New Church Life September/October 2016 | Page 66

new church life: september/october 2016 Rev. Robert Jungé called my attention to many places in The Spiritual Diary/ Spiritual Experiences where, clearly, Swedenborg was given experiences in the spirit while he was reading in some specific series in the Sacred Scripture. I would also assert that a reflective student of the Theological Writings – of the Heavenly Doctrine – will notice that the Lord, in His wonderful accommodation to a myriad different forms of mind, has used what might be termed a whole smorgasbord of approaches or formats to present to us what He would have us receive in His Second Advent. I would invite everyone to take a moment, from time to time, to reflect on the differing formats that have been employed by the Lord, beginning from the first “change of state” in Swedenborg on 7th August, 1747, and extending to those last little Divine works that were recorded before his passing to the spiritual world in 1772. Some readers of this article will have engaged in this reflection in times past, but I feel that it is worth doing again and again so that we continue to recognize the fact of these different formats and remember to utilize the special qualities of each, and so do not inadvertently stumble into heresies through ignoring them. We well know the heresies greater and lesser that people can slip into, and have slipped into if, in drawing teachings for example from the Arcana Coelestia, they ignore the successive series there which arise out of the sequential exposition of Genesis and Exodus. Before passing on to some thoughts as to possible uses that The Spiritual Diary/Spiritual Experiences may serve, it might be useful to comment on an element that one “very occasionally” encounters in passages recorded in the earlier part of this work. In these instances, the diligent reader may sense an incompleteness in the expression of some aspect of a doctrine, such that the teaching involved, without careful analysis of the immediate and broader context, does not appear to be in full harmony with later teachings on the same subject. However, in these rare instances, the Lord has not left the reader without a cautionary note. If one is watching, somewhere in the passage or little series, one will generally find that the Lord has moved Swedenborg to include some such assertion as ”I do not yet know what is signified by . . . ” or maybe “so far as is yet known,” and so forth. In still other rare instances a deliberate point may be made that certain “spirits told” Swedenborg thus and so, and the way in which it is expressed seems calibrated to prompt the careful reader to pause and ask of the Lord clarification of the point. To me, as indicated, these are signals from the Lord not to jump on board too hastily, but to await further instruction and clarification. In the meantime, on closer inspection, one just might find that the explanation that is given in the passage, while not the same as given elsewhere, may nevertheless be 472