新キリスト教聖書研究

解説

 

Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

スウェーデンボルグの著作から

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church＃114

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114. To these points I will add two memorable occurrences taken from Revelation Unveiled.

The first memorable occurrence. I was suddenly overcome with a deathly illness. My whole head felt worse and worse. A poisonous smoke was blowing in from the great city that spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). I was half dead and in severe pain. I thought I was about to die. I lay in bed in that condition for three and a half days. My spirit developed this sickness, and then my body came down with it as well.

Then I heard voices around me saying, “Look, he is lying dead in the street of our city — the one who was preaching that we should repent so that our sins would be forgiven and [that we should worship] only Christ the human being.”

They asked some of the clergy, “Is he worthy of burial?” (We read that the same thing happened to the two witnesses who were killed in that city; see Revelation 11:8, 9, 10.)

The clergy replied, “No. Let him lie there as a spectacle.”

They kept going away and coming back to mock me.

And I am telling the truth when I say that this happened to me at the very time that I was explaining the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation.

Then I heard more serious words from the people who had been mocking me — especially these: “How can repentance be practiced apart from faith? How can Christ the human being be adored as God? Given that we are saved for free without our deserving it at all, what then do we need except faith alone — the faith that God the Father sent the Son to take away the damnation of the law, to credit us with his own merit, to justify us before the Father, to absolve us from our sins, and then to give us the Holy Spirit, who activates every good thing within us? Aren’t these points in accordance with Scripture and also with reason?”

The crowd of bystanders applauded these statements.

[2] I heard all this but was unable to respond because I was lying there almost dead.

After three and a half days, however, my spirit regained its health. In the spirit I went from that street into the city, and I said again, “Practice repentance and believe in Christ, and your sins will be forgiven and you will be saved. If you do not, you will perish. The Lord himself preached that we must repent in order for our sins to be forgiven, and that we must believe in him. He commanded the disciples to preach the same message. Surely the dogma of your faith leads to utter complacency about the way you live!”

“What are you babbling about?” they replied. “The Son has made satisfaction. The Father has assigned us the Son’s merit and has justified us for the reason that these are our beliefs. We are now led by the spirit of grace. What sin could there be within us? What death could there be among us? Do you grasp this Good News, you preacher of sin and repentance?”

Then a voice from heaven said, “Surely the faith of someone who has not practiced repentance is nothing but a dead faith. The end has come, the end has come upon you who are complacent, guiltless in your own eyes, justified by your own faith — devils!”

At that moment a chasm suddenly opened up in the middle of the city and spread outward. The houses were falling in on each other and the people were swallowed up. Soon water bubbled up from the great hole and flooded what was already devastated.

[3] After they sank to a lower level and were seemingly covered in water, I wanted to know what their situation was like in the depths. A voice from heaven told me, “You will see and hear.”

Then the water that had seemingly flooded them disappeared from before my eyes. (Water in the spiritual world is a correspondence that appears around people who have false beliefs.) I saw the people in a sandy place at a great depth, where there were piles of stones. They were running between the piles of stones and loudly bemoaning their having been cast out of their great city.

They were shouting and wailing, “Why has this happened to us? We are clean, pure, just, and holy because of our faith.”

Others were saying, “Surely through our faith we have been cleansed, purified, justified, and sanctified.”

Still others were asking, “Hasn’t our faith made it possible for us to be seen and esteemed by God the Father and the whole Trinity, and to be declared before angels, as clean, pure, righteous, and holy? Haven’t we been reconciled, atoned for, ritually purged, and therefore absolved, washed, and wiped free of our sins? Didn’t Christ take away the damnation of the law? Why then have we been thrown down here like the damned? We did hear from a bold proclaimer of sin in our great city, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance.’ But didn’t we believe in Christ when we believed in his merit? Didn’t we practice repentance when we confessed that we were sinners? Why then has this happened to us?”

