Part One
PART ONE. Problems in Today’s World and Their Solution
The Doubting Thomas
If we are to make the First and Great Commandment —to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength—the center of our life, the first question is, Who is God? For if we do not know who He is, we certainly cannot love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
When the Lord appeared to Thomas, after His resur¬rection, Thomas said, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28.) Thomas is called “the doubting Thomas,” yet Thomas was the only one of the Apostles who called Jesus “my Lord and my God.”
To these words of Thomas, Jesus replied, “Thomas, be¬cause thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (John 20:29.)
It is important not only to know, if possible, who our Lord and God is, but also to know the nature, attributes, or qualities of God. A false idea of God necessarily leads to a false idea of man, and, vice versa, a false idea of man leads to a false idea of God, and this, to a false idea of life.
A man who was speaking to one of a certain religion in a distant land asked him why he was honest while so many of his co-religionists were not. The other replied that in their religions the gods often did dishonest things, and that they saw no reason for being more honest than their gods. As to the question why he was honest, he replied only that he liked honesty. Many in Christian churches think God has human weaknesses, such as becoming angry, chang¬ing His mind, loving praise for its own sake, and showing special favors to some when solicited to do so by those close to Him. This subject will be set forth more fully in a later section of this book. A man can become an image of God if he has a living faith and desire, but he can strive intelligently toward this goal only if he has a clear idea of God and His relation to man—something which few have.
If the Gospels are a true account, Jesus said He was God, yet relatively few in Christian lands, particularly rela¬tively few Protestants, believe this. If it is denied that the Lord is God, then it is evident that the account given in the Gospels is inaccurate, and that the Bible is not the Word of God. Most who do not believe that the Lord is God do not believe that the Lord was born of a virgin, that He was resurrected as to the body, or that he performed miracles. If the account of the Lard’s life given in the Bible is so in¬accurate as to the facts and some of the teachings, how can one know what is true or what is not true in Christian teach¬ing? One person in this case guesses this is true and another that; one more and another less. Christianity is reduced to mere opinions or guesses, and there is no faith, no clear see¬ing of the truth. If the Gospels are true, Jesus is the light, as He said: “I am the light of the world.” But if all of re¬ligion is guesswork, where is the light? Do not men then walk in darkness? Christianity then becomes not a religion, but a supposition that there are certain moral and social principles, any of which may be questioned. There is no re¬semblance between such an idea of Christianity and the faith of the early Christians as expressed by the early Chris¬tian fathers. Such an idea of Christianity cannot properly be called Christian, for similar moral and social principles were held by the Stoics and are held by Buddhists, Confucians, and others
Why It Is Difficult to Believe That Jesus Is God
It is difficult for modern man to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is God. Let us consider some of these difficulties and how they ca-n be met.
The first reason given for not believing is, as some say, “How is it possible, if we consider the size of the universe with its millions of galaxies, to believe that a man who lived on the little speck we call our earth is the God of the uni¬verse?” If we regard this question from a materialistic point of view, that is, from a spatial point of view, it does indeed appear impossible; but if we view it from the point of view of spirit, it does not appear impossible. The universe we live in is a marvelous thing, but the mind of man, which can marvel at the universe and to a degree comprehend it, is much more marvelous than the material universe itself; for the whole material universe is relatively insignificant spirit¬ually as compared to the mind of man.
What could be more marvelous than that man, in spite of the small size of his brain compared to the universe, can choose what he will do, can change and modify not only his environment, but also his character or mind, and can dis¬cipline himself? This is the greatest of marvels, which no science can explain.
Has Creation a Purpose?
Either the universe was created for the sake of man, or it really makes no sense. What sense would a lifeless uni¬verse make? Certainly a lifeless universe would have no purpose that could possibly be conceived; and if the uni¬verse has no sense or purpose, we cannot conceive of a God Who would create such a useless thing. Nor would a universe which contained animals make much more sense. Either God created the universe in order that there might be men and women whom He could love and who could know and love Him in return, or the whole of creation is meaningless. There can be nothing which does not have some source; there can be no activity of which there is not a source. This applies to the material realm as well as to the mental. If there were no electrons as a source, there could be no elec¬tricity. If there were no source of life, of love, and of wis¬dom, there could be no life, no love, and no wisdom. To think that a dead mechanical force is the source of life, of love, and of wisdom is absurd. Indeed, life, to be intelligible to us, must be united to an organic form. In recent times it has been dis¬covered that heredity, which gives the characteristics to living forms, is based on certain molecules, called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and that these molecules are ordered in a remarkable chain. The materialist thinks that if he can understand the composition and order of these molecules, he will know what life is. But molecules are not life. The mole¬cules upon which life is based are indeed remarkable, but it is still more wonderful that such molecules exist in creation. Is it not absurd to think that such molecules exist by mere chance, and that the whole of creation is a thing of chance? Suppose that civilization were wiped out by bombs, except for a few primitive people, and that these, as they explored, came to discover books. The books to them would appear mere pieces of paper, having on them certain shapes we call letters, consisting of a few straight and curved lines put together in different ways. Later, if they ever learned to read, would they not be astonished? The whole of the mind of a Shakespeare, even the mind of God as revealed in the Bible, is in these few letters composed of a few lines. Yet these lines are not the mind of Shakespeare, and still less are they the Divine Mind. Again, if we play a phonograph record, we may be moved to tears by the words or by the song, or we may be affected by the profundity of the thought expressed; yet the record is nothing but a wiggly line on wax. Although the mind is dependent on the brain as a book is dependent on paper, ink, and letters, the mind is no more the organic form than the wisdom in a book is the letters.
How Can We Know God?
If we can see that the purpose of creation is a world of men and women who can be loved by God and who can know Him and love Him, we come to the next step. How can we know God? We cannot comprehend or contemplate infinite love and wisdom as it is in itself. As the Lord said: “No man hath seen God at any time.” (John 1:18.) We can indeed see that there is an Infinite Source of all things, but that is all. If, therefore, the purpose of creation is that we may fulfill the First and Great Commandment, to love the Lord our God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, the Lord must reveal Himself to man. That is, God must clothe Himself and accommodate Himself to man in such a way that man can have some idea of Him.
God Willed to Be Conjoined With Man
The Lord said: “That they all may be one: as thou. Fa¬ther, art in Me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: … I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.” (John 17:21, 23.)
It is the nature of love to give itself to others. It is the very nature of the Divine Love to give its life, its love, and its wisdom to man. If man reciprocates the Lord’s love, then the Lord conjoins Himself to man and man to the Lord.
Between the Divine, called the Father, and the Human, called the Son, there was a perfect union, so that the Human was not only a receptacle of life but became the very Divine life, and thus became God. As the Lord said: “I am the resurrection and the life.” (John 11:25.) “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6.) Man can never become life itself, for if he did he would be a god. But man can re¬ceive the life of love and faith from the Lord. As the Lord cannot give the life of Divine Love and Wisdom to man, to be man’s own and thus to enable him to become a god, and as the Lord longs to communicate His love and wisdom to man, out of His love He gives His love and wisdom to man, so that man may feel it entirely as if it were his own; al¬though man should then acknowledge that he has nothing that is not given him from the Lord out of heaven. If man receives the life of love and wisdom from the Lord, and acknowledges that it is the Lord’s in him, then the Lord is conjoined with man in the love and wisdom that man has received from the Lord. Then are fulfilled the words of the Lord, “I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.” (John 17:23.)
Pride and Conceit
The first reason why man does not believe that Jesus is God is, as we have indicated, that man thinks materially about creation; he does not understand the purpose of cre¬ation ; he does not see how we can know God; and he does not realize that God wills the conjunction of Himself with man and of man with Himself.
The second reason for not believing that Jesus Christ is our Lord and God is pride, conceit, or ambition. We read in the Psalms, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” (Psalm 53:1.) Most people imagine that their opin¬ions are the result of their thinking. They think they have come to their conclusions from an objective viewing of the questions under consideration, but in this they often de¬ceive themselves. Most form their opinions from a subjective point of view, that is, from their desires or loves, or from wishful thinking. A proud, conceited, vain, ambitious man may think he believes in God because he belongs to a church which is large and powerful, and the power of the church is reflected upon him. Another may think he believes in God because the church he belongs to has a high intellectual standing; its leaders are learned and highly educated, and its members have a higher than average social standing. Is it not obvious that such a faith or belief is not a real faith or belief in God?
A proud and conceited man feels no aversion to believ¬ing in an invisible and unknowable something which he may call God, a God who is something behind the order of cre¬ation, a God who is not a Divine Man of Infinite love and wisdom. When in the Psalms it says, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,” it does not refer to an inhuman God, a God of mere energy, or the source of the order of the physical universe. Many fools believe in such a God, which in reality is no God. When it says, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,” the fool is more often a highly learned man who has made quite a reputation for himself as an intellectual.
The reason why a proud, conceited, and vain man does not like to believe in a God who is a Divine Man of Infinite love and wisdom is that such a belief demands submission, obedience, a humbling of oneself before such a God; and this the vain and proud man does not like. This aversion or dis¬like becomes still greater when he is faced with the idea that the Infinite God of love and wisdom descended and clothed Himself with a human nature in the world in order to approach and save mankind. This is the real reason why so many so-called Christians do not believe in their hearts the words Jesus used when Thomas said to Him, “My Lord and my God”: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (John 20:28, 29.)
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” (John 8:12.) “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19.)
As we have said, the primary evil of the world, which causes men to deny in their hearts that Jesus Christ is their Lord and their God, is the love of self, pride, and vanity. Pride cannot fall before the Lord Jesus Christ saying, “My Lord and my God.”
A proud man wishes in his heart to be above all, yea, even, if it were possible, to be God Himself. Such a man feels himself the supreme thing in the universe. Man ap¬pears to be the supreme thing of the universe, and a proud man wants to be the supreme man; he does not like the idea of a God-Man infinitely above him. Such a one may feel no aversion to acknowledging a so-called God which is an impersonal force within nature, for as a man he can feel in a sense superior to this; but to bow down to a God who is an Infinite Man, this his pride prevents him from doing. He then invents many arguments to confirm his aversion and finally ends up by believing that he has come to his negative conclusion from an objective point of view. Not having a pure and humble heart, he cannot see God; for we read, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8), and, being unable to see God, he concludes that there is no Infinite Divine Man who can make Himself visible to man by clothing His Infinite in an appearance that man can see, know, love, and obey.
If one thinks of “the ground of being,” or some such entity which may be called God, in place of “Our Father who art in Heaven,” can one love such an entity with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, with all one’s mind, and with all one’s strength? And if those of the church begin to make the First and Great Commandment of no effect by their traditions, what of Christianity is left?
The Lord said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3,4.) No one who does not humble himself as a little child can really say from the heart, “My Lord and my God.”
