Metaphysics Their Tripod

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
— A Memorable Relation —

I saw some who had recently come from the natural world into the spiritual world talking together about THREE DIVINE PERSONS from eternity. They were dignitaries of the church, and one of them was a bishop.

They came up to me; and after some talk about the spiritual world, respecting which they had before known nothing, I said,

"I heard you speaking of three Divine persons from eternity; I beseech you to disclose to me this great mystery according to the conception you had formed of it in the natural world from which you have lately come."

Then the bishop, looking at me, said,

"I see that you are a layman, therefore I will set forth my ideas on this great mystery, and will instruct you. My conception of the matter was, and still is, that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit sit in the center of heaven upon magnificent and lofty seats or thrones — God the Father on a throne of pure gold, with a scepter in His hand; God the Son at His right hand on a throne of the purest silver, with a crown on His head; and God the Holy Spirit near them, on a throne of dazzling crystal, holding a dove in His hand; and that round about them in triple order are hanging lamps glittering with precious stones; while at a distance from this circle stand innumerable angels, all worshiping and singing praises; and furthermore, that God the Father is continually talking with His Son about those who are to be justified, and they together judge and determine who on earth are worthy to be received by them among the angels, and crowned with eternal life; while God the Holy Spirit, on hearing the names of such, hastens to them throughout the earth, carrying with Him gifts of righteousness as so many tokens of salvation for the justified; and the instant He approaches and breathes upon them He disperses their sins, as a ventilator drives the smoke from a furnace and makes it white. He also takes away the stony hardness of their hearts, and imparts the tenderness of flesh, and at the same time renews their spirits or minds, and regenerates them, giving them infantile faces; and finally He seals them in the forehead with the sign of the cross, and calls them 'the elect' and 'sons of God.'"

Having finished this speech the bishop said,

"Thus did I in the world elucidate this great mystery; and as most of our order there applauded my utterances, I am persuaded that you also, who are a layman, will assent to them."

When the bishop had ceased speaking I looked at him, and also at the dignitaries with him, and I noticed that they all gave full assent to what he had said. I therefore began to reply, and said,

"I have given close attention to the statement of your belief, and from it I gather that you have conceived and cherish an idea of the triune God that is wholly natural, sensual, and even material, and that there inevitably follows from it the idea of three Gods. Is it not thinking sensually of God the Father to conceive of Him as seated on a throne with a scepter in His hand; and of the Son on His throne with a crown on His head; and of the Holy Spirit on His with a dove in His hand, and as hastening over the world in accordance with what He hears? And as such an idea results from your statements, I cannot assent to them; for from my childhood I have not been able to admit into my mind any other idea than that of one God; and since I have accepted and hold no other idea, all that you have said has no weight with me. I also saw that 'the throne' on which Jehovah is said in Scripture to sit means His kingdom, the 'scepter' and 'crown,' government and dominion; the 'sitting at the right hand,' God's omnipotence through His Humanity; also that by what is attributed to the Holy Spirit the operations of the Divine omnipresence are meant. Assume, sir, if you please, the idea of one God, and rightly dwell upon that in your reasonings, and you will at length clearly apprehend that this is so.

Furthermore, you admit that God is one, in that you make the essence of these three persons one and indivisible; while yet you do not allow anyone to say that this one God is one person, but he must say that there are three persons and this you do lest the idea of three Gods, such as you entertain, should be lost; also you ascribe to each person a property different from those of the others. In all this do you not divide your Divine essence? And this being so, how can you say and also think that God is one? I could excuse you if you had said that the Divine is one. How can anyone on hearing that 'The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and singly each person is God, ' possibly think of God as one? Is it not a contradiction, to which assent is utterly impossible? That they cannot be said to be one God, but only to have a like Divinity, may be thus illustrated. A number of men forming one senate, assembly, or council, cannot be called one man; although when each and all have the same opinion they may be said to be one in thought. Neither can three diamonds of the same substance be called one diamond; although they may be called one in substance. Moreover, each diamond would differ from the others in value according to its weight, which would not be true if they were one instead of three.
But I perceive the reason why three persons, each one of whom is by Himself singly God, are called by you one God, and why you enjoin upon everyone in the church so to speak, namely, because all sound and enlightened reason in the world acknowledges God to be one, and in consequence you would be covered with shame if you too did not speak in like manner. And yet when you utter the words 'one God' while in your thoughts there are three, that shame does not prevent your giving utterance to both of these ideas."

