lest the divine of the Lord and the sanctity of the Word should be
profaned. The divine of the Lord is not profaned when salvation is placed
in these words: That God the Father may have mercy for the sake of the
Son, who suffered the Cross and made satisfaction for us. For men do not
then address the divine of the Lord but have in mind His human nature,
which they do not acknowledge to be divine. Nor do they profane the Word,
for they do not attend to the passages in which love, charity, deeds and
works are mentioned. All this, they say, is involved in the faith
expressed in the saying quoted. Those who confirm this tell themselves,
"The law does not condemn me, neither then does evil, and good does not
save because good done by me is not good." They are therefore like those
who do not know any truth from the Word and consequently cannot profane
it. Only those confirm the faith expressed in that saying who from
self-love are in the pride of their own intelligence. Nor are these
Christians at heart; they only desire to be looked on as such.
[3] It shall now be shown that the Lord's divine providence is
nevertheless acting constantly to save those with whom faith separated
from charity has become an article of religion. Although this faith has
become an article of their religion, by the Lord's divine providence each
knows that it is not faith that saves, but a life of charity with which
faith makes one. For all churches in which that religion is accepted also
teach that there is no salvation unless man examines himself, sees and
acknowledges his sins, repents, desists from them, and begins a new life.
This is read out with much zeal in the presence of all who come to the
Holy Supper. In addition they are told that unless they do so, they
mingle the holy with the profane and cast themselves into eternal
condemnation. Indeed, in England they are told that unless they do so the
devil will enter them as he did Judas and destroy them soul and body. It
is plain, then, that everyone in the churches in which faith alone is
accepted is nevertheless taught that evils are to be shunned as sins.
[4] Furthermore, everyone who is born a Christian is aware that evils are
to be shunned as sins because the Decalog is put into the hands of every
boy and girl and is taught by parents and teachers. The citizens of a
kingdom and especially the common people are examined by the priest on
the Decalog alone, which is recited from memory, for what they know of
the Christian religion, and are also admonished to do what is commanded
in it. At such times they are not told by the priest that they are not
under the yoke of that law, or that they cannot do what is commanded
because they cannot do anything good of themselves. Again, the Athanasian
Creed has been accepted throughout the Christian world and what is said
at its close is also acknowledged, namely, that the Lord will come to
judge the living and the dead, and then those who have done good will
enter everlasting life and those who have done evil will enter
everlasting fire.
[5] In Sweden, where the religion of faith alone has been received, it is
also plainly taught that faith is impossible apart from charity or good
works. This is pointed out in an Appendix on things to be remembered,
inserted in all copies of the Psalms, and called "Impediments or
Stumbling Blocks of the Impenitent" (Obotferdigas Foerhinder), where are
these words,
Those who are rich in good works thereby show that they are rich in
faith, because when faith is saving it acts through charity. For
justifying faith is never found alone and separate from good works, quite
as no good tree is without fruit, nor the sun without light and heat, nor
water without moisture.
[6] These items have been adduced to make known that although a religious
formula about faith alone has been accepted, nevertheless goods of
charity, which are good works, are taught everywhere and that this is by
the Lord's divine providence, lest the common people be led astray by the
formula. I have heard Luther, with whom I have spoken at times in the
spiritual world, execrate faith alone and heard him say that when he
established it he was warned by an angel of the Lord not to do it; but
that he thought to himself that if he did not reject works, separation
from Catholicism would not be accomplished. Therefore, contrary to the
warning, he established that faith.
259. _The merely natural man confirms himself against divine providence
in that there have been so many heresies in Christendom and still are,
such as Quakerism, Moravianism, Anabaptism, and more._ For he may think
to himself, If divine providence is universal in the least things and has
the salvation of all for its object, it would have seen to it that one
true religion should exist on the globe, not one divided and, still less,
one torn by heresies. But use reason and think more deeply if you can.
Can man be saved without being reformed first? For he is born into love
of self and the world, and as these loves do not have any love of God and
the neighbor in them except for the sake of self, he is also born into
evils of every kind. Is there love or mercy in those loves? Does the man
make anything of defrauding or defaming or hating another even to death,
or of committing adultery with his wife, or of being cruel to him out of
revenge, the while having the desire in mind to get the upper hand of all
and to possess the goods of all others, thus regarding others in
comparison with himself as insignificant and of little worth? To be
saved, must he not first be led away from these evils and thus be
reformed? As has been shown above in many places, this can be
accomplished only in accordance with many laws of divine providence. For
the most part these laws are unknown and yet they come of divine wisdom
and at the same time of divine love, and the Lord cannot act contrary to
them, for to do so would result in destroying man, not in saving him.
