The following list of points formed the basis for a discussion in the latter part of a one-day exploration of Logopraxis ideas and experience in Ballarat Victoria on the 3rd of June 2017. Click on “Read More” to access related doctrinal references under each point.
1. There is a Divine Being whose very essence is Divine Love and Wisdom
Read More1 John 4:8 8
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Divine Love and Wisdom 29
29. Love together with wisdom in its very essence is in God. This no one can deny; for God loves every one from love in Himself, and leads every one from wisdom in Himself. The created universe, too, viewed in relation to its order, is so full of wisdom coming forth from love that all things in the aggregate may be said to be wisdom itself. For things limitless are in such order, successively and simultaneously, that taken together they make a one. It is from this, and this alone, that they can be held together and continually preserved.
2. That being has manifested itself in its fullness in the form of a Divine Human, this being Jesus Christ
Read MoreColossians 2:9
For in Him (Jesus) dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;
True Christian Religion 101
“At the level of his essence, God is divine love. The divine love is like the purest fire. Love, by definition, has just one intention, which is to become one with someone else whom it loves. The divine love has just one intention, which is to unite himself to us and us to himself to such a degree that he is in us and we are in him. Yet because divine love is like the purest fire, clearly it would be entirely impossible for God in this form to be in us and cause us to be in him-everything we are would be reduced to a wisp of smoke!
“Because God at the level of his essence is burning with a love for uniting himself with us, it was necessary for him to wrap himself in a body that was adapted in such a way that we could receive it and enter into a partnership with him. Therefore God came down and took on a human manifestation according to the divine design that he himself established at the creation of the world. His conception occurred through an offshoot of his own power; he was carried in the womb, was born, grew in wisdom and love, and came closer and closer to his divine origin until he was fully united to it. In this way God became a human being and a human being became God. The Scripture about him, which the Christians have and which is called the Word, clearly teaches and testifies that this is the truth. God himself, whose human manifestation is called Jesus Christ, says that the Father is in him and he is in the Father, and that someone who sees him sees the Father. There are many other statements to the same effect.
[2] “Reason sees that there is no other way in which God, whose love is like the purest fire, could unite himself to people and people to himself. Could the fire of the sun as it truly is even touch us, let alone come into us, if it did not wrap its rays in the atmospheres, so that it could present itself in an adapted state as a moderate warmth? Pure ether could not surround us and would certainly be unable to flow into the bronchial tubes of our lungs if it had not adapted itself by being thickened with air. A fish cannot stay alive in the air; it has to be in an element that is suited to its life. For that matter, no kings or queens on earth would orchestrate each and every thing in their countries directly or in their own person; they use officials in higher and lower positions who in effect constitute their royal body.
“The soul of someone could not present itself in visible form to another person, interact with that other, or communicate evidence of its love if it did not do so through a body. How then could God do this except through his own human manifestation?”
3. Jesus Christ or the Lord is the Word and as the Word the Divine is fully present, this presence being with us in all its fullness as the Sacred Scripture
Read MoreJohn 1:1&14
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
True Christian Religion 6
[2] Although that inmost divine quality is covered over with elements adapted to the comprehension of both angels and people in the world, it nevertheless shines through like light through crystalline forms. Its radiance varies depending on the condition of mind that we have formed for ourselves either from God or on our own. For all those who have formed the state of their mind from God, Sacred Scripture is like a mirror in which they see God, although each in a different way. The mirror is made of truths that they learn from the Word and become steeped in through living a life according to them. A first conclusion from this is that Sacred Scripture is the fullness of God.
4. The sacred Scripture is the Lord in his Divine Human. This has an external and an internal. The external is the letter or literal meaning, while its internal is the spiritual meaning, the literal meaning serves as a body that contains the spirit and thereby serves as a gateway to the interior things of the human spirit or mind
Read MoreArcana Coelestia 2894.
One reads in John,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light however appears in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:1-5, 14.
