Mankind: The Development of God's Presence - The Church - Part 1
By Rev. Paul Booth
By Rev. Paul Booth
Introduction - The study of times past can often be interesting. And it often can help to serve the present. History can become a great teacher. We can hope to learn from the mistakes of the past and try not to repeat them. However, can we or do we really change? Can we become better neighbors? I think we can, but, of course, it will take effort on our part.
This afternoon the talk is about history, but it is not about natural history; instead it is about the 'spiritual history' of mankind's development. You may know that I am from the Swedenborg Society and may wonder what does Emanuel Swedenborg have to say at 'Arts and culture 2002' event? The many valuable things that he has contributed to society are revealed in his religious writings. One such revelation is a spiritual historical account of mankind's progress. It is an account of man's development into a spiritual relationship with God. Now, this spiritual history cannot be seen in the literal sense of the Bible. What one reads and understands there is only the history of various peoples and nations. It is in the religious writings of Emanuel Swedenborg that this can be seen. Man's spiritual development is seen in five definite states that man must go through in order to reach a true spiritual relationship with his God.
The first state in man is called the 'celestial' and is primarily seen in the 'Most Ancient Church'. Swedenborg begins at the beginning of creation. From Swedenborg, we soon come realize that man's life begins in the celestial degree and is within and is from the Divine Itself. So, you can understand that any natural historical study will never reveal this Divine presence, and that all archeological discoveries will never reveal this beginning, though it very often reveals that there was and is a relationship between man and deity. In other words, man's life, to a great extent included worship, and so religion was and takes a large part of life. Thus, it is in the study of religion that one can discover what is beyond or within natural history and of the spiritual development of mankind. We, must therefore, look to God's Word; we need to believe that God, somehow, speaks to man, today, and that His truth enters our thoughts. And, today, those thoughts are derived through various religions, their teachings, their books, and with the Christian it largely comes from the Bible and from what man has been taught by others about God.
Swedenborg's writings teach that in man's creation, God made him a 'celestial' man and he had a natural body as you and I, but lived, as it was, directly from God. Now, what does this mean? Well, man had direct communication and conjunction with God; he knew what was truth and what was good from perception. He had an internal sense. This made him a completely different genius than what man is today. We, today, do not live from perception; we perceive through our natural senses; we have natural sight, hearing, feeling, and we have touch and taste. Our life comes from our external senses and it is through these that we can determine what is the truth and good. As such it is subjective. The relationship the celestial man had with God was immediate and his growth or development was spiritual and celestial. We can read that man was made into an image and likeness of God, for after all the purpose for creating man was so that he could come to enjoy God's delights - His attributes of love and wisdom and use. This we have come to call Heaven or being with God, enjoying God's presence. All these attributes or qualities proceed or flow from God 'as it were'. They not only created man, but sustain him as well. It is the basis for true life. That process we said began in and with the celestial of a man and proceeds to the spiritual of man and ends in the natural where he reaches a new state and where he is conjoined with God and Heaven.
The Celestial State - We begin with the spiritual development and with the Most Ancient Church. When the celestial man lived he spoke with God and angels. He was instructed by means of dreams and visions and when he thought about these things there was perception from God, and he perceived that the things on earth was alive and that what he saw was good. You could say his mind was made alive with God's love. God's attributes were within him life - His love with man was of man's will and his desire was to receive and to know God, to learn of His truth. He showed this in his love of God, and by wanting to know God through the understanding of things. These two qualities - love and wisdom - proceeded from God, entered man's mind - his will and understanding - and formed man into an image and after the likeness of God.
To further understand about the genius of the celestial man, the Good and Truth in him was united as one and not separated as they are with us today. Within God's Love or Good was Truth or Wisdom. One could say Love was a man's essence and Wisdom was his existence. This conjoining of God's Love and Wisdom with man E. Swedenborg calls the Church. So, the celestial man's mind was one, his will and understanding being united. Love was everything to him. Even his faith was from God's love. From a purely natural sense he had inward or celestial respiration. Man had not developed naturally as we are today, and so, his external respiration or breathing was only tacit or silent.
You can understand this in this way. Imagine if you will what the breathing of an angel is. It cannot be described. However, we can understand that from our breathing we form sounds, which cause speech. So, it is that the Most Ancient man or Church had silent speech and he communicated by ideas of thought and, so had perception. Man seldom spoke by words. You could say, as an infant that receives its mother's love begins to grow and in time begins to speak. One comes to understand how man communicated with Heaven and the Lord. And, one sees that his life was from within from the Lord. He knew that truth came from good or from love, for what is good is true. In fact his faith was from that love. Today this is exactly opposite of our faith. Our faith comes from the truth that we learn.
