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DISCUSSION:
The Lord; Glorification; Redemption
I FIRST HEARD ATTRIBUTED TO PAUL LEHMAN of
Harvard Divinity School the aphorism that it is impossible
to formulate a Christological statement without erring on
the side of Arianism or Docetism, unless the statement is in
narrative form. Arianism, like Socinianism and a few other
factions from the history of theology, refers to the kind of
heresy (heresy = error so great that it distorts the basic
Christian message) that does not take seriously enough the
Divine of the Lord, while Docetism, Patripassionism, and a
few other heresies do not take the Lord's Human seriously
enough.
The history of Christian thought provides
ample evidence that Lehman was right. The perfect
christological statement, the Gospels, is of course in
narrative form. After that, one theologian erred on one
side; another, trying to correct the first error, erred on
the other, and the pattern of christological thought swung
through history like a giant pendulum. The Arian error,
epitomized by the Nicene Creed, was often singled out by
Swedenborg as the most damaging to the Christian faith.
However, his doctrine of the Lord implies rejection of the
Docetic heresies as well, and parallels to a notable degree
the christology that most modern scholars consider the best
developed formulation from the church's formative
centuries—the christology of the Chalcedonian Creed and of
Augustine of Hippo.
Theories about the nature, person, and work
of the Lord are complex, with far-reaching implications.
Therefore, this chapter especially illustrates the
difficulty of selecting brief readings for an overview of
Swedenborg's theology. Chapter 2 of
True Christianity,
Doctrine of the Lord and the explications of
Genesis 12 through 50 in Secrets of Heaven are his principal christological statements. The first of these (this
chapter's assignment) is only a slight revision of the
second, and the third is much too long for the present
purpose. The difficulty presented by this situation is that
Chapter 2 of
True Christianity and
Doctrine of the Lord were written with special
emphasis on counteracting the prevalent error of
Swedenborg's time—the Arian or Socinian heresy—with the
result that modern readers, seeing these treatments alone
without the larger and more detailed context of the
treatment in
Secrets of Heaven, have misunderstood
Swedenborg as erring on the side of Docetism! To avoid this
misunderstanding, notice especially the implications of
order in
True Christianity 89 and elsewhere. Also note
Swedenborg's emphasis on progress, or process, in the Lord's
Glorification. I will expand on this latter emphasis.
Process is the essence of narrative, so
Swedenborg's christology is a prime demonstration of the
truth of Paul Lehman's dictum. Nothing that Swedenborg says
about the nature or the person of Jesus as the Christ—the
Lord as he lived on earth—is to be understood outside the
context of the process of glorification. Briefly, that
process began with the intersection of two poles: divine
nature and initiative on one hand, and human nature and
response on the other.
Swedenborg defined incarnation as
the result of the impregnating of a human ovum with direct
influx from God. This definition is distinguished from Docetism by its close parallel to his understanding of
ordinary human conception, in which an ovum is impregnated
with a soul "in the image and after the likeness" of God
(see, e.g.,
Secrets of Heaven 714). Modern genetics
complicate this starting-point, but do not necessarily
invalidate it, for at least two reasons. The understanding
of the transmission of genetic characteristics does not
include a definition of the origin of the human soul in
normal conception. Also, all scientific principles are
inductive conclusions, drawn from the observation of enough
cases to permit the reasonable assumption that under the
same conditions, the same results always occur. Divine
incarnation, however, is a unique case. Since no principle
can be induced from a single observation, there are no
physiological laws that are applicable to this particular
case. These two negative considerations may eliminate
scientific objections to the positive evidence of the Word's
literal statements and Swedenborg's revelation of their
inner meaning.
On this basis, we can assume the possibility
of a virgin birth parallel to normal human birth, and look
more closely at the details of that parallel. In any human
being, the image of God is the person's inmost essence and
last-revealed potential. In Jesus, the similarly concealed
inner telos was God Himself. This bears superficial
resemblances to Apollinarianism, and other heresies that
tried to bridge the Arian-Docetic dilemma by speaking of a
divine soul in a human body. That kind of compromise failed,
however, by excluding everything divine from the body, and
excluding everything human from the soul. In other words,
neither one took either the Divine or the Human of the
Divine-Human seriously enough. The Chalcedonian formula
rejected this along with the two extremes by insisting that
the Lord was "fully God and fully man, yet not two natures,
but one." Swedenborg avoided the problem by his conception
of process. In that conception, the sense in which Jesus'
soul was divine cannot be separated from the struggle and
development of Jesus the man. Swedenborg saw no omniscient
logos simply inhabiting a body that went through the
motions of an apparently human life. He saw the logos
uniquely present in the potential of the infant Jesus and
becoming fully actual and conscious only after a life-long
process. That process is called "glorification."
