18
Konge! Den høieste Gud gav Nebukadnesar, din far, riket og makten og æren og herligheten;
Daniel 5:18
Daniel 8:11
11
Ja, like til hærens fyrste hevet det sig; det tok fra ham det stadige offer, og hans helligdoms bolig blev omstyrtet.
The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings # 257
257. The Word is understood only by means of a body of teaching drawn from the Word. The church's body of teaching must be drawn from the Word: 3464, 5402, 5432, 10763, 10765. Without a body of teaching, the Word is not intelligible: 9025, 9409, 9424, 9430, 10324, 10431, 10582. A true body of teaching is a lamp for us when we read the Word: 10400. Any authentic body of teaching must come from people who are enlightened by the Lord: 2510, 2516, 2519, 9424, 10105. The Word is to be understood by means of a body of teaching constructed by someone who is enlightened: 10324. People in a state of enlightenment construct a body of teaching for themselves from the Word: 9382, 10659. The nature of the difference between people who teach and learn on the basis of the church's body of teaching and those who do so solely on the basis of the literal meaning: 9025. People who are focused on the literal meaning without having a body of teaching do not arrive at any understanding of divine truths: 9409, 9410, 10582. They fall into many errors: 10431. When people who have a passionate interest in the truth for its own sake reach adulthood and can see things with their own understanding, they do not simply rest in the theological tenets of their church but check them carefully against the Word to see whether they are true: 5402, 5432, 6047. Otherwise, what everyone believes could be declared true merely because someone else said so or because it was the religion of the person's native soil, whether that person was born Jewish or Greek 1 : 6047. Nevertheless, principles that have become matters of faith on the basis of the Word's literal meaning should not be eliminated unless they have been fully examined: 9039.
[2] The church's true body of teaching is made up of teachings focused on caring and faith: 2417, 4766, 10763, 10764. What makes a church is not a body of teaching about faith but living according to faith, which means caring: 809, 1798, 1799, 1834, 4468, 4672, 4766, 5826, 6637. A body of teaching is nothing unless its teachings are lived: 1515, 2049, 2116. In today's churches there is a body of teaching focused on faith and not on caring, and the body of teaching focused on caring has been consigned to the discipline known as moral theology: 2417. 2 The church would be united if individuals were recognized as members of the church on the basis of their lives and therefore of their caring: 1285, 1316, 2982, 3267, 3445, 3451, 3452. How much more valid a body of teaching focused on caring is than a body of teaching focused on faith separated from caring: 4844. If we know nothing about caring, then we know nothing about heaven: 4783. How many errors people fall into if they have a body of teaching focused only on faith and not on caring at the same time: 2383, 2417, 3146, 3325, 3412, 3413, 3416, 3773, 4672, 4730, 4783, 4925, 5351, 7623-7627, 7752-7762, 7790, 8094, 8313, 8530, 8765, 9186, 9224, 10555. [In the ancient church,] people who were devoted to teachings on faith but not to living according to faith, which means caring, were called "the uncircumcised" or "Philistines": 3412, 3413, 8093. The early people had a body of teaching focused on love for the Lord and caring about their neighbor, and their teachings about faith were subsidiary to it: 2417, 3419, 4844, 4955.
[3] Once a body of teaching has been constructed by someone who is enlightened, it can then be supported by rational means; in this way it is more fully understood, and this strengthens it: 2553, 2719, 3052, 3310, 6047. (For more on this subject, see §51 above.) People who are committed to faith separated from caring want the church's body of teaching simply to be believed without any rational inquiry: 3394.
[4] The practice of wisdom is not to support a dogma blindly but to see whether or not the dogma is true before convincing ourselves of its truth; this is what people do when they enjoy enlightenment: 1017, 4741, 7012, 7680, 7950. The light that is shed by convincing ourselves is an earthly light, not a spiritual one, and it is accessible even to evil people: 8780. We can convince ourselves of anything, even something false, in such a way that it seems to be true: 2477, 5033, 6865, 8521.
Poznámky pod čarou:
1. The expression “everyone . . . whether . . . born Jewish or Greek” means in this context essentially “all people, no matter in what religion they were born.” It stems from a common reference to and juxtaposition of the Jewish and “Greek” (non-Jewish) populations of the eastern Mediterranean region in Acts and the Epistles (see, for example, Acts 14:1; 18:4; 19:10, 17; 20:21; Romans 1:16; 2:9-10; 10:12; 1 Corinthians 1:22-24; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11). Though Swedenborg quotes Acts and the Epistles with relative infrequency (see note 7 above), he was steeped in their language from his childhood, and often uses it. [GFD]
2. Moral theology is a systematic theological treatment of Christian ethics, often taught in divinity schools. The passage to which Swedenborg refers here, Secrets of Heaven 2417, makes no mention of moral theology; rather, it discusses how a church's body of teaching about charity becomes separated from its body of teaching about faith and is eventually lost. [RS]
