The Lord

The Lord, in his essence, is love itself. That’s sort of a

metaphysical statement, and it’s easy to read over it without really grasping it. But it is everything; it is the answer to every question we will ever have about life, about humanity, indeed about reality itself. The Lord is love itself. That’s his substance and his being, and it is the basis of all existence.

Love, of course, is impossible to express directly. We can talk about how to be loving, about what love makes us want to do, about love’s effects. We can show love through countless actions. We can even see its image in the faces of people who feel it. But without some such tangible form, love is inexpressible, and in a philosophical sense does not actually exist.

Within the Lord, love is given expression through the Lord's all-encompassing and all-embracing wisdom, which shapes it into concepts that can interact with our minds and hearts. And since the Lord’s love is infinite and divine, and is the source of all human love, so also the Lord’s wisdom is infinite and divine and the source of all human wisdom.

That, then, is the simplest way to describe the Lord: He is perfect, divine love expressed through perfect, divine wisdom.

But love cannot exist in a vacuum. It needs an object, a recipient, and of its nature wants to bring that “other” close, make that “other” happy, and be conjoined. To have that, the Lord had to create something that was not himself. According to Swedenborg, he did this by extending his love and withdrawing from the extension, creating something that was in accord with his love but was not part of it – what we know as physical reality. Since it was no longer part of the Lord, this “stuff” had no love of its own, was finite rather than infinite, and was utterly dead – but because it was in accord with love the Lord could love it from the outside and keep it in existence.

Physical reality could itself, however, could not love the Lord back. So out of that physical reality the Lord formed human beings, creatures with their own forms of love and wisdom and free will, who could accept his love and return it and who could experience the joy of conjunction.

The history of that relationship -- between the Lord and humanity -- is, of course, a convoluted one, but it all centers on that principle: The Lord created us so he could love us, be conjoined with us, and make us happy.

In early days, as the Most Ancient Church, people accepted the Lord’s love freely, and lived in innocence and delight. But from free will they eventually turned to their own minds for guidance – represented by the serpent in the Garden of Eden – which led to the fall represented by the great flood. From the remnants the Lord raised up the Ancient Church, represented by Noah, which he led through knowledge and understanding. But again through free will people eventually turned that knowledge into idolatry and magic, as in the fallen nations that surrounded the Children of Israel.

To preserve the name Jehovah and and the symbolic relationship between spiritual and physical things, the Lord then formed the Jewish or Israelitish religion, which created the written Word with all its internal meaning, and preserved that meaning in its rituals of worship. To do it, though, he had to leave them people’s minds and hearts closed, since they had both been corrupted by the earlier churches. So they did things that were important, but without love and without understanding. The fact that they were forced into order put them in constant conflict with the Lord, which is why He is so often pictured as angry, and why there is so much battle and violent imagery in the Old Testament.

By the end of the Old Testament era, the hells had grown so strong, so full from the legions of evil people flowing in, that they threatened to block off the flow of love from the Lord to the world. So the Lord, through Mary, took on a human body, complete with all the evil tendencies people have. Through that human aspect the Lord could battle the hells directly, by subjecting himself to every conceivable temptation and overcoming them all – something not possible within his divine essence, which has no evil and cannot be tempted. We see only glimpses of that temptation in the Gospels – the 40 days in the desert, the Garden of Gethsemane, the cross itself – but Swedenborg tells us it was constant from his earliest childhood to the end of his earthly life.

Through his earthly life, the Lord accomplished several things. First, he defeated the hells and put them in order, so that his love could reach mankind fully again. Second, he opened a window into the deeper meanings of the Laws of Moses and illustrated the importance of love through his teachings. Third, he made a human being divine. Fourth, he made his own divinity human. And he did all these things so that human beings would be better able to receive and return his love.

This explanation, obviously, sheds some light on the idea of the Trinity. The Son was not a separate person; he was the Lord himself internally, clothed in a human body, creating a human presence which is still with us. The Holy Spirit likewise is not a separate person; it is the Lord’s love taking action before us.