[2] Look over the laws which have been set forth, bring them together,
and you will see. According to those laws there is no direct influx from
heaven but one mediated by the Word, doctrine and preaching; and since
the Word, to be divine, had to be composed wholly in correspondences,
inevitably there are dissensions and heresies. The tolerance of them is
also in accord with the laws of divine providence. Furthermore, when the
church itself has taken for essentials what pertains only to the
understanding, that is, to doctrine, and not what pertains to the will,
that is, to life, and what pertains to life is not made the essentials of
a church, then man is in complete darkness for understanding and wanders
like one blind, striking against things constantly and falling into pits.
For the will must see in the understanding and not the understanding in
the will, or what is the same, the life and its love must lead the
understanding to think, speak and act, and not the reverse. Were the
reverse true, the understanding might out of an evil and even diabolical
love seize on what comes by the senses and demand that the will do it.
What has been said may show whence dissensions and heresies come.
[3] Yet it has been provided that everyone, in whatever heresy he may be
intellectually, may still be reformed and saved if he shuns evils as sins
and does not confirm heretical falsities in himself. For by shunning
evils as sins the will is reformed and through it the understanding is,
which emerges for the first time then out of obscurity into light. There
are three essentials of the church: acknowledgment of the divine of the
Lord, acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word, and the life which is
called charity. Everyone's faith is according to the life which is
charity; from the Word he has a rational perception of what life should
be; and from the Lord he has reformation and salvation. Had these three
been regarded as the church's essentials, intellectual differences would
not have divided it but only varied it as light varies colors in
beautiful objects and as various insignia of royalty give beauty to a
king's crown.
260. _The merely natural man confirms himself against divine providence
in that Judaism still continues._ That is, after all these centuries the
Jews have not been converted although they live among Christians and do
not, in keeping with prophecies in the Word, confess the Lord and
acknowledge Him to be the Messiah, who, as they think, was to lead them
back to the land of Canaan; but they steadfastly persist in denying Him
and yet it is well with them. Those who take this view, however, and thus
call divine providence in question, do not know that by Jews in the Word
all who are of the church and acknowledge the Lord are meant, and by the
land of Canaan, into which it is said that they are to be led, the Lord's
church is meant.
[2] But the Jews persist in denying the Lord because they are such that,
if they received and acknowledged the divine of the Lord and the holy
things of His church, they would profane them. Therefore the Lord said of
them:
He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not
see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted,
and I should heal them (Jn 12:40; Mt 13:14; Mk 4:12; Lu 8:10; Isa 6:9,
10).
It is said, "lest they should be converted, and I should heal them"
because if they had been converted and healed they would have committed
profanation, and according to the law of divine providence treated above
(nn. 221-233) no one is admitted interiorly into truths of faith and
goods of charity by the Lord except so far as he can be kept in them to
the close of life; were he admitted, he would profane what is holy.
[3] This nation has been preserved and dispersed over much of the earth
for the sake of the Word in its original language, which they hold more
sacred than Christians do. The Lord's divine is in every particular of
the Word, for it is divine truth joined with divine good coming from the
Lord. By it the Lord is united with the church, and heaven is present, as
was shown in _Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about Sacred Scripture_ (nn.
62-69). The Lord and heaven are present wherever the Word is read as
sacred. This is the end which divine providence has pursued in the
preservation and in the dispersal of the Jews over much of the world. On
the nature of their lot after death see _Continuation about the Last
Judgment and the Spiritual World_ (nn. 79-82).
261. These then are the objections listed above at n. 238 by which the
natural man confirms himself against divine providence, or may do so.
Still other objections, listed at n. 239, may serve the natural man for
arguments against divine providence; they may occur to the minds of
others, too, and excite doubts. They are the following.
262. _Doubt may be raised against divine providence in that the whole of
Christendom worships one God under three persons, that is, three Gods,
and has not known hitherto that God is one in person and in essence, in
whom is the Trinity, and that this God is the Lord._ One who reasons
about divine providence may ask, Are not three persons three Gods if each
person by himself is God? Who can think of it otherwise? In fact, who
does? Athanasius himself could not; therefore it is said in the Creed
which bears his name:
Although in Christian verity we ought to acknowledge each Person as God
and Lord, yet by Christian faith it is not allowable to affirm or to name
three Gods or three Lords.
This can only mean that we ought to acknowledge three Gods and Lords, but
it is not allowable to affirm or name three Gods and three Lords.
[2] Who can possibly have a perception of one God unless He is one in
person? If it is said that such a concept is possible if one thinks of
the three as having one essence, does one, indeed can one, have any other
idea than that they are thus of one mind and agree, and yet are three
Gods? Thinking more deeply, one asks oneself, How can the divine essence,
which is infinite, be divided? Further, how can divine essence from
eternity beget another and produce still another who proceeds from them
both? It may be said that it is to be believed and not thought about; but
who does not think about what he is told must be believed? How else can
there be any acknowledgment which in its essence is faith? Was it not
because of the concept of God as three persons that Socinianism and
Arianism arose, which prevail in the hearts of more persons than you
suppose? Belief in one God and that this God is the Lord makes the
church, for in Him is the divine trinity. The truth of this may be seen
in _Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about the Lord,_ from beginning to end.
