because we are made in the image and likeness of God, and thus are able to
be affected by the goodness and truth that go forth from the Divine love and
wisdom of God.
The truth that all life, and in fact everything in all three of nature’s
kingdoms – animal, vegetable and mineral – are essentially aspects of humanity
embodied in material forms, is not so obvious; it takes revelation to open our
eyes to it. It is because they are all derived from the Love and Wisdom of the
Creator, and are thus forms of use – use being what love seeks to bring into
existence by means of wisdom. The supreme example of this is the human
form, which is the aggregate of all forms of use. The doctrine of the “Grand
Man” (Maximus Homo) explains this.
In a previous issue of New Church Life I quoted a statement by the 19th-
century English botanist and New Churchman Leopold H. Grindon, which
I think beautifully sums up the whole scheme of creation: “Nature is man
diffused, and man is nature concentrated.” In this view, the evolution of man
is seen as the gradual concentrating of the humanity that pervades the natural
universe.
Everything in creation relates to and reflects the human, each in its own
particular way. This is because God is Human and is “the All in all things.”
(WEO)
the anthropic principle
And now in science, in the cosmological theories of physics and astronomy,
we have the “anthropic principle.” There are several variations of it, but the
basic idea is that the universe is so “finely tuned” to make life possible that
it strains credibility to attribute this to pure chance. In its “strong” form,
the anthropic principle suggests that there was a Creator who designed the
universe specifically for the sake of life (and thus human life).
More about this another time, but for the moment I just want to observe
that this scientific theory dovetails nicely with the New Church belief that the
world was created for the sake of a heaven from the human race – and is thus a
good example of the “highway out of Egypt” prophesied in Isaiah 19.
(WEO)
pitfalls in reading the word
In mid-March Dr. Allen Bedford, Academic Dean at Bryn Athyn College,
spoke at the College Colloquium on: Forming a Partnership – Reading True
Christianity as a Guide Toward Faith.
Allen noted that his PhD is in chemistry, not theology, but his study
of True Christianity is impressive, and he laid out the systematic study that
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