Innocence and Sophistication
But what is it to become as a little child? It does not mean to become childish, nor even naive, although such may appear naive to the sophisticated. To become as a little child is to become wise, not stupid. To become sophisticated is to become stupid.
In the Writings of Swedenborg it is said that to become again a little child is to come to a state of innocence, and a state of innocence is to acknowledge from the heart that we are dependent on the Lord as a child feels dependent on his parents; and that a child is in the innocence of igno¬rance, but a wise man is in the innocence of wisdom. The innocence of wisdom consists in acknowledging that, apart from the influx of love and wisdom from the Lord, we have no love, wisdom, or spiritual life, and that what we know compared to what we do not know is like a cup of water to the ocean. A wise man therefore acknowledges his great ignorance and is in humility although he knows more than others.
In the modern world, for the most part, sophistication has taken the place of wisdom. Men are even proud of being called sophisticated; and not knowing what wisdom is, they think that there is no other alternative to being sophisticated than to be naive or credulous. Especially the learned are apt to be sophisticated, for their pride is in their great learn¬ing. Great learning can be of service to the wise; but for the most part the learned, on account of their pride in their learning, seldom become wise, but only sophisticated. A learned man can become a wise child beyond others if he overcomes the conceit of his own intelligence.
The sophisticated man cannot comprehend and cannot but despise such words of the Lord as “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7), and “Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child.” (Luke 18:17.)
Observe how in all things of life the sophisticated say, like the witches in Macbeth, that “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” calling evil things good and good things evil. For example, many learned critics in the arts call the ugly, the clever, or the sick by the name of art, and the beautiful they call sentimental or “corny.” It is indeed true that most reli¬gious art of the past century or two, and most popular art which the superficial art lovers call beautiful, is of no value, but it is not so bad as the sophisticated, perverse, and ugly that is today called art.
The sophisticated tend to hide their real feelings behind high-sounding words; but in the arts the real spirit of the age appears, just as the expression of a man’s face often reveals more than his words.
The arts are a most reliable sign of the times, revealing the spirit of the age. If anyone doubts the reality of hell, he needs only to regard what is called modern in all the arts in order to be convinced.
To illustrate the above, consider the comment on a paint¬ing by Picasso reproduced in a museum bulletin and here also reproduced: “Picasso was a man of extraordinary hu¬manity.” One having any sensitivity would agree that to paint one’s wife and children as Picasso did in this picture is diabolically inhuman and cruel, having nothing to do with “humanity.” This is obvious; but a similar sophistication in other fields, particularly theology and philosophy, although equally present, may not be so obvious.
Not only in all the arts but also in religious literature much of the popular things remind one of honey sweetened with saccharin, whereas most of the highly sophisticated productions appear to be made for people with plastic hearts and electronic brains, and to have been produced by the same, the difference being that the production of computers is more orderly and useful and never offends one’s intelli¬gence or sensibilities.
The sophisticated have gained the dominant power not only in theological schools, but in most of the leading uni¬versities, art schools, magazines, and museums and in the government, so that one scarcely finds a proportion of one wise man to twenty sophisticated persons in places of promi¬nence or power.
The sophisticated, by continually repeating clever argu¬ments to prove that the ugly is beautiful and the false is true, have succeeded in either brainwashing a large part of the general public into accepting the ugly as art or intim¬idating them into saying or even believing that they do not understand the insanities which the sophisticated praise so highly.
The sophisticated continually repeat the statement that the great artists were not understood or recognized for a long time, as if this were the one thing in the history of art that is most important. But they do not emphasize that it was the highly sophisticated establishments—those who were considered the most learned, the leading critics, the so-called experts—who refused to recognize the great art¬ists, and instead set up false idols for the people to follow and thus misled them. Part of the public was more fre¬quently right in their judgment than were the experts, the renowned critics. The great artists were first recognized, as a rule, by those who were not considered experts in the arts.
That this is true in other fields is evident. The Messiah, who was expected, was first recognized by fishermen. It was the Sophists who were instrumental in forcing Socrates to drink hemlock.
It was not only the church, but the leading learned socie¬ties and universities, who opposed Copernicus and Galileo. Francis Bacon, considered the most learned man of his day and the father of the scientific method, and who has been called the first modern man, opposed the Copernican idea that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the planets revolve around it. I have read that Harvard Uni¬versity one hundred years after the publication of the papers of Copernicus was still contending in favor of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, namely, that the heavenly bodies were circling the earth.
The sophisticated may say, yes, all this may be true, but times have changed, and we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. This reminds us of what the Lord said: “Ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto your¬selves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.” (Matthew 23:29-32.)
Atheists and Agnostics
In this essay by “atheists” we mean those who firmly maintain that there is no God. By “agnostics” we mean those who do not know whether there is a God or a life after death, and who do not know whether there is such a thing as inspiration from heaven, and consequently do not see clearly, or for certain, truths which are above the plane of that which can be scientifically demonstrated.
The atheist maintains his position of atheism on the grounds that, on the basis of sensual experience or scientific evidence, it cannot be proved that there is a God; but his position is illogical and irrational, for it is equally true that on the basis of sensual experience or scientific evidence it cannot be proved that there is not a God.
In the created universe there are things which are or¬derly, useful, and beautiful and others which are disorderly, harmful, and ugly. As to men and women, there are some who are noble, good, and truthful and others who are ig¬noble, wicked, and liars. It appears to us axiomatic that everything must have an origin. What is the origin of the noble, the good, and the truthful, if there is no God? And what is the origin of the ignoble, the wicked, and the un¬truthful, if man has not free choice that enables him to pervert order?
The atheist and the agnostic usually maintain that those who have a faith in God, in the Word of God, and in life after death, especially if they are ministers, hold their faith out of bias or prejudice, and with respect to this we would agree that they are often right; but we maintain that the atheist and the agnostic are even more strongly affected in their thinking by prejudice and bias.
First as to the bias of those who claim to have faith. With many, what is called faith is merely habit acquired from childhood and its environment. If one’s faith is merely such, and he becomes a minister or religious teacher, his so-called faith is strengthened by the self-interest of his profession.
Many have a blind faith, based on emotional reaction to the environment in which they have been brought up, particularly in relation to their parents and those by whom they have been taught. Such faith in childhood has its use;
but if it is carried on into life, instead of becoming an adult one comes immediately into a premature spiritual dotage, which is something entirely different from what the Lord meant when he said, “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:3.) The child which a man is again to become is a wise child, and it is not meant that he should become childish in the ordinary sense of the word. Socrates, according to our idea, is an example of a man who in his old age becomes a wise child. In the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, faith is defined as the seeing of truth in spir¬itual lig-ht or in the light of heaven, and to come to such a light involves an independent struggle.
As to the bias of the atheist and agnostic, whereas some men, out of an emotional blind clinging to the things of their childhood, maintain a kind of faith, others, because of various circumstances and their emotional reactions thereto, become rebellious. This emotional rebelliousness with some takes the form of atheism or agnosticism. Still others, who have been brought up in an atheistic or agnostic atmosphere and therefore cling to atheism or agnosticism out of childish habit just as those brought up in a religious atmosphere cling to the things of their early belief, if they are active in an atheistical movement have their negative faith strength¬ened by self-interest.
This is most obviously the case with communism, which is a kind of negative religion. In the communistic environ¬ment, if one considers the possibility of God, he is considered a heretic. It is evident that the atheism of communism is the result of an irrational emotionalism, as is clear from the writings of Karl Marx, although, like the emotional Christian, the emotional atheist and agnostic bring forth reasonings to support their position. The Writings of Swe-denborg describe an argument in the other world between a group of ministers and a group of politicians: the ministers argued that all things which occur are the result of Divine Providence, and the politicians argued that all things are the result of mere human prudence. Both groups were then told to change their clothes, the ministers putting on the garments of the politicians and the politicians, the garments of the ministers. (“Garments” stands for the external atti¬tude; here, the attitude of a function.) The ministers then argued in favor of human prudence and the politicians in favor of Divine Providence. This about-face would not have taken place if the ministers had loved the truth more than the honors which came to them as a result of their pro¬fession.
Some accept atheism or agnosticism because they wish to give free rein to their desires, apart from any restraint of conscience. Others become agnostics or atheists because they see so many so-called Christians live hypocritical lives —going to church and putting on an appearance of piety, whereas in business and sexual conduct they are worse than those of many who make little pretense of having any faith. Such judge from a narrow, personal point of view and not from a regard for whether the thing is in itself true.
In America the irrationality of atheism is apparent, and atheists are relatively few in number, but agnosticism is widespread. There is a certain truth in the idea that man should become agnostic as defined at the commencement of this chapter; for until a man feels his ignorance, he cannot learn in such a way as to become independent, or, what is the same, he cannot become spiritually an adult but, like a child, remains dependent on others for his thinking. This kind of agnostic is rare.
If a man realizes that he has no clear idea of what he believes and is aware of his ignorance and lack of indepen¬dent thinking in regard to matters of faith, if he is a real man, he will search for the truth—or at least will strive to see whether truth is discoverable.
Most confirmed agnostics strongly maintain that truth above the plane of the scientific, or truth which is not de¬monstrable on the basis of physical sensation, cannot be ascertained. Some might admit that certain moral principles are beyond doubt. For example, there is a small section of the human race which regards head-hunting as a normal activity, yet there are very few who are not certain, beyond any doubt, that head-hunting is an abnormality. But when it comes to the things of God, many so-called agnostics firmly maintain that such knowledge is unobtainable and tend to regard those who are certain of such knowledge as arrogant, and to resent such an atitude of certainty. In this they are inconsistent, for, if they were agnostic in the sense of not knowing, and if they maintain, as most do, that a man has a right to his opinion and may possibly be right, then if they were logical, they would admit that another might see clearly and certainly a thing which they themselves could not see. A man who is blind and at the same time is envious and resentful because he cannot see, and thus lacks the abilities of others, might prefer to have all other men blind so that they would not be superior to him¬self. If there is a spiritual light and yet many, being spir¬itually blind, cannot see spiritual things, if they are both vain and blind, they bitterly resent the possibility that oth¬ers can see clearly the things which to them are in the dark. Such emotional resentment is manifested by most confirmed agnostics, a fact which shows that agnosticism with them has become a kind of negative faith; for, if they were open-minded agnostics, they would acknowledge without resent¬ment that another could see and be in a light which they do not have. As they claim to be agnostics, and still firmly maintain this negative belief, their position is contradictory and illogical. That this is so is evident from the posi¬tion they commonly take. They say that everyone has a right to his opinion; they admit that the one having faith may be right and they may be wrong, but they demand that the one having faith also should admit that he might be wrong. The fallacy of this argument will be illustrated by the following.
A blind man, if it could not be physically proved that he could not see, might say to one who had normal sight that he would admit that he was blind and the other could see provided the one who could see would admit the possi¬bility that he might be blind. And because the one who could see would not admit that he might be blind, the blind man would accuse him of narrow-mindedness, prejudice, and arrogance.
