Swedenborg's Argument of
Why Miracles Are Not Allowed Today
From an email message:
I was reading Divine
Providence, and I just happened to open to section #132, and I read
the following:
"After the
Lord had made Himself known, though, and had been accepted and recognized in
the church as the eternal God, miracles stopped happening." Swedenborg
goes on to write that the Word itself says that miracles will cease. Of course,
he says that if miracles happen, they would compel us to believe. "
But what of
miracles that do not compel us to believe, but help us? If miracles are gone,
then what do we call instances of angelic protection? What do we call
miraculous faith healings? What does Swedenborg mean by "miracles?"
Does it mean *any* kind of divine manifestation, or certain kinds of manifestation?
And if it means all
kinds of divine help, then Houston, we have a contradiction, because miracles
and divine healing still happen today.
Question 2: I read
after that in section #134 that visions like that of John the Revelator and
Daniel and Ezekiel have ceased, however I read that in #135, spirits and angels
are permitted to talk with us, (though it's rare). When they do speak to us,
however, they don't say anything that violates our free will or rationality. We
seem to have another contradiction here, because don't NDEers have visions of
Heaven? Or, is it referring to a particular kind of vision?
I am not trying to
derail Swedenborgianism, I sincerely want to know the explanation to these
apparent contradictions.
Let's discuss the main point raised in this
message about Swedenborg's explanation of miracles and why they do not occur
today: "If miracles are gone, then what do we call instances of angelic
protection? What do we call miraculous faith healings? What does Swedenborg
mean by "miracles?" Does it mean *any* kind of divine manifestation,
or certain kinds of manifestation? And if it means all kinds of divine help,
then Houston, we have a contradiction, because miracles and divine healing
still happen today."
Miracles refer to sensuous consciousness
of the Divine. Miracles constitute concrete physical evidence of God's
intervention in a normal process. For instance the New Testament tells that
Jesus healed people instantly of a long term chronic disease like blindness,
paralysis, or leprosy. These are miracles because they were public
demonstrations of God's intervention in normal natural phenomena. In the Old
Testament we are told that God appeared to Moses in a burning bush that did not
burn up and from which a Divine Voice came forth to his ears. Or we are told
that the walls of the city of
Notice however that the occasional use of
miracles is not the sole indication of God's interventions and control of
events. For instance, if you should win the lottery, you may think of it as
God's intervention or just good luck, and if you fall and break your big toe,
you may think of it as bad luck, or God's punishment. God's omnipotence and
omnipresence means that every event is produced by God, either by direct
The difference between events produced by
God that are miracles vs. ordinary, is that miracles are designed to impress
the witnesses that God intervenes to produce results that benefit someone in
situations where you would ordinarily expect the person to suffer through the
consequences that are impending. For instance, suppose you apply for a job that
means everything to you right now, but you know you don't have the chance of
getting it because of several others more qualified than you have also applied.
You ask God to please let you have the job. Later you find out you got it. You
then thank God for getting it. Is this a miracle?
It may be, but it doesn't stand as a
physical proof of God's intervention. There is always room for skepticism on
the part of the atheists or materialists or believers who think that God doesn't
intervene in the course of everyday events. We know from scientific revelations
in the Writings of Swedenborg that God is a co-participant to every thought and
feeling, and that the Divine Human is an intimate Divine Therapist, constantly
making something happen around us that is for our enlightenment or spiritual
understanding. We know that God keeps certain memories out of conscious range,
while others He allows us to be aware of. In short, the entire course of our
thinking and feeling, moment by moment, and the particular events happening
around us and to us, are meticulously produced and instantiated by God.
Nothing, not the slightest part or detail, can occur or exist, except as God's
God stays in the background, out of range of
our conscious awareness, and out of our range of physical observation. Why?
Why should He make it impossible for us to
prove physically His constant Presence and intervention methods?
Because if He showed Himself or His constant
control over us at the physical or natural level, we would alternate between
rebellion-rejection-resistance, at one time, followed at another time by
depression-immobility-purposeless. We would be like robots at one point, then
switch into a mad-robot act, or a hopelessly depressed person. This would be
the inevitable disastrous reaction if God showed Himself the way He controls
our every move, motive, thought-sequence, and emotion. Therefore God must hide
His control from our direct physical observation. IN other words, God's control,
or Presence, or even existence, cannot be proven physically, and never will be.