At birth, the reality of God in Jesus was
almost entirely limited to the presence of divine potential,
and during infancy and childhood Jesus was "a boy as other
boys and a man as other men" (True Christianity 89)
with only brief and isolated exceptions (exceptions which
were inherent in the nature of the process). As a child, he
experienced no consciousness of divine mission or destiny,
except in others (like Simeon) to whom insight into God's
working was revealed, and momentarily in Jesus in the height
of his excitement after discussing theology with the
scholars in the Temple. The boy Jesus acquired knowledge
through experiences and instruction as other children do. He
"knew" things that were not compatible with divine thought
and enjoyed things that could not be combined with divine
love (Secrets of Heaven
1542). The fact that such ideas and emotions were rejected
in the course of intense spiritual struggles testifies to
the implication that occurs often, but is not clearly
specified: imperfect knowledge and self-centered human
motivations were real in early stages of the developing
consciousness of the child Jesus. Awareness of divine
potential came later, and complete transformation of his
intellectual and emotional nature took all of his life.
Through experiences of struggle with
temptation, the divine inner potential became successively
more and more actual and conscious, while human
nature—including habits and inclinations as well as physical
form—was successively transformed in accordance with its
divine potential. This was not a linear progression, but
fluctuated in and between each experience of struggle, from
more-human-and-less-divine to more-divine-and-less-human (in the sense of "merely human"). The nadirs of this
alternating progression were states of divine
self-limitation or "self-emptying" (Greek kenosis, Latin
exinanitio) and the peaks were states of human
self-emptying, or divine self-awareness (glorification). The
former was characterized by separation of Jesus' human
nature from its divine essence and potential, and the latter
by a more complete union of the two. Swedenborg referred to
both the low points of the process and the entire period of
incarnation, as the state of exinanition. The peaks of the
process, as well as the final outcome after the
Resurrection, are called the state of glorification.
The paradigm of the incarnation as a whole, and of the
recurrent cycle of relative separation and relative union,
is the universal human situation of struggle with
temptation. During temptation, a person feels isolated from
the Lord's presence in the Word and in the church, and
aligned with the temptation. Resisting temptation "as if of
ourselves" we come into a closer relationship with God. This
results in the transformation of our will, the process
called regeneration (Chapter 4). Swedenborg's philosophy of
"as if" was his principal means of negotiating the dilemma
between predestination and autosoterism (Pelagius' heresy
that man can save himself by his own effort and good works
independently of God's initiative). Temptations encountered in regeneration are proportionate to
the person's ability to overcome them, according to the
principle of equilibrium (Chapter 2). Jesus' human nature
was tempted during his process of glorification, parallel to
our being tempted in the process of our regeneration.
Because of the power of his divine potential that became
progressively more actual and more conscious, he was
subjected eventually to the most powerful temptations
possible. With each temptation, he evolved further toward
his divine potential, with consequent transformation of his
human nature. The forty days in the wilderness, the
withdrawals for prayer, Gethsemane, and ultimately the
Cross, describe and symbolize the states of separation,
divine self-emptying, and human temptation. The Baptism, the
working of miracles, the Transfiguration, such statements as
"I and the Father are one," and finally the
post-Resurrection appearances, describe and symbolize
glorification, transformed human nature, and the union of
God and man. The alternation and progressive intensity of
these symbols of exinanition and glorification in the
Gospels is descriptive of the process; no other conception
of the nature of Christ can account for those alternations
and that progression in the Gospel narratives. The end of the process, the state of
final glorification at
or after the Resurrection, was antipodal to the beginning.
The original divine potential was fully actualized; the
human nature (similar to ours) was transformed and
glorified. Both full divinity and full humanity were present
in the beginning, process, and end. The separation that
characterized the beginning was overcome by the process.
