Nilen
Genzlinger, Robert Barry Walton, Don A.
Haring, William A. Waters, Philip Andrew
Kelly, George M.
9 Deaths of Members:
Alden, Theodore S. Johns, Hyland R.
Doering, Theodore H. Pitcairn, Nathan
Genzlinger, Gustav Schoenberger, Homer
Glenn, Theodore N. Wells, Arthur B.
Howard, Wilfred H.
1 Resignation of Member: Raymond, John R.
1 Death of Member Not Reported on 12/31/75 Report: Acton, Elmo C.
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DIRECTORS
The By-Laws of the Corporation provide for election of thirty directors, ten of whom are elected each year for terms of three years. The board presently consists of thirty directors. At the 1976 Annual Meeting ten directors were elected for terms expiring in 1979, and one director was elected for a term of one year, expiring in 1977, to fill the unexpired term of Gordon C. Morey. The present directors, with the dates their terms expire, are as follows:
1978 Asplundh, E. Boyd 1979 Morley, H. Keith
1977 Asplundh, Robert H. 1978 Pendleton, Willard D.
1979 Brickman, Theodore W., Jr. 1979 Pitcairn, Garth
1977 Bruser, Henry B., Jr. 1977 Pitcairn, Stephen
1978 Buick, William W. 1979 Rose, John W.
1979 Childs, Alan D. 1977 Sellner, Jerome V.
1978 Cooper, Geoffrey 1978 Simons, S. Brian
1979 Elder, Bruce E. 1978 Smith, B. Dean
1979 Gyllenhaal, Leonard E. 1978 Smith, Gordon B.
1977 Hill, Stanley D. 1977 Smith, Robert A.
1979 Hyatt, Wynne S. 1978 Umberger, Alfred A.
1977 King, Louis B. 1979 Walter, Robert E.
1979 Lindsay, Alexander H. 1977 Williamson, Walter L.
1978 Mansfield, Willard R. 1977 Wyncoll, John H.
1978 Merrell Robert D. 1977 Zecher, Robert F.
Lifetime honorary member of the board: de Charms, George
OFFICERS
The corporation has five officers, each of whom is elected yearly for a term of one year. Those elected at the board meeting of March 5, 1976 were:
President Pendleton, Willard D.
Vice President King, Louis B.
Secretary Pitcairn, Stephen
Treasurer Gyllenhaal, Leonard E.
Controller Fuller, Bruce A.
CORPORATION MEETINGS
The 1976 Annual Corporation meeting was held at Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, on March 5, this being the only corporation meeting held during the year. The President, Bishop Pendleton, presided, and there were 74 members in attendance. Reports were received from the Nominating Committee, from Bruce Fuller for the Treasurer, the Secretary, and the election for directors was held.
Jerome V. Sellner, Chairman of a special committee appointed to study the procedures for nomination and election to the board of directors, gave a detailed report. He stated that a previous committee had recommended at the 1975 Annual Meeting that the Nominating Committee communicate with major Church centers for advice on prospective nominees and that a means should be devised to give wider participation by the membership in elections.
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Mr. Sellner said that his committee recommends that the Nominating Committee by written communication solicit names and biographical data, including business and professional accomplishments, and Church activities from the treasurer of local elected governing bodies of the General Church societies and also from the pastor. Further, an announcement should be placed in the New Church Life by the Nominating Committee seeking counsel and advice on prospective nominees.
Mr. Sellner said that the most effective way of getting wider participation in elections was through balloting by mail and his committee recommended that a balloting by mail program be implemented. After discussion, the President was asked to appoint a committee to study all of the legal, mechanical, and other problems involved in adopting a system of balloting by mail and report at the 1977 Annual Meeting.
BOARD MEETINGS
The Board of Directors held four meetings during 1976, the president presiding at all of them. The average attendance of directors was 22 with a maximum of 26 and a minimum of 18.
The regular Board of Directors meeting and the organization meeting of the board were held in March, followed later in the year by board meetings in May and October.
In March, the Board of Directors by resolution expressed its unanimous accord with the actions of the Council of the Clergy in nominating Bishop Louis Blair King as the Bishop of the General Church of the New Jerusalem and directed that the Secretary convey this action to the Joint Council.
Mr. Leonard Gyllenhaal advised the board that Mrs. Viola Wolcott Rennels had directed by her Will that her home known as the "Inn Annex" and a small sum of money be given to the General Church. The board expressed its appreciation of the gift and, after deliberations, concluded that the house should be demolished and a suitable home erected for Bishop King. Under the tentative arrangement, Bishop King would become the owner of the home with the General Church having a buy-back or some other type of an agreement whereby future Church use of the property could be continued.
During 1975, the Finance Committee did a great deal of work developing a Financial Plan for General Church Development and Mr. Gyllenhaal presented the final plan to the directors at the March meeting. The plan consolidates the various loans and forms of financing by the General Church to Societies for the construction and enlargement of Church and school buildings as well as New Church community development. The plan was approved and the Finance Committee was instructed to establish detailed guidelines for the operation of the plan and the development fund within the plan.
The Pension Committee reported that the Pension Fund was adequately funded to enable a 15% increase in pension payments to present pensioners and widows of pensioners. The directors approved this increase in light of the rise in the cost of living and changes made by the I.R.S. which adversely affected some of the Church pensioners. The Pension Committee further reported that a study was being made by an outside firm to determine if the Fund was adequately funded for the foreseeable future and study the possibility of combining the General Church and the Academy Pension Funds as a cost and time saving measure.
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The Salary Committee under the Chairmanship of Theodore W. Brickman, recommended specific increases in base salaries and changes in the increments for both the teachers and ministers salary scales. These recommendations were approved by the board.
The directors approved the South African Mission Budget for 1976, which showed a marked decrease due to the devaluation of their currency. A difficult matter of housing for the Superintendent was discussed at several meetings and the Finance Committee was given the authority to take the necessary action to resolve the problem. An in-depth study of the Mission effort including the effect of the present and future South African political climate was suggested.
The Finance Committee recommended, and the directors approved, grants to Societies for support of additional teachers and, in one case, an assistant pastor. The directors further studied and approved certain structural changes in the societies' schools and in the Midwestern District.
Acting under the guidelines of the new Development Plan, the directors approved qualified financial assistance to the Detroit Society to enable them to proceed with their New Church development plans and negotiations for a site. The Detroit development plans were studied in detail by the Finance Committee which, in addition, made several site inspections.
After the opening of the November meeting, Bishop Pendleton said that with the change in the Executive Bishop of the General Church, unincorporated, it was proper that the Board of Directors receive his resignation as President of the Corporation. After formally submitting his resignation, Bishop Pendleton instructed the board that nominations were open to fill the vacancy of the President. Bishop Louis B. King was nominated as President, and, there being no other nominations, the board proceeded to the unanimous election of Bishop Louis B. King as President of the Corporation. The board then proceeded to the unanimous election of Bishop Willard D. Pendleton as Vice President of the Corporation.
Bishop King stated that in recognition and appreciation of the Right Reverend Willard D. Pendleton's devoted and creative leadership as the Bishop of the General Church of the New Jerusalem during the years 1962-1916, the title of Bishop Emeritus should be conferred upon him. The Board of Directors was unanimous in conferring upon Bishop Pendleton the title of Bishop Emeritus.
The board approved necessary mortgages and automobile loans to certain ministers and other routine financial matters were considered.
Reports were received from the Standing Committees with the necessary action being taken.
Respectfully submitted,
STEPHEN PITCAIRN,
Secretary
TREASURER
Our principal undertaking last year was devoted to converting the corporation's financial operations to a new system of accounting and reporting. The primary purpose of this conversion was to comply with new standards developed recently for nonprofit organizations, and to prepare our accounts for computerization in the near future.
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The change, of course, had no effect on the outcome, although it did result in a number of changes in fund categories and nomenclature. Hopefully, the new format will report more accurately the financial performance of the corporation, and certainly it involves greater detail and disclosure. Some of these changes are reflected in the accompanying Statements of Financial Condition and General Fund Revenues, Expenditures, and Transfers.
As can be seen from the statements, 1976 was another in a long succession of good years financially for the corporation. Revenues increased by $42,700, or 6.5%, to a new high of $698,485.
By reason of investment policy and continuing large gifts to capital, endowment income registered the largest gain. There was, however, a gratifying increase of nearly $10,000 in direct contributions to operating income. The following is an analysis of the source of contributions:
Total operating expenditures for the year jumped a substantial 14.8% to a total of $647,404. This was, however, due largely to the incredibly high cost of nearly $60,000 to move ten ministers and their families, two of them halfway around the world. This was partly offset by a transfer of $15,000 from the moving reserve.
Last year 42%0 of the budget, or $231,000, was allocated to twenty-two societies and districts throughout the Church to help meet the minimum requirement of the General Church Salary Plan. While this involves increasingly complex financial transactions, particularly in areas where currencies are continually fluctuating, it resulted in a savings to the corporation.
In spite of the fact that salary costs were increased by more than 7% on the average, increased support on the local level not only offset the increase but actually reduced corporation requirements by $9,600 less than the previous year.
The final result, after transferring $15,000 from the Reserve for Moving and $14,345 from the Assembly and Travel Reserve, was a surplus that enabled the transfer of $60,000 to the new Development Fund, $5,000 to a special Travel Reserve for 1977, and the addition of $15,400 to the General Fund balance. Substantial increases in other funds resulted from the following gifts and bequests to capital:
Pitcairn Family Members $ 81,315
Pitcairn Foundations 240,085
Bequests-Elsie Boothroyd 20,265
Charlotte Markussen 3,000
Viola Wolcott 18,750
$363,415
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There were, of course, many other aspects of the year's fiscal activities, two of which are worthy of note:
(1) During the year a professional firm was retained in conjunction with the Academy to make an actuarial study of the Pension Fund. The result was the disclosure of a substantial actuarial liability that will have to be made up in the years ahead. It should be stressed, however, that this in no way jeopardizes our Pension program which is guaranteed by the total financial strength of the corporation.
(2) The new Development Fund established on January 1, 1976 gained prominence during the year. Administered by the Finance Committee, it received substantial funds from transfers and contributions, and assumed a number of commitments important to the growth of the church.
For next year, 1977, the pattern looks pretty much the same. With the new emphasis on Translation and Church Extension, the budget will continue upward, although reduced moving expense should slow the pace. Once again revenues will exceed expenditures and we will be able to meet all of our financial commitments.
Respectfully submitted,
LEONARD E. GYLLENHAAL,
Treasurer
STATEMENT OF GENERAL FUND REVENUES, EXPENDITURES, AND TRANSFERS
Years Ending December 31, 1976 and 1975
1976 1975
Amount Percent Amount Percent
REVENUES
Gifts and Grants
Regular $161,199 $51,416
Special 11,000 9,894
TOTAL 172,199 25% 161,310 25%
Endowment Income 477,520 68 441,854 67
Sales and Services
New Church Life 6,692 1 6,438 1
Printing and Publishing 22,948 3 27,881 4
Other 19,126 3 18,285 3
TOTAL REVENUES $698,485 100% $655,768 100%
Educational Services
Salaries 73,644 70,006
Pension Plan 29,253 27,620
S. African Mission
Expenditures 42,368 44,794
Pension Plan 1,342 1,285
TOTAL 274,852 42% 286,837 51%
Facilities 37,360 6 34,440 6
Services and Information
New Church Life 29,592 29,164
Other Printing and Publishing 53,208 51,569
Moving 59,686 2,967
Travel-Mtgs. and Assembly 14,345 5,551
Miscellaneous 15,472 11,795
TOTAL SERVICES and INFORMATION 172,303 27 101,046 18
Administration
Episcopal Office 52,418 49,629
Secretary's Office 23,678 21,363
Financial and Corp. 59,184 50,020
TOTAL ADMINISTRATION 135,280 21 121,012 21
Other 27,609 4 20,683 4
TOTAL EXPENDITURES $647,404 100% $564,018 1000%
TRANSFERS
Development Fund (to) $(60,000) $(60,000)
Moving and Travel
Reserves (to)/from 24,345 (24,450)
NET INCREASES IN GENERAL FUND BAL. $ 15,426 $ 7,300
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STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL CONDITION
Years Ending December 31, 1976 and 1975
GENERAL FUND
1976 1975
Assets
Cash $ (144,567) $ 67,621
Investments 520,768 398,912
Accounts Receivable 68,888 46,379
Loans Outstanding 54,503 198,786
Prepaid Expense 13,871 1,419
Publications-in-Progress 3,938 5,468
Due from Other Funds 2,563 2,563
Buildings and Grounds 85,215 85,215
Inventories 40,436 40,935
Total Assets $645,615 $847,298
Liabilities and Fund Balances
Accounts Payable $12,007 $8,266
Agency Accounts 75,473 36,891
Fund Balances-Restricted 86,532 218,598
Fund Balances-Unrestricted 471,603 583,531
Total General Funds $ 645,615 $847,298
ENDOWMENT AND SIMILAR FUNDS
Assets
Cash $295,980 $350,060
Investments-N.C.I.F. 6,193,585 6,668,585
Other Securities 522,086 324,121
Total Assets $7,011,651 $7,342,766
Liabilities and Fund Balances
True endowment $1,705,235 $1,624,039
Term endowment 190,522 185,098
Quasi endowment 5,115,894 5,533,629
Total Endowment and Similar Funds $7,011,651 $7,342,766
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SOUTH AFRICAN MISSION FUNDS
1976 1975
Assets
Cash $ 1,717 $ 13,509
Investments 47,541 79,266
Loans and Accounts Receivable 1,420 1,997
Real Estate and Office 59,938 29,253
Total Assets $ 110,616 $124,025
Liabilities and Fund Balances
Accounts Payable $ 13,126 $ 640
Fund Balances-Restricted 765 4,234
Fund Balances-Unrestricted 96,725 119,151
Total South African Mission Funds $ 110,616 $ 124,025
OTHER FUNDS
Assets
Cash 216,300 89,337
Investments-N. C.I.F. 1,732,010 1,192,010
Other 150,053
Loans Outstanding 306,836 82,631
Total Assets $ 2,405,199 $1,363,978
Liabilities and Fund Balances
Development Fund $ 1,137,522 $ -
Pension Fund 798,051 788,052
Investment Savings Fund 295,819 276,270
Revolving Load Fund - 131,287
Miscellaneous Funds 173,807 168,369
Total Other Funds $ 2,405,199 $1,363,978
TOTAL ALL FUNDS $10,173,081 $9,678,067
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"NEW CHURCH LIFE"
This year's report principally includes the work of the former Acting Editor, the Rev. Martin Pryke, who prepared two-thirds of the 12 issues, the present Editor having been responsible for only the last four months of 1976.
As was the case last year, a good number of writers contributed to our pages, an encouraging support providing a greater variety and interest.
This year we thought it a good idea to give a comparative chart on the usual figures over the years. Accordingly you will find it appended to this report.
We were gratified by the amount of response to the Editor's letter of appeal to the clergy for material; it has made the task of the new (and inexperienced) Editor considerably easier.
Especially appreciated by the new Editor this year was the work of Miss Beryl Briscoe in preparing the annual index. Without it an index would have been out of the question.
Figures as of December 31, 1976 supplied by the Business Manager show a net gain of 45. Total circulation was as follows:
Paid Subscriptions 1976 1975 1970 1965 1960
By subscriber 961 973 921 798 -
Gift 360 357 303 265 -
1,321 1,330 1,224 1,063 986
Free to clergy, libraries, etc. 350 296 215 236 162
1,671 1,626 1,439 1,299 1,148
Respectfully submitted,
MORLEY D. RICH,
Editor
EXTENSION COMMITTEE
1976 has proved to be a very busy year for the Extension Committee. We have had twelve meetings, and a number of activities have been entered into. Several changes in the Committee membership have taken place. The Rev. Peter Buss and the Rev. Erik Sandstrom have resigned because of other duties. The Rev. Arne Bau-Madsen and the Rev. Thomas Kline have accepted appointment. The membership of the Committee now includes: The Rev. Arne Bau-Madsen, Mr. Edward Cranch, the Rev. Harold Cranch, the Rev. Thomas Kline, Mr. Sanfrid Odhner, Mr. Leon Rhodes, the Rev. Norbert H. Rogers, the Rev. Donald Rose, the Rev. Frederick Schnarr, the Rev. Douglas Taylor and the Rev. B. David Holm, Chairman. In addition to our regular members, we invite interested guests occasionally.
It is evident that more and more people and organizations within the church are coming to this committee for help in spreading the church to others. This makes us feel as if we are performing the use for which the committee was set up. They are sharing their hopes, plans and ideas with us, and asking for our advice and help. It seems as if the committee is indeed becoming the headquarters of the missionary efforts of the church.
Certainly we have been working closely with local missionary organizations in Atlanta, Bryn Athyn, Denver, Detroit, Idaho, Los Angeles, the Ohio District, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Washington, and a number of individuals elsewhere. These contacts have dealt with everything from inquiries to the supply of books and the placement of advertisements.
This past year we have developed something of a campaign of placing books in bookstores. We now have missionary editions of the Writings on sale in more than 40 bookstores scattered throughout this continent. These books carry our own label. Efforts are now also being made in this regard in New Zealand. We have every hope of expanding this considerably this coming year. Mr. V. Carmond Odhner, of Columbus, Ohio is heading the recruitment of volunteers to place books in new areas.
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Also the development of 'on campus' missionary organizations has gone forward this year. We now have two 'White Horse Societies', as they call themselves. The one at Oakland University (Detroit area) is now full-fledged and is distributing literature, holding seminars and is a recognized student organization. Our young people there are very enthusiastic. At the University of Illinois (Circle Campus-Chicago) two young men have also started a White Horse organization on a more modest scale. We owe much to these earnest, young New Churchmen. We have hopes of organizing a similar organization in the Academy College in 1977.
The Newcomers' Questionnaire has been revised and continues to be sent out. We are gaining valuable information which may well affect our missionary work in the future. Mr. Hugh Gyllenhaal (an expert in the field) is 'tracking' the returned questionnaires and should have a report in the near future.
During the Assembly last June our Committee had the privilege of giving a full presentation of its efforts and plans to the General Church as a whole. We hope that this, together with our display, helped stimulate the missionary spirit within the church. Perhaps it has, for enquiries and offers of help have increased.
The committee continues to publish the Missionary Memo-the organ of the Committee. An increasing number of people are asking for this newsletter. Also a new publication has been started-RAINA. This little paper is intended for newcomers to the church. It is hoped it will become an 'open forum' for all those people who are interested in the New Church-from the time real interest begins to the time they find their full place within our structure. Mr. Leon Rhodes is editing this new venture.
Last September, with mixed feelings, the committee gave up the radio program of taped Cathedral services in Portland, Maine. There were a number of reasons for this decision. However, there was a general feeling that we had learned a great deal from this experiment.
The committee is still in close contact with the beginnings of the New Church in Ghana, West Africa. There are some very hopeful signs which we are encouraging. The committee is very grateful to Mr. Jeremy Simons, who is in the Peace Corps in Togo, West Africa. He has visited the people interested in the New Church in Ghana and has been able to give us valuable 'on the spot' reports. The picture is becoming much clearer, and we feel more confident in how to help this nascent branch of the church.
Last May, the chairman helped organize a men's retreat in the Midwest District. The subject was missionary work and proved a success. More trips to encourage missionary work in other areas are being planned currently.
Perhaps the most promising occurrence during the year is the matter of our budget. Last year we had the greatest difficulty keeping within our budget of $1150.00. New uses kept presenting themselves in a most persisting, yet stimulating way. This year we asked for a budget of $5000.00, and it has been approved. This figure is of course only for running expenses. The actual figure, when salaries and hidden costs are considered is around $22,000.00. This increase is truly promising for the future of missionary work within the General Church.
The work of the committee has expanded rapidly the last two years. So much so that it can no longer be regarded as a part-time job for the Chairman, More time for leadership of the committee is needed. Because of my other duties I cannot give adequate time to this committee. I have therefore tendered my resignation to Bishop King, to take effect August 31st, 1977. He has accepted it, and has asked the Rev. Douglas Taylor to take my place. Mr. Taylor brings a love for and experience in missionary work.
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He will give one-half his time to this use. I have thoroughly enjoyed the five years of chairing this committee. I give it up with regret, but I do so that the use of extension work can continue to expand and grow within the General Church.
There are many other things that could be reported, but space will not permit. It has been a fruitful year. The committee is 'alive and well'.
Respectively submitted.
B. DAVID HOLM,
Chairman
RELIGION LESSONS
Certainly the General Church Religion Lessons is one of the largest undertakings of the Church as far as committees go. Our budget for the fiscal year that has just ended was $19,653.00. This, of course, does not include the cost of New Church Home. I am convinced that the uses performed by the General Church Religion Lessons represents a major function of the General Church. The introduction of isolated children to the Lord's Word is of vital importance, not only to the individual children, but also to the Church at large.
Again, appreciation should be given to all those who do so much for this important use. Without the help of Theta Alpha, this use would come to an end. This does not just mean their financial support which is considerable, but also the day-to-day help given by so many women.
The women who serve on the actual Religion Lessons Committee form an advisory council to the Director. We meet about once a month, and both policy and practical matters are discussed. I have found that they give wise counsel. There are certain women that I especially want to thank: Mrs. Cairns Henderson (Eva), who performs the many functions of Chairman; the Vice- Chairman who is now Mrs. Leon Rhodes (Judy); Mrs. Leonard Gyllenhaal (Ruth), who is in charge of the Festival Lessons; Mrs. Erik Sandstrom (Bernice), who continues to be in charge of the creche figures which go to so many families; and Mrs. Douglas Taylor (Christine), who is in charge of the Pre-School cassette tapes. These women, together with the president of Theta Alpha, Miss Alice Fritz, and the Vice-President, Mrs. Edward Asplundh (Gwen), form the actual committee.
Also, the many counselors and teachers should be mentioned with appreciation. Without their efforts the whole use would come to a standstill, for their regular contact with the children is invaluable, and is very much valued by most of our parents. We get letters which testify to this. These counselors work out of a number of New Church centers-Australia, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and the United States. I would also express my appreciation of my office staff, without whom the daily routines of this task could not be accomplished.
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Statistics for 1976-77. There are 209 families on Religion Lessons. This represents the total of exactly 391 children. This total falls into the following categories:
Pre-School (4-years-olds) - 31
Pre-School (5-year-olds) - 35
Kindergarten - 29
First Grade - 37
Second Grade - 37
Third Grade - 53
Fourth Grade - 32
Fifth Grade - 32
Sixth Grade - 26
Life of the Lord I - 33
Life of the Lord II - 23
City of God - 13
New Jeru. and Heav. Doct. - 7
Heaven and Hell - 3
There are also several adults taking correspondence courses in doctrine. This total does not include students taught directly by pastors or those supervised overseas.
Unfortunately, all of the families offered these lessons do not respond. Last year there were 36 families that did not respond. Some 120 children did not respond at all. This is from Kindergarten through Grade Six-the most important years in some respects. Again, we asked these families that did not respond whether or not they wanted the lessons continued. As a result of this survey some 22 children have been taken off our lists as inactive.
Looking over the statistics of the past several years, we see a continued decline of the children served by this use. There are several reasons for this, no doubt. Our figures are realistic. The size of New Church families are getting smaller, and let's face it-the fringe members of the General Church are on the increase. Also, we must admit to the fact that these Religion Lessons are not in all cases ideal. Some of them are ambiguous, and perhaps too difficult.
CASSETTE TAPES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. The work on tapes for Pre-Schoolers continues. Two tapes are finished-one on the Christmas theme, and one on Noah and several other stories. Another tape designed to teach songs to children will be ready shortly. These tapes are available from the Committee to families on Religion Lessons, and from the General Church Book Center for others.
REVISION WORK. This brings us to the work of revising these lessons. This is slow and careful work, and while it is going forward, it is going forward far too slowly. A sense of frustration is experienced when there is so little time to spend on this very important part of the work. However, some accomplishments have been made. There are now very simple question sheets for both the Kindergarten and First Grade lessons. This is something new, and from recent reports it would seem to be a great success. The idea is to sphere the little ones into written returns from the very beginning when they enjoy it most. The Kindergarten lessons are in the process of being revised. Also, this is true of the Third Grade lessons. Revision work continues on "F", "G" and "H" lessons as well. They are to be telescoped into a two-year course. Several women, active in the use, have been helping with the revision.
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SUCCESS OF THE PROGRAM. We are certainly not reaching all of the children that we could, but the majority of the children who receive the lessons do respond and benefit greatly from the program. There was recent proof of this. Those students who had remained active in Religion Lessons through their sophomore year, when they came to the Academy this fall, passed (all of them) the Religion test. They are now in the advanced Religion class. This shows what these lessons can do when parents take their duties seriously.
CONTRIBUTIONS. Again, this year, we asked for donations to the Religion Lessons in our letter to parents. So far we have received $1,097.00 from 41 contributors. Last year we received $1,215.00 from 54 contributors. This is very encouraging.
CONCLUSION. When we consider the strong teachings of the service to the heavens when little children read and think about the Word, we realize the tremendous scope of the use that is performed by this committee. We are leading children to the Lord in His Word. What could be more important?
New Church Home
This year has seen a big change in this magazine. Its thrust has been directed entirely to parents and children. Organized efforts have been made to get articles on specific subjects of interest to parents. We have also begun a new series titled, "Doctrine for the Young." We have revised the Explorer, which prints stories and poems and pictures submitted by the children of the Church.
From all this we feel that we have a more vital magazine to send out to the homes of the Church. There are indications that the new thrust of the magazine is appreciated. Our circulations stands at 600. As Editor, I wish to express appreciation to all our contributors, artists and our efficient secretary, Terry Weaver. Without their time and effort, the magazine could not be produced.
Visual Education
Several months ago, the Visual Education Committee was dissolved as a separate committee of the General Church, because of general inactivity. The uses of the committee have been incorporated into the Religion Lessons program. Religious slides are still available, and all requests should be sent to the Religion Lessons Committee. The circulation figures for slides during this past year are as follows:
1975 1976
Slide sets 44 37
Total of slides 789 881
Borrowers 19 23
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Sunday School Committee
Since last year, when permission was granted to appoint laymen as assistants to this Committee of the Council of the Clergy, a good deal of work has been accomplished. Under the leadership of Myra Asplundh considerable material has been gathered both from commercial publishing houses and from other societies of the General Church which have Sunday Schools. We are now able to fill some limited orders, and all inquiries should be sent to the Sunday School Committee, Cairncrest, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009. A catalog of our material is available, with new listing and more complete descriptions. Also, a master reference is being prepared, which will include all the main sources of information on the stories of the Word, by chapter. This is slow work and will take years to complete, but a beginning has been made-Genesis 1 and 2 are complete. It is hoped, now that this committee is again active, that it will be able to serve the 25 Sunday Schools of the General Church in an increasingly effective way.
Respectfully submitted,
B. DAVID HOLM,
Director
PUBLICATION COMMITTEE
During the twelve months ending August 31, 1976, the General Church Publication Committee saw the completion of three projects reported last year as being in process. These were the reprinting of Johnny Appleseed by K. H. Asplundh, the publication of an updated edition of the General Church Handbook of General Information, and the publication of a revised edition of Our Wedding Customs. This pamphlet was originally written by the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner and, since it tended to have too much of a Cathedral orientation for use elsewhere, it was revised so as to adapt it for use throughout the General Church.
In varying stages of being considered are the manuscript for a new General Church pamphlet on Courtship, Consent and Betrothal by the Rev. Erik Sandstrom, and one for a pamphlet on Confirmation and Joining the Church based on a Talk by the Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner by the Rev. B. David Holm and the Rev. Douglas M. Taylor, a revised version of the Social Song Book, and the reprinting of Swedenborg-Servant of the Lord, an illustrated biography of Swedenborg for children by the Rev. C. T. Odhner. The Committee has also been asked to consider reprinting of The Crown of Revelation by Dr. Alfred Acton.
In the need-to-reprint category are Our Funeral Customs pamphlet, Topics from the Writings, First Songs for Little Children and the Liturgy (1966 edition). The need to reprint the last named book is urgent as there is only a one year supply in stock.
Respectfully submitted,
NORBERT H. ROGERS,
Chairman
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SOUND RECORDING COMMITTEE
After leading the Committee for the past three years, the Rev. B. David Holm resigned as Chairman in October, the Rev. Douglas M. Taylor being appointed by Bishop King to take his place. This report therefore covers almost entirely the activities of the Committee while it was still under Mr. Holm's energetic leadership. The office and studio keeps running efficiently under the capable supervision of our office secretary, Mrs. Joseph McDonough, with the help of Mrs. Cedric Lee on a part-time basis. Mrs. Anne Finkeldey and Mrs. William Welch continue giving a great deal of their time and talent to the technical work as volunteers, Mrs. Finkeldey devoting much of her time to the archiving of tapes of men now in the spiritual world.
At the annual meeting, in October, our incumbent officers were again re-elected-Mr. Cedric Lee as Vice-chairman, Mr. Boyd Asplundh as Secretary, and Miss Elizabeth Hays as Treasurer. We are very grateful for their willingness to continue their valued work.
A supplement to our catalog was issued which now has 2,516 titles-an increase of 407. There are also some additions of re-issued material. Circulation has again increased-from 3,158 last year to the present figure of 4,377, an increase of 38 percent. This is most gratifying, and adds point and purpose to the work of the Committee.
Several advances can be reported-a new catalog system, the improvement of the Cathedral's sound system, the production of five tapes of music from the Liturgy, which are now in the hands of traveling priests (and available for sale), and the purchase of a new cassette deck. But the greatest addition to our equipment was the purchase of a new $3,847.50 stereo high-speed cassette duplicator capable of copying from cassette to cassette. This has already begun to increase the efficiency of our operation.
A major undertaking this year was the preparation of tapes for broadcasting over Station WDCS in Portland, Maine. For a period of ten months a weekly tape of a Cathedral service had to be timed for 59 minutes exactly-including an introductory and closing announcement. Our deepest thanks and appreciation for this demanding work go to Mrs. Anne Finkeldey and her helper, Mrs. William Welch.
An appeal to the Academy College students for volunteers to do some of the recording work added 8 names to our list. There are many other volunteer helpers throughout the Church whose quiet, faithful help in doing the work of the Committee is greatly appreciated. We are, in fact, quite dependent upon them for a continuation of our efforts to serve the Church throughout the world.
We are completely dependent, too, on the financial contributions of users and special contributors. Our Treasurer's Report reveals that of our total income of $18,070.23, users contributed $3,417.06 (an increase of $358.12) while special contributions amounted to $11,080.40 (an increase of $4,702.15). We make no charge for borrowing tapes but rely on the conscience of the borrower to animate him to make a contribution. It must be sadly reported that despite an unusually high increase in borrowings, there was not anything like a proportional increase in user contributions.
Our net worth at September 30, 1976 was $24,381.67.
Respectfully submitted,
DOUGLAS M. TAYLOR,
Chairman
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EDITORIAL NOTES EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address, and business communications, should be sent to the Business Manager. Notifications of address changes should be received by the 15th of the month.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
$5.00 a year to any address, payable in advance. Single copy, 50 cents.
"Many men, many minds" says an old adage, one that is also repeated in the Writings. And we may be frequently reminded of this, to our surprise and delight, when presented with new ideas or expressions by other people. In the same vein, a father of twelve children was heard to say on the television recently that he had twelve worlds living with him. Such observations but reflect the teaching that every man as to his mind or spirit is a little world in the pattern of the universe, and is capable of indefinite growth. And Divine Revelation confirms the truth that every person is unique and different from all others, by citing the external differences which appear in each and every face. Very hasty glances in an air-terminal easily substantiate this. And the natures of little children appear to adults as to their differences quite obviously and plainly. It is, however, the variety of human minds which pre-eminently and correspondentially reflect the Divine, in Whom there are infinite things which are distinctly One, and which are the Divine origin of all variety.
Much is taught us by the Lord as to the affirmative and negative principles and attitudes. Most of this teaching is in relation to the subject of religion. Yet by inference it also has application to other and lower levels of human life. Thus, though judgment is necessary, a generally affirmative spirit toward new ideas, experiments and other human minds opens the mind to influx and growth; on the other hand an habitually negative attitude closes the mind. Perhaps this is reflected in the words of someone recently overheard: "I would rather be affirmative and be proved wrong than be negative, and be proved right!"
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A kindred saying is, "I would rather trust and be betrayed than never trust at all." It is certainly no pleasure when our gloomy forebodings are fulfilled; on the other hand, it is a joyful thing when occasionally our affirmative anticipations come true.
It is Divinely true that those who trust in the Divine . . . . are in the stream of Providence (and) are continually carried along toward everything that is happy.*
* AC 8478
CORRECTION TO REVIEW:-A Lexicon to the Latin Text of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Part II, (see NEW CHURCH LIFE, December, 1976, p. 538). Using italics for corrections, the last two paragraphs should have read as follows: "As a sidelight, we understand that Dr. Chadwick has been able to use a computer for Vol. VI of the Arcana Coelestia in this work, which has aided in its final production.
"The Rev. Norbert H. Rogers, who made the first comment thereon, has asked that the following correction be made to his note: 'it was the General Church Translation Committee, . . . , that contributed to the grant which helped a little in the project undertaken by Dr. Chadwick.'"
We are indebted to Mrs. Royston Griffith, Secretary of the Advisory and Revision Board of the Swedenborg Society, who in a letter to the editor, made these corrections possible.
SYLVIA AMY PEMBERTON:-This valiant, diligent New Church teacher served for over forty years in, and was the mainstay of the Kainon School of the Durban Society. We quote from part of the memorial address for her given by the Rev. Geoffrey H. Howard:- "To those who knew and loved Miss Pemberton it appeared as though many of the Lord's promises were fulfilled in her life. She had lived a full and active life in this world, a life of selfless devotion to others. She tried with all her heart to serve and thus love her neighbor, but the condition of her service to others was first of all out of deference to the Lord, that His will might be done. If Miss Pemberton affected us beneficially, it was because she tried to honor the Divine principles of the Lord in the first place. What strength of character she had, she received from the Lord because she was willing to commit her life unto His service. It is solely from the Lord that we can make ourselves acceptable to others. It is only when we are prepared to subdue our proprial and unregenerate loves, that we render ourselves worthy to receive love, honor and respect from others. It was for this very reason that Miss Pemberton was held in our highest esteem."
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RECEIVED FOR REVIEW:-New Church Music Post, a new periodical subtitled, "The Newsletter of the General Church Music Committee," and "devoted to supporting the work of organists and others who provide music in our worship." The committee is presently composed of the Rev. Martin Pryke, clergy representative; Mrs. Douglas Taylor, chairman; Mrs. Ian Real, secretary; Mrs. Douglas Halterman, treasurer; Mr. Erland Brock, Tapes.
Courtship, Consent, Betrothal, by the Rev. Erik Sandstrom Sr. published by the General Church Publication Committee; on sale at the General Church Book Center, 35?.
Conversations on Education, by William H. Benade, published by The Academy of the New Church Press, 1976. A second Edition, editing and Foreword by Prof. Richard R. Gladish. On sale at the Academy Bookroom, and the General Church Book center, $8.00.
SOUL HORAND K. GUTFELDT 1977
DEAR EDITOR:
It seems an interesting coincidence that two authors have treated the topic of the "Soul" independently: Kenneth Alden in the January issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1977, and myself in the NEW PHILOSOPHY, April-June 1976.
In reviewing both, I feel that they supplement each other in several ways. If I offer a few critical remarks too, I do this from a viewpoint to counterbalance some impressions that must arise from the article in the Life.
On p. 34 it is said there that one ". . . must assess the abilities, talents, skills, inclinations, desires and affections . . . Putting your greatest talent and affection where there is the greatest need should also produce the greatest use . . ."
Although the problem of selection may be approached in this way, at least in principle, one would have to observe that this sounds like an extremely rational, cold and unlikely way to go about important decisions, especially courtship! I feel inclined to doubt whether any person has ever used such an approach in its purest form. In practice, we rely upon entirely different criteria. Who would not follow an intuition, an analysis of feelings, or the voice of love. This perception a priori, an internal evidence, seems to be the means by which the Lord leads people together by the way of affection.
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Of course, the Writings call attention to the fact that perception occurs on a number of different levels.* Quite specifically it is said: "There is an internal perception of uses with those who have conquered in temptations. . .** Since we can assume that most New Church people will be in such a position, we can affirm that a perception of the will of the Lord must be felt by a good many people. This presupposes, however, a desire to be led by the Lord, which is the essence of what is called Humility or Innocence of Wisdom, which is the highest virtue, and almost identically defined.***
* AC 2831; SD min. 4636 and many others
** AR 354
*** AC 1153, 7550:2; HH 278; Cf. also AC 8505
It seems to me important that we should be careful not to emphasize only the guidance of the rational, or conscience alone, but also to open the doors to the influx and guidance by the Lord-if we are to develop an affection and longing to be led by Him.
HORAND K. GUTFELDT,
Berkeley, Calif.
MORE ON EU FRED ELPHICK 1977
To THE EDITOR:
Rev. Kurt Nemitz* wonders how the Lord could have told Swedenborg the name of a planet. This is a very odd question, not at all supported by the passage quoted by him. The passage in which Jethro advises Moses to delegate his judging contains the words
* NEW CHURCH LIFE, Jan., 1977, p. 50
'. . .every great word let them bring unto thee. . . .'* means that everything is from the truth immediately from the Divine. The Lord directs all things by means of the truth proceeding from Himself, both mediately through angels and immediately. But the mediate disposing through heaven is also as it were immediate from Himself, for what comes out of heaven comes through heaven from Him.** ". . . But this subject falls with difficulty into the idea of any man . . ."***
* Exod. 18:13-16
** AC 8717
*** Ibid.
Hence the difficulty of accepting the idea of Swedenborg's receiving things from heaven detracts nothing from the validity of what he was told. As to the problem of names, the argument falls when we read that,
I have frequently spoken with angels by means of that tacit speech of ideas, and also with others. . . . I was able to express even material things without words, by only thinking about them-whether they are facts, or persons, or places . . . about merely scientific matters . . . about persons, without the name, and they have known instantly. . . . Such is the communication.*
* SD 5594
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Such is the communication-if two people think of the unique features of a city and these agree, they are thinking of the same city. If Swedenborg and an angel are thinking of the unique features of Venus, they are referring to the same planet. (Other arguments, still unrefuted, can be found in Absence of Other Worlds.")* The fact remains that there is no scientific evidence for inhabited planets but as one astronomer put it! "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
* NEW CHURCH LIFE, Jan., 1976. p. 6
FRED ELPHICK,
Beckenham, England.
APPRECIATIVE NOTE B. DAVID HOLM 1977
To the Editor of NEW CHURCH LIFE:
I want to tell you how much I enjoyed the March issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE. It was an excellent blending of intellect and affection. There are two articles I would especially want to commend: Dr. Basil Orchard's The New Church and the Home and Rev. Clayton Priestnal's That we might be sanctified. I found both articles moving and even inspiring. Truth properly presented does indeed stir affection for good. May we hear more from these two men?
Sincerely,
B. DAVID HOLM
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 6002 5
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
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Church News VARIOUS 1977
LONDON, ENGLAND
Pastoral Report
The life of the pastor in Michael Church is a happily varied one. It is difficult to decide whether he is under worked or overworked The small but dedicated congregation looks after its Pastor so carefully that, even were he under worked, they would excuse him with the familiar good-will greeting, "You must be so busy." But is it a question or a hint?
The Society is distributed as widely as a district, but it usually musters an attendance of 2/3 of its adult members each Sunday. Together with the young people and children, the average hovers near 50. There is Sunday School every Sunday, which of course withdraws 3 or 4 adults from the Sermon to a higher use. A copy of the lower use awaits them in their rooms.
The Sunday School has over 20 pupils, with about the same number of teachers, so that each teacher takes about to classes a year. After our June 19th celebration, we give gifts to all students. They now line up by class in the Church garden, where we also have a toast to the Church.
The Society calendar is interspersed with happy occasions. The Harvest Festival sees our first children's procession, with the Chancel Girls in their newly-made robes (Mrs. E. E. Sandstrom) beautifully needle worked (Miss I. Searle) leading in, and receiving the offerings from the Pastor's hands.
Our annual Sale of Works brings all together with produce both edible, plantable, wearable and in any case enjoyable. This is followed by a games party for adults and children alike.
The Christmas celebration sees our second procession, with the children this time bringing their own toys, etc., wrapped for needy children. Local welfare societies are used for the distribution. Then comes the Banquet, always carefully prepared by the Women's Guild, and appreciated by all. This is followed either by Tableaux with the Sunday School, or slides of the Christmas story, or by orchestral and choir items. We have been greatly indebted to the Dawsons in this.
Christmas Day itself is observed whatever day of the week, in a shortened and earlier Service, including several lessons, a children's talk, the best loved carols, but no Sermon.
In the New Year we combine the former Children's Party with Swedenborg's Birthday, and call it Swedenborg's Party. This is the occasion for the burgeoning number of young people to take a hand. They prepare the menu and the cooking, and lay tables, serve the meal and clear up. Two superb banquets have been enjoyed, this year and last. Short speeches by young people, or by adults for the young, followed with toasts. Then a party of games.
Good Friday is the day for a full Holy Supper Service in the afternoon. Easter Sunday sees our third children's procession, this time with flowers. The Chancel looks radiant as spring makes its warmth felt in the air and in the heart.
June 19th is the final procession, this time of the children carrying the red and white New Church flags. A picnic in a nearby park follows, but first, as was said, a toast and presents in the Sunday School.
Other events mark off the year. At least two Family Services (other than Festivals) are held, directed to the young people. The shortened service leaves time for refreshment downstairs, and an informal doctrinal discussion.
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There have also been Bring Your Own Lunches, followed by a more formal doctrinal class. And since Sundays bring the Society naturally together (spiritually as well), they are used for Women's Guild, Pastor's Council and Board of Finance meetings after Church.
A new group is called the 16-22, consisting of all young people included in those ages. It was formed by the Pastor with the idea of giving responsibilities to the young people during their sometimes confusing passage into adulthood. They meet with the Pastor several times a year, and discuss various topics. They also plan the Swedenborg's Birthday Banquet, and the Young People's Gatherings held on Saturdays before Family Services: An outing to London, a meal at the Manse, a class, entertainment, and sleeping quarters in homes nearest the Church; then the Family Service concludes the Weekend.
There are, besides, at least two Young People's Weekends a year combining all young people in Britain, from 12 years upwards. The Summer School draws the same group but from 14 years upwards, plus a good support from the Continent and the U.S. and Canada. These are run jointly by both Pastors.
Is all this enough for the Pastor? Not a bit. He happily catches trains to the West Country 5 or 6 times a year, including the West Country Gathering at the end of May. Tents and Caravans are then in order for both societies and the Open Road. Both Pastors help in the doctrinal feast, the West Country residents providing their expertise in every other field.
And should the Pastor wish to escape altogether, he merely books a flight to Holland 4 or 5 times a year, where a delightful Circle continues to meet, with a good attendance of about 15 adults. Each visit is always appreciated. The Service is bilingual, but both Sermon and following class are held in English. All thoughts are Doctrinal.
There are a few other things the Pastor can do. Each month he can compose an Editorial, amass material and type the NEWSLETTER, attend the Swedenborg Society Council to consider the vital work of publishing. He can send out sheets of light doctrinal instruction (GYROSCOPE) to over 60 young people and young marrieds. He can attend British Academy meetings to consider young people's weekends and summer schools, or religion lessons for the isolated children; attend the Advisory and Revision Board to consider the essential work of translating; attend the New Jerusalem Council Ltd., to consider the vital business of the General Church in England. All these meetings are arranged so as to make the calendar a battleground!
Most flexible are the Doctrinal classes for the Society. Because of its District-like distribution, there are local monthly classes rather than central weekly ones as in many other societies. North London, South London and Chadwell Heath take in 90% of the Society. A central monthly class at Swedenborg House caters for about 45%. A further class held irregularly south of London (Guildford) in the Little's home, includes the remaining 10% and a good deal of the Open Road. Since doctrinal instruction is so spread out, the Pastor has to write only two classes (at least) per month.
Michael Church Society would not be complete without its steady stream of visitors over the years. To all who have come in the past, our thanks, and come again. To all who will pass through London, welcome. Now that you understand how the Society runs, you will perhaps not be too surprised when, after the usual happy greetings after Church, everybody is swallowed by the London jungle. Where did they go? You may find out.
Only half of the General Church in England has been here sketched in. Rev. Boyesen pays regular visits to Manchester, Letchworth, and also to Scotland, plus looks after a daily Church School, and his Colchester Society. London and Colchester Societies join together for many events, notably Adult weekends now held at Hengrave Hall, a 14th century mansion; and the British Assemblies at Colchester alternate years.
The New Church in Britain is of course shared with Big Sister, the Conference.
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Both General Church Pastors enjoy the genial friendship and good will of over a dozen of their ministers, and scores of members. The annual New Church Day celebration on June 19th combines the four London New Church Societies; Kensington, North Finchley, Waldegrave Road, and Michael Church, the service being held in turn at each Society.
Finally a word on the building. Michael Church was built as a meeting hall in 1896, financed by Mr. Whittington, and it was called the Academy of the New Church. After the General Church was formed, it remained as the Academy, until 1928, when it became a Society of the General Church. The building is historical, many silent chapters can be read by the interested party in its contents. But it is the hope of its present members that many more chapters will be written.
ERIK EMANUEL SANDSTROM,
Pastor
TORONTO, ONT.
The Olivet Society started off the year's activities by the opening of the Olivet Day School on September 7th, with thirty-seven pupils in attendance. Our tried and true staff of the Reverends Cranch and Larsen, Miss Sylvia Parker and Mrs. Leigh Bellinger were joined this year by Miss Kathi Smith who replaced Mrs. Selma Hiebert as teacher for grades four, five and six. Kathi has proved to be a fine teacher and a very welcome addition to our lively group of young people.
October was the month of our great changes. The Reverend Harold Cranch who had been our much loved Pastor for the last ten years, left to take up new duties in Glenview. Jean and Harold were honored by 162 members and friends of the society at a banquet on October 2nd. The Cranches were presented with an Eskimo carving to remind them of their sojourn in this northern clime and also with a nest egg for their new home. In return, Harold and Jean presented the society with beautiful photographs of our past pastors. We all enjoyed the occasion but with some sadness to be saying farewell to such dear friends.
Very soon we were welcoming our new Pastor and his wife, the Reverend Geoffrey and Helga Childs and their son Peter who is a nice addition to the Olivet Day School. The Childs were greeted with a pantry shower which we hoped would help to stock the kitchen shelves in the newly refurbished manse.
Since our last report we have celebrated two weddings. Susan Anderson became the bride of Andrew Nelan on June 26th, and the wedding of Cheryl Hamm and Peter Bailey took place on September 25th. Two of our young men were also married in other societies. Brothers Karl and Wayne Parker were married, Wayne to Vina Caldwell in Glenview and Karl to Holly Herder in Bryn Athyn. Happily Wayne and Vina are making their home in Toronto and are most welcome members of our society.
We are always specially moved when our young people are confirmed. On July 4th Jill Frazee made her confession of faith and during a pastoral visit to our northern members Mr. Cranch confirmed Anne and Jerry Jutras at their home in Waubanik.
Since this time last year we have celebrated no fewer than four 90th birthdays. This makes a total of five dearly loved nonagenarians in our society!
An event that must be recorded is that on September 24th Ersa Alden Parker and Nancy Gladish Wyncoll became Canadian citizens at a ceremony attended by the pupils of the Olivet Day School. A great occasion!
To finish our record of Olivet events for the present we must report an outstanding weekend just enjoyed. On February 19th an elegant banquet was held to welcome Bishop King on his Episcopal visit. The Bishop gave a most enlightening address on the nature of the priesthood. This was greatly appreciated and very timely as on the following morning, February 20th. at our regular Sunday service the Reverend Ottar Larsen was ordained by Bishop King into the second degree of the priesthood. Spring flowers on the chancel symbolized the beginning of a new priestly state. It was a very moving service as we have all learned to have great affection for Ottar in the two and a half years that he has been with us.
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In the afternoon the society honored Rev. and Mrs. Larsen at a tea held in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Anderson.
GWEN CRAIGIE
TRANSVAAL CIRCLE
If I do not proceed forthwith with the latest Transvaal news, I shall be in the position of a rather aged friend who, when asked to describe his long departed spouse, is inclined to put on a vague expression and respond, in quavering tones, "I can't remember." An interesting visit to Lebowa, homeland of the Pedi people, has intervened between A.G.M. time and now, so I fear me there will definitely be a lot I can't remember. Our Transvaal A.G.M., held as it usually is at the Sharpe "eyrie" above Houghton Drive, gave a sparkling background by the evening transformations of the prosaic motorway below into a bejewelled and glittering necklace. There was a 99% turnout of the Transvaal Circle for this event, the missing 1% being Audrey Cowley, who was overseas at the time and has since returned to the bosom of her family.
We guests at the house on the hill enjoyed a Mediterranean type supper of noodles with Parmesan cheese, accompanied by Marlene's delicious whole-wheat bread. A healthy looking, if somewhat rotund, group of Transvalers then adjourned to the lounge for the main business of the evening. Everything proceeded conventionally enough for the most part. At one point in his report, Willard mentioned that, as far as membership is concerned, the Transvaal Circle remains static, this being due in part, he feels, to the lack of a resident pastor. Sheilagh Creasy interjected at this stage that she and others have introduced friends to the Circle, but, as she remarked, it is disheartening when husbands of such people never get around to sharing the interest. Willard defined this attitude as being due to "the intellectual pride of the male" and this was really tossing the cat among the pigeons, as women then joined in with a positively Grecian chorus of complaint. Viva was heard to remark that it would be a good thing to form a working party for husbands on a Saturday afternoon. The men's faces were seen to be growing longer by the minute, as they visualized Saturday golf being exchanged for sessions of hobby-horse manufacture; then nobly to the rescue came Joe Ball with his masterly financial report, nattily contained in a shocking-pink folder. As we turned out to be healthily solvent, all was forgiven, the menfolk taken back into the fold and even offered cups of tea in token of peace between the sexes. However, there certainly does seem to be this problem of male backwardness in coming forward. So over to you, you proud Westville intellectuals, this could make quite a debate.
Other points of interest. I believe, due to a leak somewhere in the chapel, Willard's favorite ballad could become "Raindrops keep falling on my head," but this is being remedied (by the menfolk, we trust).
Mission parties this year have been affected by the political situation and it was generally felt better to play it cool with as little fuss as possible being made. However the children still received their gifts, and Jocelyn Bail is to be congratulated on her unceasing work in this field.
There are Summer School problems, it appears, with conflicting holiday periods in Natal and the Transvaal. What a pity.
A suggestion was made that the Rev. Nkabinda take a service in our chapel. We all agreed this might be a helpful gesture in the present situation. Willard finds him an eloquent speaker and he would enjoy the experience and communicate it to his people.
The three office-bearers, Secretary, Treasurer, and Adviser correspondent were all re-elected. Shades of the three stooges! However, we all continue willingly and hope those custard pies don't come our way.
Our Christmas service went beautifully. I continue to brood over the matter of "musick" which on such occasions seems a must-tape recorder music, though, we all agree to be too mechanical in effect.
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We always have to bear in mind our lack of space. However, the grey cells are getting into a huddle and who knows what might come of it.
We are so delighted to hear that the Howards are coming our way in January. In the meanwhile, may we wish you all a most blessed Christmas and much joy in 1977.
STELLA CAME
THE REVEREND LESLIE MARSHALL
1890-1977
We are informed that the Rev. Marshall, on Feb. 12, 1971, "left this earthly life having filled his 57 years with a considerable array of natural and spiritual accomplishments." Mr. Marshall, a minister of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem for almost fifty years, came from England to this country by cattle-boat at the tender age of 13. After some years in business employment with some success, he turned to the New Church ministry, and graduated and was ordained from the Convention theological school in 1931.
A man of many interests, and a prolific writer, he served the Paterson, N.J. convention society during most of his ministerial life, spending the later years of his "retirement" in St. Petersburg, Fla., but continuing his several activities until his final illness.
PASTORS' SUMMER SCHOOL
Following the 1976 Assembly, twenty-one members of the Council of the Clergy met for four days of discussion and classes at Lake Wallenpaupack, Pennsylvania.
The classes focused on the subjects of sermon writing, pastoral counseling, and methods of instruction.
In his discussion of sermon writing, the Rev. Martin Pryke, teacher of Homiletics at the Academy Theological School, explained to the pastors assembled present methods of instruction in sermon writing being employed in the Academy. Much discussion centered on the effectiveness of the sermon and the varying types of sermons presently used be pastors in the worship service.
The Rev. Alfred Acton followed the first session on sermon writing and preparation with two sessions on pastoral counseling introducing the general subject of a pastor's role in counseling and outlining the pitfalls and the practices good pastoral care requires. He discussed in these sessions the role of the pastor as counselor in relation to his many other duties, the ways a pastor can make himself more available at times of crisis in the lives of individuals, specific methods of helping people in times of trouble, and ways of recognizing the deeply disturbed and preparing them for referral to other helping agencies.
Further sessions, conducted by the Rev. Lorentz Soneson, dealt principally with pastoral communications, constructive listening techniques, and tips in counseling. Mr. Soneson's discussion of pastoral listening gave many insights as to what is implied by actually hearing the problem a troubled person has in talking with his priest. Mr. Soneson went on to outline seven blocks to good communications between individuals and to give specific lips on pastoral counseling.
The final session of the school was led by the Rev. Frank Rose on methods of instruction where Mr. Rose asked the pastors present to consider the variety of techniques presently employed and potentially available to a pastor in helping a layman of the church to understand the truths of the Lord's Word.
The general warmth and comradship that developed in a series of directed discussions of this sort was a source of real enjoyment for all pastors there. It was their hope that future schools for pastors, under the direction of the Bishop, would be established, and that this opportunity for pastors to enter into particular aspects of their work in conjunction with their professional colleagues be made known to the church at large.
ALFRED ACTON II
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ORDINATIONS EDITOR 1977
Announcements
Carlson.-At Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, March 6, 1977, the Rev. Mark Robert Carlson into the second degree of the priesthood, the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King officiating.
Larsen.-At Toronto, Ontario, Canada, February 20, 1977, the Rev. Ottar Trosvik Larsen into the second degree of the priesthood, the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King officiating.
EDUCATIONAL COUNCIL EDITOR 1977
The annual meetings of the Educational Council of the General Church will be held August 15-19 in Bryn Athyn.
NEW COMMITTEE EDITOR 1977
The Traveling Ministers of the General Church have been organized into a Committee of the Council of the Clergy. The Rev. Lorentz R. Soneson has accepted the chairmanship of this committee.
ACADEMY JOINT MEETING EDITOR 1977
The Annual Joint Meeting of the faculty and corporation of the Academy will be held at 7:45 on Friday, May 20, 1977, in the Assembly Hall, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Following the usual administrative reports of the year's work, special reports will be given by Miss Mary Beth Cronlund on Counseling and Guidance in the Girls' School, and by Mr. Bradley G. Smith on Special Education in the Boys' School.
ACADEMY COMMENCEMENT CHANGE EDITOR 1977
The Academy Commencement Exercises on Saturday, June 11 will be at 9:30 A.M., rather than 10:30 A.M. as previously announced. Alfred Acton, II, President
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DRUSAH, THE GARDEN-CITY Rev. MORLEY D. RICH 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII JUNE 1977 No. 6
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden. Gen. 2:8-10.
And (the angel) showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. in the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, there was the Tree of Life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the Tree were for the healing of the peoples. Rev. 22:1, 2.
The Word of the Lord is one indivisible Book, holding a continuous stream of Divine Truth from beginning to end, a stream which is perfectly and wondrously consistent and true in all its length and breadth and height. Wherefore, what is said in its beginning is carried forth and developed until it readies full fruition at its end. And so we find in this dual text, the resemblance and indisputable connection between two widely-separated passages in the literal sense of the Word, the one in the beginning of Genesis, the first book, the other the prophecy of the New Church in the last chapter of Revelation, the last book of the Word in its exclusively sensual and moral senses.
In the first passage, we see the garden of Eden described, and, in the Passage from Revelation, we read of the Tree of Lives being planted in the midst of the Holy City New Jerusalem; and the description plainly implies a garden around it.
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Both gardens contained the Tree of Lives; and through both ran "a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal." So both gardens were one and the same. The only difference, and an important one to the meaning of the Word, as we shall see, was that the first garden, of Eden, was by itself, whereas the second Garden of Eden in the Revelation was in the very heart of a city,-the Holy City New Jerusalem.
By "the garden" in both these passages, there is meant inwardly the essential state of the special Church of the Lord on earth, or the essential state of will and understanding which is in the man who is of that Church. This state is both inner and outer. Inwardly it consists of a will toward and a love for the goods and truths of the Church, and an acting from that will and love, hence from love to the Lord and charity toward the neighbor. Outwardly, it consists of the knowledges of goodness and truth from the Word, and a life and worship from those knowledges in obedience and faith. When a person is in this state both inner and outer, he is in a garden, as it were, in the Garden of Eden; and, from time to time, he may, even in this world have the sensation of being in heaven.
In the beginning of Genesis, the garden of Eden was this heavenly state as it existed with the peoples of the Most Ancient Church. And it stood alone, as it were, in the midst of a wilderness,-to represent the truth that, though the Most Ancients had the essentials of the specific Church within them, though they had the love and knowledge of spiritual goods and truths yet these existed alone with them, without a great deal in the way of ultimate externals. Thus, they were in innocence, but not the full-blown innocence which has rational wisdom within it.
This is confirmed by the larger meaning of the same garden as it was contained in the Holy City New Jerusalem described in the Word ages later. For it was then seen surrounded by a much more complex and human environment than a wilderness. And this fact underlines the difference in the state of the specific Church between the Most Ancients and the last and final Church of the Lord on earth.
Thus, in the Most Ancient Church, the worship and life were comparatively simple in their outward, physical forms. People worshiped by families, in groves and upon mountains. Their outward activities by which they sustained themselves, and in which their spiritual uses were expressed, were primitive and few in number. And their knowledges of heavenly spiritual and Divine things, were basically simple, and seen in the framework of a to-them uncomplex nature. Outside of their families and clans, their relationships and connections with others were essentially few and elemental, very little more than was necessary and unavoidable.
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In reading the descriptions of the Most Ancient times and peoples in the Writings, people may be misled into looking back upon them with nostalgia, perhaps wondering when the human race will ever return to that Golden Age, just as they sometimes long for the innocence of their childhood. If in so looking back, they are longing for a return to that good and truth which is the genuine Eden, and an escape from the evil and falsity into which the human race has fallen, this is a good and true feeling, for it expresses men's desire to come into the inward state of the Church of the Lord on earth. But if it also includes a desire to return to the same outward forms and life of that age, then it is an erroneous thing, and doomed to disappointment.
Indeed, such a longing springs from ignorance or lack of understanding of the Lord's major purpose and work in developing the human race through the ages from that first Golden Age.
This purpose and work of the Lord are plainly shown in the inner significance of the garden of Eden now being placed in the center of the magnificent city of the New Jerusalem. For this means that the essential state of the Lord's Church,-the desire for, the love of good and truth, and of doing them from love to the Lord, the knowledge of what they are, and doing them from obedience, also, that this state of the garden is to be, and now is, in a most magnificent and jeweled setting of infinite variety, the setting of the Holy City which is the New Church. in which there is to be a spiritual freedom and rationality such as has never been known before, and the opportunity to see, acknowledge and worship the visible God in Whom is the invisible, an opportunity such as could never be extended to the Most Ancients, and a fulness of spiritual-rational knowledges of Divine Truth which will lead every receptive mind into a maturity and innocence of wisdom such as the human race has never before experienced.
It is little wonder that the last and final specific Church of the Lord on earth, the New Church, was described in such superlatives in the Old and New Testaments. For we find it prophetically described there variously as "a crown of glory and a royal diadem," "holiness," "a city of truth," "the throne of Jehovah," "a quiet habitation," "a tabernacle that shall not be taken down." And it is further said of her that "there the wolf and the lamb shall feed together," that "the mountains there will drop down new wine, and the hills flow with milk," and "Jerusalem shall abide to generation and generation." It is also written of her future people that "they are holy, they are all written unto life, and shall be called 'the redeemed of Jehovah.'"
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The contrast between such correspondential descriptions of the New Church and its seeming present reality is often a deeply troubling one. What possible relationship, it is wondered, could there be between the magnificent prophecies and the present outward forms of the New Church, its insignificant numbers and physical establishment?
This apparent contrast and these troubling questions arise in peoples' minds from two causes. One is from obscurity as to what the inner New Church is and is to be. The other is from the natural human tendency in the end of an age to identify and associate a Church with the ecclesiastical forms of the former Church. Thus a Church to most now means the kinds of houses of worship prevailing in the Christian world, the various forms of old Christian ritual, formal membership in earthly organizations and establishments, recognized and ordained priesthoods, certain well-defined codes of behavior and ways of life externally, large numbers of explicitly enrolled members, and many other things.
The New Churchman can be freed of these externals and of the external anxieties as to the New Church's establishment, however, if he will but remind himself of the truths as to what the New Church really is, internally considered.
It is written that the New Church on earth will increase according to its increase in the New Heaven and in the world of spirits, which is the world of the minds of men both here and in the world of spirits.* Let us think about this in connection with what the angels told Swedenborg: that "they have little hope of the men of the Christian ecclesiasticism, but much of some people far distant from the Christian world. . . ."**
* TCR 784; AE 732
** LJ 74
The first statement: that the New Church on earth will increase. . . .
This simply means that when a person has an instant perception of the truth in some teaching of the Word, a perception that flashes through his mind like lightning out of the east, then and there the New Heaven is present in him through the world of spirits. And then and there is the New Church a tiny bit more established in him and with others. The same thing is true when he is "rich toward God," when he feels affections for the teachings of the Word, when he is filled with love and generous impulses toward the Church as his neighbor, when his heart overflows with joyous gratitude for the privilege of being brought into contact with Divine Love and Wisdom in the form of Truth itself, and even when he may be terrified by the revelations as to his own nature which the Word brings to him in judgment. All of these insights and feelings are conveyed to him by the angels of the New Heaven, and through the minds and spirits of those in the world of spirits who have received the Lord in His Second Coming.
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And they further establish the state of the New Church in him and with others.
In present times, both with the individual and with the earthly Church, the New Heaven is received but limitedly and faultily, intermittently and erratically, sometimes eccentrically. Like magic, its vision appears and disappears. Now we see it, now we don't. Now we feel it, and our hearts burn within us; now we do not, and our hearts grow cold and doubtful.
These are the inevitable fluctuations of individual regeneration, and in the first formations of a new age and church. And they serve to shed possible light on the observation of the angels, that they had little hope for the men of the "former" Christian ecclesiasticism, but much of a people far off.
It is not difficult to deduce that what the angels were referring to as having but little hope was the state of former, dead Christianity; and their lack of hope is fairly easy to understand. But what did they really mean by "a people far off" for whom they had much hope?
It may, indeed, mean quite literally a people far off both in time and space. But this we cannot know, any more than did the angels. So let us raise our minds above time and space, and think of the phrase from the standpoint of state,-a state of will and understanding, of heart and mind, a mind of spirit and attitude far removed from the average state of the present Christian world in particular and of the human race in general.
It is the state inmostly represented by the garden of Eden, and outwardly perceived and felt in the minds and hearts of men as a kind of spiritual-rational affection and thought, couched in the complex, varied and explicit language and terms and forms of the Holy City surrounding it.
Those who do receive this state and influence from the New Heaven are indeed "people far distant" from the present realm of thought and feeling in the world in general and of the Christian world in particular. And this even though they presently receive it but intermittently and erratically. For those times they are indeed, still in the world, but they are not of it, but of the New Heaven and New Church.
The universal message of the Writings is that this New Church will inevitably be established in the earth. The Lord will choose and care for His own people, wherever they may be. Where even only two or three perceptions and affections from His Word exist in a person's mind, there will He be in the midst of them, tenderly offering the jewels of His Holy City and the twelve great fruits of His Tree of Lives, the thrilling beauties of His garden, and the sparkling water of His river of life-truths.
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The only and crucial question then becomes: "who among us, who among men, will receive these things, become a part of the inner New Jerusalem, participants in its work, and partakers of its uncountable blessings and happinesses? Who will be enlightened and uplifted, strengthened and heartened by the New Heaven flowing in with its Divine goodnesses, affections, loves and lights?" Amen.
LESSONS: Gen. 2:1-16; Rev. 21, 22 (Selections); Apocalypse Explained 732; Last Judgment 74.
Title Unspecified EDITOR 1977
It is according to Divine order that a new heaven should be formed before a New Church is established on earth. For the Church is internal and external, and the internal Church makes one with the Church in heaven, and consequently with heaven; and the internal must be formed before the external, and afterwards the external by means of the internal. That this is so is well known among the clergy in this world. Just so far as this new heaven, which constitutes the internal of the Church in man, increases, so far the New Jerusalem, that is, the New Church, comes down from that heaven. Now this cannot take place in a moment but only as the falsities of the former Church are removed: for what is new cannot enter where falsities have previously been implanted, unless those falsities are first rooted out. This will take place with the clergy, and similarly with the laity. True Christian Religion 784
267
NATURE OF THE CHURCH SPECIFIC Rev. GEOFFREY H. HOWARD 1977
A STUDY
(An Address to the General Church Council of the Clergy, March, 1977.)
THE ETERNAL NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH SPECIFIC
It is an eternal law of Divine order that "the human race cannot live unless it is conjoined with the Lord through heaven and the world of spirits."* Throughout the ages of human existence upon the earth the Lord has always provided that there shall be somewhere on earth "a church where the Word is and where by its means the Lord is known."** Through such a church, which is in the acknowledgement of the Lord and in a life of charity according to the Word "the Lord is present by its means in the whole world, for by its means heaven is conjoined with the human race."***
* AC 1637
** SS 104
*** Ibid.
The first such church which was raised up by the Lord and specifically commissioned to serve as a medium of communication between the heavens and the human race was the Most Ancient Church. That church was raised up from among its Pre-adamite forebears to become a celestial church "more beloved of the Lord than the churches that followed it."* "More than all the churches in the whole world this church was from the Divine, for it was in the good of love to the Lord. . . . This church was pre-eminently called 'Man', and also a 'likeness of God'."**
* AC 414
** AC 4454
When in process of time the men of the Most Ancient Church began to turn away from the Lord and in preference began to favour the delights of the proprium, they set a course of decline which would ultimately threaten the conjunction of heaven with the human race. The heavens would become polluted by the spheres of evil until eventually no spiritual light could penetrate from the heavens to the minds of men. The earth would have been smitten with the curse of self-destruction. The only possible means of redemption from this eventually lay in the much prophesied Divine incarnation.
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THE LORD'S COMING TO RE-ESTABLISH THE CHURCH SPECIFIC WITH THE SPIRITUAL
In the fullness of time the Lord did come. But the teaching is given that He "came into the world to save not the celestial, but the spiritual."* What is the implication of this teaching? Were there still men who could be called "celestial" when the Lord came on earth! Several passages seem to indicate that there were. It was prophesied that "The scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come."** The explanation given in the internal sense is that the Divine sovereignty would "not depart from the celestial kingdom" until the Lord would come.*** As a result of the fall "the infernal and diabolical spirits were then raising themselves up from the hells and were ruling over the souls who were arriving from the world. The result was that none could be saved But the celestial; and at East scarcely they, unless the Lord had taken on the Human and had made this in Himself Divine. . . . The spiritual, that is, they who were of the spiritual church, were saved by the Lord's coming."**** The sovereignty of the celestial kingdom maintained by the influx of the Divine truth flowing in through the celestial kingdom could not sufficiently hold the mind of the spiritual genius in the course of truth because man had "removed himself from good. The Lord came into the world and made the Human in Himself Divine, in order that from the very Divine Human of the Lord, the Divine truth might proceed, and thus might save man, (man of the spiritual genius) who should receive good through truth."*****
* AC 2661
** Gen. 49:10
*** AC 6371
**** AC 6373
***** Ibid.
This passage indicates that there were those of a celestial genius still being created even after the fall. The Lord could still hold these under the sovereignty of His celestial kingdom and maintain them in the heavenly endeavor thereby. But the spiritual, those who could receive the good of heaven only by way of revealed truth, could not thus be reached. Therefore it is said that "the Lord came into the world not to save the celestial, but the spiritual."*
* AC 2661
That there are, even at this day, men created of the celestial genius and others of the spiritual is further implied in other passages. "There are two kinds of men within the church; the spiritual, and the celestial. The spiritual become rational from truth, but the celestial from good."* "There are at this day also men of one genius, or disposition, and men of the other."**
269
And again of little children who die and come into heaven it is said that they "have various dispositions." Some have "that of the spiritual angels and some that of the celestial angels. Those who are of a celestial disposition are seen in that heaven to the right, and those of a spiritual disposition to the left. All children in the Gorand Man, which is heaven, are in the province of the eye, those of a spiritual disposition in the province of the left eye, and those of a celestial disposition in the province of the right eye."***
* AC 2078
** AC 136
*** HH 33; see HH 339, AC 2301
With all such teachings the distinction between the mode of regeneration with the Most Ancient Church, before the fall, and that in all succeeding churches since must always be clearly held in mind. All regeneration since the fall has been by way of truth from a written Word derived therefrom either proximately or remotely. However, with those of a celestial disposition the mere mention of a genuine truth is accompanied by a very keen perception of the good to which that truth will lead. With the spiritual something of that perception can be gained only as a result of logic and the use of reason when truths are seen in harmony with each other. Truth is really necessary in the regeneration of both the celestial and spiritual genius, but the perceptive faculty is so keen with the celestial that the thought of truth as such barely intercedes. "In each kingdom good is implanted by means of truth."*
* AC 10124
The eternal necessity for the existence of a Church Specific on earth would seem to be for the sake of preserving something of Divine truth in some degree of integrity. Man's sight of the Lord, and his sight of the way that leads to Him, can be gained only by way of truth. That has been true even from the very beginning. It is a universal law that "the knowledge of a thing must precede in order that there may be a perception of it."* "No one can perceive what he does not know and believe, consequently he cannot be gifted with the faculty of perceiving the good of love and the truth of faith except by means of knowledges."** Indeed it is said that the men of the Most Ancient Church had "revelation from perception,"*** but still such perception could be effective only when the external sensories were first activated by the objects formed in the mind from the natural world of time and space. Because these men were in the order of their lives proprial evil and falsity did not intercept influx from heaven. From perception they were led to see the Divine order of the Lord reflected in all things of His creation. The sensory impressions first gave rise to knowledge and ideas which even with them still had to precede any revelation from perception.
* AC 649
** AC 1502
*** AC 5121
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Having established that the Church Specific is essential in the Divine scheme of order to maintain conjunction between the heavens, the world of spirits, and the human race, let us now turn to a consideration of what is revealed concerning the essential composition of the Church Specific.
THE ESSENTIAL COMPOSITION OF THE CHURCH SPECIFIC
The term "church specific" does not occur in a great many passages of the Writings. Yet reference to it is frequent. The Latin term used is "Ecclesia in specie," literally "a Church in special." "The church specific is where the Word is, and where the Lord is known by means of it, thus where Divine truths from heaven are revealed."* "The Lord's church is everywhere in the whole world, although specifically it is where the Lord is acknowledged, and where the Word is."** It is emphasized that the church specific is not an entity unto itself. It bears relation to the universal church of the Lord throughout the whole world. "The church of the Lord is spread over all the globe and is universal; and . . . all those are in it who have lived in the good of charity in accordance with their religion. The church where the Word is and where by means of it the Lord is known, is in relation to those who are out of the church like the heart and lungs in man."*** "They who are outside of the church have reference to the parts of the body that are supported by and live from the heart and lungs; hence it is evident that without a church somewhere on earth the human race could not subsist, as the body cannot subsist unless it has a heart and lungs."**** "Many Christians . . . believe that the church which is called a communion, is general; it follows that there are most general principles of the church which enter into all religions and constitute that communion. These most general principles are the acknowledgment of God and the good of life."***** This communion is a heavenly communion, and not necessarily effected by physical communication. "The church of the Lord is like the heart and lungs, and . . . thence there is an influx into others who are outside the church and do not possess the Word."****** Such teachings represent a fair summary concerning the government of the church by the Lord. The church specific is likened unto the heart and the lungs of the body, and the church universal to its viscera and members.
* HH 308 note
** AC 10765; see HD 244, 246
*** HH 328
**** AC 2853
***** DP 325
****** TCR 267
In order to focus on the nature of the church specific, to comprehend the essentials of its composition, it is necessary to examine its description in the light of the correspondence so often used-its correspondence to the heart and lungs in the body.
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This correspondence is almost universally drawn with reference to this subject.
First of all the correspondence is said to exist with the heart and lungs, and the heart and lungs are within the region of the chest of the human body. It seems significant that the chest is the region to which our focus is drawn. If the correspondence had more appropriately rested in the region of the head then the church would have been compared to the cerebrum and the cerebellum. But it was not. The heart and the lungs in the region of the chest correspond to the function of the church specific.
THE CHURCH SPECIFIC AND THE REGION OF THE CHEST IN THE GORAND MAN
As we survey the general teachings of the Writings concerning the region of the chest some interesting ideas come to light. "In general the highest or third heaven forms the head down to the neck; the middle or second heaven forms the chest down to the loins and knees; the lowest or first heaven forms the feet down to the soles, also the arms down to the fingers."* Again we are taught "the breast corresponds to the good of charity, which is the good of the middle heaven and is called the spiritual Divine."** In some references a distinction is drawn between the signification of the "breast" and that of the "chest." "The 'breasts' (mamillae) signify spiritual love, and the 'chest' (pectus) itself the good thereof."*** Nevertheless in agreement with the preceding references it is said that "the chest" corresponds to "the middle or second" heaven. This same passage goes on to further reveal "that the chest signifies the good of spiritual love . . . because within the chest are the heart and lungs, and the 'heart' from correspondence signifies celestial love, while the 'lungs' signify spiritual love."
* HH 65
** AC 10087; see AC 4403, 2162, 10005, 6436; AE 65
*** AE 65
In considering the correspondence of the church specific to the heart and lungs, the foregoing references lead us to conclude that the church specific on earth is in consociation with the second heaven. As is well-known the three heavens are each divided into two kingdoms, celestial and spiritual. And indication is given that the church specific has within it these two kingdoms also. "The church, where the Word is read and by means of which the Lord is known, is like the heart and lungs; the celestial Kingdom is like the heart, and the spiritual kingdom like the lungs."*
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And again: "The heart and its kingdom in man correspond to the spiritual; the celestial and spiritual angels also flow into the things belonging to the heart and lungs, insomuch that such things exist and subsist by influx therefrom."**
* SS 105; TCR 267
** AC 3635
From these teachings we are led to believe that the sustaining principle of life within the church specific descends from the second heaven, the second heaven divided into two kingdoms. The celestial kingdom with the church corresponds to the pulsations of the heart, and its spiritual kingdom to the respiration of the lungs. By means of the interaction of these two kingdoms in the second heaven, "the pulsation of the celestial inflows into that of the spiritual, and thus goes forth and passes into nature."* It would Seem then that the influx of life of the church specific inflows from the second heaven. We would in fact premise that the sustaining principle of life within the church specific is from the second heaven. In the second heaven there is an "influx from the celestial kingdom into the spiritual kingdom . . . like that of the heart into the lungs; as also is the influx of all things of the heart into those of the lungs."**
* AC 3886
** AC 3887
The influx from the Lord is through the celestial societies into the spiritual ones, or . . .through inmosts to exteriors. The reason of this is that the Lord inflows through love or mercy, whence comes all that is celestial in His kingdom; and through love or mercy He inflows into the good of faith, whence comes all that is spiritual in His kingdom.* The internal of the church makes one with the church in heaven, thus with heaven itself; and what is internal must be formed before its external.**
* AC 3890
** TCR 784
That the essential life of the church specific descends from the second heaven seems further substantiated by the following passage.
The whole angelic heaven together with the church on earth is in the sight of the Lord as one Man, the angelic heaven constituting his internal and the church his external. To be more particular, the highest heaven constitutes the head, the second :and the lowest heaven the breast and the middle portion of the body, and the church on earth the loins and feet; while the Lord Himself is the soul and life of the whole.*
* TCR 119
This passage in its continuance speaks of the ensuing effects had the Lord not come and wrought the Divine work of redemption. It describes She gradual disintegration that would have befallen the Gorand Man of heaven. "If the Lord had not effected redemption, this Man would have been destroyed, the feet and the loins would have been destroyed by the defection of the church on earth, the abdominal region by the defection of the lowest heaven, the region of the chest by the defection of the second heaven, and then the head, having no correspondence with the body would have fallen into unconsciousness."
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In this passage the church on earth is called the "external" of the Gorand Man. It is called the "loins and feet" thereof. This implies that the church specific on earth is intended to act in concert with the influx of life from the second heaven.
THE CHURCH SPECIFIC IN RELATION TO THE JOSEPH AND BENJAMIN SERIES
It is also taught that the angels of the second heaven are
distinguished into the internal and external. . . . The middle or second heaven is spiritual; for the angels there are called spiritual because they are in charity towards the neighbor, that is, in mutual love, which is such that one loves another more than himself; and because they are such they are in intelligence, and hence are called intelligences. These angels are also distinguished into internal and external, the internal being more spiritual than the external.*
* AC 4286
Is the internal here spoken of "the heart," and the external "the lungs?"
This same passage further speaks of the internal of the second heaven as being called the "celestial-spiritual." "What the celestial-spiritual is, shall be briefly stated. Those are called the celestial-spiritual who were said just above to be spiritual, and are in the middle or second heaven; they are called 'celestial' from mutual love, and 'spiritual' from intelligence thence." It then goes on to relate the celestial-spiritual to the Joseph series in the Arcana Coelestia, which introduces a most interesting parallel. "The internal angels (those called the celestial-spiritual) are represented by Joseph, and are called Joseph in the Word." It will be recalled that Joseph could not be united with his brothers, by whom were represented "the truths of the external church" as without a uniting medium which was Benjamin. And Benjamin represents "the spiritual of the celestial." Thus we read "By Joseph is represented the celestial of the spiritual, or truth from the Divine which is internal; by Benjamin the spiritual of the celestial, which is the intermediate proceeding thence, and by the other ten sons of Jacob the truths of the external church.* In the light of this let us again call to mind what is said of the church specific, and the conjunctive operations of the heart and lungs in relation to the church universal. As the body cannot live without these organs so neither can the church on earth.
* AC 5469
274
As the heart first flows into the lungs, and then into the viscera and members of the body, so also the Lord through the good of love flows into internal truths, and through these into external truths and goods. . . . Thus there must absolutely be a church on earth, and . . . apart from it the human race would perish. . . . (Therefore) it is provided by the Lord that there shall always be a church on earth in which the Lord has been revealed, through the Divine truth which is from Him. This Divine truth on our earth is the Word. . . . All of man's life is through heaven from the Lord. . . . From this, then, it is evident how this is to be understood, that through the good of charity there is conjunction with those who are in few truths and still desire to be instructed.*
* AC 9276
Joseph, the celestial of the spiritual, "that which is of good from truth,"* is truth which is "from a celestial origin. . . . (This) is truth formed by good, so that it may be called the form of good."** This quality of good from truth could not descend into the church and establish "the doctrine of faith and the doctrine of charity" within the church "unless there be an intermediate." "Neither of these things of faith or of the church will live unless the intermediate represented by Benjamin is conjoined."*** Thus when Joseph and Benjamin were conjoined then "both together" represented "the intermediate between the celestial and the spiritual man."**** How strikingly similar this is to what is said of the heart and lungs of the second heaven which act as a medium through which life from the Lord flows, first into the celestial heaven (the head of the Gorand Man) and then into the heart and lungs thence to be communicated to the rest of the body. That the uniting medium is below the celestial heaven is made clear in the following teaching.
* AC 4570
** AC 1950
*** AC 5542
**** AC 4592
Those in heaven who bear relation to the uniting medium . . . have the goods of love and the goods of faith conjoined together in themselves; for through the goods of love they are conjoined with the goods of faith with the spiritual who are in the middle heaven . . .and 'spiritual-celestial'; the former are represented in the Word by Joseph, and the latter by Benjamin.*
* AC 9671
Since "Benjamin" means the conjunctive of truth and good, or the conjoining medium in the natural" it is said that through this mediumship "the light of truth may penetrate even to those who are in natural truth and good, thus to the lowest in the church . . . All the good that the natural man has flows in from the Lord through the spiritual, and without that influx there can be no good in the natural . . . and without this influx the church is not with man."*
* AE 440
The heart and the lungs are the vital organs of the body. Similarly, the church specific serves a vital function both to the church in the heavens and also to the church on earth.
275
The heart and the lungs in their conjunctive operations give a pure supply of blood to the rest of the body including a controlled supply to the brain. But it is important to establish that the church specific can only exist on earth to the degree that it makes one with that which answers to its spiritual affiliate which we believe to be in the second heaven.
THE CHURCH SPECIFIC AND SOCIETIES OF INTERMEDIATE ANGELS
From what has been set forth concerning the nature of those spiritual societies in heaven which are in affiliation with the church specific on earth, that which answers to the heart and lungs, we are now led to consider a further implied relationship.
The church specific is where the Lord is known and loved according to the genuine teachings of the revealed Word, for the church specific is defined as being in possession of the Word and where by its means the Lord is known. The church specific can exist only from the revealed Word. It can exist only with those who love to study that Word interiorly, and who love to apply those principles in the development of the church within themselves and with others. In no wise can the church specific be categorized as passive. If it loves the interior things of the Word it seeks to reach others who desire instruction. It endeavors to preach the Word to all receptive states.
For a moment let us reflect on what has been said concerning the representation of Joseph and Benjamin when they were conjoined together. When so united they represented "the intermediate between the celestial and the spiritual man."* Those in heaven who answer to this function are termed a uniting medium. It will be recalled that "those in heaven who bear relation to the uniting medium are called 'celestial-spiritual', and 'spiritual-celestial',"** the heart and the lungs of the same. We believe that the internal of the church specific, that with which it may be consociated in heaven, may well be a specific part of the second heaven and serve a specific function. We would here focus our attention on the teachings concerning the "intermediate angels."
* AC 4592
** AC 9611
Because of the great difference between the perspective nature of the celestial angels of the third heaven, and that of the spiritual angels of the second heaven, these two heavens are entirely separate and distinct.
They are not together, and have no intercourse with each other. They are able to communicate only through intermediate angelic societies, which are called celestial-spiritual. Through these the celestial kingdom flows into the spiritual; and from this it comes to pass that although heaven is divided into two kingdoms it nevertheless makes one. The Lord always provides such intermediate angels through whom there is communication and conjunction.*
* HH 27
276
(These intermediate angels) are of such genius, that they are able to approach the good of either heaven. These societies are what constitutes the uniting medium. . . . To angels of the inmost heaven correspond those things with man, which belong to the province of the heart and to that of the cerebellum; but to the angels of the middle heaven correspond those things in man which belong to the province of the lungs, and to that of the cerebrum But to the intermediate angels who accede to both heavens, and conjoin them, correspond the cardiac and pulmonary networks of blood vessels by means of which is effected the conjunction of the heart with the lungs.*
* AC 9670
In this particular passage the intermediate angels, who act as a uniting medium, are said to form not the heart and lungs per se, but rather "the cardiac and pulmonary plexuses," the very blood vessels through which the operations of the heart and lungs come together, or are conjoined. It appears that this designation is a specific declaration of the actual function of these intermediate angels. In its context it likens the highest heaven to the "province of the heart and to that of the cerebellum" and the middle heaven "to the things in man which belong to the province of the lungs, and to that of the cerebrum." Note that it mentions not only the "heart," but also the "cerebellum," and not only the "lungs," but also the "cerebrum." We are also taught that the angels of each of the three heavens are distinguished into "internal" and "external." In the case of the third heaven it is said that the internal there are "more celestial than the external,"* and in the case of the spiritual angels of the second heaven, that the internal there are "more spiritual than the external." In relating this teaching to the preceding one, surely those angels of the celestial heaven belonging to the province of the cerebellum would be more internal, or "more celestial," than those in the province of the heart. Similarly those angels in the province of the cerebrum, would be more internal or "more spiritual" than those angels in the province of the lungs. For the cerebellum and the cerebrum are in the head while the heart and lungs are in the chest. The idea presented here becomes clarified when we introduce the idea of the "kingdoms" of the heavens. Later in the same passage the following is added.
* AC 4286
That the angels who are of the Lord's celestial kingdom, that is, who are in the inmost heaven, constitute the province of the heart in the Gorand Man, and that the angels who are in the Lord's spiritual kingdom, that is, who are in the middle heaven, constitute in it the province of the lungs, and that the correspondence of the heart and lungs results from this. The case with the correspondence of the cerebrum and the cerebellum is similar.
The great majority of passages treating of the heart and the lungs, both in the heaven and in the church specific do so with reference to the kingdoms rather than to the second and third heavens.
277
"Angels of the celestial kingdom, being in love to the Lord, have reference to the heart of heaven, and angels of the spiritual kingdom, being in wisdom from that love, have reference to the lungs of heaven."*
* Wis. VII:2
However, the essential point which we wish to establish is the fact that the Writings do indicate a relationship between the intermediate angels and the functions of the heart and lungs in heaven. This does seem to be quite clearly indicated in the passage above.*
* AC 9670
Intermediate angels are vital to the operation of the whole Gorand Man of heaven. Without them there could be no communion of influx from the celestial heaven to the heavens beneath it. Hence it is said that "the celestial kingdom of the Lord . . . is separated from the spiritual kingdom . . . by intermediates. Through these the celestial kingdom flows into the spiritual kingdom . . . for all influx is effected through intermediates from interiors."* Intermediate angels are in a general perception of celestial good, and are those through whom "influx, communication, and conjunction are effected. . . . These have extension even into celestial societies."** "This extension is not into the societies themselves, but into the spheres of their good."*** The quality of good in which are these intermediate angels is not the inmost good of the celestial heaven, but rather is said to be "the external good of the celestial kingdom." This "flows into the internal good of the spiritual kingdom."**** Intermediate angels form the nexus between the two kingdoms of heaven. It is through them that the external good of the celestial heaven takes form in truth. Through their means celestial good may take form and expression in truth. Only by way of accommodated truth may the angels of the lower heavens gain a perception of good.
* AC 8796
** AC 8802
*** AC 8794
**** AC 9913
THE HEART AND LUNGS IN INTERMEDIATE SOCIETIES
Two qualities of good are said to exist with these intermediate angels. These are "mutual love" and "the good of charity toward the neighbor." The good of mutual love is said to be "the external of the celestial kingdom" while "the internal of the spiritual kingdom is the good of charity toward the neighbor."* In spite of the differences between these two kingdoms nevertheless "they agree in the fact that the external of the celestial kingdom coincides with the internal of the spiritual kingdom, through the intermediate which is called the 'celestial of the spiritual'."**
278
Do not these two qualities of good, the good of mutual love and the good of charity toward the neighbor answer to the heart and lungs with man?*** From a careful scrutiny of these passages there appears to be a very real relationship. One of the functions of the intermediate angels is that of preaching. Since there are no preachers in the celestial kingdom, for that is the Lord's priestly kingdom, it is part of the function of these intermediate angels to preach to them "since by means of preachings they are enlightened in the truths they already know, and are perfected by many truths that they did not know." But it is said that "all the preachers (in heaven) are from the Lord's spiritual kingdom . . . (because) all preaching must be from truths."**** "As the celestial angels are perfected in wisdom by hearing, there are intermediate angels, who are called celestial-spiritual angels, who preach and teach truths in their temples, which are called houses of God, and are of wood."***** Presumably these intermediate angels designated as "celestial-spiritual" relate to the province of the heart. With regard to the lungs of these societies there are others mentioned who are designated as "spiritual-celestial" as in the following passage. Many of the intermediate angels "are preachers in the highest heaven . . . (and) are called spiritual-celestial."****** Thus we may see that within these societies of the intermediate angels, both the functions of the heart and lungs are present. By virtue of their conjoint operations the highest heaven and the lower heavens are sustained. By correspondence we can see a similar function is maintained in the body from its vital organs. Not only is the purified blood supplied to every living cell within the body itself, but an essential supply of blood is also transmitted to the cerebellum and the cerebrum of the brain, and its flow carefully controlled.
* AC 6435; see AC 9112, 9113
** AC 6435
*** Wis. VII:2
**** HH 225
***** AE 831
****** Verbo 3
THE MODE WHEREBY THE COMMUNION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH IS EFFECTED
From these considerations we believe that the essential life of the church specific on earth inflows from intermediate societies who form the heart and lungs in the second heaven. From them there is consociation with those on earth who respond to the Lord as He has revealed Himself in His glorified Human in the Word.
With regard to the mode whereby spirits from both heaven and hell communicate their affections and thoughts to men on earth, it is important that we remember that the affiliation is effected through the world of spirits.
279
It must be understood that the conjunction of man with heaven and with hell is not a direct conjunction with them, but a mediate conjunction by means of spirits who are in the world of spirits. These spirits, none from hell itself or from heaven itself, are with man. By means of evil spirits in the world of spirits man is conjoined with hell, and by means of good spirits there he is conjoined with heaven.* Every man, as to his affections and thoughts thence is in society with those who are in the world of spirits, and mediately through them, with those who are either in heaven or in hell.**
* HH 600
** AR 552; see AC 5852, 50; TCR 474, 476
This would explain why, when speaking of the growth and spread of the New Church, the Writings say that the New Church on earth will grow "according to its increase in the world of spirits."* It is speaking of the sphere flowing forth from the new heaven through the world of spirits to those who are disposed to receive of it. But it would also include the sphere emanating from the intermediate societies of heaven which answer to the heart and lungs. Their influx must also descend through the world of spirits and thence into those who are receptive, into those who constitute the church specific on earth.
* AE 736
THE CHURCH SPECIFIC AND THE PRIESTHOOD
If it is correct that intermediate societies in heaven constitute the heart and lungs of heaven, and that very many of these angels are in the priestly function of teaching and preaching, then we can draw something of a conclusion from this. What, we might ask, is the Divinely intended function of the Priesthood of the New Church? Is not the call to the priestly office a call from the Lord, that those who may serve Him in this capacity may fulfil the essential requirement of the church specific? What do the Writings teach in this regard? "The church is internal and external; internal with the clergy, and external with the laity; or internal with those who have studied its doctrinals interiorly, and have confirmed them from the Word, and external with those who have not."* While the context of this passage does not categorically preclude laymen from entering into the state of the internal church, it does indicate that the internal of the church is principally with the clergy, for much of their vocational time is spent in the study of the interiors of doctrine. Laymen may indeed enter into the state of the internal church but the state is different than with the clergy. With the clergy the Lord is known not only as to the affections of good, but also from those affections clothed in doctrinals of the Word. For only by way of doctrine can the Divine Human of the Lord be made known. But His Divine presence can be perceived only when this acknowledgement is accompanied by "repentance of life."**
280
Primarily it is the priesthood that is acquainted with the interiors of truth, and charged with the responsibility of "insinuating truths into the minds of the laity."*** However, as to who those are who constitute the heart and who those are who constitute the lungs we question whether such a judgment can be made on earth. We believe it is sufficient that the individual priest be left in freedom to develop his native genius according to the dictate of his conscience. We believe that the Lord will provide for the formation of the heart and lungs within the church specific.
* AR 398
** AR 9
*** AC 6822
Furthermore the church specific is constantly growing. Its development must recommence with each new generation. The established priesthood must provide the climate and the means for its continuance. But the formation of the true church specific is not present solely in truths that are known. Consociation with heaven is effected by means of enlightenment in the understanding, but conjunction is only through the regenerated will. Therefore the life of the individual priest of the church is a matter of considerable importance, if the living sphere of heaven is to be brought unto others. We have been loath to emphasize this lest we trespass on the verge of spiritual judgment. Yet the importance of this principle is everywhere taught in the Writings.
It is specifically inferred by the Lord when a certain man was brought unto the disciples who was possessed of a "dumb spirit." The disciples were unable to cast the possessing spirit from him. For their failure the Lord rebuked them saying, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting."* It is explained in the Writings that they could not dispel this spirit "because they had not yet reached the proper state, and for this . . . the disciples were rebuked by the Lord."**
* Mk. 9:29
** AE 556:17
The same is taught concerning the reception of the Holy Spirit by the clergyman, that it is "according to the faith of his life."* And again: "The Holy, which is meant by the Holy Spirit, does not inhere; neither does it remain, except so long as the man who receives it believes in the
Lord, and at the same time is in the doctrine of truth from the Word, and in a life according to it."** The effectiveness of the clergy is, to some degree at least, dependent upon the quality of their personal lives. Certainly evil priests can serve their use by preaching with a certain zeal. But surely, while their evils prevail as active states there can be little consociation with the angelic heavens, and the sphere of priestly teaching will be influenced.
* Can. HS. IV:7
** Can. H.S. IV:4; AC 1610
281
Let us also remember that churches in the past have been consummated, and the erosion began with the clergy. They separated "the interiors of doctrine . . . from charity" which then became "mere falsities." Of these it is said, "they have seen the depths of Satan" (Rev. 2:24), because "the clergy alone know the arcana of . . . (false) doctrine." The importance of preserving integrity within the clergy of the New Church is the very reason given for the provision of overseers within the church, "among whom there is subordination."* It was when the integrity of the church specific began to fail with the clergy of previous churches, that each began to fall. The essential principle whereupon consociation of heaven with the human race ultimately depends is the good of life within the church which can be born only when the truths of the Word are rightly understood and applied.
* AR 143
The truth which makes the man to be the church is the truth which is from good; for when man is in good then from good he sees truths and perceives them, and thus believes that they are truths but not at all if he is not in good. Good is like a little flame which gives light and illumines, and causes man to see, perceive, and believe truths.* (This is) the only truth of the church,. . . That is to say, the man who is in truths of faith from good, he is the church; but not the man who is in truths of faith and not in the good of charity.**
* AC 10792
** AC 5816
WITH WHOM MAY THE CHURCH SPECIFIC BE FORMED?
