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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

 

True Christian Religion #16

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16. At this point I shall insert an account of an experience.

I saw some newcomers to the spiritual world from the natural world talking among themselves about the three Persons of the Divinity from eternity. They were in holy orders and one of them was a bishop.

They came up to me, and after we had talked for a while about the spiritual world, about which they had previously known nothing, I said: 'I heard you talking about the three Persons of the Divinity from eternity. Would you please reveal to me this great mystery in accordance with the views which you formed in the natural world from which you have just come?'

Then the bishop looked at me and said: 'I see that you are a layman, so I will reveal the views I hold about this great mystery and instruct you. My views were, and still are, that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit sit in the midst of heaven on magnificent, high seats or thrones; God the Father on a throne of pure gold, with a sceptre in His hand; God the Son on His right hand on a throne of the finest silver, with a crown on His head; and God the Holy Spirit next to them on a throne of glistening crystal, holding a dove in His hand. Around them are three glittering rows of hanging lamps made of precious stones; and at a distance from this ring stand countless angels all worshipping and glorifying God. In addition, God the Father discusses constantly with His Son the souls who are to be justified; they decide between them and decree who on earth are worthy to be received among the angels and crowned with everlasting life. As soon as God the Holy Spirit hears the names they give, He flies through the world to them, bringing with Him the gifts of righteousness, a token of salvation for each person who is to be justified. Immediately on His arrival He breathes on them and blows away their sins, like a man with a fan who clears the smoke from a furnace, and whitewashes it. He removes too the stony hardness of their hearts and imparts the softness of flesh; and at the same time He renews their spirits or minds, brings them to a new birth, and gives them babyish faces. Finally He marks their foreheads with the sign of the cross, and calls them the Chosen and the Sons of God.' At the conclusion of this lecture the bishop said to me: 'That is how I unravelled that great mystery in the world; and because many of my clergy there applauded my speech, I am sure that you too, being a layman, will be persuaded by it.'

[2] On the conclusion of this speech by the bishop, I looked hard at him and the clergy with him, and noted that they were all fully in favour of his views. So I embarked upon a reply, and said: 'I have weighed up your profession of belief, and have inferred from it that you have formed and hold an entirely natural and sensual, I might say, material idea about the Triune God. This must inevitably lead to the idea of three Gods. Is it not thinking according to the senses to imagine God the Father seated upon a throne with a sceptre in His hand? Or about the Son on His throne with a crown on His head? Or the Holy Spirit on His with a dove in His hand, and flying throughout the world to carry out His orders? Since that is the sort of idea that emerges, I cannot accept the truth of your words. From my earliest years I have not been able to admit into my mind any idea of God except as One; and since this has been what I have admitted and is what I still hold, everything you have said makes no impression on me. In due course I saw that by the 'throne' on which the Scriptures say that Jehovah sits is meant His kingdom, by 'sceptre' and 'crown' His rule and dominion, by 'sitting at the right hand' the omnipotence of God exercised by means of His humanity; and by what is said of the Holy Spirit the workings of the Divine Omnipresence. Please take up, my lord, the idea of One God and give it reasonable consideration, and you will at length clearly grasp that this is so.

[3] 'You certainly say that God is one, and this is because you make the three Persons share one, undivided essence. Yet you do not allow anyone to say that the one God is one Person, but insist that there are three Persons, a belief necessary to preserve an idea of three Gods such as you have. You also attribute to each Person a character differing from the others'; do you not by this divide that Divine essence of yours? In these circumstances how can you say and at the same time think that God is one? I would forgive you if you said that there is one Divine. How can anyone who is told that 'the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and that each person by Himself is God' possibly think that God is one? Surely this is a contradiction which cannot be believed. This illustration will show that one cannot speak of one God but only a like Divinity: one cannot call a group of people, who make up a single senate, assembly or council, one man, but so long as they all individually hold the same opinion, they can be said to have one view. Nor can three diamonds of a single composition be called one diamond, only one in respect of their composition; and each diamond differs from another in value according to its weight. This would be impossible if they were one, and not three.

[4] 'However, I perceive that you call the three Divine Persons, each of whom is by Himself or singly God, one God, and have commanded every member of the church to speak in these terms, because enlightened and sound reason throughout the world acknowledges that God is one. You would therefore blush with shame, if you too did not speak in these terms. Yet all the time that you are uttering the words 'One God', although you are thinking of three, still that shame does not trap the two words in your mouth, but you say it aloud.'

After these speeches the bishop and his clergy withdrew, and as he went he turned round and wanted to shout 'There is one God'; but he could not, because his thought hampered his tongue; and then, forcing his lips apart, he gasped 'Three Gods'. The bystanders on seeing this monstrous happening burst into laughter and went away.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #119

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119. The second memorable occurrence taken from Revelation Unveiled. One time just after I woke up from sleeping I fell into a deep meditation on God. Looking up I saw above me in heaven an oval of intensely shining light. As I fixed my gaze on the light, it gradually receded toward the sides and merged into the periphery [of my vision].

Then, behold, heaven opened up to me! I saw some magnificent things, and angels standing in a circle on the south side of the opening, talking to each other. Because a burning desire came over me to hear what they were saying, I was allowed to hear it — first the sound of it, which was full of heavenly love; then the conversation itself, which was full of the wisdom that goes with that love.

They were having a conversation about the only God, about being in partnership with God, and about the salvation that results. What they were saying was ineffable — most of it could not be expressed in the words of any earthly language. Several times before, however, I had been in gatherings of angels in heaven itself, and had been able to join in their conversation because I was then in a state similar to theirs. This enabled me to understand them now, and to select from their discussion a few points that could be expressed in a rational way using the words of earthly language.