[3] But what is thought of the Lord today? Is it not thought that He is
God and Man, God from Jehovah the Father of whom He was conceived and Man
from the Virgin Mary from whom He was born? Who thinks that God and Man
in Him, or His Divine and His Human, are one person, and are one as soul
and body are? Does anyone know this? Ask the learned in the church and
they will say that they have not known it. Yet it is part of the doctrine
of the church received throughout Christendom, as follows:
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; and although He is
God and Man yet there are not two, but there is one Christ. He is one
because the divine took to itself the human; indeed He is altogether one,
for He is one Person, since as soul and body make one man, so God and Man
is one Christ.
This comes from the Faith or Creed of Athanasius. The learned have not
known it because on reading this they have thought of the Lord not as God
but only as Man.
[4] When they are asked if they know from whom the Lord was conceived,
whether from God the Father or from His own Divine, they reply that He
was conceived from God the Father, for this is according to Scripture.
Are the Father and He not one then, like soul and body? Who can think
that He was conceived from two Divines, and if from His own that this was
His Father? If you ask them further what their idea of the Lord's Divine
and of His Human is, they will say that His Divine is from the essence of
the Father and His Human from the essence of His mother, and that His
Divine is with the Father. Then, when they are asked where His Human is,
they have no answer, for they separate His Divine and His Human in their
thinking and make His Divine equal to the Divine of the Father and His
Human like the human of another man, unaware that in doing this they
separate soul and body; nor do they see the flaw in this, that then a
rational man would have been born from a mother alone.
[5] As a result of the fixed idea that the Lord's humanity was like that
of another man, it has come about that a Christian can with difficulty be
led to think of a Divine Human, even when it is said that the Lord's soul
or life from conception was and is Jehovah Himself. Now sum up the
reasons and consider whether there is any other God of the universe than
the Lord alone, in whom is the Divine itself, Source of all, called the
Father; the Divine Human, called the Son; and the proceeding Divine,
called the Holy Spirit; and thus that God is one in person and essence,
and that this God is the Lord.
[6] You may persist and remark that the Lord Himself spoke of three in
Matthew:
Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (28:19).
But it is plain from the preceding verse and the one following that the
Lord said this in order to make it known that the Divine Trinity was in
Him, now glorified. For in the preceding verse He said that all power in
heaven and on earth was given Him, and in the following verse that He
would be with men to the end of the age, speaking of Himself alone and
not of three.
[7] Now, why did divine providence permit Christians to worship the one
God under three persons, that is, worship three Gods, and not know until
now that God is one in essence and person, in whom is the Trinity and
that this God is the Lord? Man and not the Lord was the cause. The Lord
had taught it plainly in His Word, as is clear from all the passages
cited in _Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about the Lord,_ and has also
taught it in the doctrine of all the churches, in which it is said that
His Divine and His Human are not two but one Person united like soul and
body.
[8] The first reason why men divided the Divine and the Human and made
the Divine equal to the Divine of Jehovah the Father and the Human equal
to the human of another man, was that the church after its rise fell away
into Babylonianism. This took to itself the Lord's divine power, and in
order that it should be called human and not divine power made the Lord's
human like that of another man. When later the church was reformed and
faith alone was received as the one means of salvation--faith that God the
Father has mercy for the sake of the Son--the Lord's Human could be viewed
in no other way. For no one can approach the Lord and acknowledge Him at
heart as God of heaven and earth unless he lives by His precepts. In the
spiritual world, where everyone is bound to speak as he thinks, no one
can so much as mention the name Jesus if he has not lived as a Christian
in the world; this is by divine providence lest His name be profaned.
263. To make what has just been said clearer I will add what was set
forth in _Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about the Lord_ (towards the end,
nn. 60, 61), which is as follows:
"That God and Man in the Lord, according to the Creed, are not two but
one Person, altogether one as soul and body are, appears clearly in many
sayings of the Lord, as that the Father and He are one; that all things
of the Father are His and all His the Father's; that He is in the Father
and the Father in Him; that all things are given into His hand; that He
has all power; that He is God of heaven and earth; that one who believes
on Him has eternal life; and that the wrath of God abides on one who does
not believe on Him; and further, that both the Divine and the Human were
taken up into heaven; and that as to both He sits at the right hand of
God, that is, is almighty; besides the numerous passages in the Word
about His Divine Human which were quoted abundantly above. They all
testify that God is one both in person and in essence, and in Him is the
Trinity, and that this God is the Lord.
