The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained

Front matter

. [No. 5.

THE

Doctrines of the New Church

Chapter I

THE

Doctrines of the New Church

BRIEFLY EXPLAINED.

I.—INTRODUCTION.

BY the New Church, as the term is here employed, is to be understood that Church signified and foreshadowed by the Holy City, New Jerusalem, which the apostle John beheld in vision coming down from God out of heaven." (Rev. xxi. 2.) The doctrines of this Church were given to the world in a printed form more than a hundred years ago. Yet not one in fifty among intelligent Christians of the present day, knows what these doctrines are. The majority of people have heard something about them, and naturally suppose that what they have heard is correct; but they will generally find, on careful inquiry, that what they have heard is very far from the truth. Many honest and well-disposed persons ridicule these doctrines, who know little or nothing of them beyond what they have learned from persons no better informed than themselves. It is not, therefore, the doctrines of the New Church which excite their ridicule, but that grotesque caricature of them which they have received from others who have never taken pains to examine them, and therefore know not whereof they affirm.

Let it be said, here at the outset, that these doctrines are all contained in the Sacred Scripture, however the carnal mind may fail to see them there. They are taught in that higher sense of Scripture which is above the natural man's discerning; for "the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God; they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Cor. ii. 13.) But they are clearly discernible by the spiritually-minded and unprejudiced, and their truth may be confirmed even by the letter of Scripture. 1

Why called "Heavenly Doctrines"?

They are called "heavenly doctrines," because they are believed and taught in heaven, and are sure to conduct to heaven all those who receive and live according to them. And since they are all contained in the heavenly sense of the Divine Word, and are that sense brought down or laid open to rational comprehension, therefore they are regarded by those who accept them, as a New Dispensation of religious truth, and are believed to be what is meant, according to the true spiritual interpretation of the apostle's vision, by "the holy city. New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven." For a city, spiritually interpreted, denotes a church in respect to its doctrine; and "the holy city. New Jerusalem," denotes that new and august system of doctrinal theology now revealed, whereby a New Christian Church is to be built up, or a new and heavenlier state of mind produced among the various churches and peoples on earth. This city was seen "coming down from God out of heaven," and thereby was represented, symbolically, the truth, that this new doctrinal system is not a mere human invention, but that it comes from the Lord out of heaven;—that it is such doctrine as is believed in heaven, and such as accords with all pure, exalted and heavenly states of mind, and actually comes down from the heavenly sense of the Sacred Scripture.

These doctrines therefore claim to be a new revelation,—not a Revelation to supersede the written Word, but to help us rightly to understand the Word; to unfold for us its deeper and true meaning, by means of which a purer and more heavenly state of life may be attained.

2

A Human Instrument necessary.

For this purpose a human instrument was needed; and such an instrument was provided in the person of Emanuel Swedenborg. This man, it is believed, was providentially raised up and prepared for his sublime mission, which was to lay open the spiritual meaning of God's written Word, and to reveal at the same time the grand realities of the spiritual world—the state of man after death, the time and manner of the last judgment, and the real nature of heaven and hell. He was not inspired as were those who wrote the Word, but he was illumined in an extraordinary degree. He was gifted with extraordinary spiritual insight. His spiritual senses (such is the claim) were opened, so that he was enabled to see and converse with spirits and angels as man with man, and to describe with accuracy and minuteness the condition of things in the spiritual world. At the same time his understanding was so illumined that he could discern the spiritual meaning of all he saw, as well as of all that is written in the Divine Word.

But Swedenborg's writings are to be regarded merely as human compositions. They are not, and do not claim to be, divinely inspired; for they are not written like the Sacred Scripture according to correspondences, and have no internal sense. They only claim to be a divinely-authorized exposition of the spiritual sense of Scripture, and a truthful disclosure of the facts, phenomena and laws of the spiritual world. And his teachings are to be accepted only so far as they commend themselves to one's rational intuitions; or so far as they seem to us reasonable and true, and in accordance with the revealed character, laws and will of God.

We proceed, now, to give a brief statement and explanation of the doctrines of the New Church, without attempting to prove them true. Our space will not admit of that. We ask the reader to give them a candid consideration;—to examine them in the light of Scripture and reason and human experience and the accepted laws of our mental and moral constitution, and of all that the best minds know or believe of the character of God and his government of the moral universe.

Chapter II

II.—The Central Doctrine.

The Central Doctrine in every theological system must needs be that concerning the proper Object of religious worship. This doctrine, whatever be its nature, will determine the character of the whole system. All subordinate doctrines are the legitimate offspring of this, and are modi

, shaped and colored by it, as surely as the earths in our solar system are warmed, enlightened, electrified and held in their orbits by the central luminary which gave them birth, and around which they all revolve.

