Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

EXAMINATION OF LETTERS THIRD AND FOURTH, ON THE DIVINE HUMANITY.

DEAR SIR,

THERE are three things that strike me as remarkable in your letters, 1st, your confident appeal, on all occasions, to what you call reason as a sufficient subjective guide ;-2d, in strong contrast with this, your manner of citing continually the writings of Swedenborg as a direct objective oracle ;-and, 3dly, in still stronger contrast with both, the little use you make of the Old Scriptures regarded as conclusive, either by way of inward or outward authority. Of the first, no particular examples need be brought; they are to be found everywhere. In respect to the second, I need only remark, how very similar your manner of quoting Swedenborg is to that which Christians have generally used in citing passages from the Bible. It is not as an interpreter, or commentator, or a profound theologian, whose views are of great value in the elucidation of the Sacred Volume, but as a direct a priori authority, by no means to be questioned, or requiring any extrinsic or collateral support of argument or testimony. In other words, you never seem to think of bringing Swedenborg to the standard of your reason as you do the Scriptures. In reading him, you find no places which compel you to say, this "seems to mean" so and so, but "it must assuredly mean something else" to be consistent with right reason, or, "to fall back here upon the buttress of the literal averments" of our great prophet " would be a posture of spirit deserving to be regarded as a strange psychological curiosity" (Letters to Trin. p. 38). Why this great difference? I have pressed the question before, and I press it again; for it seems a most

VOL. V.

2

No

important one in deciding the true character of your creed, and the true name to be given to it. Why do you never think of bringing Swedenborg to the standard of your reason, as you do the Scriptures? Why do you never employ any modifications of exegesis to make sense out of his nonsense, or to give a consistent meaning to apparent irrationality? The Scriptures are dark, but he is clear; he is never even apparently irrational. The Scriptures are full of apparent contradictions, and even its truths are many of them" apparent" only in distinction from "real." In Swedenborg, on the other hand, the spirit shines through the letter so clearly, so fully, so rationally, that we read him without that vail which is upon the face in the study of Christ and Moses. All is transparent as noon-day. wonder you turn away from the dark pages of Paul and John to such an authority. No wonder that you quote him precisely as the Pythagoreans of old quoted their master.-'Avròs pa (ipse dixit), "so he said," was enough for them, and "thus Swedenborg teaches," seems often with you to stand in place of all rational argument, as well as of all Scriptural proof. That you should thus cite him in addresses to your own followers, or fellow disciples, might not seen so strange, but I certainly have reason to wonder that you should so frequently employ the same method in your Letters to a Trinitarian. ples of what I mean are to be found on almost every page. stance, which still serves as a good representative of others, I will give from letter iv. page 32. It is a perfect specimen of the manner in which you usually make the Scripture take its place behind the dicta of your oracle, on the ground that it must mean something consistent with his revelations, or else have no meaning at all. You are endeavoring to prove that heaven is not a place, and this is your argument

Exam

One in

"Heaven in general with all, and in particular with each, is a reception of the influx, which is the Divine essence. Thus teaches Swedenborg; and if revelation does not expressly say as much, it must assuredly mean it, and the meaning of the Word is the Word. The true sense of the Scriptures can be no other than that sense which is according to truth."

I need not dwell on that mixture of truisms with a show of argumentation, which is so strikingly exhibited in this passage. Of course, "the meaning of the Word is the Word" (although you sometimes talk of a Word which has been in the world for centuries without any available meaning at all), and, of course, "the true sense of Scripture is that sense which is according to truth." There was no need that one should have visited the spiritual world to be able to teach us that; although just such bald truisms as these form every where the great staple of Swedenborg's writings; but it is quoted here to illustrate your mode of dealing with the Scriptures.