There is much more that could be said. Indeed, Swedenborg says that at their deepest level the inspired parts of the Bible are entirely about the Lord’s life in this world. For now, though, it is enough to say that the Lord continues to be, as he has always been, divine love reaching out to us through divine wisdom, seeking to be one with us and to bring us joy.

Passages from Swedenborg

Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 1690

1690. That 'the rest fled to the mountain' means that it did not happen to all of them is clear without explanation from the fact that they had now become 'the rest', who fled away. The subject in the internal sense is the temptations which the Lord underwent in childhood, about which nothing is recorded in the New Testament Word. No temptations are recorded there apart from the temptation in the wilderness, or shortly after He came out of the wilderness, and the last temptation later on in Gethsemane and after that. The fact that the Lord's life from earliest childhood right through to the last hour of His life in the world consisted in constant temptation and constant victory is clear from many places in the Old Testament Word; and the fact that it did not end with His temptation in the wilderness is clear from the following in Luke,

After the devil had ended every temptation he departed from Him for a time. Luke 4:13,

as well as from His undergoing temptations right through to His death on the Cross, and so to the last hour of His life in the world. From these considerations it is evident that the whole of the Lord's life in the world from earliest childhood consisted in constant temptation and constant victory. The last was when on the Cross He prayed for His enemies, and so for all people in the whole world.

[2] In the part of the Word where the Lord's life is described - in the Gospels - no other temptation, apart from the last, is mentioned than His temptation in the wilderness. More than this was not disclosed to the disciples; and the things which were disclosed seem in the sense of the letter so slight as to amount to scarcely anything at all. For the things that are said, and the replies that are given, do not seem to constitute any temptation at all; yet in fact His temptation in the wilderness was more severe than the human mind can possibly comprehend and believe. Nobody can know what temptation is except someone who has experienced it. The temptation that is recorded in Matt 4:1-11; Mark 1:12, 13; Luke 4:1-13, incorporates in a summary form all temptations, namely this, that out of His love towards the whole human race He fought against self-love and love of the world, with which the hells were filled completely.

[3] All temptation is an attack against the love present in a person, the degree of temptation depending on the degree of that love. If love is not attacked there is no temptation. Destroying another person's love is destroying his very life, for his love is his life. The Lord's life was love towards the whole human race; indeed it was so great and of such a nature as to be nothing other than pure love. Against this life of His, temptations were directed constantly, and this was happening, as has been stated, from earliest childhood through to His last hour in the world. The love that was the Lord's very life is meant by His being hungry and by the devil's saying,

If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered, It is written that man will not live by bread alone but by every word of God. Luke 4:2-4; Matt. 4:2-4.

[4] That He fought against love of the world, or against all that constitutes love of the world, is meant by the devil's taking Him on to a high mountain and showing Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and saying,

To you I will give all this power and their glory, for it has been given to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship before me, it will all be yours. But answering him Jesus said, Get behind Me, satan! for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. Luke 4:5-8; Matt. 4:8-10.

[5] That He fought against self-love, and all that constitutes self-love, is meant by these words,

The devil took Him into the holy city, and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will give His angels charge regarding you, and on their hands they will bear you, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, Again it is written, You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Matt. 4:5-7; Luke 4:9-12.

Constant victory is meant by the statement that after temptation angels came and ministered to Him, Matt. 4:11; Mark 1:13.

[6] To sum up, the Lord was attacked by all the hells from earliest childhood right through to the last hour of His life in the world. The hells were constantly overpowered, subdued, and vanquished by Him; and this He did solely out of love towards the whole human race. And because this love was not human but Divine, and because the intensity of the love determines that of the temptation, it becomes clear how severe His conflicts were, and on the part of the hells how fierce. That all this was indeed the case I know for sure.