[2] "These things about the Lord are published now for the first time
because it is foretold in the Apocalypse, chapters 21 and 22, that at the
end of the former church a new church is to be established in which this
will be the chief doctrine. This church is meant in those chapters by the
New Jerusalem into which only one who acknowledges the Lord alone as God
of heaven and earth can enter; this church is therefore called `the
Lamb's wife'. I can also report that all heaven acknowledges the Lord
alone and that one who does not is not admitted to heaven, for heaven is
heaven from the Lord. This very acknowledgment made in love and faith
causes men to be in the Lord and Lord in them, as He teaches in John:
In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in
you (14:20);
again in the same:
Abide in me, and I in you; ... I am the vine, and you are branches; he
who abides in me and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can
do nothing; unless a man abides in me, he is cast out (15:4-6, also
17:22, 23).
[3] "This has not been seen from the Word before, because if it had been,
it would not have been received. For the last judgment had not been
accomplished yet, and prior to it the power of hell prevailed over the
power of heaven. Man is in the midst between heaven and hell; had this
been seen before, therefore, the devil, that is, hell, would have plucked
it from men's hearts and furthermore would have profaned it. The
predominance of hell was completely broken by the last judgment which has
been accomplished now; since that judgment, thus today, every man who
wishes enlightenment and wisdom is able to have it."
264. _A doubt may be raised against divine providence in that it has been
unknown hitherto that in each particular of the Word there is a spiritual
meaning from which it has its holiness._ One may raise this doubt about
divine providence, asking, "why has this been revealed for the first time
now, and why has it been revealed through any one at all and not through
a church leader?" But it is at the Lord's good pleasure whether it should
be a leader or a leader's servant; He knows the one and the other.
However, that sense of the Word has not been disclosed before because
1. If it had been, the church would have profaned it and thereby profaned
the holiness itself of the Word. 2. Neither were the genuine truths, in
which the spiritual sense of the Word resides, revealed by the Lord until
the last judgment was accomplished, and a new church, meant by the Holy
Jerusalem, was about to be established by the Lord. These reasons will be
examined separately.
[2] 1. _The spiritual sense of the Word was not disclosed earlier because
if it had been, the church would have profaned it and thereby would have
profaned the holiness itself of the Word._ Not long after it was
established, the church was turned into Babylon, and later into
Philistia. Babylon acknowledges the Word, to be sure, and yet esteems it
lightly, asserting that the Holy Spirit inspires its own highest judgment
just as much as it did the prophets. They acknowledge the Word for the
vicarship founded on the Lord's words to Peter, but esteem it lightly
because it does not accord with their teaching. It is therefore taken
from the people also and hidden in monasteries where few read it. If,
therefore, the spiritual sense of the Word had been revealed, in which
the Lord is present together with all angelic wisdom, the Word would have
been profaned not only, as it is now, in its lowermost expression in the
sense of the letter, but in its inmosts, too.
[3] Philistia, by which faith separated from charity is meant, would have
profaned the spiritual sense of the Word also, because, as we have shown
before, it puts salvation in certain formulas which are to be thought and
spoken, and not in good works which are to be done. It thus makes saving
what is not saving and also removes the understanding from what is to be
believed. What would they do with the light in which the spiritual sense
of the Word is? Would that not be turned into darkness? When the natural
sense is, why not the spiritual sense? Does any one of them who has
confirmed himself in faith separate from charity and in justification by
this faith alone, want to know what good of life is, what love to the
Lord and towards the neighbor is, what charity is and what the goods of
charity are, what good works are and what it is to do them, or in fact
what faith is essentially and what genuine truth is, constituting it?
They compose volumes, establish in them only what they call faith, and
declare that all the things just mentioned are present in that faith. It
is clear from this that if the spiritual sense of the Word had been
revealed earlier, it would come to pass according to the Lord's words in
Matthew:
If your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then
the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness ( 6:23).
In the spiritual sense of the Word by "eye" the understanding is meant.
[4] 2. _Neither were the genuine truths in which the spiritual sense of
the Word resides, revealed by the Lord until after the last judgment was
accomplished, and a new church, meant by the Holy Jerusalem, was about to
be established by the Lord._ The Lord foretold in the Apocalypse that
after the last judgment was effected genuine truths were to be revealed,
a new church was to be established, and the spiritual sense of the Word
would be disclosed. In the small work, _The Last Judgment,_ and later in
the _Continuation_ of that work, it was shown that the last judgment has
been accomplished and that this is meant by the heaven and earth which
would pass away (Apoc 21:1). That genuine truths are then to be revealed
is foretold in these words in the Apocalypse:
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new
(11:5; also 19:17, 18; 21:18-21; 22:1, 2).