Few know what ‘the Word’ is really used to mean here. From every particular detail it is clear that the Lord is meant, but the internal sense teaches that it is the Lord as regards the Divine Human who is meant by ‘the Word’, for it is said that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory’. And since the Divine Human is meant, ‘the Word’ is used to mean every truth having reference to Him and deriving from Him which exists in His kingdom in heaven and in His Church on earth. This is why it is said that ‘in Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light appears in the darkness’. And since truth is meant, ‘the Word’ is used to mean all revelation, and thus also the Word itself or Holy Scripture.
Apocalypse Explained 151.4
That the Word is the Lord in respect to the Divine Human and Divine truth proceeding therefrom, see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n. 263, 304.
Arcana Coelestia 1143
As to what names, territories, nations, and similar things are, nothing at all is known in heaven. There they have no mental picture of such, only of the things meant by them It is by virtue of the internal sense that the Word of the Lord is living. That sense is like the soul, whose body so to speak is the external sense. And just as when someone’s body dies the soul lives on, and when the soul lives on he is no longer aware of the things that belong to the body, so when he arrives among the angels he is not aware of what the Word is in the sense of the letter but of what it is in its soul. The member of the Most Ancient Church was such that if he were alive here today and read the Word he would not cling at all to the sense of the letter, but would so to speak not see it, only the internal sense abstractedly from the letter. Indeed it would be as though the letter did not exist, and so he would be abiding in the life or soul of the Word. This applies to every part of the Word, including historical descriptions of events that took place entirely as recorded.
5. The spiritual sense of the Word relates to the states of life belonging to the mind while the literal sense of the Word relates to natural things in the world
Read MoreArcana Coelestia 7844
For all the times of the day, like all the times of the year, in the spiritual sense signify alternations of states in respect to truth and good (n. 5672, 5962, 6110).
Apocalypse Revealed 476
[2] Time symbolizes state because in the spiritual world time is not measured by days, weeks, months and years, but instead by states which are progressions of the inhabitants’ lives, by which they recall the past. (On which subject, see the book Heaven and Hell, published in London in 1758, nos. 162-169, where we dealt with time in heaven.)
The state of the church is meant here by time because although day and night, morning and evening, summer and winter mark periods of time in the world, when interpreted in the spiritual sense they mark states of the church.
Arcana Coelestia 1854
The expressions that they “died,” were “buried,” and were “gathered to their fathers,” are often met with, but in the internal sense these do not signify the same as in the sense of the letter. In the internal sense are such things as are of the life after death and are eternal; but in the sense of the letter are such as are of the life in the world and belong to time.
6. The mind or spirit of a person is in the spiritual world, in fact on a personal level the spiritual world is the mind and this becomes clearly evident upon the death of the natural body, or through undertaking a spiritual practice
Read More90. Since man is both a heaven and a world in least form after the image of the greatest (see above, n. 57), there is in him both a spiritual and a natural world. The interior things that belong to his mind, and that have relation to understanding and will, constitute his spiritual world; while the exterior things that belong to his body, and that have relation to its senses and activities, constitute his natural world. Consequently, everything in his natural world (that is, in his body and its senses and activities), that has its existence from his spiritual world (that is, from his mind and its understanding and will) is called a correspondent.Divine Providence 129
Our spirit or mind is actually in that world i.e. the spiritual world.Conjugial Love 430
The reason why the delights of love are turned into such and similar forms is that all things that come into existence in the spiritual world are correspondences. The internals of their mind are turned into them as they go forth and become external before the senses.Apocalypse Explained 1092
…because man as to his… his mind, is in the spiritual world, therefore he is either in heaven or hell; and where the mind is, there is the entire man… when he becomes a spirit. And a man’s quality is exactly in agreement with the nature of his conjunction with the societies of the spiritual world, he being an angel whose quality is like that of his conjunction with the societies of heaven, or a devil whose quality is like that of his conjunction with the societies of hell.
7. Human beings as to their spirit are created to live forever
Read MoreTrue Christian Religion 816
In the spiritual world the state of a man’s mind is such as it is in the natural world; for a man’s mind is his spirit, or the posthumous man who lives after his departure out of the material body.
Divine Providence 324.3&5
[3] To enable us to live forever, what is mortal is taken from us. That mortal part is our material body, which is taken from us by death. This lays bare what is immortal about us, which is our mind, and we then become spirits in human form. Our mind is that kind of spirit.
