New Christian Bible Study

Commentary

 

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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #182

Study this Passage

  
/ 535  
  

182. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:

Several weeks later 1 I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Behold, another assembly is convening on Parnassium hill. Come, we will show you the way."

I went, and as I drew near, I saw on the hill Heliconeum someone with a trumpet, with which he announced and proclaimed the assembly. I also saw people from the city Athenaeum and its bordering regions ascending as before, and in the midst of them three newcomers from the world. The three were Christians, one a priest, the second a politician, and the third a philosopher. On the way the people entertained them with various kinds of conversation, especially concerning the ancient wise men, whom they mentioned by name. The visitors asked whether they would see these wise men. The people said that they would, and that if they wished, they would meet them, since they are friendly and cordial.

The visitors asked about Demosthenes, Diogenes and Epicurus.

"Demosthenes is not here," the people said, "but with Plato. 2 Diogenes stays with his disciples at the foot of the hill Heliconeum, because he regards worldly matters as of no importance and occupies his mind solely with heavenly ones. Epicurus lives at the border to the west, and he does not come in to join us either, because we draw a distinction between good affections and evil ones, saying that good affections accompany wisdom and that evil affections are opposed to wisdom."

[2] When they had ascended the hill Parnassium, some of the keepers of the place brought crystal goblets containing water from a spring there; and they said, "The water comes from a spring which the people of old told stories about, saying that it was broken open by the hoof of the horse Pegasus and afterwards became sacred to the nine Muses. 3 But by the winged horse Pegasus they meant an understanding of truth which leads to wisdom. By its hooves they meant empirical observations which lead to natural intelligence. And by the nine Muses they meant learning and knowledge of every kind. These stories today are called myths, but they were allegories which the earliest people used to express their ideas."

"Do not be surprised," the people accompanying the three visitors said to them. "The keepers have been told to speak as they did, to explain that what we mean by drinking water from the spring is to be taught about truths and through truths about goods, and thus to become wise."

[3] After this they entered the Palladium, and with them went the three newcomers from the world, the priest, the politician, and the philosopher. Then the people with the laurel wreaths who sat at the tables 4 asked, "What news do you have from earth?"

So the newcomers replied, "We have this news. There is someone who maintains that he speaks with angels, having had his sight opened into the spiritual world, as open as the sight he has into the natural world; and he reports from that world many novel ideas, which include, among other things, the following: A person lives, he says, as a person after death, the way he did before in the world. He sees, hears, and speaks as he did before in the world. He dresses and adorns himself as before in the world. He becomes hungry and thirsty, and eats and drinks, as before in the world. He experiences the delight of marriage as before in the world. He goes to sleep and wakes up as before in the world. The spiritual world has lands and lakes, mountains and hills, plains and valleys, springs and rivers, gardens and groves. One finds there palaces and houses, too, and cities and towns, just as in the natural world. They have written documents and books as well, and occupations and businesses, also precious stones, gold and silver. In a word, one finds in that world each and every thing that one finds on earth - things which are infinitely more perfect in heaven. The only difference is that everything in the spiritual world comes from a spiritual origin, and consequently is spiritual, because it originates from the sun there, which is pure love; while everything in the natural world comes from a natural origin, and consequently is natural and material, because it comes from the sun there, which is nothing but fire.

"This person reports, in short, that a person after death is perfectly human, indeed, more perfectly human than before in the world. For before in the world he was clothed in a material body, while here in this world he is clothed in a spiritual one."

[4] When the newcomers had thus spoken, the ancient wise men asked what people on earth thought of these reports.

The three visitors said, "We know that they are true, because we are here and have seen and investigated them all. We will tell you, therefore, what people said and judged concerning them on earth."

At that the priest then said, "When those who are members of our order first heard these reports, they called them hallucinations, then fabrications; later they said he saw ghosts; and finally they threw up their hands and said, believe if you will. We have always taught that a person will not be clothed in a body after death before the day of the Last Judgment."

The ancient wise men then asked, "Are there not any intelligent ones among them who can show them and convince them of the truth that a person lives as a person after death?"

[5] The priest said that there were some who showed it to them, but without convincing them. "The ones who show it say that it is contrary to sound reason to believe that a person does not live as a person until the day of the Last Judgment and meanwhile is a soul without a body.