Arcana Coelestia 2523

In the internal sense of the Word the Lord's entire life is described, as it was going to be when He was in the world, even as to His perceptions and thoughts. For these things had been foreseen and provided, since they were from the Divine. A further reason for this provision of them in the internal sense was so that the things of the Lord's life in the world might be manifested as present realities to the angels, who perceive the Word according to its internal sense. In this way the Lord was placed before them, and at the same time the manner in which He gradually cast off the human and put on the Divine. Unless these things had been manifested to the angels as present realities by means of the Word, and also by means of all the religious observances of the Jewish Church, it would have been necessary for the Lord to come into the world immediately after the fall of the Most Ancient Church, which is called 'Man' or Adam; for the Lord's Advent was foretold immediately the Fall took place, Gen. 3:15. And what is more, the human race existing at that time could not otherwise have been saved.

[2] As regards the Lord's life itself, it was a life in which the Human was constantly advancing towards the Divine, even to complete union, as stated many times already. For to fight the hells and overcome them He had to do so from the Human, since no conflict with the hells takes place from the Divine. That being so, He was pleased to put on the human as any other person; to be a small child as any other; to grow in knowledge and cognitions which were represented and meant by Abraham's sojourning in Egypt, Chapter 12, and now in Gerar. Thus He was pleased to develop the rational like any other person and to dispel the shadow enveloping it and to bring it into light, and to do so from His own power. That the Lord advanced in this manner from the Human to the Divine, no one can be in any doubt if he merely considers the fact that He was a small child, and learned to talk as any small child does, and so on. But there was this difference, that the Divine itself dwelt within Him because He had been conceived from Jehovah.

Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 10645

10645. 'Therefore you shall not bow down to any other god' means that the Lord alone is to be worshipped in faith and love. This is clear from the meaning of 'bowing down' as adoring and worshipping. The reason why the Lord alone and no other is the One who is to be worshipped is that 'Jehovah' and 'God' are used in the Word to mean the Lord, see in the places referred to in 9315, 9373, and that the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, also the one and only God, in the places referred to in 9194. The reason for saying that the Lord is to be worshipped in faith and love is that worship of the Lord springs either from faith or from love. Worship that springs from faith is called worship in accord with truths, for truths belong to faith, and worship that springs from love is called worship springing from good, for good belongs to love. Those who are in the Lord's spiritual kingdom worship Him in faith, whereas those who are in His celestial kingdom do so in love.

[2] But something must be said to show what worship of the Lord in faith and love is like. Very many people suppose that they worship the Lord in faith when they believe the things contained in the teachings of the Church, and that they worship the Lord in love when they love Him. But worship of the Lord does not consist in mere belief nor in mere love; rather it consists in leading a life in accord with His commandments. For those who do so, they alone are the ones who believe in the Lord and love Him. All others may say that they believe in the Lord but they do not in fact believe in Him, and they may say that they love Him but they do not in fact do so. The reason why only those who lead a life in accord with His commandments believe in the Lord and love Him is that the Lord cannot be where there is an understanding of truth but no will or desire for it, only where there is an understanding of truth coupled with a will or desire for it. For truth does not enter a person and become his until he wills or desires it, and in willing it does it; for the will is the real person, whereas the understanding is the person only insofar as it is rooted in the will. The Lord is also present with a person in his truths that spring from good with him; and truths springing from good are ones that a person wills or desires and consequently does, not those which he understands and does without any desire for them in his will. For without any desire in the will the doing of them is hypocrisy, since they are done before men and not before the Lord.

[3] Neither does the Lord reside with a person who is an empty shell, that is, who possesses no knowledge of His truths and does not do them. It is in those truths which spring from good, that is, which a person wills or desires and does, that the Lord is present with a person; for truths springing from good compose the Church as it exists in him, and they compose heaven as this exists in him. In short, they cause the Lord Himself to reside in him.