The sages and wise ones of old saw that our mind could not die. They asked how a spirit or a mind could die when it could be wise. Hardly anyone nowadays knows the ancients’ deeper concept of the matter, but it was a concept from heaven that resulted in their general sense that God is wisdom itself, that we share in that wisdom, and that God is immortal or eternal.
[5] We can see from the Word that we live forever after death, in passages where life in heaven is called eternal life. See, for example, Matthew 19:29; 25:46; Mark 10:17; Luke 10:25; 18:30; John 3:15, 16, 36; 5:24, 25, 39; 6:27, 40, 68; 12:50. Or it is simply called “life,” as in Matthew 18:8, 9; John 5:40; 20:31. The Lord told the disciples, “Because I am alive, you will also live” (John 14:19), and he said of the resurrection that God is God of the living and not God of the dead, and that they could no longer die (Luke 20:36, 38).
8. The conditions or quality of eternal life are a direct reflection of the state of our love. Where the natural self is loved above all else a state of life/mind called hell is induced, but where the natural self is made subordinate to the spiritual self and is loved for the sake of what benefits it can convey to others a state of life/mind called heaven is induced
Read MoreTrue Christian Religion 399
[6] (f) There are two types of love that act as a source for all forms of goodness and truth. There are two types of love that act as a source for all forms of evil and falsity. The two loves that originate all forms of goodness and truth are love for the Lord and love for our neighbor. The two loves that originate all forms of evil and falsity are love for ourselves and love for the world. When the latter two loves are dominant, they are completely opposite to the former two loves.
[7] (g) Love for the Lord and love for our neighbor are the two loves that constitute heaven in us, as I said. They are the dominant types of love in heaven. Since they constitute heaven in us, they also constitute the church in us.
The two loves that originate all forms of evil and falsity, which as I said are love for ourselves and love for the world, constitute hell in us, since they are the dominant types of love in hell. Therefore they also destroy the church in us.
[8] (h) The two types of love that originate all forms of goodness and truth, which are the types of love in heaven, open and form our inner spiritual self, because that is where these loves reside. The two types of love that originate all forms of evil and falsity, which as I have said are the types of love in hell, close and destroy our inner spiritual self when they are dominant. They make us earthly and sense-oriented, depending on how extensively and powerfully dominant they are.
True Christian Religion 400
[14] 14. In short, self-love and the love of the world are totally opposed to love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour. Self-love and the love of the world, as described above, are therefore hellish loves; they are dominant in hell, and also cause hell to exist in a person. Love to the Lord, however, and love towards the neighbour are heavenly loves; they are dominant in heaven and also cause heaven to exist in a person.
Arcana Coelestia 697
697. There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two angels. Through the evil spirits the man has communication with hell; and through the angels, with heaven. Without communication with both no man can live a moment. Thus every man is in some society of infernals, although he is unaware of it. But their torments are not communicated to him, because he is in a state of preparation for eternal life. The society in which a man has been is sometimes shown him in the other life; for he returns to it, and thereby into the life that he had in the world; and from thence he either tends toward hell, or is raised up toward heaven. Thus a man who does not live in the good of charity, and does not suffer himself to be led by the Lord, is one of the infernals, and after death also becomes a devil.
9. All are born into a natural self, which has as its base the hereditary and environmental component-the sense of self/identity acquired from this base gives rise to the illusion that the feeling of life we possess originates within us
Read MoreJohn 3:5-21
5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? 11 “Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. 12 “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. 14 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 “For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 “But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
Divine Love and Wisdom 262
262. The natural mind or man, from the reaction which is in him from birth, acts against the things which are of the spiritual mind or man, when he loves himself and the world above all things. Then also he feels delight in evils of every kind, as in adulteries, frauds, revenges, blasphemies and other like things. And he then also acknowledges nature as creator of the universe, all of which things he confirms by his rational faculty. And after confirmations he either perverts or suffocates, or repels the goods and truths of heaven and the Church, and at length, either shuns them or turns his back upon them or hates them. This he does in his spirit, and in the body just so far as he dares to speak with others from his spirit without fear of the loss of reputation as a means to honour and gain. When man is such, he successively closes up the spiritual mind more and more closely. Confirmations of evil by means of falsities especially close it up. Hence it is that confirmed evil and falsity cannot be extirpated after death. They are extirpated only in the world by means of repentance.