"What is a person's soul, they ask, and where is it in the meantime? Is it an exhalation or a bit of wind flitting about in the air, or some entity hidden away at the center of the earth where its nether world is located? The souls of Adam and Eve, and of all the people after them, for six thousand years or sixty centuries now - are they still flitting about the universe or still being kept shut up in the bowels of the earth, waiting for the Last Judgment? What could be more distressing or more miserable than having to wait like that? May their fate not be likened to the fate of captives held chained and fettered in prison? If that is to be what a person's fate is like after death, would it not be better to be born a donkey than a human being?

"Moreover, is it not contrary to reason to suppose that a soul can be clothed again with its body? Does the body not get eaten away by worms, mice and fish? And this new body - can it serve to cover a bony skeleton that has been charred by the sun or has fallen into dust? How can these decomposed and foul-smelling elements be gathered together and joined to souls?

"But when people hear arguments like these, they do not use reason to respond to them, but hold to their belief, saying, 'We keep reason in obedience to faith.' As for all people being gathered together from their graves on the day of the Last Judgment, this, they say, is a work of omnipotence. And when they use the terms omnipotence and faith, reason is banished; and I can tell you that sound reason is as nothing then, and to some of them, a kind of hallucination. Indeed, it is possible for them to say in reply to sound reason, 'You are crazy.'"

[6] When the wise men of Greece heard this, they said, "Are logical inconsistencies like that not dispelled of themselves as mutually contradictory? And yet sound reason cannot dispel them in the world today. What can be more logically inconsistent than to believe what they say about the Last Judgment, that the universe will then come to an end and that at the same time the stars of heaven will fall down on to the earth, which is smaller than the stars; and that people's bodies, being then either cadavers, or embalmed corpses other people may have eaten, 5 or particles of dust, will come together with their souls?

"When we were in the world, we believed in the immortality of human souls on the basis of inductive arguments which reason supplied us, and we also determined places for the blessed, which we called the Elysian Fields. And we believed these souls to be human forms or likenesses, but ethereal since they were spiritual."

[7] After they said this, they turned to the second visitor, who in the world had been a politician. He confessed that he had not believed in a life after death, and had thought concerning the new reports he began to hear about it that they were fictions and fabrications. "Thinking about it I said, how can souls be corporeal beings? Does not every remnant of a person lie dead in the grave? Is the eye not there? How can he see? Is the ear not there? How can he hear? Where does he get a mouth with which to speak? If anything of a person should live after death, would it be anything other than something ghostlike? How can a ghost eat and drink? And how can it experience the delight of marriage? Where does it get its clothing, housing, food, and so on? Besides, being airy apparitions, ghosts only appear as though they exist, and yet do not.

"These and others like them are the thoughts I had in the world concerning the life of people after death. But now that I have seen it all and touched it all with my hands, I have been convinced by my very senses that I am as much a person as I was in the world, so much so that I have no other awareness than that I am living as I did then, with the difference that I now reason more sensibly. I have sometimes been ashamed of the thoughts I had before."

[8] The philosopher had a similar story to tell about himself, with the difference, however, that he had classed these new reports he heard regarding life after death with other opinions and conjectures he had gathered from ancient and modern sources.

The sages were dumbfounded at hearing this; and those who were of the Socratic school said they perceived from this news from earth that the inner faculties of human minds had become gradually closed, with faith in falsity now shining like truth in the world, and clever foolishness like wisdom. Since our times, they said, the light of wisdom has descended from the inner regions of the brain to the mouth beneath the nose, where it appears to view as a brilliance of the lips, and the speech of the mouth therefore as wisdom.

Listening to this, one of the novices there said, "Yes, and how stupid the minds of earth's inhabitants are today! If only we had here the disciples of Heraclitus who weep over everything and the disciples of Democritus who laugh at everything. What great weeping and laughing we would hear then!"

At the conclusion of this assembly, they gave the three newcomers from earth emblems of their district, which were copper plaques on which some hieroglyphic symbols were engraved. With these the visitors then departed.