Anyone who refuses to consider the possibility that there can take place a spiritual enlightenment by which a man can be certain of the spiritual verities he sees, as clearly and certainly as a man sees objects with his bodily eyes, is not an open-minded agnostic but a narrow-minded dogmatist.
Every intelligent man is in favor of progress; but many who call themselves progressive mistake change for prog¬ress. The modern, the up-to-date, they consider an improve¬ment on the past. History teaches that civilizations rise and decline. When a civilization is rising, those called progres¬sive are more apt to be right; when a civilization is declin¬ing, the conservatives are more apt to be right; but few have the judgment to know when a civilization is rising or when it is declining. Much so-called progress is a delusion, tempo¬rarily appearing to be an advance but in the long run hasten¬ing a decline.
Those who tore out one of the famous twelfth-century windows in Chartres Cathedral and replaced it with an or¬nate fifteenth-century window undoubtedly did this in the name of progress.
A wise man never accepts the name of a conservative or a progressive. He looks for what is genuine in the present and in the past, and he is opposed to the false, the counter¬feit, whether it be in the present or in the past. As the Lord said: “Every scribe instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven is likened unto a man . . . that bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” (Matthew 13:52.) But few have the judgment to know whether a thing is a treasure or a counterfeit. Especially are those belonging to what is called the “establishment” nearly always wrong.
Further Reason for Obscurity as to Who Jesus Was
As we have said, modern man for the most part is so sophisticated that it is difficult for him to believe that Jesus Christ is God. Some believe that Jesus is the Son of God;
as Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16.) As long as Jesus was living among His disciples as a man, they could not believe fully in Him as God; and there was a certain truthfulness in this attitude, for, as long as He was in the world, Jesus had two natures, one from His Divine conception and the other inherited from Mary. It was only after He was fully glorified or made Di¬vine and had put off all merely human limitations from His maternal heredity that Thomas could rightly call Him “my Lord and my God.”
Another reason why modern man finds it difficult to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked on earth with man, is God, is that such an idea is totally contrary to the prevailing modern atmosphere of thought. Let us consider further why this is so.
The first reason is that modern education and the think¬ing it engenders have been concentrated on the sciences— have been preoccupied with things of the material world, those things that a man knows by means of the five senses of the body and the deductions therefrom. From this point of view, the universe is immensely great and man is an insignificant part of it. But, as we have said, what would all the marvels of creation amount to if there were not a man who could marvel?
In recent years many thinkers have given more emphasis to the human—to man and his subjective mind—as the all-important existing thing. The world of the mind is a world above time and space, above all scientific knowledge which comes by means of the five senses of the body. A man can be conscious of and reflect on this wonderful world of the mind; and it is only out of this world of the mind that he can reflect upon the world around him of which he is made aware by the five bodily senses.
Whereas the developing and ordering of the mind for the reception of the love and wisdom of God are the end in view, and this requires a reflection on the mind itself, such reflection is not possible apart from objective truth which is outside us. God has therefore given us a revelation in His Word as objective truth. Yet the objective truth of the Word of God becomes a living thing in man only as he works with it, applies it to his life, reflects on it in his mind and struggles to order it.
The existentialists for the most part, in placing the em¬phasis on the subjective, have gone to the opposite extreme from the materialists and do not see the importance of the objective Word of God.
If we think scientifically of God, we think of Him as the order or origin of the material universe, an unknown something or a thing of reasoned conclusions, but not as a Divine Person—as our Father who is in heaven. If we turn away from the idea of God as a philosophical-scientific idea, a thing of mere reason, to the idea of a Divine Person, we may come into the opposite danger of thinking of God as a limited human being on a throne out in an unknown region. As was said above, many of those called “fundamentalists” think of Him as having merely human emotions, such as in becoming angry or changing His mind, or as creating men for the sake of His own glory—and there are passages in the Bible which, if not genuinely understood, present such an appearance.
On the other hand, we can think of God as being an Infi¬nite Divine Mind, having Infinite Love and Wisdom, a God who is above time, space, or change of state. Love and wis¬dom are the human itself above the plane of time and space; as they exist in the material universe, they are the human form itself which is clothed with a body. As is said in the Writings of Swedenborg, the true idea of God is to think of Him as “Divine Love in Human form.” If we are to love God, we must think of Him as a Divine man appearing in Human form; yet we must not think of Him as being large, or small, or as being here or there in space; God is not material. He dwells in the Kingdom of Heaven, which may be within us, a Kingdom which, like the mind, is not bounded by the things of space which pertain to the material world. If we think of God in this way, we can understand that man can become an image and likeness of God.
Again, the body is an image of the soul on a lower plane, the plane of space and matter. The body is soul and mind clothed with a material covering which serves it for life in this world. Everything of the body corresponds to something of the soul: the smile of the face corresponds to the joy of the mind, the sight of the body corresponds to the sight of the mind, the ear of the body to the hearing of the mind, the sense of touch to the feeling of the mind, the hands and feet to the practical working of the mind, the heart to the love of the mind, the lungs to the thinking, and so with everything of the body. If we see the material world and the body of man as having their source in the Divine things of God and as phenomena of the Kingdom of Heaven brought down to the plane of space and fixed matter, it is not so difficult to see that God Himself could take on a body in the world by birth, if in accordance with His Divine Love and Wisdom there was a reason for doing so. Such an idea is con¬trary to a materialist’s idea of reason, but it is not contrary to enlightened human reason—a reason of the spirit elevated above all material things.
Why God Became Incarnate
If a king were the ruler of a province at a great distance, he might rule it by dictating to scribes, who would send letters to the governors of the province. But if the province were to come into such great disorder that it was in danger of being destroyed or overrun by enemies, the king would go himself to save the province and to establish law and order.
If there is a God of Infinite Love and Wisdom, when the writings He gave to mankind to guide them were insufficient for their salvation, could He do otherwise than come to them to save them?
A man with common sense can see that God could not do otherwise. But the sophisticated, who lack and often de¬spise common sense, can never see this.
The reason for the Lord’s coming into the world was this, that from His Love He desired to be conjoined with those in the human race, and because the human race had removed itself so far from the influx of the Divine Itself that they could no longer be saved. He took on a Human nature by birth in the world and made it purely Divine in order that He might accommodate and again conjoin Him¬self with those in the human race in their fallen state, if they would receive Him.
The teaching that the Lord Jesus Christ is God is also in agreement with the teaching of the Gospels and the prophets, for we read that not only did the Lord bless the man who called Him “my Lord and my God,” but He said:
“I and My Father are one” (John 10:30) ; and when Philip asked Him to show them the Father, He said: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; … I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.” (John 14:9, 1!.) John said of Jesus Christ, “This is the true God, and eternal life.” (I John 5:20.) And Paul wrote, “In him [Jesus Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bod¬ily.” (Colossians 2:9.)
The Old Testament plainly teaches that Jehovah was to come as the Savior. In the Prophets we read: “And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is Jehovah; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.^ (Isaiah 25:9.) “The voice of him that crieth in the wilder¬ness, Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. . . . Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand.” (Isaiah 40: 3, 10.)
There are many passages in the Prophets which say that God is one, that there is no God beside Jehovah, that Jehovah would become the Savior and Redeemer, and that there is no Savior and Redeemer besides Jehovah.
All the creeds of the early Christian church say that Jesus Christ is Lord and God.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, in his book Go To Heaven, points out forcibly that if the account given in the Bible of the life of Christ is the truth, then if Jesus was not God but only man, He could not have been a good man but was the worst of impostors and utterly arrogant in claiming to be something which He was not.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, a prominent Jewish writer on religious topics, in God in Search of Man says that the Jewish leaders were so against Jesus primarily because He made Himself God. This is in agreement with the Gospel:
Jesus said: I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones … to stone Him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father:
for which of these works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. (John 10:30-33.)
There is no greater blasphemy possible than for a man to make himself God. Wherefore, if Jesus was not God, then the Jews were right in their accusation.
Three Possibilities for an Idea as to Who Jesus Was
There are only three possibilities: (1) Jesus Christ is our Lord and God, “Jehovah come in strength”; or (2) Jesus was a blasphemer who, as the Jews said, being a man, made himself God; or (3) the Bible is a totally unreliable and falsified book which gives a false picture of the life of Jesus, or in any case is so unreliable that we can have no certain idea of what Jesus was like or of what He said.
If the latter case is true, then the Christian religion is a temple with a foundation of sand; everyone with such an idea thinks according to his own opinion, and one’s own opinion takes the place of faith. This lack of faith in the Bible is what causes the faith of so many Christians to be weak. By this we do not mean that faith should be a blind faith, based merely on the authority of men. A living faith is a spiritual seeing that a thing is true; a man believes it because he sees clearly that it is true. But to see in the light of heaven that a thing of faith is true requires a right attitude of mind and heart. As we read in the Ten Blessings, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8.)
In contrast we read in the Psalms, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” (Psalm 14:1.)
To see God and to see the Word of God, one must be sin¬cere and modest, shun evil, and do good. The vain man, the proud, the sophisticated, is the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God,” or, “There is no Word of God,” which amounts to the same thing. He says this from his heart, not primarily from his thinking, for he does not want the Word of God. If he believed in the Word of God as Divine Revelation, it would hurt his pride, vanity, and feeling of superiority; he would have to humble himself. He therefore eagerly searches out and finds ingenious arguments to prove that the Bible is not the Word of God and presents them as if they were scientific proofs. He poses as a man who views religious questions objectively, whereas his denials and his arguments against the Word of God come forth from the proudness of his heart.
The sincere man, however, although he may at first be in doubt and troubled by many things he reads in the Bible which appear unreasonable or unjust, keeps an open mind. He acknowledges that there may be an explanation which will make the matter clear and dissipate his doubts; he has a feeling that God, if He loves man, must desire to reveal Himself to man. Such earnestly seek for the truth. They are not, however, like those who so pride themselves on being seekers for the truth that they would be disappointed if they ever found the truth (for this would hurt the proud seekers’ feeling of superiority in being seekers after truth). There are many such persons who would never recognize the truth if they found it, for they are blinded by the feeling of their own self-importance.
God Is Ever Seeking Man
Man can seek God because God is seeking man; the Lord stands at the door and knocks. “But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to wor¬ship him.” (John 4:23.)
On the other hand, we read: “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” (Psalm 10:4.) It is not man’s intel¬lectual limitations which prevent him from finding the Divine Truth in which God manifests Himself, but the pride of man’s stony heart, man’s love of himself, with its conceit, which blinds him to God and to His Word. This is man’s primary sin which hides the presence of God in His Word from him.
As said in Isaiah: “Behold, Jehovah’s hand is not short¬ened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you.” (Isaiah 59:1,2.)
