Merely Natural Understanding and Spiritual Understanding
By Rev. Paul Booth
Lessons: Psalm 139: 1-12 John 5:26; 11:25; 14:6 Divine Love and Wisdom 70
By Rev. Paul Booth
Lessons: Psalm 139: 1-12 John 5:26; 11:25; 14:6 Divine Love and Wisdom 70
There are two things proper to nature, space and time. From these in the natural world man forms the ideas of his thought, and thence his understanding. If he remains in these ideas, and does not raise his mind above them, he can never perceive anything spiritual and Divine; for he involves them in ideas which flow from space and time; and in proportion as he does this, the light - lumen - of his understanding becomes merely natural. (Divine Love and Wisdom 69)
We live in a natural world. Our understanding is derived from this natural world. However, that was not always the case. In the beginning a man's understanding was from the Lord God and was spiritual. It was perceived from within, from the Lord, and not from without, through the natural senses from the natural world. The people of the Most Ancient Church, before their expulsion from paradise - the Garden of Eden - while living in this natural world received understanding as angels do - of spiritual and Divine things - and as foreign as this sounds today these things were God's life with and within them. In fact, in the beauty of nature, as example, of the trees and of the many animals that they could see, they thought of the spiritual things that they represented, not of the object itself. In this way they had knowledge concerning God and, so, they acknowledged God in their lives and as there life.
In reading the Genesis account of mankind we learn that man was formed out of the dust of the ground and was given a soul and therefore, was given life. What we are speaking of here is man being formed into a vessel, into a receptacle 'as it were', in which the Lord God gave mankind His life and that we may have life. It doesn't take much to understand this, because God is Life and that Life is His Love and His Wisdom, and these in man constitute man' life, The things proper to man we know are nothing; they are void and emptiness, and without the things of God. Time and time again we hear this taught. Jesus Christ, our Lord, teaches us this. Now, let us learn what is proper to nature and what is proper to the spiritual world.
We need to know this, because things in nature form the ideas of our thought and in them are little, if any, spiritual truths revealed. While spiritual things from the thought of angels and from those who are spiritual, who are truly in the Lord's True Church, there are truths within revealed. The last, those who are in the True Church, are spiritual, though they live in this natural world. (You might think then how is this possible? You just have to think of the Most Ancient Church and you will understand how. If we accept the Word as the Truth, then we know that they had lived in the natural world as we do, but that their life was a spiritual and celestial life. So, today, a man can become spiritual and the thoughts he receives are spiritual, for the Lord - the Divine Human - has made this possible.)
Now the things proper to nature we learned from today's text are space and time. So, then let us learn of the differences between what is natural and what is spiritual with man. God, to all men, to be God, is Infinite and Eternal, and so, He is Divine. A simple question would be, 'Is God measurable'? The answer to this will show that He is the Uncreate and Infinite, and all that comes or proceeds from Him is created and finite. Now, the first that proceeds or flows 'as it were' from God is His Life or His Love and from Love there is Wisdom and within Wisdom there is Love. What we are speaking of here is the Esse and the Existere or what Is exists. You can understand then that these two love and wisdom are one. Aren't these things proper to God? Don't these proceed from God and are spiritual and even celestial things? These are the things that are proper to what is spiritual and they are the good and the truth that proceeds from God. Therefore, in the spiritual world where there is no space and time there is instead states of life. This is because the attributes of God are Love and Wisdom and they make Life. Good which is of love has relation to truth and truth has relation with wisdom and is seen as a marriage in the regenerated man.
In creating us the Lord gave us the understanding as a vessel of His Wisdom or Truth and a will as the vessel of His Love or His Goodness. In the natural world natural things form our understanding and those things appear in space and time. That being the case, then if we do not raise our thoughts above these natural things into understanding spiritual things, then, we will only know natural things and never spiritual things or the Divine. You can see then why God gave us His Word. And, we, in fact, then understand from natural light, which our text calls 'lumen' and our lesson calls an apparent truth. To continue in such thought brings one into naturalism, which is that our actions and our thoughts are from our natural instincts and eventually we come into the belief that the natural world is all that exists. It is obvious that thinking thus will never raise our thought to Heaven and to the Lord. Yet, it is possible for us to raise our thoughts above these natural ideas that flow into us through out senses; for there is contained within those natural thoughts what is spiritual. After all, we were created with both a natural and a spiritual body, and we have shown that in the beginning man could understand spiritually, even celestially. So, he could think above the properties of nature - space and time - and today, we may actually do so, although we easily fall back into natural thought, and this is because of our love of self, which is stronger than our love of the Lord.
