Without a Proper Idea of God

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

GOD IS VERY MAN

In all the heavens there is no other idea of God than that He is a Man. This is because heaven as a whole and in part is in form like a man, and because it is the Divine which is with the angels that constitutes heaven and inasmuch as thought proceeds according to the form of heaven, it is impossible for the angels to think of God in any other way. From this it is that all those in the world who are conjoined with heaven think of God in the same way when they think interiorly in themselves, that is, in their spirit. From this fact that God is a Man, all angels and all spirits, in their complete form, are men. This results from the form of heaven, which is like itself in its greatest and in its least parts.

It is known from Genesis 1:26, 27, that men were created after the image and likeness of God. God also appeared as a man to Abraham and to others. The ancients, from the wise even to the simple, thought of God no otherwise than as being a Man; and when at length they began to worship a plurality of gods, as at Athens and Rome, they worshiped them all as men. What is here said may be illustrated by the following extract from a small treatise already published: —

The Gentiles, especially the Africans, who acknowledge and worship one God, the Creator of the universe, have concerning God the idea that He is a Man, and declare that no one can have any other idea of God. When they learn that there are many who cherish an idea of God as something cloud-like in the midst of things, they ask where such persons are; and on being told that they are among Christians, they declare it to be impossible. They are informed, however, that this idea arises from the fact that God in the Word is called "a Spirit," and of a spirit they have no other idea than of a bit of cloud, not knowing that every spirit and every angel is a man. An examination, nevertheless, was made, whether the spiritual idea of such persons was like their natural idea, and it was found not to be so with those who acknowledge the Lord interiorly as God of heaven and earth. I heard a certain elder from the Christians say that no one can have an idea of a Human Divine; and I saw him taken about to various Gentile nations, and successively to such as were more and more interior, and from them to their heavens, and finally to the Christian heaven; and everywhere their interior perception concerning God was communicated to him, and he observed that they had no other idea of God than that He is a man, which is the same as the idea of a Human Divine (Continuation Last Judgment 73-78).

The common people in Christendom have an idea that God is a Man, because God in the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity is called a "Person." But those who are more learned than the common people pronounce God to be invisible, and this for the reason that they cannot comprehend how God, as a Man, could have created heaven and earth, and then fill the universe with His presence, and many things besides, which cannot enter the understanding so long as the truth that the Divine is not in space is ignored.

Those, however, who go to the Lord alone think of a Human Divine, thus of God as a Man.

How important it is to have a correct idea of God can be known from the truth that the idea of God constitutes the inmost of thought with all who have religion, for all things of religion and all things of worship look to God. And since God, universally and in particular, is in all things of religion and of worship, without a proper idea of God no communication with the heavens is possible. From this it is that in the spiritual world every nation has its place allotted in accordance with its idea of God as a Man; for in this idea, and in no other, is the idea of the Lord. That man's state of life after death is according to the idea of God in which he has become confirmed, is manifest from the opposite of this, namely, that the denial of God, and, in the Christian world, the denial of the Divinity of the Lord, constitutes hell.

(Divine Love and Wisdom 11-13)

Thinking Naturally or Spiritually

Selection from Heaven and Hell ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

People who think only from nature cannot comprehend that there is light in the heavens. Yet, such is the light in the heavens that it exceeds by many degrees the noonday light of the world. I have often seen that light even during the evening and night. At first, I marvelled when I heard angels saying that the light of the world is little more than a shadow in comparison with the light of heaven, but, having seen it, I can testify that it is so. The brightness and splendour are such as cannot be described. The things that I have seen in the heavens have been seen in that light, thus more clearly and distinctly than things in this world.

The light of heaven is not a natural light like that of the world, but a spiritual light because it is from the Lord as a Sun, and that Sun is the Divine Love, as shown in the previous section. That which goes forth from the Lord as a Sun is called in the heavens Divine Truth although in essence it is Divine Good united to Divine Truth. From this the angels have light and heat, light from Divine Truth, and heat from Divine Good. So, it can be confirmed from this that the light of heaven from such a source is spiritual and not natural, likewise the heat.

