October 4, 2017

Why Scarcely Anyone Knows What the Heavenly Is

Selection from Arcana Cœlestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
[T]hose who were of the Ancient Church — their doctrinals were doctrinals of love and charity, which contained innumerable things that at this day are wholly obliterated. From these doctrinals they knew what charity to exercise, or what duty they owed the neighbor, thus who were called widows, who orphans, who sojourners, and so on. Their knowledges of truth and memory-knowledges were to know what the rituals of their church represented and signified; and those who were learned among them knew what the things on the earth and in the world represented; for they knew that universal nature was a theater representative of the heavenly kingdom. Such things elevated their minds to heavenly things, and their doctrinals led to life.

But after the church turned aside from charity to faith, and still more after it separated faith from charity, and made faith saving without charity and its works, men's minds could no longer be elevated by knowledges to heavenly things, nor by doctrinals be led to life; and this to such a degree that at last scarcely anyone believes that there is any life after death, and scarcely anyone knows what the heavenly is. That there is any spiritual sense in the Word which does not appear in the letter, cannot be believed. In this way men's minds have been closed.

(Arcana Cœlestia 4844:17)