The Gist of Swedenborg/God The Lord
THE GIST OF SWEDENBORG
"At this day nothing but the self-evidenced reason of love will re-establish the Church."—Canons, Prologue.
GOD THE LORD
"Believe in God: believe also in Me."
"My Lord, and my God!"
ONE AND INFINITE
GOD is One, and Infinite. The true quality of the Infinite does not appear; for the human mind, however highly analytical and exalted, is itself finite, and the finiteness in it cannot be laid aside. It is not fitted, therefore, to see the Infinity of God, and thus God, as He is in Himself, but can see God from behind in shadow; as it is said of Moses, when he asked to see God, that he was placed in a cleft of the rock, and saw His hinder side. It is enough to acknowledge God from things finite, that is, created, in which He is infinitely.
"INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT"
WE read in the Word that Jehovah God dwells in light inaccessible. Who, then, could approach Him, unless He had come to dwell in accessible light, that is, unless He had descended and assumed a Humanity and in it had become the Light of the world? Who cannot see that to approach Jehovah the Father in His light is as impossible as to take the wings of the morning and to fly with them to the sun?
THE CHRIST-GOD
WE ought to have faith in God the Saviour, Jesus Christ, because that is faith in the visible God in Whom is the Invisible; and faith in the visible God, Who is at once Man and God, enters into man. For while faith is spiritual in essence it is natural in form, for everything spiritual, in order to be anything with a man, is received by him in what is natural.
Man's conjunction with the Lord is not with His supreme Divine Being itself, but with His Divine Humanity, and by this with the supreme Divine Being; for man can have no idea whatever of the supreme Divine Being of the Lord, utterly transcending his thought as it does; but of His Divine Human Being he can have an idea. Hence the Gospel according to John says that no one has at any time seen God except the only-begotten Son, and that there is no approach to the Father save by Him. For the same reason He is called a Mediator.
GOD-MAN
IN the Lord, God and Man are not two but one Person, yea, altogether one, as soul and body are. This is plain in many of the Lord's own utterances; as that the Father and He are one; that all things of the Father are His, and all His the Father's; that He is in the Father, and the Father in Him; that all things are given into His hand; that He has all power; that whosoever believes in Him has eternal life; that He is God of heaven and earth.
There is one God, and the Lord is He, His Divinity and Humanity being one Person.
They who think of the Lord's Humanity, and not at the same time of His Divinity, by no means allow the expression "Divine Humanity"; for they think of the Humanity by itself and of the Divinity by itself, which is like thinking of man apart from his soul or life, which, however, is no conception of man, still less of the Lord.
WHY HE CAME
THE Lord from eternity, Who is Jehovah, came into the world to subdue the hells and to glorify His Humanity. Without Him no mortal could have been saved; and they are saved who believe in Him.
The Lord came into the world to save the human race which would otherwise have perished in eternal death. This salvation the Lord effected by subjugating the hells, which infested every man coming into the world and going out of the world, and by glorifying His Humanity; for so He can hold the hells subdued to eternity. The subjugation of the hells, and the glorification at the same time of His Humanity, were effected by temptations let into the Humanity He had from the mother, and by unbroken victories. His passion on the cross was the last temptation and complete victory.
HOW HE CAME
BECAUSE, from His essence, God burned with the love of uniting Himself to man, it was necessary that He should cover Himself around with a body adapted to reception and conjunction. He therefore descended and assumed a human nature in pursuance of the order established by Him from the creation of the world. That is, He was to be conceived by a power produced from Himself; He was to be carried in the womb; He was to be born, and then to grow in wisdom and in love, and so was to approach to union with His Divine origin. Thus God became Man, and Man God.
THE LIFE ON EARTH
THE Lord had at first a human nature from the mother, of which He gradually divested Himself while He was in the world. Accordingly He kept experiencing two states: a state of humiliation or privation, as long and as far as He was conscious in the human nature from the mother; and a state of glorification or union with the Divine, as long and as far as He was conscious in the Humanity received from the Father. In the state of humiliation He prayed to the Father as to One other than Himself; but in the state of glorification He spoke with the Father as with Himself. In this state He said that the Father was in Him, and He in the Father, and that the Father and He were one.
The Lord consecutively put off the human nature assumed from the mother, and put on a Humanity from the Divine in Himself, which is the Divine Humanity and the Son of God.
THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE
WHEN the Lord was in the world, His life was altogether the life of a love for the whole human race, which He burned to save forever. That life was of the intensest love by which He united Himself to the Divine and the Divine to Himself. For being itself, or Jehovah, is pure mercy from love for the whole human race; and that life was one of sheer love, as it can never be with any man.
"COME UNTO ME"
DO you, my friend, flee evil, and do good, and believe in the Lord with your whole heart and with your whole soul, and the Lord will love you, and give you love for doing, and faith for believing. Then will you do good from love, and from a faith which is confidence will you believe. If you persevere in this, a reciprocal conjunction will take place, and one that is perpetual, indeed is salvation itself, and everlasting life.
THE TRINITY; THE FULNESS OF HIS BEING
THEY who are truly men of the Church, that is, who are in love to the Lord and in charity toward the neighbor, know and acknowledge a Trine. Still, they humble themselves before the Lord, and adore Him alone, inasmuch as they know that there is no approach to the Divine Itself, called the Father, but by the Son; and that all that is holy, and of the Holy Spirit, proceeds from Him. When they are in this idea, they adore no other than Him, by Whom and from Whom are all things; consequently they adore One.
God is one in essence and in person. This God is the Lord. The Divinity itself, which is called Jehovah "the Father," is the Lord from eternity. The Divine Humanity is "the Son" begotten from His Divine from eternity, and born in the world. The proceeding Divinity is "the Holy Spirit."