What we learn from all this is that life comes from and is God's within man. So, in this way, one can say man is made as a vessel into which God's Love, in the form of Good and His Wisdom, in the form Truth, enters man. In the beginning the celestial man readily accepted God's love; he appropriates God's Good and His Truth. This, in him, was life - celestial and spiritual life - and in this way man was taught and lead. These goods and truths were inscribed within 'as it were' on man's hearts and minds, on his will and understanding. These men had cultivated into doctrine. Perhaps you can see this in the story of Adam being placed in the Garden of Eden and told to cultivate and care for it. Here, we are talking about a man's will and his understanding. Thus, the Garden of Eden or Paradise of the Celestial man was his mind, where goods and truths are planted and grow, where God's love and presence is known.
As was said, the celestial man had a natural body as you and I do. He could see earthly things with natural eyes, and from that, he thought of celestial and spiritual things, that is, of things of God and Heaven. Thus, it was that the Lord's love flowed into his will, that is, through an internal way from within him and not through an external way through the natural senses. Man had no need of a written Word or language. Truths were inscribed upon his will and understanding, that is, on his hearts and minds.
There was a process, an order, in which man became celestial. To help understand this, think of man's beginning as a vessel in which all things proper to God could enter, just as when an infant comes into the world and needs to be taught. He needs to learn everything from eating and speaking, to caring for himself. He is as an empty vessel. And, of course, what is put in 'as it were' forms the child; if it is good and the truth, the child is formed into an image of God; if it evil and false, he or she does not become an image of God. An infant, in time, in order to benefit, must use these goods and truths, for what is love if it is only known, and not used?
Now let us try to understand this process, this development, of man even further. God, like a child's parents, wants His child educated and brings to him all that is good and teaches him the truth, so that one day he will 'stand' 'as it were' on his own two feet and be able to support himself. So, in a way, God, like our parents, knows that this requires that man have, what is called, his own. This Swedenborg calls the proprium. It is what is one's possession or what is one's own. Said in another way, for one to become a man, that is, to grow up and develop intellectually and become wise, which is the ability not only to know good and the truth, but also to act from it. This proprium is what the celestial man lacked. He needed to develop, to grow 'as it were' into an adult. In other words, how does man become a true man made in God's image and likeness? In the days of Adam in the Garden of Eden God brings to him various animals for him to name. It is in this way that man was to learn his different natural affections. As the story goes, he could not find a 'help mate'. Thus, it is that we find God giving Adam Eve as a wife and we learn that marriage was instituted.
We see that man was to eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. He was to eat or appropriate, that is, to receive the goods and truths and, thus, to grow spiritually and celestially. In this, the Lord was to live within a man's will and understanding. So, his perception of love is seen coming from his will where God resides within. In the Word this is called the 'tree of lives'.
This afternoon the talk is about history, but it is not about natural history; instead it is about the 'spiritual history' of mankind's development. You may know that I am from the Swedenborg Society and may wonder what does Emanuel Swedenborg have to say at 'Arts and culture 2002' event? The many valuable things that he has contributed to society are revealed in his religious writings. One such revelation is a spiritual historical account of mankind's progress. It is an account of man's development into a spiritual relationship with God. Now, this spiritual history cannot be seen in the literal sense of the Bible. What one reads and understands there is only the history of various peoples and nations. It is in the religious writings of Emanuel Swedenborg that this can be seen. Man's spiritual development is seen in five definite states that man must go through in order to reach a true spiritual relationship with his God.
The first state in man is called the 'celestial' and is primarily seen in the 'Most Ancient Church'. Swedenborg begins at the beginning of creation. From Swedenborg, we soon come realize that man's life begins in the celestial degree and is within and is from the Divine Itself. So, you can understand that any natural historical study will never reveal this Divine presence, and that all archeological discoveries will never reveal this beginning, though it very often reveals that there was and is a relationship between man and deity. In other words, man's life, to a great extent included worship, and so religion was and takes a large part of life. Thus, it is in the study of religion that one can discover what is beyond or within natural history and of the spiritual development of mankind. We, must therefore, look to God's Word; we need to believe that God, somehow, speaks to man, today, and that His truth enters our thoughts. And, today, those thoughts are derived through various religions, their teachings, their books, and with the Christian it largely comes from the Bible and from what man has been taught by others about God.
Swedenborg's writings teach that in man's creation, God made him a 'celestial' man and he had a natural body as you and I, but lived, as it was, directly from God. Now, what does this mean? Well, man had direct communication and conjunction with God; he knew what was truth and what was good from perception. He had an internal sense. This made him a completely different genius than what man is today. We, today, do not live from perception; we perceive through our natural senses; we have natural sight, hearing, feeling, and we have touch and taste. Our life comes from our external senses and it is through these that we can determine what is the truth and good. As such it is subjective. The relationship the celestial man had with God was immediate and his growth or development was spiritual and celestial. We can read that man was made into an image and likeness of God, for after all the purpose for creating man was so that he could come to enjoy God's delights - His attributes of love and wisdom and use. This we have come to call Heaven or being with God, enjoying God's presence. All these attributes or qualities proceed or flow from God 'as it were'. They not only created man, but sustain him as well. It is the basis for true life. That process we said began in and with the celestial of a man and proceeds to the spiritual of man and ends in the natural where he reaches a new state and where he is conjoined with God and Heaven.