When, therefore, we have learned what any system of theology teaches concerning the supreme Object of worship, we have mastered the central doctrine of that system; and from this we may draw a pretty just conclusion in regard to all the rest. For when the central doctrine is wrong, the others growing out of it, adjusted to it, modified and colored by it, cannot be right; and when this is right, the others cannot be very far wrong.

Besides, the doctrine concerning the proper Object of religious worship is intensely practical. It exerts a mightier influence on the character of the believer than any other doctrine. We cannot escape its plastic power. We cannot help becoming conformed, in some measure at least, to the character of Him whom we worship, or rather to our conception and cherished idea of his character. Our souls are gradually and unconsciously moulded into the likeness of our cherished ideal. If partiality, self-seeking, arbitrariness or vindictiveness enter into our conception of the Divine character, our own character will inevitably be affected by such conception. If we think of God as stern, haughty, selfish and tyrannical, we cannot fail to make these characteristics our own. If we think of Him as acting from a selfish love of glory, we shall feel that we most closely resemble Him when we are acting from a similar love; and so the love of glory will become the ruling principle in us. But if, on the contrary, we conceive the Object of our adoration to be noble, generous and unselfish in his nature, then shall we, through the plastic power of such conception, grow to be noble, generous and unselfish in ours. If we conceive Him to be supremely tender, compassionate, wise and good—supremely patient, loving and forgiving—then will these same graces gradually become more and more our own.

Common observation and universal experience justify these conclusions. We are naturally inclined to imitate those to whom we look up with a feeling of respect and veneration. We fall unconsciously into their habits of thought, feeling, speech and action. We adopt their sentiments; we assume their tones; we imitate their manners; we often copy their follies and weaknesses—sometimes even their vices. The love and veneration we feel for them blind us to their faults and foibles, or give to these an air of comeliness, and create in us a desire to be like them; and this desire is perpetually stimulating our growth in that direction.

Now since the tendency of all worship is to bring the soul of the worshiper into sympathy with and likeness to the Being or his conception of the Being worshiped, therefore it is of primary importance that we have a correct idea of that Being's character. No other idea exerts so tremendous an influence on our own character, as the idea we habitually cherish of the supreme Object of worship. People do not, as many imagine, worship the same Being merely because they call Him by the same name. In reality each one worships the God that he inwardly looks up to or thinks of. A thousand persons may agree in calling the Object of their worship, Jehovah, God or Lord; yet their conceptions of his character may differ so widely, that it may with truth be said that each of them worships a different God. The same name may be, to each of these different minds, the sign of widely different qualities; for the kind of God one thinks of, is the kind he worships.

It becomes, then, a matter of supreme moment what idea we form and habitually cherish of the Divine Being or his character. If our thought on this central doctrine is wrong, it can hardly be right on any subordinate ones. As the navigator on the pathless ocean determines his geographical position by an observation of the sun, so does each one's intellectual apprehension or moral observation of God determine his spiritual status. 1

Prevalent Beliefs prior to 1757.

Now, if we go back to the year 1757, and inquire into the then prevalent beliefs of Christendom, we shall find that every just conception of the character of God was well-nigh blotted out. We shall find that the generally accepted theology of that day made the Supreme Being partial, unjust, selfish and vindictive. And we shall find, too, that this false conception of the Divine character was faithfully reflected in the creeds and the general character of professed believers. We shall find that the Christian nations and churches of that day were animated by the same partial, unjust, selfish and vindictive spirit which the generally accepted theology imputed to the Divine Being. Christendom was immersed in very thick darkness. There was a general and deep eclipse of faith, and the charity for which the primitive Christians were distinguished, had quite departed from the church. And along with the extinction of true charity and a living faith and a just conception of the Divine character, all knowledge of man's higher life and the way to its attainment, as well as of the nature and reality of heaven and hell and all things spiritual, had well-nigh perished. And thus was fulfilled, in its spiritual sense, that Divine prediction: "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven."

This (according to the belief and teachings of the New Church) was "the consummation of the age" foretold in the Gospels,—the end of the first Christian Dispensation or Church. This was the day which the Lord foresaw and foretold, when "the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet," would be seen "standing in the holy place;" the day when "false Christs and false prophets" (fundamental and congenital false religious doctrines) should arise, deceiving, "if it were possible, even the elect."

