God The Creator

The fundamental basis of all supernatural religion is a belief in God. The first note in any belief in an ordered universe is the assumption that creation was brought about by a Great First Cause. With the exception of the few people who believe matter is eternal and that the universe is the result of chance, most people believe in a Creator.

Even if they do not believe in him as a Divine Person they assume the existence of a Presiding Intelligence by which the universe has been ordered and sustained. Swedenborg commences his great work True Christian Religion with the assumption that the Creator is a personal God. He bases this belief on the revelations in the Bible, which he assures us are divine.

The Holy Word in its inmost meaning is the thought that proceeds from the mind of God. “The entire Bible” says Swedenborg, “and all the doctrines drawn from it in the entire Christian world, teach that there is a God and that he is One.” He draws freely from the Bible in proof of this statement. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” and “Am not I Jehovah and thou shalt acknowledge no god beside me” are but two to the many verses that he quotes.

Swedenborg will show us that his idea of this One God differed widely from that of the tri-personal God believed in by the Christian world of his day. He believed that God was one in essence and in person. In this first chapter he is concerned with stating that God is one and that he is the Creator of the Universe. Many modem writers have tried to show how the idea of the existence of God first entered the human mind.

Many of them have tried to prove that belief in a Divine Being is the result of a long evolution. Man, they say, evolved the idea of God as the result of dreams and fears and weakness. He imagined the existence of spirits or gods as dwelling in all natural phenomena. The sun with its blazing heat and light was personified and worshipped. The noise of thunder was the voice of an angry being.

Almost all the forces of nature were personified and were worshipped by early man. Then, as he won his way to civilization he gave up his crude ideas and adopted a belief in one God. Swedenborg teaches us that a knowledge of God came by revelation. He tells us also that the God-idea flows into human thought from heaven. Let me quote his exact words, “There is a universal index from God into the human souls bearing the truth that there is a God and that he is one” Here is one of the most pregnant statements ever made.

The idea of God's existence flows into the human mind, and is as much our heritage as the air we breathe. Our belief in God, who is at once Father, Savior and Regenerator, is not the result of an accidental evolution of human thought, but is the direct gift of the Almighty. The thought of one God flows into us from heaven. Influx from God, which reaches us through the heavens, is as constant as the outpouring of heat and light from the sun. We may, by an evil life and by the self-sufficiency of our own intelligence, thwart the beneficent effects of this influx.

Sunlight reflected from the facets of a diamond is the same light that is absorbed by the opaqueness of a piece of coal. So also the light from heaven depends for its effect on the mind that receives it. But the Divine Light shines on eternally. Because of the eternal influx from the Lord, says Swedenborg, “there is in all the world no nation possessing religion and sound-reason that does not acknowledge a God and that he is one.” Further, he says, that as a consequence of this influx “there is in every person an internal dictate” that tells of the existence and unity of the Divine.

For long ages people have marveled at the ordered mechanism of the starry heavens, and have realized how puny a creature is man compared with the endless precision of the movements of planets and comets. The psalmist of old ex-claimed, “When 1 consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou visitest him?”

With our modem conception of a limitless universe, and with a grasp of the grandeur of a vaster realm than the psalmist ever knew, we today are asking the same question. The universe embodies the evidence of such infinite wisdom that our minds are filled with a sense of awe. We bow in wonder before the existence of unbroken law. We take refuge from our inability to grasp the divine scheme of the universe by defining the Creator as “The Great Architect” or the “Infinite Mathematician.”

When we realize that a single atom of matter is built on the same plan as a solar system, we begin to realize-that there is a unity of design in all creation, and that the universe testifies to the existence of One Presiding Intelligence. So we are quite prepared for Swedenborg's statement that unless God were one, the universe could not have been created and preserved. Creation, says Swedenborg, is the work of an undivided Infinite Mind. People in their ignorance may conceive of many gods. But the universe testifies to the truth that God is one.