Every man by his very nature loves himself in the first place, and from this love wishes in his heart to be as God, knowing from himself good and evil. He does not want a Divine Human God above himself, before whom he is to kneel and bow down. He does not want a Divine Revelation of the Word of God. If, therefore, a man is really to seek God where He can be found, it is not in the first place an intellectual question, but it is a matter of wrestling with one’s own pride and the conceit of one’s own intelligence, for it is these that hide the face of God, and no seeking after God will enable man to find Him as long as these hide His face.
If a man does not find his Lord and his God, he ascribes this to his understanding and not to the real cause, namely, that not having a pure heart, he cannot see God—he cannot find Him.
Adam and Eve, the Serpent and the Cherubim
As we shall explain more fully in a later chapter of this book, the Old Testament treats of the history of man—both the spiritual history of mankind and the spiritual develop¬ment of the individual—and, in the supreme sense, the life of our Lord while on earth, to the extent that the things of His Spirit are concerned. The first eleven chapters of Gene¬sis are not an historical account of persons, but a represen¬tative or symbolic description of the spiritual development of the Ancient Churches. This is explained fully in the Arcana Coelestia, by Emanuel Swedenborg.
The third chapter of Genesis describes the fall of the first church on earth.
The fall had its origin in the serpent. The serpent stands for trust in the bodily senses and for thinking out of such a trust—thus, for scientific or philosophic thinking about the truth of faith. Scientific and philosophic thinking on its own plane is in order; but when one tries to think of God, and the Word of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, from a philosophy based on the sensing of the things of the material universe, this is a different thing. If one’s faith is founded on the evidences of the bodily senses, one comes easily first into doubt and finally to a denial of the Kingdom of Heaven, both a denial of the Kingdom of Heaven within one and the Kingdom of Heaven that one enters through the portal of death. One who trusts more in the philosophy based on reasonings from things in the material world than in Divine Revelation is deceived by the serpent. The woman in this chapter stands for one’s own will, the desire to be independent, to know truth from one’s self and not be dependent on the influx and revelation from God;
the desire to be like God—knowing good and evil, to be independent of the Word of God and independent of enlight¬enment from God; in a word, to trust in one’s self. As we read in the Arcana Coelestia by Emanuel Swedenborg, “Who have a stronger belief that their eyes are opened and that as God they know good and evil, than those who love them¬selves, and at the same time excel in worldly learning? and yet who are more blind?” (Number 206.)
The man to whom the woman gave the fruit stands for the rational faculty. The man who in the conceit of his own intelligence trusts solely to his rational faculty, more than anyone else thinks that he views all things objectively. But in this he greatly deceives himself, for it is his ambition and conceit that govern his rational thinking and cause him to come to the conclusions he arrives at; then, after confirming it by many rational considerations, he believes the conclu¬sion to be the result of viewing the matter objectively, whereas in fact it is the result of his wishful thinking.
The tree of life stands for the perception that a man receives his life from God—not only his life in general, but especially the life ‘of his love and wisdom. The tree of the science (usually translated “knowledge”) of good and evil is the feeling that man can know what is good and evil by means of the bodily senses—by science or philosophy apart from the Word of God and apart from inspiration from God.
It is the nature of self-love and its conceit not to believe anything it cannot apprehend by the bodily senses, science, or philosophy, and it is this love of self which persuades the rational faculty to agree with its desires.
In explication of the words, “The serpent was more subtle than any wild animal of the field which Jehovah God had made,” we read in the Arcana Coelestia by Emanuel Swedenborg as follows:
A desire to investigate the mysteries of faith by sensuous and scientific things was not only the cause of the fall of the Most Ancient Church, but is also the cause of the fall of every church, for hence come not only falsities, but also evils of life. (Number 127.)
In ancient times those were called serpents who had more confidence in sensuous things than in revealed ones. But it is still worse at the present day, for now there are persons who not only disbelieve everything they do not see and feel, but also confirm themselves in such incredulity by sciences unknown to the ancients, and thus occasion in themselves a far greater degree of blindness. In order that it may be known how these blind themselves, so as afterwards to see and know nothing, who form their conclusions concerning heav¬enly matters from the things of sense, science, and philosophy, and who are not only “deaf serpents” but also the “flying serpents” frequently spoken of in the Word, which are much more pernicious, we will take as an example what they believe about the spirit. The sen¬sual man, or he who believes only in the evidence of his senses, denies the existence of the spirit because he cannot see it, saying, “It is nothing because I do not feel it; that which I see and touch I know exists.” The man of science, or he who forms his conclusions from the sciences, says, “What is the spirit, except perhaps vapor or heat, or some other entity of science that pres¬ently vanishes into thin air? Have not the animals also a body, senses and something analogous to reason? and yet it is asserted that these will die, while the spirit of man will live.” Thus they deny the existence of the spirit. Philosophers also, who would be more acute than the rest of mankind, speak of the spirit in terms which they themselves do not understand, for they dispute about them. . . . All who reason from the things of sense, science, and philosophy, deny the existence of the spirit, and therefore believe nothing of what is said about the spirit and spiritual things. Not so the simple in heart; if they are questioned about the existence of spirit, they say they know it exists, because the Lord has said they will live after death; thus instead of extinguishing their rational they vivify it by the Word of the Lord. (Num¬ber 196.)
It may be observed that all things which God created, including the serpent, were at first good. The bodily senses are good and useful, the sciences are good and useful, the love of self, if it serves and does not rule in man, is good and useful, and the rational faculty is good and useful. Thus it is said that all that God created was very good. Evil has its origin in this, that what is lower begins to rule over what is higher. For example, all the bodily appetites which man is born with are good; but when man makes his life to consist in the gratification of bodily appetites and neglects that which is nobler, he falls into evil.
Why God Permits Evil
It is often wondered: Why, if He is omnipotent, did God permit evil to arise in the world? The answer to this question is as follows. God wishes above all else to have those He can love and who, out of free choice, love Him in return. If man were not free to choose to love or not to love, he would not be man; a compelled love is not a genuine human love’— it is scarcely even an animal love. Therefore, because He loved mankind, God necessarily had to let man choose, first between what was higher and what was lower—between what was more noble and what was less noble. It was owing to man’s choosing the less noble that evil arose. God looks in the first place to the preservation of man’s freedom, in¬cluding his freedom of choice, for He prefers having evil men and devils to having automatons, compelled to love Him. He also turns all evil to some useful purpose, just as dung and urine are used to fertilize the soil. Anyone who reflects rejoices that this is so; for who would wish to be compelled to love? Who would wish to be without freedom of choice? Who does not feel that a compulsory love of God and his neighbor is an inhuman and worthless love? It is therefore the first law of the Divine Providence that man shall be held in a free state, and that he shall be free to choose between faith in God and faith solely in himself; between loving- the Word of God and the Kingdom of Heaven above all else and loving his own intelli¬gence, his own will, and the things of this world above all else. This is the reason why the Word of God is written in such a way as not to compel belief, but is of such a nature that those who desire to believe can find reasons for their faith, and those who do not desire to believe can find reasons in favor of their doubts or denials.
By choosing to trust in their own intelligence rather than in the Word of God, men were cast out of Paradise— that is, they could no longer perceive that which the Lord called the Kingdom of Heaven within man—and cherubim were set to guard the way of the tree of life.
The Cherubim
The cherubim are guards which prevent men from enter¬ing into the arcana, the inner truths of faith, from their own intelligence. It is the spirit of truth proceeding from the Lord that enlightens man and gives him to see clearly the inner truth in the Word of God.
If man desires to enter into the mysteries or secret things of faith from himself and his own intelligence, and not from the Lord Who is the door, he is led away by bodily and earthly loves, represented by the “flame of a sword turning itself.” This is of the mercy of the Lord, for if a man were to enter the inner truth of the Kingdom of God out of self-love and its conceit, he would profane it, and his later state would be worse than his former state. As the Lord said:
“For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted and I should heal them.” (Matthew 13:15.)
Not that the Lord does not will to convert all, but that he would prevent those who are converted, but not with their whole heart, from later turning away and profaning the holy truths of the Kingdom of God.
The cherubim are also guards in the letter of the Word of God which prevent the unprepared from entering into the inner sanctuary of truth. There are many things in the letter of the Word which are “hard sayings,” many things which cause those who do not penetrate to the things of the spirit to say to themselves, “How can this be the Word of God?”
These guards are of the mercy of the Lord lest those entering without a wedding garment should violate the holy things within. The Word of the Lord is therefore written in such a way that those who are not enlightened from heaven say, “How can this be the
FROM THE AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
A Greek fragment experssing the tenderness of a sister’s love for her baby brother
(In the chapel of the Lord’s New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania)
Bus of Egyptian woman, Eighteenth dynasty
An Egyptian princess of the Eighteenth Dynasty
A Greek Tanagra (terra cotta), ca.third centure B.C.
Word of God?” For there are many things in the letter which appear not only unim¬portant, but also unworthy of God’s Word; and so it is that the spirit of the Word “is hidden from the wise and prudent” in the things of this world and is revealed to babes—that is, to those who are in innocence.
Our Lord called Himself the door, the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Stone which the builders rejected. It is this door which admits to Paradise, or, what is the same, into the Kingdom of Heaven which is within man. There are also guards or cherubim, which hide the Divinity of the Lord from the sophisticated, lest, seeing, they should pro¬fane.
The Lord said: “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth shall pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise Pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:18.)
The teaching of the Lord was therefore that He would ful¬fill every least thing of every letter of the Old Testament:
thus the Old Testament as to every least thing is the Word of God. The sophisticated either do not believe the words of the Lord quoted above or do not believe that the Lord said them.
In a column by Louis Cassels in various newspapers we read under the title “Protestant Split”:
Protestantism is heading into the sharpest theologi¬cal controversy since the fundamentalist-modernist clash of the 1920’s.
The issue is whether the Christian message needs to be radically recast to make it plausible to modern man.
Among those calling for drastic overhaul of the conceptual package in which the Gospel is presented are theologians Rudolf Bultmann in Germany and Paul Tillich in the United States.
Their views have been given wide circulation by English Bishop John A. T. Robinson in his book. Honest to God, and Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike of Cali¬fornia in his book, A Time for Christian Candor.
Robinson contends that many educated people today reject Christianity “because they cannot accept certain traditional beliefs which were really the envelope in which the message was sent, rather than the message itself.” Pike agrees.
The solution, says the California Bishop, is to “re¬think and restate the unchanging Gospel in terms which are relevant to our day and meaningful to the people we would have hear it.”
Few theologians or church leaders would argue with that objective. The point in dispute is how far the church can go in “restating” the Gospel before it finds itself offering something besides authentic Christianity.
The Bultmann-Tillich-Robinson-Pike school is not in agreement on which parts of the New Testament are to be retained as “kernel” and which may be jet¬tisoned as out-of-date “husk.”
But there is a tacit understanding among most of the reinterpreters that any Biblical account of a physi¬cal miracle must automatically be labeled mythical. Even the supreme miracle which gave birth to the church—the Resurrection—is regarded as a subjective experience of the disciples rather than an objective historical event.