[4] A voice was then heard from the side: “Are you aware of any sin in yourselves? Have you ever examined yourselves, and then abstained from any evil because it is sinful against God? If you do not abstain from sin, then you are still devoted to it; and sin is the Devil. You, then, are the people of whom the Lord spoke when he said, ‘You will then begin to say, “We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I tell you, I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of wickedness”’ (Luke 13:26, 27). Matthew 7:22, 23 is also about you. Therefore go away, each to your own place. Do you see the holes leading to those caves? Go in there, and each of you will be given your own work to do, and food in accordance with your work. If you don’t go in, your hunger will drive you in.”

[5] After that a voice from heaven came to some people who were up at the level of the ground but were outside the city (see Revelation 11:13). The voice said loudly, “Beware! Beware of associating with people like that. Don’t you understand that evils that are called sins and acts of wickedness make us unclean and impure? How can you be cleansed and purified from them except by active repentance and by faith in the Lord God the Savior? Active repentance is examining yourselves, recognizing and admitting to your sins, accepting that you are at fault, confessing them before the Lord, begging for his help and power in resisting them, stopping doing them, and living a new life. All this is to be done as if you were doing it on your own. Do this once or twice a year when you are about to take Holy Communion. Afterward, when the sins for which you are at fault recur, say to yourselves, ‘We do not want these, because they are sins against God.’ This is actual repentance.

[6] “Surely you can all recognize that if you do not examine yourselves and see your sins, you remain in them. From birth you find all evils delightful. It feels good to take revenge, to be promiscuous, to steal, and to slander. Because they feel good you overlook them. If someone happens to point out to you that they are sins, you make excuses for them because they feel good. You use false arguments to defend them and convince yourselves that they are not sins, and you stay in them. And afterward you do those evil things more than you did before, to the point where you no longer know what sin is or even whether there is such a thing.

“It is different, however, for people who actively go through a process of repentance. The evils that they recognize and admit to [in themselves] they call sins. They therefore begin to abstain and turn away from them. Eventually they begin to feel the pleasure of those evils as unpleasant. The more this happens, the more they see and love what is good, and eventually even feel delight in it, which is the delight that the angels in heaven feel. Briefly put, the more we put the Devil behind us, the more we are adopted by the Lord and are taught, led, held back from what is evil, and kept in what is good by him. This is the pathway from hell to heaven; there is no other way.”

[7] It is amazing that Protestants have such a deep-seated resistance, antipathy, and aversion to active repentance. Their reaction to it is so strong that they cannot force themselves to do self-examination, to see their sins, and to confess them before God. It is as if they are overcome by horror as soon as they form the intention to do it. I have asked many Protestants in the spiritual world about this, and they all said that it is completely beyond their strength. When they heard that Catholics practice this, that is, that they examine themselves and openly confess their sins to a monk, the Protestants were profoundly amazed, especially since the Protestants themselves could not do this even in secret before God, although they had been commanded, just as the Catholics had been, to do this when they were about to take the Holy Supper. Some people in the spiritual world investigated why this was, and discovered that faith alone was what had led to such an impenitent state and such an attitude of heart. Then those Protestants were allowed to see that Catholics are saved if they turn to Christ and worship him, and no longer worship but only honor the leaders of their churches.

[8] After that we heard a kind of thunder, and a voice speaking from heaven and saying, “We are amazed. Say to the gathering of Protestants, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance, and you will be saved.’”

So I said it.

I added, “Clearly, baptism is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into the church. What else do godparents promise for the child being baptized but that she or he will renounce the Devil and all his works? Clearly, the Holy Supper is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into heaven. Doesn’t the priest say to those about to take it that they absolutely have to practice repentance first? Clearly, the Ten Commandments are the universal teaching of the Christian church; they urge repentance. Isn’t it true that the six commandments on the second tablet say, ‘You are not to do this and that thing that is evil,’ not, ‘You are to do this and that thing that is good’? Therefore you are capable of knowing that the more we abstain from what is evil, the more we love what is good; and that before that, we do not know what good is, or even what evil is.”

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

スウェーデンボルグの著作から

 

True Christian Religion＃280

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280. The fourth experience.