Only by a single Infinite Mind could creation have been brought about. Only by such a mind can it be preserved. Then our author carries us a step further. In his essential being this one God is love. In Swedenborg's philosophy the essential verity is love. Love is the very being of God And this God whose inmost being is love, is, says Swedenborg, the Jehovah of the Bible.

This does not mean that the One Eternal God is the despotic Being of stern justice and anger conceived of by the Israelites. (There is no such thing as anger in God), But it does mean that it was the Eternal God who revealed .himself to Moses. “Moses said unto God, What is thy name?” And God said unto Moses, “I am That 1 am. And thou shalt say unto the Children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.” And in the same revelation this Divine Being speaks of himself as “Jehovah, God of your fathers.”

Few theologians have dared do more than merely state that God is self-existent. Because this Divine Being is infinite they believe that he is outside the range -of human comprehension. There is some appearance of truth in this contention. Our finite mind cannot grasp the Infinite. But there are certain things we can know about God which help us in some measure to realize his majesty and power.

Swedenborg assures us that this self-existent Divine Being has substance and form. He is not merely a diffused creative essence pervading the universe, but possesses Divine Substance and Divine Form. We must note here the fact that the word “substance” is not limited in its meaning to the material things of the natural universe. The “substance” of God is far, far different from the “substance” of man. In God it is uncreated and self existent.

In man it is something that has been created. God exists, says Swedenborg, and therefore he must have substance and form. Without these two things nothing can exist. And it is because substance and form can be predicated of God that we, whom he has called into being and whom he declares to be made in his image and likeness, possess substance in which we dwell, and form by which we are shaped.

We here quote Swedenborg's own words. “Both substance and form may be predicated of God, but in the sense that he is the only, the very, and the primal Substance and Form. And this form is verily the Human Form, that is, God is veritably Man, infinite in every respect” It is because God is Divinely and Infinitely Human that we his children, made in his image and likeness, are human. Between God and man there is a great gulf fixed.

He is infinite, man is finite. What do we mean by “infinite” as applied to God? One answer will be that God is not conditioned by the limitations of time and space. Swedenborg speaks of the Infinity of God in three terms: Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present. He is Infinite because he is eternal. He was, before time began. He always was. He always is. He always will be. He possesses infinite wisdom. From this wisdom proceed all the laws of the universe.

In his wisdom he possesses also all knowledge. With equal certitude he knows the path of a wandering comet and the thoughts of every human mind. He is present everywhere at the same time. Dwelling in the inmost heavens, he is equally present in every blade of grass and in the heart of a little child. To him, past and present are one. He is unconditioned by time, yet he fills all time. Unconditioned by space, he fills all space.

This is God, the self-existent, the eternal, the Infinite. Of these attributes of God we mortals can have but the faintest comprehension. So we can only really know him in the gracious revelations he has made of himself. One other important statement of Swedenborg in the opening chapter of True Christian Religion is that God is love and wisdom. He points out to us that the essence of love is to spend itself upon others. From his essential love comes the Divine Aim in creation.

The Lord desires to call into existence countless billions of human beings on whom he can pour out his love, and who in the eternal realms of the spiritual world can reciprocate his love. It is to this end, says Swedenborg, that all creation has been fashioned. It is for this that the immeasurable depths of space are studded with suns and earths. Tennyson says, “Yet I doubt not, through the ages, one increasing purpose runs.” Swedenborg was the first theologian to tell us the nature of that divine purpose.

Creation is fashioned and the whole universe is called into being, to the end that God may create man. God is not only love and wisdom. He is also life itself. Life flows from him in a never-ending stream. All living forms exist because this life from God flows into them and animates them. If life from God were withheld, the whole universe would cease to be.

Take the Divine Life away, and, “The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like an unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind.'' But the stream of life comes ceaselessly from the Creator, and thus “in him we live, and move and have our being,” This one and only God is the Creator. He is also, as we shall see in succeeding chapters, our Savior and our Preserver, One God over all, blessed for ever.

[Top]