[4] Reason alone tells people that this is so, if they weigh the matter up; they can see that truths serve to shape the whole understanding part of the human mind, and forms of good to shape the whole will part. For all things that exist throughout creation have connection with truth and with good; and the human understanding has been made to receive truths and the human will to receive forms of good. The truths which a person believes are called the truths of faith, and the forms of good that fill a person with delight are called forms of the good of love. From this it becomes clear that what the truths of faith shaping the understanding are like, and what the forms of the good of love shaping the will are like, determines what a person is like; for a person is a person by virtue of his understanding and will. If therefore God's truths come to shape his understanding and become the constituents of his faith, and the forms of good which become the components of his love give shape to his will, it follows that heaven then exists within that person, and that the Lord resides with that person as in His heaven. For Divine Truths which make up the understanding and forms of Divine Good which make up the will come from the Lord, or are the Lord's; and those things which are the Lord's are Himself. From this it is evident that believing in the Lord consists in filling one's understanding with the truths of faith, that loving the Lord consists in filling one's will with forms of the good of love, and that neither of these things is accomplished except by learning truths from the Word, willing them, and doing them. Whether you say willing and doing or you say loving, it amounts to the same thing; for what a person loves he wills, and what he actively wills he loves.

[5] From all this it may now be seen what worshipping the Lord in faith and love really is. That the nature of it is as described is also evident from the consideration that the Lord wills or desires the salvation of all. His desire to save a person implies His desire to lead him towards Himself, to heaven. This cannot be accomplished unless the Lord is in him; and the Lord cannot be in him at all except in such things residing in him as come from Himself. Those things are truths springing from good, thus commandments of His which the person does in faith and in love; for nothing else exists in a person, or is ever able to exist, that receives the Lord and heaven. Nor does heaven itself consist of anything else. [6] The truth that believing in the Lord and loving Him consist in doing His commandments is also what the Lord teaches in John,

If you love Me, keep My commands. He who has My commandments and does them, he it is who loves Me. If anyone loves Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words. John 14:15, 21, 23, 24.

And elsewhere in the same gospel,

Remain in My love. If you keep My commands, you will remain in My love. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. John 15:9, 10, 14.

The commandments which are to be kept, and in accordance with which people ought to conduct their lives, are presented in the teachings about charity and faith*.

Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 2

2. The Lord is God of Heaven

First and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this. Throughout the whole of heaven, no one is acknowledged as God of heaven except the Lord. Angels say what he himself taught, namely that he is one with the Father, that the Father is in him and he in the Father, that anyone who sees him sees the Father, and that everything holy emanates from him (John 10:30, 38; 14:9-11;16 16:13-15). I have often talked with angels about this, and their consistent testimony has been that in heaven they cannot divide the Divine into three because they both know and perceive that the Divine is one and that this "one" is in the Lord. They have also told me that when people arrive from earth with the idea of three divine beings they cannot be admitted to heaven. This is because their thinking vacillates between one opinion and the other, and in heaven they are not allowed to think "three" and say "one."(a)
In heaven people actually speak directly from their thought, so that we have there a kind of thoughtful speech or audible thought. This means that if people have divided the Divine into three in the world and held a separate image of each one without gathering and focusing these three into one, they cannot be accepted. In heaven, there is a communication of all thoughts, so if people arrive who think "three" and say "one," they are recognized immediately for what they are and are sent away.
Still, it needs to be realized that in the other life any people who have not put "good" in one compartment and "true" in another-who have not separated faith from love-accept the heavenly concept of the Lord as God of the universe once they have been taught. It is different, though, with people who have separated their faith from their lives, that is, who have not lived by the guiding principles of true faith.
In the other life, Christians have been examined to find out what kind of concept of God they had, and it has turned out that they had a concept of three gods: 2329, 5256, 10736, 10738, 10821. On the recognition in heaven of a trinity within the Lord: 14, 15, 1729, 2005, 5256, 9303.

Doctrine of Faith (Dick) n. 34
IV

The Christian faith in its universal idea

The Christian faith in its universal idea is this: The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to subjugate the hells and to glorify His Human; and without this no mortal could have been saved; and they are saved who believe on Him.

Doctrine of Faith (Dick) n. 35

35. This is called the Christian faithin its universal idea because this is the universal of faith, and the universal of faithis that which must be in all things of it, in general and in particular.