The Divine Truth is light to the angels because angels are spiritual and not natural. Spiritual beings see from their Sun and natural beings from theirs. It is from Divine Truth that angels have understanding, and their understanding is their internal sight which flows into and produces their external sight. Therefore, in heaven whatever is seen from the Lord as the Sun appears in light. This being the source of light in heaven, the light there is varied in accordance with the reception of Divine Truth from the Lord, or what is the same, in accordance with the intelligence and wisdom in which the angels are, thus differently in the celestial kingdom and in the spiritual kingdom and differently in each particular society.

In the celestial kingdom, the light appears flaming because the angels there receive light from the Lord as a Sun; but in the spiritual kingdom, the light is white because the angels there receive light from the Lord as a Moon. So, too, the light is not the same in one society as in another. It differs in each society, those in the middle being in greater light and those around them in less light.

In a word, the angels have light in the same degree in which they are receptions of Divine Truth, that is, in intelligence and wisdom from the Lord. This is why the angels of heaven are called angels of light.

As the Lord in the heavens is Divine Truth, and the Divine Truth there is Light, so in the Word the Lord is called the Light, likewise every truth from Him, as in the following passages:

Jesus said, I am the Light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. John 8: 12.

As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the world. John 9.

Jesus said, Yet a little while is the Light with you. Walk while ye have the Light, lest darkness overtake you. . . . While ye have the Light, believe in the Light that ye may he sons of Light. . . . I have come a Light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in darkness. John 12:35, 36, 46.

Light hath come into the world, but men have loved darkness rather than light. John 3:19.

John says of the Lord,

This is the true Light which lighteneth every man. John 1:9.

The people that sit in darkness have seen a great light, and to them that were sitting in the shadow of death, light is sprung up. Matt. 4:16.

I will give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the gentiles. Isa. 42:6.

I have established thee for a light of the gentiles, that thou mayest be My salvation unto the end of the earth. Isa. 49: 6.

The nations of them that are saved shall walk in His light. Rev. 21: 24.

Send out Thy Light and Thy Truth; let them lead me. Ps. 43: 3.

In these and other passages, the Lord is called the Light from the Divine Truth which is from Him, and the truth itself is called light.

As light in the heavens is from the Lord as a Sun, so when He was transfigured before Peter, James and John,

His face appeared as the Sun, and His garments as the light shining and white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can whiten. Mark 20: 3; Matt. 17: 2.

The Lord's garments had this appearance because they represented the Divine Truth which is from Him in the heavens. "Garments", in the Word, signify truths, consequently it is said in David,

Jehovah, Thou coverest Thyself with light as with a garment. Ps. 104: 2.

That the light in the heavens is spiritual and moreover that this light is Divine Truth may be inferred from the fact that man also has spiritual light and has enlightenment from that light so far as he is in intelligence and wisdom from Divine Truth. Man's spiritual light is the light of his understanding, and the objects of that light are truths, which he arranges analytically into groups, forms into reasons, and from them draws conclusions in a series.

The natural man does not know that the light from which the understanding sees such things is the real light, for he neither sees it with his eyes nor perceives it in thought. Yet, there are many who recognize this light and distinguish it from the natural light in which those are who think naturally and not spiritually.

Those who take account of the world only, think naturally and attribute all things to nature; while those think spiritually who take account of heaven and attribute all things to the Divine.

It has many times been granted to me to perceive and also to see that there is a true light (lux) that enlightens the mind, wholly distinct from the light called the natural light (lumen). I have been raised up interiorly into that light by degrees, and as I was raised up, my understanding became so enlightened as to enable me to perceive what I did not perceive before, and finally such things as I could not even comprehend by thought from natural light. Sometimes I felt indignant that these things could not be comprehended when yet they were so clearly and plainly perceived in heavenly light. Since the understanding has its light, therefore it is said of it, as of the eye, that it sees and is in light when it perceives, and is in obscurity and shade when it does not perceive, and many similar expressions.

