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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.

Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

True Christian Religion #621

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621. 1 At this point I shall insert some accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.

I saw a gathering of spirits all on their knees praying God to send them angels, with whom they could talk face to face, and open to them the thoughts of their hearts. When they got up, three angels dressed in fine linen were to be seen standing before them. 'The Lord Jesus Christ,' they said, 'has heard your prayers and has therefore sent us to you. Open to us the thoughts of your hearts.'

[2] 'Our priests have told us,' they answered, 'that in theological matters it is not the understanding but faith which is effective; and that faith based on the understanding is no help in such matters, because it derives from and smacks of man, not of God. We are English, and we have heard a lot from our ministers of religion, which we believed. But when we talked with others, who also called themselves Reformed, and with others who called themselves Roman Catholics, and even with members of sects, they all appeared to be learned, yet on many subjects there was not one who agreed with another. All the same, they all said, "Believe us," and some said, "We are God's ministers, and we know." But we know that the Divine truths, which are called the truths of faith and are possessed by the church, do not come to anyone from his native soil or by heredity, but from God out of heaven; and they show the way to heaven, entering a person's life together with the good of charity, and so leading to everlasting life. So we became worried, and prayed on our knees to God.'

[3] 'Read the Word,' the angels said to this, 'and believe in the Lord, and you will see truths which will be your guides to faith and life. All Christian people draw their doctrines from the Word as being their one and only source.' But two of the gathering said, 'We have read it, but not understood it.'

'You did not approach the Lord,' replied the angels, 'and He is the Word. Also you had first convinced yourselves of falsities.' The angels went on: 'What is faith without light, and what is thinking without understanding? This is not how human beings act. Ravens and jays can learn to talk without understanding too. We can assure you that every person whose soul so desires can see the truths of the Word in light. There does not exist an animal which does not know the food it needs to live on, when it sees it. Man is a rational and spiritual animal, so he knows the food not so much his body as his soul needs to live on. That is the truth of faith, provided he is hungry for it and begs the Lord for it.

[4] 'Moreover, anything that the understanding does not take in is not retained by the memory as a fact, but merely as words. So when we looked down on the world from heaven, we could see nothing, but only heard sounds, which were for the most part discordant. But we shall mention some things which the learned among the clergy have banished from the understanding, being unaware that there are two routes to the understanding, one from the world and the other from heaven. The Lord withdraws the understanding from the world, as He enlightens it. But if religion dictates that the understanding is to be shut off, the route to it from heaven is shut off, and then one sees no more in the Word than a blind man. We have seen many such people fall into pits, and be unable to get out of them again.

[5] 'Let us give some examples to illustrate this. Surely you can understand what charity and faith are - that charity is doing good to the neighbour, and faith is having a correct idea of God and the essential doctrines of the church? And as a result, that a person who does good and has a correct idea, that is to say, who lives a good life and has a correct belief, is saved?' They said that they understood this.

[6] The angels went on to say that for a person to be saved he must repent of his sins, and unless he does so, he remains in the sins to which he was born. Repentance consists in not willing evils because they are sins against God; and once or twice a year examining oneself, seeing one's evils and confessing them to the Lord, asking for help, desisting from those evils and starting a new life. So far as a person does this and believes in the Lord, so far are his sins forgiven. 'We understand this,' said some of the gathering, 'and so we know what the forgiveness of sins is.'

[7] Then they asked the angels to tell them more, and this time about God, the immortality of the soul, regeneration and baptism.

'We shall not say anything,' the angels replied, 'which you cannot understand. If we did, our words would be like rain falling on a desert and the seeds it holds, which, despite being watered from heaven, still wither away and die.'

On the subject of God they said: 'All who come to heaven are allotted their place, and thus have everlasting joy, depending upon the idea they have of God, because it is this idea which is universally dominant in every detail of worship. To think of God as a spirit, if a spirit is believed to be like the ether or the wind, is meaningless. But to think of God as Man is a correct notion, because God is Divine love and Divine wisdom, with all their attributes; and that of which love and wisdom can be predicated is man, not ether or wind. In heaven they think of God as the Lord the Saviour; as He taught us, He is the God of heaven and earth. Make your idea of God like ours, and we shall welcome you into our company.' When they said this, the faces of the others lit up.