What, then, is your grand authority in respect to the highest truth? Certainly the one to which you resort the oftenest-to which you go with the most confidence-with which you have the least difficulties of interpretation to make out of it "the sense which is according to truth." Tested by all these, and how would the balance stand between Swedenborg's Arcana Cœlestia and the Bible? In your 118 pages of Let

ters to a Trinitarian, what proportion do the quotations from the one bear to those from the other? If you quote Swedenborg ten times to Christ once (to say nothing of the apostles), and that, too, in a discussion respecting Christ's own person and office, can there be a doubt as to the fair conclusion to be drawn from these simple arithmetical premises?

But reason, you will say, is a higher guide than all. It is from reason we must first determine who Christ is, and what is the true mode of the Divine existence. It is reason which must first reveal to us "the mystery of Godliness," and "declare the generation" of Him "whose goings forth are of old, from the days of eternity." In other words-and this is the substance of page after page in your lettersthree persons in one God is an irrational dogma, but three apparent selfhoods in one person, addressing each other, and being addressed, at the same time, as though they were distinct personalities, and that, too, without any apparent reason for so unreal an appearance, -all this is perfectly rational. So also teaches Swedenborg; and, therefore, "if revelation does not expressly say so," or if it seems (as in John xvii. 1; John xii. 27; Matt. xxvi. 39; Luke xxii. 42, and other places) to say just the contrary, "it assuredly must mean" the former, because "the meaning of the word is the word, and the true sense of the Scripture can only be that which is according to truth." Q. E. D.

But I am too moderate in my statement of your position. You are actually beginning to thrust Swedenborg in the face of other people's progress, just as an old-fashioned theologian would employ the Biblefor a similar purpose. This is shown in your late discussion with Mr. Fernald, to which I would not allude, were it not so perfectly in the spirit of some things in your letters to me. He claims the right of exercising his understanding on the dicta of the New Church Scriptures, of showing their apparent contradictions, and their repugnance, in certain cases, to right reason. Now it is really amusing to see how you meet all this. Of the teachings of Christ you do not hesitate to say (Letters to a Trinitarian, iv. p. 38) that the "man who would fall back upon His literal averments" (of a personal distinction between himself and the Father), "or who would rebuke with them the prying researches of the human mind, presents a strange psychological curiosity." Paul has been made out in your pages to be little more than an erring egotistical mountebank. You acquiesce in Swedenborg's consignment of David to one of his cold hells, as a just doom for his false teachings and his false spirit. And then, when one of the admirers of your prophet ventures to express a timid doubt of his infallibility, you bring him short up for such a contumacious use of his " God-given" reason. You claim, in your progress, to have reasoned away beyond Prophets, Apostles, and the "literal averments" and "apparent truths" of Christ. Another thinks that the grand discoveries of the 19th century, the floods of light which have been poured from clairvoyance, from Davis' Revelations, and from Spiritual Rappings, forbid that we should remain content without making a little advance, and reasoning on, a little beyond

Swedenborg. I am amused, I say, at the way in which you meet this modest assertion of the rights of the human intellect-at the shock you feel on the bare supposition, that one who professes to be an admirer of the Swedish Seer should dare to "treat his eternal truths as the mistaken speculations or vagaries of an erring mortal," and, above all, the stern rebuke with which you visit the neological impiety that would "venture, for a moment, to question the infallible truth of heaven, or set up our puny reason or philosophy against a Divine dictum" (See these remarkable words N. C. Repository for Nov. 1851, p. 508). Is there not something really ludicrous in the manner in which you thus throw yourself back in your new conservative saddle, and pull hard up the reins of your boasted progress as against all who may think there is yet some more light left in reason, and some farther illumination to be expected from the spiritual world? In view of so strange a spectacle as this, I can only express my thankfulness that error has its laws of development as well as truth. You cannot stop this genius of progress you have assisted in conjuring up. It must develop itself. It is yet to teach you and others, that in a departure from the Old Church doctrine of revelation there is really no stopping place short of that stultification of all reason which must end in the most naked naturalism. I rejoice in whatever tends to this speedy development. The more rapid the progress, the better. The sooner the crisis, the sooner the cure. Elements thus combined must explode; and the earlier this takes place, the earlier must that period come, which certainly will come, when our exhausted reason shall confess its utter incompetency to solve the great question of human destiny, and the soul shall go back with a child-like docility to the Old Written Word, the Old Christianity derived therefrombelieving in it with a stronger faith than the world has ever known before, holding it all the more precious from the fiery ordeal through which it has had to pass, resorting to it from an invincible necessity when science and philosophy are found to give out darkness more rapidly than light, and finally, after all its wanderings, rejoicing in the sure Word of the Lord as "in the shadow of a great rock in a dry and weary land."