Thus, the Chalcedonian formula in full applies to
Swedenborg's concept of the final outcome of the
incarnation: at conception and during his ministry, Jesus
was indeed "fully man and fully God," but only at the
glorification was he "not two natures, but one." The Redemption, the purpose of the Incarnation (True Christianity 82), was a three-fold work (True Christianity 115). The first part (conquering the hells) was
accomplished by the glorification process itself. The second
(reordering of the heavens) occurred through the outcome of
the process. The third (founding the church) was the new
reality which the process made possible. In the context of the irreducible and indestructible freedom
of choice at the core of human nature (Chapter 2),
individual redemption requires human cooperation.
Autosoterism is excluded from this teaching by a compound
limitation on our ability to save ourselves. In the first
place, human freedom is limited to choices by an essentially
inert human being who chooses between good and evil
influences. Secondly, even the wisdom to make the choice is
exerted only "as if" it were ours. Swedenborg attributes all
but our choice of intention to God. At the same time,
predestination is excluded from this teaching by that free
choice, because God does not redeem anyone against his or
her will. He has made people free. Redemption requires
cooperation to this extent. Restoring and preserving the balance of power between good
and evil influences in human life was the first redemptive
work of Christ. A situation had developed in the general
atmosphere of the human condition in which this balance was
endangered to the point that it could be restored only by
divine intervention. It is here that the necessity for real
humanity in the nature of Christ appears. In the detailed
ramifications of Swedenborg's theology, God's infinite
goodness could have no direct contact with the evil
influences that threatened the spiritual life of the human
race, because God would utterly destroy evil, thereby
destroying the equilibrium between good and evil. Only a
human being could be capable of such contact—capable of
being tempted. Therefore, God had to become a man in order
to meet the temptations that all people meet, but still be
God to resist temptations that no other person could resist.
To accomplish this purpose, neither mere appearance of
humanity, nor mere humanity, would suffice. Thus,
Swedenborg's exclusion of Docetic and Arian heresies about
the nature of Christ (overemphasizing either the divinity or
the humanity of the divine-and-human-One) is implicit in his
conception of the work of Christ. Through the process
of intense struggle, the man with divine potential met and
overcame all temptations. Actualizing his potential in the
same struggles, he became God in human form. This has
parallels in the traditions of recapitulation theories:
there is a sense in which Christ typified all lives and the
temptations he overcame typified all temptations. Swedenborg's construction excludes theories of sacrificial
redemption and substitutionary atonement. It views the
Passion as the final, climactic, and definitive temptation,
followed by the ontological development of the New Being,
the God-man. This development will be treated more
specifically in Chapter 13, but one implication of it is
essential here. The Lord, who overcame every temptation that
any human being ever can face, became one with the God who
is omnipresent. Therefore, the loving strength of his human
experience is immediately accessible to all who will avail
themselves of it. This power has no effect upon our lives
except insofar as we choose to accept it, but to the extent
that we do choose it, it is absolute in its power to save. The metaphysical abstractions of this discussion, and of the
remaining chapters of the course, are strenuous intellectual
challenges. However, they are no further from the experience
of life than your breath or heartbeat. Consider the hymn: "O
bless the Lord, my soul... He who redeemed our souls from
hell hath sovereign power to save." What does that mean,
exactly, in practical terms? Especially, how does that
happen; how does it work? That is what this chapter is
about. CHAPTER 10 ASSIGNMENTS Read the following passages from Swedenborg. For further
reading in other published versions, see the passage listed
just below:
True Christianity Chapter 2, esp. 81-109, 114-133. PASSAGES FROM SWEDENBORG: The Lord; Glorification; Redemption
TC 81 ....By the Lord the Redeemer I mean Jehovah in his human
nature. The following pages will show that Jehovah himself
descended and assumed human nature in order to accomplish
redemption. I call him "the Lord"—not "Jehovah"—because the
Jehovah of the Old Testament is called "the Lord" in