The Celestial State - We begin with the spiritual development and with the Most Ancient Church. When the celestial man lived he spoke with God and angels. He was instructed by means of dreams and visions and when he thought about these things there was perception from God, and he perceived that the things on earth was alive and that what he saw was good. You could say his mind was made alive with God's love. God's attributes were within him life - His love with man was of man's will and his desire was to receive and to know God, to learn of His truth. He showed this in his love of God, and by wanting to know God through the understanding of things. These two qualities - love and wisdom - proceeded from God, entered man's mind - his will and understanding - and formed man into an image and after the likeness of God.
To further understand about the genius of the celestial man, the Good and Truth in him was united as one and not separated as they are with us today. Within God's Love or Good was Truth or Wisdom. One could say Love was a man's essence and Wisdom was his existence. This conjoining of God's Love and Wisdom with man E. Swedenborg calls the Church. So, the celestial man's mind was one, his will and understanding being united. Love was everything to him. Even his faith was from God's love. From a purely natural sense he had inward or celestial respiration. Man had not developed naturally as we are today, and so, his external respiration or breathing was only tacit or silent.
You can understand this in this way. Imagine if you will what the breathing of an angel is. It cannot be described. However, we can understand that from our breathing we form sounds, which cause speech. So, it is that the Most Ancient man or Church had silent speech and he communicated by ideas of thought and, so had perception. Man seldom spoke by words. You could say, as an infant that receives its mother's love begins to grow and in time begins to speak. One comes to understand how man communicated with Heaven and the Lord. And, one sees that his life was from within from the Lord. He knew that truth came from good or from love, for what is good is true. In fact his faith was from that love. Today this is exactly opposite of our faith. Our faith comes from the truth that we learn.
What we learn from all this is that life comes from and is God's within man. So, in this way, one can say man is made as a vessel into which God's Love, in the form of Good and His Wisdom, in the form Truth, enters man. In the beginning the celestial man readily accepted God's love; he appropriates God's Good and His Truth. This, in him, was life - celestial and spiritual life - and in this way man was taught and lead. These goods and truths were inscribed within 'as it were' on man's hearts and minds, on his will and understanding. These men had cultivated into doctrine. Perhaps you can see this in the story of Adam being placed in the Garden of Eden and told to cultivate and care for it. Here, we are talking about a man's will and his understanding. Thus, the Garden of Eden or Paradise of the Celestial man was his mind, where goods and truths are planted and grow, where God's love and presence is known.
As was said, the celestial man had a natural body as you and I do. He could see earthly things with natural eyes, and from that, he thought of celestial and spiritual things, that is, of things of God and Heaven. Thus, it was that the Lord's love flowed into his will, that is, through an internal way from within him and not through an external way through the natural senses. Man had no need of a written Word or language. Truths were inscribed upon his will and understanding, that is, on his hearts and minds.
There was a process, an order, in which man became celestial. To help understand this, think of man's beginning as a vessel in which all things proper to God could enter, just as when an infant comes into the world and needs to be taught. He needs to learn everything from eating and speaking, to caring for himself. He is as an empty vessel. And, of course, what is put in 'as it were' forms the child; if it is good and the truth, the child is formed into an image of God; if it evil and false, he or she does not become an image of God. An infant, in time, in order to benefit, must use these goods and truths, for what is love if it is only known, and not used?
Now let us try to understand this process, this development, of man even further. God, like a child's parents, wants His child educated and brings to him all that is good and teaches him the truth, so that one day he will 'stand' 'as it were' on his own two feet and be able to support himself. So, in a way, God, like our parents, knows that this requires that man have, what is called, his own. This Swedenborg calls the proprium. It is what is one's possession or what is one's own. Said in another way, for one to become a man, that is, to grow up and develop intellectually and become wise, which is the ability not only to know good and the truth, but also to act from it. This proprium is what the celestial man lacked. He needed to develop, to grow 'as it were' into an adult. In other words, how does man become a true man made in God's image and likeness? In the days of Adam in the Garden of Eden God brings to him various animals for him to name. It is in this way that man was to learn his different natural affections. As the story goes, he could not find a 'help mate'. Thus, it is that we find God giving Adam Eve as a wife and we learn that marriage was instituted.
We see that man was to eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. He was to eat or appropriate, that is, to receive the goods and truths and, thus, to grow spiritually and celestially. In this, the Lord was to live within a man's will and understanding. So, his perception of love is seen coming from his will where God resides within. In the Word this is called the 'tree of lives'.