新キリスト教聖書研究

解説

 

Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

スウェーデンボルグの著作から

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church＃115

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115. The second memorable occurrence. Once an angel said to me, “Do you want to see clearly what faith and goodwill are, and therefore what faith separated from goodwill is, and what faith united to goodwill is? I will express it in visual terms for you.”

“Please do!” I answered.

The angel said, “Instead of faith and goodwill, think of light and heat, and you will see them clearly. Faith in its essence is truth that relates to wisdom. Goodwill in its essence is affection that relates to love. In heaven, truth related to wisdom is light and affection related to love is heat. The light and heat that angels live in are, in essence, exactly this. As a result, you can clearly see what faith is when it is separated from goodwill and what it is when it is united to goodwill.

“When faith is separated from goodwill, it is like the light in winter. When faith is united to goodwill, it is like the light in spring. The light in winter, which is a light separated from heat, is united to coldness; therefore it completely strips trees of their leaves, kills grass, makes ground as hard as rock, and freezes water. Light in spring, which is a light united to heat, causes trees to grow, first producing leaves, then flowers, and finally fruit; it also unlocks and softens the ground so that it produces grass, plants, flowers, and shrubs; and it melts ice, so that water flows from its sources again.

“The situation with faith and goodwill is absolutely identical. Faith separated from goodwill kills everything. Faith united to goodwill brings everything to life. This killing and this bringing to life are vividly visible in this spiritual world of ours, because here faith is light and goodwill is heat. Where faith has been united to goodwill there is a paradise of gardens, flower beds, and lawns; the more united faith and goodwill are, the more pleasing the gardens are. Where faith has been separated from goodwill, there is not even grass; the only greenness comes from thorns and brambles.”

At that point there were some members of the clergy not far away. The angel called them “justifiers and sanctifiers of people through faith alone” and also “arcanists.” We said the same things to the members of the clergy and added enough proof that they could see that what we said was true. But when we asked them, “Isn’t that so?” they turned away and said, “We didn’t hear you.” So we cried out to them and said, “Then keep listening to us,” but they put both hands over their ears and shouted, “We don’t want to hear you!”

Closing Thought from Jeremiah 7:2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11

Stand in the gate of the house of Jehovah and proclaim this word there. “Thus says Jehovah Sabaoth, the God of Israel: ‘Make your ways and your deeds good. Do not put your trust in lying words, saying, “The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah are these.” Are you going to steal, kill, commit adultery, and swear falsely, and then come and stand before me in this house that bears my name and say “We are delivered” when you are doing all these abominations? Has this house become a den of thieves? Behold I, even I, have seen it,’ says Jehovah.”

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

スウェーデンボルグの著作から

 

Conjugial Love＃267

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267. The second account:

Some period of time later I entered a wooded area, where I walked engaged in thought concerning people who are caught up in a craving to possess those things which have to do with the world, and who fantasize on that account that they do. And I saw, then, two angels at some distance from me, talking together and now and then looking over at me. Consequently I drew nearer; and as I approached, they spoke to me, saying:

"We perceive in ourselves that you are thinking about the same thing we are discussing, or that we are discussing the same thing you are thinking about, which comes from a reciprocal communication of our affections."

I asked them, therefore, what they were discussing.

"Fantasy, lust, and intelligence," they said, "and at the moment, people who find delight in picturing and imagining that they possess everything in the world."

[2] At that I then asked them to express their thought with respect to the first three points - lust, fantasy and intelligence.

So, taking up the subject, they said that everyone is in a state of lust inwardly from birth, and in a state of intelligence outwardly from training; but that no one is in a state of intelligence inwardly, thus in spirit - still less in a state of wisdom - except from the Lord.

"For everyone," they said, "is withheld from the lust of evil and kept in a state of intelligence according as he looks to the Lord and is at the same time conjoined with Him. Apart from this a person is nothing but lust. Yet he is still in a state of intelligence in outward aspects, or as regards the body, from training. For though a person craves honors and riches, or prominence and wealth, these two are not attained unless he appears to be moral and spiritual in character, thus intelligent and wise; and he learns to appear such from the time he is a little child. That is why, as soon as he comes into the company of others or into gatherings of them, he turns his spirit about, withdraws it from lust, and speaks and acts in accordance with the becoming and honorable virtues he has learned from early childhood and still retains in his physical memory - doing his utmost to take care that nothing emerges of the insanity of lust which grips his spirit.

[3] "Consequently everyone not inwardly led by the Lord is a faker, a phony and a hypocrite, and so is human in appearance but not in reality. Of such a person it may be said that his outer shell or body is wise, while his kernel or spirit is insane; or that his outward aspect is human and his inward one animal. People like that direct the back of their heads upward and the front downward, thus going about as though afflicted with heaviness, their heads hanging down and their faces turned to the ground. When they put off the body and become spirits, and are then set free, they become reflections of the insanities of their lust. For people who are caught up in love of self have a longing to rule over the universe, even to extend its limits in order to widen their dominion, never seeing an end; while people who are caught up in a love of the world have a longing to possess all its riches, and they grieve and are envious if any of its treasures are kept hidden from them in the possession of others.

"To keep people like this from becoming nothing but reflections of their lusts, therefore, and so no longer human, it is given them in the natural 1 world to think in accord with fear for the loss of their reputation, and so the loss of honor and gain, together with fear of the law and its penalties; and also to apply their minds to some pursuit or work, by which they are held in external concerns and thus in a state of intelligence, however irrational and insane they are inwardly."

[4] Following this description I asked whether all people who are caught up in the lust are at the same time caught up in the fantasy of it.

They replied that those are caught up in the fantasy of their lust who think withdrawn into themselves and indulge their imagination excessively, talking to themselves; for they almost separate their spirit from its connection with the body, overwhelming their understanding with delusion and stupidly entertaining themselves with nonsense as though everything in the universe were theirs.

This madness is what a person comes into after death if he has withdrawn his spirit from the body and has been unwilling to relinquish the pleasure of his madness, thinking little from religion about evils and falsities, and least of all about unbridled love of self as being destructive of love toward the Lord, or about unbridled love of the world as being destructive of love for the neighbor.

脚注:

1. The original text reads, "in the spiritual world," but preceding and subsequent statements in the discussion, and the general doctrine delivered elsewhere concerning the nature of the two worlds, suggest that it is probably a slip of the pen for "the natural world." (The same statement is repeated in True Christian Religion, no. 662[3], without correction, but so are several other, more obvious errors, indicating that the latter was simply set in type again from the text here, without careful review.)

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

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