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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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #112

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112. 3. Given that this is impossible, it is an imaginary faith to believe that Christ’s righteousness or merit is assigned to or transferred into us. In §110 above, the point was made that we are all assigned blame for the evil or else credit for the goodness to which we have devoted ourselves. This makes it clear that if this concept of “assigning” is taken to mean the transfer and incorporation of one person’s goodness into another person, it is imaginary thinking.

In our world rewards are in one sense transferable by people. A benefit that is owed to parents can be reassigned to their children; a favor that is owed to a client can be redirected to the client’s friends. The good qualities and actions that earned the reward, though, cannot be transferred into these other people’s souls; the reward can only outwardly be attached to people.

No such reassignment of benefit is possible in regard to people’s spiritual lives. Spiritual life has to be planted in us. As mentioned just above [§111], if it is not planted in us as a result of our living by the Lord’s commandments, we stay involved in the evil we were born with. Before spiritual life is planted in us, nothing good can affect us. As soon as any goodness touches us it immediately either rebounds and bounces off us like a rubber ball hitting a rock or else is swallowed up like a diamond thrown in a swamp.

People who have not been reformed are like a panther or a horned owl in spirit; they can be compared to brambles and stinging nettles. People who have been regenerated, though, are like a sheep or a dove; they can be compared to olive trees and grapevines. Please consider, if you will, how panther-people could possibly be converted into sheep-people, or horned owls into doves, or brambles into olive trees, or stinging nettles into grapevines, through any assignment of divine righteousness, if “assignment” here means any kind of transfer. Is it not true that in order for that conversion to take place, the predatory nature of the panther and the horned owl and the damaging nature of the brambles and the stinging nettles would first have to be removed and something truly human and harmless implanted in their place? The Lord in fact teaches in John 15:1– 7 how this transformation occurs.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #113

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113. To these things I will add the following: There is a saying in the church that no one can fulfill the law, especially since someone who breaks one of the Ten Commandments breaks them all [James 2:10– 11; Matthew 5:19]. But this formulaic saying does not mean what it seems to. The proper way to understand it is that people who purposely or deliberately behave in a way that is contrary to one commandment in effect behave contrary to the rest, because doing something [against one commandment] purposely and deliberately is the same as completely denying that that behavior is sinful. And people who deny and reject the very idea of sin see nothing wrong with breaking the other commandments.

As everyone is surely aware, just because someone is a fornicator does not mean that he or she is, or wants to be, a murderer, thief, or false witness. People who commit adultery purposely and deliberately, though, see no value in any religious practice, and therefore see nothing wrong even with murders or acts of theft or false witness; they abstain from doing such things not because doing so would be sinful but because they are afraid of the law and any negative effect on their reputation.

Similarly, if people break another of the Ten Commandments purposely or deliberately, they break the rest as well, because they do not consider anything to be sinful.

[2] Much the same is true for people who are devoted to doing good things that come from the Lord. If such people abstain from one evil on the grounds that that evil is sinful, they abstain from all evils (provided that both their will and their intellect are engaged in the process, that is, they abstain from that evil purposely and deliberately). The effect is even greater if they intentionally abstain from more than one evil. As soon as we abstain purposely or deliberately from any sinful evil, we are held by the Lord in a resolution to abstain from the rest as well. Therefore if it happens that because we did not realize what was going on or because we were overwhelmed with physical desire, we do something evil, it is not held against us. It was not something we planned to do, and we do not support what we did.

We develop this resolve if we examine ourselves once or twice a year and recover from an evil we find in ourselves. If we never examine ourselves, we do not develop this resolve.

[3] I may reinforce this point as follows. In the spiritual world I have come across many people who had shared a similar lifestyle when they were in the physical world. They all dressed in fashionable clothing, enjoyed fine dining, took profit from their business, went to the theater, told jokes about lovers as if they themselves were lustful, and many other things of the kind. Yet for some of these people the angels labeled their behaviors as evil and sinful, whereas for others the angels did not. The angels declared the former guilty and the latter innocent. Upon being asked why this was, since the people had done the same things, the angels replied that they had evaluated all the people on the basis of their plans, intentions, and purposes and distinguished them accordingly. Those whose purpose excused them, the angels excused, and those whose purpose condemned them, the angels condemned, since the goal of all who are in heaven is to do good, and the goal of all who are in hell is to do evil. From this it becomes clear who is assigned blame for sin and who is not.

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

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