the New Testament.... The Lord also ordered his disciples to
call him Lord, so that is what he was called by the
disciples in their letters, and later by the Apostolic
Church—as evidenced by its creed, the so-called Apostles'
Creed. This was because the Jews did not dare to speak
Jehovah's name because of his holiness and because "Jehovah"
means the entire Divine Reality which existed from
eternity—while the human (which he took upon himself in
time) was not that Reality.... TC 82 (i) Jehovah God descended and assumed human form in order to
redeem the human race. Christian churches today believe that
God, creator of the universe, fathered a Son from eternity,
and that this son descended and assumed human form to redeem
and save mankind. But this belief is an error and collapses
under its own weight. Just consider that God is one, then
apply your reason to the fiction (or worse) that the one God
fathered a Son from eternity; and then that God the Father,
together with the Son, and Holy Spirit (each of whom
severally is God) is one God. This fiction dissipates in a
flash, like a meteorite in the atmosphere, when it is shown
from the Word that it was Jehovah God himself who descended,
became human, and was the Redeemer.... TC 85
(ii) Jehovah God descended as the Divine-True, which is the
Word; yet he did not separate the Divine-Good from it. There
are two aspects which make up God's essence: divine love and
divine wisdom. Stated another way, God's essence is
everything that is divine and good, as well as everything
divine and true.... The same pair is meant in the Word by
"Jehovah God" ("Jehovah" meaning divine love, or what is
divine and good; "God" meaning divine wisdom, or what is
divine and true).... TC 86 Jehovah God descended into the world as the Divine-True for
the purpose of accomplishing redemption. Redemption
consisted of conquering the hells, straightening out the
heavens, and (after those things were accomplished) founding
the church. The divine-good alone is not capable of
achieving all those goals, but the divine-true springing
from the divine-good is. The divine-good itself is like a
rounded sword-point, a blunt piece of stick, or a bow
without arrows. However, what is divine-and-true because it
is divine-and-good is like a sharpened sword, a stick pointed
to make a spear, or a bow with arrows—a potent weapon
against enemies. Swords, spears, and bows in the Word stand
for militant truths.... There was no other way in which the
falsities and evils—in which all of hell was plunged (and
is, perpetually)—could be attacked, defeated, and conquered,
except through the divine-true coming from the Word. There
was no other way in which a new heaven could be founded,
formed, and organized, as was then done. There was no other
way in which a new church could be established on earth....
TC 87 The difference between
what-is-good-separated-from-what-is-true and what-is-true-because-it-is-good
can be seen clearly by contemplating ourselves. All in us
that is good resides in our intentions and all of us that is
true lies in our ability to understand. However, our
intentions cannot do a thing on the strength of their being
good, because only our understanding can make them work.
They cannot act, speak, or feel on their own. All of their
ability and power come through our ability to
understand—therefore they come through what is true, because
our understanding is the container and home of what is true. It is similar to the way the heart and lungs work in your
body. The heart cannot produce any movement or any sensation
without the breathing of the lungs: together, life is the
result of the lungs' breathing because the heart beats. This
is obvious when someone suffocates or drowns: breathing
stops (though systolic cardiac motion continues)...[and]
there is neither movement nor sensation...because the heart
corresponds to intentions and their various good qualities,
and lungs correspond to understanding and its various
truths.... TC 89 (iii) He assumed human form according to his divine order....Simultaneous with creation, God introduced order into the
universe and into all its parts. His omnipotence functions
and works according to his order in all the universe and
each of its parts....Now, since God descended, and he is
order,...it was necessary—if he were to become really
human—for him to be conceived, carried in a womb and born,
be taught, learn one thing at a time and be brought (by
means of what he learned) into a condition of intelligence
and wisdom. Therefore, in his human form, he was an infant
like any other infant, a boy like any other boy, and so
on—the only difference being that he achieved that progress
more quickly, fully, and perfectly than others....