There also is a general tendency to move away from the concept of a personal God toward more abstract and impersonal terminology, such as Tillich’s “Ground of Being.”
The “New Theology” remains Christian at least in the sense of asserting that God is revealed to men uniquely and supremely in the life of Jesus Christ. But this belief is often expressed in language which sug¬gests that Jesus was a man who was so good and un¬selfish that God’s love shone through his humanity, rather than in Biblical terms of the Word of God be¬coming flesh and dwelling among men.
But critics are now saying that the reinterpreters have gone too far in the attempt to “demythologize” the New Testament and that they have needlessly aban¬doned many things which are both historically credible and essential to Christian faith.
The giant of European theology. Dr. Karl Barth, makes no secret of his feeling that the demythologizers have thrown out the baby with the bath water. There may be no scandal in a “modernized” Christianity which has no place for a personal God, an incarnation or a resurrection; but there’s not much hope in it, either.
On this side of the Atlantic, also, theologians and church leaders are beginning to voice concern about attempts to reduce the Christian gospel to an inoffen¬sive proclamation that Jesus was a nice man. Dr. Roland Mushat Frye, writing in the scholarly journal Theology Today, said that the greatest threat to contemporary Christianity comes from “pseudo-sophisticates” so eager to accommodate the Gospel to the presuppositions of modern culture that they have emptied it of all “distinctively Christian content.”
As soon as we deny the words of the Lord concerning the Scriptures, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18), the “baby” is already thrown out with the bath water. A baby or little child stands for innocence.
To the modern sophisticated theologian may we not ap¬ply the words of the Lord: “Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” (Matthew 11:25.)
But lest we should fall into the other extreme of naivete and over-credulousness, the Lord also said: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16.)
As various writers have said, some ministers use double talk, that is, they speak in such a way about the Lord that the sophisticated understand it in one way and the unso¬phisticated in another, giving the impression to the sophis¬ticated that they look on Jesus as an exceptional man, and to the unsophisticated that they see him as the Son of God. Such dishonesty is common.
Although for a Christian, faith in the Lord as his Lord and God and in the Bible as the Word of God is the only door, still every man, including the Gentile, is admitted into the Kingdom of Heaven if he chooses to look to God, as best he can according to the light he has, and lives the best he can according to his lights. For such have in their hearts a willingness to be instructed; and if they were in ignorance of the Lord and the Word of God when in the world, they gladly receive faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and God when instructed by the angels. But a Christian is faced with this choice here on earth; and if he rejects the blessing promised to those who say to the Lord Jesus Christ, “My Lord and my God,” and confirms this rejection out of the hardness of his heart, he will not listen to the angelic in¬structors.
The Two Gates
It is the sophisticated who choose the broad way; it is those who are made wise by the spirit of God who choose the strait gate and the narrow way which leadeth unto life. (Matthew 7:14.)
There was a time when it was especially the learned who were sophisticated, but now the majority are more or less sophisticated and are proud of it.
In the work Heaven and Hell, by Swedenborg, we read:
The way that leads to heaven and the way that leads to hell were once represented to me. There was a broad way tending toward the left or to the north; and many spirits [those who had recently died] were seen going in it; but at a distance a large stone was seen where the broad way came to an end. From that stone two ways branched off, one to the left and one in the oppo¬site direction to the right. The way that went to the left was narrow or straitened, leading through the west to the south, and thus into the light of heaven; and the way leading to the right was broad and spacious, lead¬ing obliquely downwards towards hell. [The quarters referred to here are not spatial quarters, but indicate different states of mind, having to do with the path of life, which appear like spatial quarters.] All at first seemed to be going the same way until they came to the large stone at the head of the two ways. When they reached that point, they divided; the good turned to the left and entered the straitened way that led to heaven;
while the evil, not seeing the stone at the fork in the ways, fell upon it and were hurt; and when they rose up they ran on the broad way to the right which went down towards hell.
What all this meant was afterwards explained to me. The first way that was broad, wherein many good and evil went together and talked with each other as friends, because there v/as no visible difference between them, represented those who externally live alike hon¬estly and justly, and between whom seemingly there is no difference. The stone at the head of the two ways, . . . upon which the evil fell and from which they ran into the way leading to hell, represented the Divine truth, which is rejected by those who look towards hell; and in the highest sense, this stone signified the Lord’s Divine Human. But those who acknowledged the Divine truth and also the Divine of the Lord went by the way that led to heaven. By this again it was shown that in externals the evil lead the same kind of life as the good, or go the same way, that is, the one as readily as the other; and yet those who from the heart acknowledge the Divine, especially those within the church who ac¬knowledge the Divine of the Lord, are led to heaven;
while those who do not are led to hell. The thoughts of man which proceed from his intentions are repre¬sented in the other life by ways. (Number 534.)
Let us give an illustration of the above. A minister or priest serves his congregation, he labors long hours, he visits those who need his care, he conducts the services of the church with reverence, he preaches earnestly. Yet one min¬ister or priest has in view his own advancement, his popu¬larity, his desire to be liked by his congregation; in all his preaching and actions he is thinking of his own position or of increasing the prestige and wealth of his church, and thereby of himself. With his mouth he worships the Lord, but in his heart he worships himself.
Another minister or priest loves the truth in his heart. He prays to Jesus Christ, saying, “My Lord and my God,” and he has a feeling that the Lord Jesus Christ is the visible God, in whom is the invisible God as the body in which is the soul—the Father in the Son, as expressed in the Gospels. He loves the Lord with all his soul and heart, and he will gladly sacrifice position, wealth, popularity, success, and friendship, if it is necessary, to uphold the truth. He would rather die than be unfaithful to the truth.
Both the good and the evil minister may appear so simi¬lar in outward speech and act that few can distinguish the one from the other. This is the meaning of the words of the Lord: “Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.” (Matthew 7:22,23.) Note that the iniquity may be hidden in the heart so that it is recognized by scarcely anyone—and usually not by the man himself, who regards himself as honest and sincere. What is said above about a minister or priest applies in a different way also to the politician, the businessman, the professional man, and the laborer.
The Logos
We read in the first chapter of John: “In the beginning was the Word [Logos] and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.” Not as in the King James translation: “the Word was God.”
The Word or Logos evidently is the Divine Truth, for words, if they genuinely express anything, express the truth. God here is the Divine Love, for God is Infinite Divine Love. To express itself or communicate itself, love uses words, which are truths speaking. Truths, or thoughts which are of truth, are the manifestation of love or are love in a form accommodated to the one with whom one is communicating. Wherefore God was the Word; that is, Divine Truth is the Divine Love, going forth, or proceeding.
This Divine Truth proceeding went forth from the be¬ginning of creation; wherefore the Lord, Who was, as He said, “the Way, the truth, and the life,” declared: “Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58.)
As all things were made from Divine Love, by means of the Divine Wisdom, or, what is the same, from the Divine Good by means of the Divine Truth, it is said, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:3.) Now, although God in¬deed created the material universe from His Divine Love by means of His Divine Wisdom, the essential thing which God made is man and the spirit of man, material creation being only a means to this end. When therefore it says, “All things were made by Him,” it is especially the Kingdom of Heaven within man that is created from God’s love by means of His Divine Wisdom, the Divine Light or Logos. Where¬fore it is said, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.” (John 1:9,14.)
If we see that God is Divine Love Itself, and He wishes to communicate His Divine Love to man, and that to do this He must do so through the Divine Truth accommodated and clothed in such form that man can receive and recipro¬cate His love, the story of the incarnation, of the Lord as the Divine Truth becoming flesh, appears natural and rea¬sonable. But if we think materialistically or scientifically, we cannot accept such an idea.
As was stated above, the Word which was in the begin¬ning not only was the Divine Truth in the act of creating the world, but it is, moreover, the Divine Truth communi¬cated to man. Now, for Divine Truth to be communicated to man, it had to be spoken and written. As we shall show more fully in the latter part of this book, the Word of God, which is the Divine Truth, is contained in what is called the Bible.
The Lord said concerning the Scriptures, that is, the Law and the Prophets: “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:18.)
The internal or spirit of the Law and the Prophets was also represented by Moses and Elias as they were seen in vision with Jesus when He appeared on the mount in glory, while His face did shine as the sun. (Matthew 17:2,3.)
The Divine Truth in heaven and in the church, which was the Word or Logos, formed a Divine seed, from which the virgin Mary conceived.
If we think on the plane of the spirit, this miracle is not hard to believe, for if God from His Divine Love wished to clothe Himself with the seed of the Divine Truth and come to commune with men, this is no more incredible than the first creation of life, which is an event which, as far as science knows, has not occurred in hundreds of centuries.
The Negative Attitude
In spite of the statements in the New Testament that God was the Word that became flesh, that he who saw the Lord saw the Father, that He and the Father are one, that blessed are they who say to the Lord “my Lord and my God,” and He is the true God and eternal life (I John 5:20), there are those who say that the New Testament does not teach that Jesus Christ is God. Is it not evident that those who make such statements do not view what is written objec¬tively but with a desire to find what they wish to find, with a negative attitude toward faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal God? This negative attitude of the sophisticated, as we have said, exists because they do not desire to have a Divine Man, one who is God and Man, above themselves, for they themselves wish to be supreme.
Augustine
In this connection we shall quote the words of Augus¬tine:
That the Son is very God . . . They who have said that our Lord Jesus Christ is not very God or not within the Father the One and only God, are proved wrong by the plain and unanimous voice of the Divine testimo¬nies : as for instance, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” .. . He is not only God, but also very God. And the same John most expressively affirms this in his epistle: “For we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us understanding, that we may know the true God, and that we may be in His true Son Jesus Christ, He is the true God, and eternal life.” (Book I, 9.)
The equality of the trinity are intimate to our faith. But because on account of the incarnation of the Word of God for the working of our salvation, that the man Jesus Christ might be Mediator between God and man, many things are said in the Sacred books as to signify or even expressly declare, the Father to be greater than the Son, men have erred through a want of careful ex¬amination on the whole tenor of the Scripture, and have endeavored to transfer those things which are said of Jesus Christ according to the flesh, to that substance of His which is eternal before the incarnation and is eternal.
And not therefore without cause the Scripture says both the one and the other, both that the Son is equal to the Father, and that the Father is greater than the Son. For there is no confusion when the former is understood on account of the form of God, and the latter on account of the form of a servant . . . and in truth this rule for clearing the question through all the Sa¬cred Scripture is set forth in one chapter of the epistle of Paul when this distinction is commented to us plainly enough. For he says: “Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emp¬tied Himself, and took upon Himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men, and was found in the fashion of a man.” (Philippians 2:6,7.) For in the form of a servant He took, He is less than the Father, but in the form of God, in which He also was before He took the form of a servant, He is equal to the Father. (Book I, 14.)