And is it strange that, at such a juncture, a wise and loving Father should have vouchsafed to men a further revelation of Himself and the things of his kingdom? It would have been far more strange if He had not. Especially as the same inspired prophecy which proclaims the great darkness that was to fall upon the church, foretells also a glorious illumination that was to follow—another coming of the Lord himself "with power and great glory." And this second coming of the Son of Man, we observe, was to be "in the clouds of heaven;" which, in the symbolic language of Scripture, means a coming or revealing of Himself in the heavenly sense of the Word, through the obscurity or cloud of the letter.

And at the hour of the church's great darkness and the world's great need, a new revelation (such is the belief and teaching of the New Church) was vouchsafed—the very thing to have been expected when we consider the paternal character of God—his deep concern and tender care and boundless love for the children of men. 2

The Character of God as revealed for the New Church.

And what is the character of the Heavenly Father as disclosed in this new revelation? To answer this question briefly, it is:

That He is a Being of infinite wisdom, tenderness, mercy and love. All that is highest, purest, noblest and loveliest in human character is from Him, and exists in Him in a measureless degree. He not only loves, but is Love itself; and this is Life itself. Love is his very substance and esse. All the love there is in heaven and on earth is from Him, as all life is from Him. And his love is infinite in all its attributes; infinite in its sweetness, its purity, its amplitude, its power. We can form but a faint conception of God's love, because we can receive or experience it only in a feeble degree. The love of a wife for her husband, of a mother for her child, of a lover for his betrothed, is, in respect to its sweetness, tenderness and unselfishness, a faint image of the Divine Love; but in point of intensity, amplitude and power, it is as the feeble glimmer of the fire-fly compared with the splendor of the noon-day sun.

God's love, too, is altogether unselfish in its nature. It is the love of others out of itself. It is infinitely expansive, diffusive, communicative. Its ceaseless desire is to impart itself and its delights to others. Such is the unchangeable nature of true love; for it all comes from God. It never seeks its own, never thinks of itself. Its glory and its delight is to communicate itself with all its joys, without a thought of recompense. In doing good and blessing others, it finds its abundant reward. And of this it never wearies any more than the sun wearies of imparting light and heat to revolving worlds.

It was from the love of imparting his own life, and so making other creatures happy, that God created man to be an image of Himself and a finite receptacle of his love. For the great end in creation was a heaven of angels from the human race;—a host of intelligent and rational beings, bright and joyous, and forever growing brighter and more joyous, in the reception and exercise of the Creator's love. And this beneficent end He has pursued with infinite wisdom and undiminished ardor from the beginning until now. He has followed our race through all its wanderings; followed it with his patient, yearning, pitying love; followed it with outstretched arms of mercy into thickest darkness and lowest depths of degradation and sin; followed it with remonstrance and warning and rebuke and correction and instruction and tender entreaty, yet never infringing man's proper freedom, but forever guarding that as the apple of his eye.

And the same deep, tender, patient love which has pursued our race through ages past, pursues it still;—pursues peoples and states and individuals from hour to hour. Nothing can turn it from this pursuit. Nothing can alienate it. Nothing can quench or diminish its ardor. We may be deaf to its remonstrances; we may despise its warnings; we may mock at its counsels; we may be heedless of its chastenings; we may trample on its laws; we may even crucify that love again and again in our hearts; yet for all this and spite of this, it patiently waits the hour when it may rise from its tomb and make its gentle pleadings heard.

Yes: God loves and cares for us, says the New Theology, even when we forget and turn away from Him. He loves and cares for us in our follies and our sins. With pitying eye and outstretched arms and ceaseless longing to save and bless. He pursues the vilest of his rational creatures; pursues them into the lowest haunts of degradation and vice; goes down with tender yearning to the most sinful and abandoned—yes, down to the very lowest of the hells,—and, veiling his ineffable brightness in merciful accommodation to their states, forever strives to save them from a lower depth, and to promote their greatest comfort and best welfare.

Such is the nature of God's love—forever seeking the highest good even of those who are enemies to Him by wicked works. Nor is his love a mere blind impulse. It is infinitely wise. It is united with supreme intelligence as the sun's heat is united with light. It therefore knows what is best for every human being; knows how to bring good out of evil, light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, success out of disaster, and ultimate triumph out of temporary defeat. Infinite love permits nothing to befall us, which infinite wisdom cannot in the end convert into a blessing. The sternest discipline of life, its most wearying vexations, its sorest disappointments, its hardest trials, its bitterest griefs—they are all permitted and overruled for our own or others' ultimate good. No cup of sorrow is proffered to our lips, but the hand of Infinite Love is there, ready and eager to make the bitter draught contribute to the best welfare of our own or others' souls.

