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
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