Although we are in the ultimates of creation - the natural, sensuous, and the corporeal state of natural life - and are far from God, we can, if we will, rise up in our understanding to comprehend spiritual things and, thus, into a life as the angels live. Religion teaches that God is Omnipresent, though He is not in space and time. We have already said that He is Infinite, Eternal, and Uncreate. Nonetheless, a man can confirm this even while in his natural state. Thus, what is Divine is not in the things of nature, but are above them, and thus not in space and time.
When life in this world ends and we die, we put off the two properties of space and time. So, instead of living in natural light or from natural truths, which we learned are apparent truths, we begin to understand space as states of love and instead of time, we understand as states of wisdom that are in them. Thus, we are to look for the good that is within a person. In natural understanding are objects seen at a distance and 'as it were' flow into our understanding through our natural senses, though they appear at a distance. In spiritual understanding objects are understood spiritually as to their quality and the things proper to spiritual life we said was the good and truth proceeding from God. Thus, our life can be lived from the Lord's Love and Wisdom and this through our internal or spiritual senses as the Lord's Truth and His Good flows in from the Lord.
Thus it is that in the spiritual world the angel's objects of thought are truths and they are of his affections of good. While the objects of a man's thoughts in the natural world are only appearances of what is the truth and, unless on follows or obeys them, his affections that guide him will be only of self-love. One then thinks from these apparent truths that flow into us externally through our natural senses. This is not so in the spiritual world. Still the natural man can understand spiritual things when he acknowledges the correspondences revealed in the Word of the Divine Human. Objects in the spiritual world also do appear at a distance, but an angel's thoughts are not derived from them, instead the object is derives from his state of his life.
You may understand, then, that there is a vast difference between the thoughts of angels and of spiritual men with thoughts of the merely natural man. One, the natural man thinks of spiritual and Divine things from space and time. And two, the spiritual man and an angel thinks apart from space and time. A natural man sees with his natural eyes and he sees an object has length, breadth, height, and form. All these things inhere to the ideas of the natural man's thoughts, even non-visible things such as moral and civil things stick to his ideas. While an angel's thoughts have nothing in common with its form or its length, breadth or height, that is, with the object that fills spaces. His thoughts are all from the truth of his life. The object that he sees, indeed, appears as at a distance from him, however, as we have said, he does not think from them as the natural man does; he thinks from the Lord within, that is, from the goods and the truths and from his affections of them.
Now, this may sound strange and even seem incomprehensible, but consider that mankind had lived at one time in paradise and had spoken with God and necessarily with angles. We can read of these things in the Word in Arcana Coelestia. There, one learns about God and His attributes - Divine Love and Wisdom - and about the people of the Most Ancient Church who had perception, that is, who knew these things from within or spiritually even though they lived here in the natural world. We read how man saw the things of nature with his natural eyes - the earth and all its nature - but how his thought was not of them as it is today. When he looked upon the many things of nature, his thoughts was of what they represented spiritually, not of the thing itself; he could see what they signified. In this way he gained spiritual knowledge about God and Heaven and, so, was in delight and enjoyed life here on earth and was in paradise.
Today, because of their fall from paradise, because of their rejection of not wanting to receive the Lord's truth and good, this spiritual sight was closed to their posterity as our spiritual sight is closed. Now a man must come to understand through his external - through his natural sense - and, so, what is proper to nature - space and time - adheres to his thoughts. The object one sees, one learns of its natural meaning and not its spiritual significance, therefore, he does not learn of God and of Heaven, nor is his life spiritual and without falsities, but is natural and fallacies eventually become falsities and these adhere to his life.