In this context that we must understand the
statement in the Writings that God does not allow miracles in the modern age
with the modern mind as a witness. If God's physical control activities were to
be proven physically, science would become theistic at first, but then it would
turn atheistic and insane. Currently science may be atheistic, but it is not
insane because scientists receive influx from the spiritual world, just alike
anyone else does. This mediate influx is responsible for atheistic science
remaining sane and useful. Again, since it the influx is kept unconscious,
scientists can believe that the rationality of their research and theory is due
to their thinking, that it has nothing to do with God.
Miracles break this mechanism of unconscious
control by God of the details of everyday life. Hence they are not permitted in
the modern age.
All of the above was said concerning
sensuous consciousness of God. We do have sensuous consciousness of God once we
make the jump to the afterlife in the spiritual world. But this is true only if
we have developed a heavenly character prior to the death of the physical body.
When we remain in our unregenerate character we cannot see God, we do not have
sensuous consciousness of the Divine Human. Instead, we deny the Divine Human,
and when we say angels with powers from heaven, we curse them, and turn away.
Thus, human beings are unwilling to change the attitude or mind-set with which
they arrive into the spiritual world at death.
It is possible for people to become
sincerely convinced that they are witnessing a miracle. This is the basis of
financial success for media preachers who produce miracles for a weekly
audience. Even if miracles are not produced upon demand, other persuasive
methods accomplish a similar end, namely, that people begin to believe God's
presence on the basis of such persuasiveness. The Writings reveal that
persuasive faith is not rationally supported in a person's mind. When people
arrive into the other life with such a persuasive faith, they demand to see
miracles, they demand to enter heaven immediately. They cannot since they have
not cultivated an inner character that can live in heaven that is formed out of
rational concepts in our mind. Heaven is a sensuous conscious experience of God
and bliss, but this is only the surface appearance. It must be produced from
within by love and truth, or rational faith. This is what Sacred Scripture is
made of--rational truth.
If miracles were allowed today it would
splinter and dissolve the development of our rational consciousness of God. Two
thousand years ago God Incarnated as a Divine Natural Man. People could hear
God speak, they could embrace God, and they could love Him and worship Him
right then and there. That lasted a mere three decades and at the end He
explained to His disciples that He must go away, back to heaven, in order for
them to generate a rational mind that lives in heaven. If He had stayed in the
physical world, as the disciples had wanted, they would never have been able to
develop a rational consciousness of Him, and never been able to enter the
promised heaven. He told them that that is why He must go. And at the same time
He explained that if He goes away physically, ascending to heaven, He can
return to them mentally, since heaven is within them. All they need to do is to
raise their consciousness to their heaven, and to Him.
And the Divine Human also explained to them
that they will see Him, recognize Him, and be instructed by Him, as the Holy
Spirit. This was the title He gave to the new rational consciousness of God
that all humanity now had available. The Holy Spirit is the rational
consciousness we have of God from God. It is the Divine Human consciously
communicating with our mind. The Divine Human created a new heaven in the
spiritual race by Glorifying His human acquired on this earth and making it one
with His Divine. By doing this, He created new mental pathways through which we
can ascend in our rational consciousness and be instructed by the Holy Spirit.
From this instruction we can become enlightened and wise, capable of seen and
understanding the truths in Sacred Scripture. Now if we apply this enlightened
understanding to compel ourselves to reform, to say no to our hellish traits,
and to say yes the heavenly, then we have entered the road of regeneration, the
road of salvation that leads to our heavenly consciousness in eternity.
To bring back miracles would interfere with
this whole plan of salvation.
The second part of the email message
discussed above asks about visions: "Question 2: I read after that in
section #134 that visions like that of John the Revelator and Daniel and
Ezekiel have ceased, however I read that in #135, spirits and angels are
permitted to talk with us, (though it's rare). When they do speak to us,
however, they don't say anything that violates our free will or rationality. We
seem to have another contradiction here, because don't NDEers have visions of
Heaven? Or, is it referring to a particular kind of vision?"