I once saw a long way off some walks between avenues of trees, and young men gathered together there in large groups; each of these was a meeting where people were discussing matters relating to wisdom. This took place in the spiritual world. I approached, and on coming near saw one whom the others reverenced as their leader, because he surpassed the rest in wisdom.

On seeing me he said: 'I was surprised when I watched you on your way here and saw you at one time becoming visible to me, at another dropping out of sight; now I saw you, now you vanished. You must surely not be in the same state of life as the people in our country.'

I replied to this with a smile: 'I am no actor, or Vertumnus 1 , but I am by turns sometimes in light and sometimes in shade to your eyes. So here I am both a stranger and native.'

At this the wise man gazed at me and said: 'What you say is unusual and strange. Tell me who you are.'

'I am,' I said, 'in the world where you once were and which you have now left, what is called the natural world. I am also in the world where you now are, what is called the spiritual world. Consequently I am in the natural state and at the same time in the spiritual state, the natural state when with people on earth, the spiritual state when with you. When I am in the natural state, I am invisible to you; when in the spiritual state, I am visible. I have been granted by the Lord the ability to be like this. You as an enlightened man are well aware that a person who belongs to the natural world cannot see one who belongs to the spiritual world, and vice versa. Therefore when I plunge my spirit into the body, you do not see me, but when I release it from the body, you do. This is the result of the distinction between the spiritual and the natural.'

[2] When he heard me mention the distinction between the spiritual and the natural, he said: 'What distinction is that? Is it not like that between what is purer and less pure? So what is the spiritual but a purer kind of the natural?'

'It is not that sort of distinction,' I replied, 'The natural can never become refined enough to approach the spiritual, so that it becomes spiritual. It is the sort of distinction there is between prior and posterior, which have no finite relationship. For the prior is in the posterior, as the cause is in its effect; and the posterior derives from the prior, as the effect derives from its cause. That is why one is not visible to the other.'

To this the wise man said: 'I have pondered this distinction, but up to now in vain. I only wish I could grasp it.' 'You will,' I said, 'not only grasp the distinction between the spiritual and the natural, you will actually see it.' Then I went on: 'You are in the spiritual state among your people here, but in the natural state with me. For you talk with your people in the spiritual language, which is shared by every spirit and angel, but you talk with me in my native language. Every spirit or angel who talks with a man speaks his own language, French with a Frenchman, Greek with a Greek, Arabic with an Arab, and so on.

[3] 'So in order to be aware of the distinction between the spiritual and the natural as they appear linguistically, do this: go inside to your people, say something there, and memorise the words; then come back keeping them in mind, and pronounce them in my presence.'

He did so and came back to me with those words on his tongue, and uttered them; they were words completely strange and foreign, not to be found in any language of the natural world. Repeating the experiment several times showed clearly that all in the spiritual world have a spiritual language, which has nothing in common with any natural language. Everyone comes of his own accord into possession of that language after his death. I once also discovered by experience that the actual sound of the spiritual language is so different from that of a natural language, that even a loud spiritual sound is inaudible to a natural person, and so is a natural sound to a spiritual person.

[4] Later I asked him and the by-standers to go inside to their own people, and write a sentence on a piece of paper, and then to bring the paper out and read it to me. They did so, and came back with the paper in their hands, but when they went to read it, they could not, since the script was merely composed of some letters of the alphabet with curly lines over them, each one of which conveyed as its meaning a particular matter. Since each letter of the alphabet there conveys a meaning, it is obvious why the Lord is called 'alpha and omega'. When they again and again went in, wrote and came back, they learned that the script entailed and comprehended countless things which no natural script can ever express. They were told that this is because the thoughts of the spiritual man are incomprehensible and inexpressible to the natural man, and they cannot be transferred to another script and another language.

[5] Then, since the by-standers were unwilling to grasp that spiritual thought is so far beyond natural thought, that it is relatively inexpressible, I said to them: 'Carry out an experiment. Go inside to your spiritual community, think of an idea, keep it in mind, and come back and expound it in my presence.'