I have deemed these remarks essential, because of that view of the Scriptures, and of the modifications they are to undergo from reason, which meets us so frequently in your Letters to a Trinitarian, and especially in the 3d and 4th, which I would proceed to consider in the present communication. Whether I should agree with you, or not, in respect to your distinction between objective and subjective vision, as set forth in your 1st and 2d letters, there is nothing in it having sufficient bearing on the points most in dispute between us to warrant my dwelling on them. I concede at once that God may manifest himself in any way he pleases, objectively, or subjectively, in a human, or angelic form-in a bush, or a flame, or in any outward he chooses to assume; and that, too, whether the Divine Nature consist in a single person thus revealing himself, with nothing behind the revelation, or in a plurality of personalities, one of which is, by way of eminence, the Revealer, in distinction from the other, or others.

On these matters I know nothing from reason--nothing but what revelation teaches me; but as far as the theophany alone is concerned, it does not at all settle the questions in discussion between us; and, therefore, I shall not waste time on this part of your correspondence. Your third and fourth letters are occupied with the Divine Humanity, as you style it,-meaning, not the incarnation, as would be at first supposed, but a very different doctrine. I might pass by these, also, on the same ground; but there is something in your mode of reasoning here that too strongly tempts me to take a different course. Your position is, that irrespective of what is called the incarnation, irrespective of any becoming in time, or of any assuming of humanity into personal union with the Divine, God is eternally, and essentially, or of his very nature, man. Without deciding on the intrinsic truth of this very strange doctrine of reason, permit me to say, that your argument for it seems very much like a game of words. If you choose to magnify the idea of humanity to infinity, and then, after clothing it with all the Divine attributes, call it God, or call God "the Divine Man," I can regard it as nothing more than the sheerest verbal speculation. "Man," you say, "has will and understanding," p. 26. These are the finite counterparts to the infinite love and wisdom of his Maker." "How is it possible then to avoid the conclusion that there is in God a Divine Humanity?" I must say that I see here no conclusion either to be avoided or to be reached. Any other name or names, embracing any conception of something that may be common, or may seem common, to God and man, or God and anything else, would furnish the elements of an argument of equal logical force. If by the Divine Humanity you mean only another name for infinite love and wisdom, it resolves itself into the merest verbal truism; if you do not mean this, your reasoning has no conclusiveness whatever. Doubtless the declaration, that man was made in the image of God, implies something in Deity corresponding to man in a higher sense than to any lower parts of the creation. Nor is this merely matter of degree in the same kind. Man has some things belonging to the Divine, which the lower animals have not at all; and, therefore, in respect to this, and in comparison with them, as any one may see from the context of the declaration, he is said to be in the image of God. He belongs, with Deity, to that logical genus rational (if we choose to made such a classification) in which they are not included; but how monstrous, as well as illogical, the conclusion, that there is, therefore, no essential or specific difference; or, in other words, that Divinity and humanity are the same species homo, differing only in extent ! In such a sense as I have mentioned, it is doubtless true, as you say, that "man could not be an image of God, were not God an exemplar of man;" but if you mean anything more by this than what is contained in the Westminster catechism on the same subject, I do not see how you have made it out, either by the aid of reason or of Swedenborg. If you mean the same, then all that I can say, is, that you have not half so well expressed it.

I would not dwell farther on your reasoning here, were it not for

« FöregåendeFortsätt »