We have shown that in the spiritual world and in Heaven that a spiritual man and an angel sees objects at some distance, and that this is only an appearance, and that his thoughts are spiritual just as were those if the Most Ancient Church. Here, we are speaking if a correspondence between natural objects and spiritual objects. In the one, the natural, a man learns apparent truths and forms his ideas. In the other, the spiritual, one has the truth - the good of truth - and his ideas are true. What the angels thinks is the truth, for he has the spiritual light of truth and this truth enlightens his understanding. He understands that the length of a thing relates to its good and by its breadth, he understands its truth. Thus, it is that the Lord flows into them directly into their understanding, which makes their understanding spiritual. While a natural person who does not understand correspondences between natural and spiritual things and does not understand the Lord's love or His wisdom or accept that He is Omnipresent.
This of course - the Lord's love and wisdom and that He is Omnipresent - is the fundamental thought concerning God. How could a man, who is without spiritual understanding retain and believe spiritual knowledge or any of these fundamental ideas of truth concerning God's creation of the universe, His Providence, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience? How can he understand these things if all his thought is derived only through external senses, for these retain things proper to the natural world - space and time? Thus, he would, in truth, also, retain the natural or the literal sense of the Word. This is because of his life's love. His life's love is his will. Thus, his will dissipates spiritual things in his thought. The outcome is that his understanding is immersed into natural light and the appearance of truth and so he thinks he is rational and when he denies spiritual things - love and wisdom, good and truth, and so, faith and charity - he is irrational.
Anyone who wishes can understand this from the truth that God is a Man. The Word readily teaches this. We are formed a man as is Heaven and all its parts. All thought comes from God. How else is it that thought impressed upon our understanding than in God's form - that of a Man? Genesis 1: 26, 27 tell that a man is made in God's image and His likeness. Again, we learn from the Word that God appeared to Abraham and other men as a Man. Then, we see that some of the ancients started to worship a plurality if gods. Thus, in Athens and Rome men worshipped them all as men. Also, the idea Christians have of God is that He is a Man.
Thus, it is that a man's thoughts of God is as a Man that began in truth, but ended in irrationality and eventually in denial unless his thoughts are raised into the spiritual world. A man's thought that flows from an object in space must be raised higher; his understanding must be of spiritual ideas that are the fundamental thoughts concerning the Lord that the Word teaches. The Lord fills all spaces apart from space, though the Lord as God Man does not fill them. And, thus it is that theology teaches that the Lord God is Omnipresence and that He hears and knows all things.
It is shown in religious history that the man of the Church all throughout history was waiting for God to come and redeem them. As we also know and believe He came, but He also has come again in a new Word that when accepted as the truth the many mysteries of faith are them opened and man's thoughts can be raised above his natural understanding into a new spiritual understanding.
Amen.
We live in a natural world. Our understanding is derived from this natural world. However, that was not always the case. In the beginning a man's understanding was from the Lord God and was spiritual. It was perceived from within, from the Lord, and not from without, through the natural senses from the natural world. The people of the Most Ancient Church, before their expulsion from paradise - the Garden of Eden - while living in this natural world received understanding as angels do - of spiritual and Divine things - and as foreign as this sounds today these things were God's life with and within them. In fact, in the beauty of nature, as example, of the trees and of the many animals that they could see, they thought of the spiritual things that they represented, not of the object itself. In this way they had knowledge concerning God and, so, they acknowledged God in their lives and as there life.
In reading the Genesis account of mankind we learn that man was formed out of the dust of the ground and was given a soul and therefore, was given life. What we are speaking of here is man being formed into a vessel, into a receptacle 'as it were', in which the Lord God gave mankind His life and that we may have life. It doesn't take much to understand this, because God is Life and that Life is His Love and His Wisdom, and these in man constitute man' life, The things proper to man we know are nothing; they are void and emptiness, and without the things of God. Time and time again we hear this taught. Jesus Christ, our Lord, teaches us this. Now, let us learn what is proper to nature and what is proper to the spiritual world.
We need to know this, because things in nature form the ideas of our thought and in them are little, if any, spiritual truths revealed. While spiritual things from the thought of angels and from those who are spiritual, who are truly in the Lord's True Church, there are truths within revealed. The last, those who are in the True Church, are spiritual, though they live in this natural world. (You might think then how is this possible? You just have to think of the Most Ancient Church and you will understand how. If we accept the Word as the Truth, then we know that they had lived in the natural world as we do, but that their life was a spiritual and celestial life. So, today, a man can become spiritual and the thoughts he receives are spiritual, for the Lord - the Divine Human - has made this possible.)
