THE “AS FROM SELF”
AND THE TWO ESSENTIALS OF THE CHURCH

Rev. Erik Sandstrom Sr.
An address to the Council of the Clergy of the General Church of the New Jerusalem 1983
(part 1)

It is a law of creation that there shall be an activity as if of itself in all created things, which activity is reaction, while the Divine by influx is action.

In the case of man, however, the law of reaction takes on a new and special dimension over and above what is applicable in the rest of creation below man. Man alone has spiritual  freedom. With him, therefore, that is, provided he believes in the Lord and lives well, his reaction goes far beyond instinct. As is said in DLW 68, "his reaction comes to be of action, and he acts with God as if from himself." A most beautiful word describes this angelic and truly human "action with God," namely, the word "cooperation" - cooperation  with the Lord (TCR 371:4-6). In cooperation with the Lord the man truly comes to live of himself from the Lord (ex se a Domino, TCR 371:6). In this he is totally dependent on the Lord, and at the same time totally free. He is an image after the likeness of God.

Definitions

The phrase with which we are the most familiar is that of "as of self." For the most part, however, the Latin is "sicut a se," which is more strictly translated "as from self." I think the distinction is not without importance. The alternative and less frequent "sicut ex se" would be strictly rendered "as if out of self." As I understand it the preposition "a" has the connotation of final origin, and is generally so used in the Writings, while "ex" denotes a mediate origin, and is generally so used in the Writings.

The supreme example of the use of the two prepositions is in TCR 153, where the profound teaching is given that "the Lord operates of (or out of) Himself from the Father, and not the reverse." Here we have "ex Se" (that is, ex Domino) but "a Patre." And what is the burden of that teaching? That burden is seen if it is realized that by the name "the Lord" is meant our God as visible, but by the name "Father" our God as invisible. This distinction applies when the visible and the invisible aspects of the Lord are contrasted, as when the Lord says, "No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6), and as in the declaration early in the same Gospel: "Νο one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son ... has declared Him" (John 1:18). The Writings of course draw the same contrast many times, notably in the teaching that gives the special reason why the New Church is to be the crown of all previous churches: "... because it will worship one visible God, in whom is the invisible God as soul is in body" (TCR 787). On the other hand we also note the teachings that set forth the unity of the Divine Person who is the Lord our God, that is, when the distinction between Soul and Body in the Lord is not the issue. These teachings, in all the three forms of the Word, are of course innumerable, and all of them would have us think of the Lord the Savior in His Divine Human as our Father who is in the heavens. It would be well for us to teach more frequently than we do that the Lord is Himself our Father, for the Father is no longer invisible, being now visible in His own Divine Human. In a discussion on the Lord's Prayer in the world of spirits an angel said: "We in heaven say that prayer daily, as men upon earth do, and we do not then think of God the Father, the invisible, but of Him in His Divine Human, because in this He is visible; and in this He is called Christ by you but Lord by us; and so the Lord is to us the Father in heaven" (AR 839:6; TCR 113:6).

It follows that the Lord "operating out of Himself from the Father" means that the Lord operates with men and angels as the Visible God. That the special reference is to the Lord's work in the church and in heaven, not this time in nature, is because the subject is the Lord as the Holy Spirit, that is, the Lord as Reformer and Regenerator.

In our context we have a special reason to look closely at the phrase "out of Himself from the Father," for there is a parallel with man. Now the words are, "out of himself from the Lord." Therefore, just as the Lord, visible in His Divine Human, is seen as the Source of all Divine action and all Divine teaching in His kingdom, so the men and women of the church should be seen as the source of all their actions and all their words. This involves unabridged spiritual responsibility. But again, just as the Lord does everything that He does from His Infinite Divine (a Patre), so the men and women of the church should acknowledge from the heart that all the uses they may be privileged to perform are from the power and light that flow from the Lord in His Human. Not that the parallel is complete (as no parallel between the Lord and man is), because in the case of the Lord the "Father" is His very Soul, while in the case of man the Lord is not his own soul, but is present with him as influx. Man's own inmost soul is created and finite, and is not Divine and not the Lord, as taught in AC 1999 and elsewhere. Man's soul itself is but "a form recipient of the Lord's life" (ibid.).