[8] On the immortality of the soul they said: 'Man lives for ever, because by means of love and faith he can be linked with God. Every single person has this capacity. And if you think a little more deeply about it, you can understand that this capacity constitutes the immortality of the soul.'

[9] On regeneration: 'Anyone can see that any person is free to think about God or not to think about Him, so long as he has been taught that there is a God. So anyone has just as much freedom in spiritual as in social or natural matters. The Lord continually grants this to all; so a person is to blame, if he fails to think about God. It is this capacity which makes man a man, and its absence makes an animal an animal. Man can therefore reform and regenerate himself as if of himself, so long as he acknowledges in his heart that this comes from the Lord. Everyone who repents and believes in the Lord is reformed and regenerated. A person should do both as if of himself, but this as if of himself comes from the Lord. It is true that a person cannot from himself contribute anything, not in the slightest, to that process. Yet you have not been created statues; you were created human beings, so that you could do it from the Lord as if of yourselves. It is this and this alone which is the reciprocal offering of love and faith, which the Lord expressly wills should be made to Him by man. In short, act from yourselves and believe that it is from the Lord; that is how to act as if of yourselves.'

[10] Then they asked whether acting as if of oneself was implanted in man from creation. The angel replied: 'It is not implanted, because acting from himself is an attribute only of God. But it is continually given, that is to say, it is continually being applied; and then so far as a person does good and believes truth as if of himself, he is an angel of heaven. But so far as he does evil and thus believes falsity, and this too is as if of himself, so far is he a spirit of hell. You may be surprised that this too is as if of oneself, but still you can see this, when you pray to be protected from the devil seducing you, from him entering into you as he did into Judas, from filling you with every wickedness and destroying you both soul and body. But everyone becomes responsible, if he believes he is acting of himself, whether it is good or evil that he does. But he does not incur guilt, if he believes he is acting as if of himself. For if he believes that he does good of himself, he is claiming for himself what belongs to God; and if he believes that he does evil of himself, he is attributing to himself what belongs to the devil.'

[11] On baptism they said that it was a spiritual washing, and this is reformation and regeneration. 'A child is reformed and regenerated when on growing up he does what his godparents pledged on his behalf, the two promises of repentance and faith in God. For they first pledge that he will renounce the devil and all his works, and secondly, that he will believe in God. All children in heaven are taught those two promises, but for them the devil is hell and God is the Lord. Moreover, baptism is a sign visible to the angels that a person belongs to the church.' When they heard this, some in the gathering said: 'We understand this.'

[12] But at this point a voice was heard from one side shouting: 'We do not understand;' and another: 'We do not want to understand.' They made enquiry to discover whose voices these were, and discovered that they came from those who had convinced themselves of false beliefs, and wanted to be believed like oracles, so receiving worship.

'Do not be surprised,' said the angels, 'there are many like this at the present time. To us seeing them from heaven they look like carved images so cunningly made that they can move their lips and make noises, like musical instruments. But they are quite unaware whether the breath that makes them sound blows from hell or from heaven, because they do not know whether a thing is false or true. They keep on reasoning and producing proofs, yet cannot see whether anything is so or not. But you should know that the human brain can prove anything it wants, so that it really appears to be so. So this is something heretics or irreligious people can do; in fact atheists can prove that God does not exist, only nature.'

[13] After this the gathering of Englishmen was fired with a desire for wisdom and said to the angels: 'Such varying ideas are expressed regarding the Holy Supper, tell us what is the truth.'

'The truth is,' the angels answered, 'that a person who looks to the Lord and repents is by that most holy act linked to the Lord and brought into heaven.'

But people in the gathering said: 'This is a mystery.' 'It is a mystery,' the angels replied, 'but one that can be understood. The bread and wine do not bring this about; there is nothing holy about them. But material bread and spiritual bread correspond to each other, and so do material wine and spiritual wine. Spiritual bread is the holiness of love, spiritual wine the holiness of faith. Both of these are from the Lord, and both are the Lord. Thus there is a linking of the Lord with man, and of man with the Lord. It is not with the bread and wine, but with the love and faith of the man who has repented. Being linked with the Lord is also being brought into heaven.'