We need to understand the answer in terms of
the previous discussions on miracles and rational consciousness. The
overarching rule is that God will do nothing to interfere or weaken the
development of our rational consciousness, needed for our ascent to heavenly
consciousness. If visions of heaven are allowed it must be under conditions
where they cannot be physically proven. What about "near death
experiences" (NDEs) and the apparition of angels to many people? My
explanation for NDEs within the context of sensuous vs. rational consciousness
is developed elsewhere (see this section of another book: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v1ch4to5-nonduality.html#_Toc22537455
In summary: Eliminating the hypothesis that
NDEs are actual visions of heaven, what can they be? I believe it is a natural
medical phenomenon. I am impressed by the fact that NDE reports are very
common--hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, have now claimed them.
Furthermore, the details of the reports have startling similarities, as proven
by Moody's comparisons and those of others. Therefore it is reasonable to
suppose that they are all influenced by the same legend, which is well known to
anyone watching TV and reading novels and magazines. Hence the frequently
mentioned "bright lights," the feeling of overwhelming peace, the
"tunnel effect," and being addressed by higher beings. This is the
well known legend that has been transmitted as cultural knowledge. This
cultural knowledge is the source of NDEs and other such visions of higher
beings,
What about prophecies?
Again, employing the same reasoning context
for the development of rational consciousness, prophecies would interfere if
they could be proven. No prophecies could ever be proven except those that are
from the Bible. And since the Bible can be dismissed in one's reasoning, no
prophecy has ever been proven. There are those who are entertained by authors
who claim to know prophecies, but again, this is a matter of freedom to think,
to accept or reject any thought or rationale. The supposed existence of
prophecies therefore do not interfere with rational consciousness of the Divine
since they cannot be proven.
God uses many elaborate methods to prevent
anyone from proving His intervention or presence. God creates random
distributions of many events as well as events whose causation is so complex
that scientists cannot figure it out, like the weather or natural disasters.
God also hides behind so called accidents and fortuitous events or luck, good
or bad. You can throw the dice and get two sixes twenty times in a row. This
won't prove God, but only that an extremely rare event has occurred. And yet
God made those dice fall on the sixes every time. This we can realize
rationally from knowing and understanding God's omnipotence and management
practices of reality. But we can't prove it physically. God will foil all our
attempts, and thereby, save us for our rational consciousness of the Divine
Human.
Rational consciousness is the spiritual
race's only approach to heaven. The original celestial approach of dual
consciousness was destroyed in the human race and can never be restituted. The
Divine Human can never again appear in the physical world. But the Divine Human
formed a new heaven inside our cognitive mind. The heaven of the celestial race
is in their will, but the heaven of the spiritual race is in our understanding.
This means that it is formed out of rational truths in our cognitive mind. A
new affective heaven has been created for the human race, and the approach to
this new heaven is by rational consciousness of the Divine Human, and in no
other way.
Science has become even more crucial for our
salvation than it was before. Scientific concepts and methods of reasoning have
been fostered and promoted by God for several centuries, so that today, in the
new and everlasting age of the Second Coming, science is advancing to the theistic
phase of its development. This book is a proof of that happening.
Quoting from Swedenborg’s Writings:
When my interior
sight was first opened and through my eyes they saw the world and what was in
it, spirits and angels were so astonished that they said it was the greatest
miracle of all time, and a new found joy entered into them that in this way a
communication now existed of earth with heaven, and of heaven with earth. (AC
1880)
501. The question
is asked today why miracles do not happen as they once did; for people think
that if they took place, everyone would acknowledge them in his heart. The
reason why miracles do not take place at the present time as they did formerly
is that they compel and take away free will in spiritual matters, turning a person
from a spiritual man into a natural one. (TCR 501)
When a miracle
alone leads a man to the acknowledgment of God, to worship, and to piety, he
acts from the natural man and not from the spiritual. For a miracle infuses
faith by an external and not by an internal way, thus from the world and not
from heaven. Now the Lord does not enter by any other way with man than the
internal way, which is by the Word, by doctrine and by preaching from it; and
as miracles close up this way, at this day no miracles are wrought. (DP 131)
Wherefore, in order
that true Christian religion might be manifested, it was absolutely necessary
that someone should be introduced into the spiritual world, and derive from the
mouth of the Lord genuine truths out of the Word. (INV 38)
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This excerpt is based on Section 3, Chapter 15 of Theistic
Psychology by