TC 92 (iv) The human by which he brought himself into the world is
the Son of God. The Lord said on many occasions that the
Father had sent him and that
he was sent by the Father (e.g., Matthew 10:40; 15:24; John
3:34; 5:23, 24, 26-38; 6:29, 39, 40, 44, 57; 7:16, 18, 28,
29; 8:16, 18, 29, 42; 9:4; and very many other passages). He
said this because "being sent into the world" means
descending and being among human beings, which he
accomplished by means of the human nature he assumed through
Mary the virgin. Also, that human is really the Son of God,
because he was conceived by Jehovah God as Father (as is
stated in Luke 1:32, 35), and is called Son of God, Son of
Humanity, and Son of Mary. Son of God means Jehovah God in
his human, Son of Humanity means the Lord as to his Word,
and Son of Mary means the specific human nature he took upon
himself. You can see that Son of Mary means his purely human
nature because, in the reproduction of all human beings, the
soul comes from the father and the body from the mother. The
father's semen contains the soul, and this is clothed with a
body in the mother's womb. In other words, everything
spiritual about you is from your father; every material
aspect is from your mother. In the Lord's
case, what was divine in him was from his Father Jehovah and
his human was from his mother. The union of these two is the
Son of God. This is clearly stated in the story of the
Lord's birth, in Luke: The angel Gabriel said to Mary,
the Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the
Most High shall overshadow you; therefore the holy thing
that shall be born of you shall be called Son of God
(Luke 1:35).... TC 95 (v) The lord made himself righteousness by acts of
redemption. Christian churches today say and believe that
the Lord—and he alone—achieved merit and righteousness while
he was in the world by showing such complete obedience to
God the Father, particularly by his passion on the cross.
But they have assumed that his suffering on the cross was
the actual act of redemption. However, that was the act of
glorifying his human and not the act of redemption. This
subject will be discussed in the following section about
redemption. The act of redemption—by which
the Lord made himself righteousness— was the Last Judgment,
which he carried out in the spiritual world. After that, he
separated the bad from the good and the goats from the
sheep, expelling from heaven those who allied with the
beasts of the dragon. From those who were worthy, he
established a new heaven, and he established a new hell from
the unworthy. By stages, he brought everything everywhere
back into order and also established a new church. These
were the acts of redemption by which the Lord made himself
righteousness, because righteousness consists in doing
everything according to divine order and reorganizing
everything that has fallen out of order. Divine order itself
is righteousness....
TC 97 (vi) The Lord united himself with the Father, and the Father
with himself, by the same acts. The union was accomplished
by redeeming acts because the Lord performed these acts out
of his human nature. As he did so, the Divine (by which is
meant the Father) drew nearer, helped and cooperated, until
they became not two, but one. This union is glorification,
which will be described in what follows. TC 99
This union is reciprocal...because no union or bond is
possible between two people unless each approaches the
other.... The same kind of reciprocal bond exists between
soul and body in each individual, between your spirit and
the sensory and motor organs of your body, between your
heart and your lungs, your will and your understanding, and
between all the members and viscera of your body in
themselves and with each other. Such is the bond between
those who love each other deeply.... TC 100 Because no bonding is possible unless there is a mutual and
reciprocal linkage, the bond between the Lord and each of us
is no different, as is obvious from the following passages
(among others): He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him (John 6:56). Remain in me, and I
in you. Whoever remains in me and I in them bears much fruit
(John: 15:4-5). If anyone opens the door, I will come in to
them and dine with them, and they with me (Revelation 3:20).
This bond is produced by your approaching the Lord and the
Lord approaching you, for it is a fixed and immutable law
that the Lord approaches a person to the extent that the
person approaches the Lord.... TC 101 (vii) Thus God became human and the human became God in one
person....Jehovah, creator of the universe, descended and
assumed human form in order to redeem and save humanity; [21.
Notes]
and the Lord united himself with the Father by redeeming
acts, and the Father reciprocally and mutually united
himself with the Lord.[22.
Notes] We can plainly see from that
reciprocal union that God became human and the human became
God in one person.... ....[2]Therefore Paul says that in Jesus the Christ all
the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9);
John says that Jesus the Christ, Son of God, is the true God
and everlasting life (I John 5:20)....