Now the things proper to nature we learned from today's text are space and time. So, then let us learn of the differences between what is natural and what is spiritual with man. God, to all men, to be God, is Infinite and Eternal, and so, He is Divine. A simple question would be, 'Is God measurable'? The answer to this will show that He is the Uncreate and Infinite, and all that comes or proceeds from Him is created and finite. Now, the first that proceeds or flows 'as it were' from God is His Life or His Love and from Love there is Wisdom and within Wisdom there is Love. What we are speaking of here is the Esse and the Existere or what Is exists. You can understand then that these two love and wisdom are one. Aren't these things proper to God? Don't these proceed from God and are spiritual and even celestial things? These are the things that are proper to what is spiritual and they are the good and the truth that proceeds from God. Therefore, in the spiritual world where there is no space and time there is instead states of life. This is because the attributes of God are Love and Wisdom and they make Life. Good which is of love has relation to truth and truth has relation with wisdom and is seen as a marriage in the regenerated man.
In creating us the Lord gave us the understanding as a vessel of His Wisdom or Truth and a will as the vessel of His Love or His Goodness. In the natural world natural things form our understanding and those things appear in space and time. That being the case, then if we do not raise our thoughts above these natural things into understanding spiritual things, then, we will only know natural things and never spiritual things or the Divine. You can see then why God gave us His Word. And, we, in fact, then understand from natural light, which our text calls 'lumen' and our lesson calls an apparent truth. To continue in such thought brings one into naturalism, which is that our actions and our thoughts are from our natural instincts and eventually we come into the belief that the natural world is all that exists. It is obvious that thinking thus will never raise our thought to Heaven and to the Lord. Yet, it is possible for us to raise our thoughts above these natural ideas that flow into us through out senses; for there is contained within those natural thoughts what is spiritual. After all, we were created with both a natural and a spiritual body, and we have shown that in the beginning man could understand spiritually, even celestially. So, he could think above the properties of nature - space and time - and today, we may actually do so, although we easily fall back into natural thought, and this is because of our love of self, which is stronger than our love of the Lord.
Although we are in the ultimates of creation - the natural, sensuous, and the corporeal state of natural life - and are far from God, we can, if we will, rise up in our understanding to comprehend spiritual things and, thus, into a life as the angels live. Religion teaches that God is Omnipresent, though He is not in space and time. We have already said that He is Infinite, Eternal, and Uncreate. Nonetheless, a man can confirm this even while in his natural state. Thus, what is Divine is not in the things of nature, but are above them, and thus not in space and time.
When life in this world ends and we die, we put off the two properties of space and time. So, instead of living in natural light or from natural truths, which we learned are apparent truths, we begin to understand space as states of love and instead of time, we understand as states of wisdom that are in them. Thus, we are to look for the good that is within a person. In natural understanding are objects seen at a distance and 'as it were' flow into our understanding through our natural senses, though they appear at a distance. In spiritual understanding objects are understood spiritually as to their quality and the things proper to spiritual life we said was the good and truth proceeding from God. Thus, our life can be lived from the Lord's Love and Wisdom and this through our internal or spiritual senses as the Lord's Truth and His Good flows in from the Lord.
Thus it is that in the spiritual world the angel's objects of thought are truths and they are of his affections of good. While the objects of a man's thoughts in the natural world are only appearances of what is the truth and, unless on follows or obeys them, his affections that guide him will be only of self-love. One then thinks from these apparent truths that flow into us externally through our natural senses. This is not so in the spiritual world. Still the natural man can understand spiritual things when he acknowledges the correspondences revealed in the Word of the Divine Human. Objects in the spiritual world also do appear at a distance, but an angel's thoughts are not derived from them, instead the object is derives from his state of his life.
You may understand, then, that there is a vast difference between the thoughts of angels and of spiritual men with thoughts of the merely natural man. One, the natural man thinks of spiritual and Divine things from space and time. And two, the spiritual man and an angel thinks apart from space and time. A natural man sees with his natural eyes and he sees an object has length, breadth, height, and form. All these things inhere to the ideas of the natural man's thoughts, even non-visible things such as moral and civil things stick to his ideas. While an angel's thoughts have nothing in common with its form or its length, breadth or height, that is, with the object that fills spaces. His thoughts are all from the truth of his life. The object that he sees, indeed, appears as at a distance from him, however, as we have said, he does not think from them as the natural man does; he thinks from the Lord within, that is, from the goods and the truths and from his affections of them.