Apocalypse Revealed 692
[2] We will briefly describe the nature of self-love. Its accompanying delight surpasses every other delight in the world, for it consists of nothing but lusts for evils, and every one of the lusts produces its own delight. Every person is born into this delight, and because it impels the person’s mind to focus its thought continually on itself, it draws the mind away from thinking about God and the neighbor except from the perspective of self and with a focus on self. As a consequence, if God does not favor the person’s lusts, he becomes angry with God, as he becomes angry with the neighbor who does not favor them.
As this delight grows, it causes the person to be unable to elevate his thought above himself, but instead draws it down to a level beneath him, for it immerses the mind in the inherent nature of his body. As a result the person becomes gradually sensual, and a sensual person speaks in a lofty and elevated tone about worldly and civic matters, but he can speak about God and Divine matters only from memory.
10. Life becomes an effort to constantly affirm this illusion or fallacy so as to convince ourselves that we are an independent and autonomous being or self. This delusion is the source of every evil that plagues humanity
Read MoreDivine Providence 286
[2] Hence it is that a man cannot see this truth, namely, that the Divine Providence is in the most individual things of the understanding and of the will, or what is the same, in the most individual things of the thoughts and of the affections in every man, whether wicked or good. He becomes confused principally by supposing that in this case evils also would be from the Lord; but, nevertheless, it will be seen in what now follows that there is not a particle of evil from the Lord, but that evil is from man, through his confirming in himself the appearance that he thinks, wills, speaks and acts from himself.
11. The sense of an autonomous and independent self-sense is an appearance of the senses, and as such has no reality to it from a spiritual perspective
Read MoreConjugial Love 444.5
“Man was so created that everything which he wills, thinks, and does appears to him as if in himself and thus from himself. Without this appearance, man would not be a man for he could not receive, retain, and, as it were, appropriate to himself anything of good and truth or of love and wisdom. From this it follows that without this appearance–a living appearance, as it were–man would have no conjunction with God, nor any eternal life therefrom. But if from this appearance he induces on himself the belief that he wills, thinks, and hence does good from himself and not from the Lord, though in all appearance as from himself, he then turns good with him into evil, and thus makes in himself the origin of evil.
12. This natural sense of self or person is the product of being identified with the flow of mental life or thoughts and affections that we experience as or self or self-consciousness
Read MoreHeaven and Hell 302
302. I have talked with angels about the conjunction of heaven with the human race, and I said that, while the man of the Church declares that all good is from God, and that angels are with man, yet few believe that angels are conjoined to man, still less that they are in his thought and affection. To this the angels replied that they know that there is such a belief and even such a mode of speaking in the world, and especially, to their surprise, within the Church, where yet there is the Word to teach men about heaven and its conjunction with man. Nevertheless, there is such a conjunction that man is unable to think the least thing apart from the spirits adjoined to him, and on this his spiritual life depends. They said that the cause of ignorance of this matter is man’s belief that he lives from himself, without a connection with the First Being (Esse) of life; and that he does not know that this connection exists by means of the heavens; and yet if that connection were broken man would instantly fall down dead. If man believed, as is really true, that all good is from the Lord and all evil from hell, he would not make the good in him a matter of merit nor would evil be imputed to him; for he would then look to the Lord in all the good he thinks and does, and all the evil that inflows would be cast down to hell whence it comes. But because man does not believe that there is any influx into him either from heaven or from hell, and so supposes that all the things that he thinks and wills are in himself, and therefore from himself, he appropriates the evil to himself, and the inflowing good he defiles with merit.
