The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #117
117. A self-induced conviction is when we believe and love the Word and the teachings of the church not for the sake of their truth or in order to live by them but for the sake of profit and respect and to be thought learned. 1 As a result, when this is the kind of faith we have we are not focusing on the Lord or heaven but on ourselves and this world. People who aspire to worldly greatness and crave an abundance of material things express stronger conviction that what the church teaches is the truth than people who have no such aspirations or cravings. This is because for the ambitious the church's teachings are only a means to their own ends, and the more they love those ends, the more they love-and trust-the means.
In reality, though, what determines the strength of their conviction at a given moment is how intensely their love for themselves and for the world is burning and how much that fire is affecting their conversation, preaching, and actions. During moments on fire they are completely convinced that what they are saying is true. When they are not feeling the fire of those loves, however, they believe very little-some have no belief at all. This shows that a self-induced conviction is a faith of the mouth and not of the heart, so it is really no faith at all.
Voetnoten:
1. In Swedenborg's Europe, a clerical career was often a path to political and material aggrandizement. The clergy had a significant role to play in the administration of the realm, and the highest offices were accompanied by lucrative sinecures. One example is given by the defrocked-priest-turned-diplomat Talleyrand (1754-1838): "The French clergy consisted of men of whom some were genuinely pious, others were distinguished as administrators, and others again were merely worldly, and, like the Archbishop of Narbonne [Arthur Richard Dillon, 1721-1806], delighted to put off the attributes of their office and live as great nobles" (Cragg 1960, 203-204). As a more immediate case in point, in Sweden the Clergy was one of the four Estates (houses) in the Diet (parliament), and every bishop had a seat in it. Furthermore, the children of noted bishops were traditionally ennobled. Thus in 1719 Queen Ulrika Eleonora (1688-1741) ennobled Swedenborg and his siblings, in acknowledgment of the distinguished career of their father, bishop Jesper Swedberg (1653-1735). This gave Swedenborg a seat on the Diet as a member of the Estate of Nobility and enabled his early career in politics (Bergquist 2005, 84). It also gave him an insider's perspective on the corruption that obtained in both the church and the nobility of Europe. [DNG]