They went inside, thought and, keeping the thought in mind, came out; and when they went to expound what they had thought, they were unable to do so. For they could not find any idea of natural thought capable of matching an idea of purely spiritual thought, so they could not find any words to express it, for the ideas of thought become words in speech. Thereupon they went back inside, came back, and convinced themselves that spiritual ideas were far above natural ones, inexpressible, unutterable and incomprehensible to the natural man. Because the spiritual ideas excelled the natural ones so much, they said that spiritual ideas or thoughts, compared to natural ones, were ideas of ideas, and thoughts of thoughts, and could therefore express qualities of qualities and affections of affections. It followed that spiritual thoughts were the beginnings and origins of natural thoughts. This also showed that spiritual wisdom is the wisdom of wisdom, and so incapable of expression by anyone, however wise, in the natural world.

[6] Then they were told from the higher heaven that there is a still more inward or higher wisdom, called celestial, which stands in the same relationship to spiritual wisdom as this does to natural wisdom. These forms of wisdom flow in regularly, depending upon which heaven is concerned, from the Lord's Divine wisdom, which is infinite.

At this point the man conversing with me said: 'I see this, because I have perceived that a single natural idea is a container for many spiritual ideas; and also that a single spiritual idea is a container for many celestial ideas. This leads too to this conclusion, that what is divided becomes not more and more simple, but more and more complex, because it approaches closer and closer to the infinite, in which everything is at infinity.'

[7] At the conclusion of this conversation I said to the by-standers: 'You see from these three experimental proofs the nature of the distinction between the spiritual and the natural. Likewise, why the natural man is invisible to the spiritual, and the spiritual man to the natural, although either of them has a complete human form. Because of this form it seems to each as if one could see the other. But it is the interiors, which are mental, which constitute that form, and the mind of spirits and angels is composed of spiritual elements, whereas the mind of men, so long as they live in the world, is composed of natural elements.'

After this a voice was heard from the higher heaven saying to one of the by-standers, 'Come up here.' He went up, and on his return he said that the angels had not previously known the differences between the spiritual and the natural, because they had never before been given the opportunity of making the comparison with a person who was simultaneously in both worlds; and these differences can only become known by making a comparison and examining the relationship.

[8] Before we parted we had another conversation on this subject, and I said that these distinctions arise solely, 'because you in the spiritual world are substantial, not material, and substantial things are the starting points of material things. What is matter but a gathering together of substances? So you are at the level of beginnings and therefore singulars, we, however, are at the level of derivatives and compounds. You are at the level of particulars, we, however, at that of general ideas. Just as general ideas cannot enter into particulars, so natural things, which are material, cannot enter into spiritual things, which are substantial. It is just as a ship's rope cannot enter or be pulled though the eye of a sewing needle, or just as a nerve cannot be introduced into one of the fibres which compose it. This then is the reason why the natural man cannot think the thoughts of the spiritual man, and therefore neither can he express them. So Paul calls what he heard from the third heaven "beyond description."

[9] 'A further point is that thinking spiritually means thinking without using time and space; thinking naturally involves time and space. For every idea of natural thought, but not of spiritual thought, has something of time and space clinging to it. This is because the spiritual world is not in space and time, as is the natural world, though it has the appearance of both of them. Thoughts and perceptions also differ in this respect. For this reason you can think of God's essence and omnipresence from eternity, that is, of God before the creation of the world, because you think about God's essence with no idea of time, and about His omnipresence with no idea of space. Thus you grasp ideas which are far beyond the natural ideas of men.'

[10] I went on to relate how I had once thought about God's essence and omnipresence from eternity, that is, about God before the creation of the world, and because I could not yet banish space and time from the ideas I thought about, I became worried, since the idea of nature entered my mind in place of God. But I was told: 'Banish the ideas of space and time and you will see.' Then I was granted the power to banish them, and I did see. From that time on I have been able to think about God from eternity, without thinking of nature from eternity, because God is non-temporally in all time and non-spatially in all space, but nature is temporally in all time and spatially in all space. Nature with its time and space must inevitably have a beginning, but not so God, who is not in time and space. Therefore nature is from God, not from eternity, but exists in time together with its properties of time and space.

脚注:

1. A Roman god believed constantly to change shape.

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

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