Two States of the Lord While on Earth
The Lord Jesus Christ when in the world had two states, a state of Glorification, and a state of exinanition or pouring out of His soul. When in the state of Glorification, He said, “I and the Father are one. He that seeth Me seeth the Father, I am in My Father, and the Father is in Me”; but when in states of exinanition in which He underwent temp¬tation, He prayed to the Father as if separated from Him¬self. But now that He is fully glorified or made Divine, He is totally one with the Father as body and soul are one person. After His resurrection He said: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” (Matthew 28:18.) That is, He is now omnipotent in His power to save mankind. As He said, “I came forth from the Father, and … I leave the world, and go to the Father.” (John 16:28,30.) After the resurrection there can be no question of two persons. If we think of the Father and the Son as being two persons, we cannot help thinking that there are two or three Gods no matter how much we say with our mouths that there is one God.
Few now ever think about the Trinity. They feel an aversion to even considering the matter. It appears to most as old-fashioned to consider such matters of doctrine, and they regard the consideration of doctrine and creeds to be doctrinaire, abstract, and having no relation to life.
Such an idea is contrary to the attitude of the early Christians, and has come about with a decline of faith— especially with a decline of faith in the Bible as being the Word of God and a decline in the faith that the Lord Jesus Christ is God.
The Trinity
With this decline of faith no real heed is given to the First and Great Commandment: “The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength.”
If a man were not sure whether his father was one person or three, and he was uninterested in finding out or considering the matter, could it be said that the man loved his father? If a man were in such a predicament, would it not affect his life—his point of view? Would it not disturb him profoundly? The fact that so few are disturbed by not comprehending the Trinity in God indicates a great indiffer¬ence, a total concentration on the things of this world, and an irritation at even being asked to consider anything above this world. Is it this indifference that is not only the cause of a lack of spirituality, but also a cause of the decline of standards of morality and honesty, of the vulgarization of life that is so evident? Man, in considering himself to be essentially an animal, sinks lower than the animals.
Other- Worldliness
In the Middle Ages, other-worldliness was considered an ideal. The Kingdom of Heaven was considered the only thing of importance—at least theoretically; and the importance of life in this world was theoretically disregarded. This led to monasticism and contempt for pleasures. If we really believe in a life after death, we recognize that life in this world is scarcely a moment in comparison to eternal life, and therefore in itself is of relatively no importance. But if we regard life in this world as a school in preparation for eternal life, then it is of great importance. A school has little importance if it does not look to a life after leaving school. Yet a school which does not have its own delights and pleasures is not a good preparation for life afterward. All kinds of healthy delights, including pleas¬ures, are gifts of God and not to be despised. Yet things like wealth and bodily pleasures, including the appreciation of the arts, are of no use—are even a hindrance—if they are loved for their own sake and not for the sake of giving thanks to God and as of use for His praise and for showing forth the things of His Kingdom.
Bodily pleasures and worldly knowledge should not be despised or rejected, but still they should hold the lowest place of importance if man really believes in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The great fallacy of monasticism is that it is an escape, an attempt to find an easy way out of the struggle of life through placing oneself in a kind of prison, or army, in which one gives over one’s problems to one’s superiors and follows the commands and orders of others. This is a far easier thing to do than to lead a normal life, disciplining one’s mind to regard the things of this world as relatively insignificant in comparison to the things of the Kingdom of Heaven.
To acquire a spiritually well-disciplined normal natural life, as a servant to the ruling love of the Kingdom of Heaven, is a much more difficult thing than in a moment of enthusiasm to enter a monastery, and is therefore a better preparation for the Kingdom of Heaven. How many in their business—in their family and social life-.-place the eternal Kingdom of God in the first place?
Could God Become Angry?
In the Christian churches an idea of salvation grew up which is frequently called “medieval” theology. The idea is that God the Father became angry with the human race on account of the sin of Adam and Eve and placed a curse on the human race. The Son agreed to come on earth, took upon Himself the curse, and by dying upon the cross He satisfied the Divine Justice and propitiated the Father, so that the Father agreed to save those who had faith that the Son had died for their sins. Does this agree with the oft-repeated words, “For His mercy is for ever”? (Psalm 136.)
Many ministers nowadays have come to see that such an idea makes God the Father a cruel God. It can also be seen that no one can hold the idea that because of the Son’s suffering the Father forgave those who believed in the Son, and at the same time really think of God as one God instead of two or three Gods, no matter how much he may say with his mouth that there is one God.
In the orthodox idea the idea of justice also is totally distorted. Suppose that there was a man who had a servant who disobeyed him, and the man said that he would punish the servant,’ the servant’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and that the son of the man offered to take the punishment due to the servant upon himself, and the man then forgave the children, the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren as long as they believed that the son had appeased the man. Could anyone regard this as justice?
Has not this cruel idea of God something to do with the cruelties perpetrated by the church in the Middle Ages?
Why There Is a Hell
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in his book Go To Heaven, in speaking of the mercy of the Lord, says that the Lord for¬gives man as He commanded man to do: seventy times seven times; that He will forgive man every sin but one, namely, that of not loving the Lord. If a man said he would forgive another every evil he did, no matter how atrocious, except the sin of not loving him, everyone would agree that a man who took such an attitude was a supreme example of ego¬tism.
The truth is that the Lord is infinitely forgiving. There is nothing He does not forgive, for He is Mercy itself, He is Infinite Divine Love. How, then, is it that there is a hell?
Strange as it may sound, we cannot believe in a hell which is not in agreement with the Lord’s Infinite Love, Mercy, and Forgiveness. The Lord’s love is a love of man¬kind. As we have said, for there to be mankind, man must be free; for the Lord cannot love men who are not free and are therefore little more than robots. The Lord therefore loves man’s freedom above everything else. Now, if man is free, he can either love God and his neighbor, or he can love himself and the world in preference to God and the Kingdom of Heaven.
When a man dies, he has the same character he had while on earth—otherwise he would not be the same man. It is a law of the life after death that a man is among his like, where he naturally tends. Now hell is nothing but the gathering together of those who love themselves and their own pleasures more than God and their neighbor.
This is of the Mercy of the Lord, for were the good to be with the evil, the evil would harm or distress the good; and were the evil to be taken into heaven where all things of the heart manifestly appear, they would be in the greatest distress, for their ugliness would be manifest not only to others but also to themselves—just as hypocrites, or those with filthy minds, if their hypocrisy and filth become mani¬fest, cannot stand the company of the innocent and the chaste but flee away to their own kind. So the evil, when they approach heaven, flee away of their own accord; for they are far less unhappy in hell than they would be in heaven.
As to the punishments of hell, these the inhabitants in¬flict on each other; just like any society of egotists, they make each other miserable and come into conflict with one another.
As God is Love and Mercy itself, He moderates the pun¬ishment in hell as far as possible. As is stated in the Writ¬ings of Swedenborg, God does not permit any punishment more than is necessary to preserve a certain order in hell, and He gives even the devils as much happiness as is pos¬sible in their miserable condition.
There is no vindictive punishment by God in Hell. To think that God inflicts such punishment is a horrible idea.
As all intelligent men know, punishment for crime should never be vindictive; the only purpose of punishment is to protect society, and to lead, if it is possible, to the reform or the betterment of the one being punished. As this is true of those on earth who are just, it is infinitely true of God. When those in hell have been brought into a certain order, their punishments become milder and less frequent and they are brought into the best state possible, without taking away their freedom. But as their ruling love is their egotism, they remain in hell. Hell-fire, like heavenly fire, represents love, and at a distance it may appear as fire. Hell-fire consists of lusts, anger, the desire for revenge, and so on.
God Is Infinitely Merciful
As we have said, many have come to see that God is a God of love, that in Him there can be no vindictive justice, that vindictive justice is injustice, and that therefore the idea of God’s cursing mankind on account of the disobedi¬ence of Adam and Eve and of salvation by appeasement of the Father through the death on the cross is wrong.
To replace the orthodox idea of redemption, a new idea of redemption has arisen and has been accepted by many. This new idea is based on the statement of Paul: “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us unto Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of recon¬ciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” (II Corinthians 5:18,19.)
The new idea is expressed in a syndicated column by Dr. Louis Cassels as follows:
They depict Christ as standing in man’s stead, accepting the punishment which man deserves for his willful wrongdoing. They speak of man as being saved, ransomed, redeemed, or delivered from his just fate because of Christ’s intervention on his behalf.
In attempting to capture a great mystery within the dry language of dogma, theologians have sometimes made it sound as though God were some kind of venge¬ful ogre who had to be appeased by a sacrificial offering of innocent blood.
This is exactly the opposite of the Bible teaching, which points to the Cross of Christ as the ultimate proof and supreme demonstration of God’s forgiving love for all His human creatures.
How can this be? The teaching makes sense only if it was God Himself acting in and through Christ. And this, of course, is precisely what Christians believe. As usual, St. Paul put it more succinctly than anyone else has managed to do: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself”.
Dr. Cassels in another article writes:
Christian theology has always asserted that Jesus Christ accomplished a “reconciliation” between God and man. This is the heart of the Gospel. But what exactly does it mean?
To many people, it means something like this: “God was angry with men because of their sins. But Jesus became humanity’s champion. On the Cross, He suf¬fered in our stead, accepting the punishment we de¬served. God was placated by Jesus’ sacrifice, and now is prepared to love any human being who appears be¬fore His throne of judgment pleading the name of Jesus.”
The doctrine of atonement, so formulated, has be¬come one of the greatest stumbling blocks for modern seekers after faith. They just can’t work up much en¬thusiasm for the kind of faith it describes—a vindictive God whose wrath could be appeased by the sacrifice of an innocent life.
Those who are repelled by the notion that Jesus was a sort of scapegoat for human misdeeds may find it helpful to read a new book, The Man for Others. . . . The author is Reverend Erik Routley, a British theo¬logian who formerly taught in Oxford, and is now a Congregationalist pastor.
This remarkable little book is every bit as modern, courageous and open-minded as Bishop John Robin¬son’s Honest to God.
And it is considerably less muddled in its theology than the sensational best-seller.
Dr. Routley feels that it is nothing short of blas¬phemy to suggest that what Jesus did for mankind was “to placate a tyrant God who was waiting to punish His people with death.” Actually he says, He came to reassure men that God is not hostile towards them.
Man has a natural tendency to think of God as being unfriendly and unfair. Everything that goes wrong in life is another justification for nursing a “grievance” against God. This “settled attitude of grievance” is what the Bible means by sin. It is the antithesis of faith, and the ultimate source of particular sin.
To liberate man from this attitude, God sent Jesus into the world. Jesus was a human person who bore “the stamp of God’s very being.” His mission was not to reconcile God to man, but rather to reconcile men to God—from one of grievance to one of reciprocal con¬fidence.