Now, this may sound strange and even seem incomprehensible, but consider that mankind had lived at one time in paradise and had spoken with God and necessarily with angles. We can read of these things in the Word in Arcana Coelestia. There, one learns about God and His attributes - Divine Love and Wisdom - and about the people of the Most Ancient Church who had perception, that is, who knew these things from within or spiritually even though they lived here in the natural world. We read how man saw the things of nature with his natural eyes - the earth and all its nature - but how his thought was not of them as it is today. When he looked upon the many things of nature, his thoughts was of what they represented spiritually, not of the thing itself; he could see what they signified. In this way he gained spiritual knowledge about God and Heaven and, so, was in delight and enjoyed life here on earth and was in paradise.
Today, because of their fall from paradise, because of their rejection of not wanting to receive the Lord's truth and good, this spiritual sight was closed to their posterity as our spiritual sight is closed. Now a man must come to understand through his external - through his natural sense - and, so, what is proper to nature - space and time - adheres to his thoughts. The object one sees, one learns of its natural meaning and not its spiritual significance, therefore, he does not learn of God and of Heaven, nor is his life spiritual and without falsities, but is natural and fallacies eventually become falsities and these adhere to his life.
We have shown that in the spiritual world and in Heaven that a spiritual man and an angel sees objects at some distance, and that this is only an appearance, and that his thoughts are spiritual just as were those if the Most Ancient Church. Here, we are speaking if a correspondence between natural objects and spiritual objects. In the one, the natural, a man learns apparent truths and forms his ideas. In the other, the spiritual, one has the truth - the good of truth - and his ideas are true. What the angels thinks is the truth, for he has the spiritual light of truth and this truth enlightens his understanding. He understands that the length of a thing relates to its good and by its breadth, he understands its truth. Thus, it is that the Lord flows into them directly into their understanding, which makes their understanding spiritual. While a natural person who does not understand correspondences between natural and spiritual things and does not understand the Lord's love or His wisdom or accept that He is Omnipresent.
This of course - the Lord's love and wisdom and that He is Omnipresent - is the fundamental thought concerning God. How could a man, who is without spiritual understanding retain and believe spiritual knowledge or any of these fundamental ideas of truth concerning God's creation of the universe, His Providence, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience? How can he understand these things if all his thought is derived only through external senses, for these retain things proper to the natural world - space and time? Thus, he would, in truth, also, retain the natural or the literal sense of the Word. This is because of his life's love. His life's love is his will. Thus, his will dissipates spiritual things in his thought. The outcome is that his understanding is immersed into natural light and the appearance of truth and so he thinks he is rational and when he denies spiritual things - love and wisdom, good and truth, and so, faith and charity - he is irrational.
Anyone who wishes can understand this from the truth that God is a Man. The Word readily teaches this. We are formed a man as is Heaven and all its parts. All thought comes from God. How else is it that thought impressed upon our understanding than in God's form - that of a Man? Genesis 1: 26, 27 tell that a man is made in God's image and His likeness. Again, we learn from the Word that God appeared to Abraham and other men as a Man. Then, we see that some of the ancients started to worship a plurality if gods. Thus, in Athens and Rome men worshipped them all as men. Also, the idea Christians have of God is that He is a Man.
Thus, it is that a man's thoughts of God is as a Man that began in truth, but ended in irrationality and eventually in denial unless his thoughts are raised into the spiritual world. A man's thought that flows from an object in space must be raised higher; his understanding must be of spiritual ideas that are the fundamental thoughts concerning the Lord that the Word teaches. The Lord fills all spaces apart from space, though the Lord as God Man does not fill them. And, thus it is that theology teaches that the Lord God is Omnipresence and that He hears and knows all things.
It is shown in religious history that the man of the Church all throughout history was waiting for God to come and redeem them. As we also know and believe He came, but He also has come again in a new Word that when accepted as the truth the many mysteries of faith are them opened and man's thoughts can be raised above his natural understanding into a new spiritual understanding.
Amen.
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