Such, briefly, is God's character as disclosed in the revelations made for the New Church. Very different is it from that proclaimed from the pulpits, depicted in the creeds and reflected in the life and conduct of Christendom a hundred years ago. We see in it all that is worthy the supreme homage of men on earth and angels in heaven; not a shadow of imperfection—nothing but purest, sweetest, tenderest love, and this forever guided in its operations by infinite wisdom.

We shall not attempt to prove that the character of the Heavenly Father is such as is here delineated. There is no need of that. It is written on every page of the created universe; written in the experience, constitution and moral government of our race; seen everywhere in the Volume of inspiration also, when its true spiritual meaning is fully apprehended. 3

The Divine Personality.

The next question, scarcely inferior to that of the Divine Character in its practical importance, is that of the Divine Personality. Does God exist as a Divine Person, or only as a formless and universally diffused essence? And is He to be thought of and adored as one Person, or more than one? And has He ever revealed Himself personally to his intelligent creatures? Swedenborg has given a distinct answer to each of these questions.

It was the accepted belief of Christendom a hundred years ago, that there are three Divine Persons existent in and constituent of the one God. And a different character was ascribed and a different office assigned to each of these Persons. And this tripersonalism entered into the whole system of the then reigning theology. It moulded the entire faith of the church into strict conformity with itself. It shaped and colored all its doctrines. The accepted "scheme of redemption," or "plan of salvation," grew by strict logical sequence out of the tripersonal theory. The same may be said of the doctrine of "vicarious atonement," the most important factor in this "scheme." And the mental confusion and distraction produced by this theory, have been frankly confessed by competent witnesses; and the angry controversies to which it has given rise, constitute no mean part of ecclesiastical history. One of the profoundest thinkers on Theology that our country has produced, as well as one of the noblest and saintliest of men—himself a prominent and esteemed minister in an orthodox church—writing upon this subject some thirty years ago, said:

"Our properly orthodox teachers and churches, while professing three persons, also retain the verbal profession of one person. They suppose themselves really to hold that God is one person. And yet they most certainly do not; they only confuse their understanding, and call their confusion faith. This, I affirm, not as speaking reproachfully, but, as I suppose, on the ground of sufficient evidence—partly because it cannot be otherwise, and partly because it visibly is not.

"No man can assert three persons, meaning three consciousnesses, wills, and understandings, and still have any intelligent meaning in his mind, when he asserts that they are yet one person. . . .

"There are too many signs of the mental confusion I speak of, not to believe that it exists. Thus if the class I speak of were to hear a discourse insisting on the proper personal unity of God, it would awaken suspicion in their minds: while a discourse insisting on the existence of three persons, would be only a certain proof of orthodoxy; showing that they profess three persons, meaning what they profess, and one person, really not meaning it."

The same distinguished writer further remarks, and in a similar vein:

"Meantime, and especially in the former class of those who range themselves under this metaphysical tripersonality, mournful evidence will be found that a confused and painfully bewildered state is often produced by it. They are practically at work in their thoughts, to choose between the three; sometimes actually and decidedly preferring one to another; doubting how to adjust their minds in worship; uncertain, often, which of the three to obey; turning away, possibly, from one in a feeling of dread that might well be called aversion; devoting themselves to another as the Romanist to his patron saint. This, in fact, is polytheism, and not the clear, simple love of God. There is true love in it, doubtless, but the comfort of love is not here. The mind is involved in a dismal confusion which we cannot think of without the sincerest pity. No soul can truly rest in God, when God is two or three, and these in such a sense that a choice between them must be continually suggested."—Bushnell's "God in Christ," pp. 131-4.

This, from a man of profound thought, reverent feeling, close observation, deep experience and rare candor; and one whose long and extensive acquaintance among the churches professing the tripersonal doctrine, enabled him to speak with confidence on the subject. And more recent writers of the orthodox school, have borne similar testimony—some of them not hesitating to characterize tripersonalism as tritheism. Thus a correspondent of the Christian Union, as late as December, 1880, writes to that paper:

"A little boy friend of mine spoke recently of 'the Jesus-God, and the other one.' I am aware of a similar confusion of thought. How can I avoid it? How can I learn to think of Jesus as God, without a feeling that there is another, 'the high and mighty Ruler of the universe'? I feel that I lose much that I might have of comfort and rest and joy in prayer and companionship with God, if I were not thus confused. Some find an easy way out of the difficulty by rejecting the divinity of Christ. What can I do, who desire to worship Christ as God?"

