The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained/Chapter6
VI.—Redemption.
The verb redeem, from which comes the noun redemption, is derived from the Latin words re, again, back, and emere, to buy; and means, therefore, according to Webster, "to purchase back"—"to ransom, liberate, or rescue from captivity or bondage, or from any obligation or liability to suffer, by paying an equivalent;—as, to redeem a captive," etc. Persons captured in war and held in captivity, are said to be redeemed when the price demanded for their release is paid, and they are set at liberty. This is the common and literal meaning of the word.
And up to the time when Swedenborg wrote (and the creeds have not changed much since) the prevailing belief among Christians was, that Jesus Christ, by his sufferings and death, paid the penalty due to man's transgressions, and thus ransomed or released believers from their state of bondage to sin and Satan. This has been and is still the prevailing idea of the divine work wrought by Jesus Christ. An eminent authority says:
The "Presbyterian Confession of Faith" for the United States (1838) says:
And the Catechism (1839) for the Methodist Episcopal Church says:
And so generally accepted has been, and is still, this idea of the nature of the great work of human redemption, that we find the theological meaning of the word redemption, as given by a great American lexicographer, to be: "The procuring of God's favor by the sufferings and death of Christ."
The Old doctrine, then, on this subject is: That the human race, being in a state of captivity to sin and Satan, was ransomed—bought off—released from its bondage, and consequently from hell and its miseries, by the payment of an infinite price, to wit, the voluntary sujfferings and death of the Son of God (the second person in the Divine Trinity): Precisely as a slave may sometimes be released from bondage or a prisoner from his confinement, by the payment of a stipulated price.
Now it needs but a little exercise of one's reason and understanding to see what absurdities, inconsistencies and contradictions this doctrine involves. 1. It is a doctrine of pure naturalism, and one that chimes in with the gross conceptions of the natural man. 2. It involves the idea of two Divine Beings, very different in disposition and character;—one, inflexible and unrelenting, the other, all tenderness and compassion, willing to suffer the extremest agonies for the benefit of his creatures. 3. It is inconsistent with itself. For in cases of natural redemption the price must be paid to him who holds the captive in his power. If (as the doctrine admits) mankind was in bondage to Satan, then the price of redemption was due to him, and not to God the Father as the doctrine teaches. 4. It mars the beauty and perfection of God's character, representing Him as a monster of injustice and cruelty. For what could be more unjust or cruel than to release sinners from the penalty due to their transgressions, and accept the sufferings of a perfectly innocent being as the price of their redemption? 5. And, finally, it involves an utter misconception of the nature of moral or spiritual evil, and the way of escape from it.
No: The Old doctrine of redemption will not stand the test of a rational examination. The closer it is scanned, the more unreasonable and hideous it appears; and the more certain we are that it is a doctrine which men in a low state of mind have invented, or have drawn from the Bible only by putting upon it a natural and sensuous interpretation. For it is as contrary to the general spirit and teaching of Scripture, as it is to the dictates of enlightened reason.
The New Doctrine.
Turn now to the doctrine on this subject as revealed for the New Church. Of course in a treatise like the present, we can do little more than exhibit it in a general way—as it were, in brief outline.
The end for which God created man, according to the belief and teaching of the New Church, was, that there might be a heaven of angels from the human race—a countless host of rational, wise and loving creatures, images and likenesses of Himself, capable of receiving his own life, and of being made unspeakably and eternally happy in the mutual and reciprocal impartation of that life. And can we conceive of a more sublime or beneficent purpose, or one more worthy of a Being of infinite wisdom and love?
But it was indispensable to this state of highest human bliss, that man should have a selfhood as the basis of his individuality, and should be gifted with rationality and liberty. Without these faculties he would not have been human, nor capable of heavenly blessedness.
But these sublime endowments which are man's chief glory, and are, indeed, essential to his humanity, rendered possible his lapse into a state of spiritual disorder, degradation and woe. Nay, with beings so endowed, such lapse was not only possible but highly probable—a result almost certain to follow from such gifts. However that may be, it cannot be denied that such spiritual lapse did occur. In the course of many generations the race became completely immersed in selfishness and sin. They lost all knowledge of the true and only God, of the laws and capabilities of their own souls; and consequently lost sight of the way that leads to that exalted and blissful state for which they were designed. From a state of mutual love, they fell into one of mutual hostility. They turned the light that was originally in them into darkness—God's love into hatred—just as the henbane and fox-glove convert the sun's light and heat and the sweet dews of the morning into malignant poisons. God's life in men thus became changed into its opposite—into the life of hell. The race became supremely selfish; their souls filled with all base passions and malignant feelings. And in this state they passed into the spiritual world, then as now taking their own characters or ruling loves along with them. Of course they were separated from the denizens of heaven through the operation of the great law of spiritual affinity—the law that forever tends to draw together those of like character, and to separate those who are unlike.
In this way there came at length to be an immense multitude of evil spirits in the other world—in short, a hell of devils. And the race once fairly started on its downward course, like a young man who has once broken the bonds of conscience and moral restraint—has begun to lie, swear, cheat and gamble—sunk rapidly lower and lower into the abyss of darkness and woe. Thus the hells increased more rapidly than the heavens; and at last they became so multitudinous, so gigantic in strength and overmastering in their power, that their disorderly and malignant sphere threatened to deprive the human race of liberty and rationality; began to infest the bodies as well as the souls of men, and even threatened the stability of the heaven of angels.
Here, then, was a great crisis in the moral universe. The human race was about to perish. Man's freedom and rationality were about to be destroyed through the preponderating influence of the hells. It is easy to understand this, if we reflect for a moment on the degrading and corrupting influence of drunkenness, profanity and licentiousness in a community where these vices have become extensively prevalent, and consider also the intimate connection between spirits in the other world and men in this. And the Bible affords abundant testimony to the fact of such connection.[1]
This was "the fulness of time." It was the point beyond which the malign influence of the hells could not be permitted to go;—beyond which they could not go without imperiling the welfare and even the existence of the human race. What, then, was to be done to avert this peril? Revelations had been vouchsafed, but these had been misunderstood and perverted. God had spoken, but the race had become deaf to his warnings and counsels. He had sent prophets and wise men, but their words were not heeded. Through the overmastering influence of the hells, the love and even the knowledge of righteousness had been lost, and the race was on the point of losing also its properly human faculties—its power to distinguish and its ability to choose between right and wrong.
At such a juncture, what should an infinitely wise and loving Father have done? What, but the very thing that He did do? The work to be accomplished was something more than suppressing the insurrection of a single wicked community, state or nation. It was nothing less than restoring the disturbed equilibrium of the moral universe; resisting and restraining within due bounds the combined armies of hell; overcoming the gigantic power of legions of devils; antagonizing and driving back the malign influence of falsity and evil which invaded the souls of men, and threatened to destroy their power of discerning and their liberty of choosing between good and evil.
And surely no finite, human, or merely delegated power was adequate to a work like this. Nothing less than the arm of Omnipotence was equal to such a task. "Therefore," as saith the prophet Isaiah, "his own arm brought salvation unto Him, and his righteousness, it sustained Him." The Heavenly Father, forever watchful over the welfare of his children, veiled Himself with our infirm humanity borne down with its accumulated weight of evil; for in what other conceivable way could He have met and overcome the influence of the hells, but by placing Himself in a condition to be approached and assailed by them? He must descend to the devils place of sojourn—to the citadel which they had invested and whose ruin they threatened. Spiritually regarded, the human race were enslaved—were in bondage to infernal spirits; and the Lord assumed humanity for the purpose of releasing them from that bondage. He came to break their fetters and "let the oppressed go free." The redemption He wrought was purely spiritual. It was a redemption from the overmastering power of the hells, and the consequent restoration to mankind of their original freedom to think and will as of themselves; the restoration of their ability to see or think what is true, and their freedom to will and do what they see to be right.
Thus redemption is seen to be purely God's own work. It is not salvation, for this requires the co-operation of man; yet without the redemption wrought by God in the person of Jesus Christ, no one henceforward could have been saved.
Such, briefly, is the New Church doctrine of redemption. It does not mar but illustrates the exceeding beauty and loveliness of the Divine character. It does not require for its acceptance the surrender or abnegation of our reason, but is quite in harmony with all its requirements. It will be found also, on careful examination, to be in perfect agreement with the whole spirit and tenor of Holy Scripture. The Bible reveals God as a merciful and loving Father; as becoming incarnate for human redemption—coming into the world and enduring the assaults of infernals for the purpose of releasing men from their spiritual thraldom, and making them truly free. "If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." The new doctrine also is in harmony with, while it helps us to understand the meaning of, many passages in the New Testament, which speak of demoniacal possession, and of Christ's casting out the devils by his word. (See Matt. viii. 16, 31; ix. 32, 33; xii. 28; xvii. 18, 19; Mark i. 34; ix. 25, 26; xvi. 9; Luke iv. 35; xi. 20; xiii. 32.) The evil spirits could not—they never can—endure the Divine sphere. The light and warmth of the spiritual Sun are painful to them, and they flee from it. (See Mark i. 23-26; Luke iv. 33-35.) And this shows us how the Lord, by his advent in the flesh, restored the equilibrium between heaven and hell, by so resisting and keeping within due bounds the sphere of the latter, as to maintain man's freedom and rationality unimpaired.
Redemption, then, according to the New Theology, was a purely divine work, wrought by God himself in the spiritual realm. It consisted in overcoming the gigantic power and threatened preponderance of the hells, by bringing the Divine life nearer to them—bringing it down through the humanity assumed, and thus conquering them, or compelling their retreat, as creatures of the night are compelled to retire to their dens when the light of day appears. And the Heavenly Father himself, and not any second person in the Trinity, is declared to be the Redeemer.
And the effect of the redemption wrought by God in Christ, was to preserve mankind in a state of mental and moral freedom; so that, "being delivered from the hands of our enemies, we may [if we choose] serve Him without fear." This is what it has actually accomplished for the human race: it has overcome the influence of hell to such a degree, that men need not now be its slaves unless they freely choose such bondage. Through the redemption that has been wrought, mankind are now able to understand the will of God, or the truth that reveals his will to them, and are free to serve Him if they choose—free to make their own election. This redemption does not confer or insure salvation, but simply places it within every one's reach, and leaves him free to choose and able to act according to his choice.
- ↑ For some of this testimony, see "The World Beyond," by Rev. John Doughty (forming No. 1 of the present series), Chap. V., on Heaven.