When we look at the New Church on earth and consider its composition it has within it its older members, its middle aged, and its younger members. In a healthy church there must be a continuing process of regeneration ensuing. The ability to see truths from the light of good is only granted by the Lord to those who have suffered themselves to enter into a degree of regeneration through the mercy of the Lord. But it may be concluded, fairly safely, and without presuming to make any spiritual judgments, that there is a great difference between the way in which the truths of the Word viewed by a man of years and wisdom and by a younger man who is yet aspiring unto that wisdom. A true man of wisdom has his internals, both his understanding and his will, opened unto heaven. If he is truly wise, he has gained that wisdom only by way of regeneration, and if this is the case he is given to see at least some truths from the light of good, and from that light he perceives them to be true, Thus it is revealed,
In the spiritual . . . there are two kinds of men: there are those who are in the truth of faith and not in the corresponding good of life, and there are those who are in the good of charity and in the corresponding truth of faith. They who are in the good of charity and in the corresponding truth of faith are they who constitute the very church itself, and are men of the internal church. . . .
282
But they who are in the truth of faith and not in the corresponding good of life are men of the external spiritual church.*
* AC 8974
With this in mind let us return to a consideration of what is said of the heart and its relationship to the lungs, thus of the relationship between what may be termed the internal and external of the church specific.
It is well-known that the first principle of . . . life is the heart, and the second of . . .life the lungs. . . . The heart of the Gorand Man, that is to say, of heaven and the church is constituted by those who are in love to the Lord and in charity towards the neighbor; therefore, abstractly from persons, by love to the Lord and the love of the neighbor.*
* AC 9276
Thus the celestial kingdom within the church specific, or its heart, must have within it some degree of love to the Lord and of love to the neighbor. Such loves are given to the man of the church by the Lord to the man who has the Word and through regeneration has interiorly applied its principles to his life. The pulsation of his spirit is in general harmony with that of the celestial kingdom of the second heaven.
"But the lungs in the Gorand Man, that is in heaven and the church, are constituted by those who from the Lord are in charity towards the neighbor, and from this in faith; thus abstractly from persons, by charity and faith from the Lord."* This would indicate the difference between celestial and spiritual love. Hence it is said "All men are born natural, with the power to become either celestial or spiritual."**
* Ibid.
** AC 4592
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHURCH SPECIFIC
Since the existence of the church specific is essential for maintaining the conjunction between heaven and the human race, then the first responsibility of the church which has the Word is to endeavor to provide for its continuance. Its second responsibility is in relation to the church universal, for in the sight of the Lord the church specific and the church universal constitute one church.
In regard to the first of these priorities, that of providing for the continuance of the church specific, the principles are taught in the internal sense of the vision in the Apocalypse of the woman clothed with the sun. She was nourished and protected by the Lord "for a time, and times, and half a time from the face of the serpent."* This is said to signify the state of the church until it "grows and comes to fullness. . . . Time in the singular signifies a state of good: times in the plural a state of truth, each as to its implantation, while half a time signifies a holy state of the church."**
283
Aspiring unto the good of charity from the Lord must always be the end for which a true church must strive. The state of good can only come to its true fruition through the increase of truths which may clothe it and render it truly heavenly. And lastly the church may only come into a holy state when these are made living, and the Divine presence may add its sanctity or holiness. When the church has these objectives as its focus, the Lord will descend and provide for the "increase of the church even to its fullness."*** If the New Church is to fulfil the uses of the church specific, it must first develop internally within itself. We believe that New Church education, especially within the Theological School, is a response to provide for this.
* Rev. 12:14
** AE 761
*** Ibid.
As to the second responsibility of the church specific which is its relationship with the church universal, this may be seen to have a twofold application. Firstly, when there is a church specific on earth "the people outside of the church who are not in possession of the Word had light by its means."* The light is communicated to such through affiliation with angelic societies. As we have already treated of this at length, it is sufficient simply to mention this aspect of this relationship.
* SS 104
However there is also the aspect of evangelization, of bringing the truths of the new revelation to those who are desirous of receiving them. The principles involved are well-known, and have been the subject of other studies. However, we would emphasize some of the more direct aspects of this responsibility.
When the Lord Himself sent forth His disciples He "commanded them, saying, 'Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel'."* "The 'Gentiles to whom they should not go', signify those who are in evils. . . . The 'cities of the Samaritans' signify those who are in falsities; 'sheep' those who are in goods."** They were sent unto those who were in good, and good contains innocence which longs for truth. The same principle is also taught in the Lord's command to John, "Feed My sheep."*** This "signifies that those who are in faith from love, ought to instruct those who are in the good of love to the Lord, and in the good of charity towards the neighbor; for those who are in faith from love are also in truths, and those who from this are in truths, instruct concerning good, and lead to good; for all spiritual good that a man has, is gained and implanted through truths."****
* Matt. 10:5; 6
** AC 4169
*** Jn. 21:11
**** AE 9
284
The principle is clear. The challenge facing the New Church is to discover those who are in good and who desire to be instructed. The validity of this is proven from experience. For one who is truly thirsty receives truth with joy, and suffers himself to be led thereby. But are we always guided by this principle in our efforts?
THE NEW CHURCH THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
It seems clear from several considerations that the church specific is intended to be formed from those of the spiritual genius. The new revelation was given to the man of the Western World, to those of Judeo-Christian heritage, and its language and style is particularly accommodated to this genius of man. However the Divine truths contained in the Writings have universal application to mankind throughout the world.
The primary endeavor of the General Church so far has been to provide for the continuation and establishment of the church specific. We believe that this has been a rightful emphasis, and the first true use of the church. Our response has been to provide the basis whereupon the angelic heavens may rest, that from the basis of this communion, the light of heaven may be shed abroad to the nations of the earth.
The church has been faithful to this call. However it is of great importance that we do not rest content in this endeavor only, but also respond to the needs of the church universal.
On occasion we hear a murmuring from some of our laity that our approach is too deep and incomprehensible to their ears. Some suffer greatly within their personal lives because of their limited intellectual abilities and their consequent blindness to truths which they do not see dearly in application to their lives. Those endowed with the ability to comprehend interior truths do not constitute a majority in the human race. There is a genuine need for accommodation of these truths to the state of the unsophisticated populace. We believe that the fulfillment of this need should not be overlooked. We believe that this is the challenge to the New Church of the future. We are taught that "doctrinal things, or knowledges of good and truth, cannot be conjoined and appropriated, except by means of delights and pleasantness accommodated to it, for they are insinuated by an external or sensuous way; and whatever does not enter by some delight or pleasantness does not inhere, and thus does not continue.* In order to fulfill this commitment of appropriately accommodating interior truths in such a way that delights are awakened, the priesthood of the New Church must be able to appreciate the state and heritage of the people whom it is to serve.
* AC 3502
285
Surely the call to the New Church is a universal call to go forth unto other nations, unto other cultures, that the life of heaven may be brought more closely unto all men. Much is said of other nations and cultures in the Writings. The genius of each is disclosed. Surely these teachings were given to provide the church with a rudimentary knowledge of the interior disposition of these peoples. A healthy body is nourished throughout, with the blood supply from the heart and lungs. And we believe that the church also can be healthy only if it looks outside of itself. It must strive to bring unto mankind the very means whereby an intelligent response to truth may be provided. Only through truth can men selectively identify the quality of their associate spirits, and thus be given the opportunity to cooperate with the Lord in His Divine work of salvation.
MINISTERIAL CHANGES LOUIS B. KING 1977
The Rev. Daniel W. Heinrichs has accepted a call to serve as pastor of the Washington Society, Washington, D.C., effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Frank S. Rose has accepted a teaching position in the Academy Schools, beginning September 1977. He will serve also as housemaster of the College Men's Dormitory, Childs Hall.
The Rev. Walter E. Orthwein has accepted a call to serve as pastor of the Detroit Society of the General Church, in Detroit, Michigan, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith has accepted a call to serve as pastor of the Carmel Church in Kitchener, Canada, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Mark R. Carlson has received appointment by the Bishop to serve as assistant pastor to the Rev. Christopher Smith in Carmel Church, in Kitchener, Canada, effective September 1, 1977.
Candidate Stephen D. Cole, after his ordination in June, 1977, will serve as minister to the Ohio District by episcopal appointment.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
286
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO DIE Rev. DONALD L. ROSE 1977
The Writings testify that human life is in reality a progression from the world to heaven, "and the last age, which is death, is the transition itself."*
* AC 3016
We are now undertaking to focus on the part of human life which is called death, and which is in reality an awakening. This part of human life is eminently secure and tranquil. It is guarded by the Lord through the agency of angels, and we may call it perhaps the safest interval of our life. Note what is said about one of the things that occur during the transition called death. ". . . but all this so gently that the same spirits who are now here present withhold me, by every means in their power, from using any expression implying pain; a sign that they are afraid lest anything be felt but what is of a gentle and soothing effect, for they love . . . every soul whom they attend."*
* SD 1116
During that transition called death we are safe from disturbance from evil spirits, a safety represented in a certain aroma,* and we are also safe from any anxieties that might emerge, for the angels are "extremely careful" about what ideas may emerge from one who is resuscitated.**
* HH 449
** HH 450
Above all let us note that resurrection is of the Lord. The drawing forth of the spirit, which Swedenborg was given to feel, was of the Lord (HH 449e). The reality here is the Lord's burning and powerful love.* It is of His mercy from which "He wills to draw all men."** As the Psalmist says, "God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us."*** Every New Church person is aware that at death an angelic face will look into our face, and that these angels "love every one."**** Let us note well that when the Writings speak of the intensity of angelic love they could not be more emphatic in saying that this love is not of the angels, but of the Lord.***** The charity in an angelic face is not of the face, but of the Lord's inflowing.******
287
As man is beheld by the face of love at death, so has he been loved through his life, even from the time he was a little child, for it is said of little ones that their angels do always behold the face of the Heavenly Father.*******
* SD 300
** SD 1104; see Jn. 12:32
*** Ps. 67:1
**** HH 449, 450
***** AC 2077, 6478
****** AC 1568
******* Matt. 18:10
There are people who speak of life after death, who do not believe in God. That is, they speak of a mechanism of reincarnation that somehow operates by itself. Now, although we will talk of a process and will even make a diagram of it, we are not talking of a mere mechanism. We are talking of the Lord's love and wisdom, for He says in so many words, "I am the resurrection and the life."* We are not speaking of a dark and perilous voyage or of a spirit to be feared, for the Lord says, "Be of good cheer: It is I: be not afraid."**
* Jn. 11:25
** Mk. 6:50
We do not think of the transition called death as one sudden event. Just as in the New Church we do not think of rebirth as an instantaneous thing but rather as a distinct process,* so we see the awakening to eternal life as a distinct series of things. Indeed, instead of speaking simply of one awakening, we can from the Doctrines understand seven different stages, each one having its own kind of feeling and each having something of the nature of an awakening.
* TCR 583, 586
Let us not allow this over-simplification to limit our thinking, just as we should not allow a diagram to limit our thinking. But let us briefly list these stages in sequence, noting in each case that a special kind of joy seems to be present. For what the Lord makes known to us here is good and happy tidings.*
*See diagram p. 291
1) There is first an awareness, although it is obscure, of the loving presence of celestial angels. This may be called a passive state in which affections are induced upon us, but those affections evoke in us peace and assurance. There is a change in the facial expression of our spirit* which might on occasion be reflected on the physical face of a dying person. Let us note the teaching that angels "do not see the faces of men in their material form, but in their spiritual form."**
* HH 449
** AC 5102
2) A distinct stage from this is that in which we are given light and are told we are a spirit. At first this light is like the dim light through the eyelids "on first awakening from sleep."* It is as if a veil had been taken away, and in this stage we feel the joy of being taught about the other life by angels eager to be of service.
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We are not really "ourself" in this state. Our "self" cannot interfere with the simple enjoyment of angelic teaching on eternal life. (This is probably related to an unconscious belief of which we will speak later, the belief that "they will see angels, will speak with them, and will enjoy happiness.")** This stage is not to be confused with a later stage in which one is told that one is in the spiritual world, for this delightful fleeting stage will soon be forgotten.
* HH 450
** AC 5063
3) The next stage is one in which we feel we are taking up life anew. There is a sense of newness of life without realizing that one is not still in the natural world.* How one can fail to realize this we will mention later on. In this stage the newcomer is in his "own life."** The Writings mention it as "a new beginning of life"*** in which the senses are sharper and the faculties of thought and speech superior. Although this state is clearly enjoyed, the newcomer does not really reflect upon it.****
* AC 2119
** HH 450
*** AC 316
**** AC 321
4) This brings us to the next delightful awakening, when we are told we are in the spiritual world. Now it is possible at this stage to feel shame and chagrin, disbelief and extreme astonishment.* But let us note that this stage is filled with distinct joy. We might represent this joy in someone crying out, "I made it. I made it." As it is put in one passage people said, "Thanks be to God that we are alive, and that death has not extirpated us."** And the passage ends, "I have seen them gladdened on account of their resurrection."
* AC 447
** 5 Mem. 1
Swedenborg joined angels in conversation with a group who did not know they had died. And here we see that both this stage and the previous one is an awakening as if from sleep. We read, "During the first few days after death, no one knows but that he is still living in the same world in which he lived before; for the time that has passed is like a sleep, on being awakened from which he had no other feeling than that he still is where he was before . . . We said . . .'You are no longer in the natural world, but in the spiritual world, and we are angels.' Then, being quite awake, they said, 'If you are angels, show us heaven'."*
* TCR 160:7
In this stage it is not uncommon for people to want to go into heaven but to be told that their time has not yet come.
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"They were answered that it was not yet their time, but that they would be admitted another time, when they were ready."*
* AC 2130:4; see AC 531-546
In this stage besides the "I-made-it" feeling, there is the joy of saying, "You made it" to friends. "I have often heard that those who come from the world were rejoiced at seeing their friends again, and that their friends in turn were rejoiced that they had come. Very commonly husband and wife come together and congratulate each other. . . ."*
* HH 494
5) What, then, is the next awakening? It is the passage from the state of externals to the state of internals, a change marked by the fact that the person involved changes in appearance so that he or she would be unrecognizable. Swedenborg saw acquaintances in the former state and recognized them, and then saw them in the second state and did not recognize them.* An example of this in a moment. Angels told newcomers, "You will no longer be recognized by your companions, nor even by yourselves."*
* HH 451
** TCR 568:5
People are said to "glide" into this state* and when they do it is said that they are "like those aroused from sleep into full wakefulness."** "The internal is awakened."***
* HH 502
** HH 506
*** DP 298
And what is the feeling? "Heaven even flows into their thoughts and affections with an interior blessedness and delight of which they had previously had no knowledge."*
* HH 506
Let us note an actual example of the saying, "I have seen some who have recently arrived from the world, and have recognized them from their face and speech; but seeing them afterwards did not recognize them."*
* HH 457
Under the heading, THAT THE FACES OF MEN ARE ALTERED IN THE OTHER LIFE, we read that Swedenborg saw two good men whom he had known in the world. He was asked whether he recognized one of them, and he started guessing. At last it was discovered that it was Hans Bjork.* The other good man was Johan Moraeus. That man had in the world been present at Swedenborg's baptism (Swedenborg Epic, page 2) and had been his tutor from age eight to age fifteen.**
* SD 4717
** Docu. 1:239
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The face in this stage, in the case of the good, is seen to be "more youthful, fair and delightful."*
* SD 4730
6) The next stage is that of specific instruction for heaven. It is called the "third state" in Heaven and Hell. Here there seems to be a new arousal of the love of use, "and that love is exalted by the hope of becoming an angel."* This State lasts a "short time" and it sets one on the path to heaven.** There is an awakening of a longing and the opening of the eyes to see the path. When the desire for heaven is kindled "presently their eyes are opened, and they see a way . . ."***
* HH 517
** HH 519
*** AR 611
7) The last stage, of course, is the actual arrival in heaven. One is "recognized and received with joy."* There is a joyful sense of belonging. "There they are in the enjoyment of their life, and in a fullness of bosom delight derived from peace of soul."** He meets those who are spiritually related to him, "and what is wonderful, when he meets them and sees them it is as if he had been acquainted with them from infancy."***
* HH 519
** AR 611
*** DP 338:4
"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."* "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord; wherefore standest thou without, for I have prepared the house . . ."** "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself . . ."***
* Matt. 25:34
** Gen. 24:31
*** Jn. 14:3
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[DIAGRAM OF SEVEN STAGES IN THE TRANSITION FROM THE WORLD TO HEAVEN.]
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ANNUAL COUNCIL MEETINGS COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
The 79th Annual Meetings of the Council of the Clergy of the General Church of the New Jerusalem were held in the Council Hall of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral, March 7-11, 1971. They were opened by a service of worship conducted by Bishop Louis B. King.
At these meetings there were three members of the episcopal degree, thirty-seven in the pastoral degree, six in the ministerial degree, and one guest. They were:
the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King, presiding, the Rt. Rev. George de Charms, the Rt. Rev. Willard D. Pendleton; the Rev. Messrs. Alfred Acton, Glenn G. Alden, Kurt H. Asplundh, Bjorn A. H. Boyesen, Peter M. Buss, Mark R. Carlson, Geoffrey S. Childs, Robert H. P. Cole, Harold C. Cranch, Roy Franson, Michael D. Gladish, Victor J. Gladish, Daniel W. Goodenough, Daniel W. Heinrichs, Willard L. D. Heinrichs, B. David Holm, Geoffrey H. Howard, Robert S. Junge, Thomas L. Kline, Ottar T. Larsen, Kurt P. Nemitz, Ormond deC. Odhner, Dandridge Pendleton, Martin Pryke, Norman K. Reuter, Morley D. Rich, Norbert H. Rogers, Donald L. Rose, Frank S. Rose, Erik Sandstrom, Erik E. Sandstrom, Frederick L. Schnarr, David R. Simons, Christopher R. J. Smith, Lorentz R. Soneson, Kenneth O. Stroh, Douglas M. Taylor; Arne J. Bau-Madsen, William H. Clifford, Brian W. Keith, Walter E. Orthwein, N. Bruce Rogers, Patrick A. Rose; and, by invitation, Candidate Stephen D. Cole.
At the first session on Monday afternoon, March 7, Bishop King welcomed the assembled clergy, noting in Particular the Council's newest member, the Rev. Walter Orthwein, and its guest, Candidate Stephen D. Cole. After the Minutes of the 78th Annual Meetings, held March 1-5, 1976, had been accepted as published in NEW CHURCH LIFE (June 1976, p. 217ff) and various routine matters had been attended to, Bishop King reported that in his assessment the state of the General Church was good. Among the encouraging things he noted were the general cooperation of laymen and pastors in effectively carrying on the uses of the church, and the development activities in several centers. Among the problems the General Church needed to resolve were how to decide where to allocate limited development funds to do the greatest good, how to develop our rituals in an orderly way, and whether to continue our present practice of accepting applicants into our Theological School on the basis of their call, after carefully assessing the validity of each call as much as was possible, or to restrict the enrollment in the school to the number of priests needed by the General Church.
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According to a decision made earlier, at the first session members of Council were asked to write down in the order of each one's preference the titles of three papers on the Docket that each wanted to take up. These written choices were tallied before the second session when the results were reported.
The Rev. Messrs. Peter M. Buss and Geoffrey H. Howard had been appointed at the 1976 Meetings to serve as the Program Committee for the 1977 Meetings. Since their appointment both had been involved in major pastoral moves. Mr. Howard had gone from Los Angeles, California, to Durban, South Africa, to become pastor of that society, and Mr. Buss had moved from Durban to the pastorate of the Immanuel Church Society in Glenview, Illinois. Both these societies are among our largest ones and required making many adjustments to be able to carry on various new responsibilities. It is a credit to these ministers that they were nevertheless able to produce well studied and thought-provoking presentations. Mr. Buss' subject was Jacob. His paper traced the meaning of the story of Jacob's journeys to and from Haran and of his sojourn with Laban. Mr. Howard's subject was The Nature of the Church Specific. In the paper he presented related doctrinal teachings and drew several tentative conclusions. Among them were that the Church specific was not simply with those who had physical possession of the Word, but with those by whom the Lord was known and loved according to the genuine teachings of the Word; that the essential life of the Church specific inflowed from the intermediate societies of heaven whose angels served the important use of effecting communication between the celestial and spiritual heavens; and that the Church specific's development must begin again with each new generation.
Other papers heard and discussed were Divine Foresight of Particulars by the Rev. Ormond deC. Odhner, The Self-evidencing Reason of love by Bishop de Charms as well as his The Paradox of the Three Heavens, The Problem of the Two Kingdoms and the Three Heavens by the Rev. Douglas M. Taylor, Are We Praying Rightly? by the Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz, and a brief summation of a paper by the Rev. Erik Sandstrom dealing with the proper translation of A Domino apud illum et per illum. All papers were well received and stimulated active discussions.
In addition a number of topics and reports were considered. The Rev. Norbert H. Rogers spoke of the importance of reporting official acts promptly, the Rev. Donald L. Rose's topic was the usefulness of agendas, and the Rev. N. Bruce Rogers dealt with the translation of Exodus 3:14 and also the question of the role of laymen and women in translating the Writings and the Scriptures.
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The reports heard were the Academy of the New Church by the Rev. Alfred Acton, NEW CHURCH LIFE by the Rev. Morley D. Rich, New Church Home by the Rev. B. David Holm, the Theological School by the Rev. Erik Sandstrom, and the pastors' summer school by the Rev. Alfred Acton.
Besides the sessions at which papers, topics and reports were considered, the enjoyment of the week of the meetings was much added to by a number of social gatherings. Ministers and minister's wives had dinner at the home of the Rev. and Mrs. Kurt H. Asplundh, there were small group luncheons on the Tuesday and the Thursday of the week, a social supper for ministers at the home of the Rev. Robert S. Junge, a reception for ministers, directors and other visitors prior to the society Friday Supper, an Open House at the Civic and Social Club following the General Church Evening, and last but not least the delightful refreshments served each morning by ladies of the Bryn Athyn Women's Guild.
The program at the General Church Evening on Friday was presented by Bishop King and Mr. James Junge. They spoke alternately, with the Bishop presenting several of the needs of the General Church one by one, and Mr. Junge responding by describing what the laity of the church have done and are now doing in their efforts to provide each of the needs. It was an excellently conceived and executed presentation, causing it to be both informative and interesting.
NORBERT H. ROGERS,
Secretary
JOINT COUNCIL NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
1. The 83rd Regular Joint Meeting of the Council of the Clergy and the Directors of the Corporation of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, held in the Council Hall of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral on March 12, 1977, was opened by the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King with the Lord's Prayer and reading of the First Psalm.
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2. Attendance:
Of the Clergy: Rt. Rev. Louis B. King, presiding; Rt. Rev. George de Charms and Rt. Rev. Willard D. Pendleton; Rev. Messrs. A. A. Acton, G. G. Alden, K. H. Asplundh, B. A. H. Boyesen, P. M. Buss, M. R. Carlson, G. S. Childs, R. H. P. Cole, H. C. Cranch, R. Franson, M. D. Gladish, V. J. Gladish, D. W. Goodenough, D. W. Heinrichs, W. L. D. Heinrichs, B. D. Holm, G. H. Howard, R. S. Junge, O. T. Larsen, R. P. Nemitz, D. Pendleton, M. Pryke, N. H. Reuter, M. D. Rich, N. H. Rogers, D. L. Rose, E. Sandstrom, E. E. Sandstrom, F. L. Schnarr, D. R. Simons, C. R. J. Smith, L. R. Soneson, K. O. Stroh, D. M. Taylor, A. J. Bau-Madsen, W. H. Clifford, B. W. Keith, W. E. Orthwein, N. Bruce Rogers, P. A. Rose. (43)
Of the Laity: Messrs. E. B. Asplundh, T. W. Brickman, Jr., H. B. Bruser, Jr., W. W. Buick, A. D. Childs, B. H. Fuller, L. E. Gyllenhaal, S. D. Hill, J. F. Junge, A. H. Lindsay, R. D. Merrell, H. K. Morley, G. Pitcairn, S. Pitcairn, J. W. Rose, J. V. Sellner, S. B. Simons, B. D. Smith, R. E. Walter, W. L. Williamson, J. H. Wyncoll, R. F. Zecher. (22)
Guest: Candidate S. D. Cole. (1)
3. The Minutes of the 82nd Annual Meeting were accepted as published in NEW CHURCH LIFE, June 1976. pp. 222-230.
4. The Rev. Norbert H. Rogers said that his report as Secretary of the General Church had been distributed by mail to members of the Joint Council. He moved that it be accepted as written. The motion was seconded and carried. Mr. Rogers added that he wished to point out some encouraging factors that were indicated but not brought out in the written report. One factor was that the 69 net increase in membership last year was larger than the corresponding figure in any of the previous fifteen years, the average increase in those years having been 29. Another factor was that 130 new members were received last year, whereas the average for the fifteen years spoken of was 86.
The most pleasing and heartening factor to be noted is that in the recent years a steadily increasing number of membership applications have been received from young people. It indicates that the anti-establishment in-thing affecting a large segment of the younger generation in the later sixties peaked in the early seventies and is now receding. Mr. Rogers also noted that he had the impression that the greater accretion of new members reflected in the 1975-76 year total was continuing into the 1976-77 year. (Subsequent note: a check made on March 15 showed a gross increase of 61 members, with five and a half months left in the year, the indications are that the accretion of new members will exceed the 15 year average of 86. NHRo)
5. Bishop King invited comments or questions relative to other written reports, and acknowledged the only comment which expressed the usefulness of the written reports and gratitude toward those who were able to get them circulated ahead of time.
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6. The Treasurer's Report was next called for (NCL, May, 1977, p. 235). Mr. Leonard E. Gyllenhaal said that, as the Directors had already had opportunity to consider his report in detail, and the Corporation more briefly, he wished to comment chiefly on matters of particular significance to our Priesthood. First of all the format had been changed to conform with present institutional practice, also the nomenclature, notably, income is now called revenue. Revenue from contributions last year increased by $10,000.00 and the budget assumes there will be no substantial decrease in the total in the current year. Special contributions have been received to meet problems of inflation as needed. If other sources of revenue yield as much as is expected, total revenues will amount to $742,000.00. The General Church will continue to pay for the travel expenses of pastors whose duties include ministering to groups on a visiting basis. The need of visiting pastors to estimate their traveling expenses ahead of time was emphasized, also emphasized was the need for pastors to make every effort not to exceed the budget they have been informed of. The percentage of salary needed to fund the pension fund has increased, but fortunately a number of societies have been able to reduce the expected cost to the General Church. Pastoral moving expenses amount to a record of $59,686.00, some of which had to be covered by transfers from reserves. There is no way to budget pastoral moves properly, since most are determined after the budget must be completed, but the General Church presently has reserves of $20,000.00 for upcoming moves. There is also a new item of $20,000.00 in the budget for translation work. This item is being funded by special contributions. The cost of benefits is increasing. Health insurance premiums have increased more than anticipated. Church extension work costs have increased substantially from $7,000.00 last year to $22,000.00 for the coming year.
Mr. Dean Smith noted that the Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee mentioned in his report only an increase of $5,000.00, and asked what accounted for the increased budget figure.
Mr. Gyllenhaal answered that Mr. Holm's report reflected only increased expenditures for the Extension Committee's services in supplying books and other materials. The budget figure includes half of the Rev. Douglas M. Taylor's full time salary and one-quarter of another salary. The budget also includes $5,000.00 for a projected trip by the Bishop and the Treasurer to South Africa and elsewhere.
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Mr. Gyllenhaal added that there was the added complication that an employee by law is eligible to receive unemployment payments after retirement. Since churches cannot be taxed for unemployment benefits they cannot build up reserve funds with the government. Any unemployment claims approved by the government agency must be paid by the churches themselves. In answer to a question, he said that under a series of programs an unemployed person could receive payment for nearly three years, though the forty weeks was the norm. Some teachers have voluntarily canceled their unemployment compensation when they found out the General Church had to pay it.
The Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz asked why the budget for NEW CHURCH LIFE was less than previously.
Mr. Gyllenhaal replied that the present editor was a retired priest on pension, and was not allowed more than $3,000.00 other salary in addition to his pension and Social Security payments. He also noted that there would be a general increase of about 6% in salary for all employees.
Mr. Robert Merrell asked how the General Church in Canada was funded.
Mr. Gyllenhaal answered partly by contributions, but presently in large part by the proceeds from the profitable sale of a block of stocks that had been a legacy left to the General Church specifically for use in Canada. The sale realized $200,000.00 which is being used by the General Church in Canada as an endowment from which it derives most of its income.
A motion to accept the report was seconded and carried.
7. Mr. Theodore W. (Dick) Brickman said that the General Church Salary Committee had nothing definite to report at this time as its meeting was scheduled to be held on April 2nd. He mentioned, however, that the committee had a problem about how adequately to meet the needs of pastors serving in countries overseas whose economies varied considerably and whose currency values fluctuated unpredictably. He gave assurance that the committee was not ignoring the problem, but was making every effort to resolve it. He also noted that the salary scales set by the committee represented what was considered a fair minimum, and were not to be regarded as salary ceilings.
The Rev. Peter M. Buss expressed deep appreciation for the work of the Salary Committee. Priests do not enter their use in order to be enriched, but expect only to be able to support their families with the necessities of life and perhaps some extras. This the Salary Committee and the laity of the General Church have provided. This expression of appreciation was applauded.
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8. Mr. Theodore W. Brickman (Dick) reported on the General Church Development Fund. He said the Finance Committee have a number of projects in process but nothing very definite. For eighteen months the Detroit Society have been searching for a suitable site to relocate. They have now found a Site that seems promising, but they still have problems to resolve. When this and other development projects have resolved their respective problems and are ready to put their plans into effect, the Development Fund stands ready to help actual fruition as needed and as funds are available.
The Immanuel Church Society, Glenview, is continuing its program to develop a sort of multi-housing project on part of its property.
The Carmel Church Society's separate Chalon Estate directors, Caryndale, Kitchener, are working out plans on how best to use the five hundred acre undeveloped land they have available, whose value has increased considerably since purchase.
The Rev. Geoffrey S. Childs asked about development plans in Atlanta, Georgia.
Bishop King responded that so far they were limited to operating an after-hours day school for young children one day a week.
The Rev. Frederick L. Schnarr warned that development projects were prone to meet a number of legal and other problems in putting them into effect that could not be anticipated even with the help of the best lawyers.
Mr. Brickman observed that the Finance Committee is developing considerable sophistication in these matters from their involvement in past projects. They can now provide much useful advice and will no doubt do much better in the future as they become more experienced. It was essential, however, that those considering development plans report in detail to the Finance Committee all problems that they foresee and discover.
It was moved that both reports be accepted. Seconded and carried.
9. The Rev. B. David Holm reported on the Sunday School materials displayed in the Choir Hall. He said they represented materials that were thought could be of use in our Sunday School programs. Most of them had been culled from religious supply stores by the indefatigable efforts of Mrs. Boyd Asplundh and other ladies who assisted her. It involved long and tedious effort in each store as most offerings were completely unacceptable for our needs. Some materials had also been received from some of our established Sunday-schools such as suggestions for projects to do and lesson notes. A beginning has also been made to prepare a catalog for pastors and Sunday-school teachers to know what is available.
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10. As there was still a brief time before eleven o'clock recess for refreshments, Mr. Alexander H. Lindsay offered to report on developments in the Freeport area, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
Upon being invited to do so, Mr. Lindsay reported that for two years the area has operated a fourteen capacity school bus to and from the Pittsburgh Church School at full capacity, with six additional children in the area which the bus cannot accommodate. The Freeport children compose 50% of the school's enrollment. (Whether the six other children were otherwise transported and contributed to the large share of the enrollment was not specified, and there was no time to ask the question. NHRo). Mr. Lindsay further reported that the area has a non-profit corporation called the Sellers S. Chapel stock computers. The corporation has assets of $20,000.00 composed of ten acres of land and $10,000.00 in cash towards starting a chapel. The area has ten New Church families and (or including) two recently built substantial homes.
There was not time for discussion as the time had come for the recess.
11. After a short recess for refreshments, Bishop King called on the Rev. Bruce Rogers, Chairman of the General Church Translation Committee, to report.
Mr. Rogers was very grateful that the Bishop had given him the opportunity. The work of translating and editing both the sacred Scriptures and the Heavenly Doctrines is a current need that is to be supported. In the past we have relied primarily upon others. Good Latin editions and definitive texts are really basic to superior translations. No translation can be better than the text that it proposes to translate. Texts which are far from definitive, Mr. Rogers pointed out as examples, are the Spiritual Diary, de Verbo and Last Judgment, Post, and also others. As an example of good work, he pointed to the 3rd Latin edition of the Arcana Coelestia done by the Swedenborg Society, which stands as the best Latin text that we have of any work of the Writings. Mr. Rogers pointed also to the more recent Small Theological Works which is perhaps, to his mind, the most excellent piece of scholarship work in this field of translating and editing that has been done in the church from the beginning. But the Swedenborg Society has been experiencing increasing difficulty in funding the projects they wish to undertake.
This is an important use for the General Church and indeed for the whole church. Mr. Rogers spoke specifically for the General Church. It's the teachings of the Writings that the Church is based on. The Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture #76 and following numbers in that section teach us that the Church is from the Word and the Church is such as is its understanding of the Word.
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It is not the Word they say that makes the Church, but the understanding of the Word. And such as is the understanding of the Word among those who are in the church such is the Church itself. It should be obvious that the work of improving Latin texts and translating those texts is directly related to the understanding of the Word. In our work of scholarship, for our private reading and for our schools we need to be able to insure reliability and accuracy. And if there is a point to our maintaining our own General Church as a distinct organization of the New Church to promote the proper interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures and the Heavenly Doctrines, there is the same point to our entering and eventually perhaps taking over their most fundamental interpretation.
Besides, Mr. Rogers continued, ours is the largest English-speaking body of the church today. And due to the Academy we can assure a continuous and faithful line of editors and translators. No other English-speaking body is as fortunate.
He felt it is past time we got into this work, formally and with continuous commitment. We cannot wait, in case the Swedenborg Society becomes unable to do the job, and then hope miraculously to be able to take it over 100% on instant notice. We must begin to develop the expertise now while they are in existence against the possible day when we may have it all.
Moreover, this is not a new use. In the past the Academy of the New Church and the General Church both supported efforts of such men as Dr. Alfred Acton, Eldric Iungerich and others, including Miss Beryl Briscoe's work. We have in the past spent money on this work. But we dropped it and it was no one's fault. For some reason we went for about twenty or twenty-five years without the General Church producing any serious linguists. Oh, we had men who had talent, but who did not see the need, probably because Dr. Acton was still around. Well, we've had the hiatus but Mr. Rogers does not believe, and a number of others do not believe, that the church can live with that hiatus any longer.
Not only that, but improvement of our translations also offers uses for evangelization. Missionary work cannot help but be aided by translations that are more readily intelligible and have the sounder interpretation. This work of translating and editing, though it can sound very "ivory-tower," is eminently practical, being a work of basic service both to internal and external evangelization, and for the education of our young, and also for the education of ourselves and the education of others.
Bishop King had requested Mr. Rogers to report to the Joint Council the Translation Committee's present undertakings, no doubt to justify the $20,000.00 item that the Council had been looking at during the week of Meetings.
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Mr. Rogers advised they have two undertakings that are currently in progress now and have been since Christmas or shortly after. Lawson Smith, who is a first-year theological student, has been spending an afternoon a week preparing reports on autograph editions of the Writings and present Latin editions with comments on their availability, their merits and their defects. Lawson Smith is quite competent to do this. If he chooses, he could become one of our ranking linguists. Currently the Committee is employing Miss Lisa Hyatt of Hockessin, Delaware, to complete a project that Mr. Rogers started years ago, but was unable to complete due to other responsibilities. She's making a detailed comparison and alignment of the Earths in the Universe, with similar material, but not identical in the Arcana Coelestia, and earlier material in the Spiritual Diary. The Committee hopes to have this completed some time within the next year and available in mimeographed form. The work itself should be done by late summer, at least, that's what Miss Hyatt hopes now. She is doing this under Mr. Roger's supervision. It's a work that requires considerable inherent skill but Miss Hyatt has the considerable flair and skill needed. It will be of use to students of doctrine, those interested in the subject of Earths in the Universe, those interested in Swedenborg's method of working and his inspiration, and, of course, there can be no better preparation for a new translation of the Earths in the Universe.
The Committee is proposing this summer also to engage in several other projects for which they propose to employ a number of people, a number of men and women, many of whom are young, either in college now or recent graduates. They need to carry on preparations for a new Latin Spiritual Diary. This is a project that was begun two summers ago under Mr. Roger's supervision, and supported privately. In fact, it was done so privately he is still hearing from people who even work at the Academy "I didn't know you were doing that." It wasn't meant to be done so quietly. The hope is this summer to bring it under the aegis of the General Church through the General Church Translation Committee. What they are doing is comparing the Latin edition, the only Latin edition we have, published by J. F. I. Tafel, with the autograph. We are making Xerox copies of the Latin edition, comparing them with the autograph, and making notes where there seem to be differences or difficulties. They are also feeding into that Tafel's own notes those made by Dr. Alfred Acton. They also tried to get W. H. Acton's notes, but have been unable to do so so far. They may have been destroyed.
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The Committee also proposes to carry out a project that was begun three summers ago which has been carried on every summer since of finding parallel passages through the Spiritual Diary. They have collected what parallels have been published in Potts Concordance, those parallels which have been made by others, and have had students working through the Concordance by subject matter trying to find more. The reason, of course, is preparing another aid for future translators of the Spiritual Diary. The Spiritual Diary is very difficult to interpret in places because Swedenborg never meant it really to be read by others. He wrote it for himself and though he never called it a Diary and there are people who object to the name Diary, the fact is that it often reads like on-notes made for himself as we might write in our diaries, but which are sometimes difficult to interpret. If parallels can be found, parallels that were prepared for publication, that were written out more clearly and more fully, it will, of course, be an invaluable source for the translator indicating what interpretation was intended and what meaning was intended.
It is also planned this summer to prepare a new Latin text of De Verbo which has never been done completely. And probably that will be translated. It is also planned to prepare a new Latin edition of the Last Judgment, Post. The current one appears in the seventh part of the Spiritual Diary, yet it is believed it was done on the basis of a talk made by Augustus Norden, and not from the autograph itself. The Committee would, of course, plan to do it from the autograph.
To do the Spiritual Diary parallel passages the Committee proposes to employ Mrs. Eric Carswell. To do the comparison of the First Latin Edition of the Spiritual Diary with the autograph, and to collate with their own observations Dr. Acton's and Dr. Tafel's notes, it is proposed to employ Brand Odhner, Geoffrey Odhner, Kate Pitcairn, Timothy Rose and Jennifer Smith. To begin work actually on a new Latin edition of the Spiritual Diary it is planned to engage the services of Durban Odhner. Lawson Smith himself, will be working on De Verbo. He has already researched the problems with the task. Then John Odhner and Prescott Rogers will be working on Last Judgment, Post. And Prescott Rogers will also be acting as immediate supervisor of the project while all of these projects will be done ultimately under Mr. Bruce Roger's supervision.
In addition, the Swedenborg Society is sponsoring or holding a school for translators this summer-the week of July 11th. They have invited the General Church to send some young people to that school. It is proposed to send six, Lisa Hyatt, Brand Odhner, Geoffrey Odhner, John Odhner, Timothy Rose and Lawson Smith.
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In addition, they believe that Hilary Pitcairn is planning to attend and perhaps also Kate Pitcairn. So, the General Church will be well-represented.
The only present plan carrying on past September in the Academy, is to provide Mr. Rogers some relief from his school duties in order to spend time on this work during the regular school year. What he will probably be doing is revising the Earths in the Universe project and preparing it for publication, and also probably reviewing De Verbo and Last Judgment, Post. and preparing them for publication. For the future he hopes they can continue to provide free time for him. He would also hope that they can continue for several years a summer employment program for the younger linguists who are in Theological School or who are in some other kind of advanced school, and need employment in the summer. During these next few years he would like to complete the Latin Diary and prepare to completely translate it anew. He also looks forward in the next ten years to completing the other projects mentioned, plus others that Lawson Smith's study turns up. This will need study. They are going to have to establish priorities because there are a number of things that need doing. Mr. Rogers said he could mention the Invitation, Corona, the Arcana Indices, the Diary Index, the Apocalypse Revealed, Conjugial Love, Divine Providence and on and on, all of which need work and in addition we should also have the Old and New Testaments. The Old and New Testaments in their present translations are not nearly as accessible to us as most of us sometimes think.
He advised that this year the Committee was really not formed. They're really operating on a year mandate, not so much to undertake translations but to reorganize. They're drawing up for Bishop King's consideration a plan for future organization which will include an executive committee within a larger committee. The larger committee means that they will be able to put on to the committee all who have an ability and special interest in this work so that they can tap the widest possible talent that we have, and yet with an executive committee that is not so unwieldy that it cannot get anything decided. They are also going to recommend a regular budget from now on, with the responsibility also of regular planning. Eventually, within six to ten years, they hope to have not only Mr. Rogers, but also two other priest linguists in the Academy with time for regular year round work. It would be better to have three doing this work on a part-time basis than one doing it on a full-time basis, because of the obvious advantages in consultation and mutual aid. Mr. Rogers is grateful for the support he has received this year.
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The fact that they will need continued support, not only in funds, although they will need those too, and they will need substantial funds, but they will also need the Council's interest and support if they are to be able to do the job that they are capable of.
Mr. D. Smith asked if the course that's being given this summer is under the Swedenborg Society. (The answer was "yes.") He also asked if there was any plan to incorporate some kind of formalized education program within the Academy College to train in that field.
Mr. Rogers advised they really have a program now. Already included, for example, in the Theological Latin course, training in Swedenborg's handwriting. And work was already being done in textural problems. We are sending six young people over there because the Rev. Norman Ryder and the Rev. John Eliot and Dr. Chadwick are over there and this will enrich our young people. If nothing else, they will become familiar with the other workers in the field. The objective was to be in a position to learn from the Swedenborg Society now and not wait until too late to do so.
Mr. Erik E. Sandstrom noted that the increasing costs of printing and publishing are of great concern to the Swedenborg Society. They are also aware that most of their books are sold in the United States through the General Church Book Center. They know of the General Church Translation Committee, and he thought this Committee would be of help to the Society.
Mr. R. Zecher asked about suitable Latin texts and access to the original autographs.
Mr. Rogers advised that in works published by Swedenborg, the printer's copy was destroyed by the printer. In the case of the Arcana Coelestia, we do have the first draft which Swedenborg was accustomed to make. We do have the autographs of works Swedenborg did not publish, but the texts of many are not clear.
The Rev. R. H. P. Cole expressed appreciation to Mr. Rogers for his very interesting and useful report. He asked whether we had people who could translate Latin into some of the Romance languages, such as Latin American Spanish and Portuguese. There is beginning to be a desire in Latin America to have copies of the Writings, as many as they can get hold of to distribute to people of these languages.
Mr. Rogers answered that the present competence is in English as the target language. Of course, we do have the Rev. Arne Bau-Madsen who translates into Danish, and the Rev. Bjorn Boyesen who is competent in Swedish.
Mr. K. Morley asked who would be guiding the A and R Board now that Dr. Freda Griffith is retired.
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The Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom answered that Dr. Griffith was still on the A and R Board as the secretary. They are very anxious to encourage young people to come into the Latin work. This is why they are having the translator's school. Anybody who is interested in the Swedenborg Society and the work of translation is encouraged to become a member of the Swedenborg Society. They could use help and interest.
The Rev. B. A. H. Boyesen said that it was quite natural that a body like the Swedenborg Society, which has existed for about 100 years and has consistently had very capable men with considerable expertise, should be proud of that, and he thought that this pride was justified. But they are looking with pleasure, and hope and good will in every respect to what we are doing here right now. He hoped that the Swedenborg Society itself will grow and continue to cooperate with our body. In fact, there is considerable cooperation already. Both know what the other body is doing which is absolutely necessary so as not to duplicate efforts. This is very important. Mr. Boyesen was very pleased and very happy that young people are going to England. Mr. John Elliot and Mr. Norman Ryder are men well worth knowing, being men of great capability and modest men at the same time.
The Rev. Martin Pryke thought that the Academy did the right thing in keeping Mr. Rogers teaching, for he is the man who has taught and inspired these young translators who are coming along now. Mr. Rogers is to be congratulated on what he has accomplished in inspiring these young people. The whole project is most exciting.
The Rev. D. W. Goodenough asked whether there were young people coming along in the Swedenborg Society in England now who will be able to take up this work in fifteen-twenty-twenty-five years.
The Rev. B. A. H. Boyesen answered that there were not really any at the moment. They are hoping that there will be some but nobody is able to answer that at the present time.
Mr. W. Buick asked how many people did Mr. Rogers expect to have active in projects including the summer.
Mr. Rogers answered that the number came to about nine or ten. Those are not all the people he could have obtained if he really wanted to make the effort.
The Rev. Norbert H. Rogers said he'd heard various rumors that there were one or two young men coming into their Theological School who had language facilities.
Mr. Boyesen thought that was true, but that it will be a little while before they are really available to the Swedenborg Society. He added that this idea of establishing a reliable Latin edition in every case that we can is of tremendous importance.
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They have difficulty in England getting their laity there to realize the need for it. He said they have to reestablish as far as possible what was intended in the original text. This is the most important work that can be done, because it will largely be the ground work not only for English translations but in the long run for any translations made from the Writings in any language. There's not anything more important that can be done for the Church.
The Rev. D. M. Taylor spoke in favor of having experts in the English language to assist in translation work so that the results are readable.
Bishop King said it should be known that the Carpenter Fellowship even at present is supporting John Elliot's work which is being done through the Swedenborg Society in the translation of the Arcana to the tune of about $8,000.00 or $9,000.00 a year. Otherwise that work would have come to a halt, so it is our hope that the Swedenborg Society will continue and that it will be strengthened. But if it doesn't, we had better be prepared. But in the meantime when we have in Providence these very talented and inspired young people; to have them benefit from the organization of the Swedenborg Society is most important. He believes it's something we have to do.
Mr. S. Hill said that as one member of the Board he would like to express his opinion that personally, Mr. Rogers has 100% of his support and he thought there were a lot of others on the Board who felt the same way, and they would encourage him to continue in his work. Mr. Rogers declined an invitation to add further remarks.
Bishop King said the report was very much appreciated indeed.
There was much applause for the report.
12. There being no further business, the meeting adjourned.
NORBERT H. ROGERS,
Secretary
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
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Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
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UNIVERSAL NEW CHURCH EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
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The 208th "19th of June" wings its way toward us, and we may find ourselves once more renewing and reviewing our understanding as to what the universal New Church is, what the specific New Church, and the relation between them. Many familiar truths enter our minds again; and perhaps they re-arrange themselves in a new order and way.
Through the ages, the "universal Church" has always consisted of those who have lived the life of whatever religion or religious pattern they had. And this life of religion was made possible to them by the life flowing from a specific Church of the Lord, which was as the heart and lungs of the body to the universal Church.
In His second Coming, after effecting the Last and final Judgment, the Lord re-ordered and made new all the heavens for all time; and then all heaven was named "the New Heaven," in signification of the new Divine quality and order which were introduced. Then the New Church began to descend to earth from that New Heaven. And we may remark that the new quality and form was not only specific, but also universal. It is in this sense that we may use the term, "the universal New Church." And we may remind ourselves that the specific New Church is also a part of the universal New Church, as the heart and lungs are indispensable parts of the body.
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Questions come into our minds as to these things. What is the specific New Church? And who are those who are of that Church? Though we may know that those are of the universal New Church who live by whatever religiosity they have been raised in or may have adopted in adulthood, just how are we to understand this?
Reflecting first upon the last question, it may be said that the "universal" Church does not necessarily mean that those who are of it have a kind of universalist view of religions and life. More clearly, the universal Church is not a kind of conglomerate religiosity made up by individuals out of various elements from many religious patterns which they happen to think are true. This is a possible thing, perhaps. But it is also a dubious thing, exposing man to the conceit of self-intelligence, as it does, tending to "make men as gods," and tempting him unconsciously to make God in his own image. It appears strongly, therefore, that generally speaking those of the universal Church must be in and live according to one defined religiosity or another. For this means that a man thereby is in that humility, that humbling of self, which is a requisite for the spirit of salvation to be in him.
The specific New Church, we are told, is where the Word is, where it is understood in varying degrees, and where the Lord is known thereby. But we need to understand that only those are actually of it who not only understand the full Word, but who also fit into the universal Church definition, i.e. who live according to their religion, in this case the True Christian religion.
The first definition includes all organized bodies devoted to the spread of the Word and the Church, whatever may be their varying emphases, patterns and endeavors. For each has the Word; each understands that Word in some degree; and thereby each knows, or knows of, the Lord Jesus Christ. But the second definition has nothing to do with church organizations, but with the life of the individual, which means that only those are of the specific New Church, whether members of Church bodies or not, who live according to the teachings of the Word in its entirety as best they can.
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NATURE OF THE WRITINGS GEORGE DE CHARMS 1977
In the Lifeline for February 1977, p, 15, we find an interesting comment by the Rev. Paul V. Vickers concerning the nature of the Writings, and how these differ from the Philosophical works of Emanuel Swedenborg. He says "His philosophical and psychological writing had balanced argument against argument, striving always to see the rational pattern of God's creation in the extensive fields he studied. . . . But once the light of revelation was fully at work, all this method ceases. The whole style of study and writing changes dramatically in the published Writings. There is no balancing of views and reliance on human rational argument. It is the Word of God that is expounded from the Lord so that the purposes of the Lord Himself can be seen in every verse. We are no longer in a realm where man's intellect seeks and finds. Instead, the Lord sheds light in His Word, and man's rationality performs the function simply of understanding and expressing. . . . We may celebrate the instrument, we may applaud the man's own achievements in his earlier years, we may seek the ways of Providence in all this preparation. But what we have in the Writings is not a human gift. . . . The revelation is of the Lord and His way, and it is a revelation of Him-in His own Word."
This is a very beautiful expression of the truth concerning the Heavenly Doctrine. There seems to be implied, however, a subtle distinction between Divine revelation and the Word. To me these two terms are synonymous. All Divine revelation is the Word. Only by means of the Word can the infinite qualities and attributes of God be revealed. As the Lord Himself said, "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." (John 14:6)
GEORGE DE CHARMS,
Bryn Athyn, Pa.
"IMAGINARY HEAVENS" PATRICIA K. ROSE 1977
Dear Editor:
The Rev. Alfred Acton's paper entitled "Imaginary Heavens and Conjugial love" in the March 1971 issue interested me. I am at a loss to understand why Mr. Acton brought into his paper the subject of the false or imaginary heavens referred to in the Apocalypse-unless he simply wanted to apply the term "imaginary heavens" to what is described in the early chapters of Conjugial Love.
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Granted, that term does seem to describe the erroneous ideas those people had of heavenly joy. However, since Swedenborg used the term only to refer to the false, hypocritical heavens dispersed at the Last Judgment, it would seem to confuse matters to apply it also to mistaken notions of heavenly happiness.
The danger lies, I think, in our tendency to take as almost insignificant the dispersal of the imaginary heavens at the Last Judgment if we think of them as just silly ideas of what heavenly joy is. Yet the whole purpose of the Last Judgment was to expose and separate the hypocrites who formed the imaginary heavens and to free those simple spirits who were fooled by their apparent goodness.* From the hypocrites the Lord formed a new hell and from the emancipated good, a new heaven.
* See Doctrine of Faith 64, AR 330 and LJ 69. See also other terms used for the imaginary heavens: semblance of heaven-LJ Post 135, AE 448:11; fictitious heavens-LJ Post 134; seeming heavens-LJ 9, 10and 23, AE 702:4, 754:3 and 1091; likeness or similitude of heaven-LJ 69 and AE 102: 3; and as it were (quasi) heavens-AR 791, 865, 866 and LJ Post 105 and 134. None of these passages is listed in the Concordance under these headings or under "heaven."
Should we not reconsider using the term "imaginary heavens" to mean those erroneous ideas of heavenly joy mentioned in Conjugial Love and reserve the term to use as Swedenborg did? I believe it would clear up some of the confusion that exists about the imaginary heavens.
In spite of the above remarks, the parallel that Mr. Acton drew between those erroneous ideas of heavenly joy and a person's early ideas of conjugal love was most interesting.
PATRICIA K. ROSE,
Bryn Athyn, Pa.
NEW CHURCH CALENDAR PATRICK A. ROSE 1977
To the Editor
In the April issue of NCL (1977, pp. 200-201), Mr. Woofenden poses an interesting question regarding the distinctive New Church Calendar used in earlier years. He cites an early Academy publication, where the date is given as 1887 = 188, subtracts 118 years from 1887, and ends up with 1769. He asks why this New Church calendar should have been based on the year 1769, when a year such as 1770 (see TCR 791) would seem more suitable.
The answer is simple. This calendar was based on the year 1770. That year was designated the 1st year of the New Christian Era.
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Adding 117 to both these dates, we find that the year 1887 was the 118th year of the new calendar.
Why not begin with the year O, as Mr. Woofenden assumed in his calculations? The reason is that a calendar is based, not on cardinal, but on ordinal numbers. We may call this year 1977. More strictly, it is the 1977th year of our Lord. There was no zeroth (Oth.) year in either calendar.
PATRICK A. ROSE,
Glenview, Ill.
LIFE AFTER LIFE ERIK EMANUEL SANDSTROM 1977
Dear Editor,
I feel that the value of Dr. Van Dusen's contributions to New Church thought are deserving of our respect, even though properly seasoned with scepticism. In my letter on "Life After Life" (N.C.L., Jan. 1977, p. 41) I had hoped to draw a distinction on which we can all agree. As Dr. Van Dusen points out in his reply to Mr. Rhodes, "We have a little boost in (Dr.) Moody, but we simply have too few experts on dying to get too involved." (N.C.L., April, p. 204) I agree.
Dr. Van Dusen is right that we should not place Swedenborg on a pedestal. We hold the Heavenly Doctrines in absolute authority, and it naturally "rubs off" on the holder of the quill-pen. We only exalt Swedenborg at times because his own professed humility and admissions of unworthiness effectively keep him permanently in the same position in which we view Moses, Ezekiel, Matthew or John. There have indeed been others.
The source for "Swedenborg only," I suppose is best illustrated by Inv. 52, (humility understood):
"The manifestation of the Lord and intromission into the spiritual world, surpass all miracles. This has not been granted to anyone since the creation, as it has been to me. . . . To me it is granted to be in both spiritual and natural light at the same time."
As for the argument recently taken up in The New Philosophy, with respect I decline any responsibility.
ERIK EMANUEL SANDSTROM,
London, England
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REVIEW LEON S. RHODES 1977
After-life, Reports from the Threshold of Death, by the Rev. Archie Matson. Harper and Rowe, $2.95 paperback, 146 pages.
The growing interest stimulated by Dr. Moody's best-seller, Life After Life has resulted in articles, programs and more books, of which Afterlife, by Archie Matson may be of special interest to the Church. Published earlier under a different title, this work goes far beyond Dr. Moody's study of experiences related to the brief moments at the approach of the death of the body. The Rev. Matson not only explores accounts over a period of many more years but endeavors to present the spiritual world as an eternal realm. In this he goes farther than Dr. Moody in using the revelations given through Swedenborg, quoting extensively not only from Heaven and Hell but the Arcana and Conjugial Love. His selections are effective and well presented from our point of view, with a religious emphasis rather than mere scientific factual reporting.
The significance of Afterlife to us, however, may be the strong theme of spiritism which includes "ghosts," ESP, poltergeists, visions and an array of reports which we would find disturbing. This book, if widely read, will most certainly associate Swedenborg with spiritists in a way which could result in problems. Yet it may also introduce readers to the doctrines more effectively than Life after Life, since its use of the Writings is forceful and deliberate. It may very well be that in this work-and in others yet to come-the Church is challenged to clarify our beliefs about the influence of spirits on our earthly lives.
We believe, as our creed declares, in the "communion of angels and men:" yet the warnings in the Writings and in past experience have resulted in a deliberate avoidance of spiritual phenomena. Carefully guided by the Writings, our priests and our scholars, we should take a real look at the subject of the influx of spirits into our natural lives. We hold that the opening of Swedenborg's spiritual eyes was a unique miracle, yet, if we read thoughtfully portions of the Writings such as DP 317 and 321, the Writings declare that the spiritual world is present around us, exerting great influence not only on our minds but on physical objects. Within the church membership we know about, though we hesitate to speak of it, spiritual experiences other than those associated with the moment of death.
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The Rev. Matson's research include very pertinent observations about the way in which the prophets of the Bible were affected by visions and voices, and although the influence of the spiritual world is now different, we-more than any others-can be aware of the intimate association of spirits and men.
The picture is, of course, clouded by charlatans and disorderly efforts to contact the spiritual world, yet the surge of interest in the whole subject of the spiritual world should not be brushed aside. Afterlife deserves our study. It presents many ideas we will welcome, as well as those which we might resist. This-and many other results of this awakening interest-are in Providence, but call upon us to react intelligently and with confidence.
LEON S. RHODES
Church News VARIOUS 1977
PHILIP CHILLS PENDLETON
Mr. Philip C. Pendleton, Esq. left this world on April 2, 1977. The Rev. Robert S. Junge gave the memorial address for Mr. Pendleton, and the following consists of excerpts from that address:
"The heavens declare the glory of God." The purpose of all creation is a heaven from the human race. The laws of Divine Providence, sustaining human life every instant are laws of order within which is the Divine zeal for human freedom. It is a wise man, and a loving man, who despite adversity learns to say with the Psalmist, "O how I love Thy law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97).
We rejoice as our friend, Philip Pendleton, returns to the vigor of life, laboring in a new state for things he treasured,-civil, moral and spiritual order and their accompanying freedoms. In the Lord's kingdom there are the ultimates of human society. Though they differ from heaven to heaven, there are decisions of law and of judgment on all levels of government in proper order and subordination. "The law of the Lord is perfect." Man's free response to that law is eternal.
In a paper entitled "The Church" Philip Pendleton as a young man in our New Church School, wrote: "But when we go out in the world, unless we have taken a strong grip upon the Doctrines of the Church we will be overcome by the indifferent attitude of the present Christian world towards religion and will at best be only lukewarm New Churchmen." Even at that early age, the Academy was becoming for him, as it had for others, the symbol and focus of New Church Education, the first use of charity in the Church.
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That hope and promise is perishable and expendable. Not that the New Church itself can perish. But the embodiment of its uses in any given organization can. The more precious the use, the more vigorously will the hells labor from within and without to divert and destroy. We remind ourselves of these teachings and goals as we think of Philip Pendleton.
Philip Pendleton was a Borough councilman for almost 40 years, focusing his concern on the basic unit of local government, where through close personal knowledge there was hope of fostering a deep conviction and consent on the part of the governed. He rose to the office of major and served in various capacities in the Pennsylvania State Boroughs Association. He served as County Controller, and devoted man years of effort on behalf of specific laws in both our state and national capitals. His effort to bring order and a sense of freedom extended to all levels of civil government.
He also devoted his talents to the service of the Academy. For forty years a member of its Corporation and twenty years a member of its Board, he worked for a just and true ultimation of New Church Education, particularly for its distinctiveness. He also served thirty years on the executive committee and Board of the General Church. While he labored hard to preserve a real sense of responsibility on the part of every local society, he also was a leader in striving for the adequate ultimate support of the priestly office would not be curtailed through external wan. Spiritual character is forged in such ultimates as these.
If we would rise to sustain uses on earth, we can gain inspiration from the personal examples of those who have gone before, because we see something of the Lord in their uses. Let us, the next generations, draw our strength from the same ideals and the same humble acknowledgment as they.
"The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is firm, making wise the simple. The commandments of the Lord are right, gladdening the heart; the precept of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, standing forever; the judgments of the Lord are truth, they are just altogether. Desirable above gold, and above much refined gold; and sweeter than honey and the dropping of honeycombs. Also Thy servant is admonished by them; in keeping them is great reward." (Psalm 19:7-11)
BRYN ATHYN
As the episcopal center of the church, Bryn Athyn's abundance of activities and happenings do not readily condense suitably for this column. In addition, that delightful though invisible grapevine quickly conveys B.A. news throughout the church world. Yet this society should be among those reporting to this journal, and at this time it would be appropriate to give, however brief, an account of the useful and delightful "Ministers' Meetings" week, March 7 through 12-plus such bonuses as services, activities and social gatherings both before and after the formal Council of the Clergy meetings.
We do appreciate this opportunity to enjoy your pastors (and their charming wives) and are confident that they, in turn, will carry back with them a storehouse of news and reports in return. Among these, no doubt, will be an account of the "General Church Evening," the traditional Friday gathering which includes a social gathering in the form of a reception, the special Friday Supper and an important program related to the work of the church.
Though likely to be repeated and published elsewhere, this presentation merits consideration here because of its significance to all. The Bishop of the General Church, the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King, shared the platform with Mr. James F. Junge, Chairman of the Church finance Committee, as a full Assembly Hall was heartened and fascinated by "Progress, Priorities and Projections," summarizing the economic health and the manpower resources of the Church.
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With backward glances at the impressive records of the past decade, the Bishop directed our attention toward the future, particularly to expanded uses awaiting the ordination of our largest group of prospective new ministers. Beyond the retirements upcoming, from 12 to 21 new positions can be anticipated, with an expected growth of 15 new priestly uses within the next five years. These include replacements for those retiring, new and expanded church centers in nine places, new growth in educational institutions, in evangelization, and six new real estate projects. Bright prospects for the growth of the Church made the 1977 General Church evening a memorable one, indeed.
Mr. Philip C. Pendleton, Esq. was called by the Lord after a lifetime of dedicated service to the Church, to the community of Bryn Athyn, and honored accomplishments in the secular world. As mayor and a notable public servant for the Borough of Bryn Athyn, he won the respect of public figures on county, state and federal governments. In his 78th year, there are many who do not remember his vigor and energy-first as an athlete, then in the forefront of legal and civic battles. Now restored, we can delight in those talents he brings to his new home in the spiritual world.
LEON S. RHODES
ADDRESSES UNKNOWN EDITOR 1977
Announcements
Anyone who can supply information as to the whereabouts of the following persons is asked to communicate with the office of the Secretary, General Church of the New Jerusalem, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009. Last known addresses are shown.
United States
Mrs. Joseph J. Artesi
150 Bowman Rd.
Foxon, E. Haven,
Conn. 06512
Mrs. Edith Guise
Rt. 1, Box 272
Hendersonville,
N. C. 28739
Mrs. Lyle Hiersemann
G.D.-M.P.O.
Las Vegas, Nev. 89114
Miss Mary Elinor Mahler
3824 V St. S.E. Apt. 102
Washington, D.C. 20020
Dr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Nicholl, Jr.
c/o Wood's Gulf Breeze
Steinhatchee, Fl., 32359
Mrs. Charles Opperman, Jr.
14902 Memorial, #303
Houston, Tx. 77024
Mr. Okon Udofa
Box 435 University Mass
Amherst, Mass. 01002
Canada
Mr. Brian Carter
1285 Lakeshore Rd. E.
Apt. 412, Port Credit
Ontario, Canada
Overseas
Mr. and Mrs. Wm. H. Ansell
21 Boonerah St.
Albion Park Rail 6C
N.S.W. Australia 2527
Miss Johanna H.C. Happee
Kijkduinschestraat 209
Loosduinen, The Hague
Holland
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HOPE Rev. NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII JULY, 1977 No. 7
Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. Jeremiah 17:7.
In a world cursed by materialism there is little room for genuine trust and hope in God. There is no looking to the Lord, for there is little knowledge of Him; nor, for that matter, is there much desire to know Him. Material things are esteemed to be of incomparably greater value. And since spiritual things are intangible, and cannot be measured by the yard-stick of the senses, they are relegated to the realm of pure supposition-to the child's world of make-believe, whose existence depends on ignorance and inexperience, innocence and imagination. The so-called wise adult feels he must leave such things behind him, having no time for them. He feels he must focus his attention on what he calls the realities of life, lest opportunity slip by him. He devotes his time and energies to attaining worldly success, and concentrates his faculties on solving natural problems. He regards nature as omnipotent, and the source of all power. He looks upon scientists as his deities, who miraculously unleash and harness the wealth and power of nature for the betterment of humanity. And his veneration for science and of scientists leads him to apply scientific rules to all aspects of life, even to realms where they cannot be valid. Thus he transposes the scientific principle of accepting nothing unless it be sensually proven and demonstrated to planes of life which are beyond the perception of the senses. By so doing he holds down and limits his judgment, thought and philosophy. And he points with pride to the benefits he enjoys as a result, and to the progress civilization has made, particularly since the time when science gained the ascendency over religion.
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He sees the improvements in living conditions and standards as having been achieved wholly by human ingenuity and effort, and not in the least by God. Even Christians, who admit to a belief in God, for the most part pin their faith and their hope upon man, questioning the wisdom of the very few who still evince a sincere trust in the God they worship, and who quietly place their hope in His Mercy.
Yet for all the improvements that have been made, and for all the material good that has been achieved, worldly conditions plainly show that evil has increased proportionately; nay, more than proportionately, fulfilling ever more disquietingly Jeremiah's prophecy: "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord."* Every vaunted good the materialist, whether pagan or Christian, wrests for himself is more than offset by ills which he vainly seeks to remedy. Instead of happiness, security and peace, he finds but greater unhappiness and insecurity, greater turmoil and anxiety. And worn out, he looks with longing upon the memory of his childhood, when knowing less, having less, and demanding less, he possessed priceless treasures now unattainable. He wonders at those who have been able to retain their faith in God, accusing them of simplicity, perhaps, and of living in a world of illusion, but nevertheless envying their buoyancy of spirit and courage in times of adversity, envying their ability to hold true to the course they have set, and to see through to the end the tasks they have undertaken. Blessed indeed "is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is."
* Jer. 17:5
The need for trust and hope becomes especially apparent in times of trouble, when the issue is in doubt. For the forces of adversity surge against and batter at the foundations and supports, the bulwarks and defenses of man's life, shaking them to their core, revealing all their fallibility and weaknesses, and threatening to engulf man. This danger can he averted only by bringing moral qualities into the fray: by exercising fortitude and courage, by having a will for victory and a genuine determination to hold fast to the very end, thus by calling on an inner strength which is superior to everything, which cannot be broken by affliction, and which transcends death itself. These moral qualities, this undying strength, can exist only where there is trust and hope, from which they are derived. There must be trust that victory can be attained, and there must be hope that it will be won.
But trust in one's own strength, whether physical or moral, is not what is needed. Such trust does not produce new and lasting strength.
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At best it but delays for a time the final expenditure and loss of all strength. Nor is hope in natural success what is needed. Such hope does not give rise to the perseverance and uplifting required for true success. It but blinds man for a time from perceiving his desperate plight; and when it is dissipated by defeat, he is left helpless in a state of absolute despair. All power in heaven and on earth is from the Lord alone. And in the Lord alone man is to place his trust and his hope. This trust involves acknowledging the Lord, and His Infinite Power and Wisdom. It involves the recognition that His Divine End is infinitely good, and the desire that His Will be done. And it involves the confidence that He gives every man all the strength needed to repel evil and to do good. This hope involves the admission that all that comes to man, both good and evil, is provided and permitted for his eternal welfare. It involves the desire that the God-given gifts and opportunities shall be well used. And finally, it involves the humble aspiration to be worthy to enter into heavenly uses, and the sure knowledge that in His mercy the Lord will save all who genuinely seek salvation. They who are blessed with such trust and hope are actually given the strength and courage to perform what they consider to be their duty, even to the end, however bitter it may be. Whatever their condition they are given comfort and consolation, and are continually revived, so much so that even when faced with the starkest tragedy they are able to say with the Psalmist: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance."*
* Ps. 42:5
Hope is generally said to sustain, to animate, and to revive. From this it can be seen that there is some connection between hope and life. Indeed, hope is as necessary to life as breathing. And in this regard, it is of interest to note the similarity in the Latin between the word "spiro," meaning "I breathe," and "spero," meaning "I hope."
When man ceases to breathe, he dies. Similarly there cannot be life without hope. For when all hope is taken away, there ceases to be any desire for life. Man then seeks death. For this reason the Lord preserves hope with everyone, whether good or evil. The good He inspires with the hope of salvation, so that they may ascend into the life of heaven. With the evil He preserves hope, not of salvation, but of doing evil, that they may retain a desire to live, and a willingness to perform uses from which they may derive some enjoyment from their existence. Concerning the evil we read:
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Inasmuch as the life of evil spirits consists in thinking and doing evil, for in this they place pleasantness of life, whatever belongs to their love belongs to their life. . . . They also have their consolation from hope, to wit, when they intend any fraud, and desire and have hope of doing evil, then they have a consolation and are quiet . . . They possess a quiet life (derived) from hope.*
* SD 2880
But the hope preserved with the evil does more than give them existence and consolation. For we read that "were (the evil spirits) checked from (thinking and doing evil), and held forcibly to good, then not only could they not live, but also could not be reformed, that is, bent to good."* They who are in hell actually cannot be reformed. All that can be done for them is to guard them from falling into greater evil, and to make their existence as tolerable as possible. These things are accomplished indirectly by their hope. It is actually the state of order the Lord induces upon them that preserves them from falling into greater evil, and from suffering the consequences; and it is the uses they are compelled to perform that enables them to have some enjoyment of life. But to all appearances this is not the case. For they are chafed by the bonds of order, and they are repelled by the thought of use. Fear of punishment compels them to be orderly and to perform uses. But it is the hope of eventually being able to do the evil they love which leads them, as it were, to remain indefinitely in unpleasant states and to accomplish undelightful tasks. They live in their hope, finding delight in imagining its fulfilment.
* Ibid.
In a similar way the great mass of human beings who are unregenerate are withdrawn from evil by their hope of doing evil. With some this hope is concerned with an act that is evidently evil and criminal; with others it is concerned with the fulfilment of an apparently unimportant and innocent proprial desire; as, for example, the child's hope that some day he will be able to do what his parents now forbid him. But as man's proprium is wholly evil, the hope of fulfilling any of its desires, however innocent it may seem, is nothing but the hope of doing evil. Whatever its object, the hope of the unregenerate man induces him to be content and to wait for a suitable opportunity to do what he hopes to do. Thus he is prevented, for a time at least, from doing an act that would confirm him in evil, fixing it more deeply in him. During this time he submits himself to the laws of order. And thus he is given the opportunity to come into the habit of being in order, which may eventually lead him to wish to remain in order. At the same time, the Lord operates to bend him to good: externally by presenting him with opportunities for good, by causing him to learn that he ought to do good, and by bringing to bear influences that direct him to good; and internally the Lord activates good affections that incline him to good.
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Thus in various ways the Lord diverts man from evil while yet preserving him in freedom.
The hope of evil merely withholds man from actual evil. Quite different is the hope that introduces ma" into good. This is the hope of the regenerating man. It is the hope of doing good, of coming into a state of good, of receiving heavenly good from the Lord. And this hope does not merely preserve man's existence, but animates him with new and more abundant life.
The hope of evil is nothing but a continuation of the cupidity of evil, a projecting, as it were, of the corruptions of the will into the imagination and thought. But the hope of the regenerating man is only partially an extension of the love of his will; it is only partially the vision in the thought of the fulfilment of his love of good. The living and vivifying part of his hope flows in from the Lord, and is inspired into man in so far as he is steadfast in temptation unto the end.
The last state of temptation is one of despair, which is sometimes so great that it lakes away from man almost all belief in God and causes him to think bitter things against Him and against heaven. They who are in this state of despair
are as it were on a slope, or as if sinking down towards hell. But at this time such thought does no harm whatever, nor do the angels pay any attention. For every man's power is limited, and when the temptation arrives at the furthest limit of his power, the man cannot sustain any more, but sinks down. But then, when he is on the downhill course, he is raised by the Lord and thus liberated from despair; and is then for the most part brought into a clear state of hope and of the consequent consolation, and also into good fortune.*
* AC 8165:2
It appears that the Lord inspires hope in man towards the end of temptation. What gives this appearance is that man at the end of temptation comes into a clearer perception of hope and feels its effects more fully than during the course of temptation. But in reality the Lord sustains man with hope throughout temptation. For we are taught that in temptation the hells inject falsities into the external or natural man, which is the plane of conscious thought. The Lord answers every falsity. This Divine answer flows into the internal or spiritual man, "but does not come to the perception so much as do falsities; neither does it move the singulars of thought, but its generals: and in such a manner that it scarcely comes to the perception otherwise than as hope and the consequent consolation."*
* AC 8159:3
The sustaining Divine Influx flowing into the internals of man is received by vessels that are acquired from the Word.
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Nothing that is man's own is fit to receive and contain what is Divine. For this reason man needs to read the Word, and, according to his understanding of the Divine Teachings, equip himself with suitable recipient vessels. In doing so man must endeavor to arrive at a genuine understanding of the truth the Word teaches; For the sense of the letter which is read contains many appearances and general things which may be twisted in every direction. They may be made to favor man's own opinions, and so to be confirmations of falsity, which render them unsuitable to receive the Divine Influx. Only the truth of the Word is suitable to receive the Divine Influx.
Hope is as it were a river stemming from three sources whose meeting place is the understanding. The first source is man's desire for good, which causes him to envision and to long for heaven, and which induces him to look to the Word for guidance. The second source is the Word, which is an unending source of comfort, and from which man derives the knowledges of the Lord and of heaven that form recipient vessels in him. And the third source is the Divine Influx from the Lord, which makes the hope living and eternal.
Hope does not merely introduce man into the way of good. Nor is it only a reward of victory in temptation. It plays a vital part in the temptation itself, that is, in the struggle against evil, by which man attains the good he desires. For we are taught that man is able to resist temptation doubts only in so far as he lets himself be cheered by hope,* and that "hope and trust are the forces of combat from within whereby man resists."** Since temptations are the only means by which a man may be purified of the evils and falsities which obstruct his reception of spiritual life from the Lord, it is clear why hope is so necessary to life, and why the prophet speaks, saying, "Blessed is the man whose hope the Lord is."
* AC 2338
** AC 8097
However strong man's hope may be, time must elapse before he is fit to receive spiritual life. He is not to be impatient, and plunge himself into a proprial and short-lived endeavor unduly to hasten his regeneration. The tenor and course of every temptation, and of the whole of regeneration, are governed by the Lord. To seek any alteration is to oppose the Divine Will. Man must contain his longing to realize his hope, genuinely acknowledging that the Divine Wisdom is infinitely superior to his own prudence. For "it is good that man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."*
* Lam. 9:12
But this does not mean that we are to be inactive. Regeneration is accomplished through an active life: through the performance of uses, through resisting evil and falsity, and through emulating the Lord in whose mercy we hope.
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The Lord gives freely to the poor and needy; He feeds the hungry; He gives sight to the blind, and heals all manner of diseases. And in the extremity of His last great temptation, His words were: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."* So also ought it to be with us. Let us in every act of our lives manifest complete trust in the Lord, and faithfulness to His precepts. Let us not be dismayed by evil tidings and by adversity. But let the flame of hope burn ever more brightly within us, and let us hold it aloft that all may see it and be uplifted. The New Churchman is charged with a hard task. In performing it he must overcome countless obstacles and resist the gravest doubts. But "Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your hearts, all ye that hope in the Lord."** Amen.
* Lu. 23:46
** Ps. 31:24
That those who are reformed are reduced to ignorance of truth or desolation, even to grief and despair, and that they then first have comfort and help from the Lord, is at this day unknown, for the reason that fete, are reformed. Those who are suck that they can be reformed, if not in the life of the body yet in the other life, are brought into this state, which in the other life is very well known, and is called vastation or desolation, concerning which something has been said in the First Part, see no. 1109. Those who are in such vastation or desolation are reduced even to despair, and when they are in this state, they receive comfort and help from the Lord, and are at last taken away from where they were into heaven, where they are instructed among the angels, as it were anew, in the goods and truths of faith. The reason for this vastation and desolation is chiefly that the persuasive principle they have adopted from the proprium may be broken, see no. 2682, and also that they may receive the perception of good and truth, which they cannot receive until the persuasive principle from the proprium is as it were softened; this is effected by a state of anxiety and grief even to despair. Arcana Coelestia 2694
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RULING LOVE Rev. FRANK S. ROSE 1977
(From an address given to the Third Canadian Assembly, Oct. 18, 1975.)
There are many ways of classifying people, or trying to understand them. There are many ways of thinking about ourselves, and struggling with the question-Who am I? or Where am I going? In the final analysis, it is not our looks, our possessions, our physical abilities, our mind or intellectual powers that make us what we are. It is our love.
Man does not know that the will is the man himself.*
* Love xviii:4
Everyone has many loves; but they are all related to his ruling love, and make one with it, or together compose it. All things of the will that are in harmony with the ruling love are called loves, because they are loved . . . . Taken together they constitute a kingdom.*
* HH 477; see also DLW 1, 143; AC 7081, 1317, 8885, 6872:3, 10284, 10740, 10741, Love ix, HH 474
We are a complex of many loves and affections, but governing them all like a fatherly, but incredibly powerful king, is one love, the ruling love or the dominant love. This love is the key to our whole personality, and a prophecy of our eternal destiny. It affects our use, our place in heaven and gives us the possibility to learn, understand and enjoy life. It is derived from our father by heredity, but is unique to ourselves, so that no two people in all creation have exactly the same ruling love.* We have a certain amount of choice as to our ruling love, certainly as to whether it will be good or evil, but after death it becomes fixed, and to all eternity we will be an expression of its nature.
* See DP 277:3; Ath. 30: 3, AE 989:2
After the first state in the world of spirits the person's "face is changed and becomes entirely different, resembling his ruling affection or ruling love, in conformity with which the interiors of his mind had been while he was in the world and his spirit while it was in the body . . . The face of his body is from his parents, but the face of his spirit is from his affection and is an image of it."*
* HH 457; see also AC 7618, 6872:3, 9297:4; CL 42: 3, Inf. 17e, HH 123; SD 4119; Love xiii e.
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That the spirit of man is his ruling love is dearly exhibited in all fellowship in the other life, for so far as anyone is acting or speaking in accordance with the love of another, to the same extent is the other plainly present with full, joyous and lively countenance; but when one is speaking or acting contrary to another's love, to that extent the other's countenance begins to be changed, to be obscured and undiscernible, until at length he wholly disappears as if he had not been there.*
* HH 479:4
This illustrates the fact that no two people are alike because the ruling love of each person is unique.
"The ruling love of one is not in every respect like that of another. For this reason no one has a face exactly like that of any other; for each one's face is an image of his mind; and in the spiritual world is an image of his ruling love."*
* HH 486
A person's way of speaking is another indicator of his ruling love.*
* See HH 236, 269:2; Char. 118, 119
Our ruling love is our inmost being. It is at the very heart of our personality. We are controlled by it, bound by it, and can be led by it.
All spirits, provided they are kept in their ruling love, can be led wherever one pleases, and are incapable of resistance, however much they may know that this is being done, and however much they may think that they will resist. They have often been permitted to try whether they could do anything contrary to that love, but in vain. Their love is like a bond or rope tied around them by which they may be led and from which they cannot loose themselves.*
* HH 479:7. See AC 3835, 6195, 7501, 6203; SD 1704, 1705
It restricts our life, and at the same time gives us a sense of freedom. It limits our development, but within its scope opens up an unlimited potential for growth. It turns our thoughts repeatedly to its own ends, so that even when we are not consciously aware of it, inwardly we think about it.
Man has for an end that which he loves above all things: he regards it in each and all things. It is in his will like the latent current of a river, which draws and bears him away, even when he is doing something else; for it is this which animates him. It is such that one man explores and also sees it in another, and either leads him according to it, or acts with him.*
* HD 56. See AC 8855; AR 756:2, CL 207:7
Man is altogether of such a quality as the ruling principle of his life is; by this he is distinguished from others; according to this is his heaven if he be good, and his hell if he be evil. It is his will itself, his proprium, and his nature, for it is the very esse of his life; this cannot be changed after death because it is the man himself.*
* HD 57; see AC 8858
All the delight, pleasure and happiness which any one has are derived from his ruling love, and are according to it.*
* HD 58; see HH 486; AC 3938
That a spirit is his own ruling love is also clear from the fact that every spirit seizes and appropriates all things that are in harmony with his love, and rejects and repudiates all that are not for every love wishes to be nourished on what belong to it.*
* HH 479: 5; see AC 4018, 4459:6, 8868e, 3066; DP 17; HH 480
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JUDGMENT AFTER DEATH
The ruling love is capable of being modified on earth, but after death it is fixed, determining our final destiny. "When the man has been prepared, then that love leads him which is the head of his other loves. And he then turns his face to the society where his ruling love is, and thither he betakes himself as to his own home."*
* L. J. post 234; See HH 427, 479, 481; TCR 447; SD 57891, 6058
"Hence it is that after death everyone goes the way of his love . . . nor does he rest but in that society where his ruling love it; and what is wonderful, everyone knows the way as though he smelled it with his nostrils."*
* DP 319:4; see AR 784:2;L. J. post. 247
There are ways leading from the world of spirits to Heaven.
"Each spirit enters the road which leads towards the society of his own love, and he does not see the roads stretching in any other direction. Hence it is that each spirit, as he turns towards his ruling love, goes forward thereon."*
* DLW 145; see AE 1163; AC 6938
These paths are not seen until the spirit is prepared. But when he is brought into the ruling love, "then ways to the society where his love reigns appear. From this it is clear that it is love itself that opens; and as all the love of good and truth is from the Lord, it follows that the Lord alone opens the ways for those who are admitted into heaven."*
* AE 206; 413
"A man's spirit cannot be anywhere else because that delight constitutes his life, even his very breathing and the beating of his heart."* This is why when an angel is away from his house, he longs to return home.**
* DP 338:5
**HH 479
The ruling love produces a distinctly different sphere with each person, and it is through these spheres that people associate after death.*
* See AC 1316:2, 5130:2, 6571, 8794:5, 10130:2; Char. 117
USE
The ruling love provides the essential plot for the book of life,* and determines each person's eternal use.
* HH 236:4
"When one sees another in heaven, he sees him indeed as a man, but he thinks of him as a use. An angel also appears in face according to the use in which he is, and affection for the use makes the life of the face. From all this it can be seen that every good use is in form a man."*
* Love xiii
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The ruling love, then, assuming that it is a good one, is not an inward looking love. It originates in the Lord and is experienced as a desire to be of service to others.
He cannot become charity unless he perpetually does the good of use from affection and its delight . . . And the goods that he does are goods of use, which he does every day, and which, when he is not doing, he thinks of doing. There is an interior affection which inwardly remains and desires it. Hence it is that he is perpetually in the good of use, from morning to evening, from year to year, from his earliest age to the end of his life. Otherwise he cannot become a form, that is, a receptacle of charity.*
* Char. 158
The delight of use carries him along as a favoring current carries a ship and causes him to be in eternal peace and in the rest that belongs to peace.*
* Char. 207
The delight in benefitting the neighbor is the true reward of a useful life.
and in the other life this becomes the joy and happiness which are in heaven, thus it becomes heaven to them. For when they who are in this love perform uses and do goods to others, they are in such joy and happiness that then for the first time they seem to themselves to be in heaven; This is given them by the Lord, to everyone according to the uses he performs.*
* AC 6388; see AC 1645, 4459e, 5949:2, 9297:4; HH 405; 517: 2, 3; CL 266:3; SD 4258; love ix
THE LORD
Some idea of the significance of the ruling love becomes clear when we relate it to the Lord's life in the world. It appeared from some of His comments that the Father He spoke of was a separate Divine being. He said that He had come from the Father, was sent to do the will of the Father, could only speak the words that the Father gave Him to speak, that the Father had put all things in His hand, and gave Him all power in heaven and on earth, that He came from the Father and would return to the Father. The Writings explain that by Father there is meant the Divine Itself within the Lord, the Divine Esse. That Divine Esse was His Ruling Love which expressed itself in a love for the salvation of the entire human race.*
* AE 449:3, AC 203416872:4; TCR 98, 99; Lord 31, 32
Now when we think of the Lord's glorification we can see that He was so powerfully affected by that Love that He became the Divine Love itself in Human Form. All of the references to the relation of Father and Son in the Lord may be seen as applying to this ruling love. He came into the world because of that love, always spoke and acted from that love, received all power in heaven and on earth because of that love, returned to that love so that everything of His life was transformed by it.
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And ultimately, when the disciple Philip wondered if they could see the Father, He explained that anyone who had seen Him had seen the Father.* This was another way of saying that the Lord's life on earth cannot be understood without seeing it as an expression of the Divine Love of the salvation of the human race, originating from that end or purpose, and taking on its entire quality because of that end. The Lord's words can be understood properly only in relation to that ruling love with Him; and to see that ruling love, you have only to behold the Lord Jesus Christ, and understand how everything of His being traces itself back to that source. The Lord has all power in heaven and on earth because of that love, and is bound or limited by it in the sense that He will never act contrary to it.
* Jn 14:9
APPLICATIONS
Those are some of the main doctrines about the ruling love. What are the implications of those teachings?
Just as plants can best be cultivated when their nature, appetites and needs are known, so the development of each person can be encouraged or hampered depending on whether one is working with or against the ruling love. The fact that others cannot force us to believe what we do not want to believe, and that we draw the food proper to our state from our own experience, and our reading of the Word, shows how free we are, or how much freedom for us means the freedom to act from our own ruling love and not that of others. Knowing this should have considerable bearing on the way we relate to other people.
This has a special application in marriage where the relationship can flower and prosper only when each person has a deep respect for the ruling love of the other and does not attempt to change it, or agree to love the other only on condition that he become something other than his ruling love.
Much of what we say and do is at variance with our own ruling love, through pressure of public opinion, fear of ridicule, or just through ignorance of what we are. Much of the feeling of isolation, uselessness and loneliness that people experience is because they are out of touch with their ruling love, or are for one reason or another fighting against themselves.
Think of the difference between acting in harmony with your ruling love, or acting against it! In the one case you are inspired, confident, quick to learn, and inwardly peaceful and happy. Indeed this is the underlying cause of heavenly joy.
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When you act against your ruling love you become bored, frustrated, feel inadequate, think that life is pointless and are generally anxious and unhappy.
All the cheerfulness and all the content a man has, even when he is thinking about other things, are therefrom; for therein the angels and spirits who are with him dwell and as it were have their abode, and their gladness flows into the man, and causes his cheerfulness and content . . . when this regnant of his life is touched, it is as if the pupil of the eye is touched; with delight when by beautiful objects; and with pain when by ugly ones.*
* AC 8865
CAN IT BE KNOWN?
When we think of the significance of the ruling love and how different life is when we are in harmony with it, we cannot help wondering whether it is possible to know what the ruling love is. Some passages seem to indicate that it cannot be known.
"Man knows nothing of how he is being regenerated, and scarcely that he is being regenerated."*
* AC 3570:2; see AC 3644, 4067:2; DP 338:5
"It is impossible for those who are in the love of self to know what their ruling love is, because they love what is their own, and call their evils good; and the falsities to which they incline and by which they confirm their evils they call truths."*
* HH 487; see AR 756:2
There are other passages that indicate that it is possible to know of the ruling love, and that knowing it is of real importance in our regeneration.
And yet, if they were willing, they might know it from others who are wise and who see what they themselves do not see. This, however, is impossible with those who are so enticed by the love of self that they spurn all the teaching of the wise.* What reigns universally is not perceived except while the thought is directed to it.** The interior things do not lie open to view so long as men live in the body, except to those who reflect upon them.***
* Ibid; see HD 56, AC 2057:4
** AC 5130; see AC 6159
*** AC 994:3; see AC 1568
But if any one desires to know the ends that are within him, let him merely pay attention to the delight he perceives in himself from the praise and glory of self, and to the delight he perceives from use separate from self . . . He must also pay attention to the various states in which he is for the states themselves very much vary the perception. A man can explore these things in himself, but not in others; for the ends of each man's affection are known to the Lord alone.*
* AC 3796:3, 1673: 4
Man knows nothing of how he is being regenerated . . . But if he is desirous to know this let him merely attend to the ends which he proposes to himself and which he rarely discloses to anyone . . .*
* AC 3570:2
Everyone may see what kind of life he has, if he will only search out what his end is; not what all his ends are-for he has numberless ones, as many as intentions, and almost as many as judgments and conclusions of thought, which are only intermediate ends, variously derived from the principal one, or tending to it-but let him search out the end he prefers to all the rest, and in respect to which all others are nothing.*
* AC 1909
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For that which flows in from heaven and reigns universally, reveals itself in every free state.*
* AC 7118
That which man has as the end is plainly discerned, for it reigns universally in him; and thus is continually present even at those times when he seems to himself wt to be thinking at all about it, for it is seated within and makes his interior life, and thus secretly rules each and all things.*
* AC 5949
The angels in the other life, who when seen appear as forms of love, the love itself not only shining forth, but also exhaling from them, so that you would say that they are wholly nothing but loves.*
* AC 6872:3
A man who is rational from what is spiritual, who knows what is good and what is true, and thus what is evil and what is false, may know from what has been said what his affections are and what his reigning affection is; for there are as many indications of them as there are delights of thought, speech, action, sight, hearing, and as many as there are ambitions, desires and intentions. He needs only to attend and reflect.*
* Love xviii: 4; see AC 7648
Therefore anyone who has this knowledge can ascertain and know what his own state after death will be if he only knows what his love is, and what its relation is to the universally reigning loves spoken of above, to which all loves have relation. But it is impossible for those who are in the love of self to know what their ruling love is . . . All these things have been said to the intent that man may examine himself, and may recognize his love by his delights; and thus, so far as he can make it out from a knowledge of correspondences, may know the state of his life after death.*
* HH 457
HEAVEN
The spirit of heaven is outward looking. When reflecting on their ruling loves, the angels are not really thinking of themselves, but of the Lord Who is the source of love, and to Whom they turn. Basically all heavenly ruling loves relate either to love to the Lord or to love to the neighbor, thus looking not to self but to others. This gives heaven its quality, since heaven is present where the Lord is.
Their interiors are actually turned towards their common centre, thus in heaven to the Lord as a Sun. Consequently because love it continually present before their interiors, and the face comes into existence from the interiors, for it is their external form, therefore the love that is ruling is always before their face. So, in the heavens, this is the Lord as a sun, because it is from Him that they have their love.*
* HH 143; see AC 987
It is the Lord's love, as received by the angels, each in his own way, that makes heaven what it is.*
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His love, as received becomes the ruling love of the angel, and is felt either as love to Him, or as love to the neighbor, for these are the universally ruling loves of heaven. This means that the ruling love of the angels is not something originating from them, but is an indication of the way the Lord is present in heaven, not as a king in his kingdom, but as the very affection and love which governs every aspect of their life.
* HH 7-12
In respect to their sight He is above them in the Sun there, but in respect to their life of love and wisdom He is in them."*
* DP 31; see DP 27; HH 13-19
He who has heaven in himself, has it not only in the greatest or general things pertaining to him but also in the very least or particular things; and that these least things repeat in an image the greatest. This comes from the fact that everyone is his own love, and is such as is his ruling love. The ruling love inflows into particulars and arranges them, and everywhere induces a likeness of itself. In the heavens, love to the Lord is the ruling love, for there the Lord is loved above all things. Hence the Lord there is the All in all things, flowing into all and each, arranging them, clothing them with a likeness of Himself, and making it to be heaven wherever He is.*
* HH 58, see AC 987
Title Unspecified 1977
The reason why man does not know that the will is the man himself is the same that renders him ignorant that love or affection is the man himself. Every one also directs his attention to those things which he sees or feels, but not to the life, the soul or essence, from which he sees and feels. This lies concealed inwardly in the things of sense, and the natural man does not think deeply enough to discover it, but it is different with the spiritual man, because sensation (sensitivum) is not the object of his wisdom, but the essential in sensation, which in itself also is spiritual. It is for this reason that many say that thought is the all of man, and that it is the man himself, or that man is man because he thinks, when, nevertheless, the all of his thought is affection, for remove the latter from the former, and you will be a log. The man, who is rational from the spiritual, who knows what is good and true, and consequently what is evil and false, may, from what has been stated, discover the nature of his affections, and of his ruling affection; for the characteristics of these are as numerous as the delights of a man's thought, speech, action, sight, and hearing, and as his pursuits, desires, and intentions. But let him attend and reflect. Love XVIII: 4.
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WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO DIE Rev. DONALD L. ROSE 1977
PART II
We have emphasized the joyful aspects of this transition from the world to heaven. Much might be said of the adverse aspects of the transition. Death is a separation, and separation is a grievous thing. Although the ancients knew well that death is but a transition "it was customary to weep for the dead," for death is "the last farewell."* It is grievous for those who lose someone by death. We do find reference to certain spirits who lamented that they were losing their relatives in passing from the natural world. "But the reply was made them, that they would receive thousands in their place whom they would love much more, and more happily," and they were told they should acknowledge the Lord as the Father of us all.** One is reminded of the saying in the Gospels ". . . they shall receive an hundredfold . . . brethren, and sisters and mothers and children . . . and in the world to come eternal life"***
* AC 4565
** SD 3032, 743, 1236
*** Mk. 10:30
A serious aspect of the transition of death is the matter of judgment and rendering account of one's life. "Let no man any longer believe, we read, "that he is not to render account of his thoughts, and of his deeds."* "Whatsoever ye have spolien in darkness shall be heard in the light."**
* AC 2488, see HH 463
** Lu. 12:3; AC 7454, 7795
One of the repeated teachings of the Writings is that our states of life will return in succession.* In Dr. Moody's book, Life After Life, we read of people experiencing a review of their life, and there has long been the saying that near death one's whole life passes before the eyes. It is not always clear just when the succession of states return, but there is a hint of it in the early state of "self-acknowledgment."** In a later state the review can be quite detailed. In fact Swedenborg observed what a man's thoughts had been for a month as they arose from day-to-day.***
* AC 561, 823, 868e, 1618e, 1906, 2116
** AC 189
*** HH 462
Dr. Moody's book is very useful in awakening interest in this subject.
