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Secrets of Heaven #1835

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1835. And Abram drove them away means that the Lord put them to flight, as can be seen from the remarks above.

It is the same with the church, too. When it begins to fall away from love for others, evil and the falsity that comes from it can be chased off fairly easily. Up to that point, conditions in the church are not very far removed from neighborly love, so the mindset of the people in it is quite flexible. Over time, though, evil and its falsity grow, and as they grow they strengthen and stiffen, as will be told below. 1

[2] The Lord constantly drives as much evil and falsity away as he can, but he does so through conscience. When the bonds of our conscience loosen, the Lord has no means of influencing us, because he acts on us by flowing through charity into our conscience. A new means does develop to take its place, but it is an external one: fear of the law and fear for our life, status, money, and consequent prestige. These are not matters of conscience but only superficial restraints. They make it possible for us to live in the same community with others and to seem friendly, no matter what we are like inside.

[3] These means, or restraints, have no effect at all in the other world. Outward appearances are stripped away there and inner character remains. There are large numbers of people who have lived an upright life in private and public, avoided hurting anyone, acted in a polite and friendly way, and even done good to many others, but only for selfish reasons — for the sake of position, money, and so on. They end up among the inhabitants of hell in the other life, because inside them they harbor no goodness or truth but only evil and falsity. In fact hatred, vengefulness, cruelty, and adultery lurk inside them, remaining hidden from others; and they remain hidden to the extent that those fears or external restraints are in charge.

Footnotes:

1. Growth of evil and falsity is touched on throughout the rest of this chapter, but in particular in §§1857-1861yyy1. See also note 1 in §1843. [LHC, SS]

  
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Many thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation and its New Century Edition team.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Secrets of Heaven #1

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1. Genesis

THE Word in the Old Testament 1 contains secrets of heaven, and every single aspect of it has to do with the Lord, 2 his heaven, the church, faith, and all the tenets of faith; but not a single person sees this in the letter. In the letter, or literal meaning, people see only that it deals for the most part with the external facts of the Jewish religion.

The truth is, however, that every part of the Old Testament holds an inner message. 3 Except at a very few points, those inner depths never show on the surface. The exceptions are concepts that the Lord revealed and explained to the apostles, such as the fact that the sacrifices symbolize the Lord, 4 and that the land of Canaan and Jerusalem symbolize heaven (which is why it is called the heavenly Canaan or Jerusalem [Galatians 4:26; Hebrews 11:16; 12:22; Revelation 21:2, 10]), as does paradise. 5

Footnotes:

1. This edition follows Swedenborg's practice of referring to the Hebrew Scriptures as the Old Testament and the Greek Scriptures as the New Testament. On the meaning of the term "the Word," see note 2 in §0. [JSR]

2. "The Lord" here refers to Jesus Christ. Although Swedenborg's theology is thoroughly monotheistic, to denote God he uses many names and terms from philosophical and biblical backgrounds (God, the Divine Being, the Deity, the Divine Human, the One, the Infinite, the First, the Creator, the Redeemer, the Savior, Jehovah, God Shaddai, and many more). The most frequently occurring term, however, is "the Lord" (Latin Dominus). Here and generally throughout, "the Lord" refers to Jesus Christ as the visible manifestation of the one and only God. See §14. For a brief summary of Swedenborg's theology, see True Christianity 2-3. [JSR, RS]

3. The idea that Scripture possesses an inner meaning is an ancient one. Some of the earliest interpretations of the Bible using such a method come from Philo of Alexandria (also known as Philo Judaeus; around 20 b.c.e.-around 50 c.e.), whose works interpret Scripture in the light of Greek philosophy. The most significant accounts of the Bible's inner meaning in early Christianity come from the church fathers Clement of Alexandria (about 150-between 211, 215 c.e.) and Origen (about 185-about 254 c.e.). Origen wrote, "Among those narratives which appear to be recorded literally there are inserted and interwoven others which cannot be accepted as history but which contain a spiritual meaning" (Origen, On First Principles, book 4, chapter 3, in Origen 1966, 290). For a discussion of the similarities between Swedenborg's perspective on the Bible and those of the church fathers, see Tulk 1994, 19-33. Another influential exposition of the inner meaning of Genesis appears in the compendium of Jewish mystical knowledge known as the Sefer ha-Zohar, or "Book of Splendor," attributed to the circle of Rabbi Moses de Leon (about 1250-1305) in thirteenth-century Spain. The Zohar is the principal work of the Kabbala, the mystical doctrine of Judaism. According to Kabbalistic teaching, there are four levels of meaning to Scripture, ranging from the literal to the mystical (see Matt 2004 and Scholem 1974, 174). Swedenborg's familiarity with these earlier sources is a matter of scholarly debate, but it is generally acknowledged that he had at least a broad conception of them, and indeed his interpretations often accord with them (see Lamm [1915] 2000, 55-58, 227-231). On the other hand, although he himself does occasionally show awareness of theories of an inner meaning much like his own (see, for example, §606), he repeatedly insists that his theology is derived from personal spiritual experience. [RS]

4. For instances in which the inner meaning of sacrifices is explained, see Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, and Luke 22:19-20, where Jesus refers to the bread and wine of the Passover meal as his body and blood. He also uses the term "blood of the covenant," which recalls a sacrifice offered by Moses just after he received the Ten Commandments, as described in Exodus 24:4-8. See also Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 7:27; 9:26. [LHC, JLO] The Epistle to the Hebrews draws an elaborate analogy between the sacrifices ordained by the Mosaic Law and Christ's sacrifice, adding that the Law is "a shadow of good things to come," that is, of Christ's Coming; see Hebrews 9; 10:1. (The term "the Law," so capitalized, refers loosely to the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and in particular to the injunctions of divine worship laid on the Jewish people there.) [RS]

5. See Luke 23:43, where Jesus on the cross promises a criminal who is also being executed, "Today you will be with me in paradise." See also Revelation 2:7. [LHC, JLO] The word paradise comes from a Persian word meaning "park" or "enclosure;" it appears in Hebrew as פַּרְדֵּס (pardēs) and in Greek as παράδεισος (parádeisos). Early on, however, it came to serve as a metaphor for heaven. [RS]

  
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Many thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation and its New Century Edition team.

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