[2] They were saying that the underlying divine reality is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. They said that the same is true of the divine essence, because the underlying divine reality is the divine essence, and that the same is also true of God, because the divine essence that is the underlying divine reality is God. They used spiritual images as illustration.

They said, “The underlying divine reality cannot be divided into many entities, each of which possesses an underlying divine reality, and still remain united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. Otherwise each separate entity would think on its own from its own separate underlying divine reality. If it also happened to be concurrently of the same mind as the others, there would be a number of deities in agreement; there would not be one God. Agreement, or the consensus of many, each one acting on its own or by itself, is not an attribute of one God but of many.”

They did not say “gods” because they were unable to. It was suppressed by the light of heaven that shaped their thought and was the context in which their conversation took place. They also said that when they tried to utter the word “gods” and to describe each one as a person by himself, the effort to say that immediately veered off toward “one,” and in fact toward “the one only God.”

[3] They added, “The underlying divine reality is a reality in itself, not from itself, because if it were from itself, that would imply an underlying reality that existed in itself from some prior underlying reality. It would mean there was a god from a god, which is not possible. What comes from God is called ‘divine,’ but it is not called ‘God.’ What is ‘a god from God,’ what is ‘an eternally begotten god from God,’ and what is ‘a god emanating from an eternally begotten god from God’ except words utterly devoid of heavenly light?”

Later on they said, “The underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, is uniform — and uniform not just in a simple way but in an infinite number of ways. It is uniform from eternity to eternity. It is uniform everywhere, and it is uniform with everyone and in everyone. (It is the condition of the recipient that causes all the variety and variability in reception.)”

[4] The angels demonstrated the absoluteness of the underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, as follows: “God is the Absolute, because he is absolute love and absolute wisdom, or to put it another way, he is absolute goodness and absolute truth. As a result, he is life itself. If these qualities were not absolute in God they would never exist in heaven or in the world, because they would be relatively nonexistent compared to the Absolute. Every quality is what it is because it comes from the Absolute, both as its source and as its point of reference.

“The Absolute (meaning the underlying divine reality) has no specific location. It is with those and in those who are in specific locations, depending on how receptive they are. Love and wisdom, goodness and truth, and the life these qualities give are absolute in God; in fact, they are God himself. A specific location cannot be attributed to them, and neither can a progression from place to place as the source of their omnipresence — they are not in a particular place. For this reason the Lord says he is in the midst of people [Matthew 18:20]; and he is in them and they are in him [John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4, 5].

[5] “Nevertheless, no one can comprehend God as he is in himself. Therefore he appears as he is in himself to be a sun above the angelic heavens. He himself as wisdom emanates from that sun in the form of light, and he himself as love emanates from that sun in the form of heat. That sun is not God himself. The divine love and wisdom surrounding him as they first go forth from him come to angels’ view as a sun.

“The Absolute in that sun is the Human Being. It is our Lord Jesus Christ, including both the divine source and the divine-human manifestation. Since the Absolute, which is absolute love and absolute wisdom, was in him as his soul from the Father, therefore divine life or life in itself was in him. None of us is like this. The soul in us is not life; it is merely a vessel for receiving life.

“In fact, the Lord teaches this when he says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6); and in another passage, ‘Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has also granted the Son to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). ‘Life in himself’ is God.”

They added that people who have any spiritual light at all can see from all this that the underlying divine reality, which is also the divine essence, cannot be shared among many, because it is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. If anyone were to claim that the divine reality could be shared, further points that person made on the subject would contain obvious contradictions.

[6] Then the angels became aware that my thoughts included common Christian ideas of God: ideas of a trinity of persons in unity, and a unity of persons in the Trinity, and also of the Son of God’s birth from eternity. At that point they said, “What are you thinking? Surely you are thinking those thoughts from an earthly light that is incompatible with our spiritual light. We are closing heaven to you and leaving unless you get rid of the ideas that go with that point of view.”

So I said, “Please go deeper into my thinking. Perhaps you will see a compatibility.”

They went deeper and saw that three persons to me meant three emanating divine activities: creating, redeeming, and regenerating, which are activities of the one only God. The birth of a Son of God from eternity to me meant his birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time.

Then I explained that my earthly thoughts about the trinity and the unity of persons and about the eternally begotten Son of God were based on the church’s statement of faith that was named after Athanasius. I added that the Athanasian Creed is accurate, provided that instead of the trinity of persons mentioned there one substitutes a trinity in one person — a trinity that exists uniquely within the Lord Jesus Christ; and provided that instead of the birth of a Son of God from eternity one substitutes the birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time, because his human manifestation is openly referred to as the Son of God.

[7] The angels then said, “Good, good.”

They asked me to pass on a statement from them: “Anyone who does not seek help from the absolute God of heaven and earth cannot come into heaven, because heaven is heaven as a result of the one only God. The absolute God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah the Lord, Creator from eternity, Redeemer in time, and Regenerator to eternity. He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit combined. This is the gospel that needs to be preached.”

Afterward the heavenly light I had seen above the opening came back. It came down bit by bit and filled the inner reaches of my mind, enlightening my ideas of the unity and the trinity of God. Then I saw my former merely earthly ideas being separated out, just as husks are shaken off wheat tossed in a winnowing basket. I saw my old notions carried off as if by a wind to the north of heaven and scattered.

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

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