(Heaven and Hell 126-130)

Those, in the next life, Who have Panted for the Wealth of Others

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.

But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.

Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea. And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done. And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. (Mark 5:1-16)

The life which evil spirits have, and which they love extremely, is the life of the cupidities of the love of self and of the world, hence a life of hatreds, revenge, and cruelties; and they suppose that there can be no delight in any other life. They are like men - for they have been men, and they retain this belief from their life when they were men - who place all life in the delights of such cupidities, not knowing but that such life is the only life, and that when they lose it they will utterly die. But of what nature is that life which they love, is plain from those of this character in the other life, where it is turned into a fetid and excrementitious life, and wonderful to say, they perceive the stench as most enjoyable; as may be seen from what is related from experience:

In the other life those who have practiced robbery and piracy love rank and fetid urine above all other liquids, and seem to themselves to dwell among such things, and among stagnant and stinking pools. A certain robber approached me, gnashing his teeth, the sound of which was as plainly heard as if it had proceeded from a man, which was strange, since they have no teeth. He confessed that he would rather live in urinous filth than by the clearest waters, and that the smell of urine was what he delighted in. He said he would rather stay and have his home in urinous vats than anywhere else.

(Arcana Coelestia 820)

The phantasies which have been indulged in the life of the body are turned in the next life into others, which, however, correspond to the first. For example, with those who have been violent and merciless on earth, their violence and unmercifulness are turned into incredible cruelty; and they seem to themselves to kill whatever companions they meet, and to torture them in various ways, wherein they take what is to them the greatest possible delight. Those who have been bloodthirsty take delight in torturing other spirits, even to bloodshed, for they suppose spirits to be men, not knowing otherwise. At the sight of blood-for such is their phantasy that they as it were see blood-they are greatly delighted. From avarice there break forth phantasies as if they were infested with mice, and the like, according to the species of avarice. Those who have been delighted with mere pleasures, having these as their ultimate end, as their highest good, and as it were their heaven, find their highest delight in staying in privies, perceiving there what is most enjoyable. Some take delight in urinous and noisome pools, some in miry places, and so on.

(Arcana Coelestia 954)

It was the same with the demons, who, when the Lord cast them out of the maniac, fearing for their life, asked that they might be sent into the swine (see passage above from Mark chapter 5). That these demons were those who in the life of the body had been given up to filthy avarice, may be seen from the fact that such seem to themselves in the other life to pass their time among swine, for the reason that the life of swine corresponds to avarice, and is therefore delightful to them; as is evident from what is related from experience:

What sordid phantasies the ideas of thought of those who have been sordidly avaricious are turned into, is evident from their hell, which is deep under foot. A vapor exhales from it like that from hogs whose bristles are being scraped off in a scalding trough. There are the homes of the avaricious. Those who come thither at first appear black, but by the scraping off of their hair, as is done with hogs, they seem to themselves to become white. So they then appear to themselves, but still there remains therefrom a mark by which they are known wherever they go. A certain black spirit who had not yet been brought to his own hell, because he had to make a longer stay in the world of spirits, being let down thither (although he had not been so avaricious as the rest, and yet had in his lifetime wickedly panted for the wealth of others), on his arrival the avaricious there fled away, saying that he was a robber, because he was black, and would kill them. For the avaricious flee from such spirits, being especially fearful of losing their lives. At length, having found out that he was not such a robber, they told him that if he wished to become white he merely had to have the hair taken off, like the swine - which were in full view - and then he would be white. But as he did not desire this, he was taken up among spirits.

(Arcana Coelestia 939)

(Selection from Arcana Coelestia 1742)