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The book has virtually nothing to do with our faith in life after death, although for some it may be what miracles are said to be . . . "an argument of no great weight that confirms their faith."* This passage says that the good "think from the Word," and in relation to the transition called death we should think from what the Lord has revealed.
* DP 133
Actually books like Dr. Moody's have in many cases stimulated us to do more reading of the Writings. And as we do this we usually find that there are things there that we had not noticed before. For example: Dr. Moody says, "in a very few instances, people have come to believe that the beings they encountered were their 'guardian spirits'."*
* Life after Life, p. 57
We find the teaching that "the very societies in and with which men have been during the life of the body, are shown them when they come into the other life."* Also we read, "When a man comes into the other life he has with him his unbelief in there having been with him any spirit . . . There is therefore shown him, if he desires it, the society of spirits in whose company he had been . . ."**
* AC 687
** AC 5861
How useful it is that a book tending to promote belief in life after death is so popular. Let us remember that even a mistaken or imperfect concept of the afterlife "is attended with this useful result, that they believe they will live after death."* And let us note that where there is the basic affirmation of life after death there is unconsciously present a truer concept than may be evident from what a person says. We are told that the simple "believe they will live after death; in which simple faith unknown to them, there is hidden the belief that they will live there as men, will see angels, will speak with them, and will enjoy happiness."** There is a "common perception" on this subject which sometimes is manifest in those about to die.***
* AC 10758
** AC 6053
*** CL 28; DP 274
Our thinking relative to the teachings about resurrection has developed. It was thirty years ago this Spring that Dr. Hugo Odhner presented his view to the council of the clergy. He said, "there is some uncertainty or difference of opinion among us as to what is meant by the process of Resurrection, and whether the manner of a man's death hastens or retards this process." He put forward the view that "the resurrection process is the same with all deceased adults," and that resurrection is completed rather than begun on the third day.*
* NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1947, P. 357. See also correspondence on autopsy, 1958 NCL.
Besides the chapter on the resurrection in Dr. Odhner's book The Spiritual World, I would recommend for a comprehensive view of the teachings two articles by Rev. Ormond Odhner.*
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Rev. Odhner emphasized the following words. "One thing is certain: No harm to the spirit could possibly come, for the spirit is preserved in integrity and peace, no matter how violent the nature of the death."*
* NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1945, pp 455, 497. 18 Ibid., p. 460
** Ibid., p. 460
Rev. Odhner remarked on the "keen sense of humor" of those who greet newcomers after death."* Dr. Moody reports that people with near death experiences found such a sense of humor.** Yes, there seems to be a playful and delightful humor when angels talk to newly-deceased persons. We read of them questioning people "with smiling countenance,"*** and we are told that they are "greatly delighted" with the give and take of conversation with those who do not realize they have died.**** The angels speak to them "merrily" and say such things as "Look at yourselves, and touch yourselves . . . You have departed from the natural world." They tell them to stamp on the ground to feel if it is real. And then the good news is received with joy.*****
* Ibid., p. 504
** Life after Life, p. 63
*** 5 Mem. 8
**** 5 Mem. 6
***** 5 Mem. 10
I think we may conclude that Swedenborg intended humor when he told certain people that arrangements were being made to bury them. Quite deliberately he said "THEY" were being buried, rather than their bodies. "I mentioned that arrangements were now being made for burying their bodies; I said, 'for burying them:' on hearing which they were smitten with a kind of surprise, saying that they were alive."*
* HH 452
There is a very apt humor in the case of people witnessing their own funeral through Swedenborg's eyes.* One talked to Swedenborg about funeral rites while Swedenborg walked in his funeral procession.** Christopher Polheim, a materialistic thinker, died at the age of ninety. Swedenborg, who had been his close associate went to the funeral, and Polheim listened with indignation to the priest stating that he would not rise to life until the day of Judgment.***
* AC 4527:3
** AC 4662:4
*** SD Min 4752
The things that happened to individuals are part of the way the Lord has revealed to us the nature of life after death. The specific examples are used to infill our understanding of the general statements. Philip Melancthon is a particularly helpful example, and we will conclude with observations on this specific case.
Melancthon died early on the evening of April 19th, 1560, in Wittenburg.
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One historian writes that on the 17th "the fever returned, so that he began to bid farewell to his friends, and he wished once more to dictate his last will, but he was unable to do so."*
* Melancthon, by Robert Stupperich, Lutterworth Press, 1966, p. 150.
Later, we read, "To the question whether he desired anything else, he replied Nothing but heaven.' While his friends prayed and while hundreds of students stood outside the house, he expired about seven o'clock on the evening of April 19, 1560." We learn from the Spiritual Diary that "because he had thought deeply about it, he was allowed to ascend temporarily that he might know what heaven is like."* In the account of Melancthon the Writings point out that "most people" find a house like the one they had known in the world. Melancthon was "as if he had just awakened from sleep" and he sat down at his desk and started writing.** It seems significant that he did not awaken as an invalid attended with people as he was when he died. Evidently he simply did not reflect on this change of circumstances. As an appendix to this study we are adding a list of the teachings that show that until the gift of reflection is granted by the Lord the newcomer does not realize he has died even though circumstances should lead him so to believe.
* SD 5923
** TCR 797
Let us hope that our turning our attention to this subject will stimulate more reading of the wealth of material in the Writings. As Dr. Moody puts it, Swedenborg's works "abound with vivid descriptions of what life after death is like."*
* P. 123
The transition called death should not be an unknown fraught with fear. The man of the New Church is not to walk in darkness with respect to this subject.* The Lord is the resurrection. He tells us that we do know the way, and that He is the way, the truth and the life.**
* TCR 771
** Jn 14:6
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SOME REFLECTIONS ON SECULARIZATION ERLAND J. BROCK 1977
The path to secularization has been taken by many notable universities as is well-known, and the history of the failure of New Church schools to preserve a distinctly New Church orientation and purpose has been documented; and that the Academy could follow a path to oblivion as a distinctly New Church institution is an ever-present possibility. As a member of the College Faculty I want to address some remarks to our role as a source of pressure to secularize, and as a means of preventing it.
As Faculty members we receive the greater part of our training for college teaching posts at secular institutions where we inevitably imbibe attitudes or outlooks that are part of what is often an overtly atheistic climate of thought, and where we are trained to think in patterns that do not draw their inspiration from the Word. We quite understandably develop affectional attachments for our alma mater, and hold in high regard those of our mentors who display integrity of academic purpose.
However, the Writings often address themselves to the exposition of the internal state of the learned of the world and thereby impart to us a warning, and the following passages are selected by way of illustration.
Whatever is seen anywhere in the universe is representative of the Lord's kingdom, . . . All things in nature, in both general and particular, are ultimate images, inasmuch as from the Divine are celestial things which are of good, from celestial things spiritual things which are of truth, and from both celestial and spiritual things are natural things. From this it is evident how gross, nay, how earthly and also inverted is that human intelligence which ascribes everything to nature separate or exempt from an influx prior to itself, or from an efficient cause.*
* AC 3483
. . . (They) who have worldly and earthly things as their end, cannot withdraw their senses from them; and even if they did so, they would perceive what is undelightful. Let anyone who is of such a nature put himself to the test, as to whether he desires to know how good adjoins itself to the affections of truth; . . . . and he will say that such things are of no benefit to him, and that he apprehends nothing about them. . . . In like manner he who studies from affection to investigate the abstruse things of the sciences loves to look and does look into things still more intricate. But when spiritual good and truth are in question, he feels the subject irksome and turns his back on it.*
* AC 4096
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And the testimony of my own experience in the world's institutions is that few there be whose primary concern is the untainted quest for truth, and more often one encounters those in whom the conceit of self-derived intelligence is dominant, and who are more concerned for personal aggrandizement and the approbation of their particular academic community than for the humble pursuit of truth. One may justify the secular character of modern institutions by arguing that in the wake of the Last Judgment it would seem inevitable that mankind, freed of the stifling influence of the pre-judgment clouds, would form or transform institutions for the pursuit of truth divorced from the corrupting falsities of a dead church. But rejection of the old false religious dogmas has, we submit, been merely replaced by an equally false set of philosophic premises. Nothing but the humble acknowledgment of the Word, and thought thence derived, can bring about a true revival.
Returning, then, to our theme, in entering the uses of the Academy from the background of training outside, we run the risk of transferring habits of thought and life to the Academy which, without conscious judgment, may be inimical to her life.
In addition, with the exception of our religion courses and some of our philosophy offerings, the works we select as texts and supplemental reading for the courses we teach are, with few exceptions, written by authors in the secular world. The onus of placing courses within the matrix of New Church thought therefore rests on us as teachers.
Beyond these factors, two others bear in upon us, namely, credit transferability and accreditation. The first exerts an influence as a consequence of our desire and that of our students that credit given at the Academy shall transfer to other institutions. As teachers we want our courses to be part of the mainstream of collegiate education both with respect to course content and academic standards; and our students would prefer not to suffer the immediate loss of time and other resources at a crucial period in their lives. And further than this, by our seeking and receiving accreditation by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, we run the risk of designing and implementing our courses in such a way as to please that Association, rather than out of concern to meet the implications of our Charter purposes. While it is true that, under the terms of the affiliation we have with that Association, it is the purpose of accreditation proceedings to assess our work in terms of our own goals, in reality the character of the proceedings and consequent recommendations depends in large measure on the particular membership of the accrediting team. But despite the implied possibility of compromise on our part, the above factors need not, I believe, mitigate against us; and it is the testimony of experience to date that we need not fear that they will, for our credits are transferring well and our affiliation with the Middle States Association has, on balance, been to our benefit.
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In a more positive vein, and as bases of thought whereby our integrity may be preserved, the following set of postulates is offered.
(1) There is no such thing as "pure objectiveness." All sensation and associated thought, and all reflective activity, is contained within preconceived matrices of thought and affection from which the former cannot be divorced.
(2) The substance of our educational endeavour is to foster an awareness of the good to which the truth testifies.
(3) Insofar as our thinking and the thinking we promote in our students is rooted in external knowledges only, our endeavour is secular; and insofar as we view external things from interior light by means of the Word, our thinking may indeed lead to true intelligence and wisdom.* This postulate is summarized in the oft-quoted passage from DLW cited above, that "Thought from the eye closes the understanding, thought from the understanding (thought from interiors by means of the Word) opens the eye."
* See HH 353 ff; AC 3660; DLW 46
The accompanying diagrams illustrate what we have tried to express above. In Figures 1 and 2,* we have attempted to emphasize that no human thought is "neutral"; there is no thought that can be said to be "objective" or divorced from qualification that does not draw its life from the worship of nature and merely human intelligence, or of God. This idea should itself be qualified by the following quotation:
* See pp. 339, 340
False intelligence and wisdom is all that which is without acknowledgment of the Divine; for all those who do not acknowledge the Divine, but nature instead of the Divine, think from the corporeal sensual plane, and are merely sensual, however educated and learned they are believed to be in the world; for their learning does not ascend beyond such things as are seen by the eyes in the world, which they hold in the memory and look at almost materially, though the same sciences serve the truly intelligent for forming their understanding.* (Italics mine)
* HH 353
In Figure 3 we attempt to show the totality of reality, God, man, and the world, and the disciplines* that represent the special focus of the enquirer, and which constitute our curriculum; and a passage embodies the essential idea we hope to impart with the help of the diagram:
* This breakdown was drawn from Professor E. F. Allen's address to the Swedenborg Scientific Association Annual Meeting in April, 1976. And the subordination of knowledges suggested in the pyramid was first suggested to the writer by the Rev. C. Douglas Brock late in the 1940's.
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[FIGURE 1]
[FIGURE 2]
340
[FIGURE 3]
Influx is spiritual and not physical, that is, there is influx from the inner man into the outer, thus into the knowledges of the latter, but not from the outer into the inner, thus not from the knowledges of the former into the truths of faith. . . . From the truths of doctrine of the Church, which are from the Word, a beginning is to be taken, and those truths are first to be acknowledged, and afterward it is allowable to consult (external) knowledges. . . . *
* HH 356
An evident implication of the diagram is that our knowledges of the world and man should reflect an essential unity, one that is drawn from principles in the Word via philosophy, which serves as a link between the Word and secular knowledge, and which is the matrix within which thought from secular knowledge gains its quality. By the word philosophy as employed here is meant philosophies of nature and man appropriate to specific disciplines which enable us to see if, for example, theories of nature in science, of mind and human behavior in psychology, of social organization and human interreaction in the social studies, conform with or run counter to the appropriate truths to which the above may be referred.
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The implication of the postulates offered is that there is the constant need on our part to pass judgment on what we teach, a judgment that will enable us to distinguish those things, which by correspondence, can be adjoined to interior goods and truths and those which can't or are inimical to them.* And if at the time we cannot do this, then we should at least get across to our students the notion that unless exterior knowledges are ultimately viewed from interior truth, then our thinking and theirs is in an important degree deficient.
* See AC 3660
In essence I believe that what is presented above is contained in the Lord's words: "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. We cannot serve God and mammon."*
* Matt. 6:24
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
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DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE NEW CHURCH Rev. HAROLD C. CRANCH 1977
It is very important to see that the New Church-the New Jerusalem-is unique. It is not a sect, one of many other organized Christian churches. It is a new dispensation given by the Lord when the former church had twisted and perverted their doctrines to such an extent that they destroyed spiritual truth. Does this mean that Christians of the former church cannot be saved? Most Christians today do not even know the doctrines of their churches, nor do the churches emphasize doctrines. The Lord looks at the heart of each one, and everyone trying to live according to the truth he knows is being led by the Lord, and will be brought to Heaven. So, while it is necessary to see clearly the doctrinal falsities that have been accepted by the various churches, and judge them, this by no means judges the individual-the sincere people who are trying to live a good life.
Some have said then: "Why is it necessary to judge the doctrinal position of other churches! Can we not just present our doctrines affirmatively without judgment on others?" The answer to this is, "it is necessary to judge, for we cannot accept the need for a New Church, nor can we develop true loyalty to its teachings, unless we see the necessity for them." So tonight I would like to review some aspects of the distinctiveness of our church, and the basis for its reception, and the doctrines that have been made new by the new revelation.
To begin, I will read a well-known quotation from the Writings. It says: "All religion has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good."* This states clearly and concisely the two aspects of religion. First, the teaching is emphasized that all religion, its doctrines, and even its abstract teachings must have relationship to life. The doctrines of the church make a religion because they teach the principles, duties, and all aspects of an orderly life. This part of religion has to do with revelation and the means by which its purpose may be accomplished. The second half teaches that man must use the doctrines of religion to accomplish that purpose in his own life, for "the life of religion is to do good." He who accepts the doctrines of religion is obligated to put them into practice to perform the goods of use which they teach.
* Life 1
The universality of these two concepts is shown by the two words repeated so often in the Writings that some have charged they say the same things over and over again.
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These words are, of course, "truth" and "good." This quotation presents the essential idea of truth and good. Truth is every aspect of Divine order as it is manifested to men. It is the Divine doctrine whether taught in the Old Testament, the New Testament, or in the Writings. But truth is contained within these vessels and must be sought out. For truth, properly understood, is the law of life which can be seen within the order in nature and in the formal, written Word. So religion which is of life is the revelation of Divine doctrine to establish and maintain Divine order with man. It is to bring him into harmony with Divine order in this world, and to prepare him for the fullest expression of that order in Heaven.
Our religion is distinctive, different in form and arrangement from any religion that has existed in the world before. For the first time man has reached the stage where he needs, and can understand, the rational revelation of the Lord's purpose in the Creation. Before, only a few aspects of the rationale of religion had been seen, but now we have a religion that combines the external commandments of God, the internal motivations from man's acceptance of Him in the New Testament, and the philosophic reasoning which shows the universal scope of religion. In the New Church doctrine revealed by the Lord through Swedenborg we are assured that all things are made new. These Heavenly doctrines are the Holy City, New Jerusalem. Men are to dwell in, and enjoy, and use this city of Divine doctrine. Within its walls there is safety, assurance, and blessedness, far above anything that men can know or achieve by any other means. Within it is the future of mankind. But there are still those who are as yet unable or unwilling to receive the truth. We are also told that outside its walls are "all who worketh abomination or maketh a lie." These are they who deliberately choose a life of evil because of its selfish gratification, or from the love of dominating others. But for those who seek shelter within that city, every possible evil and abuse to which man is heir, may be overcome for the leaves of the tree of life in the midst of the city are for the healing of the nations. From it flows forth an abundance of the water of life in which to bathe and be clean.
The foremost and most distinctive doctrine of the New Jerusalem, which gives light and purpose to that city, is the doctrine of the Lord, for it is said that in the New Jerusalem the Lord constantly reigns and the city has no need for a temple, or for the sun and moon to shine in it, for the Lamb of God is the light thereof. We who have come to this city, and who love its teachings, realize how greatly we are blessed with the knowledge of the Lord.
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We have learned that he is love itself and wisdom itself. He constantly acts from Divine justice and mercy. He does not shut out anyone who desires the sanctuary of that city, and he constantly strives to touch the hearts of men that they may receive these great blessings. We know, too, of the strong protective walls, great and high, shining as pure glass in spiritual light, repelling all power of evil, and giving absolute, firm conviction and strength to those who have accepted their protection.
Among the distinctive doctrines now seen more clearly than ever before is that which teaches the true nature of man and woman, and how in a living, genuine marriage the two are made one not only as to name and external uses, but as to living purpose, and as to the will and understanding, so that they are no more two but one angel. In such a marriage there is no division after death. They are conjugial partners, united forever. This doctrine differs entirely from the view of marriage for this world only, derived from Paul's teachings as held in other churches. So the doctrine of conjugial love is a new doctrine and the state of a conjugial marriage is called the jewel of human life, the source of the greatest happiness on earth and in heaven.
The teachings of religion are made completely new as to all human relationships and uses, and they find fulfillment in the individual acceptance of these teachings to produce a life of order. The teaching that all religion has relation to life, emphasizes our part by proclaiming that the life of religion is to do good. Good is the purpose of religion, good is done by the Lord through those who accept His teachings and try to live them. This is the golden thread that runs through every aspect of the New Church to make it new and distinctive in doctrine and life. "That golden thread is individual freedom and responsibility, for true religion is the application of the truth to our lives by our own responsibility and initiative. In the New Church we cannot turn to another and confess our sins, to be made clean without further effort. Nor can we repeat the formula "I believe," and be saved forever without continued study and application. There is no royal road to eternal happiness for the New Churchman.
How then can the New Church grow? What can lead men away from the comfortable and effortless religions of today? That the Writings have that power we can know. We have felt it for ourselves, and many who have come into contact with isolated members have it pointed out in a way that leaves a very deep impression. Many have accepted the distinctive doctrines of the church who seemingly have nothing to gain by accepting them, and much to lose as to their former life. The power of truth within the Writings has led to the formulation of a New Church education. It has led men and women to sacrifice many external advantages to come together into communities where they might support this education, and give its benefits to their children.
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It has provided the spiritual mortar which holds these families together despite the external difficulties bound to arise in small communities. The distinctive doctrine of the New Church has turned atheists and agnostics into strong members. It has produced a wealth of beauty in literature and other arts. It has exerted an influence in every field of uses among men. Yet it lacks the prestige of a great membership, and often has no society of receivers near a new convert.
The strength of the New Church is the power of truth which does not depend on numbers or wealth. It is the power of the Lord building and forming his kingdom with those who will open their minds to his guidance. It is the power of a new, rational revelation. It provides answers which are universal, which show the relationship of man to his creator and the reason behind the events of history, showing man's relationship to the past and the present, with a glowing picture of what he can become if he uses the power and means which the Lord has provided.
This power of the New Church rests on the self-evidencing reason of love. This statement in full says: "At this day nothing else than the self-evidencing reason of love will re-establish the church because they have fallen. The Church at this day errs concerning God, concerning Faith, (and) concerning Charity, and it knows nothing of eternal life; thus it is in thick darkness."*
* Can. Prologue
"The self-evidencing reason of love." This is a fascinating phrase. I have pondered it many times since I first read it many years ago. It expresses in such a concise form the reason for the acceptance of the truths of the New Church, and for its distinctive qualities, that it is difficult to grasp. But as I understand it, it means that those in the love of truth, who genuinely seek to understand, will be given enlightenment from that love to recognize the truth when it is seen. Just as love for the Lord gives also the knowledge of that which would turn man away from the Lord, and thus protects it, so love of the truth-love for the truth, and a love which is more deeply implanted after the truth is known which is called the love of the truth itself, is the wisdom to recognize the truth when it is heard. So the New Church can be given only to those who have something of this love of truth, for only that love can establish the church to remove the falsities and evils which have reigned before. And with those who have such a love of truth nothing will satisfy them completely until they are affiliated with others in that same love. They cannot rest until this is accomplished. That is the distinctive nature of our religion. It is a love of truth that established the truth first in mind, and then in life, and only then is the religion fully accepted in each individual.
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And so to conclude this idea, let us briefly list the essential doctrines which differ radically from the teaching of the other churches.
The Lord God and the Trinity in God and man.
The Word and its internal sense by correspondences.
The Life After Death and the nature of Heaven and Hell.
The Christian Life, or the Doctrine of Use and the Nature of True Charity.
What Faith Is.
The First and Second Comings-the Advents of the One God.
Eternal Marriage in a Conjugial Covenant.
Universal Predestination to Heaven.
The Laws of the Divine Providence.
The Nature and Importance of Freedom in spiritual things.
There are many, many more but they will show the radical differences between the New Church and other churches, if we compare our teachings on these doctrines with theirs.
A most important and distinctive aspect of our religion is the emphasis on man's freedom-the teaching that man cannot receive anything of the church by compulsion. Only that remains with him, and becomes his own, which he accepts freely from love for it. Every man must build his own religion in freedom. But this religion must be built not from his own, unaided judgment, but by thought about and from revelation, for we are taught that religion is not possible except through divine revelation. However, revelation can be received in life only by man's use of freedom and rationality. And so we read: "A thing is not true because the leaders of the church have said so, and their followers con firm it, but it is every man's duty to go to the Word and see if it is true."* Thus the Lord establishes the truth.
* AC 6047
From all of this it can be seen that each man must form his religion in freedom, using his personal responsibility and rational understanding. The way by which his distinctive religion will be formed from the Writings is for man to love the truth, to will that he receive it from the Lord, that when he hears it, he will see it, accept it, and establish its authority in his life. This is the self-evidencing reason of love which is the means by which the Lord can build the church in him and prepare him for Heaven. Thus our distinctive religion has a, strong appeal to all who love the truth and are willing to see how it applies to their own life. For as the Writings teach: "All religion has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good."
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MANCHESTER SWEDENBORGIAN (REVISITED) GEOFFREY B. MYERS 1977
Just after the turn of the last century in the year 1801, a young student at Manchester Grammar School, in Manchester, England, paid a series of visits to the rectory of St. John's Anglican church in that same city. Evidently, these visits made a lasting impression on the schoolboy, for thirty-six years later in 1837, he published, in a popular periodical called Tate's Magazine, a paper entitled "A Literary Novitiate." The young student was by now an accomplished and highly educated man of letters. Some years later when the collected works of this prolific author were published, the title of the article was changed to: "A Manchester Swedenborgian."*
* The Collected Works of Thomas De Quincey. Volume II, Springfield City Library, Springfield, Mass.
The illustrious writer was Thomas De Quincey, best known in our day as the author of "Confessions Of An English Opium Eater,"-an excellent study of drug addiction (the author himself being the addict). Other fine essays of his are "Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts" and "The English Mail Coach." As a fiction writer, though, he was not a great success; anyone who inspects his novel "A Spanish Military Nun" will find all the elements for a great story, but the work itself is disjointed and lacks a sense of the picturesque. Too many blanks are left for the reader's imagination to fill in.
Mr. De Quincey's host at St. John's rectory in 1901 was the Reverend John Clowes, a figure extensively documented by New Church historians, the foremost translator of Swedenborg's works from Latin into English and an author in his own right.
Evidently, the Reverend Clowes was an acquaintance of the De Quincey family and the two had actually met about nine years previous to the rectory visits. That occasion was a dinner party at De Quincey's home. Another guest at the dinner was a young woman, an outspoken person, who expressed very unorthodox and unladylike views on Christianity. Mr. Clowes became visibly disturbed at the turn the conversation had taken and he declined to converse with the young lady. The party was not a success and, as a result, De Quincey's mother had a nervous breakdown. It also turned out that the marital status of the young woman was questionable. It was certainly a mismatched affair, as De Quincey tells us in an article written in 1834, published in Tate's Magazine and entitled "The Female Infidel."*
* Ibid.: Volume I.
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So, after the above fiasco, it is a wonder that De Quincey had the nerve to renew acquaintance with Mr. Clowes, but then, the party was not his fault, it was his mother's, he was only seven years old at the time.
Mr. Clowes and De Quincey had one great love in common and that was Greek and Roman literature; and this seems to have been their main topic of conversation during the rectory visits. De Quincey was now sixteen years old and a child prodigy who, at thirteen wrote Latin and Greek verse and at fifteen, could converse fluently in Greek. De Quincey describes Mr. Clowes as a venerable, saintly old man, now in his declining years, almost senile, and the affairs of his large parish now in the hands of an assistant. He paints a glowing picture of the rectory as an oasis of peace and tranquility in the midst of a bustling and noisy city. There are beautiful stained-glass windows and Mr. Clowes plays the organ for him and sings hymns in a tremulous old man's voice. They discuss the classics, and Mr. Clowes is gradually dispensing of his wonderful library. He feels that he will be not much longer in this world and hopes that his gifts of books to his friends will serve as a memorial of himself in time. De Quincey accepts the gift of several of Mr. Clowes' most treasured and valuable volumes. De Quincey makes a great deal of the difference in age between himself and his host, he being a young lad of sixteen, and designating Mr. Clowes as being almost an octogenarian. He emphasizes this difference by twice quoting from Wordsworth:
"We talked with open heart and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Mathew Seventy-two . . . ."*
* From the poem: "The Fountain" by William Wordsworth The Cambridge Edition of Wordsworth's Complete poetical Works reads: "Affectionate and free . . . And Mathew Seventy-three . . ." De Quincey could have misquoted it or perhaps Wordsworth, himself, revised it.
And again, as Wordsworth says of old Daniel and his grandson:
"There are ninety good years of
Fair and Foul weather
Between them, and both go a-pilfering
together,. . ."*
* From the poem: The Two Thieves by William Wordsworth The Cambridge Edition reads "seasons" instead of "years.
De Quincey then admits that this latter quote is a bit on the high side but, he imagines that there must have been at least sixty years of difference between himself and Mr. Clowes.
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The truth of the matter is that Mr. Clowes was nowhere near the age that De Quincey supposes him to be and he was not a doddering old man at all. At this meeting he was fifty-nine years old and De Quincey was sixteen; giving a difference of only forty-three years. In this year of 1801, Mr. Clowes had all his faculties and was actively engaged in his translation of the Arcana Coelestia which he did not finish until 1816. In fact, he lived another twenty-eight fruitful and active years; dying in 1831. Whether or not he gave his library away in 1801 is doubtful, but, in any case, De Quincey came away with some very valuable books.
How De Quincey could evidence such poor judgment of Mr. Clowes age is puzzling, not only in view of the fact that Mr. Clowes was an old friend of the De Quincey family, but also due to his stating that previous to writing the article, he had seen Mr. Clowes' obituary in the newspapers, Surely the papers would have given the age of Mr. Clowes.
Although De Quincey is full of admiration for Mr. Clowes, he cannot understand the involvement of Mr. Clowes with Swedenborg. He supposes that perhaps Mr. Clowes, having little to occupy his time, the affairs of the parish being in the hands of Mr. Clowes' assistant, in some fashion, Mr. Clowes had turned to Swedenborg as one might turn to a book of fairy-tales: he thinks that these fairy tales have taken possession of Mr. Clowes. He finds it incredible that such a well-bred and pious a gentleman as Mr. Clowes could fall into the grossness and sensuality, which appear to besiege the visions of Swedenborg. De Quincy claims to have read some of the writings of Swedenborg and he thinks that the author is a crazy man, so crazy that it would be bad ethics even to consider writing in criticism of Swedenborg. He is at a loss to explain how such a pure and unfleshly, almost disembodied man like Mr. Clowes could find delight in Swedenborg's dreams in the very "fleshiest incubus that has intruded amongst heavenly objects." He describes Swedenborg as "One who threw a withering scowl over the far larger half of his fellow creatures."* It is not quite clear what De Quincey means by "Fleshly" or "Unfleshly,"-as he describes Mr. Clowes to be. One must beware, however, of De Quinceys adjectives and epithets. For example: in one of his essays he describes the Poet Laureate's sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, as being "the wildest person that I have ever met"; then, on realizing that we might misinterpret this, he adds in parenthesis, ("in the sense of the most natural, i.e., she is very close to nature.")**
* De Quincey gives no specific reference for this statement but his basis is Swedenborg's discrimination in charity as expressed for example in Doctrine of Charity. 21, 26.
** The collected works of Thomas De Quincey, Volume II. Springfield City Library
De Quincey is, of course, entitled to his opinion. He claims to have read Swedenborg and above are some of his comments.
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But, the question arises: Is his criticism of Swedenborg his own or has he borrowed it from someone else? The answer could be that he leaned very heavily upon the opinions of the German philosopher, Emanuel Kant. Thirteen years prior to the publication of "The Manchester Swedenborgian," De Quincey had published another article entitled "Kant's Abstract of Swedenborgianism." This was a direct translation into English by De Quincey and it appeared in the "London Magazine" for May 1824.* The comments made by De Quincey in "The Manchester Swedenborgian" are very similar to those of Kant appearing in De Quincey's translation. So it appears that De Quincey may not have read Swedenborg to any great extent and he is merely quoting from Kant.
* Ibid. Volume XIV
De Quincey presumes that Mr. Clowes had nothing better to occupy his time than to translate fairly tales such as the Arcana Coelestia from Latin into English. Mr. Clowes took about twenty-four years to translate this "fairy tale" and many other years working on the translation of The True Christian Religion, Conjugial Love, Doctrine of Life, Worship And Love of God, and other works of Swedenborg. He published many of his own original works and was instrumental in forming a New Church printing society, which still exists. He was very active in his own large parish in Manchester and, at the same time, engaged in propagating the doctrines of the infant New Church throughout England. He believed that the New Church could come about without the formation of separate societies, and he remained an Anglican priest all his life, preaching the doctrines of Swedenborg from his pulpit at St. John's. He was rector of St. John's for nearly sixty years and a memorial was established, in his own lifetime, commemorating his fiftieth year of service there. Interestingly, the sculptor of this bas-relief memorial was the celebrated John Flaxman,* himself a student of Swedenborg's writings and a close friend of William Blake,** another well-known reader of Swedenborg.
* The New Jerusalem Magazine (Boston) for December 1831
** Ibid. for January 1832
Actually, the introduction of Mr. Clowes to the writings of Swedenborg was of a far different nature than De Quincey presumed it to be. It happened in the following manner: In the spring of the year 1773, the year following the death of Swedenborg, Mr. Clowes went to visit a friend in Liverpool, a Mr. Richard Houghton, Mr. Houghton asked Mr. Clowes if he had read the Vera Christiana Religio by Emanuel Swedenborg. Mr. Clowes replied that he had not but he was so affected by the earnestness of his friend's request that, upon returning home to Manchester he immediately sent to London for a copy of the work. In about ten days, the book arrived, but as often happens his ardour was now dulled and he had no more desire to read the work.
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The very size of it repelled him and he just glanced through it, noticing, indeed, some controversial points of doctrine, then he put the book away on a shelf and it lay there unnoticed all that summer. Then, in the month of October of that same year 1773, Mr. Clowes planned an annual visit to an old college pupil of his, The Right Honorable John Smyth, of the village of Heath, in the county of Yorkshire. On the evening before his departure for Heath, he happened to pick up again the neglected volume of Swedenborg's Vera Christiana Religio, not with the intent of seriously reading it, but just to glance through it; and, on flicking through the pages, his attention was attracted to a new and strange term to him: DIVINUM HUMANUM, it read, but he soon closed the book and the term seemed forgotten and gone. The next morning he set out for his friend's home in Heath.
From here on it will be expedient to quote directly from Mr. Clowes' own memoirs.*
* Ibid for December 1851
Mr. Clowes is speaking of himself and makes use of the third person singular in so doing.
"On awaking early one morning, not many days after his arrival at his friends house, his mind was suddenly and powerfully drawn into a state of inward recollection, attended with an inexpressible calm and composure, into which was instilled a tranquillity of peace and heavenly joy, such as he had never before experienced. Whilst he lay musing on this strange, and to him, most delightful harmony in the interiors of his mind, instantly there was made manifest, in the same recesses of his spirit, that what he can call by no other name than a DIVINE GLORY, surpassing all description, and exciting the most profound admiration. But what seemed to him the most singular circumstance on this occasion was, that he was strongly impressed at the same time, by a kind of internal dictate, that the Glory was in close connection with that DIVINUM HUMANUM or DIVINE HUMANITY above mentioned, and proceeded from it as from its proper divine source.
"The GLORY continued during a full hour, allowing the author sufficient time both to view and analyze it. Sometimes he closed his bodily eyes and then opened them again, but the glory remained the same. It is well, however, to be understood, that there was no appearance presented from a visible form, but only a strong persuasion that the glory proceeded from a visible form, and this form was no other than the DIVINE HUMANITY OF JESUS CHRIST.
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When the glory disappeared, as it did by degrees, the author quitted his bed, but the recollection of what happened attended him during the whole of the day, whether he was in company or alone, and what is still more remarkable, the next morning, on his first awaking, the glory was again manifested, but if possible with increased splendor. Now, too, a singular effect was produced by it on the author's mind, convincing him of the spiritual and providential origin of what he had seen, by the important end to which it pointed, and was designed to conduct him. The effect was no other than the excitement of a strong and almost irresistible desire to return home immediately, in order to enter upon a serious and attentive perusal of the neglected volume which he had left behind him. And such was the power of this desire, that although he had intended to remain with his friend a week or a fortnight longer, yet he made some excuse for quitting his house the next day, and hastened back to Manchester, rather with the impetuosity of a lover, than with the sedateness of a man, who had no other object of pursuit but to consult the pages of an unknown, and heretofore slighted book. . . ."
This Glory or DIVINUM HUMANUNI, that Mr. Clowes experienced at Heath, then, made such an impression upon him that he rushed back to Manchester and not only read all the Vera Christiana Religio by Emanuel Swedenborg, but translated it into English and had it published. He then went on to translate other books of the Writings and, in fact, devoted the rest of his life to the propagation of Swedenborg's doctrines. All this is a far cry from De Quincey's report of a senile octogenarian being deluded by a book of fairy tales.
The village of Heath in Yorkshire, where the manifestation occurred to Mr. Clowes is a delightful place, reminiscent of the elegance and sedateness of a bygone age. It has been kept aloof from the industrial sprawl and bustle of this part of Yorkshire. It is located in the Calder valley just a few miles south of the city of Wakefield. There is much of architectural and historical interest to be seen in Heath. Heath Hall, where Mr. Clowes stayed, is still in possession of the descendants of Mr. Clowes' host, the Hon. John Smyth. Heath Hall and other fine old buildings may be visited by the public.
So, in conclusion, if "The Spanish Military Nun" as a novel falls flat, then as a biographical sketch, "The Manchester Swedenborgian" falls even flatter.
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TOAST TO THE CHURCH ROBERT J. MILLER 1977
Any time that we propose a toast to the Church, one very obvious question should come to mind; and that question is, what does the Church mean to us? Well, tonight I'm going to try to tell you a little bit about what the Church means to me.
The New Church is a very small church; we are an insignificant part of the world's population. Yet we are the sole possessors of the Divine Revelation in its entirety. This means that we have a very special, and a very difficult, use set out for us. We must not only preserve and strengthen among ourselves the revelation contained in the Writings, but we must strive to spread the Writings to the rest of the world.
As we all know, the traditional Christian churches are now in a state of decline. They are decaying because in them truth has been perverted and turned into falsity. Part of this decline is due to an emphasis in the world on self. But let us not forget that this is not the only reason for the decline in membership in the traditional churches. There are many people, in simple good, in Christian churches who are now able to see the falsities that have invaded the doctrines of their churches. They too are leaving the traditional churches. But for these people in simple good a vacuum exists; they have rejected the falsities that have crept into the old Christian churches, but they have nothing to replace them with. Where are they to turn?
Well, for several years I was one of these people who had left the old Christian church, and I think that for most of these people, the answer is that right now they have nowhere left to turn. The world today places great emphasis on the scientific and on the rational. And the only place where these people can go where they can see divine truth presented in a very rational manner, is to the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. But as we all know, these Writings are not familiar, or generally available, to the public. The possessors of the truth of the Writings, we of the New Church; are few in number, and of a very reticent nature. I think that most of us realize the great need that the world has for the truth contained in the Writings; but maybe we should stop and think about the large number of people out in that same world who would be very receptive to the Writings, if somehow these truths were presented to them.
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Those of us who are in the New Church become somewhat complacent about this at times, I think. We forget that we are not the only members of the Lord's Church. Membership in the Lord's Church consists of many more than just those who are members of the New Church. It consists of all those with a genuine affection for truth, and those who are in good that is truly good. We should try to remember this when in contact with those people in the outside world who have not been lucky enough to have become acquainted with the Writings.
I think that we of the New Church use the words 'our Church' in too much of a proprial sense; we tend to forget those outside of the New Church who are also part of the Lord's Church. The Lord's Church consists of those in the Church specific. Perhaps if we remembered this it would give us a more positive attitude toward contact with the outside world. It would enable us to take advantage of, as well as to create, more opportunities to spread the Writings to those who are in the Church universal but not yet in the Church specific.
REPORT ON BALLOTING BY MAIL E. BOYD ASPLUNDH 1977
* Chairman of Committee on Balloting by Mail
At the annual meeting held more than a year ago on March 5, 1976, it was recommended that there be balloting by mail for the election of Directors of the General Church Corporation.
The minutes of that meeting record "a lengthy and active discussion" but it appears that there was no decision on the question; instead the following resolution was adopted:
RESOLVED: that the President be asked to appoint a Committee to study all of the legal, mechanical, and other problems involved in adopting a system of balloting by mail and report back at the Annual Meeting in March, 1977.
Such a Committee was appointed, consisting of Mr. Jerome Sellner and Mr. Stephen Pitcairn, with the present writer as Chairman. This Committee reported to the 1977 Annual Meeting as follows:
Balloting by mail would require changes in the By-Laws. These can be accomplished simply enough by majority vote at any Annual Meeting or at a special meeting called for the purpose.
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A change would be necessary in Article VI, Section 2, which provides that the Nominating Committee shall give 30 days notice of its nominations and that members may suggest additional nominees until one week before the meeting. The notice periods would have to be extended, or the opportunity for members to make additional nominations would have to be curtailed.
Article IV, Section 3 states that only members present at a meeting shall have the right to vote. This would have to be changed, and the nature of the change would depend on whether all balloting for Directors is to be done by mail in advance of the meeting or whether a system of absentee ballots is to be established for use only by those unable to be present and to vote in person at the meeting.
Details of the procedures for distributing, collecting and counting ballots would have to be worked out, but these need not be a part of the By-Laws. Sufficient data would have to be sent out by the Nominating Committee to enable members who may not know the nominees to vote intelligently.
Your Committee believes that no change is necessary or desirable in Article VI, Section 5, which deals with removal of Directors; nor in Article VI, Section 6, which Provides for election of Honorary Directors.
Finally, although it is beyond the scope of this Committee's assignment, there is the basic question of the use to be served by a mail ballot. It is unlikely that election results would differ-certainly not if there were no more nominees than vacancies to be filled.
Perhaps increased participation in the selection of nominees by Corporation members would resolve the present concern over election procedures. This increased participation could follow the Academy model, in which all Corporation members are invited to submit names of potential nominees directly to the Nominating Committee or-due to the larger size of the General Church Corporation-a procedure might be adopted for submitting names through the local Treasurers and/or Pastors.
We strongly urge that further consideration be given to whether or not balloting by mail is desired by the members of the Corporation.
The question of balloting by mail has been raised more than once, always with inconclusive results. This is no doubt due to the fact that those most affected-the absent Corporation members-were not available to express their views on the subject. Because of this, it was requested that the above report be published in NEW CHURCH LIFE. Comments from Corporation members, including those who attended the 1977 Annual Meeting, but especially from those who did not, would be welcomed by myself, or by the Secretary of the General Church Corporation, Mr. Stephen Pitcairn.
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UNIQUE AND MIRACULOUS EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address, and business communications, should be sent to the Business Manager. Notifications of address changes should be received by the 15th of the month.
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Since the subject of Swedenborg's spiritual experiences and the nature of the Writings seems to be active in the minds of a good many of our readers (as it should and will be in every generation of the New Church), it may be of interest and use to continue the observations and reflections of our January and February editorials.
From such passages of the Writings as Arcana Coelestia 1880-85, especially 1885e, Invitation to the New Church 43, 44 and 52, and many others, we can glean seven of the major characteristics of Swedenborg and his experience as follows:
1. Commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ in Person, which "surpass all miracles." (Inv. 43).
2. Was conscious in both worlds at the same time as to sight, hearing and speech, "and this now for 27 years." (Inv. 43).
3. Ability to relate spiritual states to natural time (of which hundreds of instances may be found in the Writings).
4. An acquired perception of the quality of the angels, spirits and devils with whom he conversed. (cf. New Church Life editorial, January issue).
5. ". . . in both spiritual and natural light at the same time . . . to be with angels and at the same time, to draw, forth truths in light and thus to perceive and teach them." (Inv. 52).
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6. A perfect enlightenment as to the choice of his note-materials for publication (much inferential evidence not explicit, or obvious).
7. A revealment of the spiritual sense of the Word. (Inv. 44).
As an aside, though a minor point, it should be noticed that the Invitation to the New Church, though published posthumously, unlike other works published after Swedenborg's death was actually prepared in final form for the press by himself, it having been his last work. (See "Translator's Note" at beginning of work).
But what we may notice here, and in many other passages, is the precision, the directness, the specificity, the explicitness and the clarity of the phrases used. In our reading of the world's religious literature we find little even approaching such unmistakable wording of claims in such quantity.
The strength of the language used, however, is not the most important part of the uniqueness. Far more significant are the sheer number and quality of the major characteristics which are delineated. For the sum total of them form a complex which is absolutely unique and unparalleled by any individual person past or present, even by the writers of the Old and New Testaments. And Swedenborg himself says that this is a miracle far beyond all other miracles.
To extend this a little further, it may be observed that, with the exception of the first of the characteristics mentioned, men in the past and present, including the writers of the Testaments, have experienced one or more of the other characteristics. But none have been endowed with all of them. And this should not surprise us, since the materials of the Word were not simply a personal revelation for personal betterment, but were a Divine Revelation for the sake of the whole human race.
We may ask, however, what is the purpose and use of viewing Swedenborg's experience and mission in this light? Is it to glorify Swedenborg, or is it to glorify the Lord who performed this greatest of miracles for the sake of all mankind?
To these questions, your editor will address further comments in future issues, and also some expansions of the seven characteristics mentioned here, hoping that they may be contributions to this subject.
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NEW CHURCH CALENDAR GEOFFREY B. MYERS 1977
To the Editor:
Many thanks to Mr. Woofenden for bringing to light a chronological error in my proposal for a distinctive New Church calendar. The acknowledgment of this error should also make Mr. Woofenden aware that he, in his analysis has also fallen into the same trap that I did. I am sure that the answer to his question lies in the fact that there is no year (0) in calendar making! We have both assumed that the year 1770 is (0) and it really should be the year (1). This being the case 1977 should be the year 208 A.N.E. and not 207 A.N.E. as I proposed in my article in the January 1977 issue of N.C.L. Using the same argument, Mr. Woofenden's base would be 1770 (New Church Day) and not the unlikely year of 1769.
We have the same phenomenon occurring in our primitive Christian calendar. We go immediately from the year 1 B.C. to the year 1 A.D.
There is no year (0) in between.
The precise year of the Lord's first advent has never been established with certainty. The chronology now in use in the Christian world was an invention of one Dionusius Exiguus, an abbot of Rome in the sixth century. Most historians and theologians now agree that Christ was born in the year 4 B.C.
With Mr. Woofenden, I await, with interest, any information that can be given concerning the dating system that he has discovered Longmeadow, Mass.
GEOFFREY B. MYERS
NEW CHURCH CALENDAR PATRICK ROSE 1977
To the Editor:
In the April issue of NCL (1977, pp. 200-201), Mr. Woofenden poses an interesting question regarding the distinctive New Church Calendar used in earlier years. He cites an early Academy publication, where the date is given as 1887-118; subtracts 118 years from 1887, and ends up with 1769. He asks why this New Church calendar should have been based on the year 1769, when a year such as 1770 (see TCR 791) would seem more suitable.
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The answer is simple. This calendar was based on the year 1770. That year was designated the 1st year of the New Christian Era. Adding 117 to both these dates, we find that the year 1887 was the 118th year of the new calendar.
Why not begin with the year 0, as Mr. Woofenden assumed in his calculations? The reason is that a calendar is based, not on cardinal, but on ordinal numbers. We may call this year 1977. More strictly, it is the 1977th. year of our Lord. There was no zeroth (0th.) year in either calendar.
PATRICK ROSE
Glenview, Ill.
DIVINE AND HUMAN KENT O. DOERING 1977
To the Editor:
In response to the Rev. Dandridge Pendleton's description of some elements and directions in Christian thought today, may I express a quandary to the laity in general?
If the "liberal-humanist" tends to deny the Divinity and transcendence of our Lord and the authority of His Word, isn't it equally true that the "conservative-theist" tends to downplay or deny the Humanity and immanence of our Lord, and to see only the sense-of-the-letter authority of the Word in exteriors, that is, to project his own authority into a careful selection of passages from the Word?
If memory serves me correctly, the Writings teach that one of the leading heresies of the Christian world was to divide the Lord's Divinity from His Humanity. It is my opinion that this division was the mother of the many other religious and ideological divisions existing in the world today, and that this heretical division can be seen in the ideological squabbles between the "conservative-theist" and the "liberal-humanist" in our own environment.
To re-state the dichotomy: the "conservative theist," while emphasizing the Lord's Divinity and transcendence, downgrades or ignores His Humanity and immanence. On the other hand, the "liberal-humanist," while emphasizing the Lord's Humanity and immanence, downgrades or denies the Lord's Divinity and transcendence.
In their squabbles with one another, the conservative theist accuses the liberal humanist of having no faith. And, seen in the above light, the accusation is correct. Conversely, the liberal humanist accuses the conservative theist of having no charity. And again, seen in the above light, maybe that accusation is also correct.
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So really, the conflicts we see drawn into New Church society between these two views have no relevance. Do we not profess to believe in the Divinity and Humanity of the Lord, of His transcendence and immanence? Do we not believe in the marriage of good and truth, of charity and faith? If so, then we are to be both theistic and humanistic, seeing both God and Man in our Lord Jesus Christ; we are to place emphasis on both affections and cognitions, on charity and faith, on this world and the next.
It does seem that in the past, General Church trends placed too much emphasis on transcendence, too little on immanence; too much of cognitions of faith, too little on the goods of remains; too much on obedience, too little on subjective freedom. Consequently, it appears as if the General Church has been too influenced by conservative theistic thought which generally pervades the spheres of the social environment in which it exists. Another indication could be the constant use of the terms "liberal" and "humanist" in negative connotations which imply taking of sides with the conservative-theist position.
Thus, we all have heard the conservatives knocking the validity of liberalism and humanism because their proponents deny the Lord's Divinity and transcendence. (Faithless bunch, those liberal humanists!) But how would it do to have the dichotomy turned around? Conservative deism or theism is also of falsity because it denies the Lord's Humanity and immanence. (Conservative deists have no charity, heartless bunch!) Isn't it about time that we all return to the doctrine of the Divine Human, and shed those essentially old-church attitudes of mind which we have absorbed from our old-church environment? If we don't, the church will be continually divided by an irrelevant issue. Munich, Germany
KENT O. DOERING
MIRABILIS WILSON VAN DUSEN 1977
To the Editor:
May I respond to Erik E. Sandstrom's reference to Inv. 52? This reference is often given to support the view that Swedenborg was indeed unique. I would call attention to the rest of the paragraph. Right after referring to his unique experience, Swedenborg refers to miracles that are snares to lead astray; he refers to sorcery, the bewitched people of Samaria, miracles among the Papists, worshiping men as deities, dead bodies of saints, etc. What is the total thrust of this paragraph? It says, yes, Swedenborg's experience was unique, but we are in no way to be caught up in it. Miracles do not reform.
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Swedenborg is put aside totally; the real wonder is the advent of the Lord in the Writings. This wonder we already stem from, and live within. This life of doctrine is a living wonder, now, for all. It is wrong to say only Swedenborg. It makes an external miracle we can never attain, another saint's tomb. The wonder is that the Writings are describing everyone's present reality. This is a wonder we can live and move within, eminently attainable, limited only by our free choice. I would not be exactly careless of Swedenborg's bones, but bones are best buried. The real error here is not in sanctifying Swedenborg. It is in entombing what is meant to be our living experience. As the Writings teach us, and I know by experience, we all live in the spiritual and natural worlds simultaneously. The wonder of the Writings is that they describe everyone's real situation. This is why Inv. 52 turns us away from saying only Swedenborg did it, because, though true in a sense, in a deeper sense it is fortunately not true at all.
Ukiah, Cal.
WILSON VAN DUSEN
I. D. ERIK SANDSTROM 1977
To the Editor:
I write on a matter of personal identity. My son, the Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom, and I are frequently mistaken for one another. So in Dr. Van Dusen's letter to the editor in your April issue, Dr. Van Dusen replies to my son, but refers also to a previous discussion in the pages of the New Philosophy. He thought the same Sandstrom was involved in both cases, but my son must be free from blame with regard to the New Philosophy discussion, and I with regard to the one in New Church Life! There is a distinction in our respective signatures, in that I do not have a middle initial. Nevertheless, experience has shown that this distinction is not readily noted. Because of this I have in the past few years, when I publish, added the "Sr." to my name, although this is not quite in keeping with accepted convention. Bryn Athyn, Pa.
ERIK SANDSTROM, SR.
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Church News PENNY KERR 1977
KEMPTON, PA.
The village of Kempton lies in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, 20 miles west of Allentown, and about 15 miles from Bryn Athyn, a farm community populated largely by Pennsylvania Dutch. For years there have been two New Church families (the Charles Coles and Bob Junges) who retreated for the summers to their farms in the countryside surrounding Kempton.
In June 1974, the Yorvar Synnestvedts and Tom Kerrs moved to Kempton to live permanently, and begin a New Church group there. The move was made so that our lives could be led in the country, on farms rather than in an urban or suburban environment. We bought a few chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, cows, and settled in.
We began by having church, classes and Sunday school in our homes. We were quickly joined by isolated families in Allentown, Reading and other nearby communities. Late that fall we asked the Bishop for a visiting minister once month, and were delighted when the Rev. Martin Pryke offered to serve us.
The next summer (June '75) two more families moved to Kempton (the Gene Muths and the Steve Kings) followed by the Eyvind Boyesons. And by the next spring we realized we needed a chapel because on the Sundays a minister came we often numbered over 50. So we began to build a simple, rustic chapel in the upper part of the Kerrs' barn.
One of our first services in the chapel was our New Church Day service, for which we had made traditional gifts for our children. We followed the service with a picnic, games, and swimming in the pond.
This fall ('76) we began a new schedule. Mr. Pryke comes the second weekend of every month, giving a class on Saturday night and a dance for the older children, as well as our church service on Sunday. On the fourth weekend of every month the Rev. Arne Bau-Madsen does the same. We continue with a lay service on the alternate Sundays.
Christmas this year was highlighted by our first tableau, given in Steve Carle's barn-one simple scene: Joseph and Mary and the manger, with live newborn lambs, ewes and donkeys, while Mr. Pryke read the Christmas story, and we sang Christmas hymns. It was deeply moving evening, including later a party and caroling.
Recently we applied for circle status, which Bishop King officially granted. We are looking forward to the dedication of the chapel by Bishop King and we are planning a five-day summer camp for our families and other isolated families. We even have a vision for school in the future. In less than three years we have come a long way, turning a dream that a few of us had into a reality.
PENNY KERR
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SPURIOUS CONSCIENCE Rev. OTTAR T. LARSEN 1977
Announcements
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Vol. XCVII AUGUST, 1977 No. 8:
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. John 8:36.
In the state of a genuine conscience founded upon a true understanding of doctrine, a man is able to go through a temptation and overcome some evil.
But in a state of a spurious or false conscience no one can begin to be regenerated or reformed.* A spurious or false conscience is an unhealthy state of the mind. The mind is sick, because false ideas are predominant and the faculties of freedom and reason are made inoperative. When a man is in such a false persuasion, his reason is not listened to. It may then look as if he is going through a state of temptation, when he is not. A temptation is only permitted by the Lord when we are able to resist it and be victorious. The mind has to be wise, for in a temptation our feelings suffer because our loves are under attack, and only a clear understanding of the truth can give us persistence to fight through the desert like state of lack of affections or hope. A spurious or false conscience can give us no help, and therefore man cannot be changed and reformed until this state is healed.
* DP 141
To put it simply: Temptation is a spiritual state. Man is tempted when he loves and pursues spiritual things. One who has a spurious or false conscience cannot be tempted, because a spurious or false conscience is only natural. The reason is that he is only looking to natural things or ends.
A false conscience is a conscience dictated by what can be gained for oneself from a love of self and the world.
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All it cares about is to protect self. A man may feel what he considers the pain or sting of conscience when he steals or commits adultery when it is not conscience he feels but merely the sting of fear of being found out.
A spurious conscience, however, may exist with a man who wills well. It is a conscience based on false ideas and life-patterns that have been taught and instilled from infancy.* Such a spurious conscience may exist with people who have been brought up in various Christian Churches and even with men of the New Church.
* AC 1033
Now, with men of the New Church, states are often mixed. Before we have gone very far on the road of regeneration we may have a genuine conscience about some things; for example about stealing or committing adultery. At the same time we may have a spurious or even a false conscience in another area of our life. For example, we may be led by a compulsion to serve others. We may simply have a natural disposition to do this, or we may have been taught and trained to do it as a duty, as a way of following the Lord. If we come into a servant or slave relationship, and we feel in ourselves that we do it as a religious duty, then we have a spurious conscience. It may feel to us as if we are going through a temptation and a vastation when we act this way, and yet it is not. It is only a purely natural state, and the pain that is felt accomplishes nothing in itself.
If we come to realize that it does not really do others any good to serve them this way, and yet are unable to change, then we are drawing close to the state of false conscience. A false conscience is when we know letter. The difference between a spurious and a false conscience is like that between an evil and a sin. An evil becomes a sin when we know it is evil and still do not change. A false conscience looks to what other people feel or think because the man is afraid of them and dares not do what the internal conscience dictates. Such a person serves man more than God, and is therefore kept in a natural state. In this area of his life he can make no progress until he replaces his spurious or false conscience with a genuine one, asking himself: "What is spiritually best for the other person and for myself?" "What is the greatest use that can be performed?" We must develop a sensitivity and a desire to accomplish what is eternally good.
What is needed is a lot of sobering thought and reflection, until we are sure in our own mind. When we have formed a spiritual conscience, from what is eternally most beneficial for others and for ourselves, then we are ready to change our pattern of actions.
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We will have to explain our changed behavior to others, and make it clear to their understanding that our conscience has changed, and that we are now compelled by reason and freedom to obey our new enlightenment which we see to be from the Lord. We will have to expect much resistance and even pressure by others to make us continue to serve them as before. This is not only selfishness on their part, it is human nature not to change quickly, and people need time to accept and adjust to change.
It is worth noting that our awareness of what our conscience tells us is not from good flowing in, but from the ideas and behavior-patterns that we have assimilated in our infancy, childhood and youth. We have received impressions in our understanding, which have been confirmed again and again. Ideas and modes of action have been implanted in us as being the true and genuine way of life, a truly good life.* But if those ideas and patterns of behavior were false, then we will have a hard time unlearning them.
* AC 2144:3
A true conscience is only derived from true teachings. If we have been given false ideas of what we should do, so that a false kind of conscience compels us, then there is no other way out than to re-examine our inherited conscience, or the one learned in childhood, and reject it from a new insight. It is like learning to play an instrument. If we have learned it thoroughly till it becomes second-nature, but in a wrong way, then it is more than twice as hard to change to a new way of playing as it would have been to learn it the right way the first time.
A spurious conscience, then, is a conscience consisting of man-made ideas of what is true and good. But man-made ideas, (that is, ideas not inspired by the Divine) are always false and take away man's freedom. The Lord said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me."* The Lord not only is an example to us, He alone is the truth and gives the truth that may lead us from a spurious to a genuine conscience and finally to the Divine good which is meant by the Father.
* Jn. 14:6
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A spurious conscience relates closely to indiscriminate charity. Both are man-made and not of an enlightened reason. A genuine intelligence and reason is drawn from the Word. Therefore the Word must be the source upon which we form our judgment and reason. An enlightened reason gives us enlightened conscience. It is a law of the Divine Providence that man must act from freedom according to reason. But to act from indiscriminate charity or spurious conscience is to act contrary to reason. How can it but break us down and make us useless to others as well as to ourselves?
Every man, woman and child has certain responsibilities which are theirs. It is a privilege to have responsibilities, for our life and love is shaped in our response to our duties and needs we perceive. It is therefore a transgression also to do for others what they could do for themselves. Let us wake up from a life of indiscriminate charity if we are in it, and seek a life of usefulness-in response to what we truly have been called by the Lord to do and take care of. This is what a true conscience calls for. A man's love, delight and pride (in a good sense) is to learn to take care of himself and the duties of his office. The same holds true of a woman. We have to learn to carry own life and responsibilities before we take on those of others.
The love of having dominion over others, and the love of having others serve us, is the deepest love we have in ourselves. It must be rejected and turned away from before love of the Lord and the neighbor can flow in. Let us look into ourselves, whether we are truly carrying the burden of our own responsibilities, or whether we lean too heavily on our husbands, wives, children or friends. Laziness leads to depression and low self-esteem, which again makes us feel worse and more unable than ever to carry the burden of our responsibilities. Soon we bring others into this evil spiral of depression as we ask too much of them, and they in turn may not be able to complete and live up to their responsibilities and duties. We have a spurious conscience if our conscience allows us to do this.
The evil is just as much with the one who obeys another man, as it is with the one who demands. Our duty is to serve the Lord alone, and in this only is there freedom by serving the Lord only is meant, to serve what is the greatest usefulness; to others and to ourselves. The greatest usefulness is to discharge the duties of our office (and "housewives" have an office, too) sincerely, justly and faithfully, to the best of our ability.
This, however, has to be dent: within reason. Let us consider whether we might be in the state of spurious conscience which is called being over-conscientious. There are those who are over-conscientious in one area of their life and insensitive to need in another. For example, a businessman may be overconscientious about his job and much under-conscientious about his wife and children. A wife may be over-conscientious about the state of her house and under-conscientious about her children and her husband. It is often a matter of making things more important than people, when yet, people are the end and purpose of creation and should be most essential to us. Or it may be putting some people before others. It is indeed necessary at times to put some people before others to meet specific needs. But this is an area where much human judgment and prudence are necessary.
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Do we not all know what it is to be over-conscientious? Is it not like a persuasion to make something more perfect or to do more than what is reasonable? We can be over-conscientious about our work to a point where it destroys our usefulness. We may simply wear ourselves out, or we may set our standards so high that we are never contented and can never relax. It may make us so worn out and discouraged that it can close our mind to the happiness found in use. The reason is, we have not been pursuing and serving real uses, but only chores we told ourselves had to be done, but which we could not do with any affection, neither were we happy when they were done.
The spurious conscience, which exists with those who are over-conscientious, has its origin in evil spirits, especially deceitful spirits.* These love to destroy real uses by leading men into trivialities. They love to lead our conscience to be bothered over entirely unimportant things, and at the same time not to have enough conscience about important things. Such spirits are completely fixed in their own opinions, and will to induce us to agree with them. Consequently, they strive to make us insensitive to reason, and if we do understand, they lead us away from carrying it out.** The way to fight our tendency to be compelled by such a spurious conscience, is to use our reason. Is what we are doing really useful to anybody? Or are we working like martyrs to deserve what in reality is a purely imaginative heaven? The true Heaven is in the love of the use.
* SD 3847
** AC 5386
Do we feel the delights and the rewards of the love of the use? If not, then something is very wrong. Heaven is in the love of the use, here on earth and in heaven. Heaven is within us. If there is not with us the delights and rewards of use, then where is the heaven that should be within us! One of two things seem possible. Either we suffer in spiritual temptation, or else we suffer from a spurious conscience. We can know whether we are suffering from a spiritual temptation in that if we are, it is our spiritual affections that are tempted, our ability to love the Lord and the neighbor, or our hope of eternal life. If our conscience is a spurious one, then it keeps us in a purely natural state as to our affections, and the affections are the man himself. Consequently such a man remains natural. In this area of our life we are not making progress or regenerating if our affections are only natural, and mainly concerned about worldly things.
It is our conscience which makes us human. In our conscience we become aware of the Divine. The Lord is received in the truths of our conscience and speaks to us through them.
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The Lord is especially received when we have a knowledge of good and truths from the Word, for in these the Lord can dwell as in His own. He is also present with those who have a conscience of what is just and fair in moral and civil matters. But with those who have neither of these, good from the Lord flows all the way down to the sensual and corporeal and is there turned into filthy pleasures.
What makes man human is his mind, and the more internally we receive the Lord, the more human we become. The human begins and resides in the inmost of our rational faculty. When nothing of the Divine is received there, then what is from the Divine flaws down and is perverted in man's sensual. But with those who have conscience, let us note this teaching: "The principal bond of conscience is that which respects the Lord, and thus the things that proceed from Him, as conjugial love, which ought to be held the most sacred of all loves; after this, love for children. . . ."*
* SD 3848
Conscience is the middle place or meeting-place between the Lord and man. What is above our conscience is the Lord's, and what is below is subject to our awareness and decisions. Conscience is the meeting-place between the Lord and mart, because it is in conscience that love and charity are implanted (in truths). We are therefore conjoined to the Lord when we obey the voice of our conscience.
The Lord governs man by means of his conscience, but also by other means. Let us in conclusion consider these in their order: The most external plane is simply punishments. That is for those who refuse to be ruled. The next higher plane is still not spiritual. It is the fear of losing reputation, honor and gain. It is not spiritual, because even evil men are ruled by this fear. Spurious and false conscience also belong to this plane, because both of them are merely natural. The third level, however, is the first plane of genuine conscience. It is the conscience of what is moral and civil; just and fair. Those who from conscience acts with moral and civil uprightness can be regenerated after death. Finally, the second and highest plane of conscience through which the Lord governs man the conscience formed from genuine goods and truths. This conscience is activated when goods and truths flow in from the Lord. All men may receive a civil-moral conscience if they wish. A spiritual conscience, however, is only given through the teachings of the Word.
Knowing that these are the planes of the Lord's government, let us choose to be governed by the conscience of good and truth from the Word. Let us earnestly turn to the Lord and seek to be set free from the bonds of a false or spurious conscience in specific areas of our life. The hells keep their power with men through the persuasion that falsity is truth.
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Let us reflect on our life and its sore spots. Let us seek a genuine understanding and a true conscience from the Lord.
It is a great challenge to anyone to change a deeply confirmed way of life and thought. If in one area of our life we suffer from a spurious conscience we need to carefully consider what we believe to be true, from the point of view of whether it is truly good. Once we have determined this in ourselves, through study and discussion with others, comes the difficulty of changing our way of life. This takes both courage and persistence. However, no change can be successful until we have profoundly reflected and seen the truth and the Lord's will deeply in ourselves.
It is worth it to form a genuine conscience where before a spurious or false one held the ground. For "conscience . . . is the plane into which the angels flow, and through which man has fellowship with them."* By the "Son" in our text, is meant the Lord as to His Human, and as to the Word. It is the Lord as the Word, which makes us free. In the life of a conscience founded in the Word, Heaven flows in and the Lord Himself dwells with us, and we will "be free indeed." Amen.
* AC 8002:2
LESSONS: Mark 6:17-29; DP 141; AC 9122; 1916-9118.
Title Unspecified EDITOR 1977
Abram said unto Sarai. That this signifies perception, is evident from what was said above (n. 1898). The Lord's perception was represented and is here signified by "Abram said to Sarai"; but His thought from the perception, by "Sarai said to Abram." The thought was from the perception. Those who are in perception thing from nothing else; but still perception is one thing and thought another. To show that this is the case, take conscience as an illustration. Conscience is a kind of general dictate, and thus an obscure one, of the things that flow in through the heavens from the Lord. Those which flow in present themselves in the interior rational man and are there as in a cloud, which cloud is from appearances and fallacies concerning the truths and goods of faith. But thought is distinct from conscience, and yet it flows from conscience; for those who have conscience think and speak according to it, and the thought is little else but an unfolding of the things that are of conscience, and thereby the partition of them into ideas and then into words. Hence it is that those who have conscience are kept by the Lord in good thoughts respecting the neighbour, and are withheld from thinking evil, and therefore conscience can have no place except with those who love their neighbour as themselves, and think well concerning the truths of faith. Arcana Coelestia 1919
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CENTENNIAL COMMENCEMENT MORLEY D. RICH 1977
The 100th Commencement of the Academy, took place on June 11, a cool and sunny day. As villagers and visitors gathered, alumni experienced a touch of nostalgia which was accompanied by a marked sensation of newness.
And, as the ceremonies proceeded, a moving atmosphere grew among the very large attendance. There was remembrance of the steadily advancing work and solid achievement of the past which makes the strong foundation of the house of the Academy; there was reflection on new approaches and methods which have emerged; and there were many reminders of eternal values and purposes from which all these things of the Academy house stem.
Reinforcing these thoughts fittingly were the Address, the valedictories and the closing response-graceful, grateful, appreciative and interspersed with many bits of wit and good humor.
Undoubtedly, the graduates, totaling a record 130 from all schools, will well remember in years to come that they graduated at this 100th Commencement.
Continuity and creativity seemed to link their qualities together as they crossed the mind during this occasion. And indeed, the speaker of the day addressed himself to the subject of creativity. Mr. Ray Synnestvedt's intriguing address will be found in following pages.
The ceremonies began with the customary service of worship conducted by Chancellor Louis B. King, the lessons being read by President Alfred Acton. Following the service, the commencement speaker was introduced, and gave the fine address mentioned above.
Forty-nine seniors of the Girls School were then presented with Diplomas and Certificates by Miss Morna Hyatt, the Principal; and the Valedictory was given by Miss Wendy Stroh. Mr. Donald Fitzpatrick, Principal of the Boys School, then presented Diplomas and Certificates to the forty-one seniors of that school. Their valedictorian was Mr. Donald Hotson.
Twenty-nine Junior College Associates in Arts degrees were then awarded to the graduates of the two-year course by Dean E. Bruce Glenn, and Mr. Gary Edmonds gave the valedictory for them.
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In the course of awarding degrees to ten graduates of the college, it was remarked that for the first time in 25 years, degrees in Arts (2) were included, because of advances in curriculum and accreditation. Mr. Karl Parker gave the valedictory for the graduates.
Finally, the Degree of Bachelor of Theology was given to Mr. Stephen D. Cole, who made some good-humoured opening remarks on being his own class valedictorian. It should be added that at the same time something new was added, in that the Rev. Walter E. Orthwein was awarded a certificate in honor and recognition of having successfully completed his one-year orientation course in the theological school.
In responding, Bishop King spoke of the great happiness of these occasions. Happiness and gratitude at these times are expressions of worship because there is contained a recognition of gifts received as being from the Lord. Referring to the students from other organizations of the New Church, Bishop King expressed our delight in having them here, and the hope that their learning experience here would be of help when they returned to their own societies.
Particulars of awards and names will be found in the Church News of this issue, together with a comparative chart of numbers of graduates in the past few years.
MORLEY D. RICH
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS RAY SYNNESTVEDT 1977
(Delivered at the 100th Commencement of the Academy of the New Church, June 11, 1977.)
Through the haze of time the subject of creativity has been to mankind both a fascination and a bafflement-known little as to origin and only slightly more as to operation. Yet its import has been recognized by most. To quote Disraeli "Imagination governs the world," and to a great extent our lives. It is often associated most directly with the Fine Arts, yet is equally critical to all thought and endeavor, good and bad and notwithstanding the admonition, "There is nothing new under the sun," every new act or association, mental or physical, is the product of creativity.
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Tact, enlightened self-interest, the Golden Rule, all require placing one's self in the other's position with imagination. In short, be it a new widget, an act of love, courtship, a new twist to an old invention or thought, the solution to any problem (temporary or permanent), anything productive of something new utilizes imagination and creativity.
For thousands of years wood-burning fires were used to cook on. Then in rapid succession came coal, gas, electric stoves and now radar ranges, burning a roast to a lovely cinder in a matter of seconds.
Steam was used in Egypt in the year 120 B.C. to spin a toy, but not for sixteen centuries did it occur to men to make it labor-saving-hence the steam engine. The wheel, used in 1,000 A.D. primarily for chariots of war, had by the time of William the Conqueror been expanded to 1,000 back-saving water-wheels in that area alone.
The examples are myriad, from Nero's ice-cream through agriculture to Atomic Power. All are advancements through imagination and creativity, step by step, though with quantum strides at times. The aborigine could have avoided inches of foot blisters had he invented the rocket ship right off the bat, or he could have obtained peace of mind by controlling the aggressive saber-toothed tiger with the threat of nuclear annihilation. (The possibilities are endless).
Therefore, one observation might be that most solutions are based on observable past information and experience, a new twist or association being what was added.
Much creativity starts with an intuition, suspicion, feeling, indication, sixth sense, flash, hunch, etc., and has been described as "a non-verbal affective state which, after a period of time or 'nursing', takes the order of a verbal expression, worked out later in the form of a rational theory." We actually live primarily at a non-verbal level.
Edison did not bring forth his brain-child full-blown, but only after ten years advanced from first concept to first model, and that after thirty-one years of intensive background effort.
While it is safe to say that little is known of why creativity works, how is easier.
The Why (not surprisingly) is better known to the scholars of the Writings than to any group on earth. Many deep studies have been made into the operation and nature of the mind by Academicians living and past, all highly fascinating and tremendously stimulating, such as, Growth of the Mind by Bishop George De Charms, The Human Mind, published in 1969 by Dr. Hugo Odhner, Art in Education, 1974, a collaborative effort.
The Rev. Eric Sandstrom's presentation to the 27th General Assembly, "A Highway from Egypt to Assyria with Israel in the Midst," is a most powerful dissertation (as you will recall) depicting, among many things, the potential for both the vertical and horizontal growth or meanderings of the mind-its present position, pitfalls and safeguards.
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These studies, and many more, have delved into the subject of the mind from the Light of the Writings. Continuing research will reveal more and more as to the nature of the mind and its operation.
On a simpler plane, that of the laboratory, from both old and, in particular, recent studies, the how of creativity seems to be emerging slightly. Some of the new trials include "Think-Tanks," "Brain-Storming," "Ideation Association," etc. All or most of these are on the horizontal plane of association, rather than the vertical.
Under these theories the assumption is made simplistically that the mind is divided into two parts, the first (subconscious) or creative, the second (conscious) or judgmental.
The first, creative, (subconscious) contains in storage all of the sensations, impressions, affections, associations, etc., that have occurred to date. (These are not recallable at will in all of their combinations.)
The second part of the mind is conscious (judgmental) and directable. Since we can only think of one thing at a time, if the attention is consciously zeroed in on a problem, the storehouse of creativity will start to unload. The subconscious will produce many possible solutions, nutty and otherwise, which the conscious (or judgmental) may then analyze in its turn, evaluating and eventually selecting the best solution to the problem at hand.
It is not as clumsy as it sounds. Actually, we do this continually and automatically in our thought processes, creative and judgmental. For best results, it is highly recommended to separate the two steps, since if run concurrently, is akin to driving a car with the brakes on.
Creative thinking is held to be trainable. Most agree that creativity and imaginative thinking are proportional to the output of energy, rather than the input of hereditary talent. All people are gifted with creative talent (women, through exercise, possibly more so than men). Advanced education is not a vital factor; in fact, may in some cases tend to stifle creative flashes. (Many major inventions have occurred outside the major field of endeavor of the inventor). 2 and 2 = 22 as well as 4.
It does not take a genius to find a hundred reasons why something will not work. Throwing cold water is easy, and unfortunately common, even with ourselves in the privacy of our own internal vacillations. Our society tends to reinforce the judgmental type of thinking . . . "That is how it should be". . . "This is how it is done" . . . and so on.
I believe that imagination without judgment is far worse than judgment without imagination. But why not have both?
A creative mind requires a tolerance for ambiguity and loneliness; it is something or someplace new.
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It is at times necessary to join the crowds on the broad highway of life. The route is both easier and surer. However, there is something to be said for wandering the trackless tundra in search. There are no signposts in the wilderness but the directional indications are ever present. The far-distant mountain may be a surer guide than the flashing neon sign close at hand. The unexpected is anticipated. And besides-the Phoenix rose from the ashes-did not descend by parachute.
But again, no thought ever originated anywhere but in a single human mind. And within that mind are stored all of the impressions, affections, experiences, sensings and thoughts of that life to that period in time.
Therefore, the creative solutions to our problems are the limitless combinations of the sum-total that is us. This is the value of travel, sense experiences, as well as all contacts.
Speaking strictly personally, as with most of you, I have had a most stimulating and rewarding life to date. I am continually amazed at how frequently my associations and training at the Academy come to the fore and help produce looked-for answers in all fields, including business, home, goals, drives, hates, loves, everywhere.
Our teachings on freedom, reality of the spiritual world, use, creation, charity, extent of the universe, divine providence's fixed base in nature from which variables may be seen-on and on in an ever-increasing line, come back, not as big messages, but as flashes that tip the scale one way or the other (not even concentrating on or recalling entire messages, but still the critical to balance).
Countless times I see the face or hear the voice of some old contact, (faculty or associate), filling-in the note that turns out to be intertwined in the answer. Much seems lost, but many small spots remain.
On the academic level, students today may be well ahead of where we were at the same age. In 100 years the Academy has come a long, long way-a fantastic distance in sight.
While the Academy may not be the best source for some fields of knowledge, it is the only source of what is taught, being flavored by (and next to) the greatest insight into eternity.
For those leaving the Academy's walls today as the 100th class, I'll wager a prediction-that, in response to the question posed in your lovely graduation song-namely "Is it just memories we've made! Is it just knowledges we've gained!," the answer will be that you have already acquired a background of input (in a few cases, as with me, despite myself) which will enable you better to rise uniquely above your problems. We hope tremendously to share those solutions with you down the road. (I still just might have one or two myself coming up.)
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In closing, I might admit to wild flights of fantasy, on the odd occasion (a fact not totally unobserved by many of my friends). As the scientific world daily pushes the threshold of inner sight back farther and farther-through the realms of internal space, past migration, DNA, to quarks and anti-quarks, and the known or suspected limits of the Universe expand faster than the scientific and philosophic journals can be printed, I am beset with a feeling like this: "If viewed from the position of the outer, starry reaches of the unknown Truth of space and life, the oceans of earthly knowledge must appear diminutive in size, to say the least." Yet, even from this worldly vantage-point, the sum-total efforts of the 3,400 total membership of the General Church (including the Academy) produce a mighty small pond indeed, yet unique. So come on in while you can still make a big splash, and board and help man our one viable space vehicle of interaction, development and understanding that can, in turn, take us back over that glittering ocean of stimulation, on through the shifting cosmic forces of reality, past the black Holes, red giants and super novas of reason and beyond the farthest reaches, with understanding and love to eternity.
It's quite a ride! The price is right! Good Luck!
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
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JACOB Rev. PETER M. BUSS 1977
Part I
INTRODUCTION
"As regards the regeneration of man in respect to his natural, the case is altogether the same as it is with Jacob and the two daughters of Laban, Rachel and Leah; and therefore whoever is able to see and apprehend the Word here according to its internal sense, sees this arcanum disclosed to him."*
* AC 3793:3
Here is a challenge, and an opportunity unmatched in the world of learning. Every misery that afflicts the human race has its origin in the disorders of the natural mind, and here the Lord is, telling us how, despite all the evils with which that mind is beset, He can create it into a heaven. The Jacob series in the Arcana Coelestia breathes the spirit of mercy in every page. There is no harsh condemnation of those who are weak. Each affection of the natural mind is skillfully used by the wisdom of the Lord, excused where it transgresses, and led out of degradation-if only a man will allow the Lord to do it. In the Word of the Second Advent He invites us to examine this process.
He certainly warns us that this revelation of the Divine psychology is not easy. Such things are among the most familiar knowledges of the angels,* but here on earth very few will understand them.** The difficulties are that so few men are regenerate, and thus enlightened to perceive such things; and few also can distinguish between the different kinds of good in the natural.*** "Nevertheless as these are the things contained in the internal sense of these words . . . they are not to be passed over in silence. There may be some who will comprehend them."****
* AC 3969:3
** AC 3612, 3793, 3825
*** Ibid.
**** AC 3974e
379
One of the real problems in understanding this series is that there are so many different goods in the natural mind. This paper is an initial attempt to examine the various goods and truths represented in the Jacob story, to suggest some of the distinctions between them, and see how the Lord uses them.
The regeneration of the natural begins when the mind has been prepared for the Lord's work through repentance and reformation. Repentance, we are told, is the process whereby "the more grievous evils, which render him detestable in the sight of God, are put away."* After repentance, the internal man is reformed, through the elevation of truth into the rational, and its conjunction with good there. The marriage of Isaac and Rebekah tells that story. A man sees certain principles of life, and while he is living a life of external order, he meditates on them, and practices them, and they are lifted out of the natural, become universals with him, and through them his spiritual or rational man is formed.** The regeneration of the natural is the process whereby those principles and the goods to which they were united, descend, and permeate the natural mind.
* TCR 509
** Cf. AC 3183
It is important to note that almost throughout this series the Word speaks of the rational as being equivalent to the spiritual, and a degree above the natural.* More normally, the rational is said to be the "intellectual of the external man."** In the Arcana series, however, it is being used in its higher sense as constituting the human itself, which is to love God and the neighbor, and this is spiritual.*** Thus Isaac represents the Divine Spiritual, or the rational.**** The presence of the rational in the natural is spoken of in connection with Joseph. We will come to that.
* See AC 3020, 3209, 3264, 4675e, 4980
** AC 1588; see DLW 413, 455; AE 569:6
*** AC 3175
**** Cf. AC 1890, 1950, 5998, 6098; AE 768:13
The natural itself therefore is divided into two degrees, interior and exterior;* and this division appears to apply almost throughout.
* AC 3293, 3294
THE GENERAL REPRESENTATION OF JACOB
It does seem that Jacob's representation changes at times. He starts by representing the truth of the natural, then the good of truth.* In Haran it is the good of truth, or the good of the natural;** and once, the truth of good.*** When wanting Rachel but getting Leah, he represents general good,**** but most of the time it is the good of truth.*****
380
When however he separates from Laban and is about to meet Esau he represents the truth of the natural, and the mediate good with which that truth has been imbued.****** Then he represents the ultimate good of truth in the natural;******* and when Esau disappears from the story, he represents the external natural, while as Israel he represents the spiritual, or the interior natural.********
* AC 3293, 3299, 3304, 3295
** AC 3659, 3758, 3793
*** AC 3775
**** AC 3829
***** AC 3902, 3923, 3983, 4063
****** AC 4234, 4243
******* AC 4337
******** AC 4570
These minor variations are easily explained. The first general principle is that Jacob represents the affections in the intellectual of man, while Esau represents those in his will.* At first therefore it is the affection of natural truth, which is the external of the natural understanding; then the good of natural truth, which is the internal.** These are in the understanding, and therefore even when Jacob represents the good of truth, it is said that this is really truth, for although a man believes he is doing good, he is doing truth.***
* AC 3563; Cf. 3292, 1895
** AC 3293, 3294
*** AC 329514337
The second principle is that when Jacob does represent good it is the good of a man who is not yet regenerate.* The good of truth is insinuated before regeneration, and the truth of good only in a regenerate state. This is the interior reason why Jacob humbled himself before Esau when he returned to Canaan. For the good of truth is always inspired by internal good; even the affection of natural truth is; but it manifests itself only when the man is regenerate.**
* AC 4241; Cf. 3309, 3310, 3563:4, 5
** AC 4247
Still, there are changes, and the important reason for that is that the understanding, and the new will there, are undergoing tremendous changes. A man who is not being regenerated has changes of affections and delights-as for example when he leaves one state of life and enters a later one-but his loves stay the same. The man who is being regenerated has changes of love-he is formed into an entirely different kind of person.* "Jacob . . . represented various things in the natural, because the state of truth and good is of one kind in the beginning, of another in its progress, and still another in its end."** Again, we are told, "Because during man's regeneration the good and truth in the natural are at first in a different state from what they are during the progress and at the end of it, therefore by Jacob is represented the natural as to truth and good according to the state at the time."*** The important point to remember is that it is a state of the understanding and its affections. Esau represents the goods of the will and the truths which flow thence. Therefore he is said to represent the good of the natural; the truth of good there; and celestial good.****
* AC 4136
** AC 4213
*** AC 3775
**** AC 4234, 4239
381
BIRTHRIGHT, BLESSING, FLIGHT
The natural is of two levels-internal and external;* and this is so as to the will and the understanding. Therefore at birth Esau represents the natural as to both goods-internal good, and the good of truth. Jacob represents the natural as to the good of truth, and natural truth-the internal and external of the understanding. At first, however, natural truth, the most external function of the genuine natural, is what is most important. This is represented by the prophecy of the Lord to Rebekah. "Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels. And the one people shall prevail over the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger."** At the beginning of regeneration a man is more interested in the learning of truth than he is in the doing of it, and certainly more so than in the innocent loves of infancy represented by Esau.
* AC 3293, 3294
** Gen. 25:23
Because hereditary evil is present, the natural cannot be born by an internal way, any more than the rational could.* It has to be through an external way, through truth as a means, and, because of the state of the natural, through natural truth. Thus Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Natural good perceives the need for doctrinals, and longs for them, and in longing, and not perceiving the disordered quality of the doctrinal at that time disposes the mind to learning them as a priority.**
* AC 3509, 3563, 3314; Cf. 1898-1902
** AC 3316-3320
In Jacob's stealing the blessing, we learn how the inversion of the true order is confirmed. The good that Esau represents at first is the good of infancy or of remains;* and it attracts to itself delightful things of truth which should lead to a correspondence between the rational and the natural.** Unfortunately, with man today there are too many things that this good cannot agree with, "vain and empty things such as are those of self-glory and the glory of the world."*** These make it impossible for the good of infancy to bring forth its truth and cause the natural to correspond. Yet in His mercy, the Lord uses those very vain things as means! He makes use of natural domestic good, the good into which a man is born and educated by his parents.**** Interiorly this good tends to evil, and it leads man to learn the truth, and even to practice it, from motives which are selfish. And the order is inverted. The desire is to learn truth for self, and good is done as a consequence of the truth one has learned.
382
Thus good is exterior, and truth is interior-a state represented by the ironic words of Isaac when he was deceived; "the voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau."*****
* AC 3494
** AC 3502, 350413512
*** AC 3602
**** AC 3518; Cf. 3469
***** Gen. 27:22; Cf. AC 3563
Jacob's flight to Haran and all that followed resulted from the success of this deception; and this point, that the affection of natural truth must have the ascendancy for a time, leads to the descent into a natural realm of life, in which the Lord can work with the man. That affection draws him there, and the Lord blesses him and lifts him out. The order of uplifting is expressed several times. Man now learns truth; he understands it and begins to will it. He does it and it becomes the good of truth. Finally it becomes good itself, and then the inverted order is upset, and good is in the first place.* That is when Jacob returns to Canaan, and humbles himself before Esau.
* AC 3563, 3603
The affection of natural truth at first is very lowly.
"When a man is affected with truth, not for the sake of ends of life, but for the sake of other ends, such as that he may become learned, and this from a certain affection of emulation, or from a certain affection of childish envy, and also from a certain affection of glory; then are the good of the natural and the truth of the natural in such an order as is here represented by Jacob, consequently relative to each other they are in inverted order; that is, the will part which is of good is without, and the intellectual part which is of truth is within."*
* AC 3563
That is the quality with which the Lord has to work. That is the best we can produce before regeneration, and the wonder is that the Lord can do anything at all with it. Because it is all he has, the natural man is spiritually dispossessed. Jacob flees to Haran, representing a disposition of the mind to lower things; and there for many years he dwells.
The descent towards the natural is in order that the changes in man may be made in freedom, in the true state in which his loves reside. While his internal is being reformed, a man is in a state of idealism, and intellectual vision. He sees the world as it ought to be, and he sees what his duties and uses ought to be. It is an uplifting vision-the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, the conjunction of good and truth in the rational. During that state there is tranquillity, for the Lord grants tranquillity at the beginning of regeneration, and some vision of the peace to come.*
* AC 3596
His real loves, however, are not yet in the rational. The plane of his delights is the natural, and there he must betake himself, for only there can he try, of himself, to do what the Lord wants. Certainly it is a very fumbling effort at first. The Word describes the manner in which we practice charity-first without any regard to the quality of the neighbor, then with little attention to his quality.
383
It is talking about people of the church, who may have the doctrine, but do not apply it with understanding. Only as the good of truth is confirmed do we learn to distinguish between the degrees of the neighbor; and finally we can come into the state in which the distinction is perceived, and the good of every person is served from love (AC 3688). So also, we obey the Decalogue at first in its natural sense, and only later can a man have the true vision of the internal sense.*
* AC 3690
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." A man lives where he loves, and at the beginning of regeneration, although he is determined to obey the Lord, his practice of obedience is in the natural. We have possibly all felt this descent into a life remote from spiritual values, wondered at our loss of idealism and spiritual thought, feared because the vision seems lost when we try to put into practice what we have learned. It is inevitable, and the Lord knows it better than we. When we go from reflection to life, we come into obscurity, into a life remote from Divine doctrinal things.*
* AC 3693, 3690, 3101
Jacob's dream is really a vision, a foresight of the state to come. There is, spiritually, a ladder standing on the earth, man is at the bottom, and the Lord is at the top, and there are truths proper to every state of life in between. The truths proper to the infancy of a man's spiritual life are those of the letter of the Word, and especially those that appeal to his selfish instincts. The New Word specifies that man must be neighbor to himself first.* A man uses this truth above many others, because it delights him.** Only later does it acquire its right perspective. A harsh man would detect falsity in this prejudicial view of truth, but the Lord sees a steppingstone. The story of Jacob in Haran is a set of steps, foretold in this dream; and the general principle that the truths he starts with are the truths of the letter of the Word is the essential concept throughout the stay in Haran.***
* AC 6494
** AC 3101
*** Cf. AC 3660, 3665, 3688, 3690, 3701
But that dream is also a vision of the ultimate end, when the natural has communication with the Lord Himself through all the degrees. ". . . there would be a descent of the Divine through man into the ultimate of nature, and from the ultimate of nature there would be an ascent to the Divine, if with faith of heart, that is, with love, man would only acknowledge the Lord as his first and last end."*
* AC 3703
HARAN, AND LADAN
Haran used to represent the knowledges of truth, for the Ancient Church had been in Syria, or Aram, as it is also called.
384
With Laban and his people, however, there was idolatry, and therefore these places represent a state outside of the church, in which is falsity.* Laban is called "the Aramean" before and after Jacob stays with him, and not during his stay, and when so called he represents a state which is outside of the church.** In general Haran represents external good and truth, of the natural.***
* AC 4112
** AC 3612, 3616, 4112
*** AC 3691
Laban himself was of Jacob's family, his uncle. They came from a common ancestor, Terah, who represents the common stock from which are churches;* but where Abraham represented the genuine church, with those who have the Word, Nahor his younger brother represented a church "among the Gentiles who have not the Word:"** Both churches come from a common source, that is from the Lord, for all good is one, but is made various by truths.*** The distinction between them is that the one good is made genuine by genuine truths, and the other is not.**** Laban represents therefore collateral good of a common stock-good from the same origin, and now on the same level as the natural good represented by Jacob, but not the good of the church.***** Bishop W. D. Pendleton makes the point that it is "good which had its origin in a former revelation" which is either lost or no longer understood.******
* AC 3778
** Ibid.
*** Ibid. 4149
**** AC 3718, 3986
***** AC 3612, 3665, 3793
****** NEW CHURCH LIFE 1961:497
What Laban represents specifically is very important, for he was the head of the household, and all things he owned-daughters, handmaids, flock-which Jacob eventually gained, are governed by his representation. I would postulate that one distinction between him and Jacob is that the good represented by Jacob is the good of intent-the good of free choice with the man who is trying to follow the Lord. This is the genuine good, which will be joined to the truths of the church. Laban represents goods in the mind, which are not the man's own, and in fact are later separated from him! There are many species, and the Word gives us some examples. This good is found in little children, in the simple within the church, and in Gentiles who simply obey their faith.*
* AC 3986, 3778
Of course, with the simple or the Gentiles such good is the good of intention. In the mind of a man who is being regenerated, however, it is only a means. It is suitable, and very useful, as a means to true good, but once that goal has been reached it is separated; and it must be, for it partakes of evil.*
385
Thus it is also called mediate good, especially in the state when it is being separated;** a good which serves as a means, but has little initiative or determination of its own.*** It is compared to the juices of immature and unripe fruits, which are only servicable until ripe fruit can be used.****
* AC 4063, 3982, 4067, 4110-11
** AC 4063, 4061, 4088
*** AC 4088; Cf. 4047
**** AC 3982
To help us understand the quality of this good, the Writings illustrate it with the societies of mediate good in the other world which are adjoined to a man while he is being regenerated, and then are separated as he is lifted higher by the Lord.*
* AC 4087, 4075, 4110-11, 4122, 4136
As we examine this story, we cannot help being struck with the fact that everything Jacob gained in Haran came from his uncle. Even in the literal sense, however, it seems that Laban was left little poorer than he had been when he first met Jacob, for it was Jacob's work, and his care, which caused Laban's flocks to increase; and Rachel and Leah were honorably purchased with labor. Jacob was not working as a servant, but as a man whose family was superior to Laban's.* In the internal sense we find that the genuine good of the natural gains states by means of collateral good, but not from that good as a means.** It appears that collateral good, or mediate good, produce insights and uses; whereas in truth it is the presence of angelic societies with a man in mediate good which produces all that is worthwhile. The mediate good is the means "by which," not "from which," heavenly states are gained.
* AC 3914
** AC 4065
NEW CIRCLE
The group in Gorand Rapids, Michigan, has now been recognized as a Circle of the General Church.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
386
NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE Rev. STEPHEN D. COLE 1977
THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
BY THE REV. STEPHEN D. COLE
The doctrines unfolded in the Writings make all things new. There is a new light shining on all aspects of our life and thought. One area in which this can be seen is in the realm of language. The teachings now revealed allow us to think about and use language in a way that has never before been possible. Our speech and writing can be touched by this; our feeling for poetry, our ideas about translation, can arise from this fresh approach. Before the newness of the doctrine of the Writings can be seen, though, the old ideas about language must be known. From a survey of these it can be learned what are the questions or controversies for which the Writings now provide solutions. Let us turn briefly to history, then, and note some representative positions.
THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE ANCIENTS
Without going into the details of all the myths and ancient tales that have a bearing on language, two general features should be observed. The first is that language was believed to be a gift from God and the second is that language was seen to have been involved in the actual process of creation and that therefore there would be some mystical connection between word and object, some intrinsic fitness of a particular word for its corresponding object. One specific example of this will suffice. Among the oldest theological formulations of ancient Egypt is the Memphite Theology. This theology describes the conception and creation of the universe by the heart and tongue of the god Ptah:
The Ennead (of Ptah), however, is the teeth and lips in this mouth which named the names of everything, from which Shu and Tefnut came forth, and which was the fashioner of the Ennead. The sight of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, and the smelling of the air by the nose, they report to the heart. It is this which causes every completed concept to come forth, and it is the tongue which announces what the heart thinks. Thus all the gods were formed and his Ennead was completed. Indeed, every word of the god really came into being through what the heart thought and the tongue commanded.*
* James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 5.
387
Such theology is not entirely unfamiliar today. For in the Old Testament we find the speech of God creating: "And God said, Let there be . . . and there was. . . ." We also find the naming of animals as part of the creation story.* In the New Testament the doctrine of the creative Word is found in the first chapter of John. Teachings like these are found throughout the ancient traditions. This, however, provides only the basis or background for the subsequent discussion of language. It is not until the beginning of philosophy that real exploration of the questions and problems involved with language first begin to appear.
* Genesis 2:19
THE GREEKS
Even at the beginning of Greek philosophy the seeds of a fundamental controversy are seen. The question raised was: Do words have their relation to those things which they represent by nature or merely by convention? This is a sophistication of a question implied by the mythological approaches. For if language had a divine origin, the relation between word and object must be natural, whereas, if language is an artificial human convention the relation must be arbitrary.
Plato devoted a dialogue, the Cratylus, to the discussion of these two positions as they had developed up to his time. The two participants in the dialogue, other than Socrates, are Hermogenes and Cratylus, representatives of the nature and convention schools of thought respectively. Socrates first deals with Hermogenes, showing that the belief that language is arbitrary convention can be identified with the view of Protagoras that man is the measure of all things. This leads to complete subjectivity and destroys all meaning in language.* Socrates, however, cannot accept the argument of Cratylus without question either. How could a divinely created system, he asks, have the imperfections that are so evident in language?** Thus there are points discussed which question the correctness of either position. The underlying theory, the theory of Plate himself, is that there is some measure of inherent resemblance of an object in a word, especially in the elements of which the word is composed, but that in language as it exists this is to a certain extent lost.***
* Plato, The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), Cratylus, 386.
** Cratylus, 438
*** Cuatylus, 434-435
Plato's belief in the natural connection of word and object was countered by Aristotle's espousal of the convention theory of word origin. While Aristotle has left no comprehensive study of the origin of language, it is clear from his writings on the use of language that he assumed that words have their meanings from a completely arbitrary source.*
388
And indeed, he explicitly denies natural meaning in words.**
* The Works of Aristotle. Translated into English under the editorship of J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1928), Vol. I: De Interpretation, 16a.