Footnotes:

1. I.e., several weeks after the occurrence related in nos. 151[r]-154[r].

2. See no. 151[r]:1.

3. Cf., in Greek mythology, the spring Hippocrene on Mount Helicon, and perhaps also the spring Castalia on Mount Parnassus.

4. See no. 151[r]:2.

5. As late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the substances of embalmed corpses, particularly of Egyptian mummies, were used in the preparation of potions and powders prescribed and taken for a variety of supposed medicinal purposes. Cf. True Christian Religion 160[5]; also nos. 693[6], 770.

  
/ 535  
  

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #675

Study this Passage

  
/ 962  
  

675. To this I will append the following account:

I saw a piece of paper sent down by the Lord through heaven into a society of Englishmen - though that society was one of their smallest - in which there were also two bishops. The piece of paper contained an exhortation to acknowledge the Lord as God of heaven and earth, as He Himself taught (Matthew 28:18 1 ), and to turn away from a doctrine of faith that justifies apart from works of the law, because the doctrine is wrong.

Many of the people read the piece of paper and made copies of it, and they thought and spoke rationally about what it contained from an interior power to judge, so that they were enlightened by the Lord and received that enlightenment with a clarity of sight more innate in the English than in others.

After their acceptance of these ideas, however, they said to each other, "Let us ask the bishops."

And they asked the bishops, but the bishops contradicted the ideas and disapproved them. However, the bishops there were some of those who in the world had become callous with respect to the spiritual aspects of faith and charity, owing to a love of dominion over the sanctities of the church and a love of their eminence in consequence of them also in political affairs. After a brief consultation with each other, therefore, they sent the piece of paper back to the heaven from which it came.

When the bishops did this, most of the laity, after some murmuring, turned away from their earlier acceptance, and their light in spiritual matters, which before had shone, was suddenly extinguished.

Then, after they were warned a second time, but in vain, I saw that society sink down - though how deeply I did not see - so that it disappeared from the sight of angels, who worship the Lord only and reject faith alone.

[2] Several days later I saw as many as a hundred people ascend from the lower earth to which that small society had sunk. They came over to me, and a wise man among them said, "Listen to this amazing thing. When we sank down, the place looked to us at first like a lake, but a little while later like dry land, and afterward like a small city, in which we each had his own house, though a poor one.

"The next day we took counsel with each other as to what we should do. Many said we should go to the two bishops and gently blame them for sending the piece of paper back to the heaven from which it descended, on which account this has befallen us.

"They chose some representatives who went to the bishops," and the wise man speaking with me said he was one of them. "And then some of the wiser among us spoke to the bishops," he said, "as follows:

"'Hear us, you church fathers. We believed that more than others we had a church among us that deserved to be called foremost in the Christian world, and a religion that deserved to be called great. But we were given an enlightenment from heaven, and in that enlightenment a perception that there is no longer any church in the Christian world today, and no longer any religion.'

[3] "The bishops said, 'What are you saying? Does the church not exist where the Word is found? Where Christ the Savior is known? And where the sacraments are celebrated?'

"To this our spokesman replied, 'These things embody the church and they form the church, but they do not form it around a person but within a person.'

"Going on then he said, 'As regards the church: Can the church exist where people worship three gods? Can the church exist where its entire doctrine rests on a single saying of Paul misinterpreted, and so not on the Word? Can the church exist when people do not turn to the Savior of the world, and where they divide Him in two?

"'As for religion: Who can deny that religion consists in refraining from evil and doing good? Is there any religion where people are taught that faith alone saves, and not charity? Is there any religion where people are taught that charity emanating from people is nothing but moral and civic charity? Who does not see that in such charity there is no religion? Is there any deed or work in faith alone? And yet religion consists in doing.

"'In the entire world is there any nation having in it some religion that excludes anything saving from goods of charity, which are good works, even though everything connected with religion consists in goodness, and everything connected with the church consists in doctrine, which ought to teach truths, and through truths, goodness?

"'See, church fathers, what glory we would have if a church that does not now exist and if a religion that does not now exist should begin and arise with us.'

[4] "The bishops then replied, 'You speak too arrogantly. Faith in act, the faith that fully justifies and saves, is it not the church? And faith in state, the faith that emanates and perfects, is it not religion? Apprehend that, my children.'