“Jesus did not come to stand up for us against God, to vindicate mankind against a God who disbelieved in man’s worthiness to be saved,” says Dr. Routley. Where men were saying that “God must be caused to love the world,” Jesus said “God is love”—meaning “God loves the world and has always loved it.”
In the above we read that “Jesus was a human person who bore the stamp of God”; that is, He was not God but was a human person who in a remarkable way above other men was in the likeness and image of God in which men were originally created. As we showed earlier, this is not the teaching of the Gospels. Although it is true that the Lord taught that God is love, there are far more reasons for the coming of the Lord on earth than just this, some of which we shall consider in the following chapter.
Redemption
On the subject of redemption, two hundred years ago Emanuel Swedenborg wrote, in The True Christian Reli¬gion, as follows:
Jehovah God descended and assumed a Human that He might redeem men and save them. In the Christian churches at this day it is believed that God the Creator of the universe begat a Son from eternity, and that this Son descended and assumed a Human in order to re¬deem and save men. But this is an error, and of itself falls to the ground as soon as it is considered that God is one, and that it is worse than incredible in the sight of reason to say that one God begat a Son from eternity, and that God the Father, together with the Son, and Holy Spirit, each of whom singly is God, is one God. This incredible notion is wholly dissipated, . . . when it is shown from the Word that Jehovah God Himself descended and became Man and also Redeemer.
The first statement, that it was Jehovah God Him¬self who descended and became Man, is made clear in the following passages:
“Behold a virgin shall conceive and shall bear a Son, who shall be called God with us.” (Isaiah 7:14; Mat¬thew 1:22,23)
“Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, God, Mighty, Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)
“It shall be said in that day, Lo this is our God, we have waited for Him that He may deliver us; this is Jehovah.” (Isaiah 25:9)
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Jehovah.” (Isaiah 40:3,5) . . .
That it was Jehovah Himself who descended and assumed the Human is especially evident in Luke, where it is said:
“Mary said to the angel, How shall this come to pass, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered her, the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (1:34,35) . . .
That a Son born from eternity descended and as¬sumed the human is a total error which falls to the ground and is dissipated in the light of those passages in the Word where Jehovah Himself says that He Him¬self is the Savior and Redeemer, as in the following:
“Am I not Jehovah, and there is no God else beside Me? A just God and a Savior, there is none beside Me.” (Isaiah 45:21,22.)
“I am Jehovah and beside Me there is no Savior.” (Isaiah 43:11)
“I am Jehovah thy God . . . and thou shalt acknowl¬edge no God beside Me; and there is no Savior beside Me.” (Hosea 13:4) . . .
“Thou, 0 Jehovah, art our Father, our Redeemer;
from everlasting is Thy name.” (Isaiah 63:16) . . .
“Jehovah of Hosts is His name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall He be called.” (Isaiah 64:5)
From these and many similar passages it can be seen by every man who has eyes, and a mind that has been opened by means of them, that God, who is one, descended and became Man, in order to effect Redemp¬tion. Who cannot see this in the light of morning when he gives any attention to these Divine declarations themselves which have been presented? But those who are in the shades of night, owing to a confirmed belief • in the birth of another God from eternity, and in His descent and work of Redemption; shut their eyes to these Divine declarations, and in that state study how to apply them to their own falsities and pervert them. (True Christian Religion, Numbers 82 and 83)
As we have said, the sophisticated will never accept this, for the reason that they have no real faith in the Bible as the Word of God, no faith in the virgin birth, and no faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and God.
The Lord said to the sophisticated among the Jews, “Thus have ye made the commandments of God of none effect by your tradition.” (Matthew 15:6.) With many, even in the Christian church, this is more true than it was with the Jews at the time when the Lord was on earth.
Most people consider atheism and communism to be the greatest danger to the church. But the greatest danger is not from without, but from the sophisticated leaders within the church, who have no living faith in the Word of God or in the Lord as God, and who often undermine the faith of the simple. With the increase of worldly education, nearly everyone is becoming sophisticated, so that spiritual wisdom is becoming rare.
The Lord came on earth to re-establish the Church.
Nowadays, many ministers are taking part in, or are actively supporting, various political movements instead of concentrating on preaching against the sins which are de¬clared to be sins against God in the Word. This is contrary to what the Lord did when in the world. The Lord did not mention the evils and disorders of the Roman Empire, al¬though they were many, nor did He encourage anyone to take part in any political movement for freedom, but quite the reverse. Such activities do not properly belong to churches. The Lord’s words were directed against the so¬phisticated and hypocrites in the Church. If sophistication and hypocrisy in the Church can be overcome in the Church, the Church can enter upon its true function or enter into its true usefulness to the world; but so long as sophistica¬tion and hypocrisy rule in the Church, no political attempts at betterment of the world can have any lasting good effect.
The chapter on Redemption in The True Christian Reli¬gion continues:
There are many reasons why God could redeem men, that is, could deliver them from . . . hell, only by means of an assumed Human. . . . Redemption con¬sisted in subjugating the hells, restoring the heavens to order, and after this re-establishing the church; and this redemption God with His omnipotence could effect only by means of the Human, as it is only by means of an arm that one can work. In the Word this Human is called “the arm of Jehovah”—or as one can attack a fortified town and destroy temples of idols therein only by means of intervening agencies. That it was by means of His Human that God had omnipotence in this Divine work, is also evident from the Word. For in no other way would it be possible for God, who is in the inmost and thus in the purest things, to pass over to outmost things, in which the hells are, and in which the men of that time were; just as the soul can do nothing without the body, or no one can conquer an enemy without coming in sight of him, or approaching him with proper equipment. {True Christian Reli¬gion, Number 84)
That the Lord came to overcome the power of hell is taught in the Gospels as follows:
Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. (John 12:31)
Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. (John 16:11)
And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us in Thy name. And He said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. (Luke 10:17,18)
It may be asked. How did the Lord combat the power of evil or the hells before He came into the world; and if He did it before, why did He have to come into the world to do this?
The answer is that God overcame the power of evil or the hells through the ministry of angels, all of whom were once men, and also through men on earth whom He inspired to teach the truth and to fight against evil; but the time came when the power of evil, or of the hells, had so in¬creased that angels and inspired men had not sufficient power to accomplish this task, and God had to take it upon Himself. To overcome the power of evil, or the hells, He could not descend in Glory, for no one could have stood before the naked glory of God; and if they did indeed do so, their free choice would have been taken away. Therefore He had to clothe His glory by taking on a Human nature by birth in the world, so as to be able to approach both the good and the evil: the good, to lead them into the path of life, and the evil, to deprive them of power so dominating that men were no longer free. Thus the Lord came to re¬store man’s freedom, so that he could choose the way of salvation, provided he was willing.
This is involved in the parable of the Lord: “And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent servants to the husbandmen, . . . and the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did to them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son.” (Matthew 21:34-37.)
The same is signified by the words “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” (Genesis 49:10.)
Hell, the devil, and Satan are scarcely believed in by modern man, yet the evidence of their influence is very great. The Lord’s being tempted by the devil on the moun¬tain signifies His combats with the power of evil and the hells which inspire evil. Such things appear unreal to modern man because, for the most part, he has lost a living faith in the Kingdom of Heaven, and therefore in its oppo¬site, the kingdom of hell. The devil stands for the hells, and all in heaven and hell were once men on earth.
To continue the subject of redemption from The True Christian Religion:
Jehovah God descended as the Divine Truth … al¬though He did not separate it from the Divine Good. There are two things that constitute the essence of God, the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, or what is the same, the Divine Good and the Divine Truth. . . .
That Jehovah descended as the Divine Truth is shown in John as follows:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and God was the Word. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (1:1,3,14)
By the Word here the Divine Truth is meant, be¬cause the Word, which is in the church, is the Divine Truth itself, because it was dictated by Jehovah Him¬self. . . . But inasmuch as the Divine Truth passed down through the heavens even to the world, it became adapted to angels in heaven and also to men in the world. For this reason there is in the Word a spiritual sense in which Divine Truth is seen in clear light, and a natural sense in which it is seen obscurely. Thus it is the Divine Truth in our Word that is here meant in John. This is made still clearer by the fact that the Lord came into the world to fulfill all things of the Word; and this is why it is so often said that this or that was done to Him “that the scriptures might be fulfilled.” Nor is anything but the Divine Truth meant by the Messiah or the Christ.. . .
All strength, virtue and power of God belong to the Divine Truth from the Divine Good. . . . Therefore it is said in David:
“Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, 0 Mighty One, and in thy majesty mount up; ride upon the Word of Truth; thy right hand shall teach thee wonderful things. Thine arrows are sharp, thine enemies shall fall under thee.” (Psalm 45:3-5)
This is said of the Lord, and . . . His victories over the hells. (The True Christian Religion, Numbers 85 and 86)
That God, although He descended as the Divine Truth, did not separate therefrom from the Divine Good, is evident from the conception; of which it is said: “That the power of the Most High overshadowed Mary.” (Luke 1:35) “The power of the most High” meaning the Divine Good. This is evident from the passages where He says that the Father is in Him, and He in the Father, that all things that the Father hath are His, and that the Father and He are one. By “the Father” the Divine Good is meant. (The True Christian Religion, Number 88)
That the Lord in the world was the Divine Truth is evident from His own words:
I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6)
We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us understanding that we may know him that is true: and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. (I John 5:20)
This was the true Light that lighteth every man coming into the world. (John 1:9)
I am the light of the world. (John 9:5)
“Light” means the Divine Truth. That God Himself should be born of a virgin indeed seems incredible to most people. Yet if we accept the idea that God is Divine Love and the nature of love is to wish to communicate one’s love to another and to have the love returned, it can be seen that it is in agreement with sound reason. No one can love someone whom one does not know; and the better one knows another, the more one can love him or her. Certainly there was no better way for God to make Himself known to men and so make it possible for men to love Him in the fullest way, than by coming and living among them.
As we have said, it is the first law of the Divine Love that man shall be free and not compelled to believe or love, for compelled faith or love is valueless. It was therefore necessary for God to come among men in such a way as not to compel faith in Him. If the Lord had come in Divine Glory such as He appeared to Peter, James, and John on the mountain when His face shone as the sun, all would have been compelled to believe on Him. If evil persons were com¬pelled to believe on Him, their state would be far worse than when they had no faith, for they would make a profane mixture of faith with their evil life.
This is what the Lord taught:
And their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears. (Matthew 13:15)
Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind. … If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. (John 9:39,41)
This was said to the Jews. But now in what is called the Christian Church there is a far greater blindness, for although the churches have grown, there are fewer and fewer who believe in the Bible as the Word of God and in Jesus as their Lord and God. If the Lord was to come into the world, He could come only by being born of a virgin in such a way that men would not have to believe in Him. It is also of the Divine Providence that there are so many arguments against the Lord’s birth of a virgin that those in the Christian Church whose hearts are not turned to God can find many excuses for not believing, for to have a faith in Jesus as our Lord and God and live a life centered in oneself and the world is a more terrible thing than to have no real faith.
