Selection from Apocalypse Explained ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Everyone adopts the religion of his native land - because he is educated in it and is afterwards confirmed in it by preachings, and particularly because there are but few who study the doctrine of the church and the interior meaning of the Word, believing that such things transcend their comprehension, and also that they are not to be seen or understood, but only to be believed.The received faith which is called the only saving faith, "That God the Father sent His Son into the world, that through the passion of His cross He might effect propitiation, redemption, and salvation." This faith if understood according to the ideas of those who defend faith separate from life, and thence according to preachings from their doctrine, is no faith; as is evident from each and every thing that is contained in that faith and that follows as a consequence from it; and these are:
(1) That there is propitiation, that is, a propitiation of God the Father by the passion or by the blood of His Son.
(2) That there is mercy or compassion of God the Father for the Son's sake.
(3) That there was a bearing of our iniquities by the Lord, and a consequent deliverance from them.
(4) That there is an imputative principle, and thus an imputation of the Lord's merit, through which we are saved.
(5) That there is an intercession of the Lord with the Father.
(6) That there is redemption and salvation without the means of life and faith, and thus there is immediate mercy.
(7) That in such a faith there is no religion, but it is emptiness and vacuity.
(8) That there is in it neither any faith in the Lord, nor any acknowledgment of His Divine in His Human. (9) That consequently the trust and confidence of that faith which at this day is received as the only saving faith is an empty sound.
(10) That saving faith is wholly different.
But since it is on the lips of nearly all who are of the church that the Lord endured the cross for our sins, and that He took them upon Himself and bore them, and thereby not only reconciled the Father but also redeemed us from hell, and that by this merit of the Lord we are saved, provided we believe this in trust and confidence - it is necessary to inquire, whether these things should be understood according to the common opinion.
Add to this that he who supplicates the Father to have mercy for the sake of the Son has no other idea of the Lord than as of an ordinary man; for he regards Him as beneath the Father, thus as a man from the mother Mary, who suffered the cross, and because of this there is mercy for man; thence the Lord's Divine is separated from His Human, although there is no such separation in the doctrine of the Nicene Council respecting the Trinity; for this teaches that the Divine and the Human of the Lord are not two but one Person, and that they are like the soul and body in man.
But those who look to the Father, although they acknowledge the Lord's Divine, yet do not approach it; for they place it near the Father above the Human of the Lord, and thus they see His Human apart from His Divine, although His Divine is His soul. This is why many at this time confess the Divine of the Lord with the mouth, while but few acknowledge it in heart; and he who does not acknowledge the Divine of the Lord in His Human, and does not look to that in his supplications, cannot have any conjunction with heaven. From this it follows that in this faith, namely, that the Father should have mercy for the sake of the Son, there is no faith in the Lord nor any acknowledgment of His Divine in His Human. This, moreover, is what the Lord foretold to Peter, that at the end of the church He would no longer be acknowledged.
"That consequently, the trust and confidence of that faith, which is at this day accepted as the only saving faith, is an empty word."For the trust of that faith is a natural trust, in which there is nothing spiritual, since there is nothing in it of truth and good, which belong to faith and life; when, therefore, that faith is confirmed by the learned, the truth of heaven may be destroyed and man shut out of heaven by such confirmation.
In such emptiness the faith alone that is accepted in the churches, or faith separated from goods of life, terminates; and yet this faith, although it is empty, fills the entire theology of the Christian world. For this reason the learned of the church, when they come after death into the spiritual world, are in so many falsities as scarcely to know a single genuine truth.
But it is otherwise with those who have not confirmed these falsities with themselves and have lived at the same time in some measure the life of faith, which is charity. These can be instructed in the truths of faith, and when they have been instructed can be received among the angels in heaven.
For it is one thing to believe these falsities with a confirmed faith, thus with the heart, and a wholly different thing to believe them with a faith not confirmed.The reason of the Lord's coming and why He suffered:
The Lord came into the world to save the human race, who otherwise would have perished in eternal death, and that He saved them by subjugating the hells, which infested every man coming into the world and going out of the world, and at the same time by glorifying His Human, since thus He is able to keep the hells subjugated to eternity. The subjugation of the hells, together with the glorification of His Human, was accomplished by means of temptations admitted into the human that He had from the mother, and by continual victories therein. His passion in Gethsemane and on the cross was the last temptation and complete victory.
