New Church Life March/April 2017 | Page 15

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approach counter-productive to the Lord ’ s message ? Surely our reason for existence is to firmly share all the truths now revealed by the Lord . . . I believe that when we try to ‘ fit in ’ we actually deny the Lord before the crowing of the cock . Are we just being prudent as we seek to swell our membership through temporal appeals , or are we fearful of rejection or even of persecution ? ”
And Mr . Ridgway says in the middle part of his letter : “ I have been most concerned over many years at the way in which the General Church has been moving away from that very principle of faith that gives it the very reason for its existence . . . . It seems to me that our increasing failure to strongly acknowledge the Divinity of the new Word is either from a lack of understanding of what the so-called Writings of Swedenborg really are and a lack of appreciation of our prime belief , or that it is thought that by hiding our light we will blend in with others and so attract more membership .” Don ’ t these two quotes sound pretty much alike ?
In his second part Mr . Ridgway and I agree about one point , about calling ourselves Swedenborgians , but then , I ’ m sorry to say , we drift apart . My concept of the term “ Heavenly Doctrines ” must be quite different from his . We are told several times in the Writings that when a person reads the Old or New Testament parts of the Word , that the angels who are with that person do not hear the words of the literal sense . They do not hear about Abraham and Isaac , or about Jeremiah ’ s woes ; they hear only the internal sense , about the Lord and His rational , or about the state of the Church .
This hearing of doctrine through the correspondences of the Word are , I think , what is meant by “ the heavenly doctrines ” – what the inhabitants of heaven hear when we read the Word . I see it as distinguishing between the literal sense we read and the internal sense they hear , and that it is not at all something that is tampered with by people . ( See New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 7 and 252 , and Heaven and Hell 516 .)
And if one looks at all the ways the term “ Word ” or “ the Word ” are used in the Writings , one finds that two definitions become evident . The most common one is that the Word is the Old and New Testaments , but this definition is stretchable . It can mean as little as the Ten Commandments , then all the laws given to the children of Israel at Mt . Sinai , or the whole of the five books of Moses . Further , it can also include the historical books and the prophets , so we sometimes find it written as “ the Law and the Prophets ” or “ Moses and the Prophets .” And further yet it will include the Gospels and Revelation .
All of these descriptions are used , and keeping in mind that the noncanonical parts should always be excluded , it means the Word as we know it from childhood , or the Bible . Twice at least Swedenborg uses the term , “ our Word .” ( Apocalypse Explained 797:7 , and Sacred Scripture 71 ) The other definition that becomes evident , or maybe I should say the most stretched
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