Divine Providence 176
176. (1) If a person were to perceive and sense the operation of Divine providence, he would not act in freedom in accordance with his reason, nor would anything appear to him as his own doing. So, too, if he were to foreknow events. It is a law of Divine providence that a person act in freedom in accordance with his reason, and that everything a person wills, thinks, speaks, and does appear to him to spring from him. Without that appearance no one would have anything of his own or be his own person. Thus he would have no autonomy, and so not be subject to imputation; and without imputation it would be a matter of indifference whether he did evil or good, or whether he possessed faith in God or the persuasion of hell. In a word, he would not be human – all of which we showed manifestly to the intellect in its own discussions above.
[2] We must now show here that a person would have no freedom to act in accordance with his reason and no appearance of anything’s springing from him if he were to perceive or sense the operation of Divine providence, since if he were to perceive or sense it, he would also be led by it. For the Lord leads all by His Divine providence, and only in appearance does a person lead himself, as we have also shown above. Consequently, if a person were to be led by a noticeable perception and sensation, he would not be conscious of living, and would then be moved to make sounds and act scarcely otherwise than as a carved figure. If he were to be still conscious of living, he would then be led no otherwise than as one bound in manacles and fetters, or as a draft animal before the cart.
Who does not see that a person in that case would not have any freedom? And if no freedom, that neither would he have any power of reason? For everyone thinks by virtue of and in accordance with his freedom, and whatever he does not think by virtue of and in accordance with his freedom does not appear to him to spring from him, but from something else. Indeed, if you consider the matter more deeply, you will perceive that he would not have any thought either, still less any power of reason, and so would not be human.
13. To identify oneself with the influx of mental life leads to attributing what is good and what is evil to oneself, thus we take what is of the Lord and what is of hell to ourselves. This reinforces the illusion that we are independent beings separate, or separated from, the Divine Love.
Read MoreApocalypse 1148.3-4
[3] But the fallacy by which man is deceived is chiefly from this cause, that he does not know that his freedom, and faculty of acting as if from himself, are the result of an influx of life from the Lord into his inmost, and that this influx, because he is born a man and gifted with that inmost, is not taken from him. But the influx of life from the Lord entering into recipient forms which are beneath that inmost – in which forms the understanding and will reside – is varied according to the reception of good and truth, and even diminished and taken away according to the reception of evil and falsity. In a word, the life which causes man to be man, and to be distinguished from the brutes; the life which is in his inmost, and which, therefore, acts universally in the lower things in him; the life from which he has freedom, and the faculty of thinking, willing, speaking, and acting, comes perpetually from the Lord into him; but man’s understanding and will derived thence, or from that life, are changed and varied according to reception.
Man lives in an intermediate [state] between heaven and hell. The delight of the love of evil and of the falsity therefrom enters into him by influx from hell, while the delight of the love of good and of the truth therefrom enters into him by influx from the Lord, and he is constantly kept in the sensation and perception of life as if it were from himself, and also by that means he is constantly kept in the freedom of choosing the one or the other, and in the faculty of receiving the one or the other. So far, therefore, as he chooses and receives evil and falsity, so far he is taken from that intermediate [state] down to hell; and so far as he chooses good and truth, so far he is taken from that state up to heaven.
[4] The state of man from creation is, that he may know that evil is from hell, and good from the Lord, and that he may perceive these in him as if from himself, and when he perceives them that he may cast the evil back to hell, and receive good, with the acknowledgment that it is from the Lord. When he thus rejects the one and receives the other, he does not then appropriate evil to himself, or make good meritorious.
14. The Lord came into the world to remedy this delusion through presenting the truth of the situation, that God is not far off, but is in fact in our very midst in what is truly human, that He is our very life, and there is nothing that can separate us from that love-but our own wish to remain in the delusion
Read MoreArcana Coelestia 1735.2
[2] From that Love the Being (Esse) of all life is derived, that is, Life itself is derived; for that Being is present within Love and is Love itself. And because Jehovah alone, since He alone is Love, is the Being (Esse) of life, or Life itself, every single thing has its being (esse) and its life from Him. Nor can anyone except Jehovah alone, that is, the Lord alone, be and live from himself. And because no one except the Lord alone can do so, men’s seeming to themselves to live from themselves is an illusion of the senses. Angels perceive clearly that they do not live from themselves but from the Lord, since they live in the Being (Esse) of the Lord’s life because they abide in His Love. Yet to them more than to all others there is granted, together with indescribable happiness, the appearance of living as if from themselves. This therefore is what is meant by living in the Lord, something that is not possible unless one lives in His Love, that is, in charity towards the neighbour.