** Ibid., 17a
After the Greeks there was a long lull in the discussion of the nature and origin of language. This was partly because of a feeling that the Greeks had said all there was to be said and partly because of the Judeo-Christian tradition concerning the account of language in Genesis. For many years it was felt that the bringing of the animals to be named in the creation story* assigned a divine origin to language and that the story of the tower of Babel** accounted for the diversity of language. It was not until relatively recent times that this was openly questioned.
* Genesis 2:19
** Genesis 11:1-9
MODERN PHILOSOPHY I
Descartes was one of the early figures in the modern discussion of language. Language was not a chief concern in his philosophy but it was important in the formation of his conception of human reason. He considered language to be one of the two principle distinctions between man and animal:
For it is so highly deserving of remark, that no men are so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words . . . and that on the other hand there is no animal however perfect or happily circumstanced, which can do the like. . . . And this proves not only that brutes have less reason than man but that they have none at all.*
* Rene Descartes Discourse on Method, translated by John Veitch in The Rationalists (Garden City, New York: Dolphin Books, 1960), Part V, p. 81.
The use of language to define the essence of man as different from that of animals seems a concern unrelated to the nature vs. convention argument. The connection of the belief that words are naturally related to the objects they represent with the belief that language is a faculty natural in man will become more obvious, however, as we turn again to the other side of the question.
John Locke is well known for his contention that the mind of man is at birth a "tabula rasa," a blank slate, which ruled out the possibility of innate ideas. The consequence of this idea for language study is that language must then be a thing acquired entirely after birth. This would mean that language, if a distinction between man and animal at all, would be one that developed some time after birth. It would also tend to support Aristotle's view, in that the idea of a natural language suggests something innate in man, while a conventional language would necessarily be learned after birth.
389
Locke's views also involve the relation of thought and reason:
For it is evident that in the beginnings of languages and societies of men, several of those complex ideas, which were consequent to the constitutions established amongst them, must needs have been in the minds of men before they existed anywhere else; and that many names that stood for such complex ideas were in use, and so those ideas framed, before the combinations they stood for ever existed.*
* John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Dover, 1959), Book II, Chapter XXII, p. 382.
Locke is here differing from rationalists such as Descartes by arguing that although the existence of some ideas of reason before the formal languages we now know, may be admitted, he nevertheless insists that some specifics, some names from which these ideas, the generals, could be formed must have existed first.
Leibnitz, the rationalist, replies directly to this point in his critique of Locke. Of Locke's discussion of the relation of general ideas to particular Leibnitz says:
General terms serve not only for the perfection of languages, but they are necessary even to their essential constitution. . . . For if by particular things we mean individual things, it would be impossible to speak if there were only proper names and not appellatives. . . . And it is certain that all proper or individual names were originally appellative or general.*
* Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, translated by A. G. Langley (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1916), p. 288.
The position here indicated is that man could not speak, or even think about a specific object without already having a general category it could be assigned to. To suggest that something general must precede acquisition of the specifics of language again implies that there is an innate or natural element involved in language. Leibnitz shows more explicit sympathy for these views in the following: "I truly think that languages are the best mirrors of the human mind, and that an exact analysis of the signification of words would show us better than anything else the workings of the understanding."*
* Ibid., p. 368
Leibnitz believed that one way in which this signification might be sought was by seeking the common ancestor of modern languages. He thus sets out as one of the pioneers in comparative philology. After comparing a number of languages he says:
There is nothing in this to combat and not rather to favor the view of the common origin of all nations and of a primitive root language. If the Hebrew or the Arabic be the nearest to it, it must be at least much changed, and the German seems to have preserved more completely the natural and the Adamic.*
* Ibid., p. 298
390
This primitive root language was believed by Leibnitz to have preceded any known language and he therefore called it proto-speech. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that Leibnitz's search for the universal and natural language was one of the original sources leading to Swedenborg's pursuit of the Universal Mathesis in his philosophical works.
Another proponent of the opinion that language is conventional was Rousseau. His view includes a curious twist of an element in Descartes' position. Language distinguishes man from animal not because it is innate and natural but rather the very fact of its conventional nature makes it distinguishing:
The speech of beavers and ants is apparently by gesture; i.e., it is only visual. If so, such languages are natural, not acquired. The animals that speak them possess them a-borning: they all have them, and they are everywhere the same. They are entirely unchanging and make not the slightest progress. Conventional language is characteristic of man alone.*
* Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages, translated by John H. Moran in On the Origin of Language (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966), p. 10.
By making the distinction consist only in this, however, and not in man having a natural language discreetly different from that of animals, he has weakened the distinction considerably. For one can easily come to believe that that it is possible to pass from one side to the other, that animal could become man simply by learning the use of conventional symbols. This is just the view that later develops, as will be seen. Rousseau's treatment is marked with inconsistancies. At one point he assents to the old divine origin theory* while elsewhere he seems to make the early development of language little more than an animal's response to its environment. Rousseau, in fact, does not really seem interested in the philosophy of language; he is pursuing practical questions. Richard Albeit Wilson, writing on the origin of language, comments on Rousseau:
* Ibid., p. 36
"Rousseau's essay on the Origin of Languages, about 1750, might be taken as the historical landmark which stands between the old and the new points of view."*
* Richard Albert Wilson, The Miraculous Birth of Language (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), p. 64.
And in opening his next chapter Wilson states:
If pressed for an exact date of the true beginning of the scientific investigation of language, one would naturally think of the date of the publication of Johann Gottfried Herder's prize essay on the Origin of Language, 1772. In passing from Rousseau's essay to Herder's-although they are separated by only twenty-two years, and by the distance between Paris and Strassburg-we step clearly over the threshold from medievalism into the world of free philosophical investigation.*
* Ibid., p. 61
391
One fascinating point about this analysis of the history of the study of language is the date selected for the landmark. The twenty-two years mentioned are almost exactly the twenty-two years in which the Writings were written. And there is no question that Herder was familiar with the Writings, as Swedenborg's descriptions of the other world are referred to in the essay.*
* Johann Gottfried Herder, Essay on the Origin of Language, translated by Alexander Gode in On the Origin of Language, p. 157.
MODERN PHILOSOPHY II
In his essay Herder first refutes the old divine origin theories. With a line of reasoning very much like that of Plate, he points out the imperfections of language and asks how a divine creation could have such defects.* More lively is his refutation of the animal origins of language having some currency at that time. He attacks Abbe Condillac's thought experiment which was to conceive of the isolation of two children and contemplate how they would originate their own language. Herder sees no validity in this at all.** He then turns his attention to Rousseau's views:
* Ibid., pp. 92-96
** Ibid., pp. 99-101
Condillac, with his hollow explanation of the origin of language, provided Rousseau, as we all know, with the occasion to get the question in our century off the ground again in his own peculiar way, that is, to doubt it. Actually, to cast doubt on Condillac's explanation, no Rousseau was needed; but to deny straightway-because of it-all human possibility of the invention of language, that to be sure did require a little Rousseauesque verve or nerve or whatever one may wish to call it. . . . He begins, as his predecessor did, with the outcries of nature from which human language was to arise. I shall never be able to see how language could have arisen in this way and am astonished that the acuity of a Rouseau could allow it for one moment to arise that way. . . . Condillac and Rousseau had to err in regard to the origin of language because they erred, in so well known a way and yet so differently, in regard to this difference: in that the former turned animals into men and the latter men into animals.*
* Ibid., pp. 101-103
Herder finishes off those holding to an animal, or as it is here called, human origin, in this fashion:
Diodorus and Vitruvius also, who rather believed than proved the human origin of language, increased the difficulty of the subject, by supposing men for a time to have ranged about the woods, howling as animals and afterwards, God knows why, or wherefore, to have discovered language.*
* Ibid., p. 102
This also describes very well the position of many at the present day who also believe rather than prove the animal origin of language.
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Herder's own approach to the origin of language represents, as Wilson suggests, an entirely new approach to the problem. Some of the seeds of Herder's ideas can be found in the works of Johann Georg Hamann* and some, it may be suspected, arose from Herder's contact with the Writings, The reason that Herder may be singled out, though, is that he was the first to set forth this new view of language in a clear philosophical argument aimed at the question of the origin of language. Herder's position begins where that of Descartes leaves off: language, with reason, a distinctively human faculty. Descartes simply identified language as such a distinguishing mark. He did not explain how it came to be so, nor did he explore the implication of this identification. Herder diligently examines the difference between man and animal, with far more acuity than Rousseau, in an attempt to see how language fits into this difference.
* Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), Vol. I: Language, p. 151 f.
Herder begins by observing that all animals are furnished with instincts, while man is born with no instinct at all. Animals are each given their special abilities suited to their special place in nature. Man is not specially suited to any place in nature-this itself, says Herder, constitutes man's special gift. For in being given instincts for no specific sphere, man is given the freedom to act in any sphere.* Herder will not agree with the idea of many, that man's gift is simply to have something in addition to animal nature. Man is not just an animal with one further power, there is a difference in his entire disposition. Of this Herder says:
* Herder, op. cit., pp. 108-109
What it is, is the total arrangement of all human forces, the total economy of his sensuous and cognitive, of his cognitive and volitional nature, or rather: it is the unique positive power of thought which, associated with a particular organization of the body, is called reason in man as in the animal it turns into artifactive skill; which in man is called freedom and turns in the animal into instinct. The difference is not one of degree nor one of supplementary endowment with powers; it lies in a totally distinct orientation and evolution of all powers.*
* Ibid., p. 109f
Freedom, reason, reflection and other such powers pervades all man's being, animals have nothing of these. Along with these things must be the ability to use language. For in animals, Herder argues, there are things that image or mimic language. Animals possess such things in according to the latitude of their sphere of activity. When the sphere of narrow instinct serves all the animal's needs, there is no necessity of language. As the sphere broadens instinct serves less completely and the need of something like language grows.*
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Man, however, is distinctly different. He has no instinct at all and therefore is the only being endowed with true language, animals having no more than simple sounds to express their feeling.** True language is fundamental in man, or as Herder says: "Language is as essential to man as his human nature."***
* Ibid., pp. 103-107
** Ibid., P. 88.
*** Ibid., p. 108
Herder's ideas about language have been passed on and reworked even into the present century. One of the links in this transmission was Wilhelm von Humboldt in the nineteenth century. One quotation from Humboldt will serve to show his place in the discussion:
Language, I am fully convinced, must be looked upon as being an immediate given in mankind. Taken as a work of man's reason, undertaken in clarity of consciousness, it is wholly inexplicable. Nor does it help to supply man with millennia upon millennia for the "invention" of language. Language could not be invented or come upon if its archetype were not already in the human mind. . . . As natural as the supposition of the gradual development of languages is, yet the "invention" of language could only happen all at once. Man is man only through language; to invent language, he would have to be man already. As soon as one imagines that it happened gradually. . . , that by means of a bit more invented language, man became more human, and being more human, thus was enabled to invent a little more language, one fails to recognize the indivisibility of human consciousness and human speech, and the nature of the intellectual act which is necessary to comprehend but a single word, but which then suffices to comprehend all of language.*
* Wilhelm von Humbolt, Humbolt Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhem von Humbolt translated by Marianne Cowan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), p. 239 f.
The basic principle here, the identity of language and human nature, is an echo of Herder. Humboldt, however, elaborates one of the implications of this. Forty years before Darwin set forth his theory of evolution, Humboldt suggested that it would be natural to suppose that language in man had a gradual evolutionary development, natural but totally wrong.
Darwin's Origin of Species was a carefully reasoned presentation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. It was based on Darwin's many years of observation of the biological world. This work revolutionized the thought of biologists. Emboldened by the success of this treatment of animal evolution Darwin several years later made a fuller exploration of the application of this theory to the development of man. This more speculative work Darwin called The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. In it Darwin treats language as he treats other characteristics acquired through natural selection:
I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the voices of animals and man's own instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures. . . .
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Several writers have lately insisted that the use of language implies the power of forming general concepts; and that as no animals are supposed to possess this power, an impassible barrier is formed between them and man. With respect to animals, I have already endeavored to shew that they have this power at least in a rude and incipient degree.*
* Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (Akron, Ohio: The Werner Company, 1874), p. 90.
Darwin, of course, was a biologist not a linguist, a psychologist, or a philosopher. His naive conjectures in this field, ignoring 2000 years of discussion of the nature of language and its implications, are therefore understandable. What is remarkable, however, is that the naive conjectures of this biologist have been the foundation of much of the discussion of language in the hundred years since his time. The objecting voices of a few linguists could not prevail against the scientific tide then coming in. Also contributing to the wide-spread acceptance of the naive evolutionary theory of language is the fact that the students of language could find no completely satisfactory explanation of the origin of language themselves. It always seemed to resolve into paradoxes. As Susanne K. Langer has put it: the problem of origin of language is so baffling that it is no longer considered respectable.* In 1866 The Linguistic Society of Paris was founded. Included in its bylaws was the prohibition that no communication on the origin of language would be accepted.** Speculation concerning the origin of language is now said to be unscientific:*** Instead of leaving the question open, however, many simply ignore the philosophical problems and believe the evolutionary approach. This is where the discussion of the origin of language now stands. A little more may be said, though, about recent views on the nature of language.
* Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York: The New American Library, 1951), p. 99.
** Alexander Code, On the Origin of Language, p. vi.
*** Mario Pei, The Story of Language (New York: The New American Library, 1965), p.30
There has been considerable discussion this century of linguistic relativity, the idea that the language one speaks closely correlates the way in which one thinks and views the world. Many believe that this means that language determines thought. The chief formulation of the theory is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Edward Sapir's position is fairly clear. He stated, for instance:
"It is, indeed, in the highest degree likely that language is an instrument originally put to uses lower than the conceptual plane and that thought arises as a refined interpretation of its content."* Sapir is following the evolutionary view of language origin and making language the cause of thought.
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Whorf's understanding of the meaning of linguistic relativity is not so clear however.
* Edward Sapir, Language (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921), p. 14
He suggests that it is "a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated."* This is quite in harmony with what was quoted from Sapir. Whorf also makes such statements as the following: "Actually, thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language."** This recalls the statements of Leibnitz, who reached his conclusions from a belief in the universal language. It is therefore interesting to note that Whorf, author of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, also sought the universal language, and in conjunction with that search looked to the language of the Bible.*** Further, he speaks of the inward kinship of nature and language**** and universal elements present in all languages.***** Whorf, although he believed in a new principle of relativity, felt that language and the study of language were a road to higher truth,****** not bonds that enslave man to his environment.
* Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf edited by John B. Carroll (Cambridge Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, 1956), p. 214.
** Ibid., p. 252
*** Ibid., p. 12
**** Ibid., p. 249
***** Ibid., p. 258
****** Ibid., p. 248
CONCLUSION TO THE HISTORICAL PART
In summing up this historical survey, we can derive benefit by turning our attention to the analysis of Wilbur Marshall Urban. He looks at the history of thought in terms of high and low evaluations of language:
This high evaluation of language is the underlying assumption of all periods of rationalism and is uniformly accompanied by some belief in the reality of universals, since the very naming of anything immediately universalizes it in some sense and to some degree. As opposed to this high evaluation, with its trust in the word, there is the low evaluation which appears in all critical periods of culture. Scepticism is always ultimately scepticism of the word. . . . Scepticism of the word is the underlying assumption of all periods of empiricism and is again accompanied by some form of nominalism-by disbelief in the reality of the universal, the reality of the universal being at once the condition of valid naming and of communication of meaning. The inseparability of the word and the thing is, then, in one form or another, the postulate of all positive culture epoch and the loosing of the word from the thing the beginning of scepticism and relativism.*
* Wilbur Marsh Urban, Languoge and Reality (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939), p. 23f.
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This concise summary identifies the two poles that have existed in all the issues we have thus far considered, those issues being:
It can be seen that those positions on the left above represent high evaluation of language, trust in language; whereas those on the right side represent low evaluations of language, scepticism of language.
These are characteristic samples from the history of thought. What, now, do the Writings tell us about language! Do they suggest a high or a low evaluation of language?
THE DOCTRINES ON LANGUAGE
From the Writings we learn that the mythic traditions about language must be based on wisdom from the ancient churches. For the Writings tell us that the creative Word is the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord. And of this we are told:
* AC 6115:4
Scarcely any one has any other idea of the Divine truth than as of a word that issues from the mouth of a speaker and is dispersed in the air. This idea of the Divine truth has produced the opinion that by the 'Word' is meant only a command, thus that all things were made merely by a command, and thus not from any real thing that has proceeded from the Divine of the Lord; but as already said it is the veriest reality and essential, that is the source of all things, and from which are the forms of good and of truth.*
* AC 5272:2
The Word has a real, creative connection with the thing created. On the Divine level, at least, there is identity of Speech and the creative. From the Lord, who alone is Speech, and the Word, goes forth all the life of man's affection, thought, and speech.*
* AC 1642; SD 2134-2141
In the spiritual world speech is found on several distinct planes. Of these planes of speech the Writings tell us:
Spirits in the other life converse among themselves as men do on earth;. . .and this in their own speech, by which they express more in a minute than a man can in an hour. For their speech is the universal of all languages, being by means of ideas, the primitives of words. . . . This then is the speech of spirits; but the speech of angelic spirits is still more universal and perfect; and the speech of angels is more universal and perfect still.
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For there are three heavens: the first is where good spirits are, the second is where angelic spirits are, and the third is where angels are. The perfections thus ascend, as from exterior things to things more interior.*
* AC 1641-1642
The planes of speech are progressively more interior and perfect as they approach the Lord who is the origin and life of all speech. It is also said, somewhat paradoxically, that these are planes of greater or lesser universality. Universality, one might object, cannot be a matter of more or less; something is either universal or it is not. Universal is not used here in an absolute sense. It refers rather to the degree to which there are certain things shared on a given plane of the spiritual world. All in one heaven share some fundamentals of thought and because the speech in that world is the speech of ideas, all in one heaven can therefore understand the speech of one another. This is not to say, however, that the speech of one spirit will therefore be identical to that of another.
Spirits, in fact, can even be distinguished according to their speech. For we are told, "I have been enabled . . . from their speech to perceive their quality, for from their speech, in like manner as from their sphere, it is plainly manifest of what genius and of what natural disposition they are."* Thus for speech in the other world the Writings establish both a principle of universality and also an allowance for some variability within the universal. This seems more along the lines of what would be called in worldly languages "dialectal differences" (mutually intelligible forms of one language) rather than a difference as great as that between separate languages. The extent of variation, however, diminishes as one regards progressively higher heavens. In the Lord exists the true universal and perfect language. Such language can be attained by a man only to the degree that his thought is lifted up toward the Lord.
* AC 1640
Having noted the universality of spiritual speech, a discussion of its perfectly natural character follows logically. On this subject there is certainly relevant material in the Writings:
I was still further instructed, by experience, as to the nature of the speech of spirits and angels. It is articulate, and of words; but still it is, so to say, a perfectly natural language, for all the affections of the mind, whatever they are, and all the ideas of a thing, whatever they are, have their corresponding affection in the body, which cannot be described; for they affect the body and its various parts as all affections are wont to do. These affections with man, raise the breast, contract and dilate the lungs, cause freedom or difficulty of breathing, or also contract or dilate the belly, or affect the lower part, as also the face and eyes. Such corresponding affections are felt manifestly in the bodies of spirits and angels; and when they speak, they enunciate the words articulately, according to their sensation of those affections. Thus their speech and affections make one.
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Spirits themselves are acquainted with this speech spontaneously; for, as we have said, it is a perfectly natural one.*
* SD 4865-4866
It is explained not only that the spiritual language is a natural one but also how it is natural. Such natural language is produced by the spontaneous correspondence of the organs of the body with the thoughts and affections to be expressed. Being spontaneous, this language does not have to be learned but rather is innate with every one.* Indeed, since it is innate it is possessed by everyone in the world as well, although it lies hidden, only to become manifest in the other world.**
* HH 236
** SD 5589 1/4
Much has now been said about the spiritual language. But what bearing does this have on language in the world? On the one hand the Writings tell us, "The speech of spirits is a universal speech, and from: it are sprung, and, as it were, born all the languages,"* while on the other hand they say, "All in the spiritual world have a spiritual language which has nothing in common with any language in the natural world."** These two statements do not directly contradict one another but it does require some investigation of the subject to see just how they can both be true.
* SD 2138; Cf AC 1637
** CL 326:4; AR 29:2;TCR 19:2
In one place the Writings, after saying that the angelic language has nothing in common with human languages, go on to teach that the first language of men on our earth coincided with angelic language because those men had it from heaven.* The language of the most ancients was then, also a perfectly natural language.** We are told too that the Hebrew language agrees in some respects.*** This is interesting both because it places Hebrew close to the original universal language and yet in so doing makes it clear that Hebrew itself was not that original language. This first language on earth was not at all like language at this day. It was a speech associated with the tacit breathing of that time. It made use of facial expression especially that of the eyes and lips.**** It was not a speech of words, not articulate.*****
* HH 237
** SD 5595
*** HH 237
**** AC 607
***** AC 1118
When the Most Ancient Church fell and finally came to an end, language changed. With the rise of the Ancient Church a new sort of speech arose, owing to the fact that man's will and understanding had now been separated. This meant that international respiration had thus ceased and communication with heaven had been cut off. Articulate speech now began, a very different kind of speech than that which had been learned directly from heaven.*
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Nevertheless, this language must have originated from the first language. The fact that Hebrew, a language of the new sort, coincides in some respects with the most ancient language makes it clear that there must have been some connection. Originally, it would seem, the language of the Ancient Church was simply that of the Most Ancient Church made external.
* AC 607-608, 1120
In time the Ancient Church also fell. This is described in the story of the tower of Babel. And as this story is among those historicals of the Word intermediate between made-up and true,* perhaps there is some literal truth to the confusion of tongues. For it would only be logical for an increasing difficulty in understanding the speech of other men to develop as their doctrinal positions diverged further and further apart.** At any rate is seems clear that the differing tongues of mankind must have arisen from some early separation of men as to ways of thought or forms of mind.
* AC 1140
** AC 1322
This brief history of the development of language suggests one way in which it is true that all languages derive their origin from the speech of spirits. For that language, as it existed with the most ancients, was the parent language of all languages in the world today. On the other hand, these modern languages have become in course of time so different as to have virtually nothing in common with the speech of spirits. This is how these statements from the Writings might be viewed relative to the history of mankind, they also may be viewed as applying to the individual, however.
As has been seen above, spiritual speech is the language of ideas. Spirits are in what the Writings call the primitives of words. And, in fact, man is in these too, as to his spirit, although he is not aware of them while he lives on earth. The speech of spirits is the cause, the immediate origin of everything said in the speech of this world. Without ideas there could be no earthly language. Nevertheless, the language of the spiritual world is ineffable. Although by correspondence that language brings forth earthly language, it can never itself fall into the words of earthly speech.
This short survey of some teaching bearing on language may provide some insight into the philosophical questions raised.
THE WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY
Returning to the matter of whether language was the gift of God or rather simply developed out of animal sounds, it is now possible to say that both sides in that controversy are wrong insofar as they suggest that language came from outside of man.
400
Language was given and is given by the Lord interiorly through the degrees in man's mind. Speech arises from the Lord and is accommodated successively downward through the heavens and finally comes into the world. This is certainly not an outgrowth of the cries of animals, but neither is it simply an external gift from God to man.
Language, as it exists from the Lord by correspondence, is also perfectly natural. Man's original language had not the slightest element of human convention. This first language, however, has now been modified and separated into thousands of different strands, all by man's artifice. The stamp of human conventions cannot now be denied. What can be denied is that any meaning has ever been imparted to language by the agreement of men. The meaning itself is communication, and there is no communication apart from correspondence. Even when meanings are arbitrarily assigned to words, such words must originally be defined by words with a non-arbitrary meaning. Almost all words have a lengthy etymology at their backs, a history of meaning stretching back toward the original language.
From the Writings we have also learned that the universal language, the language of ideas, is innate at birth. The words of worldly language, however, are learned after birth. These could not be learned, though, if the primitives of these words had not already been present at birth.
Finally the Writings show us the true nature of the universal language. It was historically the origin of all languages. And even today it is the spiritual cause of all earthly language. The universal language is not one that men will artificially reconstruct. It is rather the language all men come into as their thought ascends into heaven and toward the Lord.
The Writings contain the truths that will solve the dilemmas of the philosophy of language. Generally the answers that they suggest involve turning the attention to the spiritual world as the world of cause. The phenomena of language are inexplicable in terms of this world alone. They can only properly be viewed from an understanding of the language of the spiritual world, the universal and natural language.
Belief in a universal language brings with it a high evaluation of language. It implies a system of values in language, it removes language from the realm of the subjective. Grammar and vocabulary can have an intrinsic rightness or wrongness in that they can more closely or more distantly image the universal language. Belief in a universal language is a belief in the existance of absolute standards in language. The applications of this to the use of language are manifold.
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REFLECTIONS FROM A COUNSELOR ON MARRIAGE STEVE GLADISH 1977
Last year a special minister of the New Church questioned marriage counseling's therapeutic applications. He asked whether the tendency wasn't to make the marital relationship pleasanter and more open so that when they needed to end it, the couple could make parting more pleasant and open. I was astonished, having never considered that angle. Looking back, I appreciate that view for the chain of reflections that have followed from fall through winter and into spring. I also appreciated the excellent study on The Marriage Covenant by the Rev. N. Bruce Rogers in the January, 1977, NEW CHURCH LIFE, P. 12. It too gave me a perspective which I could not offer myself. "Marriages are nevertheless to continue to the end of life." I couldn't agree more.
Nothing is harder to maintain than the marriage relationship. The original relationship is beautiful: two people in the magic circle of love, existing only for each other, without past or future, making one world between them, perfect as the freshness of the first spring morning. Then the deadness of tradition and false values and functional relationships sets in, and they become specialized in their roles, often carrying with them the burdens of the lifescripts (how-to-live blueprint) given them by their parents, which do not fit them in their adult lives, and which almost always stand in the way of the promise of perfect happiness and fulfillment: e.g., Divorce begets divorce; As you were raised, so shall you raise your children. The path of least resistance is the one most easily traveled on.
The range and width and scope of marriage bear looking into. There are a few myths on marriage relationships that I would like to confront with facts.
Myth: "Its always one person's fault." Fact: The relationship isn't working and it's both persons' responsibility.
Myth: "Partners either fight or give in when there are differences of opinion." Fact: Fighting is a violation of respect for the other, giving in is disrespect for one's own dignity. Good human relationships must be based on mutual respect.
402
Myth: "The man should be the boss." Fact: All marital complaints involve the threat to status, prestige, superiority, on both sides. A relationship without equality keeps both the winner and loser unhappy.
Myth: "Might makes right." Fact: In marriage and family counseling, one result is always clear: "The under-dog always wins." Don't pity the poor wife who has an over-bearing husband; she always finds ways to get back, and so do the kids. Dictatorships are illusion. The master-slave marriage relationships are on the way out. Divorce is acutely regrettable, but so are some marriages.
Myth: "People marry for romantic love." Fact: Unconscious drives such as loneliness, insecurity, self-improvement, sex, and approval are primary movers of many couples to the marriage altar. Few couples marry only because of love, and few possess true love.
Myth: "Romantic love is required for a mutually satisfying marriage." Fact: Tolerance, respect, honesty and a desire to stay together for mutual and spiritual advantage is the reality for a functional union. Genuine love displays these elements. Romantic love can often be basically selfish and even destructive.
Myth: "Competition is healthy." Fact: It often leads to loneliness; it is not conducive to sharing and intimacy- the keystones of marriage. Most frequently among males is the type of person who unconsciously seeks triumph over others as a substitute for love. He needs to triumph over others in some way in order to get along with them. So Big Daddy is always right, always feared, but never truly loved, never truly lovable. Look at all he's missing. Being loved is more important to happiness than being the boss.
From my perspective, let's look further into marriage counseling. Eighty percent of marital counseling (and family counseling as well) is initiated by the woman and administered to the woman. Why? Generally, the man has the upper hand. Things are done his way. He gets respect, the woman does not. Generally, the woman is given the loving, nurturing role, without getting sufficient loving and nurturing in return.
Perhaps she wants to be given permission or sanction to dissolve the marriage. Perhaps she wants me to change her mate. Perhaps she is just tired and depressed and can't cope with the relationship any more. More than one woman has been driven to the edge of mental or emotional disintegration by her marriage relationship, where the man not only refused to make any changes, but actually took the most active part in destruction of her character. There is where I draw the line. As a mental health specialist, I will countenance dissolution of marriage before dissolution of a person's character and personality.
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As a counselor, I cannot impose my values on my clients; I am trained to work with their values and strengths and help them be their own answers and find their own answers.
Personally, in the beginning interview, however, I do make it clear: I am committed to marriages. I believe almost all marriages can be saved, can work, and can be happy.
Divorce is extremely painful. I make it clear to the person wanting a divorce how painful it is; yet, if they have made the decision, and called their lawyer, I do help prepare them for single life again. I tell them if they don't solve their personal problems which contributed to the dissolution of the present marriage relationship, they cannot expect anything different in a subsequent marriage. I never allow one person to take the blame for a dead marriage; it is the relationship that caused it. I do not take sides.
No matter how badly the husband (or wife) may be described, if he (or she) is not there, I do not speak of him. I inquire and probe the woman's (or man's) part in the relationship. I speak the axiom: "People treat us in whatever ways we teach them to treat us." We examine the client's responsibility for the obstacles in the relationship. In counseling, there is never an innocent victim.
One loophole Mr. Rogers left in his study on the marriage covenant needs to be addressed. In working on improving and maintaining an insufferable marital relationship, he says, "of course it takes the cooperation of both partners." (p. 16). Later he paraphrases the teaching in several passages that "almost all marriages can continue to the end of life, even to a degree happily, and perhaps even . . . quite happily, if a proper mutual effort is made." (p. 16). That seems to be the key.
But that is precisely the problem! Marital counseling, with this counselor's experience, is requested usually by one partner, because there is no mutual effort or cooperation. Perhaps a pastor has an easier task, because couples more easily go to a pastor, and because a pastor has set spiritual laws which he expects to, and is expected to, reiterate in order to convince the couple they should stay together.
However, what if the spiritual laws have already been transgressed? The couple may cease going to the pastor due to a sense of guilt. And how long must the couple or individual heap shame and guilt on his or her head?
I classify three kinds of divorce. The legal divorce is the most focused on, the last one on the long road of alienation. An emotional divorce, the first kind of divorce, may have already occurred months or years earlier. A marriage, being involved so deeply with emotions, is dead without emotional commitment.
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A marriage without commitment is dead if it does not foster personal growth and further the partners' ideals. And the second kind of divorce inquired into, I call the adulterous divorce. Adultery committed in a marriage relationship is so devastating to the union that I consider it equal to the death of the partner. An adulterous divorce may also have already occurred long before the legal divorce. These things I learn in order to understand the extent of reparations and yes, repentance needed to save the marriage and rebuild it. I find people do not like the word adultery. But to aid in the cure of a client, one must correctly and directly diagnose the problem. I come right to the point. There's only one way to excise a tumor. Marriage and adultery do not mix any better than love and hate, or cancer and health. (See appendix)
But once excised, the client's health, spiritual, mental, and physical, may return. If the client wants to save the marriage, we examine all his or her acts of aggression against the marriage, whether they be active or passive, and we initiate new attitudes and behavior leading to a healthy relationship.
If, however, the client comes in for divorce counseling, having set the divorce proceedings in motion, I make no judgments. If the cause of the divorce is adultery, the marriage is severed. For that act, the person is responsible. The person can repent and begin anew. After working with some couples devastated by the teaching that "those who dissolve a marriage for reasons other than adultery continue to live in adultery," I consulted with a highly respected (New Church) pastor. His interpretation allowed for new beginnings. He said, "The Lord judges man by the intentions of the heart. If a man and woman get a divorce, by that act their marriage is severed. They are responsible for that act, whether the divorce be due to adultery or other lesser causes. If they repent of that act, and they each will, in going their separate ways, to live a new life according to order, moving toward a more perfect order, then they may rest assured of God's love and mercy and forgiveness, in a subsequent marriage." I accept that in my counseling.
The point of pastorhood is to lead to a life of good. Stressing divine laws is important. But if a member of his flock slips and sins, the pastor cannot allow that lamb to be or feel abandoned. It is important to instill high ideals into our youth and our adults. But if they have slipped, reiteration of those ideals often serves only to condemn them. And a condemned person usually cannot begin new growth. Whether we be pastor or counselor, growth has got to be the magic word, both the key to coping on earth and the key to heaven. My uncle once told me, "When everything goes your way, it's easy to be a carpenter. A good carpenter is one who makes a mistake and can correct it without ruining the day's work or the whole house."
405
A good human being follows the same formula. A work with those who want to press on, start over, begin anew. I accept Christ as a loving and merciful God, and as one in whom He works, I accept all who knock on my door, whatever they have done. And as all evil acts and disorder have their own punishments, I do not rebuke and reject. I merely point out the ways they are punishing themselves and others, and help them learn to be good to themselves by achieving a lifestyle with order and respect and love in it. I have helped the majority of my clients save their marriages. But I work with the divorced to save the next marriage.
The traditional approach to pastoral counseling requires being true to a theologically high view of marriage. Now it is inadequate because it does not serve the current needs of those caught in problem marriages and divorces.
I do not agree with the shallow modern approach taken by some to marriage-that it is just a relationship. It is a union, where two "become one flesh." It is a covenant with each other, with society, and with God; it is made before God and empowered by God. God is the Heavenly Partner. Breaking union and fidelity, and breaking covenant is a serious thing. It is proven by the fact that even those, who married for compatibility and then divorced because of a lack of it, suffer miserably when they go through the divorce. There obviously is more to marriage than they have the capacity to realize. I make them aware just how tough divorce is. It is not the easy way out.
Still, marriages are dissolving at an alarming rate. Immaturity, character problems related to personal values, neuroses and psychoses with their effects on the partner, all have a heavy hand in the statistics. Cruelty, adultery, and drunkeness may be problems in themselves, or symptoms of rebellion against and frustration with the couples' inability to grow cheerfully and live intimately with each other in a cooperative marriage contract. Problem marriages often "need religion," but they need more than that.
A couple must face the demands of intimacy a marriage forces on them. If the man risks personal honesty in facing his own faults, and the wife stops blaming the man for their conflicts, the wall separating them crumbles. A couple must learn to be emotionally present to each other if they are to grow in intimacy. This means no hiding behind the proverbial paper at the breakfast table, mumbling "Yes, Dear." This means no emotional insulation caused by turning on the television after supper and sitting like zombies through the evening.
A couple must learn to develop a high degree of caring for each other. This means genuine interest in the partner, his or her growth, well-being, work, and hobbies.
406
A couple must ignore the temptation to view marriage as an experiment in living together. Little intimacy will develop.
"A promise never made is a promise never kept." Many happy marriages today would not be, if divorce laws were lenient years ago.
My observation mirrors that of Howard Clinebell, Jr, in The Intimate Marriage: "Troubled marriages are essentially hungry marriages." (P. 68). I find that when one partner's needs are not being met, the tendency is to seek ways to punish the mate. Soon, if not immediately, this is reciprocated and alienation, distrust, and bitterness set in. I often begin a session by asking, "How do you punish your partner?" Later I ask, "What do you want from your partner?" We then become aware of all the irresponsible projections, crossed transactions, and the vicious cycles of mutual retaliation, and work toward a decision to stop one punishment and to begin finding a way to satisfy one need. I regret that a marriage counselor is too often used like the dentist: Couples don't go in to get treatment until the pain is unbearable and the tooth is begging to be pulled.
It is so simple. The human heart yearns for someone to love. The human heart longs more keenly for love, friendship, and admiration in return than for anything else. Yet so many people are raised to fear being themselves, to fear looking within, to fear the responsibility of intimacy, to fear being emotional, that our society-too often through the family, sows the seeds of divorce while the human heart is still inside the child. And as the twig is bent, so the tree grows. And what began as a simple attainable thing, ends up in a lifelong search, often without the person knowing what must be learned and relearned to remove the obstacles to the prize-loving and being loved.
All the other reasons cited for marital conflict are often just battlegrounds selected, they are not what the fight is really about. Carl Sandburg once said, "Life is like an onion. We peel it off a layer at a time, and sometimes we cry." The fascinating thing about counseling is the discovery of directly opposite answers lying underneath the layer above. The couple who come in with a typical conflict over raising one of their children really have something else in conflict: fears, guilts, religious faith, childhood memories, health conditions, in-laws, money, pre-marital experiences, vocations, avocations, or inferiority and neurosis. Money is another typical conflict area which covers up the real issues of anger and fear. A person who comes in and expresses a fear of dying is also telling me part of her wants to die. The husband who complains about his wife's weight problem may find himself the main cause of it. The wife who complains her husband won't talk to her may find her constant insecure habit of ascertaining his thoughts is causing his silence.
407
The husband who complains that his wife is a poor housekeeper may be using that as a way to keep away from intimacy. And so it goes. People almost never come in for counseling on what is really the key problem. Long ago I was told that Gladishes have bad tempers. No one just has a bad temper. A person gets angry for many reasons; he is threatened or scared by some act or somebody he can't handle, he uses anger to keep people from getting too close or intimate, he uses anger to avoid admitting fault or failure; he may use anger stored up against someone in his past.
And that's what a counselor is for. To uncover the fifteen ego defense mechanisms, and help that person take responsibility for him or her self, and own up to his or her strengths and weakness, and then deal with them (not sweep them under the rug). A counselor helps the client go from external support to his or her own internal support, complete with a functioning guidance system and achievable spiritual goals. A counselor is a seer of what the client cannot see; a questioner of questions the client hasn't asked; a mediator between the individual and society; an interpreter; a human resources developer; a trainer in options and altitude changes; a counselor sets people free to live in order.
To be effective, a counselor will exude courage, hope and optimism. He will create an atmosphere of safe permission and protection, accepting the client where he or she is, so that the client may begin to risk new behavior and anticipate new successes. A counselor is an aid to clear thinking, and teacher of rational decision-making processes. The counselor prepares the client for face-to-face confrontation with his or her hidden pathologies, so as to cause minimal damage and misdirection, and locates the healthy areas of the client, to build on them and from them. The counselor believes in the self-actualizing and self-healing abilities of the client, treating the client but not assuming responsibility (or credit) for the cure. So while a marriage problem is a relationship problem, it can be cured by raising the mental health of each troubled human being in the marriage. People bring their problems into a marriage. Marriage as an institution is not failing people, people are failing marriage. What feelings of cheerful anticipation I would have knowing that marriage in the future required professionally and pastorally supervised preparation courses!
Divorced individuals usually take all the blame and guilt for the "Failure." But even churches may share corporately in the sin. They share in inadequate preparation for marriage, failure to provide adequate pastoral follow-up, and the loss of rapport when separation and divorce develop. Yet the churches may be redemptive, by putting forth every effort to provide a healing ministry for the hurts, a counseling ministry where guidance is needed, and a nurturing ministry where new growth is called for.
408
And for those untroubled marriages, pastors may serve to strengthen their communities through supervised weekend sessions called Marriage Enrichment Retreats. Counseling techniques are too good to be used only on the troubled.
(See following appendix)
Recommended for reference:
David R. Mace, Getting Ready for Marriage, 1972.
David and Vera Mace, We Can Have Better Marriages, 1974.
Rev. John R. Martin, Divorce and Remarriage, A Perspective for Counseling, 1974.
APPENDIX
Questions and Answers To Spiritual Thoughts On Marriage
1. Is your marriage unhappy and at times even hellish? I believe marriage can be heaven on earth! It is taught:
"The chaste love of marriage is the fundamental love of all heavenly and Divine loves."*
* AE 981; SD 6051:6
"To love the married partner . . . from chastity is to love the Lord."*
* SD 6051:12
2. You don't know the importance of chastity? You cannot know the rewards of a chaste marriage until you forsake unchaste thoughts and actions. It is taught:
"'The mere conclusion in the mind that adultery is not a sin renders a man an adulterer . . . Every conclusion in the mind constitutes endeavor in the body.'?*
* SD 6110:5
"No one can know the nature of the chastity of marriage except he who shuns the lasciviousness of adultery as sin."*
* Life 76
"True marriage love is chastity itself."*
* CL 143
3. What are the definitions of chastity? It is taught:
"Chaste love is a love of the spirit and thence of the body, and not a love of the body and thence of the spirit."*
* CL 310e
"Chaste love is restricted to one of the opposite sex, and removed from all others."*
* CL 44:5
"A chaste love of the set is the very delight of the mind itself and thence of the heart, and [then afterwards] of the flesh beneath the heart."*
* Ibid.
"To become chaste is to become spiritual; without religion we cannot become spiritual."*
* CL 149, 147
"What is chaste is the absence from willing something impure, unchaste, or adulterous, even when you are able to do it and the opportunity presents itself, because it is a sin. against your partner, against society, and especially against the Lord."*
* para. From TCR 316
4. What happens when you are attracted to someone? With such a premium on external packaging and the whims of the natural man, it seems easy and natural-to look with longing. Yet it is taught:
"If only beauty conjoins, and not goodness, it is adultery.*
* SD 6110:12
409
5. Are you growing further apart with less intimacy and blaming it on your partner) Hear these teachings:
"If man concentrates his love upon his wife, by shunning adultery as sin, then love with its potency increases daily; if used otherwise, marriage love becomes like chaff and dies."*
* SD 6110:7
"Perpetual potency comes from approaching the Lord."*
* AE 992:2
6. Do you really believe adultery is just a casual act that doesn't affect anybody if they don't know about it? Hear these teachings:
"The love of dominion from the love of self is the inmost origin of adultery.
"Adultery loathes marriage and love of fellow man.*
* AE 991
"The hate in adultery is above every hate; the love of adultery in its essence is deadly hatred. Delight in doing evil derives its all from hatred, which is cruel and deceitful; it is first manifested as contempt, then aversion, then rejection, and finally abuse and contention. From these, hatreds of all kinds gush forth."*
* AE 991:5; SD 4405e; AE 993:3
From this casual attitude toward adultery, many marriages suffer from elements of the above without knowing why.
7. Are you unaware of your subtle resentments and anger? Are you unwilling to consider whether hatred could be a part of your attitude? Do you think your happiness and your children's happiness is not affected? When you have no happy moments or family delights, consider this:
"Adultery with another's wife destroys all the delight of life between husband and wife, and induces dislike of the other, and also destroys care for the children-that is, a mother's and a father's care"*
* SD 6110:66
8. Do you know the further by-products of adultery? Besides the high incidence of divorce, family breakup, and rising juvenile crime? It is taught:
"All desires for evil spring from adultery."*
* SD 6110:41
"Adulterers becomes unjust, unfaithful, insincere, iniquitous violators of a covenant, lying, and shameless. They have not interior virtues of justice, fidelity, sincerity, truth, shame, or honor."*
* SD 6110:36
"Heaven is closed to the adulterer."*
* AC 2750
"Evil decreases in potency, according to its abuse."*
* SD 6051
9. What do you believe is the purpose of life on earth? If you accept the spiritual goals of learning to love and grow closer to the Lord and learning to love and grow closer to your fellow man, then consider the contrasts:
"Adultery has been associated with love of the flesh, nose mucus, dirt, and excrement, vile and unclean smells."*
* SD 2843
"Adultery is a crime against conscience and marriage love."*
* AC 1793:2
"Through marriage love, we can learn to become forms of love, and then be living in love to the Lord, and in love to the neighbor. From us, as forms of love, other loves of all kinds proceed."*
* AE 993, 985, 995, 996 para.
10. Do you think romantic love and the accompanying natural selection processes got you married? If so, can you see that the externals of romantic love may get you unmarried? Consider Hollywood's track record on marriages. Then consider this:
"It is only internal affections that truly conjoin two partners in real marriage love."*
* CL 275, 274 para.
410
"Personal qualities are more important than physical qualities."
"Spiritual qualities are more important than social standing"
"Moral and spiritual virtues bring more security than financial well being."*
* CL 227, 272 para.
"A real interior spiritual friendship is needed, where there is internal agreement and likeness between the two individual's own special dualities of love and wisdom."*
* CL 159-162, 189-191, 227-228, para.
11. Do you think because you've erred and your marriage isn't working out that you are stuck with it? Or that you may as well quit and try anew elsewhere? Consider this:
"Your original marriage contract may have begun with the wrong set of hidden agreements and under poor circumstances. Start over! Sit down and negotiate a new marriage contract, with the proper ingredients. You have longevity in this relationship, and you have a better chance at happiness with this marriage.
411
ORDERED APPROACH TO MARRIAGE Rev. GEORGE DE CHARMS 1977
The chapter on betrothals and marriages in Conjugial Love makes it perfectly clear that there are Divinely ordered steps of approach to marriage. It is evident that these steps must be observed, at least in intention, and with inner purpose. If conjugial love is to be preserved in its integrity. It is therefore of supreme importance that these steps be rightly understood. We propose therefore to treat briefly of each one as we find it presented in the Heavenly Doctrine.
COURTSHIP
In an earlier generation there was a custom for a young man to approach the parents of a young woman whom he wished to court, asking their permission. This is followed by fewer and fewer at the present day. Nevertheless it was a gracious custom based on respect for the parents, and a recognition of their concern for the welfare of their daughter. It indicates an attitude of humility, and a willingness to make himself known as one having honorable intentions before imposing himself on the attentions of a young woman. It is one thing to seek consent to woo, and quite another to propose marriage. It is a step that rightly precedes and prepares the way. The courtship now openly begins; but it is a state of uncertainty and hesitation. The man does not necessarily make an immediate proposal of marriage. He is not at all sure if such a proposal would be accepted. Often there is great hesitation. Meanwhile the woman does not know whether the man will propose, or perhaps whether she wants him to do so. She may not be at all clear in her own mind as to her wishes in the matter. On the other hand, the woman is often sure and does what she can to induce a proposal by feminine wiles of which the man is quite ignorant.
This is a period when there should be no outside interference. The first concern is for the freedom of the parties, and yet it is a state when there seems little freedom. Their attachment to one another is not generally known, and there is a tendency to hide it. It is right that this should be so because of its uncertainty. It is at this stage, before a proposal is made, that the Writings enjoin a young woman to consult her parents.
412
The reasons for this are clearly stated.* Opportunity is given for the young suitor to become acquainted with the family of the young woman toward whom he is looking, and for the parents of the young woman to become acquainted with him. Only on the basis of mutual knowledge and understanding can sound judgment be exercised. It should be well understood that the purpose of this mutual approach to understanding is not to make a decision for the young people. Rather it is to put them in a position to make a sound decision for themselves. As we have said, free consent is of the essence. But there can be no sound judgment without knowledge. On the other hand, a decision forced on a woman by parental pressure does not conduce to a happy marriage.
* CL 298-299
In the uncertainty of courtship, before there has been a proposal of marriage, a man and a woman are not able to think together in regard to their future. He thinks necessarily from his standpoint, and she from hers, each according to whatever conscience has been imposed during infancy, childhood, and youth. The minds of the two people are not interiorly united, nor can they become so united except over a period of time which begins when a proposal of marriage is accepted.
CONSENT
Consent is strictly between the two parties, and it should be given in complete freedom of choice. But when it is given it brings with it a radical change of state. The period of doubt and uncertainty is over. The relation of the man and the woman takes on new meaning. Often it brings great relief because the need for secrecy is past, and there is felt a mutual desire that everybody in the world should know, and should share the great happiness they feel. First of all the parents and the family should be told, but also friends should join in celebrating this wonderful thing that has happened. The first thought, of course should be one of thankfulness to the Lord for this incomparable blessing which He has imparted to them. For this reason some have held that the ceremony of betrothal should follow immediately after consent. The avowed purpose in this is to emphasize the importance of that ceremony, and of its confession to the Lord. However my study of the teaching given in the Writings makes me believe that this is a mistake. It is significant that pledges are to be given at this time which are said to be confirmations, testifications, first favors, and gratifications "That they are the gratifications of love is known, for the mind is exhilarated at the sight of them; and because love is in them these favors are dearer and more precious than all other gifts."*
413
It is said that these tokens may be given either before the betrothal ceremony or after it. If given before they are testimonials of consent to the betrothal and if after the betrothal they are testimonies to consent to the marriage.
* CL 300
All this leads me to believe that time is intended to pass between the consent and the ceremony of betrothal. It is a time not only for rejoicing with family and friends, but for preparation to enter together with understanding into the ceremony of betrothal. Note that before a proposal has been made and accepted, two people are not yet in a state to consider this question together. Consent first makes this possible, and at that time only can it begin. Each one individually, if raised within the church, may well have given though to the question of betrothal; but they have not considered it together in relation to their own marriage. I think it should at this time be given mutual consideration, and in conjunction with a priest from whom they derive a deeper idea as to the value of a betrothal ceremony. This requires time. I believe that time so spent will be more effective in emphasizing the importance of betrothal, and impressing its importance upon the minds of the couple, than would be possible if they were required to hold a betrothal ceremony immediately after consent.
Some have held that a period of what has been called "engagement" is wrong. I would agree if it were purely frivolous, and unmindful of the Lord's part in the marvelous gift of conjugial love. At times no doubt it has been this; but this need not be the case. A mutual approach to a priest, and a reading and thinking together from the Writings in regard to betrothal may and should be the primary purpose of this stage of preparation for marriage.
There are frequently situations because of which, even after consent, the prospect of marriage is remote and uncertain. The steps of approach to it should not be unduly hastened; nor should an approach to marriage be unduly prolonged. In this matter judgment must be exercised with the sole view to the protection of the conjugial. But that time is required if the intended benefits of betrothal are to be received is manifest from what is said.* There is a molding into one of two minds, especially with reference to the ideals of marriage toward which bath must look together. There must be an ascent into the higher regions of the mind, and a mutual sharing of inmost goals and purposes. This is because the height to which the mind ascends in preparation for marriage, determines the quality of the conjugial love in the marriage. With two who love each other, there is a longing to open the interiors of the mind of the other, that one may learn to think and will as the other.
414
"There is no love which labors for these openings more intensely, or which opens the interiors of their minds more powerfully and easily, than conjugial love, inasmuch as the soul of each intends it."** This is the purpose of the betrothal, and time must be provided for this end to be effected. There must be time for two young people to become fully aware of this purpose before the ceremony, in order that they may reap the greatest benefit from the ceremony after it has been held.
* CL 305
** CL 302
It appears to me that if there is a long time, of necessity, before the marriage can take place, it is wise to delay the ceremony of betrothal in order not to hasten the state. For that ceremony brings the sphere of the wedding closer, and strengthens the urgency to be married. For this reason I tend to agree with Bishop W. F. Pendleton who held that the betrothal should be observed when the date of the wedding is set, and when all things look toward it in the recognized future.
THE WEDDING
Certainly the betrothal looks directly to marriage, and marks the last major step of approach to it. Yet it should not be delayed until the last minute, when every-one is in the midst of last minute preparations for the wedding ceremony and the festivities that immediately follow. There should be time for calm thought, and mutual reflection on all that the betrothal is designed to accomplish, and this before the rush of last minutes for the marriage. Whether the wedding is in a church or in a home, whether it be ornate or simple, it should be a solemn occasion in which a priest officiates. Here again, in preparation for this there should be consultation with a priest that the Divine meaning of the ceremony may be fully appreciated and understood. The wedding is the crowning achievement of all that has gone before, and it inaugurates a new and radically different state. We are told that the ceremony should be followed by festivities, and it has been customary to hold a public reception for all the family and friends, that all may enter into the joy and blessing of the occasion. It should herald the establishment of a new home, a new center of New Church life whereby all the promise of the preceding steps may come to fruition in a life of regeneration, whereby two minds and two souls may become more and more united into a one.
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ORDINATIONS VARIOUS 1977
DECLARATIONS OF FAITH AND PURPOSE
I believe in one God, the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I believe that the Lord's purpose in creation is a heaven from the human race, and that to be conjoined to the Lord in love and faith is to live to eternity in heaven.
I believe that in order to accomplish this end the Lord has revealed Himself to men in His Word, and that only by means of the truths of the Word can man receive genuine, spiritual good from the Lord, thus the life of heaven.
I believe that the church is established by the Lord alone through the Word, and that the state of the church is such as is its understanding of the Word.
I believe that the Writings are Divine doctrine given for the establishment of the New Church; that they are from the Lord alone, and are His Word.
I believe that this new revelation surpasses every previous revelation in that in it the Lord is made visible in His Divine Human, and that the New Church is the crown of all previous churches because it worships a visible God.
I believe that this new revelation thus constitutes the second coming of the Lord, and that the New Church which is built upon the acknowledgment of the Lord in His Divine Human will never die.
I believe that the Lord has established the office of the priesthood to teach men the truths of the Word and lead thereby to the good of life, and that to be a good shepherd a priest must teach only from the Word and never from himself, and lead only to the Lord and never to himself.
I pray that the Lord will give me the love, wisdom, and strength to serve His church in the use of the priesthood. I pray that the Lord will give me the humility and perception to acknowledge that all the goods accomplished by means of this office are from Him alone.
416
I wish to add that I believe the General Church of the New Jerusalem to be the truest embodiment of the New Church, for the reason that the General Church acknowledges that the Writings are the Word of the Lord, and strives to realize the various principles and ideals which this truth shows to be essential to the establishment of the New Jerusalem on earth.
WALTER E. ORTHWEIN
Made at inauguration into the second degree of the priesthood, June 12, 1977.
I believe that the LORD our God is one LORD, that He is the First and the last, and beside Him there is no God. We all have one Father and One God hath created us. The Lord, Yehowah, created the heavens and the earth and all that are in them. Yehowah is also our Savior and our Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob. For the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with his stripes we were healed. For the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This is the LORD'S doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.
I believe that the Son of Man has come again in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, that the tabernacle of God is now with men, and He will dwell with them and they shall be his people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. The Lord has now sent the Spirit of Truth in the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem. The Spirit of Truth is come and it will guide us into all truth.
I believe that the Lord's Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, that we must look to the Word and seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. The wicked must forsake his way, and the unjust man his thoughts, and return unto the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
I believe that the Lord is the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Him, though he were dead yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Him shall never die.
I believe that there is now a new heaven and a new earth, that the first heaven and the first earth have passed away, and that the holy city New Jerusalem has come down from God out of heaven.
417
It is my conviction that at this day the General Church of the New Jerusalem is the truest and most perfect external form of the New Jerusalem.
The LORD gave the Word, I pray that I may be worthy to join the great host of them that bear the tidings. I ask the Lord for strength, I ask the Church for inauguration into the priesthood, in order that I may join with those called upon to go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever the Lord has commanded us.
STEPHEN D. COLE
Made at inauguration into the first degree of the priesthood, June 19, 1977.
MINISTERIAL CHANGES LOUIS B. KING 1977
The Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz has resigned as Pastor of the Central Western District to accept a call to the Pastorate of the Bath, Maine, Society of the General Convention. This change will take effect September 1, 1977, the Rev. Nemitz remaining a member of the Council of the Clergy of the General Church while serving the Bath Society.
The Rev. B. David Holm has accepted appointment as Secretary to the Council of the Clergy, effective July 1, 1977.
The Rev. Peter M. Buss will be responsible for the Central Western District of the General Church, effective August 31, 1977, and until a district pastor is selected to succeed the Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
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UNIQUE AND MIRACULOUS II EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
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Let us consider the first characteristic or event of Swedenborg's spiritual experience. For this is the most important because all the others depend Upon and relate to this first one. It is that Swedenborg was commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ in Person to make the revelations which followed. As Swedenborg testifies, it was in the evening in his room in London about the middle of April that the Lord appeared to him for the fourth time.
Let us use Swedenborg's own account:
The same man revealed himself to me again. . . He then said that He was the Lord God, the Creator and Redeemer of the world, and that He had chosen me to declare to men the spiritual contents of the Scripture; and that He Himself would declare to me what I should write on this subject. Then, on that same night, the world of spirits, hell and heaven, were opened to me with lull conviction. There I recognized many acquaintances of every condition of life. And from that day I gave up all practice of worldly letters, and devoted my labor to things spiritual. (I Doc. 34-36.)
We quote this familiar passage only to make the point that substantially the same testimony may be found scattered through the pages of the later Writings. And most significantly, it is repeated, confirmed and affirmed in the Invitation to the New Church, which was the last work fully prepared for the press by Swedenborg himself. What he had declared at the beginning of his spiritual experience, he re-affirms at the end of his life some 29 years later.
419
The uniqueness of this experience does not stem from any one isolated statement or element; it is compounded of a number of these. Thus, it was the Lord God Who appeared and spoke to Swedenborg, and this while he was in full consciousness, both natural and spiritual. It was not "the angel of the Lord," who appeared to John on the Isle of Patmos and commanded him to write down the spiritual events which he had seen. Much less was it the type of automatic writing given to Moses and the prophets. And, of course, it was not that type of delusive spiritistic vision which, after a few persuasive experiences prompts the receiver to write a book. Much less was it the result of any deliberate, purposeful seeking after spiritistic communication. Note that the seer was directly, unmistakably, specifically told by the Lord that He had chosen him "to declare to melt the spiritual contents of the Scripture."
A close reading of what follows furnishes us with several further distinctive elements of the incident. The total effect gives the powerful impression of uniqueness beyond parallel.
And it does not glorify Swedenborg in our minds, but only Him Who in this miracle surpassing all miracles, provided fully for the redemption of the human race and the salvation of each individual to eternity.
RECEIVED FOR REVIEW VARIOUS 1977
Commentary on a Harmony of the Four Gospels, by George de Charms. Now in final stages of preparation for the press is a new book on the life of the Lord entitled: Commentary on a Harmony of the Four Gospels by Bishop George de Charms. Bishop de Charms has said of it, "It is a life of the Lord for adults."
This one-volume work of close to a thousand pages has greatly impressed those engaged in preparing it for the press. (Academy of the New Church Press). It has been the conviction of Bishop de Charms over many years that there is a natural harmony of the Gospels which can lead to a fuller and deeper understanding of the Lord's life. The forthcoming work is the result of this conviction pursued through many years of study.
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In the text, the life of the Lord is followed through a chronological pattern, quoting generously from the four Gospels concerning every salient event in the Lord's life with appropriate supporting quotations from the Writings. To these are added the illuminating comments of Bishop de Charms, from a life-time study of the Writings and the Word and of leading scholars in the field.
At least one member of the group preparing the book for the press sees the new book as a powerful missionary medium; however, Bishop de Charms is skeptical about this because of the underlying reliance upon the Writings' interpretation. But for New Churchmen of any variety, or for anyone reading the Writings affirmatively, this should be a fulfilling treatment of the greatest event in human history.
Commentary on a Harmony of the Four Gospels should be off the press in September, 1977.
Bible Study Notes, Vol. I of six volumes, by Anita S. Dole, 1976. A Memorial Edition published by the American New Church Sunday-school Association. Sales agent: Swedenborg Library, 79 Newbury St. Boston, Mass. 02116. Edited and prefaced by Dr. William R. Woofenden. $7.00 per volume.
"A NEW CHURCH CALENDAR" C. H. PRESLAND 1977
Dear Editor:
It is always pleasant to receive NEW CHURCH LIFE, and this morning the April number has arrived. I note Mr. Woofenden's comments on the subject of a New Church calendar. May I note that in the early days of the Church in England it became fashionable to date from the Last Judgment, so that 1757 = 1.1 (See the early printed Minutes of The Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church, by R. Hindmarsh, p. 119. the General Conference of the New Church followed this trend-e.g., the Minutes of the 3rd Annual Meeting are dated 1791 = 35. The practice I think never gained a firm grip here but continued with some for several years, so that some of our early publications, not all, have the two dates. I personally would need some convincing that it is useful, at any rate in our times, to try to establish this dual dating, but if we were to do so I doubt whether we would want to parallel the Last Judgment with the Lord's First Advent.
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Dr. Burnham, I imagine, had this same doubt and he therefore preferred to make 1770 = 1. Mr. Woofenden's penultimate sentence is thus strengthened. I hope this may help. London
C. H. PRESLAND
Midwestern District Assembly Rev. LOUIS B. KING 1977
The Midwestern District Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem will take place in Glenview, Illinois, at the Immanuel Church of the New Jerusalem, 74 Park Drive, from September 23 to 25. All members and friends of the General Church are cordially invited to attend.
The program is to be as follows:
Friday, Sept. 23: 8:00 p.m. Episcopal Address followed by reception in the Assembly Hall.
Saturday, Sept. 24: 10:00 a.m. Session II: Address by Rev. P. M. Buss on "The Doctrine of Spheres."
12:30 p.m. Lunch in Assembly Hall.
3:00 p.m. Session III: Discussions, led by the Rev. Walter Orthwein, on the Leadership of the Divine Providence in Specifics.
7:00 p.m. Banquet: "Education in the Midwest, in Isolated Families, in Elementary Schools, and in the Midwestern Academy."
Note that there will be a children's program during the Saturday Sessions, and during the service for adults on Sunday.
Sunday, Sept. 25: 9:45 a.m. Family Service (Pendleton Hall)
11:00 a.m. Adult Service (Pendleton Hall)
Ordination: The Rev. Patrick Rose
THE RT. REV. LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop of the General Church
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Church News VARIOUS 1977
BRYN ATHYN
The weekly Friday Suppers are introductory to the Society Doctrinal Classes, but as the season winds to its end, it is traditional to have gatherings after the Supper which are of special interest, an interest that extends to all parts of the world-wide Church. This Spring, the closing Friday evenings offered a report by the Bishop on his Scandinavian trip, the Semi-Annual meeting of the Bryn Athyn Society and the open meeting of the Academy Faculty and Corporation. Two other events during the same period are also of interest beyond Bryn Athyn's boundaries-a special meeting of a committee to plan for a retirement home, and a program sponsored by the Sons of the Academy to present the possible involvement of Academy personnel in an archeological 'dig' in the Holy Land later this year.
Each of these topics has interest to many readers of the LIFE, though these columns can scarcely cover the subjects adequately.
Bishop King's report of his visit to New Church groups in Denmark and Sweden included an account of the April Scandinavian Assembly and an Easter celebration, together with an interesting account of how our friends are keeping the spirit of the Church alive under difficult circumstances. He spoke of steps taken to form a "Swedenborg Society", of translation work so badly needed now getting underway, and of plans for the future.
Next it was the Semi-Annual meeting of the Bryn Athyn Society at which the Dean, the Rev. Kurt Asplundh, gave his final report as the Principal of the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School since the Rev. Fred Schnarr will assume this role for the coming year. At this meeting a new book compiled by the Women's Guild, "Welcome to Bryn Athyn" was introduced, an impressive assembly of useful information for any family moving into the community.
The Sons meeting, to which all were invited, featured a presentation by Prescott Rogers of a plan whereby the Academy would participate in an archeological project researching a "tel" (Mound) in the Holy Land-probably one of the Philistine cities along the coast, from which the Academy Museum would share a portion of the artifacts as well as the information obtained. A faculty member and five or more students would earn college credits in addition to having a most memorable experience.
Another activity of broad interest was the gathering to hear of plans and hopes for establishing a retirement home in Bryn Athyn for the elderly. Such a home as well as a nursing home have long been needed, and although not an official activity of the Church, would be most welcome as a use for our senior citizens.
Other activities, including the always thrilling commencement exercises and the observances of New Church day, enhanced the Society's calendar of activities, delightful but busy enough so that Bryn Athynites are relieved at the arrival of the relaxed program for the summer.
L. RHODES
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DR. SIG SYNNESTVEDT
A former teacher in the Academy of the New Church, Sig Synnestvedt passed into the spiritual world on June 5th. The memorial address given by the Rt. Rev. Willard D. Pendleton, on June 8th contained the following excerpts:
Man is a form of use endowed by his Creator with the unique capacity to enter with delight into a life of use. Despite all appearances to the contrary, there is no such thing as a premature death. On entering the spiritual world the way is opened whereby the spirit of man is introduced into the interior delights of use, differing from exterior delight as the life of heaven differs from the life of the world.
Dr. Synnestvedt was a man who accepted every challenge of life with enthusiasm, and applied himself with unusual vigor to every task. As a teacher and as an administrator he brought to his work a zeal for accomplishment that was an inspiration to others, demanding much but giving much in return.
Born of New Church parents and educated in the Academy, he served in the Navy during the Second World War, then studied American history at Michigan State University. While teaching at the Academy he earned his doctorate in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1968 began teaching at New York University at Brockport, N. Y., and became Dean at the Niagra Frontier Learning Center in Buffalo.
Dr. Synnestvedt was author of "The Essential Swedenborg" and "The White Response to Black Emancipation" and co-author of a textbook on the history of American foreign policy commissioned by the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was a director of the Swedenborg Foundation and a member of the American Historical Society.
THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH
Joint Meeting
The Annual Joint Meeting of the Faculty and Corporation of the Academy of the New Church was held in the Assembly Hall at Bryn Athyn, Pa., on the evening of May 20, 1977. In attendance were 260 persons, including adult visitors and students.
Chancellor Louis B. King opened the meeting with a short service of worship, followed by acceptance of the minutes of last year's meeting and the adoption of two memorial resolutions, one for Miss Margaret Bostock, a member of the teaching staff for many years until her retirement in 1955, and one for Mr. Philip Pendleton, a member of the Corporation from 1931 and a Director from 1940 to 1968 and finally a part-time member of the College Faculty for several years more.
Chancellor King next presented a report in which he spoke of the unity of the leadership of the Academy and the General Church, provided for by the office of Chancellor held Ex officio by the Bishop of the General Church. The Chancellor also praised Prof. Bruce Glenn's effective leadership as Dean of the College over the past ten years. He concluded by saying that the work of the Academy illustrates the truth of the statements that "the general good exists from the goods of use which individuals perform," and reciprocally that "the goods of use which individuals perform subsist from the general good." (Char. 127)
President Alfred Acton then presented his first annual report, which he began by noting that the Academy is completing its 100th year of continuous operation, now under a full-time President, though the Chancellor is still the supreme leader. Accomplishments of the past year include a reorganization of the administrative structure of the secondary schools, with a reorganization of the academic leadership proposed also for the College. As President, Mr. Acton has been involved in a number of professional meetings outside of the Academy. He has also visited several of the societies of the General Church.
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He has personally contacted potential students not in attendance at the Academy. Teaching and staff changes for the coming year include a lighter load for Prof. Edward Allen, with the title of Philosopher in Residence. Mr. Jeremy Odhner will be leaving to enter other work. Joining the faculty, full-time, will be the Rev. Frank Rose, and, part-time, Miss Ray Reuter, Mr. Thomas Andrews, Dr. Sylvia Carlton, Mr. William Fehon, Mr. Michael Hogan, and the Rev. Douglas Taylor. Mr. Lennart Alfelt has replaced Prof. Eldric Klein as Archivist, in addition to being Curator of the Swedenborgiana Library. Alter a year as interim Principal, Miss Morna Hyatt will once again resume the full title and office in the Girls School, with Miss Sally Smith and Miss Mary Beth Cronlund as Assistant principals. The Assistant Principals in the Boys School will be Mr. Kenneth Rose and Mr. Paul Funk. The new Dean of the College will be Dr. Robert Gladish, replacing Prof. Bruce Glenn. Mr. Brian Schnarr will replace Mr. Michael Brown as the College Dean of Men. President Acton expressed his gratitude for Dean Glenn's help and counsel during the past year. Finally, President Acton reported on the research programs being undertaken in the Academy.
Received also was the annual report of the Secretary of the Corporation, Mr. Lachlan Pitcairn, reviewing the activities of the Corporation and Board of Directors for the past year.
The Chancellor then introduced the special program of the evening. Mr. Bradley Smith first spoke on special education in the Boys School. He described the difficulty of discriminating between the child with a primary learning disability and the child whose problems stem from a different source, illustrating this by the fictitious case of a student called "Jake." It is important for us to be able to reach such children in the Church, he said. They should be treated as normally as possible, and yet learn how to cope with their deficiencies. The Academy has a responsibility for these children, but because of our size, we are limited in the number of options that can be provided. If the attitude is constructive and growth is seen, four years at the Academy can be useful, though preparation for making a living becomes a practical problem to be faced. There are no perfect solutions. Mr. Smith concluded by describing a tutorial and supportive program that was undertaken for the first time this past year, and outlining possible options that such students might have either during their time at the Academy or afterward.
Miss Mary Beth Cronlund next spoke about the counselling program in the Girls School. She outlined the educational requirements for receiving state certification in counseling, and said that a good guidance program should be based on the truths of the Word and the Writings, ideally complementing the guidance in the home. Miss Cronlund then analyzed the various aspects of the counseling and guidance program: individual counseling (with a description of the kinds of problems she has had to help with); group procedures, involving primarily the dissemination of information to students; communication and interchange with parents; consultation with other faculty members; the keeping of records-and keeping them confidential; testing, including interpretation of results and referral for testing; maintenance of a coordinated system of information; the discovery of other sources of help and referral thereto; and finally, orientation and placement of students. A planned guidance program therefore involves all students. It is concerned with normal developmental stages as well as with abnormal. Miss Cronlund concluded by describing the ways in which she tries to keep herself up-to-date as a guidance counselor and the various special programs in which she is involved.
(A fuller report of the evening will be given in the minutes of the meeting, to be published in the Annual Number of The Academy Journal for 1976-1971, along with the memorial resolutions presented and the other administrative reports.)
N. BRUCE ROGERS,
Secretary
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Centennial Commencement Awards, 1977
At the Commencement Exercises on June 11, the graduates received their diplomas, and were granted honors and awards as follows:
Theological School
BACHELOR OF THEOLOGY: Stephen Dandridge Cole.
Senior College
BACHELOR OF ARTS: Cum Laude: Steven David Hendricks, Karen Julie Schnarr.
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE: Cum Laude: Cara Glenn, Karl Edward Parker, Kay Marie Reuter, Louis Daniel Synnestvedt.
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE: Karl Daniel Hedstrom, Carole Friesen Heilman, Ralph Owen Horner, Curtis Leslie McQueen.
Junior College
ASSOCIATE IN ARTS: With Distinction: Christine Alan, Sarah Ann Bruell, Kent Cooper, Sheila Anne Fitzpatrick, Roxanne McQueen, Kira Lee Runion, Winyss Elizabeth Shepard, Theresa Louise Smith, Maret Evelyn Taylor.
ASSOCIATES IN ARTS: Janice Dawn Alan, Eric Parker Asplundh, Martha Childs, Thomas MacFarlan Cole, Keith Alden Cooper, Dario Jose dos Santos, Gary Owen Edmonds, Patricia Anne Field, Keith Genzlinger, Erin Bridget Keegan, Denise Margaret Kendig, William Lawson Kunkle, Nancy Jo Latta, Jill Sharon Luig, Kendal Leigh Lyon, Karen Eileen Rogers, Eric Alexander Rohtla, Sarah Louise Waters, Trevor George Woofenden, Lynn Christine Zimmerman.
Girls School
DIPLOMA: With Honors. Elizabeth Sarah Acton, Sherrin Bochneak, Carolyn Bostock, Wendelyn Bostock, Karen Childs, Chara Cooper, Freya Endrede Gholson, Marcine Gladish, Martha Jean Mash, Charie Pendleton, Dorothy Susan Posey, Sharon Lee Roberts, Susan Tory Rogers, Linda Dawn Simonetti, Marcia Gwyn Smith, Teryn Synnestvedt, Carla Zecher.
DIPLOMA OR CERTIFICATE: Angela Acton, Emily Alden, Kim Doris Alden, Denise Alford, Martha Jean Anderson, Patricia Lynn Austin, Brin Diane Burnham, Natalie Clara Cole, Cindy Lou Cook, Sharene Crampton, Jill Dianne Delyea, Janet Susanne Dristy, Gail Genzlinger, Stacy Lea Genzlinger, Aileen Horigan, Eden Horigan, Sharon Eleonore Junge, Elizabeth Ann Lau, Duana Pearl McQueen, Heather Anne Miller, Wendalyn Jo Packer, Gwenda Jean Parker, Beth Pitcairn, Jenny Marie Pitcairn, Naomi Pryke, Shirley Wynne Reams, Shirley Candace Rose, Tina Patricia Schnarr, Jennifer Kelly Smith, Suzanne Ruth Spracklin, Roberta Say Stein, Wendy Aileen Stroh.
Boys School
DIPLOMA: WITH HONORS: Donald Blair, David Cooper, Jonathan David, Thomas David, Stephen Frost, Brent Gurney, Wayne Gyllenhaal, David Hotson, Howard Hotson.
DIPLOMA OR CERTIFICATE: Bruce Bostock, Patrick Brannon, Bruce Brecht, Russell Cole, Anthony Cowley, Andrew Coy, Gordon David, Bennet Dunlap, Mark Elder, Mark Elliott, Robert Friesen, Aaron Gladish, Charles Grubb, Max Gyllenhaal, Daric Hasen, Gerald Hill, Patrick Hogan, Michael Holmes, Keith Hyatt, Bradley Johns, William Lodge, Scott Martz, Anthony Rose, Matthew Smith, Cameron Synnestvedt, Shawn Synnestvedt, Willard Thomas, Philip Tyler, Nelson van Zyverden, Robin Wiebe, Van Zeitz, Mark Zimmer.
Theta Alpha Awards
The Theta Alpha "Alice Henderson Glenn" award was given by the faculty of the College to Sarah Ann Bruell.
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The Theta Alpha pin was awarded to the following senior in the Girls School: Chara Cooper.
Sons of the Academy Awards
The Sons of the Academy award to outstanding male student(s) in the senior and junior college was granted to Karl Edward Parker.
The Sons of the Academy gold medal was awarded to Donald Blair and Wayne Gyllenhaal and the silver medal to Max Gyllenhaal.
Academy Graduates Totals
1977 1976 1975 1974 1973 1972 1971 1970 1948
School
Theological 1 2 1 2 4 2 1 0 2
Sr, College 10 10 3 9 7 10 6 12 8
Jr. College 29 21 34 7 21 24 19 19 26
Boys School 41 38 33 28 43 32 38 25 14
Girls School 49 44 41 43 42 34 33 40 15
Totals 130 115 112 83 117 102 97 96 65
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ORDINATIONS EDITOR 1977
Announcements
Cole.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 19, 1977, Candidate Stephen Dandridge Cole into the first degree of the priesthood, the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King officiating.
Orthwein.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., June 12, 1977, the Rev. Walter Edward Orthwein III into the second degree of the priesthood, the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King officiating.
OUR HEAVENLY FATHER Rev. ORMOND ODHNER 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII SEPTEMBER, 1977 No. 9
Our Father, Who art in the heavens. Matthew 6:9.
Thus did the Lord teach us to begin our prayer: "Our Father, Who art in the heavens"-words that name the God to whom we pray, and words that describe His quality.
Again and again, however, the Writings teach that prayers addressed directly to God the Father are prayers to an invisible God, that is, prayers to an unknown, unknowable, incomprehensible God. "No man hath seen the Father at any time." What is the infinite as it is in itself? What is God as He is in Himself? That is God the Father, a Being totally beyond our comprehension, and our comprehension, our understanding, or our mental sight. Even to that sight, God the Father is completely invisible; and with that which we cannot comprehend, we cannot be conjoined. As we are taught in The True Christian Religion, conjunction with an invisible God is as a man directing his sight out into the vast emptiness of space: without a visible object, it goes on and on and ends up in nothingness.* Hence we are also taught that prayers directed immediately to God the Father are "futile,"** and are taught again that when prayers are made directly to the Father, the Lord as it were stands aside, and hence is unable to grant to man the benefits of His redemption.***
* TCR 787
** AR 566
*** Inv. 43
"Our Father, who art in the heavens." The Lord could not have been teaching us to pray to an unknown, unknowable, invisible God with whom there can be no conjunction, nor was He teaching that; for now God the Father is a visible God, visible in His own Divine form. "No man hath seen the Father at any time," yes; but "the only-begotten Son, He hath set Him forth to view" to the eye of the mind, to the understanding, for the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the Human, the Divine Human, of the Father.
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Is not this the meaning of the opening phrases of "the faith of the new heaven and the New Church," as that is set forth in The True Christian Religion, "The Lord from eternity who is Jehovah came into the world. . ."? Who came into the world? Jehovah, God the Father. And did not Isaiah prophesy this when he said, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and shall call His name Immanuel, God-with-us," and again, "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given,. . .and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, Father of eternity"?
"Our Father, who art in the heavens": The Lord Jesus Christ is our heavenly Father, a truly visible God; and to approach the visible God, we are told, is like, not gazing into the emptiness of space, but rather beholding a man in the air, spreading forth his hands, and inviting to his arms.*
* TCR 787
"Our Father who art in the heavens": our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, But how can this be! How can it be that He who once lay as an infant in a Bethlehem manger, is now our heavenly Father!
Even in the case of an ordinary mortal, the adult he becomes is far different from what he was when an infant in the cradle. From what we are told, furthermore, the person who is regenerated and enters heaven as an angel is even more different, immeasurably more different, from what he was as an infant. What then of Him who was conceived of Jehovah, conceived of the Divine Father Himself, and who, through life on earth, entered into total union with His Father?
Each mortal child, we are taught, receives its soul from its father-not its life, for life comes from the Lord alone, but its soul; and the soul it a created, finite thing, and in man is simply that inmost created vessel that receives life from the Lord in human form. That soul builds up around itself, out of substances provided by the mother, a human body in correspondence with itself. Therefore is it said that what comes from the father is interior, what comes from the mother is exterior; and concerning all this we read, "In the seed from which . . . man is conceived there exists a graft or offshoot of the father's soul in its fulness; . . . and by means of this his body is formed, . . . which body may become a likeness either of the father or of the mother, the image of the father still remaining within it, and constantly striving to put itself forth."* And in another place, "The image of the father is implanted in the body, at first obscurely, but afterwards (notice these words) afterwards more and more evidently as the child applies himself to the studies and offices of his father."**
* TCR 103
** Can., Redeemer ix:2
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Now, the soul of a man, though a created thing, is spiritual, not natural and material. Natural, material things can be divided spatially. Not so, spiritual things. But a man's soul, being spiritual, can, without loss to itself, reproduce itself in fullness, again and again, times without number; and each one of these reproductions is an entity in itself.
The Lord was conceived of Jehovah the Father. The Divine was His soul. And the Divine, being infinite, can neither be divided nor yet even reproduce itself in a distinct and separate entity. (The Divine is infinite; two infinites cannot exist.) The infinite Divine itself was the Lord's soul, for He was conceived of Jehovah. It was God the Father who took to Himself a body from the mother and formed it into correspondence with Himself. And as everything spiritual that a mortal child has comes through the father, so everything spiritual, nay, Divine, that the Lord received came from the Father and was the Father taking on His own human form.
The Lord's life was Divine from conception. Life is love. His every love, therefore, was also Divine, even from conception; and it is the will of the Divine love to save the human race, and to lead men into conjunction with itself that it may bless them with eternal happiness. That was the only love that ever inwardly motivated the Lord's words and deeds while He was here on earth.
Now, we have already seen that "the image of the father is implanted in the body, at first obscurely, but afterwards more and more evidently as the child applies himself to the studies and offices of his father." To an infinite degree was this the case with the Lord. By the age of twelve years, apparently, He had already began to learn or discover His mission in life, to save humanity for it was at that age that He said to Mary (when she and Joseph had found Him in the temple), "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?"
"His Father's business"-humanity's salvation. And where had been the hope of humanity's salvation! In the Word, the Word of the Lord. Are we not taught, apparently in line with this, that the Lord willed to imbue Himself with no other knowledges than those of the Word? Study the Word He did; and thus did He apply Himself to "the studies and the offices of His Father," the infinite, Divine Father. The Word. the Word of the Old Testament, which from beginning to end, in its internal sense, is a prophecy of what He would do to glorify His Human make it Divine, fully unite it with the infinite Divine that was His soul, and this, that mankind might once again be saved.
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But the Divine revelation in the Word of the Old Testament, adapted as it was to the state of the ancient Jews, was not enough in its letter to free man from the powers of hell and to bring him fully into free and rational conjunction with the visible God; and the Lord, therefore, could not rest content with its literal teachings, and much less so with the misinterpretations imposed upon those teachings by the leaders of the ancient Jewish Church. He studied those teachings, yes; but His love of humanity's salvation led Him to penetrate them to the Divinity that lay inmostly within them, and then to re-state that inmost Divine truth in His own Divinely human words. "Ye have heard that it hath been said to them of old time, Thou shalt not swear falsely But I say unto you, Swear not at all." "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies."
Thus it was that the Lord first made His Human, His Human mind and character, to be Divine truth in very form, Divine Human truth sufficing to save humanity. And then, by living that truth in its inward form, by fulfilling the Word's every prophecy concerning Himself, and finally by rising through the gates of death, (and all this in spite of the ceaseless temptations induced upon Him by the hells!-finally He made His Human to be Divine Good also, fully united with the Father.
God the Father at last was fully revealed to man in His own Human, the Divine Human that we address in our prayers, the Lord our Savior, Jesus Christ. This is our Father who is in the heavens, our heavenly Father Himself.
Our Father in the heavens, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. But what is it, exactly that is meant by the term, heavenly Father? The Writings answer, that by the Father is meant the Divine good or the Divine love itself, and more specifically, that by our heavenly Father, our Father who is in the heavens, is meant the Divine Good or the Divine love that is in the truths that proceed from the Lord.
Usually we think of love or good as being typified by the feminine, and think of truth or wisdom as being typified by the masculine; and so do they appear in external form. But even as the inmost of the feminine is wisdom, and her form in the love that clothes that wisdom, so also the inmost of the masculine is love, (the love of growing wise with us), and his form is the truth or wisdom that clothes that love. And God He is in Himself, God the Father, is nought but infinite good, infinite love; and our Father in the heavens is that infinite love in the truth that goes forth from Him.
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Think a while of this, for this is the heavenly Father to whom we pray, and this, exactly, is the Lord Jesus Christ: The infinite love that is in the Divine truth that created and every moment re-creates the universe, the infinite love that is in the Divine truth that guides our lives (Divine Providence, that is) and leads us into heaven.
The Writings state several purposes for which the Lord was born on earth; but chief among them, perhaps, was to show forever that God is Man, and at the same time to show what Man is-is, or should be. And what is that? It is love taking form in wisdom, good taking form in truth. There is nought else that is truly human in any man; and this is the human that he receives by being re-created, reborn, into the image and likeness of God. And this is what the Lord became through the process of His glorification; the infinite love within the Divine truth that proceeds into the heavens and forms and ever re-creates those heavens.
This is our heavenly Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray to Him daily, not just with our lips, but with our hearts, when in every state of life we approach God the Father (the Divine love) through and by means of the Divine Human truths in which He is revealed. For no man cometh unto the Father, but by Him. There is no approach to the Divine love except through the truths of His Divine Human. Let us, then, turn with our hearts to those truths and apply them to our lives, for then will our prayer to Him be the prayer of our hearts and not just of our lips when we say, "Our Father, who art in the heavens. . . ." Amen.
LESSONS: Psalm 103. Matthew 6:6-18, 24-33. Arcana Coelestia 8328.
Title Unspecified EDITOR 1977
Frequent mention is made of THE FATHER WHO IS IN THE HEAVENS, and there is then meant the Divine in heaven, thus the Good from which is heaven. Regarded in Itself the Divine is above the heavens; but the Divine in the heavens is the Good that is in the Truth that proceeds from the Divine . . . (see Matt. 5:45, 48; 6:9; 7:211 . . . .). The Divine that is in the heavens is the Good which is in the Divine Truth that proceeds from the Lard; but the Divine above the heavens is the Divine Good Itself. By "a place for Thee to dwell in" is signified heaven were is the Divine Truth that proceeds from the Lord, for this makes heaven. How the case is with the Divine truth that proceeds from the Lord, that it is in heaven good, may be illustrated by comparison with the sun, and with the light that is from the sun. In the sun is fire, but from the sun proceeds light, which light has within itself heat, from which gardens sprout forth, and become like paradises.
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The very fire of the sun does not pass to the earth (for it would burn up and consume all things), but the light wherein is heat from the fire of the sun. In the spiritual sense this light is the Divine Truth; the heat is the good in the Truth from the Divine Good; and the resultant paradise is heaven. AC 8328.
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR? Rev. DANIEL W. HEINRICHS 1977
(Delivered to the Third Ohio District Assembly, May 13-15, 1977.)
When the Lord was on earth, He was approached by one of the Pharisees who was a lawyer, and asked: "Master, which is the great commandment of the law?"* He was not asking because he wanted instruction from the Lord, but because he wanted to trip Him up in front of the people. The Lord answered: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
* Matt. 22:36
On another occasion when the Lord had bested the Sadducees when they attempted to trap Him, one of the scribes, seeking to discredit Him, asked: "Which is the first commandment of all?"* The Lord replied: "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength:' this is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
* Mk. 12:28
On yet another occasion a lawyer attempting to discredit the Lord stood up and asked: "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"* The Lord asked him: "What is written in the law? How readest thou?" And he answering said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thy self."
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The Lord told him: "Thou hast answered right: this do and thou shalt live. But he, wishing to justify himself, said And who is my neighbor?" In answer to this last question the Lord told the parable of the good Samaritan.
* Lu. 10:25
I draw your attention to these three incidents because they bear powerful testimony to the fact that love to the Lord and love toward the neighbor are the two central truths of religion. "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." "There is no other commandment greater than these." "This do and thou shalt live." These are strong and unequivocal statements. Because these are the two fundamental laws of life it is incumbent upon us to focus our attention on them periodically.
Three years ago, at the First Ohio District Assembly, I addressed you on the subject of "Loving the Lord." Today I invite you to give earnest consideration to the vital subject of loving the neighbor.
We would note that the lawyer, wishing to justify himself asked: "Who is my neighbor?" Though he asked this question in order to justify himself, he nevertheless asked a very important and valid question. Who is the neighbor that we are to love? As most of you well know, there is a considerable amount of instruction given us by the Lord in the Writings in answer to this question. In the time allotted here, we can review only briefly the teachings given on this subject and indicate some of the more important applications of this doctrine to our lives. Who is our neighbor? The Writings have this to say:
The general opinion at the present day is that every man is equally the neighbor, and that every one who is in need of help must be benefitted. But it is the part of Christian prudence to search well the quality of a man's life, and to exercise charity in accordance therewith. The man of the internal church does this with discrimination, thus with intelligence; but . . . the man of the external church does it indiscriminately.*
* AC 6704
The Word in many places treats of those who are in "darkness," in "the shadow of death," and in "thick-darkness," whose eyes the Lord will open; and by them are meant the Gentiles, who were in good works, but not in any truths, because they did not know the Lord, nor did they have the Word. Exactly similar to these are they in the Christian world, who are in works alone and in no truths of doctrine, therefore they cannot be called anything else than Gentiles; they know the Lord indeed, but yet do not approach Him, and they have the Word, but yet do not search for the truths therein.*
* AR 110:2
The passage goes on to explain that in the spiritual world evil spirits have power through those who are in good works without truths to guide them, and that without them they would have no power.
436
The evil spirits present themselves to such people claiming that they are their neighbor and should therefore be benefitted by them. "On hearing this they approach, and give aid; nor do they inquire who and what he is, because they do not have truths, by which alone one can be distinguished from another."
In another passage we are told that
they who are in external truths know the mere general truth that good is to be done to the poor; and they do not know how to discern who are truly poor, and still less that by the 'poor' in the Word are meant those who are spiritually so. In consequence of this, they do good alike to the evil and the good, not being aware that doing good to the evil is doing evil to the good, for thus there is gives the evil the means of doing evil to the good; and therefore they who are in such simple zeal are subject to the greatest infestations from the cunning and deceitful. They, on the contrary, who are in internal truths know who are the poor, and discriminate among them, and do good to every one according to his quality. . . . Therefore they do not suffer themselves to be led away by the mere name of neighbor, nor to do evil from the persuasion of the good which the name induces.*
* AC 1820:2, 3
If we are observant of what is happening in the world we find abundant confirmation of the teaching that the general opinion today is that every man is equally the neighbor. In fact there is a continuing pressure to force us to regard all people as being the same and as equally worthy of our consideration and benefits. As a result of this attitude vast sums of our money are spent by local, state and federal agencies with relatively little or no discrimination as to the civil or moral quality and hence worthiness of the recipients. Much of this indiscriminate charity is, I am sure, well motivated, but the Writings, in speaking of those who practice charity in this way, say,
They . . . are not aware that charity toward the neighbor consists in anything beyond giving of their own to others, and in feeling pity for anybody who may seem to need it, because they call every body the neighbor without distinction; and yet . . . the neighbor is all the good in others . . . consequently those who are in good; and this with every possible distinction.*
* AC 2417:6
If you should say to yourself, "Every man is my neighbor, and is therefore to be loved without distinction," a devil-man and an angel-man or a harlot and a virgin might be equally loved. Use is the neighbor, because every man is valued and loved not for his will and understanding alone, but for the uses he performs or is able to perform from these. Therefore a man of use is a man according to his use; and man not of use is a man not a man, for of such a man it is said that he is not useful for anything; and although in this world he may be tolerated in a community so long as he lives from what is his own, after death when he becomes a spirit he is cast out into a desert.*
* AE 1193:2
437
The essential point in these passages is that all men are not our neighbor equally. Good is our neighbor. Use is our neighbor. We are to love others according to their good-their spiritual, moral and civil good. We are to love them on account of their potential and actual use. We are to act towards others in such a way that their use is supported and prospered, and the good that is in them is enhanced.
What of those who refuse to be of use? What of those who display no spiritual, moral or civil good-the immoral, the amoral and the lawless? How are we to regard them and act toward them?
The Writings say:
That man is in charity and mercy who exercises justice and judgment by punishing the evil and rewarding the good. There is charity in punishing the evil, for to this are we impelled by our zeal to amend them, and at the same time to protect the good, lest these suffer injury at the hands of the evil. In this way does a man consult the welfare of one who is in evil. . . and express his good feeling toward him, as well as to others, and to the common weal itself; and this from charity toward the neighbor.*
* AC 2417:7
Who the neighbor is and what the quality of the neighbor is can only be known from the truths of the Word rationally understood.* During childhood and youth most people are taught that they are to love their neighbor. Those who are brought up with religion are taught this from the Word. Being external and natural they are more aware of and affected by the external and natural needs and wants of men. Understanding the Word according to the literal sense, they also believe that they are not to judge their neighbor. It is inevitable, therefore, that in this state their charity will be indiscriminate. Such works may be inspired by charity in the heart, but because done from external truth it is, for the most part, not actually charity. Such a person, the Writings say, "does good to beggars more than to others, because he believes that they are the poor who are meant in the Word; hot considering that such . . . for the most part live an impious and wicked life, despise whatever belongs to Divine worship and surrender themselves to idleness and sloth."**
* See AC 3768:2
** AC 3688:3
Such external, indiscriminate charity is acceptable in the young prior to regeneration, and, in fact, can initiate a person into the process of regeneration when done from conscience and good will. But if regeneration progresses man is then enlightened by the Lord in these matters.
He then makes the distinction, and renders aid only to the upright and good, knowing that to aid the wicked is to do harm to many, inasmuch as by his benefits and service he supplies the wicked with the means of injuring others.
438
At last, when he is regenerate, he does good only to the good and pious, because he is then affected not with the person of him to whom he does good, but with the good that is in him; and inasmuch as the Lord is present in what is good and pious, he thereby through his affection for what is good testifies his love to the Lord. When the man is in this charity from the heart, he is regenerate.*
* AC 3688:4
Regeneration can only take place through applying the truths of the Word rationally to one's life. Furthermore it is only in the Word that we learn that "good is the neighbor because the Lord is in good, and therefore in the love of good the Lord is loved."*
* AC 3768:2
The quality of charity that exists generally in the world today is clearly contrasted in the Writings with the quality of charity that prevailed in the Ancient Church. We read:
As the ancients were in representatives and significatives of the Lord's kingdom, in which there is nothing but celestial and spiritual love they had also doctrinal things that treated solely of love to God and of charity toward the neighbor; and by virtue of these doctrinal things they were called the wise. . . . From these doctrinal things they also knew what charity is, namely, the affection of being of service to others without any end of recompense; and also what is the neighbor toward whom there should be charity, namely, all in the universe, but still each with discrimination. At this day these doctrinal things are utterly lost, and in place of them there are doctrinal things of faith, which the ancients accounted as relatively nothing. At the present day the doctrinal things of love to the Lord and of charity toward the neighbor are rejected. . . . and thus are so completely lost that there remains scarcely any trace of them. For who at the present day knows what that charity is which is devoid of all regard for self, and which is averse to everything that is for the sake of self? And who knows that the neighbor is every one, with discrimination according to the kind and amount of good in him? Consequently in the supreme sense the Lord Himself (is neighbor), because He is in good, and good is from Him, and the good which is not from Him is not good, however much it may appear to be so.
And because it is not known what charity is, and what the neighbor, it is not known who they are that in the Word are signified by the poor, the miserable, the needy, the sick, the hungry and thirsty, the oppressed, widows, orphans, captives, the naked, sojourners, the blind, the deaf, the halt, maimed, and others; when yet the doctrinal things of the ancients taught who these were, and to what class of the neighbor, and thus of charity, each belonged.*
* AC 3419:2, 3
The passage goes on to explain that the ancients were primarily concerned with those in the spiritual states to which these conditions correspond and only secondarily with those who were naturally such. In other words, they were concerned with the spiritual welfare of the neighbor primarily and only secondarily with his natural welfare.