And in their reply to this inquiry, the thoughtful and accomplished editors of that paper say:

"Of all errors the most dangerous are those which pervade the community like malaria in the air; arising no one can tell when or where; pervading all teaching, though avowed in none. Such is the error of Tritheism, the doctrine that there are three Gods. No one teaches it, but most Christians believe it. It is universally denied, and generally accepted; denied in the creeds, accepted in the experience. God the Father is conceived as Judge, majestic, awful, stern, inexorable; the embodiment of law and justice. Christ is conceived as Friend, meek, loving, tender, pitying; the embodiment of a tender compassion. The Holy Spirit is conceived as an Effluence, impalpable, invisible, ineffable; a Shadow cast by God, which eludes all grasp. . . . Does not this fairly describe the commonest thought of God? And is not this really a thought of three Gods?

"This conception of God is so pervasive of Christian literature and Christian teaching that it poisons minds least aware of it. . . . Oh, what a misreported, maligned, ill-treated God is ours! Idolatry still flourishes; and in Christian presses, pulpits, books and Sunday-schools. The idols are sometimes grotesque, sometimes horrible; only they are no longer of wood and stone.

"How can you avoid confusion of thought? By taking your thought of God, and your whole thought of God, from the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . Tell your boy friend that the 'Jesus-God' is the only God; that there is no 'other One.' You cannot teach him this lesson in a sentence; you cannot so teach it to yourself. Go constantly, habitually, to the life of Christ for your conception of God. . . . Worship only the God you see in Christ."

Here we have the frank confession of honest and intelligent men, long and still connected with the orthodox school. And what is it? Why, that the "generally accepted" doctrine of to-day concerning God—the doctrine which "most Christians believe," is "the error of Tritheism, the doctrine that there are three Gods." And that this conception or misconception of the supreme object of worship, "is so pervasive of Christian literature and Christian teaching, that it poisons minds least aware of it." And Dr. Bushnell. (who certainly ought to have known) declares that this "generally accepted" doctrine "often produces a painfully bewildered state," involving the mind of the believer "in a dismal confusion which we cannot think of without the sincerest pity."

Such a confession as this from distinguished ministers of the orthodox school, is valuable as showing the need there was of a New Theology at the time Swedenborg wrote—a need that still exists, and grows more and more imperative with the increase of intelligence and the progressive development of the human mind. If an error so fundamental as the one here confessed respecting the supreme Object of worship, early invaded the Christian church, it is not to be wondered at that all the other doctrines of Christianity should have been perverted and falsified, and a new revelation have been required to disperse the darkness. It would, indeed, have been a wonder, had this not happened. And Swedenborg, in perfect agreement on this subject with the authors just quoted, declares the prevailing belief of the church in his day to be a belief in three Gods; and he traced the numerous errors and corruptions of Christian theology to this fundamental falsity. Quoting the words of the Athanasian creed, and showing that "there arises thence no other idea than that there are three Gods unanimous and agreeing together," he proceeds:

That the whole system of Christian theology at this day is founded on an idea of three Gods, is evident from the doctrine of justification which is the principal of the doctrinals of the Christian church, both among Roman Catholics and Protestants. That doctrine sets forth that God the Father sent his Son to redeem and save mankind, and gives the Holy Spirit to operate the same. Every man who hears, reads or repeats this, cannot but in thought or idea divide God into three, and suppose that one God sent another and operates by a third. That the same thought of a Divine Trinity distinguished into three Persons, each of whom is God, is continued throughout the rest of the doctrinals of the present church, as from a head into its body, will be demonstrated in its proper place." (B. E., n. 35.)

And among the propositions affirmed in the same treatise, and briefly analyzed and demonstrated, are the following:

"VI. That, after the idea of a Trinity of Persons and the consequent idea of three Gods, has been rejected, and the idea of one God . . . received in its stead, the tenets of the aforesaid [popular] Theology are seen to be erroneous.

"VII. That then the true and saving faith, which is a faith in one God, united with good works, may be acknowledged and received.

"IX. That the faith of the present day has separated religion from the church, since religion consists in the acknowledgment and worship of one God from faith grounded in charity.

"XI. That from the faith of the present church there results a worship of the mouth and not of the life; yet the worship of the mouth is accepted by the Lord only in proportion as it proceeds from the worship of the life.

"XIV. That the doctrine of the faith of the present church ascribes to God human attributes; as that He regarded man from anger, and required to be reconciled; that He is reconciled through the love He bore his Son and by the intercession of the latter; that He required to be appeased by the sufferings of his Son, and thus to be brought back to mercy; and that He imputes the righteousness of his Son to an unrighteous man who supplicates it from faith alone.