TC 102 Here I shall add something new. I was once allowed to speak
with Mary the mother of Jesus. She happened to be passing
and appeared in heaven above my head, dressed in white
garments that looked like silk. Then she paused for a moment
to say that she had been the Lord's mother. He had been born
to her, but he became God by putting away all the human
nature he had from her, so she worships him as her God. She
did not want anyone to acknowledge him as her son, because
all that is divine is in him.... TC 104 (viii) His progress toward union consisted of his acts of
emptying himself and his acts of glorifying himself. The
Lord went through these two states during his life in the
world. This is known in the church. They are called self-emptying (exinanition) and glorification. The earlier state,
self-emptying, is described in many passages of the Word,
especially the Psalms of David, and also in the Prophets (in
detail in Isaiah 53:12, where we read that he emptied his
soul to the point of death). This state constitutes his
humiliation before the Father: he prayed to the Father, said
that he did the Father's will, and ascribed everything he
did and said to the Father.... He could not have been
crucified outside of that state. The state of glorification, on the other hand, is also the
state of union. He was in that phase when he was
transfigured in the presence of three of his disciples, when
he performed miracles, and whenever he said that the Father
and he were one, that the Father was in him and he in the
Father, and that all things of the Father's were his.
Finally, after complete union, he had power over all flesh
(John 17:2), all power in heaven and on earth (Matthew
28:18), and many other things. TC 105 The Lord had to go through these two stages—self-emptying
and glorification. There is no other way to progress toward
union because this way follows divine order, which is
immutable. The way of divine order is that a person adjusts
himself to be God-receiving, prepares himself to become a
receptacle and home for God to enter and live in as his
temple. A person must do this autonomously while still
recognizing that the action is God's gift. We must recognize
this even without feeling the presence and activity of God
(although it is God who accomplishes every good thing
anyone's love desires and provides every truth of anyone's
faith). Every person must (and will) advance in this
sequence to become spiritual instead of natural, and the
Lord advanced in this same way to make his natural human
divine.
It was for this reason that he prayed to the Father, did his
will, attributed to him everything he did and said, and
uttered the words on the cross, "My God, my God, why do you
forsake me?" This is because, in that stage of life, God
appears to be absent; but another stage follows, which is a
state of union with God. . . . Everyone who becomes
spiritual instead of natural passes through two stages of
development; the first leads to the second and so passes
from the world to heaven. . . . In the first stage,
understanding takes the lead and intending follows; in the
second stage, intending takes the lead and understanding
follows. Nevertheless, understanding grows out of intending:
we do not intend by means of understanding. What is good and
what is true, caring and faith, our human insides and
outsides, all are linked in exactly the same way.
TC 107 (ix) From this time on, no one from the Christian world can
enter heaven who does not believe in the Lord God the
Savior, and approach him alone. . .. But those who know
nothing about the Lord ... are saved by their faith and
their life if they believe in one god and live in accordance
with the commandments of their own religion. Sin is imputed
to those who know, not to those who are ignorant—just as
blind people who knock things over are not blamed. The Lord
says, "If you were blind, you would not have sin; but you
say that you can see, therefore your sin remains"
(John
9:41).
(i) Redemption itself was conquest of the hells and
organization of the heavens, in preparation for a new
spiritual church. I can say with absolute certainty that
these three events constitute redemption because even today
the Lord is exercising redemption, beginning with the Last
Judgment in 1757 and continuing from that time to the
present. That is because the Lord's Second Coming is
occurring now; a new church is being established, something
that could not happen until after the hells had been
conquered and heaven organized. I have been permitted to
witness all that has happened.... Redemption
consisted of conquest of the hells, organization of the
heavens, and establishment of a new church, because without
these, no human being could have been saved. This is their
proper order: the hells had to be conquered first before a
new heaven of angels could be arranged; this had to be
arranged before a new church could be instituted on earth.
The sequence is necessary because people on earth are so
bonded with angels in heaven and spirits in hell that they
have to be identified with one side or the other....
TC 118 (ii) Without that redemption,
no human could have been saved, nor could angels have
remained unharmed. First, I must say what redemption is. To
redeem means to free from damnation, reclaim from
everlasting death, rescue from hell, and release those who
are captured and bound at the hands of the devil. The Lord
performed all this by conquering the hells and founding a
new heaven. People could not have been saved by any other
means because the spiritual world is so closely integrated
with the natural world that they are inseparable.
