Truth Wishes to be In The Light

Selection from Apocalypse Explained ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

About God and about Divine things, which are called in heaven celestial and spiritual, and in the world ecclesiastical and theological, there is thought from light; there is also thought not from light about them. Those have thought not from light who know about these things but do not understand them. Such are all those at the present day who wish the understanding to be kept under obedience to faith, holding even that a thing must be believed and not understood, and claiming that intellectual faith is not true faith. But these are such as are not interiorly in the genuine affection of truth, and consequently are in no enlightenment — many of them are in the pride of self-intelligence, and in the love of ruling over the souls of men by means of the holy things of the church, not knowing that

truth wishes to be in the light

since the light of heaven is the Divine truth, and that a truly human understanding is moved by that light and sees from it. When the understanding does not see from that light it is the memory that has faith and not the man; and such faith is blind, because without an idea from the light of truth; for the understanding is the man, and the memory introduces.

If what is not understood must be believed a man might be taught like a parrot to speak and to remember, even that there is holiness in the bones of the dead and in sepulchers, that carcasses perform miracles, that man will be tormented in purgatory if he does not consecrate his wealth to idols or to monasteries, that men are gods because heaven and hell are in their power, with other like things which man must believe from a blind faith and from a closed understanding, and thus from the light of both extinguished. But be it known:

all the truths of the Word, which are the truths of heaven and of the church, can be seen by the understanding — in heaven spiritually, in the world rationally

for a truly human understanding is the sight itself of these truths, for it is separated from what is material, and when separated, it sees truths as clearly as the eye sees objects; it sees truths as it loves them, for as it loves them it is enlightened.

The angels have wisdom in consequence of seeing truths; when, therefore, it is said to any angel that this or that must be believed although it is not understood, the angel answers, Do you think that I am insane, or that you are God whom I am to believe if I do not see? It may be falsity from hell.

(Apocalypse Explained 1100:23)