Arcana Coelestia 2034.6-8
After all the celestial in man had perished, that is, all love to God, so that there was no longer any will of good, the human race had then been separated from the Divine; for nothing effects conjunction except love, and when this had been annihilated, there was disjunction; and when there is disjunction, then destruction and extirpation follow. Therefore the promise was then made respecting the Lord’s coming into the world, who should unite the Human to the Divine, and by this union should effect in Himself the conjunction of the human race by means of the faith of love and of charity.
[7] From the time of the first promise (spoken of in Gen. 3:15) the faith of love in the Lord who was to come effected conjunction. But when there was no longer any faith of love remaining in the whole world, then the Lord came and united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence, so that they were altogether one, as He Himself clearly says; and at the same time He taught the way of truth, that everyone who should believe in Him-that is, who should love Him and the things that are His, and who should be in His love which is love toward the universal human race, thus in love toward the neighbor-should be conjoined and saved.
[8] When, in the Lord, the Human was made Divine, and the Divine Human, the result was an influx of the Infinite or Supreme Divine with man that otherwise could not possibly have existed; and an additional result was the dispersion of the direful persuasions of falsity and the direful cupidities of evil with which the world of spirits was brimful, and with which it was continually being filled full from the souls arriving from the world; and they who were in those persuasions and cupidities were cast into hell, and thereby were separated. Unless this had been done, the human race would have perished, for the Lord rules the human race by means of spirits. Nor could they have been dispersed in any other way, for no operation of the Divine was possible through man’s rational things into those of internal sense, because these are far below the Supreme Divine when not so united;
15. The Gospels constantly present the theme that if we are to become whole spiritually the quality of our faith is paramount
Read MoreMatt. 15:26-28; Mark 7:27, 28.
Jesus said to the woman who was Greek, a Syro-Phoenician, It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. But she said, To be sure, Lord, but even the little dogs eat from the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus answering said to her, O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire. And her daughter was healed.
Arcana Coelestia 10083
The Lord often said, when sick people were being healed, that they should have faith, and, ‘Let it be to you according to your faith’, as in Matt. 8:10-13; 9:2, 22, 27-29; 13:57, 58; 15:28; 21:21, 22, 31, 32; Mark 5:34, 36; 10:49, 52; 16[:16]; Luke 7:9, 48-50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42, 43. The reason why He said it was that the very first thing a person needs to do is to acknowledge that the Lord is the Saviour of the world; for unless he acknowledges this no one can receive any truth or good at all from heaven, or therefore receive faith from there. And since it was the very first and most essential thing, therefore in order that He might be acknowledged when He came into the world the Lord questioned the sick, when He healed them, about their faith; and those who had faith were healed. This faith was that He was the Son of God who was to come into the world, and that He had power to heal and save. Furthermore every healing of sickness by the Lord when He was in the world served to mean a healing of spiritual life, thus served to mean the things that belong to salvation, 8364, 9031(end), 9086.
[6] Since acknowledgement of the Lord is the first thing of all belonging to spiritual life and is the most essential feature of the Church, and since no one, unless he acknowledges Him, can receive any truth of faith or good of love at all from heaven, the Lord also often says that whoever believes in Him has eternal life, and whoever does not believe in Him does not have it, as in John 1:1, 4, 12, 13; 3:14-16, 36; 5:39, 40; 6:28-30, 33-35, 40, 47, 48; 7:37, 38; 8:24; 11:25, 26; 20:30, 31. But at the same time He also teaches that they have faith in Him who live according to His commandments, so that the life which results from doing so goes to compose their faith. These things have been stated to cast light on and corroborate the truth that acknowledging the Lord and acknowledging that all salvation comes from Him constitute the beginning of the life from God with a person.