After this conversation the bishop with his clerical companions withdrew, and as he departed he turned and tried to say, "There is one God;" but he could not say it, because this thought restrained his tongue, and with open mouth he gasped out, "Three Gods!" At this strange sight the bystanders laughed derisively and departed.

Afterwards I asked where I could find those of the learned with the keenest minds who stood for a Divine trinity divided into three persons. Three of these presented themselves; and I said to them,

"How can you divide the Divine trinity into three persons, and assert that each person, by Himself or singly, is God and Lord? Is not a confession of the mouth that God is one thus made as remote from the thought as the south from the north?"

To this they replied,

"It is not at all remote, since the three persons possess one essence, and the Divine essence is God. In the world we were guardians of a trinity of persons, and the ward under our charge was our faith; in that faith each Divine person had his office — God the Father to impute and bestow, God the Son to intercede and mediate, and God the Holy Spirit to carry out the work of imputation and mediation."

But I asked,

"What do you mean by the 'Divine essence?'"

They said,

"We mean omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immensity, eternity, and equality of majesty."

I replied,

"If that essence makes one God of several you might add more yet, for example: a fourth, mentioned by Moses, Ezekiel, and Job, under the name of 'God Schaddai.' Something of this kind was done in Greece and Italy by the ancients, who ascribed equal attributes and a like essence to their gods, for example, to Saturn, Jove, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Juno, Diana, Minerva, and even Mercury and Venus; although they could not say that all these were one God. Moreover, yourselves, who are three persons, and as I apprehend alike in learning and therefore in that respect of a similar essence, are not able to combine yourselves into one learned man."

They laughed at this, and said,

"You are joking. With the Divine essence it is different: it is not tripartite, but one; not divisible, but indivisible; partition and division do not apply to it. "

Hearing this I said,

"Let us come down to this ground and discuss the matter."

And I asked,

"What do you mean by a 'person?' and what does the term signify?"

They said,

"The term 'person' signifies that which has no part or quality in another, but subsists by itself. Thus do all the heads of the church define it, and we agree with them."

I said,

"Is this the definition of 'person'?"

They replied,

"It is."

To this I answered,

"There is then no part of the Father in the Son, or of either in the Holy Spirit. From this it follows that each is at His own disposal, and possesses His own rights and powers, and therefore there is nothing that joins them together except the will, which is proper to each, and thus communicable at pleasure. Does not this make the three persons three distinct Gods?

Listen again: You have also defined 'person' as that which subsists by itself; consequently there are three substances into which you divide the Divine essence; and yet you say that this is incapable of division, since it is one and indivisible. Furthermore, to each substance, that is, to each person, you attribute properties that do not exist in the others, and even cannot be communicated to the others, namely, imputation, mediation, and operation. What can follow from this except that the three 'persons' are three Gods?"

At these remarks they withdrew, saying, "We will canvass these statements and then answer you."

There was present a wise man who, hearing the arguments, said,

"I do not care to view this lofty subject through such fine network; but apart from these subtleties I see clearly that in your thought you have the idea of three Gods; but as you would incur disrepute by publishing this idea openly to all the world (for if you did so you would be called madmen and fools), it is expedient for you, in order to avoid that ignominy, to confess with your lips one God."

But the three, tenacious of their opinions, paid no attention to this; and as they went away they muttered some terms culled from metaphysical lore: from which I saw that metaphysics was their tripod from which they wished to give responses.