439
We are informed that the doctrines which were known by the ancients categorized the neighbor under the various names mentioned above. They knew the various classifications of the neighbor and into which classification a person belonged. For example, by the "hungry," they understood those who, from affection, desire good. By the "thirsty," those who desire truth from the affection of truth. By the "naked," those who acknowledge that they are destitute of good and truth.*
* AC 4956
In addition to knowing these things, their doctrines taught them how to practice charity toward those in these various categories. Their doctrines were focused on life. It was the Lord's intent, in establishing the New Church, that genuine charity should be re-established. The New Church man, in his relationships with his fellow-man, should, from the truths of doctrine, thoroughly examine his neighbor to discern what ought to be loved, and in loving and conferring benefits, regard the quality of the other's use.*
* See F 21e
But the doctrines not only reveal that every man is the neighbor according to the quality and amount of good in him, and that these fall into various categories; they also reveal that there are various degrees of the neighbor. We read
Not only is man in the singular the neighbor, but also man in the plural, for a society, smaller or greater, is the neighbor; our country is the neighbor, the church is the neighbor the Lord's kingdom is the neighbor; and so above all is the Lord. All these are the neighbor who is to be benefitted from charity. These also are ascending degrees of the neighbor; for a society of many is the neighbor in a higher degree than is an individual man; our country in a higher degree than a society; in a still higher degree the church; and in a still higher degree the Lord's kingdom; but in the highest degree the Lord is the neighbor. These ascending degrees are like the steps of a ladder, at the top of which is the Lord.*
* AC 6918
These are the degrees of the neighbor, and according to these degrees charity ascends; but these are degrees in successive order, in which a prior or higher degree is always preferred to a posterior or lower one.*
* AC 6824
We would note that the doctrines also treat of self as the neighbor. They tell us that everyone must make provision for himself and those dependent upon him, both for the present and the future. If he did not he would not be in a position to be of use and service to others.* In speaking of self as the neighbor the Writings emphasize that the end that the man has in view is of primary importance.
* AC 6934
If the end is that he may become richer than others merely for the sake of riches, pleasure, eminence, and the like, the end is evil; and therefore he who from such an end believes he is neighbor to himself, injures himself to eternity.
440
But if the end is that he may acquire wealth for the sake of the necessities of life, for himself and for his family, so as to be in a state to do what is good according to the doctrine of charity, he takes care of himself for eternity.*
* AC 6935
He who turns his ends to himself, turns himself toward hell; but he who turns his ends from himself to the neighbor, turns himself toward heaven.*
* AC 6938
It is clear from the teachings concerning the doctrine of charity toward the neighbor, that if we are going to live a life of genuine charity, if we are going to love our neighbor wisely, it will require considerable study, reflection and application on our part. Simply following the ways of the world will not do, for as we noted the Writings were less than flattering when speaking of the quality of charity as practiced at the present time. We must learn to discern what is good in others, and between the various kinds and degrees of good. We must also learn to evaluate uses, for the greater the use and the diligence with which it is performed, the more is a person our neighbor, and therefore to be benefitted. Furthermore, in our day-to-day choices and decisions we should conscientiously seek to put the higher degrees of the neighbor before the lower. In this connection, I would draw your attention to the following teaching.
Since man was born for eternal life, and is introduced into it by the church, the church is to be loved as the neighbor in a higher degree (than one's country) because it teaches the means which lead to eternal life and introduces man into it, leading to it by the truths of doctrine and introducing into it by goods of life. . . . The church is the neighbor that is to be loved in a higher degree, thus even above one's country, for the reason also, that by his country man is initiated into civil life, but by the church into spiritual life, and by that life man is separated from merely animal life. Moreover, civil life is temporary life, which has an end and which is then as if it had not been; while the spiritual life is eternal, having no end. . .The distinction is like that between the finite and the infinite, between which there is no ratio; for the eternal is the infinite as to time.*
* TCR 415
I would like to focus your attention on this teaching concerning the church as the neighbor which is to be loved and benefitted, and examine some of its implications. We would recall the teaching cited above in which it was said that a higher degree is always to be preferred to a lower degree.* The reason for this is that when the neighbor in a higher degree is benefitted, all the lower degrees are benefitted simultaneously. For example, when we regard the church as our neighbor in a high degree and benefit it by serving and supporting its uses so that it is strengthened and its influence extended, then we are at the same time promoting the spiritual welfare of the people in our country and communities.
441
Note the following teaching: "The church is more the neighbor than our country, because he who has regard for the church, has regard also for souls and eternal life of the men who are in the country. For he desires and wills for another, heaven and happiness of life to eternity."**
* AC 6824
** AC 6822
As pastor of the Ohio District, I have often reflected that there is a great need for permanent, strong and flourishing centers of the church in this part of our country. It is a populous area, industrially and agriculturally well-developed, and there should be strong and permanent societies of the New Church in this section of our country. By this means the church specific could more effectively serve the church universal. At the same time, by more regular ministrations of the church, the spiritual development of the members themselves would be better served. Similarly, through such centers better provision could be made to meet the states and needs of the children than is possible now.
If we would love and benefit our country, if we would serve the good of society in general, if we would benefit the communities in which we live, if we wish to promote the real good of those with whom we live and work, if we wish to promote the eternal welfare of our children and ourselves, what greater use could we serve than to work conscientiously for the establishment of permanent societies of the church which could provide opportunities for regular public worship of the Lord and instruction from His Word?
In closing, I would invite your reflection on this passage which speaks of the celestial angels, and how they love and serve their neighbor.
With those angels uses are all things that are done with them from the Lord, and these have relation especially to the worship of the Lord, to His church, to the implantation of holy things, especially with little children . . . also to the good of society in general and also in particular. These are the things that chiefly belong to their love, because they belong to the Lord's love. The Lord operates these things with them by means of the love that is implanted in their life, which is such that they perceive in these things the delight of their life. Such things are the neighbor with them.*
* AE 828
442
JACOB Rev. PETER M. BUSS 1977
Part II
JACOB'S WOMEN AND CHILDREN
Jacob's first unselfish act is done for the girl he comes to love, and his uses for the next twenty years arise out of the love he has for her, and for his children. He comes to a well in a field and there is a stone on the mouth of the well. He learns that Rachel the shepherdess is to come, and when she comes he removes the stone, and himself waters the flock, and kisses her, and tells her who he is.
The well in the field represents the Word in the church. It is to this that a man turns when he tries to live a life of natural good, for here alone are the truths that can regenerate him.* In an earlier state, he has seen parts of the internal sense, but now he is looking at the sense of the letter, and so the Word is closed-there is a stone over the well's mouth.
* AC 3767, 3768
This first part of chapter 29 of Genesis is setting the stage once more for the whole series to come. For much of his stay in the natural, the man looks at and lives the truths of the letter. Yet even while he is doing this, he finds in the sense of the letter the central truths of the internal sense-love to the Lord and to the neighbor.* And he finds he has an affection for them, and the other truths they indicate. This affection, for interior truth, is Rachel.
* Ibid
Rachel was Laban's daughter, but her destiny lay with Jacob. The affection of interior truth is natural at first, it comes from collateral good. The appeal of interior truth to the mind is a natural appeal. Yet there is something so uplifting about the concept of a life of unselfish love to the neighbor and humble service to the Lord, that a man sees this as a thing of beauty. He loves the idea, he wants to marry it, and treasure it forever. He knows his happiness lies in this vision, even though he may know at times that he is not truly conjoined to it.
443
The wonderful love of Jacob for Rachel, which made the seven long years of work while he waited to marry her like seven days, mirrors the inspiration to regenerate life with a natural man. For her he watered the flock, representing that in the presence of the affection of interior truth, the internal sense of the Word will be opened and used.* For her he labored seven years, and then another seven-both representing states of holy study. (By this we understand both learning directly from the Word and reflection about the Word in states of use.) And her children, who represent the good and truth of the spiritual man, he loved above all the rest.
* AC 3798-99
Natural a man may be; but it is the hope and promise of the internal truth of the Word that he espouses, even in his formative years. The heavenly marriage is of the good in the natural with truth that is set on high, which uplifts and perfects it.* The beauty of the life which the internal sense presents shines forth even in the letter; and it must not be lost to sight, not even while we labor with earthly uses, using mostly earthly loves to do so.
* AC 3952
Yet during many years the main accomplishments are still in the natural realm, using the truths of the letter of the Word. Despite his longing, Jacob is not to have Rachel first. He marries Leah, the shortsighted elder sister, who represents the affection of external truth. The natural man conjoins himself with the truths where his heart lives, even though he sees higher, more desirable ones; and through these lower truths, he performs uses, and prepares the mind to receive interior truths.*
* AC 3820, 3834, 3843; cf. SD 4754
It is interesting that the New Word constantly uses the doctrine of charity to illustrate this process.* When we reflect on that doctrine, remembering that the conjunction with truth being spoken of here is a living conjunction, we can see illustrations in human life. A man in the New Church learns from the threefold Word that charity should be practiced with discrimination, with consideration for the quality of a man's good. He loves that truth, and wants to apply it, especially with those he loves. Therefore he may, for example, punish his son, for he knows that to show mercy to his faults would be "unmerciful mercy.''
* AC 3688, 3820, 3665, 3690-91
Is he following interior truth in applying the doctrine of discriminate charity? Probably not. He is applying it from the state of love in which he is, which is natural, and can only see natural states. He knows the letter-that the son has transgressed, and that some punishment is necessary. He does not sense the states of love and wisdom with his son, as a regenerate man would.
444
He does not sense what type of punishment is most likely to help, and which ones will hurt. He does not know from perception when to end the punishment, and when to show confidence and love fully once more. Those are spiritual insights, and he is not in the spiritual sense of the Word. He is in the language of the spiritual sense-charity with discrimination, charity according to the states of good-but in the practice of the letter. His handling of human states before regeneration is heavy and often insensitive, for although he longs to do better, the loves he has espoused and kept with him won't let him. His loves have to change: he has to be re-born. How many times have we wished we understood better the feelings of those we ought to help; and struggled to do so, and feared that we have done the wrong thing, but we could not help it? For as yet we may lack that continuous, spiritual flame in our hearts which produces spiritual light. "There is in each man's love the light of his life, for love is like a flame from which light issues; such therefore as is the love or flame, such is the man's light of truth."* We cannot manufacture this love, we have to prepare ourselves so that the Lord can let it inflow: as Jacob said to Rachel when she demanded children of him: "Am I in God's stead, who withholdeth from thee the fruit of thy belly?"**
* AC 3798
** AC 3909-11
Truths have to be lived out and confirmed in the natural before the heavenly marriage can take place. The conjunction between Jacob and Leah, or the handmaids, was not a conjunction of love, but it bore fruit. The ten sons of Leah and the handmaids (and the one daughter) represent the acknowledgment in faith and life of the general truths of the literal sense.* From principle, and in practice, a man honors these general truths. He does it in a natural way, guided to it by natural affections-the affection of external truth (Leah); exterior affections (Bilhah); and external ones (Zilpah).**
* AC 3963
** AC 3848, 3849:4, 3913, 3834
In one series the first four sons of Leah stand on their own, representing the complete ascent, from external faith, through faith in the will, and charity, to celestial love.* In a broader sense however the ten sons and later the twelve sons represent the acknowledgment of the essentials of the external truths of the Word.** The first things a man must honor in mind and act are those principles of faith, obedience, charity and love-which the four oldest sons represent. He does it in an external way-but these are the basic principles of the spiritual life.
* AC 3882
** AC 3963; cf. 3960, 3923
445
The next four sons are the puzzling part of the series, because the Lord is allowing a man to use such lowly means in his path to heaven. What we have to accept however is that such affections exist, and they are powerful inducements, although secondary ones. The true impetus to good is still the freedom of choice, the potentially genuine good with a man. But its conjunction is with exterior and external affections.
The Writings do not specify in any detail what are the affections represented by Zilpah and Bilhah, probably because they are so various with every man. Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, belonged to Laban, and was used by Rachel to bear children. She is said to represent exterior affections which are an affirming means between the good of truth and the affection of interior truth.*
* AC 389:4, 3848, 3913
Perhaps Bilhah represents the somewhat idealistic and naive excitement the natural mind can have about religious teaching. For example, a child and an adult in the New Church may feel that because we have the Word, we will go to heaven and enjoy all the lovely things there. We will have conjugial love, and our partners will be beautiful beyond imagination, or handsome and wise. We will have charity, here on earth, and will help lots of people because we are so kind and thoughtful. There are some very natural, good feelings attached to thoughts like these, and they make us feel affirmative to religion. Taken on their own they are very selfish, and they breathe the spirit of self-satisfaction and the love of excelling; but if subject to interior truth they are not so harmful.
A man is trying to follow the Lord, and some of the affections he uses are his good feelings about the nice things that happen to people who follow the Lord. The external mirrors of internal ideals are a spur to certain attitudes. They help give birth to his acknowledgment of the need for holy faith and the good of life-represented by Dan, the first child of Bilhah. They also make him feel that the good results of following the Lord are worth fighting for-they are worth the bitterness of temptation-represented by Naphtali, the second son.* Of course, he knows in his deeper thoughts that these are lowly motives, and there are much better reasons for the life of religion; but this handmaid is an added excitement, now and then.
* AC 3912-28
Zilpah has a more external representation. She represents the external affections, which are the appetites and pleasures belonging to the body.* There are many teachings in the Word that appeal to the delights of the body, such as that it is legitimate to enjoy those pleasures, that the pleasures of good loves increase, that a healthy body permits a healthy mind to live in it.
446
Those external truths of the letter which appeal to the lowest mental affections can be used to aid in our following the Lord. We are made aware, perhaps, of the real comfort of a good life-having a settled home and people who love and care for us, having fun with a clear conscience at the end of a job well done. Such emotions can help to lead us to an acknowledgment of good works, represented by Gad, the first son of Zilpah. And when we perform good services, we have a sense of external happiness, of well-being and contentment, we feel good. This is represented by Asher-the happiness of eternal life, and in a lower sense, the delight of the affections.**
* AC 3834, 3849:4
** AC 3934-39
These are good states of external affections, and they are all leading towards deeper acknowledgments. For the fifth and six sons of Leah are born in a away that is quite different from the first four. Leah lay with Jacob by Rachel's consent, for Rachel had bargained with Leah for some dudaim. What this is, we do not really know, but Rachel believed it to have power to make her pregnant, and for this she gave consent for Leah to spend time with Jacob.
The significance of this in the internal sense is that now for the first time does spiritual truth inflow into the affection of natural truth. Rachel's consent represents the presence of the spiritual, or interior truth, in the affection of external truth, and this begins to produce the heavenly marriage.* Thus Issachar is born, representing celestial conjugial love, or the acknowledgment of it in life; and then Zebulum-the heavenly marriage.**
* AC 3951-52
** AC 3952e, 3956-51, 3960
Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob, represents the affection of all these general truths which have been acknowledged.*
* AC 3963
And so we come to Joseph, who "represented the Lord's spiritual kingdom, which is the marriage itself that is treated of."* Here is the first presence of the internal spiritual in the natural mind. It is the germ of that presence at first, for Joseph is merely acknowledged here in heart and life from the conjunction of the good of truth with interior truth. But the mustard-seed will grow, and take over the whole natural mind in time.
* AC 3952e
From the pleasures of the body to the visions of interior truth there are affections which are intermediaries between a man and his destiny. On the one hand there is the Lord, working within that crescent new will-Jacob, the good of truth.
447
On the other side is the old will, where so much of the man's conscious delight has come from in the past. Between is a vast range of mediate goods, which partake of both lives with the man, and enable him to transfer his attention, in a free and gradual manner, from hell to heaven.
It is not a part of this study to set forth the doctrine of mediate goods, as it is developed from half-way through chapter 30 into 32 of Genesis. Only a few points need to be made to draw attention once more to our various levels of natural thought.
This whole series is dealing with mediate goods. When Jacob goes to the flock, representing natural domestic good, there is the use of a delight that partakes of good and evil.* The truths of the infancy of a man's new life, with their affections, are mediate goods.** So is collateral good and all its appurtenances-daughters, handmaids, flocks,*** although there is also what is interiorly evil present, at least in the flock.****
* AC 3518
** AC 3701
*** AC 4067, 4088
**** Cf. AC 3993
We first begin to hear directly about these goods when the genuine good of the natural is approaching a spiritual state, and the Lord is inducing a new state on them. For the speckled and spotted of the cattle and the black among the lambs and the spotted and speckled among the goats are brought into Jacob's flock, which represents a new quality in them. The false motivation of mediate good is removed. A man used to work, largely that he may succeed and excel others. Now he continues to work, and to excel others, and to accept the rewards of the world, but the motives of self has been separated.*
* AC 4174-75
The fact is that all that is good in mediate goods is from the presence of heaven in any case. Man believes the good is in his efforts, and takes credit for it, but his motives are only a means by which good can dwell with him. As good becomes more genuine, the old motive is seen to be what it is, and is rejected. The example is given time and again of societies of mediate good in the spiritual world, who are adjoined to man by the Lord, and by their means He inspires goods.* While these societies are with the man, and in the presence of heavenly societies, they are in a more perfect state; but when the man ascends, and they lose their states of good, they, like Laban, are indignant. They feel they have lost what is rightfully theirs, for merit is a primary characteristic with them; and in so feeling, they judge their own state, and further effect the separation. This is represented in the final conversations between Jacob and Laban, ending in a bond of separation.
448
The daughters are now Jacob's, the flock his by agreement; not even the teraphim, actually stolen, are spiritually his. They represent the truths adjoined to such societies, while seeming to belong to those of mediate goods.*
* AC 4067-4175
** AC 4151, 4158, 4162
Therefore it is justifiably said that the natural truth represented by Jacob had imbued itself with mediate good by the time it was ready to become spiritual.* Mediate goods had been a means by which a man had learned to love spiritual uses.** Now they have become a means, a subservient means through which uses may be performed! They have a different quality. They are part of the household of the good of truth; and that truth is ready to become spiritual. Now is the time when the truth of good, or celestial good, with its living perception, can once again manifest itself.
* AC 4234, 4243
** AC 4077
CONCLUSION
The series of Jacob does not lend itself to delineation into mechanical levels of the mind. We cannot classify Bilhah and Zilpah as belonging to the sensuous, and Leah to the lower middle natural. When the Word does speak of different levels in this series, it is nearly always by comparatives-interior, exterior, external, for example.
The thrust of this part of the revelation is towards an awareness of the sources of our motivations and affections. We are asked to see the affections represented by Jacob and Laban, by the daughters, the handmaids, and the flock, in relation to each other, and thus to see whence our feelings originate, and how they stand in relation to higher and lower ones. It is surely not easy to see these things, and at this stage of our church we are far from learned in them. Yet must we not believe that much of the world's misery and mental illness; a great deal of its depression and despair and hopelessness could be avoided if only men could know that the Lord knows every least natural feeling with perfect wisdom? Not only that, but He also molds and leads them and forms out of a monster a human form. We don't have to do it. All our natural affections are safe in His hands, if only we will take the essential step of repenting from the "more grievous evils, which render (us) detestable in the sight of God." "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, and is clean every whit."*
* Jn. 13:10
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"When a man shuns evils as sins he daily learns what a good work is, and the affection of doing good grows with him, and the affection of knowing truths for the sake of good . . . and thus his works become more truly good. Cease, therefore, from asking in yourselves, 'What are the good works that I must do, or what good must I do to receive eternal life?" Only cease from evils as sins and look to the Lord, and the Lord will teach and lead you."*
* AE 979
ANXIETY AND DESPAIR Rev. L. R. SONESON 1977
What causes states of anxiety and despair? Are they necessary? How can one get out of them? Will they continue to eternity?
How often these questions must run through our minds. Modern medicine tries to alleviate them with instant-cure pills. Psychology and psychiatry attempt to combat them by their means. But in spite of the many cures available to us, they continue to come to all but a fortunate few.
New Church men and women find it particularly discouraging. They often assume that if they were more faithful to the teachings of their church, they would be immune. If they had more faith and trust in the hands of Divine Providence, each potential state of anxiety or despair would dissolve into a blissful state of peace and tranquility. But is this true?
The human mind is a complex creation. Its unending changes and fathomless complexity baffle the inquirer. (Man has intelligence and uses it, but it escapes his full understanding.) It is truly the highest form of creation in existence. It is the finest product from the Hands of an Almighty Maker.
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The student of the Writings of the New Church appreciates the human mind more than anyone. The whole of Revelation, on one plane of the internal sense, attempts to unfold the workings of this remarkable mechanism. Every doctrine of the church deals with it, in one phase or another. The doctrines of degrees, of influx, of correspondence; the process of reformation and regeneration; the communion of angels and men; the internal and external man; conjugial love;-all describe some phase of the human mind and its growth.
One doctrine in particular, however, provides a doorway into the subject of man's states of despair and anxiety, and that is the doctrine of temptation.
There are literally thousands of passages in the Writings that discuss and explain this vital subject. It is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the Christian world today. What appears to the conscious mind regarding a genuine temptation is understandably deceiving. A definition that is over-simplified describes temptation as the choosing between good and evil. Common usage involves the idea of one being enticed or tempted by the pleasure of an evil act.
Of course this is true, in a sense, but it does not explain the source of these evil delights in man, nor does it answer how such states of temptation leave permanent impressions on the true character of man. Furthermore, no amount of scientific investigation could discover that temptation is actually a scene from a tremendous battle raging within the confines of the human mind. It is a combat of momentous proportions, between the powers of heaven and hell. Our minds are but the setting of these battles.
Though the subject is boundless, we would call attention to a few of the teachings on temptation, with particular interest on how they explain our changing states.
Every one of us experience moods throughout the day. At any given moment we are experiencing one, though it is not always easily described. At times it is definitely one of elation and optimism. Frequently we recognize our state of mind as anxiety, fear or utter despair. But just as often, we are at a loss to perceive what we are feeling. We sense something is happening deep within us, but no amount of self-examination seems to explain it or change it.
One thing we can observe is that states appears to be temporary. They pass. Sooner or later our feelings of the moment change-from great joy to sadness, from despair to peace and tranquility, or from indifference to great concern. The well-adjusted find comfort in this knowledge-that sad periods will eventually come to an end, and that delights should be enjoyed while they last, until they become only a part of our memory.
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The pessimist seems blind to his 'up' periods, and dwells only on his 'lower' states of mind, seemingly perpetuating them.
But why should man pass through these oscillating periods of joy and sadness? What use do they serve? The doctrines provide a ready explanation in the teachings on temptation. We read:
What is good, nay, what is blessed and happy, no one can perceive with an exquisite sense unless he has been in a state of what is not good, not blessed, and not happy. From this he acquires a sphere of perception, and this in the degree in which he has been in the opposite state. The sphere of perception and extention of its limits arise from the realizing of contrasts. These are causes of vastation or desolation.*
* AC 2694:2
Human experience confirms this truth. No man can value civil freedom as much as one who has been in slavery. The gift of health is most appreciated by a man who has suffered great pain and sickness. The delights of being useful mean much more to one who has experienced bitter periods of uselessness. These introduce periods of anxiety and despair.
But there is more to it than that. Every man inherits a natural proprium. Proprium, remember, is the conscious sensation of self-life. No one can sense life inflowing from the Lord. As a result, no one can perceive that his thoughts and affections come from the spiritual world. The effect is that this self-centered world of appearances excludes a sensation of the reality of the spiritual world. The proprium, with its appearance of self-life, provides no comparison between what is good and true with what is false and evil. Indeed, all thoughts and affections appear true and good, as long as they satisfy our inherited self-centered loves. Whatever is opposed to our natural wants seems evil or bad. Whatever opposes our thoughts seems false.
As a result, we establish our good ends and worthy objectives in life, based on this one-sided view. II we want it, or thought of it, it is worthy of pursuit. Much of our life is so guided. However, the best laid plans of man are not always realized. Powers beyond our control intervene, causing frustration. During these periods our train of thought is radically changed, and new thoughts enter our mind. We begin to question if we are really masters of our own life. We are forced to question if we are truly in command of all the facts. We wonder about God, the after-life, a truth outside of ourselves We are placed in a position to choose-as in a temptation. But it is not a real temptation, we are told:
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Spiritual temptations are little known at this day. Nor are they permitted to such a degree as formerly, because men are not in the truth of faith, and would therefore succumb. In place of these temptations there are others, such as misfortune, griefs, and anxieties arising from natural and bodily causes, and also sicknesses and diseases of the body, which in a measure subdue and break up the life of a man's pleasures and cupidities, and determine and uplift his thoughts to interior and religious subjects. But these are not spiritual temptations, which are experienced only by those who have received from the Lord a conscience of truth and good. Conscience is itself the plane of temptations, wherein they operate.*
* AC 762
From this passage we can see that anxieties from natural and bodily causes are not true temptations, but they prepare a man for them. This is not to say that the despair and helplessness induced by disaster are not real and sometimes excruciating. They do much to develop empathy for others. They cultivate an appreciation for happier moments. But they are not temptations.
All men, good and evil, experience this form of anxiety and despair. Whenever one's desires are withheld from completion, one experiences sadness. When man-made goals are threatened, one senses anxiety. And when one knows for sure objectives will not be realized, one sinks to despondency.
But there is another kind of anxiety and despair that only the regenerating man undergoes. This is the result of experiencing spiritual temptations. It is when a man has a good quality in him that is attacked by the hells; the sensation is similar to a natural temptation. In this case, however, the good man has set for himself goals that are from the Lord, and not from himself. He desires to serve the neighbor, he seeks to establish the church, or he longs to build a trust in Divine providence. These worthy goals have become his objectives, but are not yet firmly established as a part of his life until they have undergone the attack of the hells in the form of a spiritual temptation. Concerning this type of anxiety and despair, we read:
When a man is being reformed, which is affected by combats and temptations, such evil spirits are associated with him as excite nothing but his things of knowledge and reason; and spirits that excite cupidities are kept entirely away from him. For there are two kinds of evil spirits, those who act upon his cupidities and those who act upon man's reasonings. The evil spirits who excite a man's reasonings bring forth all his falsities, and endeavor to persuade him that they are true, and even turn truths into falsities. A man must fight against these when he is in temptation; but it is really the Lord who fights, through the angels who are adjoined to the man. As soon as the falsities are separated, and as it were dispersed, by these combats, the man is prepared to receive the truths of faith. For so long as falsities prevail, a man never can receive the truths of faith, because the principles of falsity stand in the way.
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When he has thus been prepared to receive the truths of faith, then for the first time can celestial seeds be implanted in him, which are the seeds of charity. The seeds of charity can never be implanted in ground where falsities reign, but only where truths reign.*
* AC 653
From this teaching we come to see the stages every potential angel must undergo. The threats of death or pain (as natural temptation) cause us to reach out for answers to our dilemma. They create a thirst for truth outside of our sheltering proprium. They stir the teachings of Revelation afresh in our memory, but as yet not in our life. When the state of anxiety has passed, these universal truths can be seen with a healthy point of view. If they are accepted rationally in those high peaks of clear-sightedness and happiness, they can be brought into life and practiced. We begin to re-form our life according to them. They expose the falsities of our proprium, and replace them with a greater joy that can only come from seeing a truth.
When the Lord is ready to test those truths in us, He permits the hells to challenge them. The proprium, which needs the falsities to protect it, creates a great turmoil within. The hells gain entrance into our life through this inherited appearance of self-life and we again experience moments of despair. Confusion about what is true results. Closely-held beliefs seem threatened. Truth has exposed them as false, but we are reluctant to discard them.
Again our moods take a turn for the worse. We may appear irritable, defiant, and even cruel. Often our state of mind is unexplainable even to closest friends. The knowledge that a great battle is going on within us, between the hells and the heavens, brings little comfort at the moment. We sense only confusion and unhappiness. But eventually the state does pass, and if our faith has proved victorious, we come into a peace of mind never experienced before. Those truths which had previously only existed in the outer court of the mind, our memory, are now a part of our very life. They then become the seed-bed for the implantation of genuine charity.
But the cycle is repeated. Those evil spirits who excite a man's cupidities and evils are then permitted to attack those goods in us. Then follow new states of despair and frustration. These, we are told. are even more grievous than those when only the truths in us were attacked. We may experience moods that linger with us for long periods. Every good end we strive for seems to be thwarted.
We read: "Every temptation is attended with some kind of despair (otherwise it is not a, temptation), and therefore consolation follows.
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He who is tempted is brought into anxieties, which induce a state of despair as to what the end is to be. The very combat of temptation is nothing else. He who is sure of victory is not in anxiety, and therefore is not in temptation."*
* AC 1787
Armed with this fore-knowledge, sincere worshipers should be prepared to enter into such states. The combat of heaven and hell within us is a necessary process toward regeneration. Each battle we undergo is bound to affect moods and attitudes.
However, if we can maintain a semblance of external order, of outward charity and continued trust in the Lord during these periods of temptation, we know that eventually the state will pass. We cannot control these moods of despondency, but we can control our external actions toward others when they occur.
But most important to remember is that as we pass through our lonely periods of discouragement and frustration, if we continue to hold fast to a trust in the Lord,-that this is the Lord's doing,-we will come out the other end stronger and more firmly established in His Church. We will enter more fully into the delights of heaven-its peace and inner tranquility. Each step into darkness is a step closer to eternal light. And finally, someday we will be forever free from earthly states of hopelessness. We will be in the dwelling place of the Lord.
"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."*
* Rev. 21:4
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VISION THAT VANISHED Rev. CLAYTON PRIESTNAL 1977
In that primeval age, long before mankind succumbed to the lure of sensuality, before eyes were closed to the lessons written on flowers and fruits, men were instructed in the spiritual matters by the Lord in dreams and visions of ineffable splendor. Heaven was near; in truth, it was visible. Life's meaning was clear. God was not a remote Being whose throne was somewhere beyond the outermost reaches of the universe. Death was not a parting, or the end, but the ultimate and joyous fulfillment of destiny. This "golden age" has long since vanished even to history. Nowadays man gropes in relative darkness with only a dull sense of the great spiritual realities around him. Man can and does still dream after a fashion, but the sight of celestial visions disappeared when the influence of the senses gained ascendency.
Catching an actual glimpse of heaven or seeing the glory of a spiritual truth in a blossom is now too rare an experience to even think about. But in earliest Bible times this gift had not been completely lost. In Genesis it is recorded that the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. Jacob while slumbering on the rocky ground had a dream of a ladder extending from heaven to earth upon which angels were seen ascending and descending. A few prophets of the Lord's choosing were granted extraordinary supernatural experiences. The Apostle John, while on the isle of Patmos, saw the City of God coming down from heaven, although he did not suspect the significance of its four-square dimensions, streets of gold, and gates of pearl. Generally speaking, however, by the time the young child Samuel came to serve in the temple under Eli the Scripture declares that "open vision" was no more. Today man stands stolid and unseeing in a world which has become hopelessly confused and increasingly meaningless.
In the prophet Jeremiah's time the people were thoroughly corrupt and materialistic. He complained sorrowfully, ". . . the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord." Jeremiah's Book of Lamentations speaks to our age as well; his words have a timelessness, even after some twenty-six centuries. It has been said of this Old Testament elegy, "every letter was written with a tear, and every ward was the sob of a broken heart."
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The weeping prophet was lamenting the capture and destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. The fall and ruin of this ancient city with its sacred Temple is used in the Scripture to symbolize the spiritual decline of the church and the people. In contrast, the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation foretells of the emergence of a new church rich in truth and pure in goodness. It is this Holy City descending from God out of heaven which gives us the vision of a life truly Christian.
Sometimes as we turn from the sad, sad words of Jeremiah as he bemoaned the loss of his beloved Jerusalem, we wonder whether they might not rightly describe the state of the visible church today. Jeremiah's Jerusalem had lost spiritual values in the rigid observance of rituals. The world had become more important than heaven; earthly treasures were more precious than the riches of righteousness. Are there not evidences today that our God-given vision of a new quality of life has become blurred, perhaps even obliterated, by materialism and an over-dependence upon the sciences?
What we are suggesting is this: the very thing which happened eons ago when mankind began to lose the power of catching glimpses of heaven is taking place now. The same human trails which closed the portals of eternity to those who lived in most ancient days seems to be happening again in this present age, perhaps in the very Church we cherish. Little by little those who lived near the dawn of time began to trust the judgment of the eye rather than depend upon the intuitive dictates of the soul. The life which the fingers could touch, the eye see, and the ear listen to, supplanted the visions of the gardens of paradise and a close communion with heaven. Slowly the threshold of the land of the angels receded until it could no longer be seen or consciously crossed. Man began to be controlled by the determinations of sense experience This tragic decline of a celestial People is recounted in the early chapters of Genesis to serve as a lesson and a warning to all men for all time. Jeremiah saw a decided drift towards externalism and a profanation of sacred things by the people. Were Jeremiah living among us today his words might still be written with tears and carry the burden of a broken heart.
This presupposition should not be interpreted as an apostasy. It is not so intended. Nor do we feel inclined to visit the traditional wailing wall of Jerusalem, even figuratively. We believe the tarnished glory of the Holy City of men can be restored to its pristine luster. Our purpose is to encourage acceptance of the present-day challenge which confronts the few who are loyal to the "New Christianity."
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It would be unjust to leave any degree of censure of the visible Church expressed only in vague generalities. Let us be specific.
Nearly a decade ago some New Churchmen were in a state of intense expectancy as three astronauts prepared for a landing on the moon. In the Writings of our Church there are statements which assert that men live on the moon and the kind of life they lead is described in some detail. There was the hope that the discoveries of the astronauts would completely vindicate the claims of Swedenborg. Thus science would force men into an acceptance of the heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem, and the Church would grow into great popularity. The mere fact that some could wish for such an eventuality indicates a willingness to rely on external evidence to instill a faith in spiritual realities. Since the moon was found to be a barren wasteland with an environment unsuitable to support life, perhaps some rejected the teachings of the New Church as being unreliable. By allowing science to prove or disprove the validity of our religious faith, are we not guilty of the same error committed by the earliest dwellers on the earth?
There are other areas in which there can be a strong inclination to rely on the findings of science to validate the articles of our faith. In spite of the profusion of reasonable testimony found in the Writings of our Church, in addition to the declarations of the Scripture, we wait on science to provide the ultimate proof of the existence of an afterlife. One of the most widely read books of the day is entitled Life After Life, it is a study of the process called death made from a medical and psychological viewpoint. The experience of individuals who are dead, medically speaking, and then resuscitated confirms the statements of Swedenborg. It may be that an over-preoccupation with death from a this-world perspective will tend to destroy whatever insights men might have about the spiritual world.
In a very subtle way the feeling that spiritual truth can be found merely through a knowledge of correspondences is also symptomatic of materialistic thinking. When we sacrifice the integrity of the doctrines of the "new dispensation" by commingling them with the philosophies, theories, and sciences of men, we succumb to the power of the senses. The inevitable result of this practice is a deadening of the soul's sensitivity to spiritual truth.
This protest against the enticements of human knowledge does not in the least detract from the achievements and uses of science. It is a question of whether science is the servant of man's spirit or the master. Spiritual truth does not enter the mind by way of sight and sound, not from the outside through the physical senses, but by an inner perception, an internal dictate.
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By way of illustrating this process, let us observe that true marriage love between a man and a woman does not have its origin in a mutual attraction aroused by the senses, although this might appear to be the case. Deep within the innermost being of the couple involved there is an intuitive feeling that each belongs to the other. This awakened feeling of needing and complementing each other is merely confirmed by the sharing of external experiences; the essence of the love already existed in the deep and secret chambers of the heart.
This pattern recognized in the budding and blossoming of true marriage love is likewise the course taken in acquiring spiritual truth. There must be a state of receptivity in the soul before the seeds of spiritual truth can be implanted, take root, and grow. All the arguments of theologians, all the evidence produced by scientists and all the reasoning of philosophers, cannot convince a man of the existence of a Divine Being unless that person has the desire to believe.
In this age of advanced technology, when the eye beholds mechanical wonders undreamed of by our forebears, we must be alive to the danger of displacing spiritual truths with scientific knowledge. The laws of nature must never become more compelling than the insights and urgings of heaven. When this happens we suffer the sin of the ancients; the decrees of science replace the dictates of heavenly influx; the sounds of men are listened to with greater rapture than the soft whispering of angels. Thus Jeremiah's complaint, ". . . the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord," becomes applicable to our generation.
Even though the Lord no longer teaches man through open vision, we still have the power to lift the mind into heavenly light by means of the Holy Scripture and by a faithful study and contemplation of the teachings of our Church. If by vision we mean instruction, for this is the Scriptural significance of the word, we have the capacity to have visions which penetrate with greater depth into the meaning of life than those experienced by Abraham, Jacob, and the prophets, who lived long before the Second Coming of the Lord. Let us turn from earthly nightmares to the vision of spiritual realities. We can experience the wonders and splendor of the heavenly life, if not with physical eyes, then by an inner sight known only to the higher faculties of the soul.
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REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS NORMAN TURNER 1977
(Presidential Address to the 167th General Meeting of the Swedenborg Society, May 14, 1977.)
Towards the very end of the Arcana Coelestia and repeated without change in The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine is a short chapter on Ecclesiastical and Civil Government. I do not propose to deal with ecclesiastical government, other than to remark that this applies to those who have freely chosen to be so governed, and may therefore be presumed affirmative to observing its laws.
Civil law, however, must rule both those disposed to be law-abiding and those not so disposed, and therein lie many problems. The importance of the civil law is underlined in no uncertain terms, for we read that nothing less than the very survival of the human race depends on it. While the moral or spiritual man may indeed aspire to higher degrees of order, these cannot exist without the orderly basis of the civil law. Furthermore, no man starts off other than as a natural, indeed sensual man. In the course of his education, he must learn simple external obedience before he can learn to examine and control his inner motives. To expect otherwise is both premature and futile.
External order-conformity with the civil laws of the country-is to be maintained by the hope of rewards or by the fear of punishments, and it is the function of governors or magistrates, we read, to reward those who live according to order and to punish those who live contrary to order.
Of governors, the chapter goes on to detail the qualities required-that they should be skilled in the law and God-fearing; further that they should be subordinated in a hierarchy so that those tempted to exceed their authority may be controlled or rebuked by those higher. We are reminded that the dignity of all governors attaches to the office, not to the person. The highest governor is the sovereign, and we read how the wise monarch will consider himself subject to the law: he who considers himself above the law is not a king but a tyrant.
As we in Britain prepare to celebrate our Queen's Silver Jubilee, we can express gratitude that in the person of our present queen we have one who conscientiously upholds these qualities. There are too many cynics who see in royalty only the external trappings and privileges.
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In a world of crumbling standards of morality, Her Majesty has demonstrated by her personal example both her fear of God, and her respect for the civil laws enacted in her name. Especially, perhaps, we would applaud her obvious belief in the sanctity of family life, on which a stable society must depend. Long may she reign!
The topic of rewards at the national level is strongly associated in the public mind with the monarch, through the custom of periodic honors lists and investitures. There are, of course, many other forms of reward, among which we might think of honorary degrees and scholarships in the academic world, awards for literary or artistic achievements, medals, cups and shields for sporting prowess or for a wide range of hobbies from music festivals to flower shows.
Now the sort of rewards bestowed by the Queen are in general retrospective-a recognition of outstanding excellence and sustained effort in one's chosen field of work, be it government, commerce, the military services, industry, science or the arts. There are many other awards which are more openly competitive, where effort is spurred by the hope of achieving the rewards. We may be tempted to value these less highly, as appealing to lower motives, especially where the intrinsic value of the award seems disproportionately great. Let us not dismiss them too lightly, however, particularly as they apply to the young. Such rewards encourage men to aspire to excellence, and if they acquire wisdom in later years, they will see their rewards (or lack of them) in proper perspective.
Those who do well from a spiritual motive do not look for rewards. The angels of heaven would be horrified at any such suggestion. They nevertheless receive rewards, and are pleased to do so on account of the use they serve, but claiming no merit to themselves. Those who receive rewards in this world should also learn to receive them graciously, with due acknowledgment to partners, colleagues or employees who have contributed to their success, as well as to the donor.
By no means all will do so, of course. With some, the reward will confirm their self-love and love of dominion. Nevertheless, the order of society can still be preserved through the efforts of self-seeking men.
An important type of reward is the regular reward one find's in one's pay packet. Higher skills or responsibility should carry greater rewards, but assessment of just 'differentials' is far from easy. One could wish that men's labors were rewarded in proportion to their usefulness to society, rather than according to the inconvenience which society must suffer when their labor is withdrawn, but such judgment would call for a modern Solomon indeed.
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Now the subject of rewards and punishments must raise in our minds those ultimate consequences of our whole life on earth-the rewards and felicities of life in the angelic heavens or the miseries and torments of the hells.
A superficial reading of Swedenborg's descriptions of the other life can leave us with the impression that the angels enjoy the sort of privileged and showy munificence to which our own affluent and acquisitive society aspires: while the punishments of hell partake of the very tortures and degradations which the more liberally-minded would like to think we had put behind us, and which we are wont to condemn in Other nations. We must, of course, beware of reading our Heaven and Hell merely as a sort of travelogue.
It must be said that the process of judgment which determines a spirit's ultimate place in heaven or in hell is without the fallibilities of our earthly judicial system. For in the world of spirits, where judgment takes place, all externals which do not correspond to the interior state are successively stripped away, and the spirit's real character may be read plainly from his face. It is his loves and intentions which matter-the motives which inspire his actions rather than his past deeds in themselves.
A court of law in our world must consider a man's actions: did he or did he not commit some criminal act? That crime must itself be clearly defined in a penal code, and maximum penalties associated with it. Strict rules of evidence must be framed to protect the interests of the innocent accused. We have a rightful horror of convicting innocent men, and safeguards have to be set up, and the benefit of reasonable doubt given to the accused where the evidence is inconclusive. All these factors can unfortunately help the guilty to escape conviction. The loopholes of a necessarily rigid system can be searched out by the professional criminal, and to a disconcerting extent exploited by unscrupulous members of the legal profession. All this must concern us, for the Writings clearly declare that it is not charity to allow the guilty to go unpunished. Can we be surprised, for instance, if a zealous police force, seeing known criminals continually evade justice, takes the law into its own hands and plants incriminating evidence on them? Such action is in no way to be condoned, but that it happens from time to time is symptomatic of the righteous disgust felt by those who are striving to maintain public order against increasing odds.
Let us move on from the problems of establishing guilt and consider the subject of punishments. What do we see as the functions of punishments?
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First, there is the protection of the community, particularly where violence has been involved, so that people may feel free to go about their business unmolested, and that their property is respected.
There is secondly the question of deterrence-the discouragement of others who may consider like criminal activities. "External order is to be maintained by the fear of punishments." But there is more to punishment than deterrence. There is a widespread opinion which says "if this punishment does not in fact deter, then we might as well drop it." This school of thought seems to neglect the third aspect of punishment-retribution. He who fails to be deterred by threats or by the example of others must suffer actual retribution by sacrificing some of the things he holds dear, whether possessions, privileges, respect, liberty or even life itself. (The Writings do not exclude this possibility.)
A fourth possible use of punishment is that the wrong-doer should make some recompense to the injured party. Often these days, though, an offence is committed against such large impersonal organizations that it is hard to keep sight of this, and harder still to convince the offender of the gravity of his acts. Many a man who might shrink from robbing an individual will see nothing amiss in stealing from a large store or a railway company. "The council can afford it." "The insurance will pay up."
A fifth and final use of punishment is that of the reformation of the wrong-doer-persuading him to mend his ways and 'go straight'.
We have identified several different aspects of punishments, and a proper system of penalties must make distinctions between them.
Where the violent criminal is concerned, the first requirement-protection of others-calls for some form of imprisonment. But the mere segregation of the criminal with others of his sort does not constitute a sufficient deprivation to bring about any effort to reform.
May we not consider a parallel with the sequence of repentance, reformation and regeneration. These terms apply properly to an examination of our inner motives, but an external parallel can surely be drawn. The old will must first be broken, and the initial period of a prison sentence should surely have no other end than to break the evil will of the prisoner. If this can be done by a relatively short but rigorous regime, so much the better, though we will be prepared for many backslidings. Until evidence of some remorse is attained, however grudging and external, it is premature to concern ourselves with preparing the prisoner for a more honest life. Equally, it is unreasonable to expect a prisoner who, by the very nature of imprisonment, has been relieved of all responsibilities to adjust immediately to a useful life in society on his release.
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Surely there is need for a more deliberately programmed approach to punishment, with an ordered progression from harsh, even cruel discipline, through menial labor to more constructive employment, with a gradual relaxation of discipline as evidence of amendment is seen.
I have started with the serious, violent criminal. There are of course many situations calling for less severe penalties than imprisonment. A first offender in the courts may be sufficiently shamed by the mere fact of being charged. Then there are many shades of punishment before one reaches the judicial level at all. Many of the disorders in our colleges and schools point to a failure on the part of parents to give punishment wisely and consistently.
In our reading of the doctrines, we must apply them foremost to the regulation of our own lives, but we need also to consider their application to those who do not acknowledge a God, or indeed any authority outside themselves. Such will be constrained to obey the civil law only by rewards and punishments, and it is for this reason that I have thought it worthwhile to present these thoughts. To recapitulate, the survival of the human race depends on maintaining civil order.
NEIGHBOR LOUIS B. KING 1977
The quality of the neighbor is according to the quality of the good in man; or such as the man is, such is the neighbor. That all men are not equally the neighbor, the Lord's parable of the man wounded by robbers teaches, where it is declared that "he is neighbor who showed mercy on him." Luke x:29-37
Whoever does not distinguish the neighbor according to the quality of good and truth in him may De deceived a thousand times, and his charity become confused and at length no charity. A man devil may exclaim, "I am a neighbor: do good to me." And if you do good to him he may kill you or others. You are placing a knife or a sword in his hand.
The simple act thus. They say every man is equally a neighbor, and that they deem it no business of theirs to search into his duality; but God looks to that; I may only render assistance to a neighbor. Brit this is not loving the neighbor. Be who from genuine charity loves the neighbor inquires what the quality of a man is, and does good to him discreetly, and according to the qualify of his good. Char. 50-52
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DIRECTORY EDITOR 1977
GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
Officials and Councils
Bishop: Right Rev. Louis B. King
Bishops Emeritus: Right Rev. George de Charms
Right Rev. Willard D. Pendleton
Secretary: Rev. Norbert H. Rogers
CONSISTORY
Bishop Louis B. King
Rt. Rev. George de Charms; Rt. Rev. Willard D. Pendleton; Rev. Messrs. Alfred Acton, Kurt H. Asplundh, Peter M. Buss, Daniel W. Goodenough, B. David Holm, Robert S. Junge, Dandridge Pendleton, Donald L. Rose, Erik Sandstrom, Frederick L. Schnarr.
"General Church of the New Jerusalem"
(A corporation of Pennsylvania)
OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION
Right Rev. Louis B. King, President
Right Rev. Willard D. Pendleton, Vice President
Mr. Stephen Pitcairn, Secretary
Mr. Leonard E. Gyllenhaal, Treasurer
Mr. Bruce Fuller, Controller
BOARD OF DIRECTORS OP THE CORPORATION
Rt. Rev. Louis B. King; Rt. Rev. Willard D. Pendleton; Mr. E. Boyd Asplundh; Mr. Edward K. Asplundh; Mr. Theodore W. Brickman, Jr.; Mr. Henry B. Bruser, Jr.; Mr. William W. Buick; Mr. Alan D. Childs; Mr. Geoffrey Cooper; Mr. Bruce E. Elder; Mr. Leonard E. Gyllenhaal; Mr. Stanley D. Hill; Mr. Wynne S. Hyatt; Mr. James F. Junge; Mr. Alexander H. Lindsay; Mr. William R. Mansfield; Mr. Robert D. Merrell; Mr. H. Keith Morley; Mr. Richard Parker; Mr. Garth Pitcairn; Mr. John W. Rose; Mr. Jerome V. Sellner; Mr. S. Brian Simons; Mr. B. Dean Smith; Mr. Gordon B. Smith; Robert A. Smith; Mr. Alfred A. Umberger; Mr. Robert E. Walter, Mr. Walter L. Williamson; Mr. Robert F. Zecher. Honorary Life Member: Right Rev. George de Charms.
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Council of the Clergy
Bishops
KING, LOUIS BLAIR. Ordained June 19, 1951; 2nd Degree, April 19, 1953; 3rd Degree, November 5, 1972. Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church. Bishop of the General Church. Chancellor of the Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
DE CHARMS, GEORGE. Ordained June 28, 1913; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1916; 3rd Degree, March 11, 1928. Bishop Emeritus of the General Church. President Emeritus of the Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 247, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
PENDLETON, WILLARD DANDRIDGE. Ordained June 18, 1933; 2nd Degree, September 12, 1934; 3rd Degree, June 19, 1946. Bishop Emeritus of the General Church. Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 338, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
Pastors
ACTON, ALFRED. Ordained June 19, 1964; 2nd Degree, October 30, 1966. President of the Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
ALDEN, GLENN GRAHAM. Ordained June 19, 1974; 2nd Degree, June 6, 1976. Pastor to Florida District, resident in Miami, Florida. Address: 211 N.W. 150th St., Miami, Fl. 33168.
ASPLUNDH, KURT HORIGAN. Ordained June 19, 1960; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1962. Dean of the Bryn Athyn Church, Address: Box 277, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
BOYESEN, BJORN ADOLPH HILDEMAR. Ordained June 19, 1939; 2nd Degree, March 30, 1941. Pastor of the Colchester Society. Bishop's Representative in Great Britain. Address: 30 Inglis Road, Colchester CO3 3HU, England.
BOYESEN, RAGNAR. Ordained June 19, 1972; 2nd Degree, June 17, 1973. Pastor of the Stockholm Society. Visiting Pastor of the Copenhagen, Jonkoping and Oslo Circles. Editor of Nova Ecclesia. Address: Aladdinsvagen 27, 16138 Bromma, Sweden.
BUSS, PETER MARTIN. Ordained June 19, 1964; 2nd Degree, May 16, 1965. Pastor of the Immanuel Church, Glenview, Illinois. Bishop's Representative in the Midwestern District. Address: 73 Park Drive, Glenview, Il. 60025.
CARLSON, MARK ROBERT. Ordained June 10, 1913; 2nd Degree, March 6, 1977. Assistant to the Pastor of the Carmel Church. Address: 58 Chapel Hill Drive, R. R. 2, Kitchener, Ontario, N2G 3W5, Canada.
CHILDS, GEOFFREY STAFFORD. Ordained June 19, 1952; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1954. Pastor of the Olivet Church. Address: 2 Lorraine Gardens, Islington, Ontario, Canada M9B 424.
COLE, ROBERT HUDSON PENDLETON. Ordained June 16, 1963; 2nd Degree, October 30, 1966. Address: Box 345, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
CRANCH, HAROLD COVERT. Ordained June 19, 1941; 2nd Degree, October 25, 1942. Asst. Pastor Immanuel Church and Missionary Pastor to the Midwestern District. Pastor in Charge of Sharon Church Circle, Chicago, Il. Address: 2700 Park Lane, Glenview, Il. 60025.
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FRANSON, ROY. Ordained June 19, 1953; 2nd Degree, January 29, 1956. Pastor of South West District, resident in Tucson, Az. Address: 8416 East Kenyon Dr., Tucson, Az. 85710.
GLADISH, MICHAEL DAVID. Ordained June 10, 1973; 2nd Degree, June 30, 1974. Pastor of the Hurstville Society. Address. 22 Dudley Street, Penshurst, New South Wales, Australia 2222.
GLADISH, VICTOR JEREMIAH. Ordained June 17, 1928; 2nd Degree, August 5, 1928. Address: 3508 Linneman Street, Glenview, Il. 60025.
GOODENOUGH, DANIEL WEBSTER. Ordained June 19, 1965; 2nd Degree, December 10, 1967. Instructor in Religion and History, Academy of the New Church. Address: Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
HEINRICHS, DANIEL WINTHROP. Ordained June 19, 1957; 2nd Degree, April 6, 1958. Pastor of the Washington, D. C. Society. Visiting Pastor to circles in Virginia. Address: 3809 Enterprise Road, Mitchellville, Md. 20716.
HEINRICHS, HENRY. Ordained June 24, 1923; 2nd Degree, February 8, 1925. Address: R. R. 3, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada N3H 4R8.
HEINRICHS, WILLARD LEWIS DAVENPORT. Ordained June 19, 1965; 2nd Degree, January 26, 1969. Superintendent of the South African Mission. Visiting Pastor to the Transvaal Circle and isolated members and groups in South Africa. Address: 42 Pitlochry Rd. Westville 3630, Natal, South Africa.
HOLM, BERNHARD DAVID. Ordained June 19, 1952; 2nd Degree, January 27, 1957. Director of Religion Lessons and the Chairman of the Sunday School Committee. Editor of NEW CHURCH HOME. Instructor of Religion in the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School, and the Academy of the New Church. Secretary of the Council of the Clergy. Address: Box 2'i8, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
HOWARD, GEOFFREY HORACE. Ordained June 19, 1961; 2nd Degree, June 2, 1963. Pastor of the Durban Society. Address: 30 Perth Road, Westville, 3630 Natal. Republic of South Africa.
JUNGE, ROBERT SCHILL. Ordained June 19, 1955; 2nd Degree, August 11, 1957. Instructor in Religion and Education, Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
KLINE, THOMAS LEROY. Ordained June 10, 1973; 2nd Degree, June 15, 1975. Visiting Pastor to the Southeastern District, resident in Atlanta, Ga. Address: 3795 Montford Drive, Chamblee, Ga. 30341.
LARSEN, OTTAR TROSVIK. Ordained June 19, 1974; 2nd Degree, February 2, 1977. Assistant to the Pastor of the Olivet Church, Toronto, Ont., Canada. Visiting Pastor to the Montreal Circle. Address: 73 Haliburton Ave., Islington, Ontario, Canada M9B 4Y6.
NEMITZ, KURT PAUL. Ordained June 16, 1963; 2nd Degree, March 27, 1966. Pastor of Convention Society, Bath, Maine. Address: 887 Middle Street, Bath, Maine 04530.
ODHNER, ORMOND DE CHARMS. Ordained June 19, 1940; 2nd Degree, October 11, 1942. Professor of Church History and Instructor in Religion, Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
ORTHWEIN, WALTER EDWARD III. Ordained July 22, 1973; 2nd Degree, June 12, 1977. Pastor of the Detroit Society. Visiting Pastor to the Gorand Rapids Circle, Mich. Address: 132 Kirk Lane, Troy, MI 48084.
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PENDLETON, DANDRIDGE. Ordained June 19, 1952; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1954. Instructor of Religion, Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
PRYKE, MARTIN. Ordained June 19, 1940; 2nd Degree, March 1, 1942. Instructor of Religion, Academy of the New Church. Visiting Pastor to the Kempton Circle, Pa. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
REUTER, NORMAN HAROLD. Ordained June 17, 1928; 2nd Degree, June 15, 1930. Part-time Instructor of religion in the Academy. Address: 506 Anne Street, Huntingdon Valley, Pa. 19006.
RICH, MORLEY DYCKMAN. Ordained June 19, 1938; 2nd Degree, October 13, 1940. Editor NEW CHURCH LIFE. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
ROGERS, NORBERT HENRY. Ordained June 19, 1938; 2nd Degree, October 13, 1940. Secretary of the General Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
ROSE, DONALD LESLIE. Ordained June 16, 1957; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1963. Pastor of the Pittsburgh Society. Address: 7420 Ben Hur Street, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15208.
ROSE, FRANK SHIRLEY. Ordained June 19, 1952; 2nd Degree, August 2, 1953. Instructor of Religion in the Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
SANDSTROM, ERIK. Ordained June 10, 1934; 2nd Degree, August 4, 1935. Dean of the Theological School, Professor of Theology and Religion, Academy of the New Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
SANDSTROM, ERIK EMANUEL. Ordained May 23, 1971; 2nd Degree, May 21, 1972. Pastor of Michael Church, London, England. Visiting Pastor to the Circles in Paris and The Hague. Address: 135 Mantilla Road, Tooting, London, S.W. 17, SDX, England.
SCHNARR, FREDERICK LAURIER. Ordained June 19, 1955; 2nd Degree, May 12, 1957. Principal, Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School. Address: Box 277, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
SIMONS, DAVID RESTYN. Ordained June 19, 1948; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1950. Pastor of the Los Angeles Society and Visiting Pastor to San Francisco. Address: 4615 Briggs Ave., La Crescenta, Ca. 91214.
SMITH, CHRISTOPHER RONALD JACK. Ordained June 19, 1969; 2nd Degree, May 9, 1971. Pastor of the Carmel Church. Address: 16 Bannockburn Road R.R. 2, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 3W5.
SONESON, LORENTZ RAY. Ordained June 16, 1963; 2nd Degree, May 16, 1965. Pastor of the New England, New York and Northern New Jersey District, resident in Connecticut. Address: 145 Shadyside Lane, Milford, Conn. 06460.
STROH, KENNETH OLIVER. Ordained June 19, 1948; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1950. Director of Music, Bryn Athyn Church. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
TAYLOR, DOUGLAS MCLEOD. Ordained June 19, 1960; 2nd Degree, June 19, 1962. Assistant Dean of the Bryn Athyn Church. Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
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Ministers
BAU-MADSEN, ARNE. Ordained June 6, 1976. Translator of the Writings into Danish. Asst. to Director of the General Church Religion Lessons and to the Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee, Visiting Minister to Wilmington, Delaware. Assistant to the Visiting Pastor of the Kempton Circle, Pa. Address: 1437 Huntingdon Road, Abington, Pa. 19001.
CLIFFORD, WILLIAM HARRISON. Ordained June 6, 1916. Visiting Minister to the North-West, resident in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada. Address: 1536 94th Ave., Dawson Creek, B.C., Canada V1G 1H1.
COLE, STEPHEN DANDRIDGE. Ordained June 19, 1977. Minister of the Ohio District, resident in Cleveland. Address: 1256 Donald Avenue, Lakewood, Ohio 44101.
FIGUEIREDO, JOSE LOPES DE. Ordained October 24, 1965. Minister to the Rio de Janeiro Society, Brazil. Address: Rua Desembargador Izidro 155, Apt. 202, Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
KEITH, BRIAN WALTER. Ordained June 6, 1976. Assistant to the Pastor, Immanuel Church, Glenview, Illinois. Visiting Pastor to the Madison Circle, Wis. Address: 810 Glenshire, Glenview, Il. 60025.
ROGERS, NORBERT BRUCE. Ordained January 12, 1969. Instructor in Religion, Latin and Hebrew, Academy of the New Church. Chairman, General Church Translation Committee. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
ROSE, PATRICK ALAN. Ordained June 19, 1975. Assistant to the Pastor of the Immanuel Church, and visiting minister to the Twin-Cities Circle. Address: 73A Park Drive, Glenview, Il. 60025.
Associate member
WEISS, JAN HUGO. Ordained June 19, 1955; 2nd Degree, May 12, 1967. Address: 2650 Del Vista Drive, Hacienda Heights, Ca. 91745.
Authorized Candidates
BOWN, CHRISTOPHER DUNCAN. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
HEILMAN, ANDREW WARD. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
MCMASTER, ROBERT DAVID. Address: Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009.
South African Mission
Pastors
MBEDZI, PAULUS. Ordained March 23, 1958; 2nd Degree, March 14, 1965. Resident Pastor of the Hambrook Society, Visiting Pastor of the Balfour Society, the Greylingstad Society, and the Rietfontain Group. Address: Hambrook Bantu School, P.B. 9912, Ladysmith, Natal 3370.
MBATHA, BHEKUYISE ALFRED. Ordained June 27, 1971; 2nd Degree, June 23, 1974. Resident Pastor of the Kwa Mashu Society, Visiting Pastor of the Impaphala Society and the Dondotha Group. Address: P. O. Box II, Kwa Mashu, Natal 4360.
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NZIMANDE, BENJAMIN ISHMAEL. Ordained August 21, 1938; 2nd Degree, October 3, 1948. Assistant Superintendent, Resident Pastor of the Clermont Society, Visiting Pastor of the Enkumba Society. Pastor in charge of the Alexandra Society, the Mofolo Society, and the Tembisa Group. Address: 1701-31st Avenue, Clermont Township, P. O. Clernaville, Natal 3602.
ZUNGU, AARON. Ordained August 21, 1938; 2nd Degree, October 3, 1948. Mission Translator. Visiting Pastor of the Umlazi Group. Address: 2102 Main Avenue, Clermont Township, P. O. Clernaville, Natal.
Minister
NKABINDE, PETER PIET. Ordained June 23, 1974. Assistant to the Rev. B. I. Nzimande, Resident Minister to the Alexandra Society. Visiting Minister to the Mofolo Society, the Quthing Society, and the Tembisa Group. Address: P. O. Box 56, Bergvlei, Johannesburg, Transvaal, 2012.
Societies and Circles
Societies Pastor
BRYN ATHYN CHURCH Rt. Rev. Louis B. King
Rev. Kurt H. Asplundh (Dean)
Rev. Douglas M. Taylor (Asst. Dean)
CARMEL CHURCH, KITCHENER, ONTARIO Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith
Rev. Mark R. Carlson, Assistant to the Pastor
COLCHESTER SOCIETY, ENGLAND Rev. Bjorn A. H. Boyesen
DETROIT SOCIETY, MICHIGAN Rev. Walter E. Orthwein, III
DURBAN SOCIETY, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA Rev. Geoffrey H. Howard
HURSTVILLE SOCIETY, N.S.W., AUSTRALIA Rev. Michael D. Gladish
IMMANUEL CHURCH, GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS Rev. Peter M. Buss
Rev. Harold C. Cranch, Associate Pastor
Rev. Messrs. Brian W. Keith and Patrick A. Rose, Assistants to the Pastor
LOS ANGELES SOCIETY, CALIFORNIA Rev. David R. Simons
MICHAEL CHURCH, LONDON, ENGLAND Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom
OLIVET CHURCH, TORONTO, ONTARIO Rev. Geoffrey S. Childs
PITTSBURGH SOCIETY Rev. Donald L. Rose
RIO DE JANEIRO SOCIETY, BRAZIL Rev. Jose Lopes de Figueiredo
STOCKHOLM SOCIETY, SWEDEN Rev. Ragnar Boyesen
WASHINGTON SOCIETY, D.C. Rev. Daniel W. Heinrichs
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Circles Visiting Pastor or Minister
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Rev. Michael D. Gladish
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Rev. Lorentz R. Soneson
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK Rev. Ragnar Boyesen
DAWSON CREEK, BRITISH COLUMBIA,
CANADA Rev. William H. Clifford (Resident)
DENVER, COLORADO Rev. Peter M. Buss, Supervisor
ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA Rev. Stephen D. Cole
FORT WORTH, TEXAS Rev. Peter M. Buss, Supervisor
GORAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN Rev. Walter E. Orthwein
THE HAGUE, HOLLAND Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom
JONKOPING, SWEDEN Rev. Ragnar Boyesen
MADISON, WISCONSIN Rev. Brian W. Keith
MIAMI, FLORIDA Rev. Glenn G. Alden (Resident)
MONTREAL, CANADA Rev. Ottar T. Larsen
NORTH JERSEY Rev. Lorentz R. Soneson
NORTH OHIO Rev. Stephen D. Cole
OSLO, NORWAY Rev. Ragnar Boyesen
PARIS, FRANCE Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom
Sr. PAUL-MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA Rev. Patrick A. Rose
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA Rev. Roy Franson
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA Rev. David R. Simons
SOUTH OHIO Rev. Stephen D. Cole
TRANSVAAL, REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA Rev. Willard L. D. Heinrichs
TUCSON, ARIZONA Rev. Roy Franson (Resident)
In order to avoid confusion, it seems well to observe, in the official records and the official journal of the General Church, the recognized distinctions between a "Society," a "Circle," and a "Group."
A "Group" consists of all interested receivers of the Heavenly Doctrine in any locality who meet together for worship and instruction under the general supervision of pastors who visit them from time to time.
A "Circle" consists of members of the General Church in any locality, who are under the leadership of a regular visiting pastor appointed by the Bishop, and who are organized by their pastor to take responsibility for their local uses in the interim between his visits. A Group may become a Circle when, on the recommendation of the visiting pastor, it is formally recognized as such by the Bishop.
A "Society" or local "Church" consists of the members of the General Church in any locality who have been organized under the leadership of a resident pastor to maintain the uses of regular worship, instruction and social life. A Circle may become a Society by application to the Bishop and formal recognition by him.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
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Committees of the General Church Chairman
General Church Extension Committee Rev. Douglas M. Taylor
General Church Publication Committee Rev. Norbert H. Rogers
General Church Religion Lessons Committee Rev. B. David Holm
Orphanage Committee Mr. Robert F. Zecher
Pension Committee Mr. Garthowen Pitcairn
Finance and Development Fund Committee Mr. Leonard E. Gyllenhaal
Salary Committee Mr. Theodore W. Brickman, Jr.
Sound Recording Committee Rev. Douglas M. Taylor
Translation Committee Rev. N. Bruce Rogers
Address all committees, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009 except the following:
Mr. Theodore W. Brickman, Jr. 1211 Gladish Lane, Glenview, Ill. 60025
Mr. Garthowen Pitcairn 600 Woodward Drive, Huntingdon Valley, Pa. 19006
SHARON CHURCH CLOSING LOUIS B. KING 1977
After some sixty years of service, and due to a greatly depleted congregation, the Sharon Church building has been sold by unanimous consent. The group remaining will be served and provided for by the Rev. Harold C. Cranch, 2700 Park Lane, Glenview, IL 60025, Phone: (312) 729-9117; and inquiries as to activities should be addressed to him.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
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UNIQUE AND MIRACULOUS III EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address, and business communications, should be sent to the Business Manager. Notifications of address changes should be received by the 15th of the month.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
$5.00 a year to any address, payable in advance. Single copy, 50 cents.
We turn our attention now to the fifth characteristic of Swedenborg's spiritual experience. He tells us that he was ". . . in both spiritual and natural light at the same time, . . . . (and was given) to be with angels . . . and at the same time to draw forth truths in light and thus to receive and teach them."*
* Inv. 52
As a related side-light, we may note what is said in the Arcana Coelestia.* Here are described the two kinds of vision experienced by men which are meant by being "withdrawn from the body," and by being "carried by the spirit into another place." And, in order that he might have a living, personal sensation and understanding of these, Swedenborg was led into them several times, the most remarkable of which is related in AC 1884.
* AC 1882-85
But then he makes a sharp distinction between these two types and the daily and customary spiritual contacts which he enjoyed: "But the things I have ordinarily (commonly) seen . . . are not visions, but things seen in the highest wakefulness of the body, and this for several years."*
* AC 1885
It was this everyday spiritual experience which enabled the revelator "to draw forth truths in the light," both spiritual and natural, both the light of the spiritual sun and the natural light necessary to perceive them fully from primes to ultimates, from inmosts to outmosts, and to teach them in both natural and spiritual language.
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Primarily, and most obviously, he was to teach these truths by publishing them in printed form; and, as previously mentioned, even in this he was given perfect enlightenment as to his choice of notes and materials for such publication.
But there is another, and much less apparent aspect which should be noticed here, one which is really unique.
Many have had spiritual experiences of varying length and number, and have afterwards written books about it, to communicate and teach something of what they had learned by these. But Swedenborg not only was commissioned to teach men by means of publication, but he also taught angels and spirits in many, many conversations and discussions, and even in what we call lectures. And he taught them "in light," that is, in the light of the spiritual sun, with a perfect grasp of how and what to teach, with a perfect enlightenment as to what to choose to meet their various states.
Some of these presentations led to large scale judgments on various groupings in the world of spirits; and some of them greatly delighted the angels themselves. For thereby they saw nuances and connections of truths which even they had not previously seen.
It could be said that in this regard Swedenborg was like a spiritual John the Baptist, "bringing forth judgment unto truth"* in the world of spirits, preparing them for the full coming of the Lord, laying the groundwork for the instruction by the Twelve Apostles which was to follow.
* Isa. 42:3
Do we find anything comparable to this in human history and records, any credible parallel, anything like it either in quality or quantity? If so, we would genuinely appreciate knowing of it.
In concluding this small series of three, we have presented the concept that the general uniqueness of the revelator's work consists in the totality of its elements, the several factors and characteristics which make up his complex spiritual experience. In particular we have dwelt upon the first and fifth characteristics as evidences of this fact of uniqueness. And specifically in regard to the fifth one, we have discussed its most unique feature, namely the fact that Swedenborg taught angels and spirits-thousands of them.
We would not belabor an ancient subject further. We would only ask, "Is it not true that every discussion, conversation and presentation about it adds some small bit to our knowledge? Does it not widen our vision a little, deepen our conviction, enlighten our faith and, most importantly, enlarge our love, until at last we can see more deeply the meaning of the words, . . . with Thee is the fountain of Life; in Thy light shall we see light.'"*
* Ps. 36:9
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In this way, little by little, our conviction and love and faith become so much a genuine part of us that the understanding as one New Churchman expresses it, "has become of the bone, of the nature and life."
IN OUR CONTEMPORARIES GEORGE DE CHARMS 1977
We have read with great interest a letter addressed to "Fellow New Church Friends" by the Rev. Obed Mooki, the Superintendent of the South African Missions. It is published on page 147 of the June 1977 issue of The Messenger under the title "The Last Word, New Church Day."
In his letter, the Reverend Mr. Mooki calls attention to The True Christian Religion by Emanuel Swedenborg, which "contains the universal theology of the New Church." It is pointed out that the New Church is not a sect "started by any individual, but a Church for all mankind, and was raised up by the LORD HIMSELF.
Reference is made to the prophecies of the New Church in Daniel and in the Apocalypse. The doctrinal teaching of the True Christian Religion is outlined, and reference is made to the sending out of the twelve Apostles by the Lord, throughout the whole spiritual world, on the 19th of June, 1770. The letter ends with this admonition: "Please remember this great event on June 19th, and pray for the New Church on that day, not only in Southern Africa, but throughout the world."
We would congratulate The Messenger on its publication of this important declaration.
GEORGE DE CHARMS
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
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Church News VARIOUS 1977
GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS
Glenview has had an active year under the leadership of the Rev. Peter Buss. Routine business and celebration of the festivals filled the calendar. New classes were set up to fill special needs. Retreats for young people and adults were held, and on occasions visiting speakers addressed us. A variety of affections were stirred by events that touched our lives this year, and the questionnaire Mr. Buss asked each of us to respond to made us aware of how we might have regard to Church uses as a whole, and take our parts as individuals in relation to it.
The Christmas festivities, with tableaux, singing and gifts for the children, were happy occasions made more so by many visitors. Representations for Palm Sunday and for Easter were artistically arranged. New Church Day began with an early morning outdoor service, led by the Rev. Brian Keith. A pageant of the Five Dispensations followed, and gifts for the school children. The Women's Guild provided dessert for the picnic.
New beauty was lent to the celebrations of Easter and the Nineteenth of June by original music "Hosannah," composed by Marvin Stevens, and sung by choir and solo; and Brian Kingslake's "The Lord God Jesus Christ Reigns!" was played on the organ for the Nineteenth of June.
Besides the new class on the Doctrine of the Lord, there is one for young parents, dealing with the education of young children in the home. We were invited to attend a forum to see how the Doctrines may be applied to our social life. "Rules for the Park" are to be looked over.
At the Annual meeting several plans for the future were presented. Plans for a four year high school had been worked out. From the newly-incorporated group, "Immanuel Dwellings" we heard of aims to provide modest dwellings for Church members in the vicinity of Glenview. Reports on the Immanuel Church School, and on the Midwestern Academy were given. The Treasurer and the Contributions Committee spoke about the pledges needed for general purposes, and for Building repair. Appreciation of the Sunday School, the Park News, and the work of the retiring teachers of Art and Dramatics was confirmed by applause from the congregation. Thanks from the pastor to the Rev. Patrick Rose, the Assistant to the Pastor, to Mrs. Hugo, his secretary, and to Mr. Don Synnestvedt of the Board of Trustees for their special help this year.
The subject of "What the Lord Permits," was considered at an adult retreat held over a weekend in Linden Hills, Michigan.
Among the visiting speakers were the Rev. Erik Sandstrom and Dean Bruce Glenn, who spoke the same evening on the interrelated uses of the Theological School and the College. The Revs. B. David Holm and Harold Cranch showed us the work and methods of the Extension Committee, having missionary kits which included 3, copy of Heaven and Hell ready for sale and distribution. Theta Alpha and the Sons were represented here by speakers on the Religion Lessons, and on the Museum. The Rev. Mark Carlson, from Detroit, spoke on the study of History of Bible times. The Rev. Michael Gladish, from Australia, but from Glenview way back when, made us happy to hear him on a comparison of the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments.
In Heaven and Hell, #236 there is an interesting description of how the ruling love is within various affections, making up the "book of life."
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Joy, grief, sympathy, compassion, sincerity, truth, love and charity, zeal and quest for honor and glory are mentioned, as well as simulation and deceit. As an experiment I have tried to see what affections have come into play as various events took place. Joy is felt as new members, families and homes are joined to our society. Grief can be avoided by some by the development of conscience, but is felt when we fail to live up to some truth we have accepted. Sympathy is felt for Sharon Church at the sale of their Church building; compassion for the families of young persons who have died unexpectedly by accident or disease.
In the retreats arranged at times, there may be free and sincere discussion of many-sided or unclear issues, and an effort made to get at the truth. Love makes the world go round, they say, and we're happy when it brings visitors here. Three Golden Weddings were celebrated this year amid reunited families. The Victor Gladishes, the Archie Prices and the Rowland Trimbles. Although the Trimbles have returned to Washington, we send them our warm good wishes.
Standing high among the uses of Charity are the formal uses reported at the Annual Meeting, but we can't forget the fine social times provided for us, the Rummage Sale, and the helpful care given by individuals as the needs are seen, and many more examples, which will come to mind.
With zeal we wrote in to the Federal Communications Commission opposing the petition to ban religious broadcasts on radio or television. It did not pass. I can't exactly say what affection is aroused by the distortion, exploitation, fear of and even denial of the different uses intended for each sex, but we can hope that the honor and glory the Lord lends can be present when those uses are fulfilled.
Perhaps you may be able to think up some examples of simulation or deceit, such as how to win your favorite card game. Or would you try a game of Adverbs?
SUSAN S. HOLM
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The Nineteenth of June Family service which the Rev. Frederick Schnarr held here this year was fraught with emotion as we realized all too well that this would be his last service here as pastor after nineteen years in that office. How involved a pastor becomes in all the joys and sorrows, achievements and failures, births and death of his-parishioners-especially so with one who has been here so long, and who has been essentially responsible for many major changes in the lifestyle of this society!
When Mr. Schnarr arrived here in 1958 with his wife and two small daughters, Washington was holding its services in a rented building and sharing its pastor with Baltimore. Within a year he had combined the two societies (facilitated by a new parkway between the two cities and the condemnation of Baltimore's Arbutus Chapel for another highway) and he negotiated the purchase of a small church on the northeast edge of Washington, near the end of the new parkway. For the first time the Washington Society had a home of its own. Many of the younger People joined in the enthusiasm of making this building suit our needs, among which was covering an immersion tub and erecting a new chancel over it.
In the meantime Mr. Schnarr kept his eye to the future, realizing this Douglas Street Church could be but a stepping-stone if the society were to grow. So he bought a house in Mitchellville, then way out in the country, where he could keep an eye on adjoining land which he sensed would soon be coming up for is sale. A model for a new church building was erected and Mr. Schnarr invited suggestions from all committees and individuals, in order to foresee all uses and make the best possible use of available space. These were exciting times, especially as Sunday-school rooms were designed with a future school in mind. The first acres were bought, a purchaser was found for the Douglas Street church and the long, seemingly endless struggler with permits and county and state authorities were begun.
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But somehow, in just six years after Mr. Schnarr's arrival, the society was ready to move into and dedicate a church truly its own.
More land came up for sale, making possible the dream of a New Church center, and dreams for a school turned into actual plans under Mr. Schnarr's encouraging guidance. In 1969 Bishop Pendleton was called upon to dedicate this school and officiate at its opening-the first New Church school to open its doors since 1921. Miss Gillian Simons had been hired to teach the ten students in the first three grades. Unbelievably, a new grade was added each year with some trepidation but no great fuss, and this year of 1977 saw the first graduation of our tenth grade students.
In 1975-76 Mr. Nathan Gladish helped to supplement the schedule of our regular teachers, Mrs. Fred Waelchli, Mrs. Dean Smith, Mrs. Phillip Zuber, Mrs. Frank Mitchell and Mrs. George Cooper, his arrival being a particular godsend, coming just when Mr. Schnarr was laid up for some time with a bad back. In 1976 Mr. Schnarr hired Mr. James Cooper as a full-time teacher, lending what he considered a much-needed masculine influence in the school. And with our ninth and tenth grades, we now have what Mr. Schnarr fondly calls "The Washington Academy." In spite of the transitory nature of many in our society, largely due to government work of one sort or another, the school keeps growing. In the past year four new young families have bought homes in the area and our new pastor's family will add children. That our pastor's office has been relegated to the original coat closet will give an idea of what has happened to the once spacious building.
Of particular note is the completion of our cemetery, which has taken on the appearance of a lovely park under the able hand and guidance of Dr. Bill Radcliffe. And most delightfully useful are the after-church coffees, instituted and run by the Dean Boyce family. Of a different nature, but wonderfully new, is an Allen computer organ-a tremendous, though welcome challenge to our several organists.
The school plays, The Emperor's Nightingale in '76, and The Frog Prince in '77 came up to the usual standard of excellence we have been led to expect through the years. They add a delightful part to the lighter side of the society activities, which also include Thanksgiving dinner dances, 19th of June and 4th of July picnics, and New Church Day banquets. Here we shall also mention the highly successful bazaars, run the past two years by Sherri Boyce; our annual influx of Senior boys and girls from B.A., plus a B.A. Boys Club honor group. And this year we were also privileged to have a large group from the college, all of which groups entailed a special meal and get-together with the society, where the visiting students have provided most enjoyable entertainment. And the college group treated the adults of the society to a wonderful meal!
Our tableaux get better each year, and the candlelight Christmas Eve Service was particularly enhanced this year by the addition of rows of candles along the side walls. The talk our pastor gave at the New Church Day banquet, an overall view of the Apocalypse, with illustrations by Mary Cooper, was especially inspiring.
Extension work is now an official use of the society. Dr. Robert Somers is to be commended for his direction in this use and especially for the excellent book center and display he has established in the church hallway. With the help of Dean Smith and Louise Coffin and others, numerous books have been placed in public bookstores and further inquiries are beginning to come in.
Two valued friends, Mrs. John Needer (Jean) and Dr. Philip Stebbing have gone to the other world since our last notes, forcefully directing our thoughts to heaven which is the final purpose in creation. We felt a bit of the influx of that heaven in the beautiful sphere at the marriage of Sarah Schnarr and Craig McCardell this past December.
Interesting speakers from Bryn Athyn have been Austin Arrington, Kenneth Rose, and Michael Brown.
Candidate Stephen Cole ably assisted our pastor in the summer of '76, as Mr. Chris Bown will do this summer. Other candidates preaching and giving classes here in the past two years were Mark Carlson, Brian Keith and William Clifford.
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Ministers who have come for the same purposes are the Reverends Erik Sandstrom, Dan Heinrichs, Douglas Taylor, Bjorn Boyesen, Walter Orthwein, David Holm, Norman Reuter and Arne Bau Madsen-all most welcome guests providing a deliciously varied menu in the food for thought. Small wonder Mr. Schnarr often questioned whether he would ever get through his own series of classes, which in the past twenty-four months encompassed the nature of heredity, natural good and the states of reformation.
We have also been honored by several delightful visits from Bishop Louis B. King, two of which presaged a changing of pastors. After consultation with a lay committee, Bishop King presented for our consideration the name of Daniel Heinrichs, who was then overwhelmingly accepted as our new pastor.
And so these notes must close with a mixture of feelings-deep sadness at losing our Fred and his lovely family, whose uses have so thoroughly entwined them into the fabric of our lives-and great anticipation of the arrival of the Heinrichs. The beginning of these notes listed some of Fred's many outward accomplishments, but over and above all this his affection for, and fidelity to the doctrines of the New Church have made him a staunch and beloved leader. We wish the Schnarrs much happiness in their new uses in B. A. and gladly welcome the Rev. Heinrichs and family into what will necessarily be a very different development in this society.
JANET H. DOERING
HURSTVILLE, AUSTRALIA
Looking back on the activities of the Hurstville Society during the first half of 1977, we can see that it has been a busy and productive time and that also means happy.
Of primary importance, those uses of worship and instruction have been carried on. We lost the Pastor, the Rev. Michael Gladish, during March while he attended the Council of the Clergy Meetings. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Let it be said that we did miss him, though we have able lay readers to take services.
The Society benefitted in several ways by the visit of Mr. Ariel Gunther in April. He came to deliver public lectures on the Bryn Athyn Cathedral and the stained glass work there. These lectures were reasonably well attended by outsiders and created quite a lot of interest among people engaged in stained glass work here. Hurstville members also greatly enjoyed them. Mr. Gunther, and the Church gained some very useful publicity, newspaper and radio. We have made a new and firm friend; Another "friend across the sea" is now a face as well as a name. Essentially, "Gunny" seems the same as when he was a cheery young airman of Pitcairn Aviation days.
Another visitor we were glad to meet was Mrs. William R. Kintner, here to see daughter Gall, son-in-law George Marcou and the children. Also here for about a month was Mrs. Clyde Smith of Bryn Athyn to see her two daughters, Claudia and Ellen, sons-in-law Brian and John and of course granddaughter Tiffany. From South Africa to settle in Sydney came Raymond Van de Byl Smuts and his wife Mary with their son Jason. They are very welcome.
Soon to come to Sydney will be the Rev. Michael Stanley from London, who will give lectures at universities on Swedenborg the Scientist.
The remodeling of the front of the church building is now almost completed. The front of the church is very much more attractive and there are plans for landscaping the garden around to enhance the appearance even more. There was wonderful response to the fund-raising effort. Contributions to the Society actually increased even while more than three thousand dollars was contributed to the Fund. People from overseas who have it in mind to fly out to see the nice changes please leave it for another three or four months till the landscaping is completed.
NORMAN HELDON
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THE SWEDENBORG SOCIETY
The 167th Annual Meeting was held on Saturday, 14th May, 1977 at 4:00 p.m. Forty members attended. The President of the Society, Mr. Norman Turner, was in the Chair and the meeting was opened with the Lord's Prayer, led by the Rev. B. A. H. Boyesen.
The notice convening the meeting was read and apologies for absence were received from the Rev. Dr. N. J. Cockburn, Miss Alice Colborne, Mr. John Cunningham, Mr. A. A. Drummond, Mrs. J. E. Elliott, Mr. F. C. Elphick, Mrs. Moya Friend, Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Griffith, Mr. J. Walter Grounds, the Rev. Brian Kinglake, the Rev. Norman Ryder and Mrs. Norman Turner. Messages of good wishes were received from Mr. Drummond, Mr. and Mrs. Griffith and the Rev. Brian Kingslake.
The President remarked that it seemed strange to be holding an Annual Meeting of the Society without the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Griffith and it was resolved to send them a message of greeting.
The Minutes of the 166th Annual General Meeting were read, confirmed and signed by the President.
The Council's Report for 1976 was presented by the Chairman of the Council, Mr. D. F. C. Mann.
Referring to the new English translation of the Arcana Coelestia, Mr. Mann said that the Rev. J. E. Elliott had made very substantial progress but there had been a problem over consultancy. An arrangement for sharing this work among the members of the Advisory and Revision Board seemed likely to prove successful and fortunately the Paul Carpenter Fellowship Committee had decided to maintain its financial support for the project.
Mr. Mann made mention of the excellent meeting of those concerned with Swedenborgian Libraries in Britain which had been attended also by Bishop King of Bryn Athyn. During the year a number of works had been reprinted. It was the Council's belief that, ideally, existing translations should be revised rather than simply reprinted but that it was important to maintain stocks of works in demand provided that any defects in translation were not so serious as to preclude reprinting.
The Council had suffered the great loss of Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Griffith on their removal to Dorset. Their experience was unparalleled and could not be replaced. The Council had great pleasure in welcoming Mr. A. T. Chadwick and Mr. David Lorimer to its membership.
Mr. Mann went on to mention the other concerns of the Council which received little publicity in the Report. Much time was in fact taken up over the maintenance of the premises, letting of offices, insurance, financial control, investments, and so on.
Tribute was paid to Mrs. D. H. Harley who had died in January 1977. She had been a distinguished member of the Advisory and Revision Board for 24 years and very active in the translation work of the Society.
Mr. Mann drew the attention of the meeting to the fact that Mr. Dan Chapman was to retire from the Council at this meeting after 42 years continuous service. During this period he had been Honorary Treasurer from December 1935 to October 1951 and Chairman of the Council from October 1951 to July 1956, and had thus been active over a very long period of time and had made a major contribution to the work of the Society.
In closing, Mr. Mann expressed his personal thanks to the other members of the Council, the President and to the staff of the Society.
The Honorary Treasurer, Mr. F. B. Nicholls, read the Auditors' Report and presented the accounts and Balance Sheet. He drew attention to the substantial deficit amounting to L13,082, which was due to an unusually heavy program of printing and repairs and maintenance to the premises. It was hoped that these costs would be lower during 1977. In spite of the large deficit the General Fund had increased slightly, owing to generous legacies and gifts.
Mr. Mann moved the adoption of the Report and Accounts, This was seconded by Mr. Owen Pryke and carried unanimously.
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During the discussion on the Report and Accounts, Mr. W. G. Straw said that he considered that a period of eight months between meetings of the Society was: too great and wondered whether the time of 4 o'clock in the afternoon was a suitable one. Mr. A. S. Wainscot, Mrs. B. A.H. Boyesen and Mrs. Beulah Pratt raised the question of membership and support from New Church young people. The letter of apology for absence from the Rev. Brian Kingslake had contained a suggestion that the Swedenborg Society should consider reviving the annual examination. Miss M. Acton spoke in favor of this proposal but the Rev. D. Duckworth considered that a very different format should be adopted if the young people of today were to be expected to respond. Dr. N. J. Berridge spoke in favor of a project rather than an examination, perhaps with several people contributing to the same paper.
In response to a question from Mr. A. T. Chadwick, the Rev. J. E. Elliott spoke to the meeting on his work as translator of the Arcana Coelestia and gave an account of the progress he had made.
Mrs. Boyesen asked for details of results of the advertising campaign on the London tube system and at the Chairman's request Mr. Kenneth Campbell informed the meeting that although postal response had been poor a considerable number of books had been sold in the shop as an indirect result of the campaign.
Mr. D. F. C. Mann then moved the Council's nomination of Mr. Norman Turner as President for another Year and this was carried with applause. Mr. Mann was then formally elected Vice-President and, on a motion by Mr. A. T. Chadwick, Mr. F. B. Nicholls was unanimously re-elected Honorary Treasurer of the Society.
The Secretary reported that the three members of the Council retiring by rotation and the two members co-opted during the year had all offered themselves for re-election. One nomination had been received, namely Mrs. Nancy S. Dawson. There being a vacancy, no vote was necessary. The following were therefore declared elected to the Council: Mr. A. T. Chadwick, Mrs. Nancy S. Dawson, the Rev. Dennis Duckworth, Mr. L. H. Houghton, Mr. David Lorimer and Mr. A. F. Turner.
The Chairman of the Council asked the meeting formally to record appreciation of the work of Mr. Dan Chapman. In response, Mr. Chapman made pleasant references to his time on the Council.
The President then gave his address entitled "Rewards and Punishments." Mr. Owen Pryke moved a vote of thanks to the President for his paper, for his conduct of the meeting and for his work during the year and this was approved with applause.
The meeting was closed with the Benediction pronounced by the Rev. Dennis Duckworth.
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EDITOR 1977
Announcements
All ex-students, members of the General Church and friends of the Academy are invited to attend the 61st Charter Day Exercises, to be held in Bryn Athyn, Pa., Friday and Saturday, October 21st and 22nd, 1977. The Program:
Friday, 11 a.m.-Cathedral Service with an address by the Rev. Mark R. Carlson.
Friday evening-Dance.
Saturday, 7 p.m.-Banquet, Toastmaster: The Rev. Robert S. Junge.
MIDWESTERN ACADEMY EDITOR 1977
MIDWESTERN ACADEMY
The Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Academy of the New Church Corporation will be held Saturday, September 24th at 10:00 a.m. during the second session of the Midwestern District Assembly in Pendleton Hall, Glenview, Illinois.
EDITOR 1977
In order to avoid confusion and embarrassment, those who will be guests in Bryn Athyn homes for the Charter Day weekend should order their Banquet tickets in advance, by mail, unless they have made other specific arrangements with their hostesses.
The dale is October 21st. The regular ticket price is $6.25. For all students, including those not presently attending the Academy, the price is $3.50 per ticket. Checks should be made payable to The Academy of the New Church.
Orders should be sent to the attention of Mrs. R. Waelchli, The Academy of the New Church, P.O. Box 275, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009, before October 12th. Please mark clearly on envelopes "Banquet Tickets." Tickets will be carefully held at the switchboard in Benade Hall for pick-up either by you or your hosts. No tickets can be sold at the door because of the need for advance arrangements with the caterer.
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MAKING MORAL JUDGMENTS Rev. KURT H. ASPLUNDH 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII OCTOBER, 1977 No. 10
"Judge not according to the appearance, but judge just judgment." (John 7:24)
In this sermon we will consider the problem of making moral judgments. What are we to do when we see a disorder? Do we judge those in it.? De we condemn them? Do we condemn the evil deed but excuse the person who committed it? What is the mercy that we should exercise? These are very real questions that we all must face in a lifetime. Nor are we speaking only of the "evils of the world" which surround us, but evils within the Church and among our friends. Virtually no family remains untouched by some moral lapse. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone . . ."*
* Jn. 8:7
What instruction does the Word give about judgment? First, we see a sharp contrast between the Lord's teachings for the Christian Church and Jewish Law. The ancient Jew saw Jehovah God as the "Judge of all the earth",* "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation . . ."** His laws set forth strict penalties for all kinds of evil acts and there was no question about the congregation enforcing the penalties.
* Gen. 18:25
** Ex. 20:5
The Lord came on earth to teach a new spirit of the Law: "Judge not. . .," He said.* Again, He taught: "I judge no man"** "for I came not to judge the world but to save the world."***
* Matt. 7:1
** Jn. 8:15
*** Jn. 12:47
It was to test out this new doctrine that the scribes and Pharisees came to the Lord, bringing with them a woman taken in the Sin of adultery. They sought to discredit the Lord's teachings, showing them to be contrary to the law of Moses.
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They reminded Him that Moses, in the law, commanded that such should be stoned. "But what sayest Thou?" they asked. The Lord did not give a direct answer. He stooped down and wrote with His finger on the ground. When they continued to ask Him what He would say, He rose up with those well-known words: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." Then, He stooped to write again on the ground and they went out, one by one, convicted by their own conscience. When the Lord saw that the woman was left alone and that no man condemned her, He said: "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."
The point has often been made that while the Lord here forgave the woman, He did not condone adultery. For He said, "Sin no more," recognizing the adultery as a sin. This is an important distinction. We must see evil as separate from the person if we are to render a just judgment. One of the purposes of judgment is to enable the person to separate himself from evil. If the person in evil cannot separate himself from it, the judgment serves in providing the means whereby others can separate themselves from him. Evil comes from hell, and man can accept it as his own, or he can reject it, sending it back to hell. If man accepts evil as his own, however, and confirms it by a life of evil, he is guilty. The Writings teach that man is what he loves. If he confirms himself in the love of evil, then as long as he is in that love, he is a living form of it. By his love and by his life he brings judgment and punishment upon himself. This is not only deserved, but is of the mercy of the Lord for it is the only means leading to his possible salvation.
Why then, did the Lord without penalty release the woman taken in adultery? Probably because of a state of repentance. There is no indication that she was in the love of adultery, and if she had, indeed, rejected that evil in herself she could, as the Lord said, "Go, and sin no more."
We cannot take the account of the woman taken in adultery as the model for dealing with all evils and moral disorders. From this account alone we might conclude that no one is permitted to make judgments of any kind because all are equally guilty of evil. Did not the Lord say that the first to cast a stone should be one without sin? And who is without sin? Would this mean for example that we should refrain from judging a couple living in adultery because we recognize unchaste lusts in ourselves? Should we accept the failings of our children non-judgmentally, because we have occasionally failed? Is it mercy to accept their moral failings without giving them the truth by which to learn to be free of them? Are we to judge them? Yes, but justly.
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Just judgment involves two main restrictions: First, it cannot be a spiritual judgment. It is not lawful for one man to judge of another's spiritual state, or whether he will be saved or condemned. The interiors of man's mind which determine this are known to the Lord alone. Second, judgment that is truly just is not from man, but from the Word. Judgment from man is from a proprium of evil which influences the judgment in one or the other of two ways: it influences judgment from a spirit of anger, or selfishness, causing it to be too severe, or it influences judgment from a spirit of natural affection or sentimentality, causing it to be too lenient.
Concerning the first limit of judgment the Writings teach that "it is permissible to every one to think about the moral and civil life of another, and to judge of it."* "Who does not see that were it not lawful for a man to judge as to the moral life of his fellow inhabitants in the world, society would fall."** We can and must make judgments about a man's civil life, and also about his moral life" so far as it concerns the civil."*** The Writings amplify this teaching, saying "it is proper for one to know what connections may be safely entered into, and how much trust is to be reposed in another; what is suitable to be done, and what not; for there are pretenders, deceivers, hypocrites, adulterers, and evil men of all kinds; there are wise men and fools, and those who value nothing of the public good, but prefer themselves, and all varieties of character; consequently, without reflection, thought, and thus judgment with one's self, no one would ever be able to live in civil life."**** Indeed, it is a mark of natural and spiritual maturity to be able to exercise judgment in life.*****
* AE 629:14
** CL 523
*** SD 4425
**** Ibid.
***** AC 6598
"What is not lawful," we are told, "is judgment as to the quality of the interior mind or soul within man, thus as to what his spiritual state is and hence his lot after death. This is known to the Lord only."*
* CL 523
The case of the accusation of the woman by the scribes and Pharisees illustrates the nature of judgment that comes from men, from proprial evil instead of from the truth and mercy of the Lord. Certainly, the scribes and Pharisees that accused the woman were not without sin. They had raised this case for the set purpose of finding fault with the Lord's teachings. They had no concern for preserving the morals of the nation, nor did they have any interest in learning mercy or just judgment. The woman's sin was simply a convenient example for their selfish ends.