It is a universal of faiththat God is one in Person and in Essence, in whom there is a Trinity, and that the Lord is that God.
2. It is a universal of faith that no mortal could have been saved unless the Lord had come into the world.
3. It is a universal of faith that He came into the world to remove hell from man; that He removed it by combats against it and by victories over it; and that He thus subjugated it, and reduced it to order and under obedience to Himself.
4. It is also a universal of faith that He came into the world to glorify the Human which He assumed in the world, that is, to unite it to the originating Divine; and that, having subjugated hell, He thus keeps it in order and under obedience to Himself to eternity. As neither of these purposes could have been effected except by temptations, even to the last of them which was the passion of the cross, He therefore endured that also.

These are the universals of the Christian faith concerning the Lord.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 4

4. God alone--the Lord--is love itself, because he is life itself. Both we on earth and angels are life-receivers. I will be offering many illustrations of this in works on divine providence and life. Here I would say only that the Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite, while we and angels are created and finite. Since the Lord is uncreated and infinite, he is that essential reality that is called Jehovah and is life itself or life in itself.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 28

28. The true divine essence is love and wisdom. If you gather together everything you know, focus your mind's insight on it, and look through it carefully from some spiritual height to discover what is common to everything, the only conclusion you can draw is that it is love and wisdom. These two are essential to every aspect of our life. Everything we deal with that is civic, everything moral, and everything spiritual depends on these two things. Apart from them, there is nothing. The same holds true for everything in the life of that composite person who is (as already noted [24]) our larger and smaller community, our monarchy or empire, the church, and also the angelic heaven. Take love and wisdom away from any of these collective bodies and ask whether there is anything left, and you will be struck by the fact that without love and wisdom as their source, they are nothing.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 55

55. Everything in the created universe is a vessel for the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. We acknowledge that everything in the universe, great and small, has been created by God. That is why the universe and absolutely everything in it is called "the work of Jehovah's hands" in the Word.
People do say that the whole world was created out of nothing, and they like to think of "nothing" as absolutely nothing. However, nothing comes from "absolutely nothing" and nothing can. This is an abiding truth. This means that the universe, being an image of God and therefore full of God, could be created by God only in God. God is reality itself, and everything that exists must come from that reality. To speak of creating something that exists from a "nothing" that does not exist is a plain contradiction of terms.
Still, what is created by God in God is not a continuation of him, since God is intrinsic reality and there is no trace of intrinsic reality in anything created. If there were any intrinsic reality in a created being, it would be a continuation of God, and any continuation of God is God.
The angelic concept involved is that anything created by God in God is like something within ourselves that we have put forth from our life, but the life is then withdrawn from it. It then agrees with our life, but still, it is not our life.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 114

114. The reason the Lord is not only in heaven but actually is heaven itself is that love and wisdom make an angel, and these two are properties of the Lord in the angels. It therefore follows that the Lord is heaven.
Angels are not angels because of anything that belongs to them. What belongs to them is just like what belongs to us--evil. The reason this is what belongs to angels is that all angels were once earthly people, and this attribute clings to them from their birth. It is simply moved aside, and to the extent that it is, they accept love and wisdom, or the Lord, into themselves.
With a little elevation of understanding, everyone can see that it is quite impossible for the Lord to dwell with angels in anything but what is his, that is, what belongs to him, which is love and wisdom. He cannot dwell in anything that belongs to the angels, which is evil. This is why the Lord is in them, and they are angels, to the extent that evil is moved aside. The actual angelic essence of heaven is divine love and wisdom. This divine reality is called "angelic" when it is in angels; so again we can see that angels are angels because of the Lord and not on their own. The same therefore holds true for heaven as well.

Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 170

170. The grand purpose, or the purpose of all elements of creation, is an eternal union of the Creator with the created universe. This does not happen unless there are subjects in which his divinity can be at home, so to speak, subjects in which it can dwell and abide. For these subjects to be his dwellings and homes they must be receptive of his love and wisdom apparently of their own accord, subjects who will with apparent autonomy raise themselves toward the Creator and unite themselves with him. In the absence of this reciprocity, there is no union.
We are those subjects, people who can raise themselves and unite with apparent autonomy. I have already explained several times [4-6, 57, 68, 116] that we are subjects of this sort and that we are receptive of Divinity with apparent autonomy.
Through this union, the Lord is present in every work he has created, since in the last analysis everything has been created for our sake. As a result, the functions of all created things rise level by level from the lowest things to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source, as explained in 65-68 above.