(True Christian Religion 16-17)

General Knowledges Concerning Creation

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

No one can gain a right idea of the creation of the universe until his understanding is brought into a state of perception by some most general knowledges previously recognized, which are as follows.

(1) There are two worlds, a spiritual world where angels and spirits are, and a natural world where men are.

(2) In each world there is a sun. The sun of the spiritual world is nothing but love from Jehovah God who is in the midst of it. From that sun heat and light go forth; the heat that goes forth therefrom in its essence is love, and the light that goes forth in its essence is wisdom; and these two affect the will and understanding of man - the heat his will and the light his understanding. But the sun of the natural world is nothing but fire, and therefore its heat is dead, also its light; and these serve as a covering and auxiliary to spiritual heat and light, to enable them to pass over to man.

(3) Again, these two which go forth from the sun of the spiritual world, and in consequence all things that have existence in that world by means of them, are substantial, and are called spiritual; while the two like things that go forth from the sun of the natural world, and in consequence all things here that have existence by means of them, are material, and are called natural.

(4) In each world there are three degrees, called degrees of height, and in consequence three regions; and in accordance with these the three angelic heavens are arranged, and also in accordance with them human minds are arranged, which thus correspond to those three angelic heavens; and the same is true of every thing else in both worlds.

(5) There is a correspondence between those things that are in the spiritual world and those in the natural world.

(6) There is an order in which each thing and all things belonging to both worlds were created.

(7) It is necessary that an idea of these things should first be gained, for unless this is done the human mind from mere ignorance of these things easily falls into a notion of a creation of the universe by nature; while on mere ecclesiastical authority it asserts that nature was created by God; and yet, because it does not know how creation was effected, as soon as it begins to look interiorly into the matter, it plunges headlong into the naturalism that denies God.

(from True Christian Religion 75)

Repentance from Sins — The Pathway to Heaven

Selection from Divine Providence ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The Lord cannot rid us of the evils in our outer nature without our help. In all Christian churches the accepted teaching is that before we come to take Holy Communion we should examine ourselves, see and admit our sins, and repent by refraining from them and rejecting them because they come from the devil. Otherwise our sins are not forgiven, and we are damned.

Even though the English accept a theology of faith alone, in the prayer before Holy Communion they explicitly enjoin self-examination, acknowledgment, confession of sins, repentance, and taking up a new life. They threaten people who do not do so by saying that the devil will enter into them as he entered into Judas and fill them with all iniquity, destroying both body and soul. The Germans, Swedes, and Danes, who also accept a theology of faith alone, teach much the same in their prayer before Holy Communion, adding the threat that otherwise we will render ourselves liable to the punishments of hell and eternal damnation because of this mixture of the sacred and the profane. The priest reads these words with a loud voice to the people who come to Holy Communion, and the people hear them with a full recognition of their truth.

However, when these same people hear a sermon about faith alone on the very same day, when they hear that the law does not condemn them because the Lord has fulfilled it for them, that on their own they cannot do anything good without claiming credit for it, and that therefore their deeds contribute nothing whatever to their salvation and only their faith does, then they go home totally oblivious to their earlier confession. In fact, they dismiss it to the extent that they are thinking about this sermon on faith alone.

So which is true, the first or the second? Two mutually contradictory statements cannot both be true. For example, • one option is that there is no forgiveness of sins and therefore no salvation, only eternal damnation, unless we examine and identify and recognize and confess and reject our sins--unless we repent. • The other option is that things like this contribute nothing to our salvation, because by suffering on the cross the Lord has made full satisfaction for people who have faith; and if we only have faith--a trust that this is true--and are sure that the Lord's merit has been credited to our accounts, then we are sinless and appear before God with faces washed gleaming-clean. We can see, then, that all Christian churches share the basic conviction that we need to examine ourselves, see and admit our sins, and then refrain from them; and that otherwise we face not salvation but damnation.