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Viewed in relation to the woman, this is not a story of judgment, but of Divine mercy. Viewed in relation to the men, her accusers, it is a picture of just judgment. These men livingly represent the truth of the Lord's words which they had thought to counter: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." The Writings, in some places, translate this phrase: "Judge not, that we be not condemned."* By their judgment of the woman they were condemned. It is said that when the men came, accusing her, the Lord wrote with His finger on the ground, both before and after He had spoken to them. The Writings teach that this is a sign of condemnation. The prophet Jeremiah had said, "They that depart from Me shall be written in the earth."** These men had departed from all love of the Lord and the neighbor. Therefore, the Lord wrote on the ground. He wrote not once, but twice, the double writing referring to a deeper fault than could be seen on the surface. We are taught that this signified their condemnation for adulteries "in the spiritual sense",*** for the scribes and Pharisees were those who adulterated the goods and falsified the truths of the Word, thus of the church. The church at that time was "full of adulteries, that is, full of the adulteration of good and the falsification of truth . . ."**** The very accusation these men raised against the woman returned, in a deeper and more serious sense, upon them. As a consequence, they were judged and separated; they went out from the Lord and the woman, convicted by their own conscience.
* Ibid., CL 531
** Jer. 17:13
*** AE 222e
**** AE 304:61
We see here, also, another principle of just judgment: every man judges himself. The Lord came to save, not to condemn. Yet those who do not heed Divine instruction cannot be saved, rejecting as they do the means of salvation mercifully extended to them by the Lord. By refusing to embrace the truth they separate themselves from the mercy that it bears within. This concept of judgment is contained in the Lord's words: "If any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I come not to judge the world but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day."*
* Jn. 12:47 ff
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."*
* Jn. 3:19
The truth of the Word is given for our amendment. It shows us the structure or the form of good. Take, for an illustration, the truth about marriage; that there is to be a lawful covenant of marriage; that marriage is to continue at least to the end of life in the world; that adulteries are to be shunned.
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These are the Lord's teachings. They are the only pathway to the happiness and blessings of conjugial love. But suppose these teachings are ignored by some? What is our responsibility for judgment? Do we not, from charity and mercy, bring these truths to their attention? Do we not do more? Do we not set forth these truths, as we believe them to be taught in the Word, that they may be seen and be represented in a form of moral order? Those who reject that form of order separate themselves from it. That is their decision. That is the judgment they make upon themselves. Our responsibility is to insist on the order. Moral behavior must be upheld for the preservation of society and especially for the protection of the innocent and the young for whom external forms have much power. When persons choose to live outside of the forms of order, we must recognize their disorder, and teach that it is wrong, always hoping for their repentance and return. External sanction may be applied against those in disorder. The Writings teach that in kingdoms where justice and judgment are guarded, "men are compelled not to speak against religion, and to do nothing in opposition to it . . ." (DP 129). It is further taught that "the internal (of man) may be compelled by the external not to speak ill of the laws of the kingdom, the moralities of life, and the sanctities of the church; to this extent the internal may be compelled by threats and punishments; and it is so compelled and ought to be."*
* DP 136:2 In preserving the order of society such judgments and actions must be enforced. This is not done to remove freedom, but that the truth, which alone brings freedom, may be set forth as it is believed to be taught in the Word and established in forms of supporting external order.
By setting standards of moral and civil life from the Word we are not judging the neighbor. Some may judge themselves by departing from the standards. This is not an invitation for our condemnation. Far from condemning them spiritually, we will be seeking and desiring their repentance and their welfare. How can men be free if they do not know, and clearly see, the alternative to their evils? Such was the exhortation of Ezekiel: "If the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all My statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?"*
* Ezek. 18:21-23
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Is not this the spirit of mercy that should infill our moral judgments! Let us beware of judgment from a spirit of contempt, from a spirit of anger, from a spirit of condemnation. Yet let us be uncompromising of principle. The Writings are clear that "to think evil of what is evil and false is permitted to every one,"* and "it is lawful to judge, but justly."**
* AE 629:14
** SS 51:5 We would do well to remember this passage, however, when faced with the necessity of rendering moral judgment: "It is very common for those who have taken up an opinion respecting any truth of faith, to judge of others that they cannot be saved, unless they believe as we do-a judgment which the Lord has forbidden. . . . The life of charity consists in thinking kindly of another, and in wishing him well; and in perceiving joy in one's self from the fact that others also are saved."* Therefore "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge just judgment." Amen.
* AC 2284
LESSONS: II Samuel 12:1-14. John 7:14-28, 8:1-11. C. L. 523
JUST JUDGMENT EDITOR 1977
The Lord says: "Judge not, that ye be not condemned." (Matthew 7:1).
This can be understood in no wise as meaning judgment concerning a man's metal and civil life in the world, but as meaning judgment concerning his spiritual and celestial life. Who does not see that were it not lawful for a man to judge as to the moral life of his fellow inhabitants in the world, society would fall! What would society be if there were no public judgments or if one did not form his own judgment concerning another? What is not lawful, is judgment as to the quality of the interior mind or soul within man, thus as to what his spiritual state is and hence his lot after death. This is known to the Lord only; nor does the Lord reveal it until after death, and this in order that what a man does he may do from freedom, and that thereby good or evil may be from him and so in him, and he thus live far himself and be himself forever. That the interiors of the mind, hidden in the world, are revealed after death is because this is a matter of importance and use to the societies into which the man then comes; for there all are spiritual. That they are revealed then is plain from these words of the Lord:
"There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.
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Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the housetops" (Luke 12:2, 3).
A general judgment such as: If in internals you are what you appear to be in externals you will be saved or condemned, is allowed; but a particular judgment such as, You are such in internals and therefore will be saved or condemned, is not allowed.
It is judgment of man's spiritual life or of the internal life of his soul that is meant by the imputation here treated of. What man knows who is a whoremonger at heart and who a consort at heart? Yet it is the thoughts of the heart, being the purposes of the will, that judge every man. But these matters shall be laid open in the following order:
I. That after death the evil in which one is, is imputed to him; likewise the good.
II. That the transcription of the good of one man into another is impossible.
III. That if by imputation is meant such transcription, imputation is an idle word.
IV. That evil is imputed to every one according to the nature of his will and the nature of his understanding; likewise good.
V. That scortatory love is imputed to each man in the same way.
VI. And likewise conjugial love. Conjugial Love 523
SOUTH AFRICAN ASSEMBLY LOUIS B. KING 1977
All members and friends of the General Church are cordially invited to attend the Ninth South African Assembly of the General Church of the New Jerusalem to be held in Westviile, Natal, South Africa on November 4th to 6th, 1977, Bishop Louis B. King presiding.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
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REMAINS and Our Part in Their Implantation Rev. ERIK SANDSTROM 1977
(First of two parts of an address given to The Educational Council, August, 1917. p. 23.)
INTRODUCTION
One of my most vivid boyhood memories is when our parents gathered the five of us children for morning prayer It Was very simple. We would kneel in a circle on the wooden floor before going to the train for school, and we would just say the Lord's Prayer together. There was nothing else, except that an all-around "Good morning" in the form of hugs and kisses always followed. The whole ceremony took only a few minutes, and it was routine procedure; it never failed.
There is of course a feeling that goes with that memory. The Writings would refer to it as an affection, perhaps in this case an affection for things from the Lord and for one another-the Writings might even call them celestial and spiritual things.
The memory and its accompanying feeling remain with me.
We all have remains of this or a comparable nature. Some of our remains we can associate with distinct memories; others of a still deeper nature would have been given us without our conscious observation, and these are therefore beyond our conscious recall. But whatever has once been felt or intellectually observed is preserved by the Lord with tender care in the inner recesses of the mind. Nothing is wanting; nothing is failing: nothing is without potency for later use.
Secular psychology and psychiatry too are aware of latent powers in the mind derived from childhood. In fact, the whole theory of psychoanalysis is based on the observation of the influence of past experience on later behavior. Typical is Perhaps Dr. Missildine's book "Your Inner Child of the Past" (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1963), in which he makes the following point. "Actually, the 'child of the past' participates in everything we do as adults-in our pleasures as well as our difficulties. When we can recognize these feelings as stemming from childhood, we have made a big step forward."*
* P. 23
Of course psychiatry does not attach any Divine or celestial influx to the latent powers stored up from childhood (and, for that matter, from later years as well).
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In fact, it tends to dwell chiefly on negative experiences, as is perhaps natural since its particular field is mental disorders. Certainly this applies to the book just cited. Nor is it really possible to have an adequate concept of the influence of earlier experiences, that is, of remains, unless there is some insight in the law of correspondence. First there is the process of implantation itself, namely, when a good experience or a true knowledge affirmatively accepted in the external mind, invites a corresponding influx from a heavenly society into and through the internal mind. The result is what the Writings call 'remains,' while Missildine, lacking the spiritual perspective, speaks of 'feelings stemming from childhood.' Second, there is the activation of these remains, or the influx into them and through them. Again correspondence is required. Either the external is already in correspondence, or there is a struggle to restore in the external a state that corresponds to the remains in the internal. Such a struggle the Writings call temptation.
States thus preserved in the internal man make it possible to account for conscience. Without them, conscience arises from nowhere, and becomes entirely unexplainable. How could man hear the voice of God within him, if there were no states in him that opened up towards the Divine? But here we are at the gate of vast vistas, for a spiritual kingdom, organized and quickened by an all-present Divine Proceeding, comes into view. The Word in its letter holds out the key to these vistas, and the Writings apply the key to the lock and open up the door.
I find it interesting that Swedenborg was aware of something higher operating in the mind, even before he was introduced to the arcana themselves of heaven. Perhaps he could have this awareness, and discuss it, because he had remains of humility before his Maker and his Maker's Word, and because he based his philosophy on his studies of the Word as much as on his examination of nature and its phenomena. At any rate, he knew that there was something flowing in from above which tacitly operated in the mind. For example, in the "Rational Psychology" he says: "The spiritual mind is a form, the essential determinations of which are all those loves which flow in from above, that is, from God through His Spirit by means of the Word, and from heaven and the heavenly society of souls."*
* R. Psych. 341
It is easy to identify "the loves that flow in from above" with the Divine and heavenly influx that strikes upon the remains in the mind, and awakens them so that our rational, conscious mind below them is excited and challenged to respond.
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The work cited touches on this in the following remark, where the spiritual mind is termed the 'superior mind':
Thus the superior mind is constantly turning to the rational mind, to the end that it may inform itself concerning the things which come before the senses, lest in any way it be deceived by an appearance; for the superior mind well knows how innumerable are the fallacious appearances of things. This is the reason why we are carried along naturally by a desire of knowing This is called innate curiosity and is the first motive in the perfecting of our intellect; that is, it is the love of communicating [the superior mind's] own knowledge to the mind that is to be instructed. In these operations, moreover, the rational mind does nothing of itself save only that it turns its rational gaze to the superior mind, that is, to the soul.*
* R. Psych. 311
Through this process, that is, by presenting "the things which come before the senses" to the inspection of the superior mind, and by allowing that superior mind to sort them out, the rational mind becomes formed and is given properties as though they were its own. The passage just cited thus concludes by speaking of an "acquired property" bestowed on the rational mind:-
From the moment that the [rational] mind applies itself, all this intellect is predicated of [that] mind as its own property, the property, namely, that it not only perceives but also thinks and judges. This becomes its own property, as it were, because it is acquired; but while it is being acquired, the [rational] mind itself is as though passive, and merely turns itself to the one side or the other.*
* R. Psych. 311e
I quote these things, both from secular psychology and from Swedenborg the philosopher in order to indicate that the existence of remains is knowable even without Revelation, although Revelation alone is able to give them their proper name, place them in the context of the Word, and show their heavenly nature and Divine origin. We should therefore not assume that remains are mere abstractions that we can only know about academically and so to speak esoterically. They are real, living forces, and when they are activated they flow as impulses into our rational thought, supplying an affection of warmth for what is good and true and one of horror for what is not.
These things I should like to examine further in the light of Revelation, and this by raising four simple questions represented by the interrogative pronouns What? Where? How? and When?-or, more specifically: What are remains? Where in the mind are they implanted? How are they implanted? and When do they come into their use?
In sum I shall try to show that remains are essentially all the good affections and true knowledges and concepts that are stored in our two memories, the internal and the external; that they are organic and are implanted chiefly in the interiors of the natural mind, including its inmost, namely, the rational mind (but that nevertheless in the widest view the exterior mind with its physical memory is also to be seen as housing things from God that are to be classified as remains); that they are implanted by the agency of men and angels, though not by any of these but by the Lord alone; and that they come forth as the voice of conscience during the process of regeneration, that is, during states of temptation, and are established as the new will itself after temptation, that is, in the states themselves of regeneration.
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I. WHAT ARE REMAINS?
In answering this question it is proper to begin with passages from the letter of the Word, notably the Old Testament, for the imagery of the New Testament does not usually lend itself to a direct reference to remains. We may, however, see a subtle implication of spiritual remains in the story of the feeding of the multitudes where we read of the "fragments which remained" after they had all eaten;* and an open reference to them in the message to the angel of the church in Sardis: "Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die."**
* Jn. 6:13
** Rev. 3:2
But the historical context of the Old Testament narrative gives frequent occasions for speaking of the "remnant of the people," or "those that remained," etc., meaning those few in Israel who were faithful to the covenant of Jehovah in the midst of a general decline and corruption. We can learn from such passages, because there is a complete analogy, and therefore correspondence, between the few faithful in Israel on the one hand and on the other hand the spiritual affections of what is good and true in the mind of the individual, surrounded as these affections are by what is false in thought and corrupt in will. Bear in mind too that in the lower spiritual sense-the spiritual-historical-there is also involved a prophecy concerning the establishment of a new church from the remnant of the people.
Here therefore is a selection of spiritual teachings couched in the terms of the inspired story of Israel, including two where explanations from the Writings are added.
Except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.*
* Is. 1:9
I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord.*
* Jer. 23:3, 4
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Thus saith the Lord; Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations: publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Lord, save Thy people, the remnant of Israel.*
* Jer. 31:7
Out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of Mount Zion: the zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall do this.*
* II Kings 19:30; Is. 37:32
(With an explanation from the Writings:) And Noah only remained, and they that were with him in the ark . . . And God said unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying:. . .And I will remember MY covenant, which is between Me and you and every living soul of all flesh.* The remains with every man are what are here called the "living soul of all flesh."**
* Gen. 7:23, 9:8, 15
** AC 1050
The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof; which shall be marvellous in the eyes of the remains of My people. Now, not as in former days, am I to the remains of this people, for it is a seed of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, and the earth its increase, and the heavens shall yield their dew; and I will make the remains of this people heirs of all these things.* The remains are here called a "seed of peace," and it is they who are in truths of good whose fruitfulness is described by "the vine shall yield its fruit, the earth its increase, and the heavens their dew."**
* Zech. 8:5, 6, 11, 12
** AC 5897:7
The last two quotes were selected particularly because of the phrases, "living soul of all flesh" and "seed or peace," because it seems to me that they are rich and beautiful descriptions of what spiritual remains actually are.
Now we have all sensed the general spiritual sense in the passages that have just been quoted. But here is what we may regard as a summing up of that sense in two full statements in the Writings.
Those who are left are in the Word called "remains," and a "remnant," and are said to be "in the midst," or "middle of the land." And as this is the case in the universal, so also it is in the particular, or as it is with the church, so it is with every individual man; for unless remains were preserved by the Lord in every one, he must needs perish eternally, since spiritual and celestial life are in the remains. So also in the general or universal-if there were not always some with whom the church, or true faith, remained, the human race would perish; for as is generally known, a city, nay, sometimes a whole kingdom, is saved for the sake of a few. It is in this respect with the church as it is with the human body: so long as the heart is sound, life is possible for the neighbouring viscera, but when the heart is enfeebled, the other parts of the body cease to be nourished, and the man dies.* How the case is with churches or doctrines has already been stated, namely, that they decline until there no longer remains anything of the goods and truths of faith, and then the church is said in the Word to be vastated. But still remains are always preserved, or some with whom the good and truth of faith remain, although they are few; for unless the good and truth of faith were preserved in these few, there would be no conjunction of heaven with mankind.
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As regards the remains that are in man individually, the fewer they are the less can the matters of reason and knowledge that he possesses be enlightened, for the light of good and truth flow in from the remains, or through the remains, from the Lord. If there were no remains in a man he would not be a man, but much viler than a brute; and the fewer remains there are, the less is he a man, and the more remains there are, the more is he a man. Remains are like some heavenly star, which, the smaller it is the less light it gives, and the larger, the more light.**
* AC 468
** AC 530
These are general and comprehensive teachings. The Writings contain several specific statements about remains as well, and some of these we shall presently look at. I think, however, that the essence and force of remains cannot be truly appreciated except by contrast with their opposites, that is, hereditary evils; for remains are provided in order to balance out these, and so to make for a state of equilibrium in the mind. We shall therefore place remains and heredity over against each other.
The case in sum is, that heredity is with the man from conception, and thus as innate nature from birth, and that remains are implanted after birth according to Divine order to control that heredity by direct and specific opposition. I shall shortly explain what I mean by 'direct and specific opposition,' but first one special point with regard to heredity ought to be established.
That point is that man, strictly speaking, is not born into evil, but only into an inclination to it. This is important. No child is evil. If he were, he would be born condemned; but instead we know that all children are born for heaven, and that if they die as children they are brought into heaven. Perhaps I should have said, 'not born into evil per se,' or, 'not into the essence itself of evil.' Evil is a love, and the love of man is that which he as an adult acquires in freedom.
This point is a little delicate, for it is known that the Writings do speak of man being 'born into evil.' Examples are the following.
The reason that no one can come into the kingdom of God unless he has been born again is, that man hereditarily, from his parents, is born into evils of every kind." Man is said to be born into all evil, and what he has hereditarily is said to be nothing but evil.*
* DP 215:7The Divine Providence never acts in unity with the love of a man's will, but constantly against it; for man from his hereditary evil is always panting towards the lowest hell.*
* DP 182
In the face of statements of this kind we cannot outright discard the phrase 'born into evil,' but we should clearly understand how the Writings use that phrase, and ourselves use it in the same way. The words 'born into evil,' linguistically viewed, can perhaps be interpreted in two ways.
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One can think that the man has arrived in evil, that is, by birth is there; or one can think that he is turning towards it, so as to wish to be there, or tend towards it. The latter is the true interpretation, as the following from the True Christian Religion makes abundantly clear. And note particularly that the heading itself of the article, from which my quote is taken, includes the words, 'Man is born to evils of every kind.' Then the second paragraph in the article says:
Man is not born into evils themselves, but only into an inclination to evils, yet with a greater or less bias to particular ones. Wherefore, after death, no one is judged from any hereditary evil, but from the actual ones which he himself has committed. This also is evident from this statute of the Lord: 'The father shall not die for the son, and the son shall not die for the father; every one shall die for his own sin,' Deut. 24:16.*
* TCR 521
With this in mind we then return to the question of remains being the opposite of heredity, not only in general but also in particular.
There is opposition everywhere. Not even the Most Ancient Church prior to its fall, is exempt from this law; for there was some knowledge of evil (or perception of it) even before it was actually committed. We may vaguely understand this if we try to put ourselves in the place of simple, celestial men, who perceived that everything was from their Maker, thus that they lived solely from Him, and who could therefore faintly sense a horror in the concept of turning away from Him. Hence there was a 'nay, nay' with them as well as the predominant 'yea, yea.' And unless the 'nay, nay' had also been there, they would not have been able to perceive the bliss of being 'alone with God'.* From this comes the noteworthy fact that the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil was present in the garden also before they ate of it.
* See Gen. 2:18 and AC 138, 139
The general law is that "every thing is known from its opposite" (DP 38e). Therefore also "conjugial love cannot be known in a special way (in specie), except indistinctly and thus obscurely, unless also in some measure its opposite appears." (CL 138)
Perhaps we see the point best if we consider that evil is impossible unless there was first a good which was then perverted and turned into its opposite, and that falsity is impossible except as a twisting of a truth into its opposite. As the True Christian Religion states it, "An opposite comes about when one thing altogether ceases to be something, and another then rises up with the effort of counteracting the former."*
* TCR 72
It is from this we get 'non-good' and 'non-truth,' and it is from this that the important teaching evolves, that "no one knows what good is unless he also knows what non-good is, nor what truth is unless he knows what non-truth is."*
* AC 5356:2
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Bearing all this in mind we sense that remains are implanted under the auspices of the Lord, according to His own order, so that the particular evil tendencies into which man is born, taking into account also the "greater or less bias" to them, are distinctly opposed by particular remains. In this way there is a complete correspondence by opposition between our remains and our hereditary tendencies. We must remember that we are born with our tendencies, but not with our remains. The latter are implanted after birth. How then could it be otherwise than that they are provided by an omniscient providence in distinct application to the man's individual need, thus so that he may have within him an opposite from which to fight its counterpart in the proprium?
I see this implied in the following remarkable teaching:
As evil and good are two opposites, precisely as hell and heaven are, or as the devil and the Lord are, it follows that if a man shuns an evil as sin, he comes into the good that is opposite to the evil . . . Since this good and that evil are opposites, it follows that the latter is removed by means of the former.*
* Life 70, 71; see also AE 971:2, AC 9938, HH 541
I say 'remarkable,' because of the apparent paradox that man comes into a good by overcoming its opposite evil by means of that same good! This can be explained only by assuming that remains are referred to. These contain that particular good, i.e. that particular good affection, from which the man fights; and as a result of the combat-if he persists-he comes into the good from which he fought, that is, it is appropriated to him as his own.
In this way the new will is gradually formed; for as the man uses his remains he comes to will what they will. The Writings teach this under the title of conscience. The words are: "With the regenerate man there is a new will and a new understanding, and this new will and new understanding are his conscience, that is, they are in his conscience, and through this the Lord works the good of charity and the truth of faith."*
* AC 977
The new will and understanding are "in" his conscience, just as remains are in conscience as essence is in form; and by regeneration the remains of good affection build the new will and the remains of affection of truth form the new understanding.
What then are remains? We have seen that they are things in the individual man that perfectly correspond to the remnant from a former church through which there is yet some presence of the Lord and His kingdom in the midst of a fallen age.
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We have seen too that remains are the opposites of hereditary tendencies. Further and more specific descriptions of what they are should now be added, and we select the following teachings.
But what are remains? asks the Arcana, and then goes on to answer its own question: They are not only the goods and truths that a man has learned from the Lord's Word from infancy, and has thus impressed on his memory, but they are also all the states thence derived, such as states of innocence from infancy; states of love toward parents, brothers, teachers, friends; states of charity towards the neighbor, and also of pity for the poor and needy; in a word, all states of good and truth. These states together with the goods and truths impressed on the memory are called remains.*
* AC 561, 1738
This passage mentions memory. Another makes it plural, memories: "remains are all the good and all the truth with man which he stored up in his memories and in his life."*
* AC 2284
We need to stay with this passage for a moment. First we note the "memories," which of course refers to the fact that man has both an external and an internal memory; and second we also look at the phrase, "and in his life." Why this phrase! I think it refers to this, that by life from the remains that are in his memories he also receives new remains. AC 1738 speaks of these, after first noting the remains that have been given to the man from infancy. The teaching reads: "But when a man is being regenerated, he then receives new remains also, besides the former, thus new life. The remains acquired in the combats of temptations are those which are here meant."
Earlier in the same passage these new remains are called "remains derived from victory," and they are signified by the tithes given to Melchizedek by Abram after the latter's victory in battle.
But the new remains are also inscribed on the memories, particularly the interior one! All the states that man has ever experienced are there preserved. That is why the interior or spiritual memory is called "the book of man's life."* I therefore conclude that the phrase "and his life" is added in order to suggest the progressive accumulation of ever new remains from stale to state, through combat and through the life of peace that follows victory. The "seed of peace" in fact multiplies even to eternity, for remains are implanted after death also.
* AC 9841:3; DP 227
Some more points must now be added before we part with this section on what remains are. We should note that remains are of three degrees and also of three kinds; that some people have fewer remains, and others more; that it is remains that make a man human; and remains make reflections possible.
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As to the first of these points we are all familiar with the teaching recited at infant baptisms, that "as soon as infants are baptized, angels are appointed over them, by whom they are kept in a state of receiving faith in the Lord; and as they grow up, and come into the exercise of their own right and their own reason, the guardian angels leave them, and they associate to themselves such spirits as make one with their life and faith."* This indicates a progressive change in a child's heavenly environment as he passes from infancy to later years in life; and if angels from lower heavens succeed those from the higher heavens, it would follow that the remains implanted later are of a lower degree than those received earlier, thus that remains are of the same discrete degrees as are the heavens through which they are given. A teaching from the Arcana states the case more fully.
* TCR 677
Directly after the birth of infants on earth angels from the heaven of innocence are with them; in the succeeding age angels from the heaven of tranquility and peace; and afterwards those who are from the societies of charity. And then, as the innocence and charity with the young children decrease, other angels are with them; and at length, when they become older and enter into a life foreign to charity, angels are indeed present, but more remotely, and this in accordance with the ends of life.*
* AC 2303
Here the three heavens are clearly indicated; and it is obvious that remains in successive order are implanted by means of them. The "other angels" who are with the children as innocence and charity with them decrease, are no doubt from this society or that, as the states of the children fluctuate. I think the "other angels" are associated to the children as "they come into the exercise of their own right and their own reason," and that the angels from the three heavens prior to this state are assigned to them before their freedom has "come into its own right," and therefore before they can reason for themselves.
In this, therefore, we see remains in a descending order being implanted; and afterwards a new state developing, namely, one of incipient maturity.
In another teaching, however, the order of development is towards a good of a better and better kind. But this does not reverse the former series, for the accent is now on the remains of truth rather than on those of good. And truth, as it embodies and forms, comes by an external way.* I think we should envision good coming down in the mind through three discrete degrees, and reaching for the corresponding truth that may fulfill and establish it so as to turn it into use.
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Note, therefore, that this other teaching is in terms of instruction. We see good clothing itself. It reads:
* See AC 2557:3
Goods of three kinds are signified by remains, namely, the goods of infancy, the goods of ignorance, and the goods of intelligence. The goods of infancy are those which are insinuated into man from his very birth up to the age in which he is beginning to be instructed and to know something. The goods of ignorance are what are insinuated when he is being instructed and is beginning to know something. The goods of intelligence are what are insinuated when he is able to reflect upon what is good and what is true. . .The good of intelligence is the best, for this is of wisdom; the good which precedes it, namely that of ignorance, is indeed good, but as there is but little of intelligence in it, it cannot be called the good of wisdom ; and as for the good of infancy, it is indeed good in itself, but still it is less good than the other two, for as yet there is not any truth of intelligence adjoined to it, and thus it has not become any good of wisdom, but is only a plane for being able to become so. For it is the knowledges of good and truth that cause a man to be wise as a man. The passage then adds the cogent observation that "infancy itself, by which is signified innocence, does not belong to infancy, but to wisdom."*
* AC 2280:2, 5
There is obviously more than meets the eye in all this; but in general we may think in terms of good descending, and then truth ascending in order to meet that good and to form it. It is truth that perfects and gives quality, but it is good that gives life and essence. It is good that wills to be formed; truth has no will of its own.
Another passage puts it all together. It first speaks of the states of good stored up from infancy, observing that these states "are what are called remains," and then directs the reader to new remains, namely, those of truth.
In later life he is also gifted with new states, but these are not so much states of good as states of truth, for as he is growing up he is imbued with truths, and these are in like manner stored up in him in his interior man. By these remains, which are those of truth, born of the influx of spiritual things from the Lord, man has the ability to think, and also to understand what the good and the truth of civic and moral life are, and also to receive the spiritual truth of faith. But he cannot do this except by means of the remains of good that he had received in infancy.*
* AC 1906:3
In all of this the earliest remains, those of infancy, must be especially emphasized. It is from these there is innocence. Retain it, and you have an opening towards all things; cut it off and lose it, and you have nothing. If therefore remains in general are "in the midst of the city," or in the midst of the mind, then the remains of innocence are in the midst of the midst. Hence this: "The celestial things of love are love to Jehovah and love to the neighbor, and innocence itself in these. From these, as from the veriest fountains of life, flow all other things both in general and particular, for all other things are merely derivations.*
* AC 1450
501
These celestial things are specifically called "the first remains";* and we should bear in mind that, just as in numbers, first things in spiritual matters enter into all things that follow.
* AC 1548
As to our next point-that some people have fewer remains, and others more-let me introduce the teaching concerning the matter by observing that fewness or a greater number largely depends on education both in the home and in the school. We do have a responsible share in the implantation of remains, though no remains are implanted by either man or angel, but by the Savior alone. Yet no child is devoid of remains, nor is he lacking that inmost kind-innocence-which is the gate itself of heaven.
Two teachings will suffice to place the case before us.
The goods and truths [of remains] are acquired from infancy even to the time of reformation, with one person more, with another fewer. These are reserved in his internal man.*
* AC 2967
As regards the remains that are in a man individually, the fewer they are the less can the matters of reason and knowledge that he possesses be enlightened, for the light of good and truth flows in from the remains, or through the remains, from the Lord. If there were no remains in a man he would not be a man, but much viler than a brute; and the fewer remains there are, the less is he a man, and the more remains there are, the more is he a man. Remains are like some heavenly star, which, the smaller it is the less light it gives, and the larger, the more light.*
* AC 530
Our third point-that it is remains that make a man human, and the more so the more remains there are in him-was included in the passage just cited. But let further teachings strengthen the point:
That the states of innocence, charity, and mercy which a man has had in infancy and during the years of childhood, cause him to be capable of being a man, is plainly evident from this, that man is not born into any exercise of life, as brute animals are, but has everything to learn.*
* AC 1050
Man being man, and more than beast, consists in his having interior life, which beasts never have nor can have . . . And if this life were not within everything that he has in common with beasts, he would never be anything but a beast.* Good and truth are stored up within, and are there reserved by the Lord, even with the evil, in order that there may still be something human left.*
* AC 714
** AC 7560
[In remains] the veriest spiritual life of man consists.*
* AC 5297e
The things stored up and reserved are good and truth, and by these man has communication with heaven; and in so far as man has communication with heaven, so far he is a man.*
* AC 7560
502
Since, therefore, remains are so vital, to destroy them is to destroy the human itself. Here is a stern warning:
If evil steals the goods and truths stored up in the interior natural, and signified in the Word by "remains," and applies them to confirm evils and falsities, especially if it does this from deceit, then it consumes these remains; for it then mingles evils with goods and falsities with truths till they cannot be separated, and then it is all over with the man.*
* AC 5135:4
Yet, while vital, and even holy in the sense of being from the Lord, Divine they are not. They are spiritual creations; they open heaven to man; they are the human within him by which he is distinguished from beasts, and they enable him to become a man. But only the Lord had Divine remains. These He procured for Himself while advancing into states of glorification, and through them He united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence. And "these cannot be compared to the remains that pertain to man, for the latter are not Divine, but human."* But truly human they are.
* AC 1906:4
Finally about reflection. Without reflection there is no regeneration; and it is our remains that make it possible for us to reflect, and to examine ourselves, and to repent. It is essential to know that the unregenerate man has this ability. The Writings speak to this point as follows:
With the unregenerate man there is only corporeal and worldly life, and his ability to think and understand what is good and true is from the Lord's life through the remains before spoken of, and it is from this that he has the faculty of reflecting.*
* AC 977
That faculty is not derived from knowledges only. In fact it is not even essentially from knowledges, although these are indispensable. The essential formative force itself is the celestial good received in infancy. We first have remains of good, then remains of truth. The following therefore sets forth, in sum, the process whereby reflection becomes possible. "By the remains of truth, born of the influx of spiritual things from the Lord, man has the ability to think, and also to understand what the good and the truth of civic and moral life are, and also to receive spiritual truth or faith; but he cannot do this except by means of the remains of good that he had received in infancy.*
* AC 1906:3
503
DEVELOPING THE AFFECTION OF TRUTH Rev. LORENTZ R. SONESON 1977
(First of four-part series addressed to Educational Council Meetings, August 1977.)
The subject before us, "Developing the Affection of Truth", and its application to the teaching profession, is a complex one. Indeed, like all profound doctrine, it is easily defined, yet difficult to comprehend in all of its ramifications. It stands as the ultimate goal of New Church education, because of its key role in man's regeneration. It symbolizes success in our distinctive form of training the young in our church; and it is the spirit within the teacher that makes him or her a truly New Church educator.
The Rev. Fred Waelchli, when addressing a similar body as is gathered here, said, in 1934, that there exists a spirit among those who love the Academy and its uses, whether or not they be engaged in its educational work, "A spirit unknown to the world's education." He recalled a comment made by Bishop W. F. Pendleton, in summarizing his memorable tract on the Principles of The Academy, that there was yet another principle superseding all others. "The principle that is within all, the truth that is within the doctrine of the Academy, the law that is within the law, which is the spirit of the law-this spirit of the Academy, the spirit of its doctrine and law, the spirit of its work from the beginning, is the love of truth for its own sake.
"The love of truth for its own sake is defined in the Writings as being the affection of truth, and sometimes as the spiritual affection of truth. It is with the affection of truth that a New Church teacher is to be inspired; and it is this affection that he must seek to call forth in his pupils, so that they, too, may be inspired by it. Affection manifests itself in delight."*
* Principles of the Academy, NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1934:222, 223
Granting our acknowledgment of this truth, we immediately see how difficult it is to define our subject. For we are speaking of a living force, a spirit within a body; and we the trying, in this series of talks, to crystallize in our minds a working definition that can bring enhanced meaning into the work of educating others.
504
It is not that the Writings of our Church are lacking definitions of this doctrine; indeed, there are almost too many for us to digest and then to comprehend. In addition, many of you here, as well as teachers in the past, have presented remarkable studies on this very subject. Our library is full of documents on the affection of truth in a variety of expressions: sermons on Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala; Christmas doctrinal classes on the birth of the Lord coming through the characters representative of this important affection in man; learned addresses at assemblies dealing with the offspring of Jacob which involve this key doctrine. The Council of the Clergy files are full of material on this profound subject, documented with many carefully ordered passages. Editorials and articles in New Church Life abound on this particular teaching.
For this reason, as I soon discovered in my research, there is very little I could add to the files. The work has been done, by many learned theologians and educators. Yet, because of its integral part of this educational council, I have chosen to bring it to your attention again. It is not my intention to echo oft-repeated quotes on the affection of truth, but first to comment on a few papers by those who have presented their thoughts in the past; and then to add a few reflections and questions from a peripatetic priest who along with you is struggling to develop this important affection among parishioners, young and old.
My plan during this series, will be to center attention on a few of what I consider key numbers from the Writings. Then I will analyze along with you, what can be drawn by way of inspiration and enlightenment to further our mutual work in the church. With the aid of a visual projector, I will place these passages before you, and then after comments, invite your considered reactions.
Admittedly, much of what I had planned to say on the subject was presented to you just two years ago, by the Rev. Dan Pendleton. Perhaps it was the heat of the evening, or the dullness of my receptivity, but I missed much of the real genius of Mr. Pendleton's address when I heard it. Since then, in the quiet of the study, his series of talks entitled "Accommodation of Affections in Learning" have crystallized many of my scattered thoughts on the subject of `affection of truth'. His study, in my opinion, was a monumental contribution to the educators in our church. Knowing the half-life of the external memory, I plan to summarize some of those key ideas presented two years ago, touching on those particularly pertinent to the subject of this year's series.
But before turning to Mr. Pendleton's study, let me glean for you a few priceless comments by 'Father' Waelchli, when he spoke to the joint meeting of the Council of the Clergy and General Faculty forty-three years ago.
505
I feel a very personal kinship to 'Father' Waelchli, possibly because he brought my father into the church; perhaps because he baptized me; his son-in-law was my Dean in Theological School; and many of his grandchildren have been lifelong friends of mine. But a more subtle reason makes this grand old man so entwined into my life-for he too, was a traveling minister! He knew the rigors of reaching the isolated in the church. After long journeys to far-away places, he would set up his New Church school, and proceed to develop the affection of truth in the handful of young before him, in the living room or kitchen. The fruits of his labor, I am sure, are represented in this room. I am one of his lucky students.
As a result of his years of dealing with small numbers, eager to hear about good news from heaven, he developed a brilliance for stating the profound in simple phrases. His eloquence was in his ability to paraphrase passages and doctrines that rang true, even to the simple farmer and his family. In short, he was a wise man, dedicated to the very principles and work that bring us together. There were many times when he literally sat at one end of a log (or perhaps a wooden table), with a student or two at the other. But he had the essentials of New Church education, make no mistake about it: A teacher with an affection of truth that ultimated his very own definition of our subject-"It is with the affection of truth that a New Church teacher is to be inspired; and it is this affection that he must seek to call forth in his pupils, so that they, too, may be inspired by it. Affections manifest itself in delight."*
* Ibid.
Father Waelchli began his presentation with this well-known passage:
The Church is from the affection of truth in which is good, and (from affection) of good from which is truth, but not from an affection of truth in which there is no good, nor from an affection of good from which there is no truth. (The passage continues) They who say that they are of the church being in the affection of truth and not in the good of truth, that is, who do not live according to truths, are much mistaken. These are outside the church, although within its congregation, for they are in the affection of evil, with which truth cannot be conjoined. Their affection of truth is not from the Lord, but from themselves.
But they who are in the affection of good from which there is no truth, are not of the church, although within the congregation, for they are in natural good, not spiritual good, and suffer themselves to be led into every kind of evil and falsity, if only the appearance of good is induced upon the evil, and the appearance of truth upon the falsity.*
* AC 3963
506
He commented on this passage with these words; "(the affections of truth's) essential meaning is the affection which is inherent in truth. It is truth's affection. With man it is the spirit of his thought of truth, imparting quality to it. Affection is the state of being affected. The affection of truth is truth affecting." Then again: "When anything is in any wise affected, a change is produced in it. So when truth affects, there is produced a change in the state and form of that substance which is essentially man. With each such affecting he becomes to some extent a different man from what he was before-to some extent a new man."*
* Ibid.
Let me paraphrase some of these statements, into educational terms. If the church, by definition, is where the Word is read, (taught and studied), acknowledged and lived; and if New Church education is similar to this, that is, where there is a New Church educator who is teaching, studying the Word, acknowledging it through presentation of his or her particular subject in the curriculum, and most importantly, living it in his classroom, we can then substitute some words in the passage. This appears to be a legitimate exercise for us, for the passage is preceded with these words:
"Whether we speak of the church of faith in which there is good, or of the spiritual church, it is the same; and also if we speak of the affection of all, that is, of all these general truths."
So the passage could read:
"(New Church education) exists from the affection of truth in which there is good, and the affection of good from which is truth; but not from the affection of truth (in the teacher) in which there is not good, nor from the affection of good (again, in the teacher) from which is not truth. They who say that they are of the (New Church educational system), being in the affection of truth and not in the good of truth, that is, who do not live according to truths, are much mistaken. These are outside of (New Church education) although within its (faculty.)"
And further:
"(Regarding New Church educators) whose affection of truth is not from the Lord, but from themselves; they have regard to themselves, to the intent that by the knowledges of truth they may gain reputation, and thereby honors and wealth; but they have no regard to (New Church education), nor to the Lord's kingdom, and still less to the Lord." And still again, with "affective" vs. "cognitive" connotations:
"They who are in the affection of good from which there is not truth, are not of the (New Church educational system), although within its (faculty); for they are in natural and not spiritual good, and suffer themselves to be led into every kind of evil and falsity, (such as false educational philosophies and methodology) if only the appearance of good (in the system or philosophy) is induced upon the evil, and the appearance of truth upon the falsity."
507
As we know from another series of numbers in the Divine Love and Wisdom. 404 ff, which we will analyze in greater detail later on, a child is born into an affection of learning. Within this lies the potential (but not yet actual) affection of spiritual truth. Therefore, in the classroom situation, it is not the child who is expected to bring forth the affection of truth, nor is it the textbook, but it is the teacher! Or, as 'Father' Waelchli expressed it, "A wise teacher will be mindful of the fact that there is with children an inherent affection of knowing which he must call into activity, so doing in great measure by his own state of inspiration, and this in the entire range of subjects taught, from the highest, which is religion, down to the most ultimate of natural truth; all this leading to the great end to be attained, which can begin to manifest itself in youth-the affection of spiritual truth. But it should be said that even in early childhood, especially in religious instruction, in whatever connection this may be given, there can be within the affection of knowing a certain primitive affection of spiritual truth, as it were the germination of a seed into a tender plant, thereafter to grow."*
* NCL, 1934:327
Bishop W. F. Pendleton, in his work, the Science of Exposition, explains it this way, in the section dealing with religious instruction of children and the young:
"Affection or love is the prime essential of the Word, as it is of the human mind, just as heat or fire of the sun is the prime essential of nature . . .Affection is not so easily discovered or brought to view as thought. Truth is more readily seen than good. Hence the teacher will frequently find it difficult to determine the ruling affection of any passage; still, it can he done when there is time for close scrutiny and reflection The Writings frequently call attention to the affection expressed in the words of Scripture it may be remarked that if affection is the prime thing of the Word, it should be taught so as to inspire affection in children. To accomplish this the teacher should be in a state of affection or delight, and thus in a state of inspiration. This will beget a sphere that cannot fail to reach and penetrate the minds of the children."*
* Pp. 336, 337
And to take this a step further, to the teacher of secular subjects: the goal is to convey not only subject matter-facts and dates-but also natural truths in the sciences and humanities, conveying the affection of those truths from the teacher to the student.
508
At the same time, will not the wise teacher stimulate that affection of not only learning within the student, but also his God-given affection of natural truths? 'Father' Waelchli comes right out and says as much:
"It is not only in religious instruction that a New Church teacher should be in the affection of and delight in truth, and thus in a state of inspiration, so that affection may be inspired in the children. This same applies on all planes of truth, from that which is spiritual even to the most ultimate; the affection of spiritual truths entering into the affection of the more ultimate truths. Unless this be so, a teacher is not a New Church educator."*
* NCL, 1934:225
And again: "On the plane of natural truth-meaning thereby all truth beneath the spiritual-there should, in general, be two affections active with a teacher; first, the affection of confirming spiritual truth; second, the affection of the use in life of that which is taught. And the endeavor should be to awaken a response to these affections with the pupils."*
* Ibid., p. 226
The traveling minister knows how important it is lo begin his class for his handful of children with a simple opening worship. This not only introduces a sphere of heaven into the students, bringing them (hopefully) into a state of order and attention, but is equally valuable to the teaching minister, who needs inspiration from the Lord; to rekindle his love and affection of the truths he hopes to share. Certainly opening worship and chapel in our formal schools can perform this valuable inspiration for the faculty (if they are there!). And the same holds true for the traveling minister who conducts a short worship before giving a home doctrinal class.
'Father' Waelchli offered his listeners (and mine), a merciful teaching. We are all aware of some days when entering the classroom, that our inspiration and enlightenment is somewhat dimmed. Wrestling with a personal problem, ailing body, or just plain fatigue may limit our ability to inspire and affect others. There may still exist a love of or affection for truth, which is not from a love of truth for its own sake, but for the sake of reputation, honor, or gain. We are seldom without these loves, when no higher loves are present. Even so, we are told in a series on influx in the Arcana Coelestia 6301 ff, that they "can have the redeeming quality that it can adjoin itself to the genuine affection of truth, provided there be regard to use, so that truths may thus be introduced and learned."* It is implied, however, that when this becomes more the rule than the exception, we had better look for a new profession.
* Ibid., p. 228
509
Well, what else can we learn from our gentle and wise speaker of the past, addressing us now, as if he were here? Certainly he, along with his colleagues, have made clear our specific responsibilities in the classroom of New Church education. The finest building; the most cheerful classroom; the most up-to-date textbook; the longest string of degrees after our name-none of these adds one iota to sound New Church education in our generation, without the "spirit" within the teaching sphere. The affection of truth, spiritual truth, a love of truth for the sake of truth, must be present. And this, as I see it, must enter through the teacher from the Lord. We can utilize the smiling innocent face of a first grader to get us started. We can see evidence of an affection of learning in our students, on occasion, to remind us of what we are appealing to in them. But unless we are cultivating, in ourselves, a genuine affection of truth, both spiritual and natural, we cannot call our work distinctive. We may turn out products that do well on their S. A. T., or pass "Rooky Religion" at the Academy, but so might any secular or parochial school. The good student will learn what facts we have to offer, in spite of our shortcomings as educators. The poorest students will move on to higher grades to enrich what you and I have tried to convey in memory-knowledges. They may even have learned something of justice and honesty from their contact with us-the civil and moral planes of truth. But will they be inspired by the affection we should have of spiritual truths, filtering down into their love of natural truths? Can we, as told in Heaven and Hell, 319: 2 receive in freedom those good affections that come from angels sent to us? Can we, as stated in the True Christian Religion 140 be inserted into heavenly societies, to receive our inspiration?
We have accepted our sacred responsibilities as extensions of the home, as educators of the formal disciplines, both religious and secular, but with this comes a charge from Revelation. We are responsible for conveying and inspiring this most precious gift from the Lord to our class. "The Lord, from Divine love and thence from Divine zeal, calls and convokes all who are in spiritual affection of truth, and think about heaven, to the New Church (and to the classroom as teachers), and to conjunction with Himself, thus to eternal life."* "The Doctrines of the New Church cannot be acknowledged except by those affected by truths."** "Spiritual affection of truth is to love truth itself and to estimate it above all the good of the world, because through it man has eternal life."***
* AR 831
** AE 732
*** AE 444:10
Let us end this part of the evening with these sobering thoughts and challenges. We are involved with the great work of building the Church on earth.
510
Let it permeate and infill our deliberations this week. "This spirit of the Academy, the spirit of its doctrine and law, the spirit of its work from the beginning, is the love of truth for its own sake.*
* Principles of the Academy, p. 15
******
But now each of you can do something for me. I have limited this first paper to enable time now for a simple return. Before you, on the chair, is a simple question that I would ask you to respond to, and leave with me before you go. The returns are to be anonymous, but honest. It is my plan to collate your responses, to be incorporated, in summary form, later this week.
The question is:
"Can you recall an incident or two of the affection of truth coming forth from one of your teachers that seemingly touched and inspired a similar response in you? Describe it."
This may be difficult to separate from a remain of truth being implanted. Indeed, there may be no difference.
We will go deeper into further definitions and illustrations of these affections later on this week, but for now, your responses can be a very useful sharing experience for all of us.
Meanwhile, while you are writing, there may be some who can share and would share their experiences verbally.
(to be continued)
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, 111. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
511
SPIRIT OF PROPHECY IS THE SPIRIT OF A NEW CHURCH COLLEGE Rev. ROBERT S. JUNGE 1977
We learned that "the Church from the most ancient times to the end of the Jewish Church, progressed like a man who is conceived, born, and grows up, and is then instructed and taught; but the successive states of the Church after the end of the Jewish Church, or from the time of the Lord even to the present day, have been like a man increasing in intelligence and wisdom, or becoming regenerate . . ."*
* AE 641:4
This number clearly indicates an educational series which is reflected within the Old Testament Word. This and similar numbers are the basis for the Growth of the Mind concept. The internal picture is of states: conceived, born, and growing up, being instructed and taught up to the time represented by the end of the Jewish Church. States of maturity or becoming regenerate follow from the time represented by the advent of the Lord. Our College stands as the fulfillment of formal New Church lay education, and fits into the educational series in and around the fall of the Jewish Church. For this reason we think of the prophets as being a uniquely important field to explore in relation to the developing vision of the College.
Adult age is defined as the state when man ". . . for the first time has the full exercise of reason and judgment and thus can receive good and truth from the Lord . . ."* This we are interpreting as paralleling the time of the Advent. "Before this (the passage continues) he is being prepared by the Lord by such things as may serve him as ground for receiving the seed of good and truth." To pin this down somewhat more tightly we also read,
* AC 2636:2
. . . That the second state (from the fifth to the twentieth year) is a state of instruction and of scientifics is plain; this state is not as yet a state of intelligence because at that time the child or youth does not form any conclusions from himself, neither does he from himself discriminate between truths and truths, nor even between truths and falsities, but from others; he merely thinks and speaks things of memory, thus from mere scientifics; nor does he see and perceive whether a thing is so except on the authority of his teacher, consequently because another has said so."*
* AC 10225:4
512
Of course, adult age is a continuing process of increasing intelligence and wisdom, entering more and more into the meaning of the Advent and the confirmed belief in the Lord that it implies. We go on growing, (hopefully) to all eternity, entering intellectually into the mysteries of our faith. But sometime during the college years there is usually the turning point for beginning to make that faith our own-a time when the motivation process is fulfilled and a new beginning is made in the perfection of our character through adult life.
******
Now in thinking of the Prophets in relation to the college state we would focus on the theme of judgment, renewal, and redemption. As to Judgment: The pride of self-intelligence must break before a genuine spiritual vision can be formed. Man must despair of his own proprial ability to reason from natural light before he can ever hope to acknowledge a Divinely Human God to Whom he is responsible. The captivity of Israel portrays being carried away by natural reasonings,-yes, captivated by them. This can be a state of desolation as to faith and life. Hear just a few of the statements in the Writings concerning the learned. They doubt and even deny the existence of the internal man.* They "ascribe all things to nature and scarcely anything to the Divine. . ." and more than "the simple (they) make themselves out to be like brutes."**
* AC 3747
** Ibid.
They that think from modern learning do not know that there is what is spiritual, and that this is distinct from what is natural. From this it is that the distinction between the internal or spiritual man, and the external or natural, thus between man's internal thought and will, and his external thought and will, is not apprehended by such learned men. Hence neither can they comprehend anything of faith and love, of heaven and hell, and of the life of man after death.*
* AC 10099:4
Their sphere, even their tone of speech, "fascinates and infatuates the minds of others. Yet, "it is unknown in the world that there is such an infatuating and suffocating persuasiveness as exists in the spirit of the sensual man, who believes himself wiser than others.*
* AE 556:1
And most particularly and sadly we read,
It is a remarkable circumstance that the more one considers himself superior to others in learning and judgment, the more prone is he to seize upon and adopt these ideas concerning the Lord, namely that He is a man and not God, and that, because Be is a man, He cannot be God; yet everyone who adopts these ideas enters into fellowship with (those) who in the spiritual world are in hell. . .* . . .
513
The simple think of God as a Man, and not as a Spirit without a human form as the learned do. . . .*
* TCR 380:2
** AE 808:3
Yet all these concepts, the idea of the internal and external man, the concept of the human form, particularly of the Divine Human, are all contained within the inner message of the Prophets. Yet the learned stand against these teachings, even as most in Israel stood against the Prophets. Like Ahab they suppose that it is the word of the Prophets that troubleth.* They stand against those who represent the Word and doctrine from the Word, for the learned "deny the Word itself, which they attempt to destroy utterly."**
* I Kings 18:18
** AC 8944
The Academy College aspires not just to intelligence, but to wisdom, that wisdom which can receive the Lord. ". . . Pride of heart which is the love of self repels from itself the Divine . . . So far as man can humble himself before the Lord, and so far as he can love his neighbor as himself, and as in heaven, above himself, so far he receives the Divine, and consequently is so far in heaven."* The Academy College must have the inner strength to stand in a unique contrast to the learned world that it may receive life from the Lord. The power and strength of our movement depends not so much upon our great learning, as upon our attitude toward that learning. "For the Lord flows with power into those who are humble; but not into those who are puffed up, because the former receive influx, but the latter reject it."**
* AC 8678
** AC 9039
Now a maturing mind opened by the Word in life, recognizes that the kingdom of God is within man. We do not say lo here, or lo there. The authoritative Word of God, the voice of Prophecy, reveals it to us. The kingdom of causes, the kingdom of uses, the kingdom of God, cometh not with observation from sense experience. Because it is on a discretely different plane of reality it can only be known through Revelation, as a vision revealed by God. But it is no accident that the greatest conscious challenge to the authority of the Word is raised at the level of the university. The dearest possible defense of the Divine authority of the Writings must be developed at the college level-not with a denial of the intellect or the value of experience, but with a clear definition and recognition of its limitations-calling on all available experience and intelligence to illustrate and confirm this treasured conviction concerning the Word of the Lord.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord,-
514
And shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord, and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears: but with righteousness shall He judge. . . ."*
* Isa. 11:2-4
Think of the setting for a moment. A Prophet, claiming to speak for the Lord in a nation wrapped up in the delights of the world. The people vacillate. Intrigue runs rampant, and convictions are clouded with cynicism. Should they turn to the Lord or trust in Egypt or one of the other nations? They want so much to be like others. At the threshold to maturity it is so easy to become absorbed in the merely intellectual view, and to yield to natural conceits. But the Word of God in a New Church college keeps calling the mind back like the voice of Prophecy. "O ye remnant of Judah, Go not yet into Egypt."* In each experience as the student alternates between humility and fulfillment the student is asked to ponder the question of meaning, of order and purpose,-to look for the kingdom of the Lord. Despite discouragement and obstacles, New Church higher education must continually look for "the Day of the Lord." "And it shall be said in that day, Lo this is our God; we have waited for Him and He will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."** we earnestly hope that our students will be trained to look for the human form in all things, to look for its use. The quest for use is intrinsic to humanity itself. To not allow the voice of Prophecy to be raised as the Word of the Lord in higher education, can lead only to captivity and spiritual enslavement.
* Jer. 42-19
** Isa. 25:9
******
Thus the desolation and humiliation of judgment must also be seen in balance with renewal and fulfillment. Breaking the pride of self-intelligence is the road to enlightenment and wisdom, not to its denial.
The intellectual is given to man to the end that he may be in freedom and in choice, that is, in the freedom of choosing good or evil . . . Nothing of good that is of charity and nothing of truth that is of faith can be insinuated into anyone who has not an intellectual, but they are insinuated according to his intellectual; therefore also man is not regenerated by the Lord until in adult age and possessed of an intellectual, before which period the good of love and truth of faith fall as seed into ground quite barren. But when a man has been regenerated his intellectual performs the use of seeing and perceiving what is good, and thereby what is true.*
* AC 6125; cf. DLW 404
Although as this number says the good of love and the truth of faith can only be implanted with maturity, nevertheless the intellectual must be prepared so that the ground is not barren.
515
Of many colleges it could be asked, "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?"* We look to a college which prepares the intellectual ground for the bread of God to be received-which labors to open the way for the spiritual affection of truth which alone can satisfy.
* Isa. 55:2
Therefore one of the first elements in the Prophets is the element of vision. Like the Prophetic Word, the state of the college knows desolation, but it should also be full of hope and promise. There must be an inner optimism that recognizes that for all we are oppressed by life's contingencies, the Lord's kingdom will be established. It will be; it must be, even to the natural degree. Why? In a sense simply because it is the Lord's. It reaches beyond frustration and doubt. It calls upon the name of the Lord for its fulfillment, because beside Him, there is no Redeemer and Savior.
The ability of the mind to see the relationship of the spiritual to the natural must be fed if man is to become increasingly human. This requires a zealous pursuit of both foundations of truth. When we look at the Prophets in the letter we see all manner of diverse experiences and seemingly disjointed relationships. Yet each Prophet internally, viewed as to use, associates with a different society in heaven. Each one links to a particular affection and inspires a focus on a particular avenue of thought. Each in its own right contains an aspect of good and truth, which like the society of heaven with which it is conjoined is in human form. With reflection man can see how in a living and vivid way the Prophets reveal a concept of the Gorand Man of heaven which could be seen in no other way.
Something similar can be said of the college student's efforts to pull together all the knowledges of his whole life experience. It is like the retrospective view of the Historical Word we have mentioned before. The student is often confronted with a very disjointed view of experience. If he views his life, past, present and future, in terms of this world, in terms of time and space, there will never be a realistic pattern to his knowledge. With such a view the best he will be able to do is "from the things of sense draw conclusions as to causes" and so begin to be interior natural.* The worst is to doubt by doubt and question by question sink into a sea of confusion. Memory, no matter how keenly trained does not reflect purpose. Not even the ability to reason or think abstractly will reveal the final cause of life. Only a mind trained to think spiritually can grasp the very purpose of existence.
* Cf. AC 5497
Nevertheless abstract thought is the final preparing of the way.
516
Through it, both analytically and analogically, the mind is led to ponder the right questions. If the mind has been led to look for and expect to find an internal harmony, to expect nature to be a kingdom of uses, then the mind is prepared to turn rationally to the Word of God when the Lord in fulness of time makes His advent to that individual.
And remember, the mind that treasures the spiritual freedom that the Lord came to uphold does not expect proof, because proof in any final sense of the word is contrary to freedom. The harmony which is sought is not seen from without, but rather when the mind is lifted by the Word of the Lord to envision things beyond time and space. There is indeed a special beauty to the words so often repeated in the Prophets, "The Word of the Lord came unto me."
The relation of these states of desolation and discouragement to the drawing together of life's experiences into a genuine faith is clearly taught.
The man who is born within the Church, from earliest childhood learns from the Word and from the doctrinal things of the Church what the truth of faith is, and also what the good of charity is . . . the truths learned from childhood enter no further into man's life than the first entrance, from which they can either be admitted more interiorly or cast out. With those who are being regenerated, that is, who the Lord foresees will suffer themselves to be regenerated, these truths are greatly multiplied, for these persons are in the affection of knowing truths; but when they come nearer to the very act of regeneration, they are as it were deprived of these truths; for these are drawn inward, and then the man appears to be in desolation; nevertheless as regeneration goes on these truths are successively let back into the natural and are there conjoined with good. But with those who are not being regenerated, that is, who the Lord foresees will not suffer themselves to be regenerated, truths are indeed usually multiplied, for these persons are in the affection of knowing such things for the sake of reputation, honor and gain; yet when they advance in years and submit these truths to their own sight, they then either do not believe them, or they deny them, or they turn them into falsities; thus with them truths are not withdrawn inward, but are cast forth, although they still remain in the memory for the sake of ends in the world, though without life. This state also is called in the Word 'desolation' or `vastation,' but differs from the former state in the desolation of the former being apparent, while the desolation of this state is absolute . . .*
* AC 5376:1, 2
As we have seen the states of such desolation and vastation run deep in the inner message of the Prophets. In educational terms it is a time of trial and intellectual doubt, but its potential is a faith confirmed in the natural and freely made man's own.
Such a restoration of spiritual thought is impossible without some grasp of the correspondential relationship of the two worlds of cause and effect.
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Genuine human responsibility turns upon the restoration of the relationship between the internal and external man. This is implied in the teachings concerning the establishment of the new heaven and the New Church contained in the Prophets. The bones of Ezekiel's vision must come together and receive new life.
This vision rests upon the ultimates of life. As a Divine work, when the Church is truly seen it will be seen as living and growing, and the man of the Church will long to be a part of its ultimate mission and its growth. It is essential that the maturing mind be able to find an active role in the ultimate uses of the Church. And when he does he will walk confidently, "Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel are My people, saith the Lord God. And ye, My flock, the flock of My pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God."* The doctrine is clear: "They who are being reformed are reduced into ignorance of truth or desolation, even to grief and despair, and then for the first time have comfort and help from the Lord . . ."**
* Ezek. 34:30, 31
** AC 2694
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But there is a yet more profoundly affecting state when man is first confronted with his proprial will. This too like self-intelligence can carry him off. His sacred Jerusalem, even its temple treasures can be destroyed and carried off because there was no internal vision and no inner trust. Most college students, at one time or another, usually after they have been confronted with their intellectual doubts and limitations, also have to face personal natural affections and even allurements of which they were scarcely conscious before. Particularly as they think of their own use in life and perhaps the choice of a married partner they become confronted with the love of self as never before. "He hath hedged me about that I cannot get out. He hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, He shutteth out my prayer . . . I was a derision to all my people. He hath filled me with bitterness. He hath made me drunken with wormwood."*
* Lam. 3:7, 8, 14, 15
To meet this state man must learn to stand alone before the Lord's Word, with no historical faith to intercede for him. We read: "True humiliation is possible to none unless they acknowledge that of themselves they are profane and condemned, and thus that they cannot of themselves look to the Lord."* We can strive for a sphere of humility both intellectual and personal in our faculty, but we cannot of course expect a full state of humility from those who are just beginning their own path in life.
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But the deep introspective lows of college students seem to involve the stirring of that essential spirit of personal humility. It is not a state to be immediately directed, jellied and cajoled. At such times the student deeply needs the opportunity to reflect. He can find as if of himself a place in the Divine plan, if the voice of Prophecy is raised, and the affections of the past are gathered together into a remnant so that the Lord can build an eternal use within his heart.
* AC 2327
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion . . . How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? . . . Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy."* Even when "Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he knelt upon his knees three times a day and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did afore time."** But now he was alone before his God in a strange land. The courts of kings would have him forget. His high office would have him do otherwise. But because he held to his chief joy, the angel of God shut up the lions' mouths. Thus renewal stands in direct contrast to humiliation and judgment. The state at the border of maturity must provide for both.
* Ps. 137
** Dan. 6:10
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Now recall how the Prophets stand at the end and yet can also be seen in a retrospective historical relation to the thread of Israel's history. The voice of Prophecy must be an overall vision, but also must be tied here and there in a living way to the whole thread of Israel's life as a nation. When a young man can look back and see those affectionate states of remains as the Lord's leading,-when the thread of all this sense experience together with his affectionate insights begin to fit together then he begins to see his God as an active force in his life. Experience, like the Historical Word, fits into the vision of the Prophets as the whole basis for preparing for use. You can't live only in the "now" and appreciate the operation of the Holy Spirit for man's salvation. You can't live only in the "now" and take purposeful human responsibility before your God. To see life as a series of events in which the Lord appears is to begin to see the purpose of life. "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old."* "I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations . . . and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Savior and Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob."**
* Isa. 51:9
** Isa. 60:15, 16
We may also glimpse the Lord's presence here and there.
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We may consciously reflect upon His Divine presence in but a few outstanding incidents of our past life, but His Spirit is with us every hour. We read: "But then the man grows older and begins to think from himself and not as before from parents and teachers; he then takes up again and as it were ruminates the things which he had before learned and believed and either confirms them or doubts about them. If he confirms them, it is a sign that he is in good; if he denies them, it is a sign that he is in evil; but if he doubts about them, it is a sign that in succeeding years he will accede either to the affirmative or the negative when he begins to think from himself and to lead himself; if he confirms such things in himself and adds to them things which are still more interior and lives according to them, then it is well with him."*
* AC 5135:2
No other institution on earth except the Academy recognizes so keenly the profound struggle of intellect and will as a young man sets his course for spiritual life. Both must undergo desolation and judgment, yet both can be fulfilled and renewed. No other institution has the means for understanding this state with both justice and mercy. We stand alone as an institution of higher education which dedicates itself to turning the mind to the Lord and His Word. It is true that Redemption is a work that parents and educators can but prepare for. But we can strive that in all our work an inner vision of the Glorified Lord will prevail, that we will look to our Redeemer as the fulfillment of the thread of His life on earth, and as the inner Divine presence we long for in our work.
We will never know the measure of our success except through our confidence in Him who is the Spirit of Prophecy, the spirit of the preparation for the Day of the Lord, The confirmed sense of purpose and human worth can only come from the Lord, beside whom there is no Redeemer and Savior.
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RESPONSIBILITY OF THE HOME IN PREPARING BOYS FOR LIFE AT THE ACADEMY BRADLEY G. SMITH 1977
(Reprinted from New Church Home, May, 1971, pp 205-211, for the sake of wider distribution. The author is the headmaster of Stuart Hall, the high-school boys' dormitory of the Academy.)
The Housemaster of Stuart Hall (boys' dorm) has many responsibilities and functions. One of the more important functions that I have is trying to maintain a balance within the group that makes up the boys dorm. This balance can be tipped in different directions depending upon what is affecting the dorm or groups of boys within the dorm. The balance can be changed by a change of membership within the dorm, by the attitudes of the members or by events that occur in the school or in the dormitory. Normally the thing that changes the balance in a positive direction and affects the attitude within the dorm (or where a group of teenagers reside) is the influence: of parents and teachers with whom they come in contact. It has been seen that just the presence of an adult in a room or in the midst of teenagers can maintain a balance and a sphere of order that permits all of the members of a class or group of teenagers to remain in freedom and not be influenced so greatly by individuals or the general sphere of the group they are with. Maintaining this freedom of choice I believe is one of the responsibilities that we have as teachers and parents and is an important part of my responsibility as Housemaster. Without the adult sphere teenagers would not be left in freedom.
The home plays an essential role in preparing a buy for dorm life and life at the Academy Whether we have a successful or a more trying year depends greatly on the number of boys we get from homes who have been able to prepare their sons for the responsibility of being on their own and living with others. I have given some thought as to what could be used in deciding whether a boy was basically adjusted enough or has had family training that would enable him to benefit from dorm life. I have not been able to come up with any significant means of making a subjective judgment. Two studies that I have come across made by people not connected with the church help to point out the importance of the home.
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One study, dealing with city children from difficult circumstances, shows that the only two controllable variables that could be detected in those making it out of the difficult situation of a ghetto, were (1) they had an active mother and father in their home and (2) they went to church as a family. Another study, dealing with the culturally deprived, pointed out that even with large amounts of money being spent by school systems they cannot change the attitude and behavior educationally which have been instilled by the home in early childhood (remains). Admittedly, these studies were done with younger children than juniors and seniors in high school, but I feel that they are worth mentioning.
If a boy had to come with minimal training I would choose that he come with the following:
1. An affection for the things of the Word, and;
2. A respect for authority and adult leadership.
Others could be added, but these two (I feel) are necessary as a basis for my being able to work with a boy. A third might be an affirmative attitude to learn and work with others. This is mentioned because I feel that we are and will be getting boys with a larger variety of backgrounds than has been the case in the past, if for no other reason than sheer numbers.
I believe that some important changes have taken place in the last few years that our boys are caught up in. An obvious one is a change in morality, i.e., acceptance by some (and in some cases, the mod style of life) of cohabitation, even to the extent of having offspring under these conditions. This is experienced by our young people through their music, films, television, and athletes whom they have been exposed to since they were youngsters as well as by experiences related to them by friends. This can have a powerful, subtle influence on one when exposed to it over a long period of time. I believe we can instruct, and they will accept, that this form of togetherness is not orderly but they are still under great pressure when they leave us to be like other people in the world. Even if they do not, it can be a frustration and pressure that saps strength from more orderly pursuits.
If teenagers get caught up in inappropriate behavior early in life through peer pressure and opportunities being available; i.e., a relaxed or permissive sphere, it is difficult to prevent poor behavior from recurring or to reverse negative attitudes if the experience is found to be rewarding by the young boy or girl participating.
Verbal instruction by us as parents and teachers as well as others on appropriate behavior and thought has to take place many times prior to a boy's or girl's experiencing the delights as well as trials that come with maturation.
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The rationale (reason) for not doing things that parents and teachers believe are inappropriate will have less effect if the child is actively in a state of wanting to continue experimenting with new forms of behavior with their friends. It will become more necessary for early indoctrination and instruction as the culture in which they function and in which their peers live changes with the times.
The readily available experiences in drugs and alcohol as well as sexual misbehavior is difficult to handle with teens as they get older if these experiences have been found to be pleasing to the senses, helping in masking frustration easing boredom, and is rationalized as being acceptable from theirs or their peers, point of view. The temptation to pursue pleasurable experience not seen as being acceptable by their parents is made more tempting when the culture in which they live condones it or has become tolerant of such behavior.
A deterrent or help is the fear of being caught or being exposed in an activity that is considered inappropriate by adults that they respect and do not want to "let down." Inappropriate behavior can be put off by conscience instilled early in childhood, by example and instruction from the children's parents and teachers. This at times, though, is not enough. If situations present themselves often enough to take part in aberrant behavior-sexual, chemical, or mental-it becomes more difficult for boys and girls not to participate particularly if the sphere is one of "who will ever know" or if that they have found it pleasurable or exciting before. Protection of ignorance at this age is not really practical.
A protection that seems to be enforced less and less is one of chaperoning and keeping boys and girls in the sphere of mature adults. I am finding more than before parents making requests of my wife and me to loosen up on chaperoning restrictions so that the boys in the dorm can participate in social life involving dates and going to places where chaperoning would normally be called for. Some parents feel that we should become more trusting of our children with the idea that if we would be just more trusting and freer with certain types of privileges with our boys and girls, many of the problems that are in adults' minds would not come into fruition. The concept is that the children, not wanting to break this trust between themselves and their parents, would pursue only proper behavior when alone or with their friends. There is truth in this type of thinking. There are times when teenage boys and girls should be left to themselves and be permitted to go it on their own. A problem arises when adults take it to an extreme and allow boys and girls to be together in trying circumstances and situations.
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The role of an adult, or the sphere of adults, is essentially to help boys and girls remain in freedom; freedom to enjoy themselves without pressure or being tempted to do things that might be inappropriate.
The influence of adults is needed with groups of boys and groups of girls, not just with mixed company.
There is a tendency today to allow boys and girls at a much earlier time in their life to make the decisions that were considered to be those of the parents not too long ago. Boys and girls today are more frequently involved in what would be called the decision-making process in the running of their homes, also the choice of schools that they will attend; i.e., with many boys it is up to them as to whether they come to the Academy or not. A freshman or sophomore boy (to me) certainly does not have the perspective as to what he is missing if he is permitted to choose not to come to the Academy for a secondary school New Church education. What basis or experience does he have to base his choice on! I do not feel a boy should be forced against his will-but he should be encouraged (if the parents feel it is important) to give it a real try.
Many boys and girls in the schools that they attend, and in some of their homes, are continually asked for their counsel and their opinions (and they should be). But in many cases their opinion is accepted as being equal or on the same level and degree as the adults that they are associating with. This, along with a feeling that we have to show our children that we trust them by not demanding certain types of adult supervision, can take away the protection that young boys and girls need so that they do not follow along with the philosophies and pressures of the world that we live in.
Some parents, and many of the educators, emphasize the idea that all learning has to be an enjoyable experience and one that does not frustrate the child. If this philosophy is carried to an extreme it can prevent a young person from understanding an important fact of life that is to be learned; namely, that there are many periods in a person's life when all is not a bed of roses, and that we cannot always pursue those things that are more comfortable. Being happy and comfortable is an important thing to obtain in life, but it is not the basic goal of life on this earth. A teenager's wants or demands are different in many cases from what they need. They are quite volatile at this point in their lives. What was wanted or felt as being important yesterday is not what is on their list of needs today. Many times teenagers are flexing the rational, and teacher and adult should not take their pushing for change or arguing about rights as a direct challenge for the teacher or parent to change their views or give in.
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Many times it is a questioning of things they are being requested to obey, consider, or study and which they are not sure of or don't fully understand. I feel many times it is a testing of adults that they are with to see how strong the adults are in their beliefs and convictions. I believe that this is one basic error that educators have made when working with young people. Teenagers pushing for changes and questioning authority are natural growing pains for this age. It is the as-of-self exerting itself (many times it is the "wild ass" state showing itself with vigor). Its severity or intensity depends on the individual teenager. It is multiplied and complicated when one is dealing with a group the same age.
Touching again on social matters, I feel parents and teachers should play an active role in the social life of adolescents. If parents permit their children to relegate them (parents) to other parts of the home when they have their friends in or the parents choose not to be present and around when their children are socializing in the home, it is very difficult for parents to revert back to being influential in their children's lives and casual social life in the home without the children resenting the intrusion. If children, from an early age, are used to having Mom and Dad around to chat with them and their friends and the parents remain visible and at times take an active part, it is found that they can continue to do so under all kinds of social and life situations with their children and their children's friends. The children will have learned to accept this as a matter that is not one to be questioned but something that just happens. This participation does not have to have the effect of driving one's children and their friends out of the house and not wanting to come to their homes for social occasions. Once the parents feel that they are intruding and shy away from this responsibility, from fear of losing friends for their children, it is much more difficult to get back into the children's lives when it becomes evident that their (the parents') influence is needed.
What Bishop Elmo Acton has said many times in the past-that parents tend to be afraid of their children-would seem to hold true in many situations. Some parents seem to believe that enforcing and expecting certain kinds of proper behavior will have a tendency to turn their children away from them and put them into possibly more serious situations outside of the home. Parents can fear that if they are too strict in making their boys and girls follow the things that they as parents feel are proper, they will lose their children's friendship and affection. This might seem to be the case at a particular point in a child-parent relationship. There is a greater danger though, and that is one of the parents becoming ineffective as parents and in the end losing control, if not the respect of their children.
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I firmly believe that children will grow up and respect their parents and love them for doing what they as parents honestly believe to be the right thing for them to do. Children can, in fits of anger and frustration, berate their parents and consider them "square" at times but if the parents hold true to what they believe the Lord wants them to do as parents and uphold their values and stand by their understanding of the Lord's teachings, the children in the end will have respect for them doing the job to the best of their ability. It is not always pleasant or easy being a parent. It is very often a very lonely feeling one has, particularly when things are difficult and easy answers and solutions are not in sight.
I am going to quote the following to show how important our children's social life is and to emphasize the point that what is being talked about is not just parties, dates or just having friends in and around. Social life at this age in many respects is the area in which the teen operates, functions or lives. "The choice of our social life in late youth will determine the choice of our ideals, which will either look downwards towards the love of the sex, as such, or upwards towards the love truly conjugial. The beginnings of a new society, a new regenerate world of men and women, is involved as a hope in the social life of our adolescence; not a new world which possesses more and more perfect machines, or wider and more particular knowledge of natural things; for true civilization does not mean more inanimate machinery! but a new world in which the animal instincts with man will be civilized and tamed for their intended use and where the evil hereditary inclinations towards rebellion against reason and morality and mutual love will be modified and tempered more and more in each generation."*
* CL 49; The Moral Life, by H. Lj. Odhner, p. 89
If the church is successful in educating its youth, young people will be at odds many times with the broader culture in which they live their daily lives. If their life is distinctive and different, they, in some areas of behavior, will be thought of as socially maladjusted by many of their peers, by people they come in contact with, and by the norm of the culture that they operate in. As the culture changes and the church strives for distinctiveness, more differences will be seen. The young people will more and more be faced with choices that can be trying in light of what some of their peers are doing and in contrast to what the broader culture accepts or deems acceptable in the way of social customs and general behavior.
The members of the church and many of the church's practices seem to evolve with the culture in which we live.
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As society in general changes, so do the members of the church. A rational understanding of one's faith, and one's historical faith does not seem to be enough with many. There is constant Pressure and desire to be like other people. It is difficult for many members of the church to be willing to be different and distinctive in their own or their children's behavior. They are either poorly Prepared or the positions presented to them by their teachers and friends outside the church are more appealing or more comfortable to accept and follow. The "newer" approaches to life and one's problems seem easier to accept at times rather than taking a stand and maintaining the faith that one was brought up and educated in.
In the studies of the underprivileged and our knowledge from the Word, one can see support in the general belief that the home is where the strength of one's belief and mode of living comes from. The school cannot supply it. The home has to lay the foundation and support the school in its efforts not by words alone, but by doing-by showing that the distinctive life of the church is a real way to mental health and real happiness. The school can merely support, enrich, and strengthen the foundation laid by the Lord by means of the parents and home.
The organized church has to help to keep the home involved and active in the reading and the learning from the Lord's Word. Children learn by visual example, by something that they can experience apart from the rational verbalization process. The important things of the church are not just in meeting the material and physical needs of the organization, although these are of use and need to be taken care of. What has to be kept as the uppermost thing of importance for the family and the home is the reading of the Lord's Word and the participation of the family in worship. Our telling our youngsters that these are important will not have a very great effect if they see us as adults letting others things interfere or take precedence over these essentials of a distinctive New Church home. It is easy for us to get caught up in the affairs of the external church and feel that we are New Church while our mental processes become lazy and we fail to take time each day to read and meditate on the things that the Lord teaches. Children can feel this and be affected by these acts or the lack of them. Homes can be lulled into thinking that school or community fills these needs. If this becomes the case, they cease to be effective New Church homes. The externals of the church may be being served, but a void is left in the home in matters of education concerning the Word, marriage and general morality.
After observing, for six years, the young men living in Stuart Hall it is refreshing to see that many times the isolated boys (ones not having had the opportunity of a New Church education) have been solid individuals, affirmative to what the Academy and church are trying to do and they are seen to have a willing attitude receptive of adult leadership in matters that concern them.
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It is evident that their homes have laid a good, solid something in their lives and way of thinking that is refreshing for us to work with.
Some boys brought up in a New Church community, seem to lack at times the basic interest about matters concerning the church and religion. They sort of have a feeling that the Academy is just more of the same old stuff and that they have been there before. I realize that the students from away, who have been isolated and not had the opportunity to be in a New Church school or community, find a newness in the situation that could create a different sphere about them but it is interesting to see that in many cases the isolated boy has a better attitude towards adult leadership, a greater willingness to try to follow the school's and society's customs. This cannot be said to hold true of all students but there has been enough of a contrast or difference over the years to be of some interest. There are problem boys from all situations and outstanding young men from communities and school situations, too, but many times the isolated boy has been the one who shines.
As a church, as educators and as parents, we will have to work continually to develop and establish within our children a real willing interest in learning about the things of the Word. We parents, with the help of the priesthood, will have to see the vision of what New Church homes are and what distinctive New Church homes can provide for their inhabitants. We will have to work continually on developing a better understanding of what being a New Church parent means. I believe that our church schools are essential, but I also believe that the strength of the church lies in its ability to establish New Church homes no matter where they might be located.
If the church can work in establishing New Church homes and the members of these homes strive for distinctiveness the church will be successful and will grow, not just in numbers, but in depths as well. With the establishing of New Church homes, the Lord and His Church will be served.
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GOAL AND SPHERE EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address, and business communications, should be sent to the Business Manager. Notifications of address changes should be received by the 15th of the month.
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The teachings of the Writings concerning "remains" are the heart and soul of all New Church educational effort. For both parents and teachers, they outline the essential goal of all such education of children and the young.
In brief, they are affections of good and truth stored up, sequestered by the Lord in the inmost of the natural mind, which can be called the spiritual part of the rational degree. They are attached to, associated with, the sensations and knowledges which flow in to the child's mind. And, in adulthood, they are used by the Lord to balance, to modify and purify the lower, hereditary emotions and tendencies of the outer mind or animus of the adult, thus making possible to him a free choice between good and evil. Hence states of cruelty are balanced by feelings of compassion, anger and hatred are modified by love and pity. Inordinate grief is assuaged by consolation and hope. Intellectual conceit is purified by states of humiliation, of humility.
The actual implantation of these remains is done by the Lord alone, unobservable by adults, and unbeknownst to the children. Yet the legitimate goal of all parents, teachers and priests of the New Church is that they may aid, enhance and further this work. This goal will be realized so far as they project to children and the young a genuine sphere of affection. So far as they themselves, the teaching adults, inwardly feel the affection and love of things good and true, so far will they project to their young a corresponding feeling,-a sense of excitement, the feeling of wonder ("How did He do that)"), plain curiosity, pity, compassion, zeal, joy in creation, and many others.
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Title Unspecified EDITOR 1977
In this 101st year of the Academy of the New Church, it seems fitting to publish some of the papers and addresses which have been given recently on the subject of New Church Education, and which contain new thoughts and expressions as well as re-statements of old and familiar principles.
Most of these were given to the 1977 meetings of the Educational Council of the General Church, held in August. An account of these meetings will be given in our next issue. But in this issue will be found those which largely express the inner spirit of these meetings. As will be seen, much attention was given to the key teachings on "remains" what they are, how implanted, how used by the Lord, and how their implantation may be furthered by parent and teacher.
Accordingly, in this issue will be found:
(1) The first half of an address by the Rev. Erik Sandstrom, giving the basic teachings involved in this subject, and entitled "Remains, and Our Part in Implanting Them."
(2) The first of four addresses to the public meetings by the Rev. Lorentz Soneson entitled "Developing the Affection of Truth,"-a principal element in remains.
(3) A class by the Rev. Robert S. Junge entitled "The Spirit of Prophecy Is the Spirit of a New Church College."
And we find it a fitting coincidence that the new edition of Bishop Benade's "Conversations on Education" is reviewed at the end of this section of our issue.
DIVINE FORESIGHT AND HUMAN FREEDOM NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
Dear Editor:
Through the ages thinking people have striven to resolve the apparently irreconcilable problem of Divine foresight and human freedom. All three Testaments teach these two horns of the dilemma, and human reason, if properly exercised, will confirm that God must be omniscient and thus must foresee in order to provide for the needs of the whole universe as well as for the living creatures dwelling in it, and that humans do have freedom.
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Predestinarians of various persuasions have stressed Divine foresight at the expense of human freedom. But that so-called solution, if pursued to its logical conclusion, leads to the reducitio ad absurdum that God creates some souls destined for hell as well as those destined for heaven. Others, also of various kinds, have stressed human freedom at the expense of Divine omniscience. In so doing God is made out to be some remote, impersonal and insensate Being, hard to conceive of and to believe in.
New Church people cannot in good conscience adopt either theory even in part. They must face the problem squarely and exercise their God-given rationality to find a solution to the problem that agrees with the teachings of the Word with study and reflection.
The two absolute truths that should not be compromised in any way are that the Lord has perfect and full foresight, and man has freedom of choice. While on earth that freedom is not absolute. It is limited to the choice of things related to spiritual matters, essentially to the choices between good and evil, truth and falsity, thus between heaven and hell, but also as to his thoughts, desires, beliefs and the like. Civil laws and social considerations necessarily limit freedom an earth. In fact no one is able to enjoy full freedom until he becomes an angel of heaven.
The problem is something that each one must resolve for himself. As a senior General Church minister I've often discussed the problem with people troubled by it, but have never been able to convey my own solution satisfactorily. I don't think anybody can do so. The reason is, I believe, that verbalizing of one's own solution, and even its formulation in the conscious mind, involves finite time-and-space-based thoughts and phrasing which cannot adequately convey things that are apart from earthly time and space limitations.
It is the same as in the case of the descriptions in the Writings of the Spiritual World. Anyone who thinks and speaks of these descriptions in terms of earthly space and time can only conceive of the Spiritual World as a very weird place.
One must make the effort to raise his thoughts above time and space which our God-given rationality is able to do if properly extended to perceive the reality of the Spiritual World and a resolution of the problem of Divine foresight and human freedom.
NORBERT H. ROGERS
Huntingdon Valley, Pa.
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SELF-EVIDENCING REASON OF LOVE GAIL WALTER 1977
Dear Editor:
The Rev. Harold Cranch's article in the July issue of New Church Life, entitled "The Distinctiveness of the New Church," is one to be appreciated, but I was disappointed in its emphasis on truth and rationality rather than love. Mr. Cranch does talk about "the self-evidencing reason of love," but understands it as referring primarily to the love of truth. When I think of that phrase it brings to my mind a picture of people acting from love.
What it says to me is that the power of love is so strong that "it is self-evidencing;" it needs no explaining. The Lord's love for us is what makes this kind of love possible; and He demonstrated in His life on earth that nature of this love, its qualities of compassion, forgiveness, mercy. To me this is what the Lord's New Church is all about; it exists wherever people treat each other with love. This doesn't mean that I think it has nothing to do with truth, for the Lord is the only True Giver of love, and genuine love is founded on our faith in Him.
I don't think I necessarily disagree with Mr. Cranch-it's more that I feel the General Church has misplaced the emphasis. For what good does it do if people can recite and discuss doctrine all their life, if they are unable to forgive people or love someone who hates them?
Perhaps through learning truths we learn how to love, but Swedenborg talks about the love of our own intelligence, and I believe this is a real danger. When I think of the Lord's kingdom, I don't think of a place where everybody sits around talking about doctrine. I think of a place where people are loving towards one another. I believe Swedenborg describes a scene in the world of spirits in which "fools" are arguing over doctrinal points. As Mr. Cranch said, religion is of life; it is in our day-to-day dealing with other people that we are either growing towards the Lord's kingdom or away from it. His kingdom, His church, exists on earth to the extent that the spirit of His love is alive in us, manifest (self-evident) in our love toward Him and toward our neighbor.
GAIL WALTER
Bryn Athyn, Pa.
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BOOK REVIEW KURT H. ASPLUNDH 1977
Conversations on Education by William H. Benade, The Academy of the New Church Press, 1976 (Second Edition).
What is New Church education?
There have been many answers to this question. One of the earliest and perhaps most significant was given some ninety years ago by Bishop William H. Benade in lectures and articles on education.
Bishop Benade believed in the importance to the church of a distinctive philosophy and practice of education. In the year 1884 he began to meet with a group of teachers, parents, and students in weekly lectures or "conversations" on the subject of education. Benade saw that the doctrine of the church called for a totally new educational philosophy and practice from the teachings of the Writings to open a new understanding of what man is and the means whereby he may be rightly educated.
Shorthand notes of the earlier lectures by one of the members of the class (Col. John Wells) were published serially in NEW CHURCH LIFE, beginning in 1885. Later, Bishop Benade himself prepared the lecture notes for publication. The material which had appeared in New Church Life through 1880 was compiled in a small volume and published in 1888 under the title, Conversations on Education, (Volume I).
When we refer to Benade's Conversations on Education, we most often think of this little volume. In fact, however, Benade continued to publish monthly installments on education in New Church Life through 1889 although unable to continue meeting with the class. These later articles were reprinted in the Academy Journal of Education in 1915-1916 as a "Second Series" of Conversations on Education.
The present edition, under review, happily brings together between its covers Benade's complete series on education, making readily available for the student material that has been long out of print.
The Conversations are a classic statement on education in the New Church. They have been "required reading" for students in the teacher-training program at the Academy, for they comprise the first systematic collection of passages from the Writings on the subject of education, and present a systematic application of doctrinal and philosophical principles to the practice of a distinctive form of education for the church.
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In the announcement of this "New Church work on education" the reviewer of the first edition states his hope that the book "will stimulate thought and energies in the direction of a more extended school system, built up on the principles with which, as this work shows, the Writings are replete" (NCL 1888, p. 24).
We welcome this new edition, with its expanded text, for the same reason that the church welcomed the first. Benade's work shows the way to enter into a work of "indefinite extension" which is of primary importance to the church. This is an important work, not because it is a definitive statement of principles and practices of New Church education, but because of its spirit. Conversations was inspired by a spirit of devotion to the authority of the Writings, and to a principle that the teachings of the Writings could make "all things new". New Church education will continue as a distinctive and effective system only to the degree that this same spirit motivates each new generation to seek in the pages of revelation for guidance in the important use of the education of the young.
The work of education is a work of charity. In it, we seek to cooperate with the Lord in leading to Him, and to His Kingdom, those children whom Providence has given into our care. In the right performance of this work we must use those means which He has appointed and made known to us. Only thus can the successive degrees of the mind be opened and stored with all things required for their growth. Thus can the child be rightly prepared to be a useful member of the Lord's kingdom on earth in preparation for entering His kingdom in the heavens.
Benade's Conversations is not easy going for the casual reader, particularly the opening section of "Ends and Means" Therefore, we are indebted to the editor of this second edition (Professor Richard R. Gladish) for the aids he has introduced: carefully chosen sub-headings, an index, and a Foreword which includes helpful historical and biographical material.
Hopefully, this re-publication of Benade's classic work will stimulate renewed conversations on education among teachers, parents, students, and the clergy of the New Church.
KURT H. ASPLUNDH
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Church News VARIOUS 1977
OHIO DISTRICT ASSEMBLY
The Third Ohio District Assembly, held in Cleveland May 13-15, was not only the biggest yet, but in many ways the most significant.
About 120 people attended various occasions, with the most visible groups being young adults, teenagers, and a large variety of children. They came from Cincinnati, Louisville, Columbus, Erie, West Virginia and many places in between, including Pittsburgh and Bryn Athyn.
The Assembly was led by Bishop King, assisted by the Rev. Daniel Heinrichs, for whom this Assembly represented all that he had accomplished in the Ohio District in a little over five years. The Rev. Heinrichs has since moved to the Washington, D.C. Society as Pastor and Headmaster of the school.
The Assembly also became the first opportunity for many in the District to meet our new Minister, the Rev. Stephen Cole (then Candidate Cole). There were many words of appreciation for the work done by Mr. Heinrichs in building and unifying the District during his tenure. The Rev. Cole, who graduated and was ordained in June, was warmly welcomed and given a good idea of the size of the job he was undertaking beginning in July.
Sessions were held Saturday at the Rocky River Methodist Church's modern school building, following a Friday evening reception at the Alan Childs' home. Bishop King addressed the morning session with a rousing, extemporaneous defense and condemnation of the Proprium, explaining that while it is important that we do things as "our own" regeneration is accomplished when we come to know that the Lord alone has "Proprium" or life.
The Rev. Heinrichs addressed the Assembly on "Who is the Neighbor?" He pointed out that we should love others according to their good and should support that good in them.
In describing the various degrees of love to the neighbor, he showed that the highest degree is Love to the Lord, and just below that love of the Church as the neighbor. He stated that when the Church benefits, all the lower degrees; the country, the community, the individual, also benefit. In this way he stressed the importance of establishing General Church centers in the Ohio District.
At the business meeting Bishop King, noting the growing numbers in the Ohio District, held out the hope of two ministers in the District. He looked forward to North Ohio and Cincinnati becoming societies, as two strong centers, with growing and newly established circles in the other areas. He then carried this idea forward to the hope of establishing schools.
Hugh Heinrichs of Columbus was the toastmaster at the Saturday banquet, and presented three speakers on the "State of the Christian Church." Patrick Mayer of Cincinnati discussed current Christian Church practices, Carmond Odhner of Columbus current social practices, and Candidate Cole current civil and governmental practices. Mr. Cole complained that he was at a disadvantage, not having had a chance to learn the political persuasions of those present. But all the addresses were well received and then summed up by Bishop King, who stated that all the disorder mentioned stemmed from the love of sell and of the world, but that "the healing of the nations" will come from the development of rational ideas of Divine Truth.
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While all the meetings were going on, the children had their own program, presided over by Candidate Robert MacMaster and his wife, Brenda, for which we thank them.
An overflowing congregation filled the Swedenborg Chapel in Cleveland with a Holy Supper service on Sunday. Lunch followed, and New Church people then headed out the interstates for home, looking back on a very successful period in the area's history under Rev. Heinrirhs, and looking forward to the first visit from the Rev. Cole.
CHARLES P. GYLLENHAAL
SWEDENBORG SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION
The Eightieth Annual Meeting of the Swedenborg Scientific Association was held in Pendleton Hall, Bryn Athyn, Pa., on Monday, March 28, 1977. Mr. Charles S. Cole was elected President, taking the place of Mr. Edward F. Allen, who was elected to the Board of Directors along with incumbents Rev. Daniel W. Goodenough and Messrs. Michael A. Brown, Donald C. Fitzpatrick, Jr., Joel Pitcairn, Prescott A. Rogers, Jerome V. Sellner, Paul J. Simonetti, and Tomas H. Spiers. At a meeting of the Board later in the evening the following officers were re-elected: Treasurer, Mr. E. Boyd Asplundh; Editor, Mr. Lennart O. Alfelt. Newly elected were vice-president, Mr. L. O. Alfelt and Secretary, Miss Hilary Pitcairn.
Reports of the Treasurer and Editor were read; the Secretary's report was not yet prepared. Mr. Allen then gave a "President's Report", in which he mentioned the difficulties the Association had managed to weather in her history, the cessation of translation and the publishing work in recent years, and the present difficulty of cost of the New Philosophy. He emphasized the importance of the organization's second purpose, to promote the principles taught in Swedenborg's scientific and philosophical works, having in view their relationship to modern science and philosophy. Mr. Allen then thanked his associates and the officers for their work, and presented to Miss Morna Hyatt a gift in recognition of her years of service to the Association.
Mr. Allen turned the gavel over to Mr. Cole, who introduced the speaker for the evening, Dr. Thomas W. Keiser, an assistant professor of Psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit. His subject was the world of dreams, specifically nightmares.
Dr. Keiser began with the observation that dreams, and especially nightmares, resemble some of the experiences Swedenborg had in the spiritual world. Dreams in fact are from the spiritual world (cf. SD 4200), and the inhabitants of the world of spirits are inclined toward malevolence.
From ancient times until relatively recently, dreams have been regarded as a medium of communication between the spiritual world and man, and nightmares have been viewed as attacks by hostile supernatural beings. But today psychology and science reject the old ideas and regard nightmares as repressed wishes breaking through into awareness and frightening the dreamer because they are unacceptable to his waking ego.
The term "nightmare" may give clues to the origin of nightmares. The term originally meant "night fiend" and referred to a malicious and sexually seductive demon. The word "mare" is related to a word meaning "crusher", and in many cultures the word for nightmare has that connotation of crushing or pressure. (The sensation of suffocation is regarded as one of the main features of a nightmare.) In Europe and the U.S. the "mare" eventually became associated with witches.
If the world of spirits is the source of nightmares, specifically which of its inhabitants are involved? It would seem that the Nephilim, who inflowed by cupidities while Swedenborg was asleep, are a likely choice; the problem is that they are no longer in the world of spirits, since the Lord removed them (AC 581). Another possibility is the Sirens, whose interiors are filthy and who desire to control man.
A theory of sirens as the originators of nightmares would certainly explain a number of phenomena.
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Their effort to control man may be what causes the helplessness one experiences in a nightmare. Sirens are said to breathe into a person's evil affections (AC 1983); the fact that they work through what is already a part of the man is very likely what prompted Freud's assertion that nightmares are connected with man's deepest instinctual stirrings. The seductive nature of sirens may explain the folklore of the seductive "mare."
The theory of sirens may even explain the association of horses with nightmares (etymologically there is no connection); sirens desire to possess the intellectual things of man (SD 3719), and horses appear in the spiritual world when intellectual things are represented. (The relation of the lungs to the understanding suggests an explanation of the feeling of suffocation in nightmares).
Finally, sirens may even be the explanation of witches in the folklore which developed about the mare.
Modern science would regard the theory of sirens as highly improbable, and claim instead that nightmares are produced not from outside the dreamer, but from within by the emergence of repressed feelings into awareness. In order to respond to this view, a different model of mind is needed from that currently accepted by science, one which does not assume space.
A spatial concept of mind puts all mental experience inside the head and forces us to assume a plurality of minds. A non-spatial model lets us see mind apart from boundaries. The work Heaven and Hell says that neither affections nor their manifest forms are in space (HH 156). But since our perceptions are rooted in physical space, we perceive minds (or persons) to have separate identity.