That the Lord came into the world for these two reasons, and that He thus saved the human race from eternal death, can be seen from this, that before the Lord's coming, the hells were not in order, and consequently there was no equilibrium between hell and heaven, but hell on its part prevailed over heaven. And yet man has been placed in the midst between heaven and hell; in consequence of this whatever before the Lord's coming flowed into man out of heaven was taken away by hell, because of its superior power. Therefore to restore the destroyed equilibrium it pleased the Lord to come into the world, and to accomplish at that time a Last Judgment, and subjugate the hells; and by doing this the Lord acquired for Himself the power to save the men who have faith in and love to Him from Him.
These things could be carried into effect only by the Lord's assuming a Human, for the reason that God works such effects from first principles by means of ultimates, since to work from first principles by means of ultimates is to work in fullness. The very might of the Divine power rests in things ultimate; so the Lord's might rests in His Human because that is in the ultimate. This was one reason of His coming into the world.
The other reason was that He might glorify His Human, that is, make it Divine, since by this and by no other means is He able to keep the hells subjugated to eternity, for He thus acts to eternity from first principles by means of things ultimate, and in fullness. In this way His Divine operation reaches down even to those who are lowest in the world, while otherwise it would reach only to those who are first in heaven, and mediately through these and those that follow to the lowest, who are men. Consequently, if these should give way, as happened just before the Lord's coming, the Divine operation among men would cease, and consequently they would have no means of salvation. The Divine operation of the Lord through the Human assumed in the world is called His immediate influx even to those who are lowest.
These are the two means whereby man has salvation, which is called redemption.This is called the redemption by His blood because the subjugation of the hells, together with the glorification of the Lord's Human, could be effected only by means of temptations admitted into Himself from the hells, the last of which temptations was the passion of the cross.
From this it can now be seen that the Lord did not come into the world to propitiate the Father and to move Him to mercy, nor to bear our iniquities and thus take them away, nor that we might be saved by the imputation of His merit, or by intercession, or by immediate mercy, consequently not by a faith in these things, still less by the confidence of that faith, since that confidence confirms such things as are not true, thus such things as do not belong to faith.
He who knows why the Lord came into the world, and knows that all who believe and do the things that He taught are saved by Him, and at the same time by the Father in Him, and not by the Father separated from Him, can see that many of the things that the leaders teach respecting redemption must be understood otherwise than according to their explanation of them.
That the Lord subjugated the hells He taught when the passion of the cross was at hand, in John:
Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out (12:27, 28, 31).
In the same:
Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world (John 16:33).
In Luke:
Jesus said, I beheld Satan as lightning falling from heaven (10:18).
In Isaiah:
Who is this that cometh from Edom, walking in the multitude of his power? great to save; Mine arm brought salvation for Me; so He became their Savior (63:1, 5, 8; also 59:16-21).
Because the Lord subjugated the hells He gave the seventy disciples:
Authority over demons (Luke 10:17, 19).
That the Lord glorified His Human, and that the passion of the cross was the last temptation and complete victory by which He glorified it, He teaches in John:
When Judas was gone out Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God shall glorify Him in Himself, and straightway shall He glorify Him (13:31, 32).
In the same:
Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son that Thy Son also may glorify Thee (John 17:1, 5).
In the same:
Now is my soul troubled; Father, glorify Thy name. And there came a voice out of heaven, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again (John 12:27, 28).
And in Luke:
Ought not the Christ to suffer this and to enter into glory? (24:26).
This was said of His passion. "To glorify" is to make Divine. From this it can be seen that unless the Lord had come into the world and had become Man, and by this means had liberated from hell all those who believe in Him and love Him, no mortal could have been saved. Thus it is understood that without the Lord there is no salvation. This, now, is the mystery of the Lord's incarnation.
(from Apocalypse Explained 805-806