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

 

True Christian Religion #72

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72. The second experience.

Once I heard an unusual murmuring at a distance, and in the spirit I followed the track of the sound until I came near. When I reached its source, I found a group of spirits arguing about imputation and predestination. They were Dutch and British, with a few from other countries among them, and at the end of each argument these shouted: 'Wonderful, wonderful!'

The subject under discussion was: 'Why does God not impute the merit and righteousness of His Son to every single person He has created and subsequently redeemed? Is He not omnipotent? Can He not, if He wishes, make Lucifer, the Dragon and all the goats into angels? Is He not omnipotent? Why does He allow the unrighteousness and impiety of the devil to triumph over the righteousness of His Son and the piety of those who worship God? What is easier for God than to judge all worthy of faith and so of salvation? What does it take but one little word? And if not, is He not acting contrary to His own words, that He desires salvation for all and death for none? Tell us then whence it is that those who perish are damned, and what is the reason for it.'

Then a certain believer in predestination, a supralapsarian 1 from Holland, said: 'Surely this is at the pleasure of the Almighty. Shall the clay blame the potter, because he made a chamber-pot of it?' Another said: 'The salvation of every man is in His hand, like the scales in the hands of someone weighing.'

[2] At the sides of the group there stood a number of people of simple faith and upright heart, some with reddened eyes, some as if drugged, some as if drunk, and some as if choked, muttering to one another: 'What have we to do with this nonsense? They have been driven crazy by their faith, which is that God the Father imputes the righteousness of His Son to whomsoever He wishes, when He wishes, and sends the Holy Spirit to effect the rewards of that righteousness; and so that a person should not claim for himself a grain of merit in attending to his own salvation, he must be as inert as a stone in the matter of justification, and like a block of wood in spiritual matters.'

Then one of these people thrust himself into the group and said in a loud voice: 'You madmen, what you are arguing about is goat's wool. 2 You obviously do not know that almighty God is order itself, and that there are myriads of laws of order, as many in fact as there are truths in the Word, and God cannot act contrary to them, because if He did so, He would be acting against Himself, and so not only contrary to righteousness but contrary to His own omnipotence.'

[3] On the right he saw at a distance what looked like a sheep and a lamb, and a dove in flight, and on the left what looked like a goat, a wolf and a vulture. 'Do you believe,' he said, 'that God by His omnipotence could turn that goat into a sheep, or that wolf into a lamb, or that vulture into a dove, or the reverse? Far from it; that is contrary to the laws of His order, of which not so much as a tittle can fall to the ground, as His words tell us. How then can He impart the righteousness of His Son's redemption to anyone who resists it, contrary to the laws of His righteousness? How can Righteousness itself do unrighteousness, and predestine anyone to hell and cast him into the fire, beside which the devil stands torch in hand making it blaze? You madmen, devoid of spirit, your faith has led you astray. Is it not in your hands like a snare for catching doves?'

On hearing this a magician made as it were a snare out of that faith and hung it in a tree, saying? 'Watch me catch that dove.' Very soon the hawk flew up and put its neck in the snare and hung there, while the dove on seeing the hawk flew past. The by-standers exclaimed in wonder, 'This trick is a reward of righteousness.'

Footnotes:

1. Supralapsarian: a person who believes the Fall of Adam was predestined.

2. Proverbial for what does not exist.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #355

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355. The second account:

When I once looked out into the world of spirits, I saw some men in a particular meadow, dressed in the same sort of clothing that people wear in the world, from which I recognized that they had only recently come from the world.

I went over to them and stood to the side, in order to hear what they were saying to each other. They were talking about heaven; and one of them, who knew something about heaven, said there were wonders there which no one could ever possibly believe unless he saw them. He cited as examples the paradise-like gardens; the palaces, magnificently constructed architecturally owing to the quintessence of the art there, shining as though of gold, with columns of silver in front, and covered with precious stones in heavenly forms; the houses, too, of jasper and sapphire, fronted by majestic porticos through which the angels enter; and the adornments inside the houses, which neither art nor words can describe.

[2] "As for the angels themselves," he said, "they are of both sexes. There are young men and married men, maidens and wives - maidens so beautiful that the world has nothing to match such beauty. Yet the wives are even more beautiful, appearing as veritable pictures of heavenly love, and their husbands as pictures of heavenly wisdom. The latter are also all youthful young men; and what is more, they do not know what love for the opposite sex is other than conjugial love. Furthermore - something that will surprise you - the husbands have a continual ability to experience its delights."