A non-spatial model postulates only one mind, with separate regions corresponding to individual "minds". (We can see a parallel in the physical world, where objects appear separate from one another, yet are manifestations of space-time continuum.) The "regions" are zones of affections corresponding to analogous functions in the human body. Mind is the composite of all existing affections, while each man is one affection in the whole. Affection is love in its derivation; thought is from affection and is what is perceived instead of the affection, for it is the thing formed, not the thing which forms, which is perceived.
With a non-spatial model of mind, then, there is neither "inside" nor "outside" to mind; mind is experience. Sirens-and evil affections-are part of that experience. (Man's affections are living, cf. AC 41). Sirens are part of mind, as is the body.
Modern science and psychology cannot satisfactorily explain nightmares. In nightmares is the presence of evil, and modern psychology denies that either good or evil has real existence. Swedenborg, however, asserts that the laws of physics and chemistry are but concrete reflections of the laws of spirit.
The two conflicting positions-between matter and spirit, between love of God and love of self-have always existed. In dreams these two spheres are often more keenly perceived than they are in waking life.
To see mind as one is to see everything as somehow being part oneself. Sirens, which form a part of one's experiences, are ever active, and the man who is obsessed by them remains so unless he is in faith to the Lord. Nightmares rise up periodically as a warning to us to take that truth to heart.
The discussion of the address included the following topics:
Relationship of nightmares to vastations.
Possible connection between nightmares and the hood stage.
Connection between nightmares and the sleeper's physical position.
Possible relationship of gastro-intestinal disturbances to nightmares.
Machinations of sirens through man's affections.
The use of nightmares to children.
Influence of Dr. Keiser's beliefs on his dealing with patients.
Dreams as representations from the World of Spirits.
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The address and a complete account of the meeting, including reports and the discussion, will be found in the July-September issue of The New Philosophy. Those wishing to become members of the Association and/or to subscribe to its journal are cordially invited to write to Mr. E. Boyd Asplundh, Box #11, Bryn Athyn, Pa. 19009
HILARY PITCAIRN,
SECRETARY
AS IT SHOULD BE* NORMAN HELDON 1977
Could be the world but sees in me
An aged, gnarled and withered tree,
That with the querulous winds I sigh
In vain for fertile years gone by;
For golden springs and blossomed splendor,
And fruit that I was glad to render.
The axe of time, they say, will fall;
That surely is the end of all.
Not so:
I trust the Power that grafts in me
A scion from the living tree.
I feel the glowing heat, and bright
My leaves now shine in Heaven's light;
Already in my branches sing
The winds of an eternal Spring;
A finer sap begins to rise
And there'll be fruit fro other eyes.
NORMAN HELDON
* Inspired by AC 414, 1852, 2198, 3016, 3498; DP 332
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EDITOR 1977
Announcements
All ex-students, members of the General Church and friends of the Academy are invited to attend the 61st Charter Day Exercises, to be held in Bryn Athyn, Pa., Friday and Saturday, October 21st and 22nd, 1977. The Program:
Friday, 11 a.m.-Cathedral Service with an address by the Rev. Mark R. Carlson.
Friday evening-Dance.
Saturday, 1 p.m.-Banquet, Toastmaster: The Rev. Robert S. Junge.
EDITOR 1977
In order to avoid confusion and embarrassment, those who will be guests in Bryn Athyn homes for the Charter Day weekend should order their Banquet tickets in advance, by mail, unless they have made other specific arrangements with their hostesses.
The date is October 21st. The regular ticket price is $6.25. For all students, including those not presently attending the Academy, the price is $3.50 per ticket. Checks should be made payable to The Academy of the New Church.
Orders should be sent to the attention of Mrs. R. Waelchli, The Academy of the New Church, P.O. Box 278, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009, before October 12th. Please mark dearly on envelopes "Banquet Tickets". Tickets will be carefully held at the switchboard in Benade Hall for pick-up either by you or your hosts. No tickets will be sold at the door because of the need for advance arrangement with the caterer.
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ALL THINGS NEW Rev. ALFRED ACTON 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Vol. XCVII NOVEMBER, 1977 No. 11
And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. Revelation 21:5.
God today speaks to us in the clear concise language of His New Word. The pages of this new revelation, in fact, proclaim His Second Advent. Those who have wondered as they waited for the spirit of truth to come and lead them into all truth no longer need delay in recognizing that this spirit is present. He who sat upon the throne proclaiming the newness of His creation has now come as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The new gospel of truth is with us. Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, reigns; and His kingdom shall be from ages to ages.
But as we who know of the new revelation ponder its pages, its newness only slowly becomes visible. It has taken the church time to assimilate the wonder of this truth. Since its beginning in the late seventeen hundreds, the church has needed to grow in its knowledge of the new truth. Just as a baby must grow in stature, so the church as an organization must grow. Of course, this latter growth is of the spirit, but it has its corresponding development in human growth. Our Savior predicted the need for such development. In the book of Revelation, a woman clothed with the sun fled into the wilderness lest the great red dragon destroy her, there to remain for time and times and half a time while her child was prepared to face the struggle which would lead to the defeat of the dragon. Spiritually, the woman is the church, while her child is the doctrine of the church-the church's understanding of the truth newly revealed. This doctrine was with the church from its beginnings, in that all doctrine necessarily is from the Word, but it was only embryonically present.
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The church itself needed to pick up the pages of revelation, to understand the implications of its new truth, and so to bring forth that child of truth as it increased from the few in the wilderness of intellectual isolation to the many. As the True Christian Religion teaches, the New Church on earth does not grow in a minute, but increases only as men see the falsity in their former faith and so embrace the new vision of God now revealed.*
* TCR 784
Today we can look back on the history of our church and see how it has matured in its understanding of revealed doctrine. The intellectual struggles and controversies of the past two centuries, which are recorded in the literature of our church, illustrate our progress. From the wonder and joy with which people first received the good news of God's second advent, we have matured to a vision of God's essence. Study and thought have helped us to see falsities once taken for granted. Words such as God, Faith, Providence, Regeneration, Love, and Use have taken on new meaning in the light of God's own truth. By his second advent, the Lord has made all things new, and His church now gradually enters into an understanding of this fact.
But even as our church passes from infancy into childhood and on to adolescence, the vision of God expressed in His New Word has never waned, although with His first coming this sight has progressed and led to deeper joy and adoration. The wonder which Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men felt in beholding the innocent babe of Bethlehem is reflected in the first states of our church, and for that matter, of each individual dual entering into the church. The mixed emotions reflected by the shepherds, who noised abroad all that was told them by the angels concerning the child, and by Mary who kept all these things and pondered them in her heart, find ready counterparts in the church, based on the new vision of the Lord shown in the revelation of His Second Advent. The more mature joy and humility, expressed by John the Baptist and the apostles as the Lord began His public ministry, also is found reflected in the history of our church. But, although both states, described by individuals who saw God incarnate, show joy and adulation in the Messiah, neither truly understood the majesty of what they viewed. Awe and wonder remained but were infilled with truth in a third view of God described in the New Testament, the view of the risen Lord who could walk into the locked room and unfold unto His disciples all the scriptures. It was this final vision of God that gave the inspiration to take His gospel to the many. It is a similar vision which will inspire His new church with the same dedication.
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All things have been made new, which is particularly the case with the vision we have of God; but the church must mature to a true understanding of this vision if it is to increase. We must come to the clear conviction that the phrases penned by Swedenborg in his theological writings are not the words of a mere mortal, but are in fact words selected by God Himself as He speaks with us. To be able in the quiet of one's room to hear the voice of the Lord our Saviour Jesus Christ is a wonder and joy to the mature New Church man. To recognize the majesty of Divinity, the beauty of truth, which presents the very love of God in all its wonder-this brings an inward peace which can fill our hearts. No longer is God invisible, lost in terms like Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is present as the one God of heaven and earth, leading us to the peace of His happiness.
God has told us anew of heaven. Now, the details of that kingdom beyond death are clearly expressed as things seen and heard. In selecting the words of His new revelation, God opened the eyes of Emanuel Swedenborg to a special view of heaven. Unlike all other mortals, he was permitted to walk and talk with angels as an angel. His were no mere visions, but the factual accounts of things miraculously presented to all his senses by God for the express purpose of leading us to a true picture of our eternal destiny. This new vision of heaven, given to us by God, exists for no other purpose than to help in leading to entrance therein.
A heaven scarcely understood by mortal men now has been opened to the eyes and ears of those who read the New Word. Its newness is manifest.
The Word itself, sealed with the seals of human understanding, is now also open. The spirit of truth, which infills every syllable of both the Old and New Testaments, has been revealed in such a way that we may study these sacred scriptures with new joy. The destruction and slaughter, wreaked on a stiff-necked people by a jealous vengeful God, no longer stands as a stumbling-block to acceptance of God's love and mercy when the spirit of truth within is opened. Nor does the language used by God to speak to men of past generations and necessarily couched in the science and myth they accepted as truth, confuse. What was written as fiction need not be taken as fact, nor discarded as worthless when opened by the beauty of its spiritual reality. The creation, described in its seven day sequence, illustrates how God could speak to people of the past and of the present at once, leading them both to the happiness found in a life dedicated to selfless service of Him.
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Today, we can see the spiritual creation as it takes place in our hearts, developing logically through seven stages fully described by the days of creation in Genesis. Indeed, the entire word of God has become new in the New Church.
Nor have our dealings with others remained static as God has proclaimed His new truth. A kind of love, described by a new term because of its uniqueness, is revealed in the New Word. Conjugial love, which brings about the eternal union of one man with one woman in God's sight, opens for all a new understanding of the contributions men and women can make in our world. Nor is this unique love, which is described as holy, clean, and pure above all other loves capable of mankind, the only new love revealed to us by our Heavenly Father. We are taught in this New Word of the purpose of our own life, of the fact that we are uniquely created to receive love and to express that love in service to others. The term use is infilled with new meaning for the Church. We see our effect on others as a means whereby we express our love to God, as well as the only true path to our own happiness. The life of use is the life of religion which in turn is described as the doing of good.
The fact is that, as we listen to the voice of God speaking in the pages of His Word, every facet of our life is touched. Our mind is opened to the light of heaven itself, while our heart in concert responds to its warmth.
Let us then delight in the truth with us, and in that joy seek to carry the good news unto all men; for He who has made all things new has also called us to His new discipleship-discipleship which carries with it the responsibility of proclaiming this truth unto all nations.
"And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new." Amen.
LESSONS: Rev. 21:1-7; True Christian Religion 784.
Title Unspecified EDITOR 1977
Just so far as this new heaven, which constitutes the internal of the church in man, increases, so far the New Jerusalem, that is, the New Church, comes down from that heaven. Now this cannot take place in a moment, but only as the falsities of the former church are removed; for what is new cannot enter where falsities have previously been implanted, unless those falsities ale first rooted out. This will take place with the clergy, and thence with the laity.
True Christian Religion 784.
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SAYING THANK YOU TO THE LORD Rev. DOUGLAS TAYLOR 1977
A THANKSGIVING TALK TO CHILDREN
You know, among the first words you ever learned were "Please" and "Thank you". You may not remember how you were taught this, but if you have a baby brother or sister, you have probably heard your parents say, "No" when he or she said, "I want some more" or "Give me some more". When the little one looked surprised, your parents would explain that the magic word "please" had been forgotten. You may also have seen them hold on to something they were giving your brother or sister and not letting it go until they said, "Thank you". Your parents did the same for you, too, because they know that all children must learn to say "please" and "thank you".
There are good reasons for this. It's not just because seeing and hearing children saying "thank you" is a beautiful thing to see and hear. It is beautiful because it is good. It shows that we know that those who give us good things do not have to do so; they are not being forced to give to us; they want to do it, they love to do it, out of the kindness of their hearts, and we appreciate that; we are grateful for their kindness and generosity. When we think of that, we easily remember to say, "Thank you". And that is beautiful, because it is good.
But if we expect and demand good things from our parents or other people, even other children, if we think we have a right to all these good things, if we feel we ought to have them, that we deserve them, then we take these things for granted; we have no "thank you" feelings, so it never occurs to us to say "thank you" or to think of how kind and generous people are being to us. We forget all about that; and that is very ugly, because it comes from selfishness, from thinking of ourselves and our own enjoyment before anything else. Knowing this, your parents teach you, as soon as you begin to speak to say "please" and "thank you". But most important of all, we have to learn to say "please" and "thank you" to the Lord. We say "please" to the Lord when we pray to Him. To pray is to ask. We say "thank you" when we realize the Lord has given us something good.
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All good things come from the Lord in the first place. He made everything that's good. He gives us the most precious things of all. He gives us our very life. He keeps us alive every second, to eternity. When we think of that, we can feel very thankful to the Lord, and then we say, "Thank you". We give thanks unto the Lord. That's what thanksgiving means.
This matter of thanking the Lord for all his wonderful blessings is so important that we are given reminders of it over and over again in the Lord's Word. We were reminded of it in our reading from the Word this morning. We read about a message that the Lord gave to the Israelites through his servant Moses. The message was simply this: "Be sure you remember to thank the Lord for all your blessings. Be careful in case you forget that He has done all these marvelous works and think that you have done them".
You see, the Israelites were just about to enter the promised land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey that the Lord promised their fathers He would give them. They had been led by Moses out of Egypt, through that great and terrible wilderness for forty years, and here they were at the boundary of the land, about to enter it. The Lord told Moses to remind the people that later on, after they had conquered the inhabitants of the land and were no longer living in tents but were living in comfortable houses, when everything they had was getting better and better, when all their riches increased, it would be very easy to forget that the Lord had done all these wonderful things for them; it would be easy to become very proud and conceited and think that they had done it all from their own strength, their own power. In that case they would not feel like thanking the Lord at all. It would be very easy for them to do that-to forget that they had received all these good gifts or blessings from the Lord, and not from themselves.
But we are not so very unlike the children of Israel in that. We are very like them; it is easy for us also to forget the Lord and all His wonderful works. It is very easy to think and act as if we had created all the good things we enjoy.
This morning we brought fruit and vegetables as offerings for the Lord. We knew that we were giving them to the Lord as a way of saying "Thank you". But really, we were not just giving them to the Lord. We were giving them back to the Lord. They came from Him in the first place. He made them. He grew them for us. Human beings may have prepared the ground or planted seeds. But the Lord made them grow. They are His. That is why we give them back to Him-as a reminder of all that He does for us.
That is why we have this Thanksgiving service every year-so that we will not forget the Lord and His blessings.
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He doesn't have to give them to us. He wants to. He loves to, because He is Love Itself.
Let each one of us at this very moment think of all the good things that the Lord has given us, all that He has done to make us happy. As we said in repeating the Thanksgiving Recitation, "Remember His marvelous works that He hath done". Let us do that each week as we go to Family Service. The first thing we do as we enter the Church is to make an offering to the Lord. Let us think of the Lord's blessings as we put our offering into the offertory bowl. Let us remember and not forget that we are giving back to the Lord something, a very small something, of what He has already given us. Let us go even further than that; let us remember the Lord and His wondrous works and give to Him-all the days of our life, or, at least, from now until next Thanksgiving. Amen.
LESSON: Deut. 8:1, 2, 10-18.
ANGELS REFUSE ALL THANKS EDITOR 1977
Angles, from their wisdom, go still further. They say that not only everything good and true is from the Lord but everything of life as well. They say, further, that there is but one fountain of life and that man's life is a stream therefrom, which, if it did not unceasingly come into existence from its fountain, would immediately flow away. Again, they say that from that one fountain of life, which is the Lord, nothing proceeds except Divine Good and Divine Truth which affect each one in accordance with the reception. Those who receive them in faith and life find heaven in them, but those who neglect and suffocate them turn them into hell, for they turn good into evil and truth into falsity, thus life into death. The fact also that everything of life is from the Lord they confirm by this, that all things in the universe have reference to good and truth-the life of a man's will, which is the life of his love, relating to good, and the life of a man's understanding, which is the life of his faith, relating to truth. Therefore, since everything good and true comes from above, it follows that so does everything of life. This being the belief of the angels, they refuse all thanks for the good that they do and are indignant and withdraw if anyone attributes good to them. They are astonished that anyone believes that he is wise from himself or does good from himself. Doing good for one's own sake they do not call good because it is from self; but doing good for the sake of good, they call good from the Divine, and they say it is this good that makes heaven because this Good is the Lord. Heaven and Hell 9.
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REMAINS and Our Part in Their Implantation * Rev. ERIK SANDSTROM 1977
(Second half of an address to the Educational Council of the General Church, August, 1977.)
II. Where in the Mind are Remains Implanted?
The first thing to be established is that remains are in the natural mind. They have to be. Heredity too is in the natural mind, and if that was all there was in that mind, then the Divine influx through the heavens would have nowhere to go. Hereditary evil could not receive it. Moreover, the natural mind is the very seat of consciousness, for it is there that the flow from the world through the senses-call it afflux-meets the empowering influx from within. Consciousness arises at the point of contact. There is no consciousness whatever in the higher degrees of the mind, though most certainly consciousness has its very life from these. It is because of this-that consciousness resides in the natural-that spirits and angels retain "the finest things of nature" (called the "limbus") after death.
Concerning this retention the following may usefully be recalled at this point: "Every man after death lays down the natural which he had from the mother, and retains the spiritual which he had from the father, together with a kind of border (limbus) from the purest things of nature, around it.*
* TCR 103
These purest things of nature are organic, and that is how it is possible for them to serve as the seat of consciousness, or we should say, the very seat of consciousness, for in the wider sense the whole natural mind may be regarded as such a seat. Nevertheless, it can only be the inmost organic structure of the mind-a structure of such stupendous plasticity and responsiveness as stills our imagination-that is the first receptacle of spiritual influx and therefore the very point of contact itself.
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There is much to learn about our mind having an organic sub-structure; and it is important that we do, lest we think of love and wisdom, good and truth, affection and thought, as something floating about in the somewhere or nowhere, in fact outside of man. Nothing can exist except in a containant or on a base. The Writings deride the idea that it can, and observe:
No one who thinks rationally can avoid laughing at the fancies of some, that affections and thoughts are not in substantiate subjects, but are exhalations modified by heat and light, like images appearing in the air and ether; when yet thought can no more be given apart from substantial form than sight separate from its form which is the eye, hearing from its form which is the ear, and taste from its form which is the tongue.*
* DP 274:6
These substantial forms are in the brain. That is noted in the next sentence: "Examine the brain, and you will see innumerable substances, and fibers likewise, and that there is nothing there which is not organized. What need is there of any other than this ocular proof?"
One might think that this is self-evident. Yet in practice we seem to tend to abstractions, probably because the non-substantial does not commit to anything. It becomes intangible. A mere abstraction is the lazy thinker's concept of learning. He is 'deep,' a master of speculation, and way above the crowd-and he is unintelligible, too. "For a mere knowledge of abstractions is like something airy which flies away."*
* DLW 189
The Writings themselves are frequently thought to be abstract, and of course they do speak much of things that are 'abstract' from nature in the sense of not being of nature, yet never as disconnected from nature or unbounded by it. While abstract in the sense just suggested, the Writings are at the same time very much "down to earth." There are indeed two worlds, but only one creation, and the world inhabited by spirits and angels can no more exist without the world inhabited by men than the latter without the former. Hence the emphasis of the Writings on organics.
With reference to the individual, who is at the same time a little spiritual world and a little natural world, there is the reiterated insistence that affections and thoughts (which are spiritual) are seated in organics (which are natural). Perhaps the primary teaching is the following:
Affections, which belong to the will, are mere changes of the state of the purely organic substances of the mind; and thoughts, which belong to the understanding, are mere changes and variations of the forms of those substances; and memory is the permanent state of these changes and variations.*
* DP 279:6
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See also what was quoted from the same number a minute ago. Some have thought that "the purely organic substances of the mind" are spiritual 'organic substances.' But I believe there are none. To be organic a thing must be natural. Yet spiritual substance is in such an organic natural substance. The mind is in the brain, and primarily in the purest things there. "The life of man is in its beginnings (in principiatis) in the brains, and in its derivatives (in principiatis) in the body;"* and in explanation the number adds: "'In its beginnings' means in its firsts, and 'in its derivatives' means in what is brought forth and formed from its firsts; and by 'life in its beginnings' is meant will and understanding." This reading of "purely organic substances of the mind" seems reinforced by the following:
* DLW 365
Because the will and understanding are receptacles of love and wisdom, these two are organic forms, or forms organized out of the purest substances, for such they must be to be receptacles. The fact that their organization is imperceptible to the eye is no cause for objection.* (Then the passage goes on to illustrate its point by the fact that there are insects too small to be seen by the naked eye, which "yet have organs of sense and motion," etc.-an illustration which shows that the reference to "purest substances" is to purest natural substances.)
* DLW 373
In other words, the will and understanding are forms organized out of the purest natural substances, and this because they are receptacles. As an a propos to this discussion we may also note the teaching that "man's natural mind consists of spiritual substance together with natural sub stances,"* a teaching that is further opened up and strongly reinforced in the phrase, "out of the purer substances of the world a fixed containant of spiritual things."**
* DLW 257, 270, 273
** DLW 388
I suggested that DP 279 is perhaps the primary teaching with regard to the organic seat of spiritual things, and had in mind that that number is very concise and directly to the point. However, we will add a fuller teaching which contains additional points (though not actually containing the word "organic"). It is from the posthumous work "On The Divine Wisdom," and reads:
The will and understanding are called receptacles because the will is no abstract spiritual thing, but is a subject substantialized and formed for the reception of love from the Lord; and the understanding is no abstract spiritual thing, but is a subject substantialized and formed for the reception of wisdom from the Lord. Truly they have actual existence; although hidden from sight they are nevertheless interiorly in the substances that form the cortex of the brain, and also here and there in the medullary substance of the brain . . .
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There are therefore not merely two but innumerable receptacles, each one doubled and of three degrees, as has been said above.
That these are receptacles, and that that is where they are, is plainly manifest from this, that they are beginnings and heads of all the fibers out of which the whole body is woven, and that it is from fibers so extended that all the organs of sense and motion are formed, those receptacles being their beginnings and ends. The sensory organs feel, and the motor organs are moved, solely by reason of their being extensions and continuations of the dwelling-places of the will and the understanding. . .The changes of state of these receptacles are affections; their variations of form are thoughts; memory is the existence and permanence of both of these; and recollection is their reproduction. The two taken together are the human mind.* (Italics added.)
* D. Wis. V:2, 3
In sum: "Divine order never stops midway, so as to form anything there apart from an ultimate, for it is not in its fulness and completion there, but goes on to the ultimate."*
* HH 315
So much about organics, all of which should help to infill our understanding of the teaching that remains are in the natural mind. The phrases in the Writings vary, the one most commonly used being "in his interior man."* "Man's interiors" also occurs;** and AC 5344 (speaking of Joseph storing corn in the midst of the city) takes us all the way into the "interiors of the interior natural," adding significantly that "the interior things of the interior natural are those in it called spiritual" AC 1906:2 gives us man's "natural disposition," and a few lines later, in 1906:3, his "interior rational." "In his internal man," is the phrase used in AC 2967. These phrases, however, are but variations of the same theme, for that it is the natural mind that is spoken of is placed beyond doubt by the constellation of phrases in AC 7560. There it is said that remains are reserved in "the interior natural mind, "the rational mind, and thus the man himself," and in "the interiors"-all of which phrases comprise the natural mind, but with a little more emphasis here or a little more emphasis there.***
* AC 2284:3, 6156, 5897:11, 7560, 5134: 4, 5297 et al.
** 5335
*** See also AC 7556
We bear in mind, of course, that the natural mind itself has degrees. These it is not necessary to analyze here beyond noting that the exterior natural turns through the five senses to this world, and the interior natural to the spiritual world-and to heaven or to hell there. The rational is the highest region in the natural mind, and therefore the first receptacle of spiritual influx. The inmost remains can be nowhere else than in that region.
But there are other remains than inmost ones. This would constitute a good reason why terms in allocating the remains vary.
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In fact, if we include remains of knowledges of what is good and true, the "house" of remains* would expand to contain even the exteriors of the natural, the seat of the natural memory. Recall at this point the comprehensive definition of remains quoted earlier in this study: "Remains are all the good and all the truth with man which lie stored up in his memories and in his life."** Can it therefore be said that remains are everywhere in the natural mind? I think it can, once we bear in mind the distinctions (on the Voluntary side of the mind) between affections of innocence (which are inmost), affections of charity, friendship, and the like (intermediate), and affections of good habits (outermost); and (on the intellectual side) remains of perception (inmost) remains of insight or intelligence (intermediate), and remains of external knowledges of what is good and true, that is, of scientifics (outermost).
* AC 7556-60
** AC 2284
One point of clarification: We have just spoken of the voluntary side and the intellectual side of the mind. But now in order to clarify (or confuse?) we must stress that all remains are in the intellectual part of the natural mind. This however, is not as complicated as it sounds. The hereditary will is destroyed; there is in it a long accumulation of tendencies to evil; that will is not salvable. But the understanding can be raised up above that will. The light of heaven does not consult the loves of hell. It does not abdicate its own intrinsic authority. So it reveals to us what is good and what is true, even in states when we do not at all like what is good and true.
That is how the intellectual part is kept in freedom-freedom to turn to the light, or to listen to the affections of a perverted will. And since it can turn to the light, therefore a new will can be formed within it, and this under the auspices of a constant, merciful and infinitely circumspect
Providence.
It is this new will that is being built up by means of remains, and therefore it is to this will, the will in the making, that we have reference when we speak of remains in the voluntary side of the mind.
The whole matter is basically simple, but at the same time profound: simple because it is obvious that the old will has no desire whatever to become heavenly. Therefore, unless provision was made for a new will to take its place, it would be all over with the man. But profound too, for the reason that the building up of that new will involves the whole philosophy of remains, the whole philosophy of the elevation of the understanding above the (old) will, and thus the whole doctrine of regeneration and salvation.
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But many, many aspects, innumerable doctrines, are not complications; they are only additions, or further insights, beyond a universal simple. And it is a wonderful thing that truth in all its infinite span can be reduced to primary, simple doctrines (and, we may add, if it cannot, then it is not true). In this case the simple doctrine is, that affectional remains are secretly implanted in the intellectual part of the natural mind, there to form the nucleus of the future new will of the reborn man. This is primary. Afterwards we may add the perceptions of truth that stem from those affectional remains; then the appetite for knowledge in the external region of the mind; then the intellectual insights between the perceptive faculty and the external knowledges; then the concept of the elevation of the understanding by the will in the making above the will it is to replace; then the deliberation and judgment on the part of the man in the making; then the resulting reformation, regeneration, and salvation of the man; then the peace and happiness he experiences when there are no longer two wills struggling for dominion within him, but only one free and triumphant will: one that is good. And, obviously, there are innumerable aspects, innumerable provisions, in each step of progression (most of them secret, but enough of them open for man to have a share in all of them).
But it all begins with inmost remains: remains of innocence. And they are reserved in the interiors of the interior natural, there to serve as gates for Divine and heavenly influx, which influx descends from there so as to embrace the whole of the natural mind with its creative power, touching it all with the Divine kiss of life.
III. Our Part in the Implantation of Remains.
How are remains implanted? This is basically a matter of correspondence, correspondence within the mind. We tend to think in a technical way about correspondence. Water corresponds to truth, we say; sold corresponds to love, etc. Yet that is representation rather than true correspondence.
Correspondence exists only when there is agreement between an internal and its own external; representation on the other hand can exist without such agreement. For example, a friendly smile represents a friendly disposition; but the friendly disposition may in fact not be there, and if not, then the smile belies the actual internal state. Of course, representation does not depend on disagreement! Should there be agreement, we still have representation. The point is, it can be either. With regard to correspondence, however, we must have agreement.
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Thus we can have representation without correspondence; but we cannot have correspondence without representation. Correspondence is always living; representation may or may not be. The teaching is: "The things that flow in from the spiritual world and are presented in the natural world, are in general representations; and in so far as they agree they are correspondences."*
* AC 2990; see also 2988, 2989AC 4044 marks the difference through the phrase "rightly represented:" "When spiritual things are rightly represented in natural things, the two correspond."
Now, what is the state of the natural mind before regeneration, in fact from birth? We have on the one hand the voluntary part in it, and on the other the intellectual part. The voluntary is perverted; therefore from it there spreads only "darkness upon the faces of the deep." These "faces of the deep are the cupidities of the unregenerate man, and the falsities thence originating."* "On the other hand there is the intellectual part; but as yet "the earth is void and empty," for as yet "nothing of good and truth has been sown."** But the Divine is making preparation for tremendous things-for a new, creative process that begins after the body itself, with the brain and all its marvellous components, has been created. So the "Spirit of God is brooding (or moving) upon the faces of the waters." That is when the Lord implants remains, and "broods" over these.***
* AC 18
** AC 17
*** AC 19
The "face" of the waters (or "faces," as in the original tongue) is in the external natural mind. Underneath this surface is "the deep." Thus we come into the internal natural mind. That is where inmost remains are being laid up. These, being implanted first, are called "first remains."* The Spirit of God "brooding upon the faces of the waters," is therefore the Lord reaching from within the inmost remains in the child so that the "cognitions of the true and of the good"** may be formed. Another passage helps to clarify these things:
* AC 1548
** AC 19
There are two states from which comes celestial light. The first is that into which man is introduced from infancy; for it is known that infants are in innocence and in the goods of love, which are the celestial things into which they are at first introduced by the Lord, and which are stored up in the child for use in later life, and for his use when he comes into the other life. These are what are called the first remains, spoken of in several places before. The other state is, that man is introduced into spiritual and celestial things by means of cognitions, which must be implanted in the celestial things given from infancy.*
* AC 1548
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We are reminded of the general idea discussed earlier, namely, that there is a descent by an internal way through affectional remains, or remains of good, and an ascent by an external way through intellectual remains, or remains of truth. This ascent takes place because of the drawing power of the things that descend. (For a full view of this stupendous process, see AC 2557 and cf. AC 9184:2)
So what is our part? Our part is (1) educationally, to guide and instruct the external mind of our children, so that this mind may be brought into correspondence with the work of the Lord in their internal mind; and (2) regeneratively, to bring our own external mind into order, and this by combat against the powers of darkness that operate there, thus by spiritual self-discipline, so that the Lord may bring out the remains He has held in store in the internal mind, and so that by these means a permanent correspondence between the external and the internal in the man's own mind may be established.
The long term goal of education, and the immediate goal of regeneration are the same goal: the unity and consequent peace of the mind, or in other words, the internal correspondence of the mind. Therefore, "When external things are put off [i.e. at death], blessed is the man who is in correspondence, that is, whose external man corresponds to his internal man."*
* AC 2904
Now, since our primary subject here is the implantation of remains, our attention turns chiefly to the pre-regenerate states (although we should not forget that remains are being implanted also during the process of regeneration, and then for ever in heaven). However, in order to further establish the principle that our responsibility lies in the area of the external mind (the area in which interior affections and thoughts come forth in decisions and words, let us recall a universal law of Providence: "It is a law of the Divine Providence that man should, as from himself, remove evils as sins in the external man; and it is thus, and not otherwise, that the Lord can remove evils in the internal man, and so at the same time in the external."*
* DP 100
Again a matter of correspondence, although that term itself is not used in the quoted law. But it is used in the following parallel statement: "The goods and truths from the Lord stored up with man . . . are reserved in his internal man; nor can they be brought forward until his external man has been reduced to correspondence."*
* AC 2967:2
But we return to education. The externals we directly deal with in education are one step removed from the externals in our own regenerative battles.
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In the case of ourselves we are directly concerned with our minds. We are to examine intentions, that is, decisions, and thoughts. Acts and speech are by no means exempt, but we should not change these merely for the sake of appearance. They are truly changed, only when the thoughts and decisions, from which they spring, are changed.
As for children in our home, and children and the young in our classroom, we cannot directly control their minds (unless we include "memory" in the concept of "mind," which we should not do); but we can influence and essentially control their behavior, and we can control the instruction that is intended for their memory. Their own reflections and their own affections are invited by the guidance we give and the words we address to them; but thoughts and affections do not come from without, although they find forms and stimulations from without.
What then is our part? Generally speaking, our part is to provide the right environment. And what does a right environment consist of? Order in our home; a sphere of reverence for things Divine as the heart of that order; kind words and attentive listening; thoughtful counsel; gentle guidance when gentle is enough, and firm and strict guidance, if necessary enforced order, when such is called for in order to break an unruly state; participation in the child's stories and in general an overview over these; at times participation in, and in general an overview in his games; and an introduction of the child into uses, with increasing responsibility, accompanied by trust, as he grows older.
A special word about the sphere of reverence. Nothing is more conducive to such a sphere than regular family worship. Let it be simple, and not too long. Let the time for it be wisely chosen. Let the child have a share in the arrangements, and invite both his questions and his comments. Let him be addressed by questions too. And let the parents, if possible, be united in supporting regularity and in promoting the right sphere. I think family worship more than anything else helps to provide an environment that will invite the corresponding influx, so that remains may be implanted. And the baptism itself of the child is the very first family worship in which he has a direct part. Baptism is holy. There is no question but that profound remains are implanted during the baptismal service.
But not only in times of worship. The Lord is present whenever truth is spoken and good is done.
Our part, therefore, is to plan and promote all the aspects of home life, so as to make possible the Lord's presence and the presence of heaven in them all. This is what invites corresponding states and the implantation of such in the interiors of the child's mind.
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And be not afraid of failure. No man is judged by the fact that he trips and falls; he is only judged by the fact that he stays down.
As for the school room, the emphasis there shifts from the affectional to the instructional, though that which is less in evidence ought not to be absent either in home or school.
Again we are concerned with environment, with emphasis now on the intellectual environment, though less so in the primary grades and more so in the higher grades. Order is once more a prerequisite. You cannot force a child to listen, but you can teach him not to do anything that prevents his listening.
More important for order, however, is the adaptation of the subject matter in such a way that the student can understand, and so become interested. It is of order too that he should be involved in the learning process. A rule of thumb is that what you tell him is not of primary importance, but what he gets out of it is.
Are remains implanted in the class room too? It certainly can be so, and this throughout the school years; yet just as the instructional more than the affectional is increasingly in evidence in those years, so we are now concerned with remains of the affection of truth more than those of the affection of good. The Lord implants both kinds of affection; angels are used under His hand to accommodate His influx. The teacher does not implant remains, as neither does the parent in the home. But we do provide the environment; we do invite influx, or we don't.
My main suggestion in this area, beyond what has just been mentioned, is for the teacher to think vertically as well as horizontally. Truth communicates upwards, all the way to its Divine source itself, as well as latitudinously on the level of scientifics. To think vertically is to be interiorly aware of causes, thus to have faith in the actual operation of the Spirit of God upon the faces of the waters. This faith can be a matter of lip service, or one of living philosophy. Is there any doubt but that the sphere of the class room will be affected by the nature of the teacher's faith?
The very essence of New Church education as I see it is to present knowledge vertically as well as horizontally. Let us keep both those adverbs. The latter we have in common with the rest of the educational world. It is important too, if anything even more so within the Church than outside of it. The "horizontal" is what we usually think of as learning. But the vertical approach in education is what is new. The True Christian Religion goes to the very heart of this point in the following statement:
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The Lord in the world put on also the Divine Natural, and from this He enlightens not only the internal spiritual men, but also the external natural man; which two, unless they are at the same time enlightened, man is as in shade, but when both are enlightened at the same time, he is as in the light of day.*
* TCR 109; see also 5541, AE 759:2
"At the same time" is the key phrase.
Is this possible in teaching history? And mathematics? Or let us re-phrase the questions. Is it possible to discern the footprints of the Divine Providence in the development of history? Is it possible to see the laws of creation, that is, relationships both discrete and continuous, reflected in the rigid formulas of mathematics and geometri? I have long felt that there is something profoundly suggestive in the three elementary means adopted by Swedenborg the philosopher in his search for truth. He says:
The principal means which lead to truly philosophical knowledge are three in number- experience, geometri, and the power of reasoning . . . By philosophy we here mean the knowledge of the mechanism of our world, or of whatever in the world is subject to the laws of geometri; or which it is possible to unfold to view by experience, assisted by geometri and reason.*
* Pr. I, Ch. 1:2
"Geometri" here is obviously dynamic more than static. In order to get at "the mechanism of our world" you have to think in terms of the geometri of motion. And is not the geometri of motion the origin of still geometri? and of numbers, angles, circles, curves, and spirals?
But if apparent stillness (and the static stillness on the page) comes from motion, then motion comes from conatus, and conatus from life. This is where discreteness, or the vertical, enters the thinking so as to give direction and control to relationships on the continuous, or latitudinous, level.
To discuss individual subjects, however, is not the province of our present study. History was chosen as an example, because it relates to human studies; and mathematics, because it bears on nature. The general question remains, and the applied answer is for the individual teacher. And the question is: Is there a vertical as well as a horizontal approach in all subject areas, in all disciplines? This study says yes, and for the reason that it is the vertical that makes the difference between true faith and a merely traditional faith.
Certain it is that parents and teachers alike have a part in the implantation of remains. Why is it that some have fewer and some more remains? As for children it must be essentially because of environmental influences. Adults are of course more on their own. Yet even adults depend on their human environment.
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For instance, would not a good adult gentile have fewer remains than a good adult who lives among true Christians? The gentile would not have fewer degrees of remains, for as we have noted earlier all three degrees have to be present with everyone; but there would be fewer remains on each level, especially, we would assume, on the lower levels.
The principle behind these observations is that the Lord operates both from within and from without. The "without" is what involves us people on earth. Angels and spirits (and we are spirits too, though less developed) are the agents in the "within" operation. It is intrinsic in the very order of Providence that created beings should have a part in the building of the Lord's kingdom, not by any power or light of their own, but by their acceptance of both from Him who alone has them to give.
I think the following tells the story:
No man has religion from himself, but through another, who either knows directly from the Word, or by derivation from others who have learned from the Word, that there is a God, that there are a heaven and a hell, that there is a life after death, and that God must be worshipped in order for a man to become happy.*
* DP 254
And the more a man knows from the Word, the greater is his opportunity and responsibility in the establishment of true religion among his little neighbors in home and school, and among his adult neighbors as well.
IV. When do Remains come into their Use?
We need to answer this question in terms of preparatory use and actual use. I suggest we do this in a more contracted way than in the preceding sections, since many of the teachings we have considered (especially in section I) have already laid a basis for this our concluding quest.
a. Preparatory uses. The states with which man is gifted from infancy together with the truths of faith are called "the beginnings of regeneration."* And another teaching, noting again that regeneration is by means of remains, adds that it is through remains that man has communication with heaven.** This communication is possible also with the unregenerate man; in fact, if not, then his understanding could not be raised into the light of heaven, and so he could not know what is good and true, nor be reformed. Therefore, "The unregenerate man's ability to think and understand what is good and true is from the Lord's life through the remains before spoken of, and it is from this that he has the faculty of reflecting."***
* AC 1050:2
** AC 7831
*** AC 977
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Clearly the remains are the powerhouse from which man draws strength as he lives his life. They alone open up towards heaven, and the Lord is in them. They are the celestial itself from which the rational is conceived as from a father (the "mother" being the affection of knowledge).*
* See AC 2557
We have earlier noted that there are remains of good and remains of truth, and that there is an influx from the former down towards the externals of the mind and an ascent of the latter, or more accurately, a lifting up of them because of the drawing power of good. In that context we listen to the following teaching concerning preparation for regeneration and especially for temptation: "Unless a man is prepared, that is, furnished with truths and goods, he can by no means be regenerated, still less undergo temptations . . . These truths and goods are the remains which are reserved by the Lord for such uses."*
* AC 711
a. Preparatory uses: if it were not for such uses, provided in mercy and with infinite care, man would be utterly defenseless against evil, nay, he would have no way of discerning between what is good and what is evil, and so would have an existence as that of a blind automaton.
Still, preparation is not in itself a choice or a determination; it is only freedom to choose. The next step is man's. While the Lord provides and protects, the choice itself He does not make. This is why the second kind of use potent in our remains may never come about, may never become actual. By "actual" uses we mean uses in act. How should we view these?
b. Actual uses. The new will and the new understanding of the angel-man to be are in potency in that man's remains. But that potency never becomes confirmed, never actual, except by means of hands and lips. Just as the Lord Himself never stops midway, but ever proceeds to ultimates, so neither do (or can) the celestial and the spiritual stop midway. Yet what is celestial or spiritual can be prevented from proceeding at all. What prevents is evil or falsity. (See AC 2284:2) The Lord will not permit commingling.*
* See AC 2284:2
But He does permit remains to come forth at times when "man is in a holy state, or in some anxiety, sickness, or other trouble."* On the one hand a holy state, on the other a troubled state of some kind. I think a "holy state" refers to a state of reflection on the Word, or one of prayer and worship. Remains would then as it were whisper into such a state, like a gentle wind at springtime. And in troubled states too! But its voice would then be for comfort.
* Ibid.
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Never, however, are remains more vigorously active than in states of temptation. They are being tempted, that is, attacked; for only what a man loves can be tempted. Therefore they rise up in defense, or rather, the Lord draws them together as His host of war. Man is defended, but really the man-to-be, for he "is" not yet. "Truths adjoined to good (we read) are stored up in the interiors of the natural mind, and there preserved . . . especially for use in temptations during man's regeneration."*
* AE 5342
If there is victory (and that depends on man), then the man comes into the love that was latent in the remains. He so to speak identifies himself with the things within him that were attacked. And the things that did the attacking, namely, evil effections and false concepts, are "vastated," that is, defeated. Also, "his external man is reduced to correspondence" (AC 2967:2); and this being so, remains are said "to receive life."*
* Ibid.
No man is regenerated without temptation. He has to have a share in the combat in order to confirm that he is, in the end and despite all, willing to give up his life in order to find it. That is how remains come into their actual use: through temptation and victory. In that victory remains of good hold the sword, and remains of truth are the sword.
But the man is given the reward of the victory! Thus the Divine mercy is revealed.
560
DEVELOPING THE AFFECTION OF TRUTH Rev. LORENTZ R. SONESON 1977
(Another of a series of papers given to the Educational Council of the General Church, August, 1977.)
In our first paper, we endeavored to establish the affection of truth as the underlying principle of New Church education. Unless this affection of truth for the sake of truth permeates and infills the classroom, (coming from the Lord, and through the teacher), our claim of distinctiveness is unfounded. It takes more than the proclamation: 'We are preparing children for heaven? Other parochial schools seek the same end. No, our objective is unique; and the charge before New Church educators is more specific. This particular affection, stemming from the affection of good which comes from the Lord, is what sets us apart.
This time I would like to zero in on just one of those affections in the classroom, the subject of this series on developing an affection of truth in our students. As all of you know from your own studies of the Writings, this particular love is presented in countless series of the Old and New Testament. It is, in fact, an integral part of the Creation series in Genesis; and, it is the final verse of Revelation: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all," "Grace" signifying the affection of truth, the blessing we seek from the Lord.
This particular affection is represented by Sarah in the Abraham series, Rebecca in the Isaac series and Rachel in the Jacob series.* Spiritual angels are in this affection;** it is the celestial-spiritual;*** and it is the tribe of Levi.**** Indeed, nearly everywhere the feminine is mentioned, the teaching is about the affection of truth: "Mother,"***** "females,"****** "wives,"******* "virgins,"******** "daughters,"********* and even "she-mules."********** It is the inner meaning of "cleanness of hands,"*********** the "soul"************ and "Samaria."************* It is the "salt of the earth", in the Sermon on the Mount;************** it is even the meaning of Sarah's laughter in her tent.***************
* AC 1904, 3075, 3848
** AC 1997:2 *** AC 2184:4
**** AR 375
***** AC 4257
****** AC 4510
******* AC 4510
******** AC 4844:16
*********AC 3066
**********AC 2781:7
*********** AC 2529
************ AC 2930:4
************* AC 2466:4
************** AC 2455
***************AC 2072
561
Because of this inexhaustible supply of teachings on this subject, it is almost impossible to know where to begin to collate passages. However, the final section in the work Divine Love and Wisdom seemed to me to give the most clear and step-by-step definition of our subject, especially as it relates to the field of education. So, knowing full well there is a wealth of other series available in the Writings, I would like to direct your attention to just a few numbers appearing in this more philosophical work, having in mind applications to our work of education.
The sub-heading, beginning at no. 394, offers this sweeping statement:
"From the correspondence of the heart with the will and of lungs with the understanding, everything may be known that can be known about the will and understanding, or about love and wisdom, therefore about the soul of man."
Now that remarkable offering of spiritual truths is perhaps a little more than we want to deal with here. However, within this presentation is a sequence of ideas that leads to our particular subject of the affection of truth.
In preface to this, though, we need to keep in mind a well-known teaching:
Since the soul in its very esse is love and wisdom and these two in man are from the Lord, there are created in man two receptacles, which are also the abodes of the Lord in man; one for love, the other for wisdom, the one for love called the will, the other for wisdom called the understanding. Now since Love and Wisdom in the Lord are one distinctly, and since these so go forth from God-Man, that is, from the Lord, therefore these two receptacles and abodes of the Lord in man, the will and understanding, are so created by the Lord as to be distinctly two, and yet make one in every operation and every sensation: for in these the will and understanding cannot be separated. Nevertheless, to enable man to become a receptacle and an abode of the Lord, it is provided, as necessary to this end, that man's understanding can be raised above his proper love into some light of wisdom in the love of which the man is not, and that he can thereby see and be taught how he must live if he would come also into that higher love, and thus enjoy eternal happiness (Italics added.)*
* DLW 395
Here I would ask you to note a few specific truths. First, love and wisdom are one distinctly in the Lord, and from the Lord. Secondly, they are so received in man as distinctly two. Thirdly, they make one in every operation and every sensation. And fourthly, the understanding can be raised, temporarily, thus separated from its loves in the will, for purposes of raising man from his fallen hereditary nature.
Expressed in other terms, as suggested by the Writings, life is both in the lungs and heart; yet we have blood in the heart (and its many tributaries throughout the body), and we have air in the lungs, (also sent throughout the body.)
562
Also, we know from this section and other teachings, that not all loves in the will are good, and thus not all thoughts in the understanding are true. Fortunately, given both an internal and an external man, we can maintain two sets of loves and thoughts. One is in the internal of man, into which flows an influx from heaven; and another is in the external of man, receiving influx from hell. Yet, as just expressed, we can raise our understanding, or rather we can consciously view from a higher understanding, the loves and thoughts of the external man, and begin the first step toward regeneration by admitting what we see in the lower self.
The analogy between these two chief receptacles of the spiritual and natural man is further described:
As the heart acts in the body, so does the will act in the mind; and as all things of the body depend for existence and motion upon the heart, so do all things of the mind depend for existence and life upon the will.
By the heart and its extension into the body through the arteries and veins it can be seen that love or the will is the life of man, for the reason that things that correspond to each other act in a like manner, except that one is natural and the other spiritual.
The heart is the first and last thing to act in the body. That it is the first it evident from the fetus, and that it is the last is evident from the dying, and that it may act without the co-operation of the lungs is evident from causes of suffocation and swooning; from which it can be seen that the life of the mind depends solely upon the will, in the same way as the substitute life of the body depends on the heart alone; and that the will lives when thought ceases, in the same way as the heart lives when breathing ceases.*
* DLW 399
The teaching here is straight-forward, but I would only emphasize how the will (corresponding to the heart), is the esse, the substance, the life of man. It is the alpha and omega of life in man.
The next passage selected (and I have left many out for brevity's sake) states:
Love or the will strives unceasingly towards the human form and all things of that form. This is evident from the correspondence of heart and will. For it is known that all things of the body are formed in the womb, and that they are formed by means of fibers from the brains and blood vessels from the heart, and that out of these two the tissue of all organs and viscera are made; from which it is evident that all things of man have their existence from the life of the will, which is love from their first principles, out of the brains through the fibers; and all things of his body out of the heart through the arteries and veins. From this it is evident that life (which is love and the will therefrom) strives unceasingly towards the human form.*
* DLW 400
563
Now, admittedly, this is one of those giant steps in thinking that causes me to falter. The temptation is to visualize a 'spiritual heart' forming a spiritual body, but into a human physical shape! Because my thinking is so confined to time and space, it is hard to make this transition of thought into a spiritual concept of form, and not just shape. Swedenborg appreciates this frustration, in trying to express spiritual ideas in natural language, but there is no alternative while we live in this world. He stated it can be expressed and understood, "but can be perceived only obscurely, from a lack of knowledge of what love is, what wisdom is, what affections of good are, and what affections of wisdom, that is, affections of truth are."*
* DLW 402
It is easier for me to make the transition from heat to love and light to truth, than from the analogy of heart and lungs. However, I am comforted by other teachings, such as "Spirits are affections, and hence are in a human form like their own affections,"* and "that man after death is in every sensation, memory, thought and affection in which he was in the world."** And also, Swedenborg describes these spirits and angels as people some ugly and some beautiful. I know "beautiful" people on this earth, though their external shape has nothing to do with their beauty. The next step in this logical presentation is as follows:
* HH 517
** HH 461
"Love, or the will, is unable to effect anything by its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the understanding."*
* DLW 401
Here is the balancing teaching. Love seeks its counterpart, its 'conjugial', if you please. Just as the love of the wife is nothing without the husband through which to effect its goals, neither are the loves of man anything without marriage to a spouse. The number continues with this analogy:
This also is evident from the correspondence of the heart with the will. The embryo-man lives by the heart, not by the lungs. For in the fetus the blood does not flow from the heart into the lungs, giving it the ability to respire; but it flows through the foramen ovale into the left ventricle of the heart; consequently the fetus is unable to move any part of the body . . . But as soon as the lungs are opened, which is the case after birth, he begins to feel and act, and likewise to will and think. From all this it can be seen, that love or the will is unable to effect anything by means of its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the understanding.
Love, we can see, is the aggressor; the motivator; the driving force. Though it lives, (for it is life itself), still, it is powerless without its mate, its conjugial, that which infills the understanding.
564
Furthermore, love takes on the role of the male counterpart, as stated in this passage:
Love or the will prepares a house or bridal chamber for its future wife, which is wisdom or the understanding. In the created universe and in each of its particulars there is a marriage of good and truth; and this is so because good is of love and truth is of wisdom, and these two are in the Lord, and out of Him all things are created.
How this marriage has existence in man tan be seen mirrored in the conjunction of the heart with the lungs; since the heart corresponds to love or good, and the lungs to wisdom or truth.*
* DLW 402
Throughout this series, please try to keep in mind those students in your classroom. They are constructing their spiritual bodies, even as you and I disperse some of the materials for their construction. There is a marriage taking place within them, including the construction of an abode for the couple-loves and thoughts. For we are told:
Love or the will betroths to itself wisdom or the understanding, and afterwards weds it, that is, enters in a kind of marriage with it. Love betroths to itself wisdom by preparing for it a house or bridal chamber, and marries it by conjoining it to itself by affections, and afterwards lives wisely with it in that house.*
* Ibid.
Then we are told that we can best visualize this conjunction by examining the relationship of the heart and the lungs in the body. "For what is true of these is true of love and wisdom, so entirely that there is no difference whatever except that one is natural and the other spiritual."*
* Ibid
We are given a warning. "Beware of cherishing an idea of the will as something separate from the human form, for it is that same form."* Perhaps this statement should give me comfort in my struggle to visualize spiritual shape. I do see that the body and its anatomical and physiological functions are the mirror in which we see an identical function on a higher plane. We are given this simple anatomy lesson:
* Ibid
Anatomy shows that the heart is joined to the lungs through the auricles, which are continued into the interiors of the lungs; also that all the viscera of the entire body are joined through ligaments to the chamber of the breast; and so joined that when the lungs respire, each and all things, in general and in particular, partake of the respiratory motion.
Only explore the connections well and scan them with an anatomical eye; then, following the connections, consider their co-operation with the breathing lungs and with the heart; and finally, in thought, substitute for the lungs the understanding, and for the heart the will, and you will see.*
* DLW 403
565
I am not an anatomist, nor do I hope to teach you anatomy in this presentation, but I do know how each new idea and thought entering the understanding has its affect on the emotions and affections. Knowledges, and eventually truths, are like windows through which loves can see and act. The obvious example that comes to mind is when someone is troubled, frustrated and/or confused. The teacher (or counselor) who takes the time to help the student understand his troubled state, frees him to discharge or at least cope with his feelings. The transition from not knowing something, to knowing, is like a great release. Indeed, it is true freedom, educationally speaking, as we know from Scripture.
Now this process of mating thoughts and feelings is next presented to us in this series, beginning with #404. I invite you to pay careful attention to the process that is explained in the following, for it gets right to the heart of our subject; the affection of truth. It is described in a series of three conjunctions. Though it appears to be explaining something happening immediately after birth, it obviously is presenting to us a phenomenon that occurs over and over again every day of our life, and to eternity. It states:
After the nuptials, the first conjunction is through affection of knowing, from which springs affection of truth.
By the nuptials is meant man's state after birth, from a state of ignorance to a state of intelligence, and from this to a state of wisdom. The first state which is one of pure ignorance, is not meant here by nuptials, because there is then no thought from the understanding, and only an obscure affection from the love or will. This state is initiatory to the nuptials.*
* DLW 404
Here, as I read it, is the state of the very young. After birth, they are in ignorance. They are not without loves, however their spiritual heart, so to speak, has found no marriage yet with the outside world, except through the sense of touch. It is a period, we know, when celestial remains are accumulating for future use. But it could also be read to mean the state prior to acquiring new knowledges, at any period in our life. The passage continues with the second state:
In the second state, which belongs to man in childhood, there is, as we know, an affection for knowing, by means of which the infant child learns to speak and to read, and afterwards gradually learns such things as belong to the understanding.
That everyone has, after birth, an affection for knowing, and through that acquires the knowledge by which his understanding is gradually formed, enlarged, and perfected, is acknowledged by every one who thoughtfully takes counsel of experience.
I suspect there are times when we educators have doubts about whether our students have an affection to learn, or at least for what were have to offer them on certain days in the classroom.
566
The reasons, of course, are many. Our presentation may be boring. We may lack the inspiration to reflect our love of the subject. Or, it may be a warm spring day and a lively baseball game is going on outside the window.
One more thought on this passage, before going on. The affection of learning is more apparent in the bright student who is also cooperative and attentive. But what about the academically and emotionally troubled child? We have got to believe that he has an affection to learn comparable to the normal student. Learning disabilities, however, frustrate the marriage of spiritual heart with lungs. The skill of the special ed teacher is to find ways to match-make this union. Perhaps the success of these patient teachers is not measured on final exams or I.Q. tests, but it is there to behold, in countless ways, by the trained eye,
Let us continue with this description of the first conjunction:
It is also evident that from this comes affection of truth; for when man, from affection of knowing, has become intelligent, he is led not so much by affection of knowing as by affection of reasoning and forming conclusions on subjects which he loves, whether economical or civil or moral. When this affection is raised to spiritual things, it becomes affection of spiritual truth.
That its first or initiatory state was affection of knowing, may he seen from the fact that affection of truth is an exalted affection of knowing; for to be affected by truths is the same as to wish from affection to know them, and when found, to drink them in from the joy of affection.
What a beautiful passage! So much wisdom and guidance are packed into it. We see the transition from a desire to know things, to one of reasoning and forming conclusions about what is learned. Here is an insight into that passage from the Diary, where it states:
I have now been in conversation with spirits and angels respecting reflection, to which I do not know whether men sufficiently attend, but if they do attend to it, they will find more arcana in the doctrine of reflection, than b airy other whatever, . . . . Without reflection he knows nothing, except that a thing is, nor does he know anything else, thus not its quality.*
* SD 737
How educators can stimulate this necessary step in learning is the great challenge. (It is like that saying: "God has no grandchildren". The children of God cannot pass on what they have worked for, on their own, to their children, making them children of God also. Each generation must come to this state on their own.)
We can summarize, offer observations, and even conclusions. But it is not the same as developing an affection of reasoning on one's own. Classroom discussions provide one stimulus.
567
Papers that ask for analysis are another. But the true genuine form of bringing this about must be linked to the teacher's affection of truth, brought into the classroom. It is the means by which children and youth are led from knowing, to reasoning, to truth-by means of affections associated with each.
Keep this challenge in mind as we examine the second form of conjunction offered to us in this series:
The second conjunction is through affection of understanding, from which springs perception of truth.
From rational insight it is clear that affection of truth and perception of truth are two powers of the understanding, which in some persons harmonize as one, and in others do not.
They harmonize as one in those who wish to perceive truths with the understanding, but do not in those who only wish to know truths.
It is also clear that every one is in perception of truth so far as he is in an affection of understanding; for if you take away affection of understanding truth, there will be no perception of truth; but give the affection of understanding truth, and there will be perception of truth according to the degree of affection for it.
No man of sound reason ever lacks perception of truth, so long as he has affection of understanding truth.
Every man has a capacity to understand truth, which is called rationality.
Note here, we are talking about an affection of understanding and no longer about an affection of knowing, the initial conjunction. This is the delight that comes from knowing, "why", and "how come" and "what does it all mean." Just knowing, in other words, does not produce automatically a delight in understanding what is known. But an affection for understanding does automatically produce a perception of what is understood! Again, a challenge to the educator. Feeding back knowledges and data on an exam is not enough. The curiosity must be stimulated to encourage questions of "How!" and "What for?" The night-before-exam crammer misses the point of education, as we know. The teacher who is content to convey knowledges, that can be drawn from the memory of the student later on, when needed, is also missing the point.
Cultivating a habit to always ask "Why?" is part of training the young, not just the plight of mothers of two-year-olds. There is a delight, an affection, that resides within the potential rational mind of the student, which is directly associated with this delight of understanding, and thus perceiving. It is a crucial step leading to the affection of truth itself, and it cannot be side-stepped. True, students often want to understand "why" before they have the basic knowledges down pat. But if this crucial affection of understanding is thwarted, we have done a disservice to our young.
568
Rhetorical questions of "why is this important to know?", and "Why do we need to know it?" (the doctrine of use), should permeate the process of learning.
But let us move on to the third, and final conjunction, described in this series:
The third conjunction is through affection of seeing truth, from which springs thought.
Affection of knowing is one thing, affection of understanding another, and affection of seeing truth another.
Or, that affection of truth is one thing, perception of truth another, and thought another.
This is seen but obscurely by those who cannot perceive the operations of the mind as distinct, but is seen clearly by those who can.
Now I ask you to contemplate these statements carefully. The three key phrases, I believe, in this first statement are: "through affections", "seeing truth", and "thought". The conjunction, at this highest level of spiritual heart and lungs, is achieved as a result of the first two conjunctions. A love, a delight, an affection, inflowing from the Lord into the mind, is the uniting factor. It is through affection, the affection of truth, that this comes about. There is, hopefully, already this affection in the classroom; through the teacher. It is what brings out this affection in the student.
Secondly, the phrase, "seeing truth"; remember this phenomena takes place when the light of heaven shines upon what is accumulated in the memory, the knowledges gathered there. It is not an added ingredient, for truth is not a "something." Only loves are "something." Truth is light, a coming forth of love; and light is invisible, like the light from the sun in space. Without something to shine upon, it is black, void, invisible. What leads up to this experience of seeing truth, is first the knowledges, acquired through the delight in wanting to learn them; secondly, the proper training to ponder, reflect, mediate upon what has been learned. This, too, comes about from an affection, a delight in understanding what has been learned. Finally, along with this perception of what has been learned, comes the sight of truth reflecting upon what has been reflected! And with this, comes a conjunction of an affection of truth with the truth itself, that springs forth as thought!
We are then told, in this passage, that this process is seen only obscurely by some. But, if you are confused, do not be discouraged; take heart:
This is obscurely seen by those who do not perceive the operations of the mind as distinct, because with those who are in affection of truth and in perception of truth, these operations are simultaneous in the thought, and when simultaneous they cannot be distinguished.
569
As if in anticipation of our struggles to comprehend these teachings, the Writings offer us council on how to grasp them:
Man is in manifest thought when his spirit thinks in the body, which is especially the case when he is in company with others.
But when he is in affection of understanding, and through that comes into perception of truth, he is then in the thought of the spirit, which is meditation.
This passes, indeed, into the thought of the body, but into silent thought; for it is above body thought, and looks upon what belongs to thought from the memory as below itself, drawing therefrom either conclusions or confirmations.
With this teaching before us, I ask you to experiment with me. I invite you to mediate, in silent thought, forgetting you are in a large assembly. Draw within yourselves, to receive the wisdom from the Divine Human before you, and let this very process just described happen within you, here and now. Recall the knowledges, the doctrines presented. Ponder them, from an affection to understand them. Reach to perceive them in the understanding. Seek from the Lord an understanding of these truths. Contemplate, reflect, as the angels told us to do, in silence for a minute or two, without disturbing those next to you.
And then, see if you can experience what is described on the screen, our final passage for this evening:
"Real affection of truth is perceived only as a pressure of will from something pleasurable which is interiorly in meditation as its life, and is little noticed."*
* DLW 404
570
REFLECTION WITHELD Rev. DONALD L. ROSE 1977
(This is the "Appendix" promised at the end of the article, "What it Feels Life to Die," NEW CHURCH LIFE, 1977: 335.)
When people pass into the other life they do not realize that they are no longer in the natural world. The main reason for this is that the Lord witholds the gift of reflection for a short time.
There are plenty of clues that would tell someone he is in the other world, but if he does not have the gift of reflection the clues will not register with him. Swedenborg once encountered some spirits who had recently arrived in the spiritual world. "They did not know that they were there, thinking that they were still in the natural world, and reflection as to where they were being taken away from them . . ."* Swedenborg told them that they were in the spiritual world, but they soon forgot!!
* AC 2748
Virtually everyone forgets the first news given by the spiritual angels. During the calm state of the awakening process everyone is told he is in the spiritual world. But then as he takes up life anew he finds a world so similar to the one he left behind that he can realize his situation "only by giving attention to what he encounters, and from having been told by the angels when he was resuscitated."* The time elapsed since his decrease is like a forgotten sleep.** In one dramatic incident an evil spirit insisted he was in the natural world, but then "recollection was given him, and he remembered," and he exclaimed, "I saw heaven above and I heard angels there uttering things ineffable; but that was when I first came here."***
* HH 493
** TCR 797
*** TCR 80:4
A sure indication that one is in the other life would seem to be the fact that the senses are so very much sharper, but "spirits are not aware of this until gifted with reflection by the Lord."* Spirits come into a remarkable ability to communicate with others, but they are not aware of this ability "unless it is given them by the Lord to reflect upon it."** As reflection does come to a spirit he starts to notice the clues. "When he observes that he has more exquisite sensations, and especially when he begins to speak with other spirits, it dawns upon him that he is in the other life."***
* AC 321
** AC 1641
*** AC 4622:4
571
He may not at first even reflect upon the fact that he does not meet any acquaintances (except those deceased).
The difference does not appear to him, because he cannot compare his state with his former state; for he has put that off and is in this. I have therefore often heard them say that they know no otherwise than that they are in the former world, with the only difference that they no longer see those whom they had left in the world, but see those who had departed from that world and died.*
* CL 31
In one instance we read of several spirits walking along together without even reflecting on the fact that they were strangers. When reflection was given to them "they saw that they were in another world, and among those with whom they were not acquainted."*
* TCR 160:7
And so the key seems to be the brief witholding of reflection. It is such a natural thing; we experience something like this virtually every night. Just think of the incongruent things that happen in our dreams. Why did they not seem strange when we were dreaming? Obviously because we did not reflect on the strangeness until we did so in retrospect when we awoke.
The purpose of the temporary witholding of reflection is that there may be a gentle transition of one life into the other and "one life is continued into the other."*
* HH 493
It is not necessary, therefore, to suppose we must awaken in similar circumstances as those in which we died. A man dying in battle need not awaken in battle. And it is certainly not necessary to imagine that spirits will have to masquerade as our former associates to ensure that we will not know we have died. Instead of thinking from such suppositions we do well to think from the repeated teaching concerning reflection.
One passage on the subject has the following heading: "that souls after death do not know that they are in the other life, unless by means of reflection granted them." Here we read that "they neither know nor can know that they are in the other life . . . Reflection is also given but by the Lord that they are in the other life."*
* SD 1903
Similarly we read:
"Without reflection granted them . . . they would not be able to know that they were spirits."* "No one can know without being gifted with reflection."** As soon as reflection is given them by the Lord they know that they are in the other life."*** A certain spirit came to me at evening, and spoke with me, and from certain indications it appeared that he was recently from the earth; . . . .
572
He knew not at first where he was, supposing himself to be in the world altogether as if living in the body, for of this impression are all souls recently from the life of the body, inasmuch as they are not then gifted with reflection upon place, time, the objects of the senses, and the like, of which I have spoken elsewhere, and which would enable them to know that they are in another life, only that they live as it were in the body, and think accordingly."****
* SD 1939
** SD 2053
*** SD 135
**** AC 2030-32
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN AND GLENVIEW EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn or Glenview who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
Let the interested reader consult such other passages as AC 321, 2748, 5883, 6054, SD 1243, 2330, 3101. And as we consider these teachings we may well ponder that as reflection is something continually given to us by the Lord, so also is freedom, and so is rationality, and so is life.
573
ANNUAL REPORT OF SECRETARY OF THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM NORBERT H. ROGERS 1977
During September 1976, through August 1977, one hundred fifteen members were received into the General Church. Three resigned from the church. Ten were dropped from the roll. Forty-seven deaths were reported. On September 1, 1977, the roll contained three thousand five hundred and thirteen names.
Membership, September 1, 1976 3,458
(U.S.A.-2,290. Other Countries-1,168)
New Members (Cert. 6284-6398) 115*
(U.S.A.-99. Other Countries-16)
Deaths reported 47
(U.S.A.-30. Other Countries-17)
Resignations 3
(U.S.A.-1. Other Countries-2)
Dropped from Roll 10
(U.S.A.-5. Other Countries-5)
Losses 60
(U.S.A.-36. Other Countries-24)
Net Gain during September 1976, through August 1977 55
(U.S.A.-63, Other Countries-(minus 8)
Membership, September 1, 1971 3,513
(U.S.A.-2,353. Other Countries-1,160)
* This total includes two (2) names withheld at members' own request.
NEW MEMBERS
THE UNITED STATES
California: Glendale
Mr. Kenneth L. Williams
California: La Jolla
Mrs. Jon F. Critchlow (Wenda Junge)
California: Menlo Park
Mr. Douglas Copley Johnson
Mrs. Douglas Copley Johnson (Jennifer Lee Pendleton)
California: Montrose
Miss Laurie Lee Brown
California: Novato
Mr. Aldon DeWitt Maddox, Jr.
Mrs. Aldon DeWitt Maddox, Jr. (Carlyn Leigh Smith)
California: Redondo Beach
Miss Molly Clark
Mr. Garland Livingston Cole
Mrs. Garland Livingston Cole (Karen Lorraine Willis)
California: San Jose
Mrs. Thomas Raphael Marrero (Peggy Lou Turner)
Georgia: Atlanta
Miss Judith Anne Davis
Mr. Stephen Kendall Rose
Georgia: Camp Pendleton
Miss Carole Jane Cronlund
Georgia: Smyrna
Mr. Donald Kenneth Rogers, Jr.
Me. Donald Kenneth Rogers, Jr. (Karen Redfearn)
Hawaii: Barber's Point
Mrs. John Michael Alan (Dana Lee Frey)
Idaho: Payette
Mr. Harold William Rand
Mrs. Harold William Rand (Barbara Ella Marugg)
Illinois: Glenview
Mr. Neil Winfred Caldwell
Miss Laurie Anne Fuller
Miss Carolyn Synnestvedt
Illinois: Wilmington
Mrs. Gary G. Smock (Kristina Grace Odhner)
Louisiana: Baton Rouge
Miss Stephanie Ann Bruser
Michigan: Almont
Mrs. Delmar S. Harder (Elizabeth Almira Hallock)
Michigan: Cutlerville
Mr. Randy Lee Banfill
Mrs. Randy Lee Banfill (Susan Kay Horton)
Michigan: Gorand Rapids
Mr. Frederick Merle Chapin
Mr. Vernon W. Graeser
Michigan: Gorandville
Mr. August Peter Rienstra
Mr. William T. Rienstra
Mrs. William T. Rienstra (Nancy Lee Carrier)
Michigan: Kentwood
Mr. James Duane Banfill
Mrs. James Duane Banfill (Marion Adeline Burg)
Michigan: Royal Oak
Mr. Craig Alan McCardell
Nebraska: Lincoln
Mr. Scot Pitcairn
Nevada: Las Vegas
Mr. Steven McDaniel Echols
New Jersey: Pemberton
Mrs. Kevin Michael Cullen (Lucyellen Norman)
North Carolina: Bynum
Miss Allyn Ruth Edmonds
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North Carolina: Washington
Miss Kira Lee Runion
Ohio: Cincinnati
Miss Joan M. Stoecklin
Ohio: Cleveland
Miss Barbara J. Casper
Mr. Kurt Pendleton Gyllenhaal
Ohio: Milfoud
Mr. Carlile Francis Williams III
Ohio: Rocky River
Miss Martha Childs
Oregon: Days Creek
Mr. Raymond George Walker
Miss Barbara Ann Wilda
Pennsylvania: Ambler
Mr. Jack Gaghan
Pennsylvania: Bryn Athyn
Miss Elise Alden
Mr. Kenneth James Alden
Mr. William Leslie Alden
Mr. Noel Frederick Griftin
Mrs. Noel Frederick Griffin (Lynne David)
Mr. Andrew James Heilman
Mrs. Andrew James Heilman (Carole Anne Friesen)
Mr. Steven David Hendricks
Mrs. Stephen David Hendricks (Denise Alden)
Miss Judith Johns
Mr. Kent Junge
Miss Shanon Junge
Miss Kristin King
Miss Lisa McQueen
Miss Eva Magdalene Sandstrom
Mr. Robert Baker Smith
Miss Brenna Synnestvedt
Pennsylvania: Huntingdon Valley
Mr. Marvin Bruce Clymer
Mr. Thomas MacFadan Cole
Mr. Mark William Furry
Mr. Dennis Keith Gyllenhaal
Mrs. William J. Kees (Llyn Katharine Coffin)
Miss Katherine Martha McDonough
Mr. Robert Campbell Nash
Mrs. Robert Campbell Nash (Carol Gockley)
Mr. Karl Edward Parker
Mrs. Karl Edward Parker (Holly Herder)
The Rev. Norman Edward Riley
Mrs. Norman Edward Riley (Maureen Harrison)
Mr. Gregory Scott Smith
Pennsylvania: Kempton
Mr. Michael Folwell Muth
Pennsylvania: Library
Mr. Lincoln Forrest Schoenberger
Mrs. Lincoln Forrest Schoenberger (Kirsten Soneson)
Pennsylvania: Philadelphia
Mr. Michael David Norman
Mrs. Michael David Norman (Edith Sue Fuller)
Mrs. James C. Pellani (Sandra Lois Rogers)
Miss Suzanne Diane Stumm
Miss Natalie Synnestvedt
Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh
Miss Diane Alden
576
Pennsylvania: Warminster
Mr. David Malcolm Closterman
Mrs. David Malcolm Closterman (Doris Evans)
Texas: Amarillo
Mrs. Orlando B. Long (Vivian L. Blankenship)
Virginia: Falls Church
Mr. Lindsay Courtland Lee
CANADA
Ontario: Etobicoke
Mrs. Jacques Jean Rousseau (Charlotte Jeanne Alix Baissal)
Ontario: Islington
Miss Gwenda Jean Parker
Ontario: Kitchener
Mr. Stewart T. Eidse
Mrs. Stewart T. Eidse (Elizabeth Anne Planner)
Ontario: Ottawa
Mr. Donald Brian McMaster
Mrs. Donald Brian McMaster (Janet Lee Heilman)
EUROPE
England: Essex
Mr. Philip Noel Pryke
Mrs. Philip Noel Pryke (Janet Alexandra Hammond)
Mr. Robert Keith Wombwell
England: Hertfordshire
Mr. Ronald Nater
England: Kent
Dr. John Christopher Berridge
Mrs. John Christopher Berridge (Eileen Mary Laing)
Alandete, Mrs. Louis (Carol Annette Smith), December 23, 1976, Chicago, Illinois (29)
Anderson, Mr. Albert Francis, March 21, 1977, Denver, Colorado (82)
Barros, Mrs. Rosa (Delissanti) Villela de, January 22, 1977, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Barry, Mrs. Frank C. (Katherine Fuller), June 3, 1976, Merrill, Wisconsin (75)
Bostock, Miss Margaret, November 11, 1976, Richboro, Pennsylvania (88)
Carter, Mrs. Norma Augusta (Mabel Georgina Langlois), April 7, 1977, Islington, Ontario, Canada (87)
Cockerell, Mr. Gordon Dunbar, May 27, 1977, Westville, Natal, Republic South Africa (71)
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Coffin, Miss Stephanie Anne, October 20, 1976, Park Ridge, Illinois (20)
Cole, Mr. Francis Joshua Cole, January 15, 1977, Goderich, Ontario, Canada (90)
Cranch, Mr. Ernest Alden, 1976, Doylestown, Pennsylvania (65)
Cranch, Mrs. Raymond G. (Florence Mary Cooper), October 9, 1976, Richboro, Pennsylvania (86)
Doering, Mrs. Andrew Alan (Margaret Adelaide Dempster), December 9, 1976, Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania (64)
Elphick, Miss Margarite, November 1, 1976, Red Hill, Surrey, England (86)
Fraser, Mrs. J. D. (Vera Bowie), May 4, 1976, Glasgow, Scotland (70)
Gunsteens, Mr. Edmond Y., September 17, 1976, Glendale, California (71)
Hubbard, Mrs. Reginald (Elida Olivia Heldon), March 15, 1976, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia (69)
Johns, Miss Marian Delores, February 21, 1977, Walla Walla, Washington (48)
Junge, Miss Frieda, January 12, 1977, Glenview, Illinois (86)
Kendig, Mr. Robert Louis, September 9, 1976, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (60)
Kintner, Mrs. J. Richard (Caroline Waelchli), August 24, 1976, Honesdale, Pennsylvania (75)
Liden, Mr. Lars Bertram, August 18, 1976, Stockholm, Sweden (61)
Lima, Mr. Enio de Mendonca, March 21, 1977, Brasilia, Brazil (65)
Lindrooth, Mr. John Edmund, November 25, 1976, Lake Havasu City, Arizona (71)
Loeppky, Mr. Isaac, November 14, 1976, Central Butte, Sask., Canada (80)
Low, Mr. Albert Joseph, DELAYED REPORT, January, 1974, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin (82)
Needer, Mrs. John H. (Sara Alder), September 6, 1976, Mitchellville, Maryland (49)
Niall, Mr. Ezra William, January 24, 1977, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (92)
Odhner, Mrs. Hugo Lj. (Constance Waelchli), September 25, 1976, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania (79)
Odhner, Mr. Laurence Xandry of Hatboro, Pennsylvania, February 13, 1977 at Durban, Natal, Republic of South Africa (67)
Owen, Mr. Curtis Sprewell, Sr., November 12, 1976, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (81)
Packer, Mr. Edward William, Jr., June 4, 1977, Tuckerton, New Jersey (51)
Parker, Mr. Stanley Frederick, April 4, 1977, Eshowe, Natal, Republic of South Africa (75)
Pedersen, Mr. Sven Aage, November 1, 1976, Copenhagen, Denmark (69)
Peirce, Mr. Allen A. C., July 30, 1977, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (59)
Pemberton, Miss Sylvia Amy, February 10, 1977, Durban, Natal, Republic of South Africa (76)
Pendleton, Mr. Philip Childs, April 2, 1977, Abington, Pennsylvania (77)
Pike, Mrs. Wilfred Douglas (Edna Elizabeth), November 21, 1976, Colchester, England (79)
Pitcairn, Mr. Edward Hugh, December 31, 1976, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (40)
Pribilski, Miss Antonia, April 4, 1977, Walla Walla, Washington (84)
Rott, Mr. Thomas France, March 28, 1977, Los Padres, California (60)
Soneson, Mrs. Gustaf Walfrid (Hulda Sophia Obert), November 30, 1976, Erie, Pennsylvania (89)
Stebbing, Dr. Philip Archibald Eustace, January 31, 1977, Washington, District of Columbia (73)
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Synnestvedt, Mrs. Arthur (Gertrude Eulalie Tafel), December 23, 1976, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (88)
Synnestvedt, Dr. Sigfried Tafel, June 5, 1977, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (53)
Vanderzvalmen, Miss Gilberte, DELAYED REPORT, May 10, 1967, Seine, France (73)
Wells, Mr. Arthur Benade, September 6, 1976, Richboro, Pennsylvania (90)
Zick, Mr. Walter William, January 20, 1977, Maplewood, Minnesota (76)
RESIGNATIONS
Hall, Mr. John William, Seaside, Oregon
Willer, Mr. Michael S., London, England
Misvaer, Mrs. Ola Ingeborgt, Oslo, Norway
DROPPED FROM THE ROLL
Peals, Mrs. John A., U. S. A.
Carter, Mrs. Beverley Barnes, U. S. A.
Coffin, Mrs. Jutta Gertrud Ding, U. S. A.
Hedenbratt, Mr. Walter, Sweden
Low, Mrs. Albert Joseph, U. S. A.
Rempel, Mr. William Richard, Canada
Rempel, Mrs. William Richard (Maria Reimer), Canada
Schnarr, Mr. John George, Canada
Shouldice, Miss Isabelle, Canada
Tessing, Mr. Arvid Victor, U. S. A.
NORBERT H. ROGERS,
Secy.
ADDITIONS TO GENERAL CHURCH DIRECTORY
Circles
Visiting Pastor or Minister
ATLANTA, GA. Rev. Thomas L. Kline (Resident)
CHICAGO, III. (Sharon Church) Rev. Harold C. Cranch, Pastor-in-charge
KEMPTON, PA. Rev. Martin Pryke
Rev. Arne Bau-Madsen, Assistant
(Add to p. 470, NEW CHURCH LIFE, September)
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FEELING GRATEFUL EDITOR 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address, and business communications, should be sent to the Business Manager. Notifications of address changes should be received by the 15th of the month.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION
$5.00 a year to any address, payable in advance. Single copy, 50 cents.
It is written that the angels refuse all thanks from others for the uses which they perform. They direct all such expressions of gratitude to the Lord. For, they say, their uses are from Him, and without Him they could not carry out their uses; and besides, such uses are the delight of their lives, so why should they be thanked for doing what delights them
Quite plainly, there are good spirits who try to thank the angels for their services. Having been helped and instructed by the angels, they are moved to give thanks to them. The angels must feel pleasure from this, not just on their own account, but because it shows that their teaching and help have been effective. At the same time, they put the finishing touches as it were, the climax to their instruction by refusing the thanks, directing the spirit's attention once again to uses and to the Lord from Whom comes all uses.
It is also taught that the Lord, though He appears to, does not really demand gratitude or thanks from man.
Yet the Lord also commanded the Jews to have feasts of thanksgiving, and to make offerings to Him. All worship contains grateful expressions to Him. And the Word itself is full of prayers and songs of thanksgiving.
For, as it is with good parents, so it is infinitely with our Father in the heavens. And just as parents ask things and services of their children, teach and discipline them, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the children themselves, and for the Lord and His kingdom,-so the Lord teaches, disciplines, and even seems to demand things from His children,-not that He may be thanked and glorified for His own sake, but so that human beings may have those affections of gratitude which will fit them for that greatest gift of all, eternal life.
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And so it is that He tells us to offer that gift, the affection of gratitude, upon His altar, that is, to acknowledge from the heart that this feeling is of and from Him, as are all the good and true things of the spirit.
The constant effort of the Lord is to bring man back to the essential goodness of this affection. For "it is good to give thanks unto the Lord." Ana as He said, "Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven," of which He also said, "To grow old in heaven is to grow young." For after man has been cleansed of the outward tarnish of life's disillusionments, suspicions and skepticisms, he comes back, in the spiritual world, to the clean and unspoiled feelings of his youth and childhood, though these are now firm and adult in wisdom. In the words of Revelation, he "becomes again like a child, but a wise child."
Then he can say with full knowledge, firm purpose and understanding love, "it is good to give thanks unto the Lord, to call upon His name, to remember all His marvelous works which He hath done."
"THE SELF-EVIDENCING REASON OF LOVE" VICTOR J. GLADISH 1977
Dear Editor:
Gail Walter's letter to the Editor in the October issue of the Life intrigued me. She feels that Harold Cranch's article in the July issue on "The Distinctiveness of the New Church" has too much emphasis on truth and rationality rather than on love. What struck me when I read the article, and when I looked at it again, was that he was emphasizing the love of truth, and the willingness to become truly rational. That is a matter of the will, the love. The quotation from the Writings, "the self-evidencing reason of love" was discussed by both Mr. Cranch and Miss Walter. To her the phrase brings to mind love from the Lord, love to the Lord and love to our fellows. That seems good to me, and I imagine it would to Mr. Cranch. But I am struck by this: that love from the Lord reaches us by Divine Revelation, i.e. Truth; and love to Him and to others should be guided by the same.
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Acting from love rather than discussing doctrine appeals to her. I trust that she recognizes that the love needs to be instructed and elevated by doctrine, whether one discusses it or absorbs it into one's life some other way. In the article by Mr. Cranch the point is made several times that truth is vital, but is not established in anyone until it is lived, until it becomes of the life and act.
The passage referred to earlier says that only "the self-evidencing reason of love will re-establish the Church." It is the "reason," the rationality, the Truth that love discovers that will re-establish. Bishop George de Charms gave a short paper to the 1977 Council of the Clergy on the meaning of this passage from the Canons for the New Church. Among the points he made was that it was love guided by enlightenment from the new Revelation that was referred to, and that love not instructed by Truth is marred by hereditary self love.
I think that all regular readers of the Heavenly Doctrine would agree with Miss Walter that we need to beware of the love of our own intelligence.
VICTOR J. GLADISH,
Glenview, Ill.
WHY DIFFERENT NEW CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS NORBERT N. ROGERS 1977
To the Editor:
Why there are several different New Church organizations is a question that troubles many devoted New Church people. The question is the more pressing to those concerned because all our organizations are small in membership and constantly frustrated by their inability to enter fields of use they know need cultivation but that they cannot support.
Only the Lord knows the real reasons for our several organizations and the fewness of their numbers. Humans can only speculate in finding some answer that will ease their frustration and enable them to remain steadfast in their faith.
The keystone teaching to hold fast to is that it is the Lord who makes and establishes His Church. People don't. They are only the agents or means by which He achieves His Divine purpose in His good time. They can serve Him in the part He has entrusted to them by doing their best in whatever Church activity they can undertake faithfully, sincerely and justly.
582
Apart from the willing acceptance of that trust and that responsibility a possible answer to the question of why different New Church organizations is that there are so many diverse areas in which human participation is needed to serve the use of being the heart and lungs of the Lord's Church that, in the present state of the world, no one organization can possibly do them all properly. Different organizations are needed, each to concentrate on certain areas of the work people of the New Church are entrusted to do.
Inevitably our thoughts on this subject turn to what the Writings tell us of the Ancient Church which was disparate in details of doctrine but were one in charity. So it can be and should be with the New Church.
Anyone who acknowledges the Lord's Divine Human as it is revealed at His second coming in the Writings is a New Churchman of the church specific. We don't know who belongs to the church universal. Other differences don't matter so long as those who acknowledge the essential of New Churchmanship observe the Golden Rule. Otherwise there is controversy which harms the Lord's New Church. The intrusion of one's proprium in church work always does this.
Each one's endeavor should always concentrate on performing his particular use for the church as best he can, trusting that the Lord will be able to make use of his efforts to achieve His Divine purpose.
NORBERT N. ROGERS,
Bryn Athyn, Pa.
ANGER AND ZEAL EDITOR 1977
"To be kindled with anger" signifies to be indignant. Real spiritual indignation (and especially celestial indignation) derives nothing from the anger of the natural man, but from the interior essence of zeal; which zeal does indeed appear in the outward form like anger, but in internal form is not anger, nor even the indignation of anger; but is a certain sadness that is attended with a prayerful wish that it be not so; and in a form still more interior it is merely a certain obscure feeling that breaks in on the celestial delight on account of something not good and true in another. Arcana Coelestia 3989
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Church News MYRA J. ASPLUNDH 1977
EDUCATIONAL COUNCIL 1977
The opening worship service of the Educational Council, 1977, was conducted by the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King reading from Deuteronomy 8 and Arcana Coelestia 1661-1667.
In his introductory remarks following Bishop King spoke of the Revelation to the New Church as exceeding in perfection all revelations and that it is the means of communication between heaven and earth. He reminded us of our privilege in serving the Lord in the uses of New Church education in the light of this revelation. Rational things blind, but rational things from the doctrine of faith bring enlightenment. This work looks to the salvation of souls in opening the mind to see the Lord as the visible God.
The Rev. Erik Sandstrom began the week's meetings with the presentation of the first sections of a study of the Doctrine of Remains, published elsewhere in this issue. This important study deserves thorough reading; no attempt is made here to summarize it. It is to be noted that the subject of Remains provided an excellent starting point for the week of meetings devoted to New Church education.
In a report of the Social Curriculum Committee, the Rev. Douglas Taylor, its chairman, presented the doctrinal principles underlying the new curriculum and the reasons for its development. The three essentials of the Divine Love and their application were explained. These essentials are: "It is the essence of love to love others outside of oneself, to desire to be one with them, and to render them blessed from oneself." (TCR 43)
Mr. Taylor's outline of principles was followed by a commentary by Mrs. George Woodard, a committee member, on some of the highlights and particulars of the Social Studies curriculum itself.
In a two-part paper on Preparation for Marriage, the Rev. Alfred Acton compared the growing child's changing ideas of marriage to the series of imaginary heavens found in early numbers of Conjugial Love. He applied these to three areas of curriculum; religion, social studies and science, from kindergarten to 8th grade. First describing each grade's state and the corresponding concepts of marriage, he then suggested practical applications in each subject area.
Another interesting comparison was made between the qualities of conjugial love given in number 180 and the states of infants and children. This number states: "that the states of this love are innocence, peace, tranquility, inmost friendship, full confidence, and a mutual desire of mind and heart to do each other every good; and from all these come blessedness, happiness, joy, pleasure, and from their eternal fruition heavenly felicity,. . ." which Mr. Acton regarded as a descending series represented by states in children. (CL 180)
In a short time section Professor Morna Hyatt took the opportunity to promote Miss Jennie Gaskill's book (completed by the closing of the meetings) on Nature Study. This beloved teacher had devoted much time in her retirement to the compilation of all material useful to nature and science teachers in the light of New Church doctrine. Miss Morna has spent many hours editing all this material. It was a source of satisfaction and pleasure to all who knew her to know that Miss Jennie's book was at last a reality.
Then later in the week Miss Hyatt, in a talk on the "Importance of Nature Study for children," reminded us of the vast and varied ways in which children may be brought to see the wonders of the Lord's creation.
584
She stressed that it is the duty of parents as well as teachers to stimulate an affection for the things of nature. A demonstration of a variety of means which can be used as illustration followed.
Lunch programs were devoted to reports of Church school Headmasters. These were informal accounts of people, programs and problems in each society school.
In the evening sessions, to which interested members of the Bryn Athyn Society were invited, the Rev. L. R. Soneson presented papers on "The Development of the Affection of Truth." He endeavored to establish the affection of truth as the underlying principle of New Church education, then analyzed some of the statements set forth two years ago in the Rev. Dan Pendleton's presentation . . . "with an effort to fortify and strengthen some of his arguments." He also emphasized "developing an affection of truth in our students."
In a two-part paper on the Tabernacle, Mr. Michael Brown gave three reasons why a study of this kind is useful. They are:
1. To call attention to the importance of the Tabernacle as a study in its own right. He then reviewed with slides the basic features of the Tabernacle, following the sequence as commanded by the Lord in Exodus 25 and following. His stated purpose was "to present concrete images from which to think about abstract things represented by particulars of the Tabernacle."
2. To draw an analogy between the Tabernacle and the human mind. Mr. Brown gave three arguments for this analogy: 1) it represents heaven and the church (AC 9455), 2) man is a heaven in the least form (AC 5115), and 3) the mind of man is the man himself (DLW 386-8).
3. To show the relationship of the Tabernacle to New Church education. The Tabernacle was made use of as a representative to show educational ends, attitudes and curriculum. The encampment on four sides was suggested as representative of four areas of the curriculum; religion, humanities, arts and science.
Mr. Brown concluded by suggesting several interesting areas of study which could be made with application to New Church education. These were the Tabernacle as it relates to curriculum, number, color, language and translation, materials, the human form, the Temple and Holy City and the Garden of Eden.
Mr. William Thomas gave an overview of Vocational Technical education. He noted the value of such education for a certain proportion of students from any school, including the Academy. He also pointed out that the environment is not in accordance with standards of New Church education and made a plea for the institution of vocational and /or technical training at the Academy, giving specific examples of ways and means.
Mr. Kenneth Rose gave two lectures on Creek. He believes that "New Testament Greek" deserves attention in the Church along with Hebrew and Latin of the other two Testaments. It is presently suffering a self-perpetuating unpopularity, which may be relieved by introducing children to this orderly and beautiful language.
Mr. Rose also discussed astronomy and said that "looking at the sky is the first step toward astronomy, and should be done before looking at books and charts." He then followed with several interesting facts and forecasts designed to stir the interest of teachers and students.
Mr. Bradley Smith noted that the Academy has a responsibility to provide a New Church education for all Church children who are prepared to benefit from the programs that it now offers. There is a question as to how far beyond the early years of high school the Academy is prepared to handle certain types of students with special learning problems and needs who are not able to do regular academic work. . . .
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We can offer such students an opportunity to grow into maturity with New Church teachers and ministers, and provide important social opportunities with other boys and girls who hold our basic beliefs, but it is not clear how far the Academy is able to go in providing special education and training for certain boys and girls of the Church.
"Order in Creation" was the subject of two lectures by Dr. Greg Baker. His goals were: 1) to outline the general Pattern of creation from Revelation and from science, 2) to give the scientific idea of order, 3) to show as an example of order the early universe and how it evolved, 4) to show order in the sequencing of DNA, the information carrier in the living cell. The discussion was quite scientific, but with the use of visual aids he managed to keep everyone interested.
Mary Griffin discussed "Apparent Freedom in the Primary Grades". She noted that "it is axiomatic to New Church thought that without rationality, there is not spiritual freedom. . . ."The whole concept of freedom is involved in making right choices. . . . the choices a child makes will not be rational. The choices we offer them will usually be between what is right and what is wrong. The choices offered in primary grades are a practice in choosing. Always in the back of our minds as an ideal to strive for are the four ways to teach children in heaven." (DP 136)
MYRA J. ASPLUNDH, Secretary
SCHOOL ENROLLMENTS
1977-1978
The Academy
Theological School 15
College (Full time) 142
Girls School 135
Boys School 127
Total 424
Midwestern Academy
Grades 9 and 10 (Boys and Girls) 18
Local Schools
Bryn Athyn 267
Colchester 12
Durban 36
Glenview 92
Kitchener 53
Pittsburgh 28
Toronto 37
Washington, D. C. 25
Total reported enrollment
in all schools 992
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LOCAL SCHOOLS DIRECTORY
1977-78
BRYN ATHYN: Rev. Frederick L. Schnarr Principal
Mr. Carl R. Gunther Assistant to the Principal
Mrs. Clark Echols Kindergarten
Miss Gretchen Lee Kindergarten
Mrs. Edward Cranch Grade 1
Mrs. Robert Johns Grade 1
Mrs. Grant Doering Grade 2
Miss Cara Glenn Grade 3
Mrs. Peter Bostock Grade 3
Miss Claudia Bostock Grade 3
Miss Rosemary Wyncoll Grade 4
Miss Heather Nelson Grade 4
Mrs. Gina Rose Grade 5
Mr. Stephen Morley Grade 5
Mr. Dick van Zyverden Grade 6
Miss Elsa Lockhart Grade 6
Mrs. Bruce Fuller Grade 7, Girls
Mr. Garry Hyatt Grade 7, Boys
Mrs. Barbara Synnestvedt Grade 8, Girls
Mr. Yorvar Synnestvedt Grade 8, Boys
Mr. Richard Show Music
Miss Brenda Rydstrom Art
Mr. Gale Smith Physical Education
Mrs. Harry Risley Physical Education
Mrs. Robert Alden Librarian
COLCHESTER: Rev. Bjorn A. H. Boyesen Headmaster
Miss Hilda Waters, Deputy Head Grades 1-7
DURBAN: Rev. Geoffrey H. Howard Headmaster
Mrs. Neil Buss Grades 1 and 2
Mrs. Brian Lester Grades 3 and 4
Miss Suzanne Bernhart Grades 5-7
Mrs. Peter Pienaar Afrikaans Specialist
GLENVIEW: Rev. Peter M. Buss Headmaster
Mrs. Daniel Wright Head Teacher and
Kindergarten
Miss Marie Odhner Grade 1
Mrs. Donald Alan Grade 2
Mrs. Kenneth Holmes Grade 3
Mrs. Ben McQueen Grade 4
Miss Cindy Tennis Grade 5
Mrs. Daniel Wright Grade 6
Mr. Richard Acton Grades 7 and 8
Rev. Patrick Rose Religion
Rev. Brian Keith Religion
Mrs. William Hugo Librarian
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KITCHENER: Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith Principal
Rev. Mark R. Carlson Religion
Miss M. Edith Carter Grades 1 and 2
Miss Barbara A. Walker Kindergarten, Grades 3 and 4
Miss Joan N. Kuhl Grades 5 and 6
Mr. Karl E. Parker Grades 7 and 8
MIDWESTERN ACADEMY: Rev. Peter M. Buss, President Religion
Dr. Charles Ebert, Principal Mathematics
Mrs. Brian Keith History
Mrs. William Hugo Library
Mr. Gordon McClarren Math, Science
Miss Cindy Tennis Physical Education
Mr. Dan Woodward English, Athletic Director
Rev. Patrick Rose Latin
Rev. Brian Keith Religion
Mrs. Charles Ebert Typing
PITTSBURGH: Rev. Donald L. Rose Principal
Mrs. Marion Kendig Grades 1 and2
Mrs. Robert Blair Grades 3 and 4
Miss Karen Junge Grades 5 and 6
Mrs. Paul Schoenberger Grades 7-9
Mr. Curtis McQueen Grades 7-9
TORONTO: Rev. Geoffrey S. Childs Principal
Rev. Ottar Larsen Assistant Principal
Miss Sylvia Parker Head Teacher, Grades 1-3
Miss Kathy Smith Grades 4-6
Mrs. Leigh Bellinger Grades 7-8
WASHINGTON: Rev. Daniel W. Heinrichs Principal
Mr. James Cooper, Headmaster Grades 6-7
Mrs. Frank Mitchell Grades 1-3
Mrs. Phillip Zuber Grades 4-5
Mrs. B. Dean Smith Grades 8-10
Mrs. Fred Waelchli Grades 6-10
Part-time teachers are not included. The teaching staff of the Academy of the New Church is listed in the Catalog Numbers of The Academy Journal.