Principally, this affects people's interiors—what we call
their souls and their minds. Good people are linked with
souls and minds of angels, and bad people with souls and
minds of spirits from hell. That union is so close that if
you were deprived of it you would fall down, lifeless as a
block of wood. Similarly, angels and spirits could not
continue to exist either, if human beings were taken away
from them. So it is plain why redemption took place in the
spiritual world and why heaven and hell had to be brought
into order before a church could be established on earth.... TC 119 Angels could not have remained unharmed except for
redemption by the Lord, because the whole heaven of angels,
together with the church on earth, forms a single person in
the Lord's sight.[23.
Notes] That person's inside comprises angels of
heaven, and the outside comprises the church. In more
detail, the highest heaven forms the head, the intermediate
and lowest heavens the chest and mid-section; the church on
earth the loins, legs, and feet. The Lord himself is the
soul and life of this entire person, so if the Lord had not
accomplished the acts of redemption, this person would have
been destroyed.... TC 120 There are many reasons why injustice and wickedness would
have spread throughout all Christians in either world
(spiritual as well as natural) except for the redemption by
the Lord. One reason is that everyone comes into the world
of spirits after death and is at that time exactly what he
was before. On arrival, no one is prevented from talking
with his or her dead parents, siblings, family, and friends.
Every husband first seeks out his wife, every wife her
husband. They are introduced by one another into various
companies of individuals who outwardly look like sheep but
inwardly are like wolves, who are able to corrupt even those
who had led religious lives. Thus, as a result of
unspeakable tricks unknown in the natural world, the world
of spirits is filled with wickedness—like a pool covered
with the green slime of frogs' spawn.... [So,) without the redemption accomplished by the Lord, no
one could be
saved, nor could the angels remain unharmed. The Lord is the
only refuge to avoid destruction. He says: Remain in me, and
I in you. Just as a branch can bear no fruit by itself, but
only if it remains part of its vine, so neither can you
unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the
branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear
much fruit; because without me you can do nothing. Unless
you remain in me, you are cast out, you wither, and are
thrown into the fire and burned (John 15:4-6).
TC 121 (iii) The Lord thus redeemed not only the human race, but
also angels....(1) At the time of the Lord's first coming,
the hells had grown to such a height that they filled the
whole world of spirits (which lies midway between heaven and
hell). They had thrown the region called the lowest heaven
into confusion, and— not only that—they had even attacked
the middle heaven. It was being plagued in a thousand
different ways, and would have been destroyed except for the
Lord's protection....The hells had grown to such a height
because at the time the Lord came into the world, the whole
world had utterly alienated itself from God by worshipping
idols and practicing magic; and the church established among
the Children of Israel (and, at a later time, among the
Jews) had been totally destroyed by falsifying and
adulterating the Word. And the people who had done these
things came after death into the world of spirits. They
eventually grew and multiplied so that they could not be
dislodged from there except by God himself descending and
using the strength of his divine arm....
[3](2) ....Not only every human being, but every angel as
well, is held back from bad things by the Lord and kept in a
good situation. No one—angel or human—is in a good
situation on their own, but everything good is from the
Lord....The Lord came into the world to take hell away
from humans, and he did this by fighting against hell and
winning victories over it, until in this way he made it
subject to his command.... TC 123
(iv) Redemption was a purely divine work. Hell had risen to
flood the whole world of spirits at the time of the Lord's
coming. The power of the Lord drove it out and scattered it
(eventually imposing his organization on it, even as heaven
was being reorganized). Anyone knowing the nature of hell
must exclaim in wonder that redemption was an
unconditionally divine work.... TC 124 (v) This redemption could not be accomplished except by God
incarnate....Redemption ... could not have been
accomplished except by Almighty God.
