Love correspondence
To some degree, there really is no spiritual meaning to the word “love” in the Bible. Why? Because if you truly love another, that is already a spiritual state. To put it simply, the Lord is Love Itself, a perfect and infinite love that is the source of all actual life and substance in the universe. Thus everything we are and everything we experience is a product of the Lord's love; there is no way for us to have any love from ourselves that is not ultimately the Lord's love, because the Lord's love is everything. When we feel love, what we're really doing is opening ourselves to be a conduit for the Lord's love -- truly a spiritual state. This also means that the more we can align our love with the Lord's love, the stronger our experience of love will be. The Lord's love is a constant desire to be conjoined with us, to be able to love us fully while protecting our right to choose. So the more we try to love that way, the more in harmony with Him we will be and the more powerful our feelings of love will be. In a general sense, then, most uses of “love” in the Bible represent a desire for union, connection, powered, and enriched by the Lord.
In Matthew 6:24, this signifies celestial of love. (Arcana Coelestia 3875[3])
In Malachi 2:11, this signifies to conjoin oneself with falsity. (Arcana Coelestia 4434[3])
The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #53
53. The fallacies arising from the senses that preoccupy the merely earthly and sense-oriented people mentioned in §45 above. People who are completely earthly and sense-oriented derive their thinking and reasoning from fallacies arising from the senses: 5084, 5700, 6948, 6949, 7693. The nature of fallacies arising from the senses: 5084, 5094, 6400, 6948. To this I may add the following: There are fallacies arising from the senses that concern earthly matters, others that concern civic matters, others moral matters, and still others spiritual matters, and there are many of each kind; at this point I would like to list a few that concern spiritual matters.
If we base our thinking on fallacies arising from the senses, we cannot understand the idea that after death people still look human, that they enjoy the use of their senses as they did before, and that they can become angels. We think [instead] that
1. The soul is simply something barely alive, something purely ethereal, and we can have no concept of it.
2. It is only the body that feels, sees, and hears.
3. We are just like animals except that we can say what we are thinking.
4. Nature is all there is-it came first and is the source of everything.
5. We learn to think and we develop that ability because the inner things of nature and its order flow into us.
6. Spiritual reality does not exist; or if it does it is just a purer aspect of earthly reality.
7. It would be impossible for us to enjoy any sense of blessedness if we were deprived of the gratifications that come from loving glory, high rank, and profit.
8. Conscience is nothing but a feeling of distress caused by physical weakness or lack of success.
9. The Lord's divine love is a love of glory.
10. There is no such thing as providence; everything depends on our own prudence 1 and intelligence.
11. High rank and wealth are the real blessings granted by God.
Not to mention many more such things.
These are just some of the fallacies arising from the senses that concern spiritual matters. These examples show that what is heavenly cannot be grasped by people who are completely earthly and sense-oriented. And we become completely earthly and sense-oriented when our inner spiritual self is closed and only our earthly self is open.
Фусноти:
1. In general English use, prudence only rarely has a negative sense-for instance, in the case of a Falstaffian coward who acts "prudently" with a view to his or her own survival. But in Christian authors the term often has a negative denotation. This negative aspect derives from the Vulgate translation of passages such asRomans 8:6, Prudentia carnis mors, prudentia autem spiritus vita et pax ("The prudence of the flesh is death, but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace"), and1 Corinthians 1:19 (quoting Isaiah 29:14), Prudentiam prudentium reprobabo ("I will condemn the prudence of the prudent"). The Bible often distinguishes between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God (for example,Isaiah 47:10; Jeremiah 4:22; Romans 1:22; 1 Corinthians 2:6; 3:19; James 1:5). Swedenborg, following this tradition, generally uses the term prudence to refer to an overweening belief in one's ability to foresee and take measures to meet the difficulties of life without divine assistance. This belief typically stands in contrast to reliance on divine providence (see, for example, Secrets of Heaven 950, 4214:4, 6316, 8717:3; Divine Providence 206). In some passages Swedenborg defines prudence as speaking or acting with cunning deceit in order to hide one's evil intentions (see, for example, Secrets of Heaven 3573[4], 6655). In other passages, however, he understands prudence as the use of cunning and deception to achieve good ends; see for example, Secrets of Heaven 3993[12]; Marriage Love 1 155b:3, 187. He does approve the use of prudential thinking when it is properly understood to be wisdom that derives from the Lord rather than one's self (see Divine Providence 191), especially in the collocation "Christian prudence" (see, for example, New Jerusalem 85; Secrets of Heaven 6704). For extensive discussion of the topic of divine providence as opposed to human prudence, see Secrets of Heaven 8478, and especially Divine Providence 191-213. For examples of discussion of these issues by other Christian authors, see Aquinas Summa Theologiae 2:2:55 (= Aquinas 2012, 17:507-521); Saarinen 2006, 206-209 (on Luther). [SS]