True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 81

81
Chapter 2
The Lord the Redeemer

THE previous chapter was on God the Creator, and also included material on creation. This chapter is on the Lord the Redeemer, and also includes material on redemption. The following chapter is on the Holy Spirit, and will also include material on divine action.
By "the Lord, the Redeemer" we mean Jehovah in his human manifestation. In what follows, we will show that Jehovah himself came down and took on a human manifestation for the purpose of redeeming.
We speak of "the Lord" rather than "Jehovah" because Jehovah of the Old Testament is called "the Lord" in the New, as you can see from the following passages. In Moses it says, "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah your God, Jehovah is one. You are to love Jehovah God with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deuteronomy 6:4-5); but in Mark it says, "The Lord your God is one Lord. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (Mark 12:29-30). Likewise in Isaiah it says, "Prepare a way for Jehovah; make a level pathway in the solitude for our God" (Isaiah 40:3); but in Luke it says, "I will go before the face of the Lord to prepare the way for him" (Luke 1:76). There are other instances elsewhere.
Furthermore, the Lord commanded his disciples to call him Lord [John 13:13]. Therefore this is what he was called by the apostles in their letters, and afterward what he was called in the apostolic church, as is clear from its creed, called the Apostles Creed.
One reason for this change of names was that the Jews did not dare to say the name Jehovah, because of its holiness. Another reason is that "Jehovah" means the underlying divine reality, which existed from eternity; but the human aspect that he took on in time was not that underlying reality. The nature of the underlying divine reality or Jehovah was shown in the previous chapter, 18-26, 27-35.
Because of this, here and in what follows when we say "the Lord" we mean Jehovah in his human manifestation.
The concept of the Lord has an excellence that surpasses all other concepts that exist in the church or even in heaven. Therefore we need to adhere to an orderly sequence, as in the following, to make this concept clear:

Jehovah, the Creator of the universe, came down and took on a human manifestation in order to redeem people and save them.
He came down as the divine truth, which is the Word; but he did not separate the divine goodness from it.
In the process of taking on a human manifestation, he followed his own divine design.
The human manifestation in which he sent himself into the world is what is called "the Son of God."
Through acts of redemption the Lord became justice.
Through these same acts he united himself to the Father and the Father united himself to him, again following the divine design.
Through this process God became human and a human became God in one person.
When he was being emptied out he was in a state of progress toward union; when he was being glorified he was in a state of union itself.
From now on, no Christians will go to heaven unless they believe in the Lord God the Savior and turn to him alone.

Who (or What) is Swedenborg?

The ideas on this site are based on the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18^th-century Swedish scientist and theologian. Swedenborg claimed that his religious writings, the sole focus of the last three decades of his life, were done at the behest of the Lord himself, and constituted a revelation for a successor to the Christian Church.

In keeping with Swedenborg’s own statements, modern believers downplay his role as author, attributing the ideas to the Lord instead. For this reason they generally refer to Swedenborg’s theological works as “the Writings,” and some resist the label “Swedenborgian” as placing emphasis on the man rather than the message.

Since “the Writings” would be an unfamiliar term to new readers, we have elected to use the name “Swedenborg” as a label for those theological works, much as we might use “Isaiah” or “Matthew” to refer to books of the Bible. The intent, however, is not to attribute the ideas to Swedenborg, any more than we would attribute the divinity of the Bible to Isaiah the man or Matthew the man.

So when you read “according to Swedenborg” on this site, it’s really shorthand for “according to the theological works from the Lord through Swedenborg.” When you read “Swedenborg says,” it’s really shorthand for “the theological works of Swedenborg say.”

IS GOD REAL? Part 1

IS GOD REAL? Part 2

The Lord, in his essence, is love itself. That’s sort of a

Who (or What) is Swedenborg?