May 29, 2019

Love Produces by Wisdom

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Love as a bridegroom and husband produces or begets all forms, yet only by wisdom as a bride and wife, can be proved by things innumerable in both the spiritual world and in the natural world, provided only it is kept in mind that the entire angelic heaven is arranged in its form, and kept in it, from the Divine love through the Divine wisdom.

Those who deduce the creation of the world from any other source than the Divine love through the Divine wisdom, not knowing that these two constitute the Divine Essence, descend from reason's sight to eyesight, and bestow kisses on nature as the creator of the universe; and thereby conceive chimeras* and bring forth specters*. They devise fallacies, and reason from them; and their conclusions are eggs that contain birds of night.

Such should not be called minds, but eyes and ears without understanding, or thoughts without soul. They talk of colors as if these existed without light; of trees as if they existed without seed; and of all things in the world as existing without the sun; for they make derivatives to be first principles and things caused to be causes; thus they turn all things upside down, lull their reason to sleep, and the things they see are dreams.
(True Christian Religion 37:3)

* chimera
(1.) (in Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
(2.) a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.

* specters
a ghost. Something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence.