Page:Evolution and Natural Selection in the Light of the New Church.djvu/12

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

12

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

CREATION.

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF ITS PHILOSOPHY AS TAUGHT IN SWEDENBORG'S THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS.

God is not a mere formless all-pervading ethereal essence, without body, parts, or passions; but He is an inﬁnitely glorious Divine Man—our Heavenly Father,—whose essential attributes are Love, Wisdom, and Life or Power. God is the one self-existent Personal Being,—the I AM,—above and independent of all space and time—Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent. God is Divincly Human, and the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the manifestation and embodiment of the substance of the invisible God, who, prior to His Incarnation, was called Jehovah. God is the only self-subsisting Life and Substance—the First Creative Cause of all things. God creates all things from His own Life and Substance;^[1] but He so creates them that they form no part of His own Life and Substance. All orderly things ﬁrst exist subjectively in the mind of God; then, by their actual creation, though they are still unceas-

↑ This statement must not be understood in a Pantheistic sense; no theory differs from the teaching of the New Church more widely than Pantheism. The deiﬁcation of nature, that is, the worship of the visible material universe as the only God, is not only an absolute denial of God as a conscious and intelligent Personal Creator,—a loving and wise Heavenly father,—but it is destructive of all true religion and worship, and of belief in a future state of existence. It is written, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

[1] This statement must not be understood in a Pantheistic sense; no theory differs from the teaching of the New Church more widely than Pantheism. The deiﬁcation of nature, that is, the worship of the visible material universe as the only God, is not only an absolute denial of God as a conscious and intelligent Personal Creator,—a loving and wise Heavenly father,—but it is destructive of all true religion and worship, and of belief in a future state of existence. It is written, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

[1]