"But then the wise Englishman said, 'Listen, you church fathers. A person who produces faith in act, does he not do so like a log? Does the church exist in a log that is, according to your notion, then brought to life? Is not faith in state but a continuation and extension of faith in act? And since, according to your notion, everything saving resides in faith, and nothing in the good of charity issuing from a person, where then is religion?'

"At that the bishops said, 'Friend, you speak as you do because you do not know the mysteries of justification by faith alone, and someone who does not know these does not know the path of salvation from within. Your path is an external and untutored way. Go that way if you wish, but provided you know that all good comes from God and none from man, and that in spiritual matters a person can therefore do nothing at all of himself.'

[5] "Annoyed at that, the Englishman speaking with them said, 'I know your mysteries of justification better than you, and I tell you plainly that I have seen in your interior mysteries nothing but phantoms. Does religion not involve acknowledging and loving God and shunning and hating the devil? Is God not good itself, and the devil evil itself? Who in the entire world, if he has any religion, does not know this? To acknowledge and love God - is that not to do good because it is of God and from God? And to shun and hate the devil - is that not to refrain from evil because it is of the devil and from the devil?

"'Your faith in act, which you say is faith that completely justifies and saves, or to say the same thing, your act of justification by faith alone - does it teach the doing of any good that is of God and from God? And does it teach the shunning of any evil that is of the devil and from the devil? Not in the least, because you have determined that there is no salvation in either.

"'Your faith in state, which you say is faith that emanates and perfects - unless it is the same as faith in act, how can that faith in state be perfected when you exclude from it any good issuing from a person as though originating from him, saying, "How can a person be saved by any good issuing from him, when salvation is by grace? And what is good issuing from a person but merit-seeking? And yet the merit of Christ is everything. Consequently to do good for the sake of salvation would be to attribute to self what is Christ's alone, and therefore it would be to try to justify and save oneself. Moreover, how can anyone do good when the Holy Spirit accomplishes everything without the least help of the person? What need then is there for any additional good on the person's part, when any good issuing from the person is in itself not good. And so on."

[6] "'Are these not your mysteries? But in my eyes they are nothing but sophistries and shams concocted in order to set aside good works that are works of charity so as to establish your faith alone. And because you do this, you view people in relation to those works, and in relation to everything spiritual in general having to do with the church and religion, as being like logs or inanimate statues, and not as human beings created in the image of God, to whom have been given, and are continually given, the faculties of understanding and willing, of believing and loving, and of speaking and acting, entirely as though of themselves, especially in spiritual matters, because they are what make a person human. If a person did not think and act in spiritual matters as though of himself, what then would faith be, what then would charity be, and what then would worship be - indeed, what then would the church and religion be?

"'You know that to do good to the neighbor out of love is charity. But you do not know what charity is, even though charity is the soul, life force and essence of faith. And because charity is all of that, what then is faith divorced from charity but lifeless? And a lifeless faith is nothing but a phantom. I call it a phantom, because the Apostle James calls faith without good works not only lifeless but also the faith of demons.' 2

[7] "When he heard his faith called lifeless, the faith of demons, and a phantom, then one of the two bishops became so enraged that he snatched the miter from his head and threw it onto the table, saying, 'I will not take it up again until I have taken vengeance on the enemies of the faith of our church.' And he shook his head, muttering to himself and saying, 'That James! That James!'

"His miter had on it a plaque, which had engraved on it, 'FAITH ALONE.'

"And suddenly then a monster rising up from the earth appeared, with seven heads, having feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion, altogether like the beast described in Revelation 13:1-2, an image of which was made and worshiped, verses 14, 15, in the same chapter.

"This phantom took the miter from the table, and widening the lower part, placed it on its seven heads. At that the earth opened under its feet and it sank into hell.

"Seeing this, the bishop cried out, 'A violation! A violation!'

"We then departed from them, and suddenly we saw a stairway before us, by which we ascended and returned above ground into the sight of heaven, where we were before."

This is the account the wise Englishman related to me.

Footnotes:

1. "And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.'"

2. James 2:14-26

  
/ 962  
  

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

©2024 New Christian Bible Study Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed from newchristianbiblestudy.org