16. Faith is our understanding of reality and the underlying beliefs as to how it all works
Read MoreTrue Christian Religion 11
[3] Everyone can see that a man’s knowledge of God is his mirror of God, and that those who know nothing about God do not see God in a mirror with its face toward them, but in a mirror with its back toward them; and as this is covered with quicksilver, or some dark paste, it does not reflect the image but extinguishes it. Faith in God enters into man through a prior way, which is from the soul into the higher parts of the understanding; while knowledges about God enter through a posterior way, because they are drawn from the revealed Word by the understanding, through the bodily senses; and these inflowings meet midway in the understanding; and there natural faith, which is merely persuasion, becomes spiritual, which is real acknowledgment. Thus the human understanding is like a refining vessel, in which this transmutation is effected.
17. That understanding is grounded in our experience and is very much reliant on the framework that interprets that experience and because all we have access to, to frame our experience is our senses our faith or understanding will be littered with many fallacies, this forms our natural sense of self as opposed to a spiritual sense of self
Read MoreArcana Coelestia 5125
[2] A person can easily tell, if he pays the matter any attention, whether sensory impressions occupy the first or else the last and lowest position in him. If he says yes to everything his senses urge or desire and plays down all that his understanding tells him, then sensory impressions occupy the first position. When this is the case that person is carried along by natural desires and is ruled completely by his senses. The condition of a person like this is little different from that of animals, which are not endowed with reason; for animals are carried along by nothing else than their senses. Indeed that person’s condition is worse than theirs if he misuses his power of understanding or reason to lend support to evils and falsities which the senses urge and tend towards. But if he does not say yes to these, but from within himself recognizes that they can mislead him into false beliefs and incite desires for evil in him, and he strives to discipline them – thereby bringing them into a position of subservience, that is, making them subject to the understanding part and the will part which belong to the interior man – sensory impressions are in that case restored to order, to occupy the last and lowest position. When sensory impressions occupy that position, happiness and bliss radiate from the interior man into the delights of the senses and make these delights a thousand times better than they were before. Having no understanding of this, one who is ruled by his senses has no belief in it either; and feeling no other delight than that of the senses, and so imagining that no higher kind of delight exists, he regards the happiness and bliss that can be inwardly present in the delights of the senses as worthless. For what a person has no knowledge of is not thought by him to have any real existence.
Arcana Coelestia 9330
[2] The implications of all this are that initially in the next life those steeped in falsities arising from evil fight against those guided by truths springing from good. They are allowed to fight for the reason that good can come out of it. The good that comes out of it is that by that experience those guided by truths springing from good are made stronger in truths against falsities, whereas those steeped in falsities arising from evil are made stronger in falsities and so bring about their own ruin. For in the next life falsities are taken away from those guided by truths springing from good, and truths are taken away from those steeped in falsities arising from evil. Accordingly, those guided by truths springing from good are raised to heaven, and those steeped in falsities arising from evil sink down into hell. And when they are in hell they are terrified and filled with dismay on account of the truths springing from good which angels possess from the Lord.
18. The Word and Heavenly Doctrine provides of view of reality that runs counter to what our natural self is in and therefore serves as the basis for developing a new understanding or faith as to the nature of reality that can form the basis for a new sense of self
Read MoreArcana Coelestia 9382.2
[2] How the case is with enlightenment and instruction from the Word, shall also be briefly told. Everyone is enlightened and instructed from the Word according to his affection of truth, and longing for it, and according to his capacity of receiving it. They who are in enlightenment are in the light of heaven as to their internal man; for it is the light of heaven which enlightens man in the truths and goods of faith (see n. 8707, 8861). They who are thus illumined apprehend the Word in accordance with its interior things, and therefore make for themselves doctrine from the Word, to which they apply the sense of the letter. But they who are not in the affection of truth from good, and from this in the desire to be wise, are blinded rather than enlightened when they read the Word, for they are not in the light of heaven; and from the light of the world, which is called the light of nature, they see only what agrees with worldly things; and thus from the fallacies in which the external senses are, they embrace falsities which appear to them as truths.
