聖書

 

Genesis 1:1

勉強

   

スウェーデンボルグの著作から

 

Marriage#47

  
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47. Their lot in the other life is this. At first they take several wives as well as concubines there as they did in the world, but because in the spiritual world there is conjunction of minds, and those who disagree in mind cannot remain together, but they separate of their own accord, and eventually they mate with a woman of similar mind, thus by degrees they separate from their wives, and finally are united with one, with whom their mind agrees. Moreover, those who persist in polygamy in course of time become so weak and impotent that they become disgusted with marriage, for this is the effect of lasciviousness.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

解説

 

Night

  

The sun in the Bible represents the Lord, with its heat representing His love and its light representing His wisdom. “Daytime,” then, represents a state in which we are turned toward the Lord, receiving His love and being enlightened by His truth. And “nighttime,” obviously, represents states in which we are turned away from the Lord, left cold and blind to the truth. The most common word used for it in the New Christian theology is “obscurity.” The darkness is not absolute, of course. The light of the moon represents the understanding we can have based on facts and our own intelligence. But while the moon reflects some of the sun's light, it offers almost no heat, so this kind of understanding is a cold one, without the warmth of love. And at its darkest and coldest, night represents a state of judgment. This happens when a person -- or a church -- becomes so mired in evil and falsity that there is no light or heat. The Lord can then step in, separate the good from the evil, consign the evil to hell and begin rebuilding based on the remnant that is still good. Drastic as that sounds, it is something that we all go through repeatedly in various aspects of our loves, so that we can be rid of what is evil and let the Lord rebuild us as angels.