The Lord also had to be born of a virgin not only that He might clothe Himself with a body of this world accord¬ing to order, but also in order that He might take on a human heredity, in which was a tendency toward all the evils of the human race.
If He had not clothed Himself with such a human, He could not have been tempted. No devil could approach Him in His states of glory, nor could evil men stand in His pres¬ence. He could therefore not have effected the judgment for which He came; as He said, “For judgment I am come into this world.” (John 9:39.)
The reason for His coming into the world was judgment, for by judgment He cast out the prince of this world (John 12:31) and He ordered heaven and the church anew, and thus made possible the salvation of those in the human race who love Him and keep His commandments. His love and salvation also go forth to the Gentiles, who, while not knowing Him, receive indirectly of His life and light if they live according to the truths which they have.
Although the Lord took on a human heredity from Mary, as He glorified His Human He entirely put this off, so that He was no longer her son.
The Two Great Commandments
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the com¬mandments is. Hear, 0 Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first command¬ment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (Mark 12:29-31)
The word “love” is a much-abused word. No one can have a real idea of what love is unless he distinguishes a true from a false idea of love. The world is full of a false, senti¬mental idea of love. In the first place, there is animal love and there is genuine human love. Animals love their young and love their kind, and they may love other kinds of ani¬mals and may love human beings; all men, by instinct, love others, whereas animal love is proper to animals. If human love remains on the plane of animal love, it is not the love that the Lord commanded. The Lord indeed spoke of a merely animal kind of love in human beings when He said:
“For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.” (Luke 6:32.) The Lord also taught how we should truly love, saying:
“This is My commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” (John 15:12.) But how does the Lord love us? The Lord’s love looks to our eternal welfare. He does not regard any temporal thing—things of this world only— as of any significance, unless it looks to our welfare in the Kingdom of Heaven. The things of this world last less than a moment compared to eternal life. Wherefore suffering or joy, miseries or happiness, are regarded by the Lord’s Di¬vine Providence or loving care only insofar as they are useful in preparing us for our eternal welfare. The animal kind of love in a man, which is very far removed from the love of others as the Lord loves us, regards only one’s hap¬piness, pleasures, and welfare here on earth.
Miseries, sadness, and sufferings of all kinds are often useful in helping to bring us to the real significance and values of life and thus to prepare us for eternal life;
whereas too easy a time is often the worst thing possible for the development of character. Yet not only politicians but even the churches in recent times have tended to con¬centrate on making life in this world as easy and painless as possible, and this is considered Christian charity—for¬getting completely the primary teaching so oft repeated, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.” (Matthew 6:33.)
When churches center their attention on improving the material condition of those in this world and not on pre¬paring men for a life in the Kingdom of Heaven, they are no longer Christian churches except in name only, for they have totally left the teaching of our Lord.
This does not mean that we should not help others in regard to material things when we are able to do so, and when our help may be useful to another and does not take away his responsibility or tend to make him lazy. But a wise man recognizes that such material aid is of relatively no significance in comparison to helping one in his preparation for eternal life.
An indication of the prevailing materialistic point of view is this. Many are distressed on account of the hunger of millions of people in the world, particularly when chil¬dren are near to starving. Yet few are distressed that hun¬dreds of millions of children are spiritually starving for that food which is the love and truths which lead to eternal life. Especially sad is it that children are growing up with¬out any instruction in religion. The above does not mean that we should not be distressed by the fact that there are many people hungry in the world. But if a man is truly a Christian, he will be much more distressed that there are so many millions who are being spiritually starved. This illustrates the fact that, although there are millions who have a membership in a church, this is no longer a Christian nation, and that the best characteristic, or highest good, with most people is a kind of animal sympathy with their fellow human beings.
But how are we to love the Lord? This the Lord taught us as follows:
If ye love me, keep my commandments. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, . . . and I will love him. (John 14:15,21)
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. (John 15:10)
The Lord’s Father, the Infinite Divine Itself, was His soul, called the “power of the Highest,” which overshadowed Mary and was in Him from conception. As to His Human which is called the Son, the Lord completely followed the dictates of His soul. Thus He glorified His Human until His Human also became purely Divine. He and His Father were one, one in essence and one in person.
We can be conjoined with the Lord, in His love, only if we obey His commandments.
Anyone will admit that a child who likes to kiss and hug its mother and be kissed and hugged in return but dis¬obeys her and does all kinds of things which distress her and make her sad, and is indifferent to the distress it causes her, does not reveal real love. Or that a friend who is most cordial and hearty to another and yet acts contrary to the other’s best interests does not show love. Yet there are many who think they can have faith in the Lord, and even love Him, and still disobey His commandments.
But consider further: what are the Lord’s command¬ments?
As we have said, one of the Lord’s commandments was, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you.” (John 13:34.) The Lord had already said that the commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” was one of the two Great Command¬ments. This was not a new commandment, for it had been written by Moses. But to love one another as the Lord had loved them, this was “a new commandment,” for the Lord loved them as no one had loved his neighbor before. If we can come to an understanding of how the Lord loves us, then we can keep this new commandment.
There can be no genuine love of the Lord or one’s neigh¬bor unless one shuns sins which are against his neighbor, for what kind of love is it if one says he loves God and his neighbor while he sins against them?
The Lord’s Command to the Young Man
Again we read:
And behold, one came and said unto him, Good Mas¬ter, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him … If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt love thy neigh¬bor as thyself. (Matthew 19:16-19)
The Lord therefore made the keeping of the Ten Com¬mandments the means of inheriting eternal life. But He taught that it was not enough to keep them according to the letter, but that they must be kept according to the spirit as well, saying: “Ye have heard, . . . Thou shalt not kill. . . . But I say unto you, whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment.” (Matthew 5:21,22.)
And again: “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28.)
The Lord, after telling the young man that the means of inheriting eternal life was to keep the commandments, added one thing more: “Sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” (Mark 10:21.)
Whereas the Lord in parable apparently spoke of things of this world, still all His words refer to the Kingdom of Heaven, to the things of the spirit. When He spoke of the poor, the “poor in spirit” are especially meant, as He de¬clared in the Ten Blessings: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Also, when He spoke of the rich, He referred to the “rich in spirit.” Spiritual riches are knowledges, especially the knowledge of the Word of God and of the church. That this is the meaning is evident from the book of Revelation, where, using the rich in a favorable sense, it is said, when addressing the church of Smyrna, “I know thy . . . poverty, (but thou art rich).” (2:9.) And in Luke: “So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” (12:21.)
The rich in the unfavorable sense are the sophisticated, the learned doctors, the scribes, both in the Jewish Church and in the Christian Church, who have a great knowledge of the Bible, of doctrine, and of philosophy but misuse it and make it serve their own honor and power, their status, and their reputation, instead of in humility serving the King¬dom of God.
All the wealth of knowledge with them is interpreted in such a way as to favor themselves and their own glory. This is the wealth with which, unless he sells it, a man cannot en¬ter the Kingdom of God. The poor in the favorable sense are those who acknowledge that they of themselves are ignorant of the spirit of the Word, and who are therefore willing to be instructed. Such know that what they know of the Word of God, whether it be relatively much or little, is only like a cup of water compared to the ocean, relative to the Infinite Truth contained in the Word of God, and they know that they can understand nothing of the spirit of the Word of God unless it is given them from the Lord out of heaven. They are therefore modest and regard themselves as poor, although they are rich toward God.
The final thing required to enter into life, according to the Lord’s command, was to “take up the cross, and follow Me.” (Mark 10:21.)
To take up the cross is to undergo trials or temptations, to sacrifice oneself, to give up one’s own will, in order to live according to the will of God—but to do these things not before the world, but before God.
The Lord commanded, “Do not your alms before men, to be seen of them,” “. . . let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth,” pray not “standing in the synagogues or in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men,” “use not vain repetitions . . . much speaking”; not “to fast with a sad countenance” that “they may appear unto men to fast,” but to do all things “in secret.” Matthew 6:13, 5,16-18.)
All these commands of the Lord have gone unheeded in the Christian church. Men and women went into monasteries and convents where they prayed endlessly. Some courted martyrdom, and many desired their contributions to churches, hospitals, the poor, and other charities to be noised about so that they might receive credit and influence on account of good works, if not in heaven, then at least on earth.
To do something spectacularly good, especially if there is danger involved, or what appears like a great sacrifice, is not difficult. Evil people are often more eager to be rec¬ognized as heroes than are the good people. It is the fashion of the day to want to appear “committed.” Now no “com¬mitment,” no dedication to accomplishing a good or useful work, is of any use unless evils are first shunned as sins against God. To do good before repentance is like adding pure water to contaminated water; no matter how much is added, the whole continues to be contaminated.
Observe the order of the commandments of the Lord on how to obtain eternal life.
“Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not commit adul¬tery, Thou shalt not steal, defraud not, Thou shall not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 19:18,19; Mark 10:19.) Love toward one’s neighbor follows the keeping of the other commandments.
As it is said in Isaiah: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well.” (1:16,17.)
Most people want to love, they want to do good, but with¬out keeping the commandments; therefore their offering is unacceptable to God.
Luther taught salvation by faith alone, ignoring the teaching of the Lord. Luther did, indeed, say that love to the Lord is essential for salvation, but he ignored the words of the Lord, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” (John 14:21.)
Naaman the Leper
This whole principle is illustrated by the story of Naaman, captain of the Syrian army, who was a leper, though a great man in Syria and a friend of the king.
Hearing of the powers of a prophet in Israel, he came with a letter and great treasure to Elisha, to ask to be cured of his leprosy.
Elisha did not receive him into his house but sent a messenger to tell him to go wash seven times in Jordan and he would be cured. At this Naaman was very angry and went away saying that he expected the prophet to come to him, call on the name of Jehovah, strike his hand over the place of the leprosy, and cure him.
Naaman’s servant said to him, if the prophet had bid him to do some great deed, would he not have done it? Was it not much easier to wash and be clean? So Naaman did as he was commanded and was cured.
Leprosy signifies an unclean state of the spirit in which one has a kind of faith but does not live according to it. Such a man may wish to do some heroic deeds to cleanse his spirit; he may, under powerful emotion, wish to do some great deed to be saved—to become “committed.”
The Jordan river signifies the first simple truths of life, the keeping of the Commandments in their obvious mean¬ing. It is obedience to these simple truths that first enables a man to cross over to the heavenly Canaan, the Kingdom of God. To wash seven times in the river Jordan is to repent and cleanse oneself by shunning evils as sins against God, in obedience to the Commandments.
If this idea had been regarded as the first thing of the Christian religion and had been obeyed, how much better a world this would be! Keeping the Commandments, in a broader sense, includes shunning pride, vanity, arrogance, conceit, and sophistication, which sins are all included in the spirit of the Ten Commandments, as will be illustrated in a later chapter.