I stumbled upon the following line in Swedenborg today, and was struck by how this can be read two ways: “All teaching in heaven is from doctrine drawn from the Word, and not from the Word apart from doctrine.” (Heaven and Hell 516) Way 1: Doctrine is what we can understand. What we know. It [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Bible’
Sinus waves
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, cement, doctrine, sinus waves, teachings on August 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Gravity well
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, Einstein, law of attraction, The Secret on July 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Einstein said that gravity could be paraphrased as an extreme curvature in the space-time continuum. Or something to that effect. So gravity is not a force, but a bending of space to cause the effect of gravity. We live inside that well. God poked his finger into the mattress of the starry fields and now [...]
Psalm 19
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, Hebrew, poetry, psalm 19, psalms, Stephen Mitchell, translation, uplifting on June 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Help me to be aware of my selfishness, but without undue shame or self-judgment.” (Stephen Mitchell translation) This would be in the neighborhood of verses 11-13 of Psalm 19. My other Bible translations say nothing like this. They use words like sin, blame, transgression. Bad stuff. All those words that have ceased to have any [...]
Spiritual knowledge
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, God, Jesus, revelation, spiritual growth, spiritual knowledge, Swedenborg on February 20, 2011 | 2 Comments »
There is a place in Swedenborg that points out the difference between knowledge gained from the senses and knowledge gained from revelation. It is used to argue that religion, or really any ideas concerning God and the afterlife, must have a source of knowledge that comes direct from God and the afterlife. Using nature as [...]
Change is ordained
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, change, life, New Year, ordinance, Prophets, statute, Swedenborg on January 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
(Today is Jan 1 of the new year 2011.) I found the following surprising insight. The word ‘ordinance‘ or ‘statute,’ as it occurs so often in the Bible, means the following in the inner sense: [Referring to] changes that take place in spiritual and celestial things. Life without changes and variations would lead to sameness, [...]
The internal meaning of the Bible
Posted in Sermon writing and preaching, tagged Bible, creation, Genesis, God, inner truth, spiritual growth, Swedenborg, water, Word on November 7, 2010 | 1 Comment »
In today’s culture the Bible is on the way out. Quite understandably so, since no one is sure what it means, or even believes that it in fact means something. That is our message: the Bible means something. Its meaning is unknown, but not secret. The teachings of the New Church go a long way [...]
Uniqueness of New Church teachings
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, change, heaven, New Church, spiritual growth, Swedenborg, Word on October 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The uniqueness of New Church ideas concerning the Word, i.e. the Bible, starts with accepting that there is an internal, spiritual meaning inside the Word. There are correspondences with individual images and words that deepen the literal meaning into a much more spiritual meaning. Water corresponds to truth. So every time water is mentioned it [...]
Living law
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, Essenes, God, Jesus, John, life, scripture on October 20, 2010 | 1 Comment »
“The law is the living word of the living God to living prophets for living men.” (Essene Gospel of John, chapter 4) Jesus is reported to have said this to the people that hung on his words, wanting to be taught. They already knew the Law of Moses, and were already following it. But that’s [...]
Unquestioned answers
Posted in Flashes, tagged answers, Bible, church signs, questions, Tao te Ching, Truth on October 15, 2010 | 1 Comment »
“Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers.” (church sign in Concord, MA) The truth I have on paper, in the Word, is not the real truth. Truth functions as a seed, where my life is the ground. My life is my heart and my soul, my feelings, actions and thoughts (AC 3030.4). “The [...]
Out of Jesus
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, Craddock, exegesis, Jesus, preaching, sermon, Word on October 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I’m listening to a Fred Craddock talk from 2005. He mentions the word “exegesis,” and his slightly Aymehricun accent makes it sound like: “Ex-uh-Jesus.” Exegesis means going from single Bible verses toward meaning. Swedenborg’s Secrets of Heaven are an exegesis of Genesis and Exodus. “Ex” means out of. So… you get exegesis = out of [...]
Killing babies
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, emotion, Lord, Swedenborg, Word on October 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“By the rivers of Babylon a we sat and wept when we remembered Zion… O Daughter of Babylon, happy is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” (Psalm 137) Oh, it’s so good we have Swedenborg’s Apocalypse Explained to soften these words from Psalm 137. Make them innocuous. Because now it [...]
Language is flexible
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible, church, Lord, preaching, religion on September 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“If a language doesn’t have a word for “behind,” this doesn’t necessarily mean that its speakers wouldn’t be able to understand this concept.” (source) We already instinctively know this. It’s the power of poetry, as an example. A few well-chosen words that vaguely circumscribe a situation can evoke a powerful image of the experience. Doesn’t [...]
Trees, degrees and simulations
Posted in The Sacred, tagged Bible, holiness, Jesus Christ, Swedenborg, Truth, Word on August 27, 2010 | 2 Comments »
(A section from my dissertation on “The Sacred”) Does the literal sense of the Word play a minor role only? Something to be discarded as quickly as possible in the attempt to get to the real meaning and holiness of God’s Word? I would like to relate, at this point, an interesting fact about trees. [...]
Angels
Posted in The Sacred, tagged Bible, holiness, Lord, The Sacred, Truth on June 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The teachings of Swedenborg have revealed that each person is joined to good and evil spirits all the time. Everybody has at least two angels with him through whom he has communication with heaven, and two evil spirits through whom he has communication with hell. (AC 986.2; see also AC 1277, 2379, 6600; and many [...]
The Lord appears in the Bible
Posted in Flashes, tagged Bible on December 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Can you guess what this image represents? This looks to me like the image of an angel. Or one of those New Age pictures of the human aura with lines and formations. But what is it really? You won’t believe this: “Visually, this is the entire Bible printed on a single piece of paper. Floating [...]