19. It teaches that the self we believe ourselves to be, has no reality in itself, that we must give this up if we are to be given a real, or spiritual self
Read MoreDivine Providence 320
320. IV. IF MAN BELIEVED, AS IS THE TRUTH, THAT ALL GOOD AND TRUTH ORIGINATE FROM THE LORD, AND ALL EVIL AND FALSITY FROM HELL, HE WOULD NOT APPROPRIATE GOOD TO HIMSELF AND ACCOUNT IT MERITORIOUS, NOR WOULD HE APPROPRIATE EVIL TO HIMSELF AND ACCOUNT HIMSELF RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. As this, however, is contrary to the belief of those who have confirmed in themselves the appearance that wisdom and prudence originate from man, and do not flow in according to the state of the organisation of men’s minds, treated of above (n. 319), it must now be demonstrated; and in order that this may be done clearly, the following order will be observed:
1. He who confirms in himself the appearance that wisdom and prudence originate from man and consequently are in him as his own, must needs see that if this were not so he would not be a man, but either a beast or a statue; when yet the contrary is true.
2. To believe and think, as is the truth, that all good and truth originate from the Lord and all evil and falsity from hell, appears as if it were impossible, when yet it is truly human and consequently angelic.
3. To believe and think thus is impossible to those who do not acknowledge the Divinity of the Lord, and who do not acknowledge evils to be sins; but it is possible to those who acknowledge these two things.
4. Those who are in the acknowledgment of these two things reflect only upon the evils in themselves and, so far as they shun them as sins and turn away from them, they cast them out from themselves to the hell from which they come.
5. In this way the Divine Providence does not appropriate either evil or good to anyone, but one’s own prudence appropriates both.
20. A new framework of interpretation must be acquired from which we can test how what is taught is true in our own experience, this then can form the basis for a new faith
Read MoreTrue Christian Religion 601
601. VIII. THE REGENERATED MAN HAS A NEW WILL AND A NEW UNDERSTANDING.
The church of today knows both from the Word and from reason that a regenerated man is a renewed or new man. From the Word, by the following passages:
Make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? (Ezek. 18:31).
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit in the midst of you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put My spirit within you (Ezek. 36:26, 27).
Henceforth know we no man after the flesh, therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (2 Cor. 5:16, 17).
In these passages “a new heart” means a new will, and “a new spirit” means a new understanding; for “heart” in the Word signifies the will, and “spirit,” when connected with heart, signifies the understanding. The church also knows from reason that the regenerated man has a new will and a new understanding, since these two faculties constitute man, and they are what are regenerated. Therefore every man is such as he is with respect to these two faculties, that is, he is evil whose will is evil, and still more so he whose understanding favors the evil; while the reverse is true of the good. Religion alone renews and regenerates man. Religion occupies the highest seat in the human mind, and sees beneath it the civil matters pertaining to the world; it also ascends by means of them, as the pure sap ascends through a tree to its very top, and from that height it surveys what is natural, as from a tower or mountain one surveys the plains below.
True Christian Religion 659
659. No evil that a man thinks is imputed to him, because he was so created as to be able to understand and thus think either good or evil – good from the Lord and evil from hell – for he is between these two, and from his freedom of choice in spiritual things has the ability to choose either one or the other. This freedom of choice has been treated of in its own chapter. And because man has the ability to choose from freedom he can will or not will, and what he wills is received by the will and appropriated, while what he does not will is not received and thus is not appropriated. All the evils to which man inclines by birth are inscribed upon the will of his natural man; and so far as the man draws upon these evils they flow into his thoughts; in like manner goods with truths flow from above the Lord into the thoughts and there they are balanced like weights in the scales of a balance. If the man then adopts the evils, they are received by the old will and added to those in it; but if he adopts goods with truths, the Lord forms a new will and a new understanding above the old, and there by means of truths He gradually implants new goods, and by means of these subjugates the evils that are below and removes them, and arranges all things in order. From this also it is clear that thought is the seat of purification and excretion of the evils resident in man from his parents; consequently if the evils that a man thinks were to be imputed to him, reformation and regeneration would be impossible.
21. Logopraxis provides a framework by which we can actually do that