We can see that this is also divine truth itself in passages in the Word where we are commanded to repent, passages like these:

• John said, "Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. Right now, the axe is lying at the root of the tree. Every tree that does not bring forth good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." (Luke 3:8-9)

• Jesus said, "Unless you repent, you will all be destroyed." (Luke 13:3, 5)

• Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God: "Repent, and believe the good news." (Mark 1:14-15)

• Jesus sent out his disciples who preached repentance as they went forth. (Mark 6:12)

• Jesus told the apostles that they were to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations. (Luke 24:47)

• John preached the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3)

Think about this, then, with some clarity of mind and if you are religious you will see that repentance from sins is the pathway to heaven. You will see that faith apart from repentance is not really faith and that people who are without faith because they are without repentance are on the road to hell.

There are people who accept a faith separate from charity and who justify themselves by what Paul says to the Romans:

"We are justified by faith apart from works of the Law" (Romans 3:28).

They worship this statement like people who worship the sun; and they become like people who stare so constantly at the sun that their eyesight becomes dull and incapable of seeing things in normal light. They do not see what "works of the Law" means here--not the Ten Commandments, but the rituals described by Moses in his books, everywhere referred to as "the Law."

To keep us from thinking that it means the Ten Commandments, Paul goes on to explain

"Then do we abolish the Law by faith? Far from it, we strengthen the Law" (Romans 3:31)

If we convince ourselves of faith alone on the basis of this statement, then by staring at this passage like the sun we blind ourselves to places where Paul lists the laws of faith and says that they are in fact deeds of charity. After all, what is faith apart from its laws? We blind ourselves to the places where he lists evil deeds, saying that people who do them cannot enter heaven.

We can see from this what blindness comes from a misunderstanding of this one passage.

The reason the evils in our outer self cannot be expelled without our cooperation is this — One of the principles of the Lord's divine providence is that whatever we hear, see, think, intend, say, and do seems to belong to us completely. If it did not seem like this, we would not be able to accept divine truth, decide to do good, or internalize love and wisdom. We would have no charity and faith and therefore no union with the Lord, no reformation and regeneration, and no salvation.

It is obvious that if it did not seem like this there would be no possibility of repentance from our sins and in fact no faith whatever, and that if it did not seem like this we would not be human but would be devoid of any rational life, like animals. Submit the matter to reason, if you will. Does it not seem exactly as though we ourselves think about what is good and true in spiritual, civic, and moral matters? Then accept the theological principle that everything good and true comes from the Lord and nothing from us. Can we not recognize the conclusion that we should do what is good and think what is true as though we were autonomous, but that we should still admit that these actions are being done by the Lord? Particularly, can you not see that we are to expel evils in apparent autonomy but still admit that the source of our doing this is the Lord?

There are a great many people who do not know that they are involved in evil because they do not do evil things outwardly. They are afraid of civil laws and of losing their reputations, so by habitual practice they have trained themselves to avoid evil deeds as harmful both to their reputations and to their purses. However, if they do not avoid evil deeds on religious grounds, because they are sins and are in conflict with God, then the cravings for evils and their pleasures are still there within them like foul water that is dammed up and stagnant. They might examine their thoughts and intentions and discover these compulsions if they only knew what sins were.

A great many people who have settled on faith divorced from charity are like this. Since they believe that the law does not condemn them, they pay no attention to sins. They even doubt whether there are such things as sins. If there are, they are not sins in God's sight, because they have been pardoned.

Natural moralists are like this as well — people who believe that everything depends on our civic and moral life and its vigilance and nothing on divine providence. People are like this too who take great care to cultivate a reputation and a name for decency and honesty for the sake of position or profit. After death, though, people like this who have had no use for religion become spirits that embody their compulsions. They look absolutely human to themselves, but from a distance they look like images of Priapus * to others. They see everything in darkness and nothing in light, like owls.

(from Divine Providence 114-117)

* priapus - In Greek mythology, Priapus is a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia.