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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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #796

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796. Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin in the spiritual world.

I have held many conversations with these three leaders, who were the reformers of the Christian church, and thus I learned what has been the condition in which they lived from the beginning down to the present day. As for Luther, as soon as he arrived in the spiritual world, he was at once a keen propagator and defender of his dogmas, and as the numbers of his supporters coming from the earth increased, so did his zeal for those dogmas. He was given a house there similar to the one he had lived in while in the bodily life at Eisleben. In the middle of this he set up a slightly raised platform, where he took his seat. The door was open to admit listeners, whom he arranged in rows, the strongest supporters nearest to him, and those less favourable behind him. Then he spoke continuously, from time to time allowing questions, in order to be able to begin again by picking up the thread of the discourse he had just finished.

[2] As a result of this general support he finally adopted a false conviction; this is so potent in the spiritual world that no one can resist it or speak against what it prescribes. But because this was a kind of incantation as used by the ancients, he was forbidden to go on talking seriously on the basis of that conviction, and after that he taught as before from memory and at the same time the use of his understanding. A conviction of this sort which is a kind of incantation wells up from self-love. This ends up by making a person so disposed that, when anyone contradicts him, he not only attacks the subject under debate, but the other person himself.

[3] He lived like this up to the Last judgment, which took place in the spiritual world in 1757. A year later he was moved from his first house to another, at the same time moving into a different state. On hearing that I, although in the natural world, spoke with those who were in the spiritual world, he was one of a number who came to see me. After some questions had been put and answered, he perceived that the present time is the end of the former church and the beginning of the new church foretold by Daniel's prophecy, and also by the Lord Himself in the Gospels. He also grasped that it is this new church which is meant by the New Jerusalem in Revelation, and by the everlasting gospel which the angel flying in the midst of heaven announced to dwellers upon earth (Revelation 14:6). He became very indignant and abused me; but as he grasped that there was a new heaven, which was and is being made from those who acknowledge the Lord alone as God of heaven and earth, as His words in Matthew 28:18 state, and noticing that the size of his audience grew less day by day, he stopped being abusive, and then came closer to me and began to talk with me in a more intimate fashion. Once he had been convinced that he had drawn his principal dogma about justification by faith alone not from the Word, but from his own intelligence, he allowed himself to be instructed about the Lord, charity, true faith, free will and so on to redemption, all of this from no source but the Word. Finally when he had been convinced, he began to take a favourable view, and more and more to convince himself of the truths on which the new church is being founded.

[4] At this time he was with me daily, and then, whenever he recalled as being those truths, he began to laugh at his previous dogmas, as being something completely opposite to what the Word says. I heard him say: 'You should not be surprised that I seized upon faith alone as justifying, shut off charity from its spiritual essence and also took away from people all free will in spiritual matters, not to mention other things which hang like hooks from a chain on faith alone, once it is accepted. My aim was to make a split with the Roman Catholics, and there was no other way to achieve and accomplish this aim. I am not surprised therefore that I myself went astray, but I am surprised that one madman could drive so many others mad.' He glanced round here at some dogmatic writers who had been famous in his time, faithfully following his teaching, for failing to see the contradictions contained in Holy Scripture, evident though they were.

[5] The examining angels told me that this leader was in a better position to be converted than many others who had convinced themselves of justification by faith alone, because in childhood, before he started making the reformation, he had absorbed the dogma of the preeminence of charity. This was why both in his writings and his sermons he gave excellent teaching about charity. It is to be deduced from these facts that his belief in justification was implanted in his external natural man, not rooted in his internal spiritual man. The case is quite different with those who while young convince themselves that there is no spirituality in charity; and this also happens automatically, when justification by faith alone is well grounded upon arguments.

[6] I talked with the prince of Saxony with whom Luther had been in the world. He told me how he had often criticised him, in particular for separating charity from faith, and declaring faith and not charity as the means to salvation, when Holy Scripture not only links them as the two universal means to salvation, but Paul too puts charity above faith, saying that there are three things, faith, hope and charity, and the greatest of these is charity (1 Corinthians 13:13). Luther, however, replied every time that he could do no other because of the Roman Catholics. This prince is among the blessed.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #655

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655. To this I will append the following account:

I spoke with some of the spirits meant by the dragon. And one of them said to me, "Come with me and I will show you what pleases our eyes and hearts."

Then he took me through a dark forest and over a hill, from which I could view the pleasures of the dragon spirits. And I saw an amphitheater built in the form of a circle, with sloping tiers of benches extending up all around on which spectators were sitting. Those who sat on the lowest benches looked to me at a distance like satyrs and priapi, some of them with a cloth covering their private parts, and some of them naked without one. On the benches above them sat whoremongers and harlots. So they appeared to me from their behavior.

The dragon spirit then said to me, "Now you will see our sport." And I saw what looked like calves, rams, ewes, kids and lambs brought into the arena of the circus, and after they were all there, a gate opened and I saw what looked like young lions, panthers, leopards and wolves rushing upon the flock and savagely attacking them. They tore them to pieces and slaughtered them. And after that bloody carnage the satyrs spread sand over the site where the slaughter took place.

[2] The dragon spirit said to me then, "These are our sports, which please our hearts."

But I replied, "Get away from me, you demon! In a little while you will see this amphitheater turned into a lake of fire and brimstone."

He laughed and left me. And wondering to myself afterward why the Lord permits such things, I received in my heart the answer, that they are permitted as long as spirits are in the world of spirits; but that when their time in that world is over, such theatrical scenes are turned into dreadful ones in hell.

[3] Everything that I saw was a sight induced by the dragon spirits through beguilements. There were no calves, rams, ewes, kids or lambs, therefore, but those spirits made genuine goods and truths of the church to so appear, goods and truths that they hate. The young lions, panthers, leopards and wolves were manifestations of the lusts in those spirits who looked like satyrs and priapi. Those without a cloth over their private parts were people who believed that evils are not seen in the eyes of God, while those with a cloth are people who believed that evils are seen, but do not condemn, provided they have faith. The whoremongers and harlots were people who falsified the Word's truth, for licentiousness symbolizes the falsification of truth.

Everything in the spiritual world appears at a distance in accordance with its correspondence, and when these correspondences take manifest form, in objects like those of natural ones, we call them representations of spiritual entities.

[4] I later saw those spirits leaving the forest, with the dragon spirit surrounded by the satyrs and priapi, followed by their lieutenants and camp followers, who were the whoremongers and harlots. The troop grew as it went, and I was given then to hear what they were saying among themselves. They were saying that they saw a flock of sheep and goats in a meadow, and that it was a sign that they were approaching one of the Jerusalem cities where charity is primary. And they said, "Let us go and seize that city, throw out its inhabitants, and plunder their goods!"

They went to it, but it had a wall around it, with angels as guards upon the wall. So then they said, "Let us take it by trickery. Let us send in an artful person skilled in casuistry, who can make black white and white black, and color the reality of any subject."

So the spirits found a certain expert in the metaphysical art, who could turn concepts of things into considerations of terms and hide actual realities under strings of words, and so fly away like a hawk with its prey under its wings. They told him what to say to the inhabitants of the city, that they were people who shared the inhabitants' religion and should be admitted.

Going to the city gate he knocked, and when it was opened, he said that he wished to speak with the wisest person in the city. So he was allowed in and taken to a certain man, and he addressed the man then, saying, "My brethren are outside the city and ask to be let in. They share your religion. You and we both make faith and charity to be the two essential ingredients of religion. The only difference is that you say charity is primary and faith its effect, while we say faith is primary and charity its effect. What does it matter which one is called primary, when we believe in both?"

[5] The city's wise man replied, "Let us not speak about this matter by ourselves, but do so in the presence of a number of others, to serve as arbiters and judges. Otherwise no decision will result."

And at that he summoned some others, and the dragon spirit's emissary repeated to them what he had said before.

Then the city's wise man responded, "You said that it is the same whether one takes charity to be the primary concern of the church, or faith, provided one agrees that the two together form the church and its religion. And yet the difference is as the difference between something prior and something subsequent, between a cause and its effect, between a principal cause and an instrumental cause, between an essential component and a manner of expression.

"I speak so to you, because I have observed that you are an expert in the metaphysical art, an art that we call casuistry, and that some people call mumbo jumbo. But let us put these terms aside. The difference is as the difference between something above and something below. Indeed, if you would believe it, it is as the difference between heaven and hell. For that which is primary forms the head and breast, while that which is its effect forms the feet and the soles of the feet.

"But let us first agree on what charity is and what faith is - that charity is the love's affection for doing good to the neighbor for God's sake, and for the sake of salvation and eternal life, and that faith is confident thought regarding God, salvation and eternal life."

[6] However, the emissary said, "I grant that that is what faith is, and I also grant that charity is, as you say, an affection for God's sake, because it conforms with His commandment, but not that is an affection for the sake of salvation and eternal life."

Whereupon the city's wise man said, "Let it be as you say, provided it is for God's sake."

Following this agreement the city's wise man said, "Is not affection the primary thing and thought its effect?"

To which the dragon spirit's emissary answered, "No, it is not."

But he was told in reply, "You cannot deny it. A person is moved to think by his affection, is he not? Take away the affection. Can you form any thought? The case is entirely the same as if you were to take the sound out of speech. If you were to take away any sound, could you speak a word? The tone is also a matter of affection, while the words are a matter of thought, for affection produces the tone and thought the words. The case is also like that of a flame and its light. If you take away the flame, does not the light die?

"So it is with charity and faith, charity being an affection, and faith a matter of thought. Can you not comprehend, then, that the primary element is everything in the secondary one, even as sound is in speech? And from this you can see that if you do not make primary that which is primary, you do not possess the second element. Consequently, if you take faith, which is in second place, and put it in first place, you will appear no otherwise in heaven than as a person upside down, with his feet planted upward and his head pointed down. Or you will look like a clown turned upside down and walking on his hands. Since people like you will appear so in heaven, what then are your good works constituting charity but the kind that a clown might do with his feet, seeing that he cannot do them with his hands? As a consequence your charity is natural and not spiritual, as you yourself see, because it is turned upside down."

[7] The emissary understood this, for every devil can understand truth when he hears it, even though he cannot retain it, because when his affection for evil returns, it casts out thought of truth.

After that, then, the city's wise man described with many illustrations what faith is like when it is accepted as primary, saying that it is merely natural, that it is simply knowledge devoid of any spiritual life, and that it is consequently not faith. "For your charity," he said, "is nothing but a natural affection, and the only kind of thought that springs from a natural affection is natural thought, which is what constitutes your faith.

"I might almost say, too," he continued, "that in your merely natural faith there is scarcely any other spiritual life than in your knowledge of the Mongol empire, of the diamond mine there, or of its emperor's wealth and court."

When the dragon's emissary heard this, he angrily departed and reported to his companions outside the city. And when they heard that he had been told that charity is an affection for doing good to the neighbor for God's sake and for the sake of salvation and eternal life, they all cried out, "That's a lie!"

And the dragon spirit himself said, "What an outrage! All good works that constitute charity - if done for the sake of salvation, are they not merit-seeking?"

[8] The spirits then said to one another, "Let us summon here more of our colleagues, and let us lay siege to this city. Let us make ladders, scale the wall and attack them at night, and throw out those proponents of charity."

But when they attempted this, there suddenly appeared what looked like fire from heaven which consumed them. In fact, however, the fire from heaven was a manifestation of their anger, owing to their hatred of the city's inhabitants, because those inhabitants cast faith out of first place into second place. It appeared to them as though they were consumed by fire because hell opened beneath their feet and swallowed them.

Events similar to this occurred in many places at the time of the Last Judgment, and this is the meaning of the following depiction in the book of Revelation:

(The dragon) will go out to lead astray the nations which are in the four corners of the earth..., to gather them together for war... And they went up over the breadth of the land and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from God out of heaven and consumed them. (Revelation 20:8-9)

  
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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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