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APPLICATIONS FOR ADMISSION TO THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH COLLEGE 1977
Announcements
All Students:
Requests for application forms for admission to The Academy College for the 1978-79 school year should be made before January 15, 1978. Letters should be addressed to Dean Robert W. Gladish, The Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009, and should include the student's full name and address, the name and address of the school he or she is now attending, and whether the student will be a day or dormitory student. Please see the Academy catalog for information about dormitory requirements.
Completed application forms and accompanying material should be received by Dean Gladish's office by March 15, 1978.
BOYS SCHOOL AND GIRLS SCHOOL
New Students:
Requests for application forms for admission to the Academy Secondary Schools should be made for new students before January 15, 1978. Letters should be addressed to Miss Morna Hyatt, Principal of the Girls School, or Mr. Donald Fitzpatrick, Principal of the Boys School, at The Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009. Letters should include the student's name, parents' address, the class the student will be entering, the name and address of the school he or she is now attending, and whether the student will be day or dormitory. Please see the Academy catalog for dormitory requirements.
Completed application forms and accompanying material must be received by the Academy by March 15, 1978.
Old Students:
Parents of students attending the Girls School or Boys School during the 1977-78 school year and residing in the dormitory or wishing financial assistance for the 1978-79 school year should apply before March 15, 1978. Letters should be addressed to the Principal of the school the student is now attending.
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FAITH AND SPIRIT OF ANTICIPATION DANDRIDGE PENDLETON 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
VOL. XCVII DECEMBER, 1977 No. 12
And Simeon came by the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for Him after the custom of the law, then took he Him up in his arms and blessed God and said, Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel. Luke 2:27-32.
The Christmas story, with its sacred memories, is told and retold countless times over. Yet Simeon's part in relation to this story is seldom mentioned. He appears unannounced upon the New Testament scene. He remains momentarily, then is gone, never to reappear. Who Simeon was, we do not know. We are left ignorant of his parentage and his place amongst the Jews. We are not even sure of his age; although the usual assumption is that he was old; for it had been "answered unto him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ." By comparison with the angelic annunciation, the visitation by shepherds and wise men, and the Divine Birth itself, Simeon's place seems insignificant, and is quickly passed over :f indeed it is mentioned at all.
And yet, when we pause to reflect upon the Christmas story in its various parts, we cannot help but be struck with the singular importance of Simeon in his relation to the Lord's birth among men. What do we know of Simeon the man? Upon reflection, we should rather ask, what do we know of those familiar and beloved figures that were the shepherds and the wise men? That is to say, what do we know of their quality as men?
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The shepherds were overcome by a miraculous occurrence, and their glorifying of God was little more than an extension of this miracle-sphere. The wise men from the East obeyed a dictate and a sign known to them from their ancestry; and they did obeisance in the ancient tradition of correspondential worship, then returned whence they had come. Nothing is said as to the interior quality of either of these groups of men: although we suppose that there must have been with them remains of genuine innocence, in order for them to be affected by the presence of the Divine Infant.
But of Simeon we know much. He was a man just and devout, well reported amongst his own people. He awaited the Consolation of Israel-the Messiah-with fervent hope and conviction. The Holy Spirit was upon him, and answer had been given to him from heaven that he should see the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy before his death. Simeon, awaiting avidly the completion of this promise, must have searched the Scriptures for those signs whereby he might know that the Messiah had come; and he was undoubtedly well acquainted with the centuries-old prophecy of Malachi, where it was written: "The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts."*
* Mal. 3:1
We may assume that Simeon visited the temple regularly, perhaps daily, in expectation of fulfillment; for had not the prophet said, "The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple"? Simeon did not know when this event would occur. But when it did, he would be there to receive it.
There are other things that cause Simeon's place in the Advent story to assume more than ordinary significance. He was the first, except for Mary and Joseph, to touch the Lord; for "when the parents brought the child Jesus to do for Him after the custom of the law, then took he Him up in his arms and blessed God." He was the first to recognize the Lord as the Messiah; the first to acknowledge His Divinity; and the first to confirm this acknowledgment by a reference to prophecy: for, having taken the infant Lord in his arms, Simeon said: "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel." In so saying, he bore witness to Isaiah 49, where it had been prophesied: "Thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified . . . I will also give Thee for a light to the gentiles, that Thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth."*
* Isa. 49:3, 6
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In all of this, Simeon portrays a vital quality of spiritual life with the man of the church. This quality is defined in the Writings as faith in the will, which is the second universal of the church with man.* Into this spiritual quality the character of Simeon fits to perfection. His part was a confirmatory one, and yet this confirmatory part was more than mere confirmation-after-the-fact. For Simeon had looked forward to this fact; he had desired it, had sought after it, and had awaited its fulfillment with eager anticipation. Nor was his anticipation founded simply upon his own thoughts and hopes; for it had been answered to him by the Holy Spirit that he would see the Lord's Christ. And it is precisely these manifestations-the desire and search for the fulfillment of truth in use, and the confident anticipation that this fulfillment will occur-that are given to the regenerating man in proportion as he comes to possess faith in the will.
* AC 3862:3, 3812, 5354:12, 4606; AR 356; cf. AC 342, 5461
This term, faith in the will, carries a charming connotation. For it tells of an intellectual understanding of truth which has been warmed and gentled by commencing states of charity. Prior to this, man has known the truth; but he has wielded that truth as a sword of righteous but cutting condemnation upon his fellow men. Now, he begins gradually to realize that this same truth must be used to bring healing and not to wound. This is a difficult transition to achieve: and it cannot be done all at once, nor with full perspective at its first recognition. Yet the desire is there-a desire that grows with an increasing realization of the needs that call piteously for help in the fearful wilderness of other men's temptations. Faith in the will: that is to say, understanding guided by affection, and looking to the life of charity: this is the spiritual quality that is represented by Simeon-the quality that his every word and action fulfills in the Christmas narrative-a quality which gives strength to the man of the church by bringing to him living confirmations of the Divine purpose in human life. And when these confirmations have been experienced, there follows one of the greatest blessings that can be given: the blessing of anticipation. For it is in this that faith in the will clothes and manifests itself-an ever deepening anticipation of prophecy and its fulfillment.
Anticipation is more than mere hope that a thing may come to pass. For in hope, by itself, there is, or can be, an element of doubt and therefore of fear concerning the achievement of our hearts' desires. Anticipation is hope confirmed, hope which has grown and strengthened to that point where inner assurance is gained and all essential doubts are laid to test.
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Such a state of life can be given only with those who have consented to place their intellect subject to the Divine Rational, and who have established this consent by remaining steadfast through adversity. This does not mean that life will thereafter rest in unbroken calm. It will not rest. The battle is only then beginning on a truly spiritual level. And yet, by persevering in this first state of intellectual response to the truth itself, a man is given to see the underlying power of the Lord in all things of His creation; and a perception of truth is thereby awarded which girds him securely for battle, giving him a sense of absolute assurance in the Lord's strength to protect and save. Many are the conflicts that still lie ahead; many the heartaches, the sicknesses, the feelings of inadequacy and failure. And yet, through it all comes a deepening awareness of the Lord's providence, and of anticipation in the fulfillment of His Word. The battle is joined, and it will continue: So let it be joined, and let it continue. There is only a compounding of confusion to be served by waiting, by hoping that life's problems will somehow solve themselves while we shrink back in indecision. Let us get on with it, seeking the Challenge rather than the reward: and, if the challenge be met, and the reward thereby gained, let us give blessing to our God who has preserved and sustained us.
The man who does not anticipate life in both its spiritual and natural requirements and place himself in their path so that he may be ready when those requirements come, is a man who has not savored the true quality of humanness. We all have desires which we long to fulfill, ambitions in which we hope to succeed. Yet how many of us are willing to pay the price of true fulfillment or success? How many of us are truly willing to lay down our lives for our friends, to give over to one more able or deserving than we, to share with others, not of our wealth, but of our penury, to sacrifice in that true spirit of charity which looks to the promotion of use above the personal considerations of self-interest? Are we willing to persevere in the study of the Word, to make daily pilgrimage to the temple of interior worship, to await with unflagging certainty the coming of our God, despite those apparent injustices which would appear on the surface to discredit the concept of a truly Divine love and wisdom? "The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple . . . Behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand, when He appeareth"?*
* Mal. 3:1, 2
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The Divine truth is born into the life of every man, whether he be Disciple or Pharisee, saint or sinner. So was the Lord born long ago; and as the very Divine Truth in Human Form He affected the lives of all men, His birth was universal. So also is His presence at this day. To all, He came, and continues to come, as the fulfillment of prophecy. And, as predicted, He comes "suddenly . . . to His temple."
The shadow of death brooded darkly over the temple even at the time of His presentation by Mary and Joseph. For there were those who awaited Him only to destroy Him. And yet it was not this shadow of impending death, but the blessing of heavenly light that greeted Him and surrounded Him with a protecting aura of angelic reception. For Simeon was there, his way led unerringly by the Holy Spirit. Simeon the just. Simeon the devout. Simeon, who caught the Lord up in his arms and, in a rush of tender gratitude, blessed God and committed himself to his Maker, saying, "Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy Word." Simeon was content. He did not request that he might see the conclusion of events still to come. For is not the End contained in its Beginning. Was not this holy Child the Last as well as the First? In the leading of Providence, the opportunity for which Simeon had looked, and which he had anticipated with sure conviction, had not passed him by. For whosoever prepares his footsteps as a worthy servant, the promise is fulfilled. Enlightenment is given and glory is granted, the glory of truth in its fullness, and the attainment of heavenly gifts. Spiritual anticipation is a reward of trust, trust in the Lord's promise to save. Does not each one of us have his secret hope, his unspoken wish, his love too deep to be expressed in words or analyzed by thought? And has not each of us lived at times in fear that this secret life's desire will die unborn, that he will never know happiness in its completion? We seek to escape this fear in a variety of ways; but it returns to haunt us, bringing with it a desolation of loneliness, loneliness that cries out brokenly far help, yet which often takes form by lashing unmercifully those who love us most: a paradox, it would seem, but one which has a parallel in the action of a drowning man who grips his rescuer so fiercely that both are dragged to their death. And in these states of fear, we may well be stricken by an inability to affirm the leading of Providence. We would that we might hope, and yet we have no hope. We find it impossible to believe that there can be any joy for us. We turn from the Lord, sorrowing and self-centered: Who are we, that He should help us? But this is a presumptuous question. For our doubting hearts are really, if unconsciously, asking, Who is He, that He should be able to help us?
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Have we forgotten that His hand is not shortened to save, nor His ear heavy that it cannot hear. Where is our acknowledgment of His Divinity? Where is our faith? Have we lost our courage so far as to admit defeat? Must the sun shine at every hour of the day, in order for life to continue? Are we not created in His image? Then let not the image dishonor its Master! Let not disappointment destroy our manhood, nor temporary failure our perseverance. Return again, ye people. If the Lord be God, then follow Him. Have confidence in His promise; for "behold, He that keepeth Israel shall not slumber nor sleep."* "The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple . . .and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver . . . Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in the former years."** Amen.
* Ps. 121:4
** Mal. 3:1, 3, 4
LESSONS: Malachi 3:1-6; 4; Luke 2:21-40; Arcana Coelestia 896
It is one thing to know truths, and quite another to acknowledge them, and still another to have faith in them. To know is the first thing of regeneration, to acknowledge is the second, to have faith is the third. What difference there is between knowing, acknowledging, and having faith is evident from the fact that the worst men may know, and yet not acknowledge; and that unbelievers may acknowledge, and in certain states preach, confirm, and persuade with zeal; but none can have faith who are not believers. Those who have faith know, acknowledge, and believe, they have charity, and they have conscience; and therefore faith can never be predicated of any one, that is, it cannot be said that he has faith, unless these things are true of him. This then it is to be regenerate. Merely to know what is of faith is of a man's memory, without the concurrence of his reason. To acknowledge what is of faith is a rational content induced by certain causes and for the sake of certain ends. But to have faith is of conscience, that is, of the Lord working through conscience. This is abundantly evident from those who are in the other life. Those who only know are many of them in hell. Those who acknowledge are also many of them there, because their acknowledgment in the life of the body has been in certain states only, and when in the other life they perceive that what they had preached, taught, and persuaded others is true, they wonder greatly and acknowledge it only when it is recalled to their memory as what they had preached. But those who have had faith are all in heaven. AC 896
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DEVELOPING THE AFFECTION OF TRUTH Rev. L. R. SONESON 1977
(Last of a series of papers given to the General Church Educational Council, August, 1977.)
For our final evening on the subject of "Developing an Affection of Truth," we have several subjects and comments prepared for you-all pertinent to the series.
First, I want to report what I was able to glean from the academic world outside our New Church educational system. The "desire to learn" is so universal, it has to be recognized and categorized by authorities in educational communities. It was a pleasant surprise to find what that world had to offer. I had the generous assistance of a daughter who is majoring in the subject of motivation as it applies to learning at all stages of growth (from pre-school tots to graduate students). I will quote just a few pertinent points. With the expected enthusiasm of one in her doctorate program, Sonia provided a good deal more material than I was able to digest. But a couple of the studies seemed most apropos.
For example, in a work entitled: "Psychology of Human Growth and Development," by Baller and Charles (one of whom is her professor), the chapter on Human Drives and Motives caught my eye. They stated, as a preface, "In the practical affairs of the classroom 'motivation' often has reference to something the teacher does to get children to respond in certain ways. Inducements are offered by the teacher to his pupils as he tries to spark their interest and their efforts. As he makes use of various incentives the teacher may say, 'I do this to 'motivate' learning."' Clearly, 'this' pertains quite directly to a teaching method. Good teachers employ many different methods of motivation suited to various phases of the guidance and instruction of their pupils. Rewards, punishments, and the ways in which teachers relate certain goals to the rewards are very much a part of motivation as thus defined.
"The other meaning of motivation-an importantly different use of the term-has reference to something going on within an individual. This is the view to which the expression 'basic drives and motives' relates in the more truly psychological sense."*
* Psychology of Human Growth and Development, by Baller and Charles, p. 126.
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In defining one of these "urges" or "desires" within the student, they gave much space to this inherent phenomena. They called this "desire to know" that which is manifest in the persistent search that human creatures make for meaning in experience. "It has reference to the insuppressible 'what?,' 'who?,' 'where?', 'how?,' and 'why?' that are characteristic of the young child, and generally less overtly, of the adult. Even the restriction implied in the words, 'which human creatures make' may well be unwarranted. For those who have gone for a walk through the fields or the woods with a favorite dog, the urge to 'inquire into' may not seem to be a characteristic owned by man alone."*
* Ibid., p. 142
The authors went on to present the results of another study made by Guilford.* He noted that "from various sources among writers, there is a growing recognition that in addition to the more obviously utilitarian motives, there is a unique source of drive for problem solving; a drive of an intellectual nature; a drive that appears to reach fulfillment merely through the mastery of problems. . . . From all this there comes, like a welcome breath of fresh air, a belief that children and others can be motivated by needs other than those of hunger, thirst, pain, and sex; that they can learn to know and to value the sweet taste of intellectual achievement."**
* Guilford, J. P. 1965, Intellectual Factors in Productive Thinking in Aschner, Mary Jane, and C. E. Bish, Eds., Productive Thinking in Education, Washington, D. C., National Education Association, pp. 9-10.
** Ibid., p. 144
These statements indicate several things: first, that the affection of knowing, described in Divine Love and Wisdom is not exclusively human in nature; the curiosity of a kitten about an empty paper bag is one example. But the second conjunction referred to last evening, that of producing perception of truth from a desire or affection to understand, is human exclusively.
And finally, the affection of truth itself was never hinted at in the literature I was able to peruse. This is a human potential explained to us in a Revelation from heaven. It is hinted at in the prior Testaments, but not so rationally explained as in the Writings. In Proverbs, we read: "Get wisdom, get understanding; forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee; love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding."*
* Prov. 4:5, 6
We know this affection of truth is the inner meaning described in the Beatitudes. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice. . . "
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But, it is not obvious to the understanding without benefit of the Writings to interpret such passages.
Another study, made by Maslow, seemed related to what was presented earlier this week. As you probably know, he came up with a theory on the hierarchy of needs, arranged in order of prepotency. This means that the appearance of one need rests on the prior satisfaction of another.
Maslow's list of needs arranged in their hierarchal order from the lowest to the highest is as follows:
1. Physiological needs, for example, to satisfy hunger, thirst.
2. Safety needs, for example, security and release from anxiety aroused by threats of various kinds.
3. Love needs, for example, affection, acceptance, and feeling of belonging in one's relationships with parents, teachers, friends, and other social groups.
4. Esteem needs: both self-esteem from mastery and confidence in one's worth, adequacy, and capacities, and esteem from social approval.
5. Need for self-actualization through creative self-expression in personal and social achievements; need to feel free to act (within the limits of general and social needs) to satisfy one's curiosity, and to understand one's world.
According to Maslow's theory, "an individual's lower needs must be satisfied before higher ones can operate. However, it is not necessary that a lower need be completely satisfied before higher need systems can come into operation; they must be satisfied at a particular level before the next highest can emerge. Thus, loosely generalized, if only 10% of Need One is satisfied, Need Two may not appear. If Need One is 20% satisfied, then Need Two may appear.
"Relatively free of persistent physical and/or psychological deprivations, a child can-and will-manifest the desire to know, the desire to create, and the desire to share what he knows and what he creates. Experiences that build self-confidence and self-respect go far in helping a learner function effectively."*
* Emotional Blocks to Creativity: Humanist 18: 325-332, by A. H. Maslow, 1958. See also Baller and Charles' Psychology of Human Growth and Development, p. 146.
I find this an enlightening theory, and one not too surprising, based on experience in the classroom. A person, young or old, who is literally hungry makes a poor student. It is hard to hold the attention of the pupil who comes to school without breakfast.
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Even a well-fed student who is threatened by others, and fears for his or her safety in the play-ground, is not going to be too attentive. Assuming the first two needs are partially met, a student who is without love from others, lacking acceptance from friends and parents is likely to show little interest in learning. The newest member in the class is more interested in finding friends and being accepted by peers, than in any instruction the teacher has to offer. The study shows how a priority of needs must be met before the affection of learning and understanding can flower in the student.
Is not this the very teaching given in the Matthew 25 passage, referred to earlier? If we are trapped by fear, as if in prison, can we learn effectively? If we feel like a stranger among our peers, will the desire to study and acquire knowledges be prominent? If we are hungry for love and affection, can there be a conscious thirst for truth? We would do well to keep this hierarchy of needs in mind when meeting with our class each day. The affection of learning is the last of the priorities to be met by individuals, young and old. If the prior needs are neglected, there may be teaching, but there will be little or no learning.
The authorities I read made this subtle but important differentiation. "The desire (motive) to be loved must not be confused with the desire to be approved or accepted. The child in his relationships with his parents needs to feel esteemed-but he needs more than this. He needs to feel secure in the knowledge that whatever he may be and whatever he may do, his parents deeply love him."*
* Ibid. P. 140.
The separating of these two basic needs is pertinent to what we said before. The teacher may have affection for his students, but it is no substitute for parental love. On the other hand, a teacher's respect for and acceptance of everyone he teaches is paramount to encourage the love of learning to surface. The instructor who is truly a New Church educator will perceive this truth, if he or she is motivated by an affection of truth. After all, the affection of truth is the form of an affection of good, and that is the definition of true charity, mercy and love of the neighbor.
Permit me to quote from just one more study that fascinated me. David Rosenhan, of Swarthmore College, in a work called "The Kindness of Children,"* made a couple of statements that should bring a smile to readers of the Writings. He wrote:
* Young Children, Vol. XXV, No. 1, Oct., 1959
"Consider: The capacity of people to give much more than they apparently receive (and this is how we define altruistic or generous behavior)-as parents do for children, teachers for students, lovers for each other-forms one of the likely bases of socialization, education, patriotism, love, social order and cooperative cohesion.
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These capacities and social structures do not arise de novo in the adult, but rather spring from childhood antecedents.
"Although rumor (buttressed by naive psychological theory) has it that man is selfish and concerned only with himself and his own gratifications, that is hardly the case! Indeed, evidence for altruistic behavior can be found throughout the animal kingdom, and in large measure, too."
After an explanation of a series of experiments to prove that children can be charitable, given the right incentive and model, the author came up with these interesting conclusions:
"Regardless of the variation employed, these experiments have produced one consistent outcome: moral preachings have no effect on behavior. If the model behaves charitably, so will the child-even if the model has preached greed. And conversely, if the model preaches charity, but practices greed, the child will follow the model's precept and will not contribute to the charity. Behavior in the prosocial area is influenced by behavior, not by words!" (Or as the clich? puts it: "Not by precept but by example.")
As the Rev. Frank Rose stated here three years ago:
"I have taken a person after class, and told him to be good. I have preached sermons to my congregation telling the people to be charitable. . . . Or taken that little child that bullies other children, and told that child 'stop bullying.' It doesn't work. One of the most useless exercises I ever had was to preach to a person to try to get him out of an evil state into a good state."*
* Educational Council Notes, 1914:69
That whole series of education council meetings in 1974 moved me deeply. The results of Mr. Rose's survey on goals in our religious curriculum that we gave back to him; Mr. Hyatt's study on affection in the classroom; and all the other speakers that week gave me much to ponder in my own approach to teaching in the ministry.
An epitome for Love in the Classroom was given by Rev. Norman Reuter when informed of its completed conclusion: "God has been a policeman to many, keeping the universe in order. But the new vision of our church is love. The motivating power the universe is love; what but love started it? What but love keeps it going? What but love sends the Son to the world to the ignominy of the cross? What but love gives us the freedom to live our own life? What but love provides for us in Divine Providence? What but love redeems us and brings us back from our headlong rush into evils?
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What but love ensures the learning process? What but love enhances social relations? What, indeed, but love makes life worth living?"
And Mr. Stephen Gladish said: "I believe in a loving and just God, from Whom all that is good and true flows. I believe every teacher can be a disciple of the Lord, whatever his subject field. The Lord does not condemn, manipulate, exploit, and put us down, taking away our freedom; He loves, accepts, instructs, and encourages us freely. Can we not so love our students? True instruction encourages an innocent affection in our students and opens the interiors of their minds; when we give it, acknowledging that we received it from the Lord, we are true disciples. . . . I believe in Bishop Benade's ideal of New Church education-'to lead and guide the child by means of affections.'"
And Mrs. Beth Johns stated, while discussing affectional leading: "Warm personal relationships and recognition of individual interests are prevalent. Adult authority based on age, knowledge, experience, and expertise is combined with understanding and respect for children's needs as well as genuine interest in each one's special desires. Willing obedience is sought, and mutual respect fostered. A quiet, deep friendship develops between teacher and pupil; a relationship based on trust, open communication, and an affectional sphere delightful to experience. Whatever the teacher asks of a child seems readily accepted, and conversely, there is much opportunity for the child to ask a great deal of his teacher. This two-way relationship is challenging and satisfying for both."
One of Mr. Garry Hyatt's quotes was: "When man is led by the Lord by means of affections he can be led according to all the laws of His Divine Providence, but not if he should be led by means of thoughts. Affections do not become evident to men but thoughts do; also affections produce thoughts, but thoughts do not produce affections; there is an appearance that they do, but it is a fallacy. And when affections produce thoughts they produce all things of man, because these constitute his life."*
* AE 1175:4
"To the degree that the educational process does not engage the student's affection of truth it will simply fail. We are told that "to receive anything contrary to the affection is to receive it contrary to the life. Hence it is manifest that truth of doctrine, or faith, cannot be received except by the affection of it. But such as is the affection, such is the reception. It is only the affection of truth and good that receives the truth of faith; for they agree, and because they agree, they conjoin themselves together."*
* Cf. AC 1875
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The Rev. Frank Rose said, in his talk that year to this council:
"Love to the Lord and charity is experienced in the innocence of ignorance by a little child, and that makes the child sensitive to what is good. This is what produces the longing for truth that reaches out to find information to feed itself; so that the love of good which is experienced there as a borrowed state can be built up, can become the tree of that person's life and bear fruit in the works of charity to the neighbor. . . .
"There are many things than we can do besides simply teaching; that's one thing. Hugging is another one; and singing together is another one, and enjoying the spirit of worship and friendship-these are all found in New Church education."
The Rev. Kurt Asplundh stated: "The more we can excite the affections, and allow the child to act freely from his affections, the more readily will he learn what we have to teach."
"As Mr. Hyatt has so fully shown in his presentation, it is through, or by means of, affections that we learn. The Writings teach that when we are in the affection of knowing and learning truths we are 'easily and as it were spontaneously imbued with truths.'"*
* Cf. AC 2704
FREDERICK EMANUEL DOERING TRUST EDITOR 1977
Application for assistance from the above Fund to enable male Canadian students to attend The Academy of the New Church at Bryn Athyn, Pa., U.S.A., for the school year 1977-78 should be received by one of the pastors listed below as early as possible.
Before filling their applications, students should first obtain their acceptance by the Academy immediately, as dormitory space is limited.
Any of the pastors listed below will be happy to give any further information or help that may be necessary.
The Rev. Geoffrey S. Childs
2 Lorraine Gdns.
Islington, Ont. M9B 424
The Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith
6 Bannockburn Rd., R.R.2
Kitchener, Ont. N26 3W5
The Rev. William H. Clifford
1536 94th Ave.
Dawson Creek, B.C. VIG 1H1
604
INTERNAL SENSE OF THE WORD CORBETT S. KLEIN 1977
Do the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg have a spiritual or internal sense? To answer this question we must understand what is meant by a spiritual or internal sense. Swedenborg writes, "The spiritual or internal sense of the Word is nothing else than the sense of the letter unfolded according to correspondences. . . .* Now we desire a precise definition of "the Word." By the Word is mean Divine truth, in its natural, spiritual, and celestial sense.** Concerning the natural and spiritual senses Swedenborg writes, "It is written in many places that the Lord will come in the clouds of heaven. . . . Heretofore it has not been known that 'the clouds of heaven' mean the Word in the sense of the letter, and that the 'glory and power' in which He is then to come (Matt. xxiv. 30), mean the spiritual sense of the Word. . . ."*** Swedenborg further explains, in this passage and elsewhere, that the Lord opened to him the spiritual sense of the word:
* De Verbo 17
** TCR 777
*** TCR 776
At this day the spiritual sense of the Word has been revealed from the Lord, because the doctrine of genuine truth has now been revealed, which doctrine is partly contained in the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, and now in the small works, which are being given to the public; and because that doctrine, and no other, agrees with the spiritual sense of the Word, therefore that sense, together with the science of correspondences, has now for the first time been disclosed.*
* De Verbo 21
It seems obvious that the Writings contain the spiritual sense of the Word. This is the context in which the Writings are the Word and a Divine revelation.
It would seem that the Writings would not contain an internal or spiritual sense in the way that the Writings speak of a corresponding sense. Other writers have explored the possibility of an inner meaning to the Writings using perhaps a different approach. Dr. Wilson Van Dusen in the New Church Magazine of summer 1976 calls it "the actual experience of the truth of the Writings."*
605
I haven't quite nailed this concept down yet. That there might be more levels of truth in a Divine revelation than the natural and its corresponding spiritual sense doesn't seem unlikely. In all probability all truth can be understood in an infinite variety of ways and in infinitely greater depth. Moreover, its application to good, "its experience" might be considered to constitute an inner meaning of a living Word.
* New Church Magazine, Vol. 95, No. 616, p. 42 (General Conference of the New Church, 20 Bloomsbury Way, London) 1916.
In addition, the celestial sense of the Word which was mentioned earlier merits consideration. The Writings do not deal as extensively with it because, ". . . this sense can scarcely be unfolded, for it does not fall so much into the thought of the understanding, as into the affection of the will."* In the chapter of True Christian Religion entitled the "Sacred Scripture" Swedenborg writes, "Whatever goes forth from the Lord's Divine love is called the Divine Celestial, everything of which is good."** Dr. Van Dusen states concerning the Writings that, "The celestial sense occurs when the Writings are found to illustrate your experience of good, love, and the Lord."***
* SS 19
** TCR 195
*** New Church Magazine, Vol. 95, No. 676, p. 42
So far I haven't said anything which might surprise New Church Life readers. However, it has occurred to me, as perhaps it has to others, that many of the memorable relations in the Writings do contain an internal message which can be developed with the use of correspondences. I would like to share an example from True Christian Religion 185 of which I have quoted parts (2) and (3) in full:
(2) On one occasion I had a strong desire to see some region of the frigid zone where these boreal spirit is dwell. I was therefore conducted in spirit northward to a region where the whole earth appeared to be covered with snow and all the water frozen. It was the Sabbath day; and I saw men, that is, spirits similar in stature to the men of our world, with their heads, owing to the cold, covered with lions' skins, the mouth of the skin fitted to their own; while before and behind and down to the loins their bodies were clad with leopard skins and their feet with bear skin. I also saw many riding in chariots, and some in chariots carved in the form of a dragon with the horns projecting forward. The chariots were drawn by small horses with their tails clipped, which ran like frightful wild creatures, the driver holding tight the reins and continually speeding and whipping them to a run.
At length I saw that the crowds were flocking towards a temple, which was invisible because it was buried in snow: but the caretakers of the temple were shoveling away the snow and digging a path for the coming worshipers, who descended and entered.
(3) I was permitted to see the inside of the temple. It was lighted with an abundance of lamps and torches. There was an alter of hewn stone, behind which hung a tablet with the inscription, The Divine Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are essentially one God, but personally three.
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At length a priest who stood at the alter, after kneeling thrice before the tablet, went up into the pulpit with a book in his hand and began a discourse on the Divine trinity. "O how great the mystery," he exclaimed, "that God in the highest beget a Son from eternity, and through him sent forth the Holy Spirit, the three conjoining themselves by their essence but dividing themselves by their properties, which are imputation, redemption, and operation! But if we look upon these things from reason our vision grows obscure, and a spot comes before it such as appears before the eye of one who fixes his gaze upon the naked sun. Therefore, my hearers, in this matter let us keep the understanding under obedience to faith."
It is interesting to note that Swedenborg tells us scarcely anything about the images portrayed. But surely a Divine revelation wouldn't mention the fact that the horse's tails were clipped if it didn't have a significance. From studying the correspondences presented in this memorable relation one can see that it describes the state of the Christian Churches of the reformed. Let me cite some passages which help to explain these correspondences.
Concerning snow and frozen water: "Truths outside the heavens shine coldly, like something snowy without heat, because they do not draw their essence from good, as do the truths within the heavens."*
* HH 132
When considering the apparel of the "boreal spirits" it is informative to compare it with the beast described in association with the red dragon in the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse: "And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority."
This beast corresponds to the quality of faith of the laity in the churches of the reformed concerning which Swedenborg writes in Apocalypse Revealed:
By "a leopard" is signified the affection or lust of falsifying the truths of the Word and also a heresy destructive of the church. That "a leopard" signifies the truths of the Word falsified, is owing to its black and white spots, for by the black spots are signified falsities, and by the white among them is signified truth.
Having feet like a bear's signifies full of fallacies from the sense of the letter of the Word read but not understood. By "feet" is signified the natural, which is the ultimate, upon which that heresy, meant by "the leopard," subsists, and as it were walks, and this is the sense of the letter of the Word, and by a bear are signified those who read the Word and do not understand it, whence they had fallacies.
And his mouth as the mouth of a lion, signifies reasonings from falsities as if from truths. By "mouth" is signified doctrine, preaching and discourse, here reasoning from falsities of doctrine, because by "the head," in which is the mouth, is signified insanity from mere falsities; by "a lion" is signified Divine Truth in power but here falsity in power appearing like truth by reasonings. . . .*
* AR 566-514 (paraphrased)
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In considering the chariots which conveyed the "boreal spirits" we can discover from Arcana Coelestia that chariots signify doctrinal things of good and truth, and also the memory-knowledges belonging to doctrinal things while horses signify things of the understanding.* In a perverted sense horses and chariots signify the things of understanding, of doctrine and of false knowledge, together with the reasonings founded on them that pervert and extinguish the truths of the Church.** The significance of the chariots being carved in the form of a dragon can be seen from these two passages:
* AC 5321 (3)
** AC 5321 (12)
That the religious persuasion of faith separate from charity is meant and described in the Apocalypse by the dragon and his two beasts, has not only been told me from heaven, but also shown me in the world of spirits which is beneath heaven.*
* F 56
And behold, a great red dragon, signifies those in the Church of the Reformed who make God three, and the Lord two, and separate charity from faith, and who make faith saving but not charity together with it.*
* AR 537
And what about horses with clipped tails?! "And because religion is of the life, and this consists in good works according to the truths of faith, it is evident that religion is the picture itself, and not the mere appendage; yea, with many it is like the tail of a horse, which because it avails nothing, may be cut off at pleasure."*
* BE 46
The temple can be interpreted as the spiritual church where to measure a temple as the angel instructed John in the Apocalypse chapter eleven signifies to know the quantity and quality of truth and good of the church.* This temple wouldn't measure up to par because it is buried in truth without good (snow). The persuasion of those without true faith, of those who merely confess to believing what is true is likened to "the light of winter, in which light, because it has no heat in it, all things on the earth are bound up in frost, become torpid, and lie buried under the snow."** It is interesting to note that digging as the caretakers did to uncover a path for the worshipers corresponds to searching for truth because it is generally associated with digging a well for water, (truth).*** Lamps, which were used to light the interior of the temple, signify the knowledges of truth and good from the Word, as well as the truths of doctrine and of faith.****
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How this could be construed to fit the representation I don't know except that the lamps, or the knowledges of truth and good from the Word apparently did not have any beneficial affect on the clergy or the laity of the Church whose state this memorable relation describes. This becomes apparent when we examine the riddle of the trinity as expounded upon by the priest in the temple.
* AC 10123 (2)
** HH 482
*** AC 7343
**** AE 675
Taken in perspective this memorable relation serves to illustrate graphically what Swedenborg is saying in that part of True Christian Religion from which it is taken, namely that the doctrine of the trinity of persons, and faith alone are the undoing of the Christian Church. It is precisely for this reason that a new Divine revelation was given, the spiritual sense of the Word was opened, and a New Heaven and a New Church were established.
Perhaps by understanding the internal sense of this memorable relation we can better understand their use in the Word. Possibly they may serve to illustrate in an ultimate way things which are discussed in a doctrinal way. Most of the memorable relations are written so that their point is obvious, yet a little study can show that their symbolism reinforces the doctrines being presented. Taken in this light I am not sure just how literally some of the memorable relations should be regarded. Sometimes they seem more symbolic than real. I also think that the understanding of them illustrates the importance of correspondence in understanding the internal sense of the Word.
VISITORS TO BRYN ATHYN, GLENVIEW, AND TORONTO EDITOR 1977
Visitors to Bryn Athyn, Glenview or Toronto who are in need of hospitality accommodations are cordially urged to contact in advance the appropriate Hospitality Committee head listed below:
Mrs. A. Wynne Acton Mrs. Philip Horigan
3405 Buck Rd. 50 Park Dr.
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 Glenview, Ill. 60025
Phone: (215) 947-0242 Phone: (312) 729-5644
Mrs. Sydney Parker
30 Royaleigh Ave.
Weston, Ont. M9P 2J5
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DIVINE ART TIMOTHY ROSE 1977
Complex as the production of art is in execution, it is not hard to summarize: an artist takes things from the spirit, symbolizes them before the senses of the body, and thus conveys them to another spirit. While in this life of the body, we cannot convey the feelings of our spirit directly to another. We must represent them in symbols: words, pictures, sculptures, music, drama. If they are skillfully symbolized, the observer or listener can perceive something of the feelings that inspire the choice of symbols.
Any artist knows the feeling of inadequacy he is forced to feel. Only crudely and incompletely can he fit the symbols of nature to the sublime affections of the human spirit. Only in glimpses can his audience capture the meaning of his expressions. But there is a perfect Artist, an Artist Who can represent the whole, full world of man's spirit in perfectly exquisite imagery for all the senses; Who has created a world of natural signs and symbols which so perfectly mirrors the world of spiritual reality that not the tiniest detail is without meaning. This natural universe is the canvas, the block of marble, the theater, the concert hall, for God's communication to us. Its crowning glory is His Literary Work, so infinitely artful that it contains all the truth there is.
Our perception and appreciation of the meaning of God's Art is as vague and patchy as our own artistic competence. We cannot look at any one of His creations and pretend to know its full meaning, or even a considerable fraction of it. But, from a certain amount of innate perception, especially with the guidelines given in the New Revelation, we can have at least some small affectional response to works of Divine Art.
A response to a work of art requires that the observer have something in him that can be identified with or likened to the affection being expressed. If someone had never known despair, he would not be able to appreciate a painting or poem depicting despair-except for the technical skill in its making, which is not the purpose of art. A morose, pessimistic Eeyore is not likely to be moved by joyful music; it does not speak to his affections.
But Divine Art is addressed to affections so basic to human nature that it has universal meaning.
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For example, the Heavenly Doctrine tells us that various kinds of animals represent the various affections that make up a human spirit: some good and innocent, some evil and crafty; some simple and natural, some rational and spiritual. Man can easily see elements of himself reflected in these artful creations. Who does not have some snake in him? Some lion? Some sheep, or mouse, or pig? Who cannot sometimes feel his mind rise out of the mundane life as a bird out of a swamp? Or feel the slow, groping blindness of the mole? The reason it is so easy to respond to this form of art is that animals are essentially parts of man; he is made up of the affections which they embody.
Another form of Art that can strike man vividly, perhaps even more so than animals do, is weather. A man is constantly undergoing changes and variations in the state of his affections. He has times of enlightenment, of delight, of peace, of self-confidence, of humility, of despair, of fear, of bitterness, of hope. One can see these changes movingly depicted on the face of the sky. It is not hard to "picture" the turbulence and anguish of temptation when watching a storm; or to see quiet peace of mind in a calm, mild day; or enlightenment in sunshine, or doubt in fleeting grey clouds that intermittently block the sun.
These are only a few examples of striking scenes in nature that have meaning to us. They have meaning because they were created that way for that very purpose. They are not just "pretty." Even the work of a finite artist deserves more meaningful appreciation than that. Vincent van Gogh would not enjoy hearing art gallery visitors, as they passed his paintings, exclaim, "Isn't it pretty?" and move on to Monet. He painted those scenes to share glimpses of meaning. How much more should we respect the perfect meaningfulness of God's works?
Neither are the forms of Divine Art mere sentimental reminders, whose meaning is determined by the memories we associate with them. A sunset, a flower, a snow-laden landscape, a full moon-these are beautiful not because they remind you of your first date, or of your home back in the old country. They are beautiful from creation, because God made them that way. Their beauty is every bit as real and substantial as the things themselves, and even more so, since they are but temporal, natural representations of eternal, spiritual things.
There is nothing arbitrary or artificial about the correspondence between created natural forms and their representative meanings. God did not create a deer and then tack some assigned affection onto it. The two correspond perfectly, and in fact the former could not exist without the latter. A deer is a deer entirely because of its corresponding spiritual entity, through which it receives its very existence, life, and form.
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As if to acknowledge that all true art, that is, all true representation of spirit in matter, is in the correspondence of God's two created worlds, and that man's artistic endeavors can add nothing to Divine Art, artists for all time have depicted scenes from nature. For centuries men have seen that they cannot possibly invent any beauty to match what the Creator produces. With this attitude, art can become a sort of worship; an actively expressed acknowledgment that God alone creates, and we, at best, reflect, when we do not obscure instead. The current abandonment of natural art in favor of surrealistic self-expression may be a reflection of man's increasing desire to be his own god, and to attribute creative power to himself. Such an attitude, if and when it is present, mocks nature, saying that an arbitrary arrangement of dots and squiggles has as much meaning as a windswept landscape, if either has any. An abstract invention may give the ego a thrilling illusion of self-power, but it will inspire no humble admiration of the true Creator's work. A simple photograph of a flower, while it may not seem so "free" or "creative" on the part of the artist, can draw the observer's mind to the One Source of all beauty, and meaning.
The Divine Artist deserves a humble audience as well as humble apprentices-an audience who does not pretend to understand everything. This would mean, for example, ignoring the modern version of astrology. Of course the stars have meaning-everything does-and various theories about their meaning can be very thought-provoking and useful. But to claim the ability simply to read that meaning as a book is to claim too much. Though some thread of ancient wisdom may (or may not) remain in the general ideas of astrology, surely it is entirely pretentious to tell me that on September 2, 1977, I must be careful with financial matters because of what the stars say.
This applies to the meaning in all of nature, especially for New Churchmen, who, having been given clues as to where the key is, must not pretend to be fingering the treasure already, much less to have it all tallied and recorded. Let us be honest and admit that we are in the first week of kindergarten, if that far, when it comes to "knowing" what we call correspondences, that is, the meanings of things. Far, very far off in the misty future is the hopeful day when we will share the precious gift given to the Most Ancients, of being able simply to look around and see what a vast store of heavenly secrets is vividly illustrated in every leaf, every breeze, every stir of a bird's wing. Between this day and that, no doubt, lie many lessons in intellectual humility and unpretentious awe at the work of the Supreme Artist.
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CROSSED-OUT PASSAGES IN THE SPIRITUAL DIARY GEOFFREY ODHNER 1977
Swedenborg crossed out many of the passages in The Spiritual Diary. He drew anywhere from one to as many as nine lines through each of these passages, apparently not to eliminate them, but for some other purpose.* The question why he did this has been a source of speculation for more than a century. Dr. J. F. I. Tafel was sure that Swedenborg would cross through a passage each time he rewrote that passage from the Diary into one of his later works. According to the Rev. A. W. Acton, each line through a passage was thought by Dr. Tafel to indicate a separate insertion or excerpting of that passage elsewhere. A passage with nine lines through it would supposedly then have been used in nine separate passages elsewhere. The Rev. G. Bush and then the Rev. W. H. Acton thought it more likely that Swedenborg drew the lines each time he indexed a number. The Rev. A. W. Acton thought it more likely that he did both.
* These crossed out passages have been indicated in different ways in the Latin and English editions, but not always accurately. In the first 1539 numbers, J. F. I. Tafel made 4 errors in the first Latin edition, and G. Bush made 13 in the first English edition. A. W. Acton has them correctly indicated in the second English edition (vol. I).
In order to find an answer to the question, I spent some time in the summer of 1975 investigating passages in the Diary that have known parallels elsewhere in the Writings to see how many of them are in fact crossed out. My study indicates that Dr. Tafel's theory was substantially correct, namely, that the reason Swedenborg crossed them out was indeed because he rewrote them elsewhere. Of those passages that we know have parallels, most (75%) are crossed out. Considering that only 21% of all the numbers in the whole work are crossed out, this is an impressive percentage, indicating a high correlation between crossed-out passages in the Diary and parallel passages elsewhere. And furthermore, of the remaining 25% of passages with known parallels, but which are not crossed out, most fall into definable categories by which they may be explained as regular exceptions. I have in fact found four general groups of numbers that Swedenborg failed to cross out when he wrote parallels:
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1. Swedenborg did not consistently cross out those passages in the Diary to which he wrote parallels in the Arcana Coelestia from about AC 2000 to about AC 6000. I say "about" these numbers, because it was a gradual change. During this period he would sometimes cross out and sometimes not. The numbers between AC 5000 and AC 6000 display the greatest inconsistency.
2. Swedenborg consistently did not cross out those passages in the Diary to which he wrote parallels in the chapter in Heaven and Hell on "Infants in Heaven." It seems likely, however, that these latter numbers were rewritten from their parallels in AC 2289-2309 rather than from the Diary directly, so that these uncrossed-out Diary passages probably should be included under the previous category.
3. None of the passages at the end of the Diary, after no. 5889, were crossed out when Swedenborg wrote parallels to them, except in the case of the very last section on marriage and adultery (no. 6110). Few, in fact only 24 numbers, were crossed out past SD 4630. This part was written much later than the first part of the work, and is used much less in the other works. But of those few numbers here which do have parallels, a far smaller proportion is crossed out, indicating that Swedenborg eventually gave up the practice.
4. Those passages in the Diary which are listed as having parallels elsewhere in the Diary itself are not crossed out consistently. I doubt whether any of these passages are actually rewritten elsewhere in the Diary. Rather, I think they are simply continuations treating further of the same topic. I found this to be the case with those few that I examined.
Now as we know, Swedenborg failed to cross out 25% of the passages that are known to have parallels written to them. Yet most of these (in fact, 80% of the 25%) fall among the four categories just described. This leaves only 5% of all the passages having known parallels, which are not crossed out, yet cannot be explained by any of the four categories.
How about the number of lines used to cross out a passage? Although Dr. Tafel suggested that the number of lines through a passage may have some significance, I have found none, with one interesting exception. In SD 3241 we can see that five lines were drawn on one occasion, and one more on a different occasion. Study of the evidence indicates that Swedenborg drew five diagonal lines through SD 3241 when he wrote AC 5564 parallel to it. Later, when writing AC 9232 and the following numbers parallel to SD 3241 and the numbers following it, he drew a single vertical line through each number.
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In the case of SD 3241, therefore, the five lines indicate one parallel, and the sixth, vertical line indicates another.
From this evidence it becomes apparent that the crossed-out passages in the Diary were indeed crossed out because parallels were written to them. This does not demonstrate conclusively that this was the only reason Swedenborg crossed out numbers. It is possible that he also crossed out in preparing his indices, although my examination of the first ten pages of his second Diary index gave no statistical suggestion of any such relation.
Finally, assuming that we know the reason, or the main reason, why these numbers are crossed out, we can now estimate the number of parallels that there should be still to be found. If of those passages that we know have parallels, about 75% are crossed out, then the ratio of paralleled passages in this group to those that are crossed out is 100 to 75. Since there are 1255 numbers crossed out altogether, this suggests that there should be 1255 x 100/75 = 1673 passages with parallels. But we have only discovered 595 such passages. Therefore, if the ratio of the known can be generalized to apply to the whole, there should be another 1000 or so passages with parallels yet to be identified.
The following table presents the data from which I have drawn my conclusions. I hope this study may be interesting and useful to others.
Table
Total numbers in the Diary 6,079
Numbers with known parallels (as of 1975) 595
Numbers with known parallels that are crossed out 449
Numbers with known parallels not crossed out 146
Numbers with known parallels not crossed out but explainable
by the four categories described in this study 119
Total numbers crossed out (including the 449 above) 1,255
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REVIEW N. BRUCE ROGERS 1977
Bible Study Notes, Volume 1, by Anita S. Dole. Edited by Wm. R. Woofenden. American New Church Sunday School Association, 1976. 429 + xxix pages. $6.75, hardcover.
The "Dole notes" have been a popular item with teachers of religion to children for almost two decades. Available in mimeographed form, they have presented graded lessons from the Word in four series, each series representing a complete year's work from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the Book of Revelation. Now these notes, properly called Bible Study Notes, are being republished in print, in a more permanent, memorial edition.
Though Mrs. Dole's work remains essentially unchanged, the lessons of the original four series have been interwoven in this edition to form a single sequence. The four series can still be followed, however, by use of the chart on pp. xxviii, xxix, which distinguishes them. The most extensive change has been to combine the notes for the Beginner and Primary ages. Otherwise the graded levels in each lesson have been preserved: Primary (notes intended for ages 3 to 8); Junior (ages 9 to 11); Intermediate (ages 12 to 14); Senior (ages 15 to 17); and Adult (age 18+). In addition, each lesson is preceded by a summary of Doctrinal Points relating to the lesson, as well as Notes for Parents; and following the lesson there is an appropriate passage quoted from the Writings, with a list of Suggested Questions on the Lesson.
As before, the strengths of the work so far outweigh its weaknesses as to make the weaknesses almost inconsiderable. Among the latter I note a misuse of the word "soul," apparently viewed as distinct from the mind, but where in every case it is the mind or spirit that is properly being spoken of and not the soul itself, which is above the mind.* Spiritual temptation is presented as a common Christian experience, which is contrary to doctrine.** We are told that we can in our regeneration reach the celestial degree, which I believe is true, but "we do not attain it before the end of our life in this world;"*** I know of no doctrinal basis for the second assertion. Reporting Swedenborg to have said that in his day the Ancient Word "might" still be in existence in Great Tartary introduces a doubt that is not found in the original claim.****
* E.g. pp. 11, 56, 67, 84
** P. 162. Cf. TCR 597:2
*** P. 64
**** P. 158. Cf. AR 11; CL 11:2; TCR 266, 219:3; Coro. 39
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In addition to these infrequent and mostly minor doctrinal missteps there are as well a few needless inside references to General Convention's Sunday School practices* and Convention's Book of Worship,** which will not be familiar to other readers.
* E.g., pp. 134, 135f. The reference might have been to Ps. 121:8
** E.g., p.78. DP 321 or some similar passage might have been cited instead
On the other hand, however, the great bulk of the work is doctrinally accurate and very well presented. It could not have been produced except by one closely acquainted with the Writings and at the same time gifted in explaining the doctrines to the young in terms understandable to them.* Indeed, many adults could gain insights into the teachings of the Writings and the internal sense of the Word from Mrs. Dole's explanations and illustrations.** The Writings are also quoted frequently, and when not cited directly their presence is nevertheless still perceptible throughout.
* See the Primary lesson on pp. 181-183 for an outstanding, but typical example.
** E.g., on Cain's wandering, p. 124, to cite but one instance
I note with especial pleasure the teaching, stated unequivocally, that external good by itself is not good enough, that natural kindliness and good works without a desire for truth are not good.* Yes, the will is inherently selfish, and we do have to learn what is right and make ourselves do it.** Nor is there any instinctive knowledge of truth, but we have to learn it from the Word.*** Very different fare, this, from so much of the educational philosophy today; yet it is the truth, and Mrs. Dole conveys it with both firmness and warmth.
* Pp. 111, 112
** P. 138
*** P. 172
What faith is, and what it is not. What charity is, and what it is not.* Examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely of the many teachings of the New Church to be found in the pages of this work, described always with clarity, and well accommodated for the age levels at which the lessons are aimed.
* See pp. 124, 125
Of course not all the stories of the Word are taken up. To cover them all would have made the work even more extensive than it is. As it stands, it is amazing how much Mrs. Dole was able to include, and how unified her work remains. It is an excellent contribution to our educational literature, representing years of loving concern and painstaking labor. It may be added that Mr. Woofenden's editing has eliminated any confusion as to the use of the work, so that clarity extends now to format as well as to substance. His, too, has been a worthwhile effort.
N. BRUCE ROGERS
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CLERGY REPORTS LOUIS B. KING 1977
September 1, 1976, to August 31, 1977
Report of the Bishop of the General Church
The activities of the Episcopal Office this past year can best be described by the words communication and delegation. Increased delegation of responsibility to both the Dean of the Bryn Athyn Church and the President of the Academy Schools resulted in more time and energy available to be spent by the Bishop on General Church uses.
In the area of General Church uses more responsibility has been given to the Bishop's Representatives in Great Britain and the Midwestern District of the United States. In addition to this, chairmen have been appointed to represent the Bishop in giving active leadership in the fields of Church Extension, the work of Traveling Ministers and the needs and concerns of Headmasters of General Church Schools. The Bishop meets with these respective chairmen on a monthly basis to lend counsel and support to their work.
As you may realize, a number of substantial steps have been taken, through delegation of responsibility, to provide for active leadership in vital areas of General Church use which otherwise might wait in line for attention from the Episcopal Office. Resulting from this process of delegation, the use of communication to and from the Bishop's Office has immeasurably increased. Regular written reports to the clergy and the board of directors have, it is hoped, assisted these respective bodies in keeping abreast of what is happening in the General Church as well as what is being planned.
Already, there has been a noticeable increase in communications to the Bishop's Office, offering valued counsel well in advance of meetings at which important decisions must be made.
As Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church it was my privilege during the past year to conduct 76 services of worship (festival, public, and private), preach 13 sermons, conduct 7 doctrinal classes, and 51 Arcana Classes, conduct 11 meetings (Board of Trustees and Society), and conduct 38 special services (rites and sacraments).
Episcopal visits and District Assemblies were numerous during the year, providing opportunities to meet with General Church people all over the world, and to discuss with them vital, mutual concerns, both local and church-wide. Time and space permit only a listing of these visits.
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As Chancellor of the Academy I met weekly with the President, chaired 13 board and corporation meetings, taught Elective Religion in the Secondary Schools, a course in marriage to the Theological School, a tutorial course in Church Government to the Rev. Norman Riley, and conducted 2 General Faculty meetings.
Episcopal Visits and District Assemblies presided over during this period.
Date Place
Sept. 17, 1976 Washington, D. C.
26 Glenview, Ill. (Founders Day MWA)
Oct. 3 Washington, D. C.
10 Tonche, N. Y. (ANC Weekend)
24 San Diego, Calif.
26 Phoenix, Ariz.
31 Tucson, Ariz.
Nov. 25 Kempton, Pa.
Dec. 5 Wilmington, Del.
19 Erie, Pa.
Jan. 1, 1977 Cleveland, Ohio
14 Caryndale, Canada
Feb. 16 Caryndale, Canada
20 Toronto, Canada
March 22 Caryndale, Canada
25 Pittsburgh, Pa.
29 Bath, Maine
April 8 Stockholm (Scandinavian District Assembly)
17 Copenhagen
19 Jonkoping
21 Gothenburg
23 Stockholm
24 Oslo
29 Copenhagen
30 Vienna
May 17 Cleveland, Ohio (District Assembly)
22 Kempton, Pa. (Church dedication)
27 Denver, Colorado
June 23 Pacific N. W. Canadian District Assembly
Aug. 11 Addressed Pastors' Summer School
15 Presided over Educational Council Meetings
Ministerial Changes
The Rev. Kurt H. Asplundh has resigned as Principal of the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School effective September 1st, 1977. He will devote his full time to the Deanship of the Bryn Athyn Church.
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The Rev. Frederick L. Schnarr has resigned as Pastor of the Washington Society, Washington, D. C. and has accepted a call to serve as Principal of the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Daniel W. Heinrichs has resigned as Pastor of the Ohio District and has accepted a call to the Pastorate of the Washington Society, Washington, D. C., effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Stephen D. Cole has received appointment to serve as Minister to the Ohio District, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Frank S. Rose has resigned as Pastor of the Carmel Church, Caryndale, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, and has accepted a teaching position in the Academy Schools, effective September 1, 1977. He will also serve as housemaster of the college men's dormitory.
The Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith has accepted a call to serve as Pastor to the Carmel Church Caryndale, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Mark R. Carlson has received appointment by the Bishop to serve as Assistant Pastor to the Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith in Carmel Church, Caryndale, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Walter E. Orthwein has accepted a call to serve as Pastor of the Detroit Society, Troy, Michigan, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz has resigned as Pastor of the Central Western District to accept a call to the Pastorate of the Bath, Maine Society of the General Convention, effective September 1, 1977. The Rev. Nemitz will remain a member of the Council of the Clergy of the General Church.
The Rev. Peter M. Buss will be responsible for the Central Western District of the General Church, effective September 1, 1977, and until a priest is selected to succeed the Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz.
The Rev. B. David Holm has resigned as Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. Douglas M. Taylor has accepted appointment as Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee, effective September 1, 1977.
The Rev. David Holm has accepted appointment as Secretary to the Council of the Clergy of the General Church, effective September 1st, 1977.
LOUIS B. KING,
Bishop
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COUNCIL OF THE CLERGY MEMBERSHIP B. DAVID HOLM 1977
During the year ending August 31, 1977, one young man was inaugurated into the first degree of the priesthood, and three ministers were ordained into the second degree.
At the end of the twelve month period the Council of the Clergy consisted of three priests of the episcopal degree, forty in the pastoral degree, seven in the ministerial degree, and one associate member, a total of fifty-one. Of these fifteen were mainly or essentially employed by the General Church and/or Academy of the New Church, twenty-eight were in pastoral work, six were retired or in secular work and one unassigned. The newly inaugurated minister was preparing to enter into his field of priestly uses.
In addition, the General Church had four priests in the pastoral degree and one in the ministerial degree in the South African Mission besides the Superintendent.
A directory of the General Church and its Mission in South Africa was published in the September NEW CHURCH LIFE, page 468.
STATISTICS
The statistics of the Sacraments and Rites of the Church administered during the year, compiled from reports of all priests as of October 15, 1976, together with comparative figures for the twelve month periods five and ten years ago, are shown below:
1976-77 1971-72 1967
Baptisms
Children 141 125 130
Adults 32 31 30
Total 173 156 160
Holy Supper Administrations
Public 253 168 169
Private 58 57 51
Communicants 5,574 5,316 5,807
Confessions of Faith 45 44 24
Betrothals 37 36 19
Marriages 60 52 31
Blessings on Marriages 2 2 0
Ordinations 4 2 3
Dedications
Churches 1 1 0
Homes 10 12 5
Other 0 0 1
Funeral or Memorial Services 42 53 39
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REPORTS OF MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL
"The Rt. Rev. Louis B. King served as Bishop of the General Church, Chancellor of the Academy of the New Church, and Pastor of the Bryn Athyn Church. The full text of his report appears on page 617.
The Rt. Rev. George de Charms, retired, awaits the printing of his book, A Commentary on the Harmony of the Four Gospels. He also wrote several papers and articles for New Church Life and New Church Home.
The Rt. Rev. Willard D. Pendleton, retired, is occupied with literary work and reports a number of baptisms and other priestly acts.
The Rev. Alfred Acton II served as President of the Academy of the New Church.
The Rev. Glenn G. Alden served as Pastor of the Florida District, resident in Miami.
The Rev. Kurt H. Asplundh continued to serve as Dean of the Bryn Athyn Church and Principal of the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School.
The Rev. Bjorn A. H. Boyesen continued to serve as Pastor of the Colchester Society in England and Headmaster of the Society's Day School. He also served as Visiting Pastor to the Groups in Manchester, Letchworth and Scotland. In addition he served as Chairman of the British Academy and of the General Council, Ltd. He reports having served as Headmaster of the British Summer School and as a member of the Advisory and Revision Board of the Swedenborg Society. He also reports being actively engaged in translating Divine Providence from the Latin into Swedish.
The Rev. Ragnar Boyesen served as Pastor of the Scandinavian District, resident in Stockholm, Sweden, and visiting the circles in Jonkoping, Sweden, Copenhagen, Denmark, Oslo, Norway and groups in Gothenburg and Malmo, Sweden. He also visited the isolated in Sweden and Norway. He acted as Head of the Swedish Summer School in Dalarna. He also served as Editor of Nova Ecclesia. In addition he has done work in revision of Apocalypse Revealed into the Norwegian language and is cooperating with translation and revision of Heaven and Hell and Divine Providence in the Swedish Language. He reports useful missionary lectures and cooperation with the General Convention in Sweden.
The Rev. Peter M. Buss served as Pastor of the Immanuel Church in Glenview, Illinois and as Headmaster of the Immanuel Church School. He also served as President of the Midwestern Academy, and the Bishop's representative to the Midwestern District. In addition he preached in several other places and organized the Pastors' Summer School.
The Rev. Mark R. Carlson served as Interim Pastor of the Detroit Society. In addition he visited the New Church Group in Gorand Rapids.
The Rev. Geoffrey S. Childs continued to serve as Pastor of the Detroit Society until October 15, 1976, at which time he became Pastor of the Olivet Church, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Headmaster of the Olivet Church Day School.
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He also served as Chairman of the Secondary Education Committee for Canada, and as Executive Vice-Chairman of the General Church in Canada.
The Rev. Robert R. P. Cole, unassigned, reports numerous activities of a pastoral and missionary nature, among which was a trip to Puerto Rico.
The Rev. Harold C. Cranch served as Pastor of the Olivet Church, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and as Headmaster of the Olivet Church Day School until October, 1976. At that time he became Associate Pastor of the Immanuel Church, Pastor of Sharon Church and Development Pastor to the Midwest District. This last responsibility involves the development of missionary work in the Midwest. He reports hopeful progress in this field.
The Rev. Ray Franson continued to serve as resident Pastor of the Tucson Circle in Arizona, and Visiting Pastor to the San Diego Circle, California, and the Phoenix Group, Arizona. He also visited in El Paso, Texas and in Pima, Arizona.
The Rev. Michael D. Gladish continued to serve as Pastor of the Hurstville Society in Sydney, Australia, and Visiting Pastor to the Auckland Circle, New Zealand. He also served the isolated in both countries.
The Rev. Victor J. Gladish, although retired, continued to conduct services at Sharon Church, Chicago, Illinois as needed. He also visited the Group in Wilmington, Illinois, and the Circle in Madison, Wisconsin.
The Rev. Daniel W. Goodenough served as Associate Professor of Religion and History at the Academy of the New Church where he taught both in College and Theological School. In addition he served as Secretary of the Bishop's Consistory. He also preached and gave doctrinal classes several times.
The Rev. Daniel W. Heinrichs continued to serve as Pastor of the Ohio District, resident in Cleveland, Ohio until July, 1971. He reports numerous services, doctrinal classes and children's classes presented in the various centers of the Ohio District during that period. In July he became Pastor of the Washington Society.
The Rev. Henry Heinrichs, retired, reported one baptism.
The Rev. Willard L. D. Heinrichs continued to serve as Superintendent of the General Church of the New Jerusalem Mission in South Africa, resident in Westville, Natal. In addition he served as Visiting Pastor to the Transvaal Circle, the Cape Town Group, and to the isolated in South Africa and Rhodesia. He also served as head of the Mission's Theological School, and gave assistance to the pastor of the Durban Society.
The Rev. B. David Holm continued to serve as Chairman of the General Church Extension Committee, Director of General Church Religion Lessons, Chairman of the Sunday School Committee of the Council of the Clergy, Editor of New Church Home and Instructor of Religion in the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School and in the Academy of the New Church. In addition he preached in several centers of the Church and served as a lecturer at the Almont New Church Assembly in Michigan.
The Rev. Geoffrey H. Howard served as Pastor of the Durban Society, in Natal, South Africa. He also served as the Headmaster of the Durban Society Kainon School.
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The Rev. Robert S. Junge served as Instructor of Religion and Education in the Academy of the New Church.
The Rev. Thomas L. Kline continued to serve as Pastor of the Southeastern United States District, resident in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition he served as an Instructor at the Laurel Leaf Academy Summer School.
The Rev. Ottar T. Larsen continued to serve as Assistant to the Pastor of the Olivet Church, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He also served as Visiting Pastor to Montreal, Quebec, and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
The Rev. Kurt P. Nemitz continued to serve as the Pastor of the Central West District, resident in Denver Colorado. He also served as a Revision Consultant, appointed by the Swedenborg Foundation, working on the translation of Heaven and Hell by the Rev. Dr. George Dole. He was also engaged in considerable missionary work during the year.
The Rev. Ormond de C. Odhner continued to serve as Professor of Church History and Instructor in Religion in the Academy of the New Church.
The Rev. Walter E. Orthwein III spent a nine month period of orientation in Bryn Athyn, during which time he studied in the Theological School, taught in the Academy of the New Church and in the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School. He also traveled to several centers of the Church. Since July he has served as the Pastor of the Detroit, Michigan Society.
The Rev. Dandridge Pendleton served as an Instructor of Religion in the Academy of the New Church.
The Rev. Martin Pryke served as an Instructor in the Theological School, Academy of the New Church, and as a Visiting Pastor to the Kempton, Pennsylvania Circle.
The Rev. Norman H. Reuter, retired, continued giving Pastoral assistance in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania and elsewhere when called upon and able. He also visited the belated in Virginia, and served as a Substitute Instructor of Religion in the Academy of the New Church.
The Rev. Morley D. Rich, retired, continued to serve as Editor of New Church Life. In addition he gave a bi-weekly small group class in the Bryn Athyn Society.
The Rev. Norbert H. Rogers continued to serve as Secretary of the General Church and Secretary of the Council of the Clergy. He also served as Chairman of the General Church Publication Committee. During the year he began a system by which the French speaking members and friends of the General Church in France, Switzerland, Mauritius and Quebec receive a sermon once a month in their own language.
The Rev. Donald L. Rose continued to serve as Pastor of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Society, and Principal of the Pittsburgh Society School. He also served the Group in Freeport, Pennsylvania.
The Rev. Frank S. Rose continued to serve as Pastor of the Carmel Church in Caryndale, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He also conducted the Laurel Leaf Academy Summer School.
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The Rev. Erik Sandstrom continued to serve as Dean of the Theological School, Academy of the New Church. In addition he continued to give a series of biweekly small group classes in Bryn Athyn. He also preached in several centers of the Church.
The Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom continued to serve as Pastor of Michael Church in London, England, and of the surrounding District of London. He also served as Visiting Pastor of the West Country Group and of the Hague, Holland Circle.
The Rev. Frederick L. Schnarr continued to serve as Pastor of the Washington, D.C. Society, and Headmaster of the Washington School. Since August he has served as the Principal of the Bryn Athyn Church Elementary School.
The Rev. David R. Simons continued to serve as the Pastor of the Los Angeles, California Society and as Visiting Pastor of the San Francisco, California Circle. He also made monthly visits to the San Diego, California Circle. He reports on a busy and productive year.
The Rev. Christopher R. J. Smith served as Assistant to the Pastor of the Carmel Church, Caryndale, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. A good deal of his work was with the Carmel School.
The Rev. Lorentz R. Soneson continued to serve as Pastor of the Northeast District, resident in Milford, Connecticut. In addition to his regular duties, he conducted a Junior Pineneedle Summer School, and gave a series of lectures at the General Church Educational Council meetings. He reports that the New York and Northern New Jersey congregations have merged services and classes.
The Rev. Kenneth O. Stroh continued as the Bryn Athyn Church Organist, and Director of music. He also served as Supervisor of Pastoral Visiting for the Society.
The Rev. Douglas M. Taylor continued to serve as Assistant Dean of the Bryn Athyn Church, and as Chairman of the General Church Sound Recording Committee. In addition he reports speaking to an Episcopalian Group about the New Church and has been interviewed about the Church twice on the radio.
The Rev. Arne J. Bau-Madsen served as Visiting Minister to the Wilmington, Delaware Group, and as Assistant to the Visiting Pastor of the Kempton, Pennsylvania Circle. He also served as Assistant to the Rev. B. David Holm helping in General Church work.
The Rev. William H. Clifford served as resident Minister of the Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada Circle and Visiting Minister to Western Canada and the Northwestern District of the United States.
The Rev. Stephen D. Cole completed his final year in the Theological School of the Academy of the New Church. He was inaugurated into the Priesthood on June 19, 1917. Since July he has been the Minister of the Ohio District, resident in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Rev. Jose L. de Figueiredo continued to serve as Minister to the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Society.
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The Rev. Brian W. Keith served as assistant to the Pastor of the Immanuel Church in Glenview, Illinois. He assisted in the Immanuel Church School. He traveled extensively in the Midwestern District and reports many services and classes.
The Rev. N. Bruce Rogers served as Assistant Professor of Religion, Latin and Hebrew, and as Head of the Foreign Language Department at the Academy of the New Church. He also served as Chairman of the General Church Translation Committee. He also headed the Bryn Athyn Church Sunday School.
The Rev. Patrick A. Rose continued to serve as Assistant to the Pastor of the Immanuel Church in Glenview, Illinois. He also taught in the Immanuel Church School. He served as Visiting Minister to the Circle in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota and also visited various other Circles and Groups in the Midwestern District.
The Rev. Jan H. Weiss was in secular work in Los Angeles, California. He reports that he led a weekend retreat on missionary work.
South African Mission
Added to the above priests are those of the General Church of the New Jerusalem Mission in South Africa. Since they do not report directly to the Bishop of the General Church, they are not included here. Their names and assignments appear in the September, 1977, issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE, pp. 468-469.
Respectfully submitted,
B. DAVID HOLM,
Secretary
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GOOD NEWS Editor 1977
NEW CHURCH LIFE
Office of Publication, Lancaster, Pa.
Published Monthly By
THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
BRYN ATHYN, PA.
Editor Rev. Morley D. Rich, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
Business Manager Mr. L. E. Gyllenhaal, Bryn Athyn, Pa.
All literary contributions should be sent to the Editor. Subscriptions, change of address, and business communications, should be sent to the Business Manager. Notifications of address changes should be received by the 15th of the month.
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The Shepherds were simple men of good will. They reflected and were part of the ignorance and blindness of their times. So when "the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, they were sore afraid."* A trembling fear, tinged even with horror, took hold of them. Some of this feeling was a primitively superstitious fear. But that was not all of it, as becomes clear when the literal sense is carefully examined. For there was another quality in this fear which is instructive and beneficial to men.
* Lu. 2:9
It can be noticed that the angel of the Lord did not merely appear in the sky, as is ordinarily pictured; but he "came upon them," and by this there is conveyed the distinct impression that they saw the light around them, and felt his presence in it as being in their very midst, almost a part of themselves. And the "glory of the Lord" did not appear merely as a powerful light distant in the heavens, but it "shone round about them," as an encompassing glow immediately surrounding and enfolding each of them.
Indeed, what they saw and felt inwardly was the sphere of God Himself coming close to earth in the form of His Divinely-chosen Human, the Infant of Bethlehem. And so, in addition to primitive superstition they felt powerfully a kind of holy fear which verged even upon horror.
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Concerning this kind of fear, the Lord in His second coming tells us, "Holy fear, which sometimes is accompanied by a sacred tremor of the interiors of the mind, and sometimes with a holy trembling of the body (horripilation), occurs when life enters from the Lord in place of one's own life. One's own life is to look from oneself to the Lard, but life from the Lord is to look to the Lord from the Lord, and yet as if from oneself. When man is in this latter state, he sees that he himself is not anything, but the Lord only."*
* AR 56
When life from the Lord enters into any human being in place of that life which he thinks is his own, then he really sees himself as nothing in comparison with the Lord. And he looks at himself from the Lord-that is, not in his own light, but in the light of the Lord's teachings in His word. Such a looking, such a sight, brings to him a most deep and powerful fear, even trembling as well as humiliation.
It is the kind of feeling which assaults a person when he perceives the high holiness, the shining purity and Divine Love behind and within some one truth from the Word. The contrast between this and his own self is so extreme as to fill him with terror for his very life. The evils of his heredity, the offences he has committed even if unwittingly and without conscious malice, the gross, dark pattern of his attitudes and habits-all these suddenly appear to him as in a glaring light; and when he sees them in contrast with the vision which has appeared to him through the Lord's Word, he trembles inwardly with a fearful humiliation, sometimes even physically in his nerves and heart. He would exclaim in the words of the Psalm, "I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of man and despised by the people."*
* Ps. 22:6
Though unaware of it, such was part of that fear which seized the shepherds. But the angel comforted them, saying "Fear not." And this expressed the truth that, though it is salutary for man's heart and good for his spirit to experience this holy fear, yet he need not abandon hope for himself, for it is exactly in such slate that the Lord his Savior is closest to him, waiting to be born and enter in to him. "For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord."*
* Lu. 2:10
Good tidings in truth. This is what the word "Gospels" means when used to name the books of the New Testament; for "gospel" is an old word meaning "good news." Yet this only limitedly describes the Divine and greatest message which has ever come to the world.
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The message of the Gospels is such that all the superlatives of every language in the world cannot fully express the profound and fundamental changes which the Lord effected by His birth, life in the world, and glorification-changes in His relationship with men, in His approach to them, and even spiritual mutations in the very inmost constitution of mankind-by which He created new opportunities for salvation, doing fundamental works which would affect and change human history for all time in the future, changes of which He tells us in His second coming. These changes are largely hidden from the blind eyes of men; limited as is every human mind, men cannot see these changes in the human race clearly, even after two thousand years. And even then they can be seen only obscurely through the revealed truths of the Lord's second coming.
"THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE" SCOTT PITCAIRN 1977
To the Editor:
I read with pleasure Stephen Cole's article entitled "The Nature and Origin of Language" (August 1977). However, I felt that he made an unjustified leap of logic in his final paragraph.
In the last section of the article, Mr. Cole reviews what the Writings have to say about the nature and origin of language: 1) that the language of the spiritual world has nothing in common with the languages of this world; 2) that the higher the state of the angels, the more universal is their speech; 3) that the Most Ancients used a language like that of spirits and angels, which functioned by means of internal respiration, but at the fall men came to use their vocal cords, and degenerated into the ability to say what they did not feel, to deceive; 4) and that the Hebrew language is similar in some respects to the speech of spirits and angels (which seems, as Mr. Cole points out, to contradict teaching number one above).
After reviewing these teachings Mr. Cole concludes by saying that a belief in a universal language "implies a system of values in language. . . . Grammar and vocabulary can have an intrinsic rightness or wrongness in that they can more closely or more distantly image the universal language" (p. 400). Here is where, I believe, Mr. Cole is making an unjustified conclusion. While it seems clear that the language of ideas precedes and causes the words we speak, it is also true, I think, that our minds use whatever appropriate "word-tools" are stored in our memory, in one of the patterns (grammar) we have learned.
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Is it not this idea/word dichotomy, as well as the difference between internal respiration and articulation, which the Writings refer to when they say that the universal language "does not, even in the smallest particular, make one with any natural language on the earth" (AR 29)?
Although Mr. Cole does not say that we can improve our spiritual state by strictly adhering to certain rules of grammar, his statement about the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of grammar and vocabulary could be inferred by many (including me) to mean that people can be judged spiritually, or at least morally, by the quantity of ain'ts or double negatives they use. Whether or not this inference is made, the original statement, I believe, is also faulty.
What does constitute correct grammar? One could reply that the standard is correct. But what is standard? Standard English-if there really is such a thing-is established by cultural and historical changes. Chaucer's late Middle English dialect became standard because it was the dialect of London, the cultural and economic center of England. But of course, the present preferred dialect of England is far different from Chaucer's. Moreover, "Standard" American English differs in many ways-most notably in pronunciation-from modern Standard British English. They all differ from each other and from the "non-standard" dialects because of the simple fact that languages change.
Language originally went through changes because of man's fall into evil. However, recent changes in languages are not caused directly by evil any more than sickness is. Nor do deviations from a standard dialect represent illogical thought. A double negative, for example, does not make a positive unless the current grammar says so. After all, Shakespeare used it quite often, as does the French language. The two meanings of the word cleave (to join together and to split apart) are part of our standard vocabulary but they seem illogical unless we realize that the external conventions of language are beyond the realm of logic.
What if we were to try to find the right grammar and vocabulary? Would we look into the past? If so, would we end our search with Middle English? With Old English? Or with Hebrew, which the Writings say is similar in certain respects to angelic language? I don't think switching over even to Hebrew would be of any spiritual advantage to us any more than reverting to the Jewish customs, the remnants of the worship of the Ancient Church.
The recent emergence of many forms of slang and jargon has caused problems in communication between various groups and generations.
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And, in a rapidly changing world, we should expect the language to reflect these changes. However, English, at least published, edited English, has changed far more slowly in the past few hundred years (e.g., King James to the present) than it did in the previous few hundred years, probably as a result of the increasing use of printing, and the more recent mass media.
In one respect, then, languages change in much the same way that clothing fashions or gestures of greeting do. We choose what is appropriate from what is available. The language of ideas finds its proper vessels, although the vessels go through constant changes. "Correctness" Or "incorrectness," then, is determined by the appropriateness of the forms chosen at a particular time, in a particular situation.
It is often possible to identify people as coming from a certain place or a certain level of society by the way they speak, as it is possible to do by the way they dress. However, this is nothing to feel smug or self-righteous about. All of us have an "accent" or dialect and can be identified by it. We all choose different levels of formality, according to the situation. And we all learn to speak like those we hear most often. But no matter how we speak, we are communicating ideas and affections of some kind. Let's focus first on these.
SCOTT PITCAIRN
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Church News Various 1977
ATLANTA, GA.
What has been going on in Atlanta since spring 1975? Extensive national news coverage has told you the story of Atlanta's economic growth, natural beauty, and current political impact. You may have concluded that Atlanta consists of giant hotels, fragrant magnolias, and southern fried cabinet members. That view overlooks one important fact: Atlanta is the home of a thriving New Church Circle.
At the district assembly in 1975, Bishop Pendleton announced the formation of a new district (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas) to be centered in Atlanta and served by a full time resident pastor, Tom Kline. Before the Klines could move south, other moving vans were at work changing the makeup of the Atlanta group significantly. The Collins and deMaine families moved away, as did the Woodworths (temporarily). Jane Posey married Chris Carter who had moved to Charlotte. The church members who remained were heartened to hear that the Jack Martins, Dave Archers, and Helen Scrimshaw were moving to Atlanta.
Old timers welcomed new comers at parties given by the Leepers and the Warleys. Talk turned to starting a New Church kindergarten when we counted eight pre-schoolers running around. The school got underway that fall in the Martins home with Nina Kline as head teacher assisted by Raquel Martin. Tom Kline taught an after school religion class to the three older children, and also held adult doctrinal classes twice a month in the evening. We continued our weekly church and Sunday School, using taped services for the Sundays when the pastor was out visiting the district. Mrs. Scrimshaw served as accompanist.
That Thanksgiving, Nina and Tom Kline invited the congregation to their home for Thanksgiving dinner after the special festival service. Shortly after Thanksgiving, Stephanie Latta and Dick Kunz traveled to Cincinnati to be married. Then it was Christmas time. Connie and Bunny Bostock hosted a dinner party for the adults, and on Christmas Eve we attended a candlelight family service. This was followed by an open house at Tom and Judy Leeper's house, where presents from the church were given out to all the children.
Early in 1976 we had some good news the Woodworths were moving back early. Mrs. Willard Pendleton came to take care of her Woodworth grandchildren for a while and gave the group an excuse for some happy teas and luncheons. While here, she found out Mrs. Scrimshaw's 83rd birthday was approaching so on Sunday she invited everyone out to dinner to celebrate the occasion. Nina Kline, also in on the plan, brought a cake and candles and got everyone to sing Happy Birthday.
The next happy event of 1976 was the birth of Becky Kline. Linda Carr and Bunny Bostock hostessed a luncheon to toast her arrival.
Our Easter that year included a devotional night at the Klines on Good Friday to look at slides, listen to music and read scripture. We also had a traditional Easter Sunday service for which the children brought flowers. Then everyone converged on Leepers for a lively egg hunt and Easter dinner.
That spring, a loosely organized extension committee was formed, consisting of Tom Kline, Karen and Don Rogers, and Jean and Hester Daly. The church group agreed to underwrite part of the cost of a newspaper advertisement for Heaven and Hell.
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The General Church supplied the books and paid the remaining cost of the advertisement. Thirty-three copies were sold although one lady later returned the book and asked for a refund, saying it was not a Christian book. Nevertheless, encouraged by the results, the committee began to place books in bookstores.
To celebrate the 19th of June, the Martins invited the congregation to a picnic at their house after church, and for the 4th of July the Leepers again hosted an afternoon picnic. This time the children made patriotic hats and wore red and white vests for a short parade, forced inside by the rain. The summer of 1976 saw the return of Chris and Jane Carter, and the arrival of Shelly Cooper, Darcy Bostock, and Bob and Mary Jane Stitt.
When summer ended, the school was resumed on the same once a week basis as the previous year. The schedule for church and doctrinal class remained unchanged, but we made the official move to change from a group to a circle by unanimous vote at our September business meeting. Also at that meeting, a committee was formed to explore the possibility of acquiring a building to house church and school. The committee, consisting of Mr. Kline, the Warleys, the Leepers, Kerry Woodworth, and Chris Carter, drew up a proposal to submit to the General Church Building Committee. Outlining our past history, predicting future needs, and discussing economic potentials of the southeast, we requested Atlanta be considered for a building loan.
In answer to an ad in the Bryn Athyn Post, Edith Van Zyverden accepted a job with the Tom Leeper family and moved to Atlanta. She became church accompanist, allowing Mrs. Scrimshaw to switch to teaching singing in the kindergarten. The school was moved to Robert Leepers basement and a first grade begun with Kerry Woodworth as teacher. The final event of Fall was Thanksgiving, again celebrated with a special service at church and a bring-a-dish dinner at Klines.
Christmas was full of special events beginning with a dinner at Bostocks for which Bunny outdid herself with decorations and food. Several nights later we gathered at Martins to sing Christmas carols, listen to the kindergarteners sing "Why do Bells for Christmas Ring?" under the direction of Mrs. Scrimshaw, and watch the older children perform tableaus of the Christmas story. Following this serious part of the program, the Martins and visiting Harold Sellners gave a double party for children and adults. On Christmas eve we had a candlelight service, after which the children were given handmade gifts and everyone went over to Leepers for punch and cookies.
1977's first arrival was Steven Rose. He and Edie Van Zyverden became engaged and were married in a private ceremony at Kline's house. That evening the whole circle gave them a reception at the Warleys. A four-tiered wedding cake made by Nina Kline and lots of flowers and presents made our first local wedding in five years a festive occasion. The new groom had already become an active member of the circle as the new accompanist and a volunteer Sunday School teacher.
Our traditional Easter weekend included a devotional evening Good Friday at the Klines, church with a children's procession of flowers, and a party afterward at Leepers. The popularity of the book Life After Life, by Raymond Moody encouraged us to put another advertisement for Heaven and Hell in the newspaper. It appeared Palm Sunday and sold 95 copies. Book store placements were continuing with 4 stores involved and 25 copies sold. The director of the General Church Extension Committee, David Holm, visited our circle at the end of April to discuss extension work with us during a well attended Saturday evening meeting, and to preach the next morning.
May and June were baby months, bringing baby daughters to the Warleys and Klines. The circle welcomed the little girls with two showers: one for Anne Warley at Rachel Martin's house and one for Christy Kline at Stephanie Kunz's house. Mrs. Henry Dunlap, grandmother of both babies, commuted to Atlanta during that period.
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On one of her visits she was guest at our lovely 19th of June banquet at Martin's house.
Raquel and Jack converted their home into a banquet hall for the 19th A long table for the twenty adults was beautifully set in their living room. Hanging throughout both rooms were banners made by the school children. After dinner we saw slides of the book of Revelation and then the children went outside to play while the adults heard talks by Robert Leeper, Randy Warley, and Don Rogers.
For the 4th of July, Tom and Judy Leeper repeated what has by now become their traditional swimming party and bring-a-dish picnic.
Summer in Atlanta is a time for saying "Hello" and "Goodbye." We had to say goodbye to Linda and Roger Carr, after nine years, when they moved to Kentucky, but we welcomed Scott Smith and Gary Elder. Kim York was a temporary member of our circle while she worked for the Leepers this summer. She has promised to return for a visit this spring when she plans to bring other A.N.C. College students with her.
One thing which Kim was a part of while here was a women's reading group. Started by Karen Rogers and Nina Kline, the group first read and discussed Growth of the Mind by George deCharms.
Summer has ended and our assembly is past, so the regular New Church life of the circle is resuming; our weekly church services and Sunday School, our doctrinal classes and once a week church school are all under way. There is a place for you! Come down and find out what it is!
Southeastern District Assembly
A very successful Southeastern District Assembly, held September 16-18, has left the 99 people who participated in it with warm hearts, happy memories and a firm determination to help the church grow.
At two open houses, the Atlanta Circle, host of the Assembly, welcomed the many visitors who arrived Friday. There was one part at the Daly's house for adults and another at Warley's house for Young people, At bath, visitors and Atlantans renewed old friendships and anticipated the arrival of the many people still on the road.
On Saturday morning, everyone gathered at the building Atlanta uses for church. Young and old alike attended the worship service led by Bishop King. Then we broke up into age groups for classes. Bishop King gave a class on the Proprium to the adults and older teenagers. The older school age children (17 of them) met with Terry Warley to begin work on a book of projects about Moses. The seven younger children went to another room where Stephen Rose guided them in making books about the Lord. Both project books used in the Sunday Schools were specially designed for the Assembly by Stephen Rose and Nina Kline. While all these classes were going on, Raquel Martin cared for the six babies in a nursery.
At midmorning all groups took a break and gathered in the back of the main room for refreshments provided by Jane Carter, with help from Judy Davis and Susan. Then it was back to Sunday School for the children so the adults could have a question and answer session.
When the session was over, it was time for everyone to drive to Leepers' for a swimming party and picnic. Mary Archer, Edith Rose, and Raquel Martin helped Judy Leeper put on a delicious meal. Most of the children spent the entire afternoon in the pool, but most of the adults passed up swimming for a chance to talk to people they seldom see.
Ten upper elementary school students had volunteered to serve the banquet. They met early at the Mercer University Student Center with Edith Rose to set the tables. Randy Warley had made the arrangements with Mercer and the caterers, Jack Martin procured the "wine," and Bunny Bostock did the lovely red and white centerpieces.
The appearance of the banquet hall put us all in a good mood, which was heightened by seeing the polite and charming way in which the young teenagers served the banquet.
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The speeches on the Divine Providence were particularly moving and left many with tears in their eyes. Rev. Bill Burke, from Americus, Ga., spoke of the way in which Divine Providence had guided him in his search for truth, Cheryl Collins, from Charlotte, talked about how to accept Divine Providence with humility and joy, and Dr. Aubrey Allen, from Alexander City, Al., took the 23rd Psalm as a basis for discussing the doctrine of Divine Providence. Bishop King summed up the evening.
Church the next morning was the most heavily attended event of the assembly, with 91 children and people present. After a children's talk by Mr. Kline, the children left to finish up their Sunday School projects. This time the older group was taught by Kerry Woodworth, the younger by Mary Archer, and the nursery run by Nina Kline. Bishop King preached on the signs given to the Christian Church, explaining the meaning of preaching in tongues, handling serpents, and taking in poisons.
After the sermon Bishop King, assisted by Mr. Kline, administered the Holy Supper. Then the children rejoined the group for the baptism of the Kline's baby daughter, Christina Sarah. Afterwards the whole Assembly was invited to a luncheon at the Kline's home, where Nina, and her helpers, Dorothy Wade, Sarah Wheeler, Mary Archer, and Edith Rose, had a delicious meal waiting.
Thanks are certainly due to all the Atlanta people who worked so hard to make the Assembly a success, but thanks are also due to the many district families who made long trips and gave up weekend activities to come. Without you we wouldn't have had an Assembly: Burkes, Doreans, Shepards, Wades, Allens, Collins, Archers, Smiths, Newbergers, Geses, (and Mr. Taylor, who came for the Assembly but couldn't attend because of an emergency hospital stay). We also thank the Bryn Athyn people who came: the Boyd Asplundhs and Vernus Davis. And most of all we thank our hard working pastor and Bishop King for an inspiring weekend.
TERRY WARLEY
KEMPTON, PA.
It has been a busy time for the Kempton Circle. Just to be recognized as a circle was quite a milestone for us. We had a summer camp and dedication of our chapel too.
On May 22, 1977 the long-awaited dedication took place. This was joyously celebrated by our circle with over 100 adults and children sharing in the occasion. Bishop Louis King with the Rev. Martin Pryke and the Rev. Arne Bau Madsen, gave an inspiring dedication service. The highlight of the service was the placement of a large leather bound edition of the Word on the altar. This special, edition includes a portion from the Writings. Afterwards the group joined in toasts followed by a lunch.
Much planning was needed to convert the space from the upper part of a barn into a simple chapel. Rough cut lumber was used for the walls, leaving much of the original barn structure and stone walls exposed. At the center of the raised chancel is the altar, a hand worked shelf of oak. The carpeting, chairs and a hand-crafted, oak lectern further enhance the warmth of the wood and stone. The organ is set beneath the balcony and adds a great deal to the enjoyment of our services. When completed the chapel and balcony will seat about 75 people.
A first church summer camp for the families in and around Kempton turned out to be a wonderful success. A nearby campground was chosen for the five days of camp. There were many recreational facilities available as well as a country setting in which to relax and enjoy the unique advantages of church companionship.
Classes were offered to all ages with the Rev. Martin Pryke and the Rev. Arne Bau-Madsen giving a series to the two older groups of children. Mothers and friends offered a varied program for the younger children including worship stories, art projects, music appreciation, songs and Hebrew lettering. Afternoon class for the adults was led by Mr. Pryke on the subject of prayer. Mr. Bau Madsen held the evening class on a study of the five churches, all leading to lively discussion and many thoughts for reflection.
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In spite of the damp weather, young and old joined in everything from dishes to volleyball, even a talent show. The time ended all too quickly with a Sunday service in our chapel and inspirational thoughts to take home.
ANDRI S. MUTH
TORONTO, ONT.
As I report the doings of the Olivet Society we have just concluded our annual society meeting.
Our Pastor, Rev. Geoffrey Childs gave a report in optimistic vein, drawing particular attention to the needs of our very considerable group of young people. He said that negotiations are in hand to obtain a replacement for Miss Sylvia Parker in our school next year. No one, of course, will be able to replace "Miss Sylvia" in our affections. She was born and brought up in the Olivet Society and, for the last twenty-one years, has given our primary grade children an education second to none. She has set many little brains on the path to an excellent school career. We are very loath to lose Sylvia but do appreciate the exciting challenge she will face in pioneering a New Church school in Detroit.
Our school will face another change also next year when we lose Miss Kathi Smith whose engagement to our own Roj. Miller was announced recently. "Miss Kathi" has endeared herself, in the year she has spent in our school, not only to the children of her class but to the whole society.
Our Long Range Planning Committee gave a comprehensive report to the annual meeting showing much thought and careful consideration of the possibilities for the future of the Olivet Society.
Community societies are eminently suited to "growth from within" with their less expensive housing and their closeness of homes to church and school. City societies, on the other hand, are more advantageously placed for the attraction of new members from outside the church. It is, therefore, the thinking of the Long Range Planning Committee that more efforts should be made in the missionary field.
Following this thinking, the Executive Committee has, this year, budgeted $1,000 for the use of the Epsilon Society. The Epsilon Society has been very active under the direction of Rev. Ottar Larsen. Advertisements have appeared in local papers which have led to requests for literature, these contacts are followed up by correspondence. A program of placements in book stores is also getting under way.
Another facet of endeavor to promote the growth of our Society is the newly formed H.A.C.-this is more formally titled Housing Assistance Committee. This committee is in the nature of an investment group which will make mortgage loans available at low interest rates to those families who wish to locate near the Olivet Church. If you are thinking of taking advantage of this opportunity contact Keith Morley or Frank Raymond.
Altogether we came from our annual meeting with a feeling of enthusiasm and optimism for the growth of the church in our area.
We have had all our usual society activities during the past months with some less usual ones. An innovation for the Olivet Society was a Canada Day picnic on the church grounds. It was a great success. We had a flag raising with the singing of "O Canada"; the children paraded in costume with decorated bicycles and many racing events were held. Mr. and Mrs. John Raymond conceived and carried cut the party and are to be heartily thanked.
Another innovation, organized by the social committee, was a series of weekly family picnics throughout the summer. These were held in various locations. Unfortunately the weather this past summer was less than jolly picnic weather and therefore the attendance was not what it might have been.
In April we were saddened by the loss of our friend, Mrs. Norman Carter who entered the Spiritual World on April 7th but are happy to remember that her old age will be turned to youth again and she will be able to live her life of use once more.
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We have had three weddings in the society and two of our young men and one young woman were married in other places. Julie Bond was married, on June 4th to Leo McDonald. On June 11th Heather McDonald became the bride of Christopher Sinardo and on September 17th Jill Frazee and Michael Hasen plighted their troth. In more distant places were married: on April 30th, in Edmonton, Alberta, Glen Raymond and Angle Meisenbacker, on August 20th in Calgary, Alberta, Michael Smith and Pamela Sakalofsky and on August 27th in Muskoka, Ontario, Karen Jean-Marie and Dwight Brown. Our heartfelt good wishes are with all these young people.
We now look forward to our winter activities which include the hosting of the annual meeting of The General Church in Canada and, for the first time, a visit from the A.N.C. College. We do look forward to entertaining our friends from the college and hope that attendance will be 100%.
GWEN CRAIGIE
ORDINATION Editor 1977
Announcements
Rose.-At Glenview, Ill., Sept. 25, 1977, the Rev. Patrick Alan Rose into the second degree of the priesthood, the Rt. Rev. Louis B. King officiating.
BLESSING OF A MARRIAGE Editor 1977
Schiffer-Schiffer.-At Bryn Athyn, Pa., Sept. 25, 1977, Mr. and Mrs. Charles William Schiffer (Cynthia Irene Marquis), the Rev. B. David Holm officiating.
Title Unspecified Editor 1977
APPLICATIONS FOR ADMISSION TO THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH COLLEGE
All Students:
Requests for application forms for admission to The Academy College for the 1978-79 school year should be made before January 15, 1978. Letters should be addressed to Dean Robert W. Gladish, The Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009, and should include the student's full name and address, the name and address of the school he or she is now attending, and whether the student will be a day or dormitory student. Please see the Academy catalog for information about dormitory requirements.
Completed application forms and accompanying material should be received by Dean Gladish's office by March 15, 1978.
BOYS SCHOOL AND GIRLS SCHOOL
New Students:
Requests for application forms for admission to the Academy Secondary Schools should be made for new students before January 15, 1978. Letters should be addressed to Miss Morna Hyatt, Principal of the Girls School, or Mr. Donald Fitzpatrick, Principal of the Boys School, at The Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania 19009. Letters should include the student's name, parents' address, the class the student will be entering, the name and address of the school he or she is now attending, and whether the student will be day or dormitory. Please see the Academy catalog for dormitory requirements.
Completed application forms and accompanying material must be received by the Academy by March 15, 1978.
Old Students:
Parents of students attending the Girls School or Boys School during the 1977-78 school year and residing in the dormitory or wishing financial assistance for the 1978-79 school year should apply before March 15, 1978. Letters should be addressed to the Principal of the school the student is now attending.