When those newly arrived spirits heard that they did not have any love for the opposite sex there other than conjugial love, and that they had a continual ability to experience its delights, they laughed among themselves and said, "What you are saying is unbelievable. Such an ability is not possible. You are, perhaps, making up stories."

[3] But then an angel from heaven stood unexpectedly in their midst and said, "Listen to me, please. I am an angel from heaven, and I have lived with my wife now for a thousand years, in the same flower of youth in which you see me here. I have this youthfulness as a result of conjugial love with my wife; and I can declare that I have had and continue to have the continual ability you are talking about. However, because I perceive that you believe it is not possible, I will speak with you on this subject in terms of its reasons, in accordance with the light of your intellect.

"You know nothing of the original state of man, which you call the state of his integrity. In that state, all the interior faculties of the mind were opened all the way to the Lord, and consequently were pervaded by a marriage of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. So, because the goodness of love and the truth of wisdom are continually drawn to each other by love, they continually aspire to be united; and when the interior faculties of the mind are opened, this conjunctive, spiritual love freely flows down with its continual impetus and imparts the ability.

[4] "Because man's very soul is pervaded by a marriage of goodness and truth, it is impelled not only by a perpetual striving for union but also by a perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself. So, when a person's interior faculties are open all the way down from the soul from that marriage there - since the interior faculties continually look to producing an effect in outmost expressions as their goal, in order to manifest themselves - as a result that perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself, which is one of the soul, becomes one of the body. Consequently, because the ultimate operation of the soul in the body in the case of a married couple is into the ultimate expressions of love there, and these depend on the state of the soul, it is apparent why they have this continual ability.

[5] "They experience as well a perpetual fruitfulness, because there is a universal atmosphere of begetting and propagating the celestial attributes that have to do with love, the spiritual attributes that have to do with wisdom, and so the natural attributes that have to do with offspring - an atmosphere which emanates from the Lord and fills the entire heaven and entire world. Thus that heavenly atmosphere fills the souls of all people, and descends through their minds into the body, even to the outmosts of it, imparting a generative power. However, this power can be imparted only to those in whom a passage stands open from the soul through the higher and lower regions of the mind into the body and its outermost elements, which is the case in those who allow themselves to be led back by the Lord into the original state of their creation.

"I can declare that for a thousand years now I have never lacked the ability, or the power, or the virility, and that I have not experienced at all any diminishing of its forces, since these are continually renewed by the continual flowing in of the aforesaid universal atmosphere. They also then gladden the spirit, and do not leave it depressed, as happens in the case of those who suffer a loss of them.

[6] "Furthermore, truly conjugial love is altogether like the warmth of spring, whose flowing in inspires all things to burgeon and be fruitful. That, too, is the kind of warmth we have in our heaven. Consequently married partners there have springtime in them with its constant stimulus; and that constant stimulus is the impetus from which our virility comes.

"The fruits produced among us in heaven, however, are of another kind than among people on earth. With us the fruits are spiritual, which are the fruits of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. A wife acquires from her husband's wisdom a love of it in her, and from his wife's love of wisdom a husband acquires wisdom in him. Indeed, a wife is actually transformed into an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom, which is accomplished by her receptions of the propagations of his soul with delight - a delight arising from her willing to be an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom. From being a maiden she thus becomes his wife and a likeness of him. As a result, too, love with its inmost friendship constantly increases in the wife, and wisdom with its happiness in the husband, and this to eternity. This is the state of angels in heaven."

[7] After the angel said that, he looked at the men who had come recently from the world and said to them, "You know that when you have felt the virile urge of love, you have made love to your married partners, and that after experiencing the delight you have turned away. But you do not know that in heaven we do not make love to our partners because of that virile force, but we have that virile force because of our love; and because we love our partners continually, that virility is continual in us.

"If you can reverse your state, therefore, you can understand this. When a man loves his partner continually, does he not love her with his whole mind and his whole body? For love directs all things of the mind and all things of the body to that which it loves; and because it is reciprocated, it so joins the two that they become as one."

[8] He said further, "I will not speak to you of conjugial love's having been implanted from creation in males and females, and of their inclination to a legitimate union; nor of the procreative faculty in males, which is tied together with a faculty for proliferating wisdom from a love of truth; nor of the fact that so far as a person loves wisdom from a love of wisdom, or truth from goodness, so far he experiences truly conjugial love and its accompanying power."

  
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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.