new church life: march/april 2015
The Rt. Rev. Peter M. Buss Jr. is Assistant to the Bishop
of the General Church, Vice President of General Church
International, Incorporated, and Head of General Church
Education. Prior to his ordination into the third degree he was
Pastor of the Glenview (Illinois) New Church. He and his wife,
Teresa (Farrington), live in Bryn Athyn with their four children.
Contact: [email protected]
(Illustrations courtesy of the Office of Education)
O U R N E W C H U RC H V O C A B U L A R Y
Part of a continuing series developed by the Rev. W. Cairns Henderson, 1961-1966.
CONJUNCTION
Only in the Writings do we find the expression “conjunction with the Lord,” and find
it used, not of a mystical state, but of one that may be understood rationally. A common
love, thought and purpose are what bring men together; and by conjunction with the Lord
is meant a state in which man, from the Lord’s love received as good in the will, and His
wisdom received as truth in the understanding, is engaged finitely in the same uses as the
Lord performs infinitely. It is a state in which the Lord is in man as the source of the good he
wills, the truth he thinks, and the uses he does, and man is in the Lord because in good and
truth which are the Lord and are from Him.
It may be useful to note the distinctions among the terms union, conjunction and
consociation. Union is used of two things which together make one, and is therefore reserved
for the relation of the Divine and the Human in the Lord after glorification, and for the
conjugial marriage in which minds of the husband and wife make one mind.
Conjunction is used to describe the regenerate man’s relation with the Lord, in which
man becomes a vessel receptive of life, whereas the Lord by union with the Divine became
life itself in the Human. Consociation describes the regenerate man’s relation with the angels
as with brethren. (See True Christian Religion 725; Apocalypse Revealed 818 and 819; Arcana
Coelestia 2021; Earths in the Universe 64)
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