It could not have been accomplished without his incarnation,
that is, making himself human. Jehovah God in his infinite
essence cannot approach hell (much less enter it) since he
is in fact the highest and most perfect Being. If he were
even to breathe on those who are in hell (since he is
essentially so high and perfect) he would destroy them
instantly....Therefore, if Jehovah God had not assumed human
form—thus clothing himself with a body of the lowest
kind—attempting any kind of redemption would have been in
vain. For how can anyone attack an enemy without coming near
and arming for the battle?... But you must realize that the Lord's battle with the hells
was not a battle of words, like people arguing a point or
disputing in a court of law. Such fighting is quite
ineffectual here. It was spiritual battle—the Divine-True
armed with the strength of Divine-Good (that is, the very
life-force of the Lord...whose strength was illustrated
in my small book, Last Judgment). TC 126
(vi) The passion of the cross was the last temptation which
the Lord underwent as the greatest prophet. This was the
means by which he glorified his human—that is, united it
with the Father's Divine—so in itself this was not the
redemption. The Lord had two purposes in coming into the
world, redemption and the glorification of his humanity. By
these, he saved both the human and angelic races. However,
the two purposes were quite distinct although they combined
in achieving salvation.... TC 129 One reason the Lord was willing to undergo temptations, even
to the point of suffering on the cross, was that he was the
Prophet. In ancient times, prophets represented the church's
doctrine from the Word, and consequently the church's
condition at the time, by the various harsh, unfair, and
even criminal acts imposed on them by God. However, since
the Lord was the Word itself, his passion on the cross as
the Prophet represented the way in which the Israelite
church had profaned the Word. Another reason
was that in this way he would be recognized in the heavens
as the Savior of both worlds. All the details of his passion
stand for specific kinds of profanation of the Word....
TC 130 [ 3 ] ...For example,...his betrayal by Judas meant that
he was betrayed by the nation of Israel, which possessed the
Word ( Judas represented that nation). His arrest and
conviction by the chief priests and elders meant that that
entire church behaved that way; his being beaten, spat upon
in the face, flogged, and his head struck with a reed meant
similar treatment of divine truth contained in the Word.
Crowning him with thorns meant that they falsified and
adulterated those truths; dividing his garments and throwing
lots for his tunic meant that they threw the Word's truths
to the winds, but kept its spiritual sense (tunic means the
spiritual sense). The crucifixion meant that they destroyed
and profaned the whole Word; their giving him vinegar to
drink meant that they offered only falsified truths (which
is why he did not drink it). Their piercing his side meant
that they utterly extinguished everything true and
everything good in the Word. His burial meant his rejection
of all he had left from his mother and his resurrection on
the third day meant his glorification (or the union of his
human with the Father's Divine). TC 132 (vii) It is a fundamental error on the part of the church to
believe that the passion on the cross was itself the
redemption. That error, together with the error concerning
three divine persons from eternity, has perverted the whole
church to the point where there is no spirituality left in
it. Does any subject fill more books of traditional theology
today[24.
Notes]—or is any subject taught more zealously in colleges
or preached more often in pulpits—than this: the belief that
God the Father not only drove the human race away from
himself in anger, but included it in universal damnation
(thus excommunicating the whole race). According to this
tradition, God was gracious and compelled his own son to
descend and assume the damnation to appease his father's
anger. This was the only way in which the Father could look
at all favorably on any human being!... These and similar phrases ring through our churches,
resounding from the walls like echoes in woodlands and
filling the ears of all listeners. Is there anyone who
cannot see that God is mercy and clemency itself? Anyone
whose reasoning faculty has been illuminated and healed by
reading the Word can see that these qualities are his
essence. It is a contradiction to say that mercy itself and
goodness itself could look on humanity in anger, pass a
sentence of damnation upon all, and still remain what he is
in his divine essence.... The reason...[for the error] is this: people have taken
the passion on the cross to be redemption itself....One
erroneous deduction leads to other theories of the same type
(for errors lie hidden in the deduction and emerge one after
the other). From the belief that suffering on the cross was
the redeeming act, ideas about God can emerge and be
extracted that are even more scandalous and ignoble until,
as Isaiah says: Priest and prophet go astray
through strong drink. They stumble in judgment, all the
tables are covered with vomit brought up (Isaiah 28:7, 8).
TC 133 This idea of God and redemption has reduced all theology
from the spiritual level to the lowest natural level by
attributing purely natural characteristics to God.
Everything in the church depends on our having an idea of
Good and Redemption linked with our idea of salvation.... EXTENDED READINGS FOR CHAPTER
10:
True Christianity Chapter 2, especially 81-109, 114-133. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER
10: How do you see the difference between what Jesus of Nazareth
was and who Jesus Christ is? Can you describe the states or stages in Jesus'
glorification process illustrated by two pairs of
consecutive events in the Gospel narratives? How is our regeneration process similar to and/or dissimilar
to the glorification process of Jesus Christ? What questions or issues does the lesson raise for you? |