Now that the angels had taught them something about correspondence, some in the gathering said: 'Now for the first time we can understand this.' As soon as they said this, a flaming radiance came down from heaven and joined them to the angels' company, and they loved one another.

Voetnoten:

1. This section is repeated with modifications from Apocalypse Revealed 224.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

True Christian Religion #460

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460. The second experience 1 .

Once when I was looking around the spiritual world I heard a noise like the grinding of teeth, and also a throbbing sound, and mixed with them hoarse cries. I asked what this was. 'There are colleges,' said the angels with me, 'which we call places of entertainment, where they hold disputations. Their debates sound like this if heard from a distance, but from close by they are heard only as disputations.'

On approaching I saw some huts made of plaited reeds stuck together with mud. I wanted to see in through a window, but there was none. I was not allowed to go in through the door, because if I did light would flood in from heaven and cause confusion. Then suddenly a window was made on the right, and then I heard complaints that they were in darkness; but a little later a window was made on the left and that on the right was shut, and then little by little the darkness was dispelled, and they could see one another by their own sort of light. After this I was permitted to go in by the door and listen.

There was a table in the middle with benches round it; but it seemed to me that they were all standing on the benches disputing hotly about faith and charity. One party claimed that faith was the essential of the church, the other that charity was. Those who made faith the essential said: 'Surely faith guides our dealings with God and charity our dealings with men. Is not faith then heavenly and charity earthly? Surely it is by heavenly things, not earthly ones, that we are saved. Again, surely God can from heaven give us faith, because it is heavenly, while a person can give himself charity, because it is earthly; and what a person gives himself has nothing to do with the church and therefore does not save. Surely like this no one can be justified in the sight of God by so-called charitable deeds. Believe us, it is by faith alone that we are not only justified, but also sanctified, provided that faith is not polluted by the presence of merit-seeking deeds among the charitable ones.' They added many more arguments.

[2] But those who made charity the essential of the church hotly contested these arguments, claiming that it is charity, not faith, which saves. 'Surely God holds all men dear and wishes good to all? How can God do this except by means of men? Surely God does not grant only the ability to talk with men about matters that concern faith, without enabling men to do charitable acts? Do you not see how absurd it is of you to talk of charity being earthly? Charity is heavenly, and because you do not do charitable good, your faith is earthly. How do you receive your faith, except like a block of wood or a stone? "By listening to the Word" you will say. But how can the Word act on someone if he merely listens to it? How can it act upon a block of wood or a stone? Perhaps you are quickened without any awareness of it; but what sort of quickening is it, apart from your ability to say that faith alone justifies and saves. But you do not know what faith is, or what sort of faith is saving faith.'

[3] Then someone got up whom the angel talking with me called a syncretist. He took off his wig and put it on the table, but immediately put it back on his head, because he was bald. 'Listen,' he said, 'you are all wrong. The truth is that faith is spiritual and charity is moral, but they are none the less linked. The link is effected by means of the Word, as well as by the Holy Spirit, and by the result produced, which can indeed be called obedience, though man has no part in it; because when faith is introduced, a person knows no more about it than a statue. I have pondered the subject for a long time, and finally reached the solution, that a person can receive from God faith which is spiritual, but he cannot be moved by God to charity which is spiritual, any more than a block of wood can.'

[4] This speech was greeted by applause from those who championed faith alone, but with disapproval from those who championed charity. They said indignantly: 'Listen, friend, you are unaware that there is moral life which is spiritual, and moral life which is purely natural. Spiritual moral life is found in those who do good coming from God, but still as if of their own accord, purely natural moral life in those who do good coming from hell, and yet still as if of their own accord.'

[5] I said that the dispute sounded like the grinding of teeth, and a throbbing sound, with hoarse cries mixed with them. The dispute which sounded like the grinding of teeth came from those who made faith the sole essential of the church, and the throbbing came from those who made charity the sole essential of the church, the hoarse cries mixed with them came from the syncretist. The reason why they sounded like this at a distance was that they had all in the world engaged in disputes, and had not shunned any evil; consequently they had not done any good of spiritual lineage. They were also totally ignorant of the fact that the whole of faith is truth and the whole of charity is good, and that truth without good is not truth in spirit, and good without truth is not good in spirit, so that one makes the other.

Voetnoten:

1. This passage is repeated from Apocalypse Revealed 386.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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