Out of all this, then, emerges the definition of the as-from-self which I suggest is meant to be remembered and understood whenever we think or talk about man being called upon to think, act, and speak -- called upon, that is, to busy himself in the sphere of use, as if from self. The meaning of this "as if from self" is out of self (or of self) from the Lord.  Εx  se a Domino is the Divinely given formula.

Now let us connect this with the two essentials of the New Church. These are, in brief, the acknowledgment of the Lord and repentance of life (AR 9 et al).

It can be seen that the little phrase "as from self" is identical in meaning to the two essentials; for in the word "as" -- sicut -- there is the acknowledgment that anything useful a man may do or say is from the Lord with him, therefore that there is no merit to him in it. This is acknowledgment of the Lord. But in the next two little words, "from self," there is the recognition that all initiative is with man, including all planning, all preparation, all adaptation, and then the act or speech itself. In a word, it is seen that while the power and the light are from the Lord, the initiative is with man. This is cooperation between man and his God -- not indeed a cooperation as between two equals, but one where the one, the Lord, instructs and directs, and where the other obeys intelligently.

This obeying -- but intelligently, perhaps even wisely -- is in the performance of use. One might not at once recognize the second essential here; but if it is remembered that genuine love towards the neighbor begins by shunning evil as sin, then the connection appears. "The first of charity," we recall, "is to look to the Lord and shun evils as sins" (Char 1). The reason is clear to us all, namely, that no act is good in the sight of heaven, unless the source of the act is cleansed from what is impure; and the source is the will and thought of man. The second essential, therefore, namely, repentance of life, or as it is also described, "a life according to the precepts of the Decalogue" (AR 490 et al), is seen to be involved in the man acting "out of self."

We should also mention the Two Great Commandments here, although it is hardly necessary; for it is obvious that acknowledging the Lord is nothing else than loving Him, indeed with one's whole heart, soul, and mind. And that loving the neighbor as oneself is the same as the second essential, is clear from what we just recalled. In fact, the "two essentials of the New Church" are nothing but an opening up of the inner meaning, or inner implication, that was already there in the Great Commandments as previously given -- first in the Old Testament, and then with important new touches in the New Testament.

One special reason, however, for making a trilogy of the "as from self," the two Essentials, and the Great Commandments, is that it leads us to note also the words which the Lord attached to His reply to the inquiring lawyer. He said: "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 22:40). Much could be said about that, but is not the sum of it that the all of truly human life is to turn humbly to its Divine Source, and then, receiving it, administer it in service to the neighbor? Is there anything else in true religion? One might say, What about the Word -- the threefold Word? But the Word does not add to the Lord. The Lord is the Word. So when DP 259 speaks of three essentials, and includes the "acknowledgment of the holiness of the Word," this is simply to remind us how the Lord communicates, and by what means we in turn may communicate with Him. For we cannot know the Lord without the Word, and we cannot pray to Him without it.

Is it right, therefore, to conclude that in the words, "as if from self," everything of truth is contained? I believe it is, for "as from self" stands for cooperation, that is, for conjunction; and conjunction is the purpose of creation and the essence of the Word.

The Lord's life and man's life

The life of man is not the same as the life of the Lord. The life of man is finite, the Lord's life is infinite. But man's life, if it is well, is a recipient of Divine life, and is so motivated that it corresponds to it.

That life of man is essentially love (TCR 778:1, DLW 1, etc). It is his love, in the sense that it is he who loves. In a way it is not the Lord's love, for the Lord's love is Life itself. Yet in another sense it is, for it is a product of the Divine operation in man. It is therefore the Lord's in the same sense that a tree, or the bird of the sky, or the universe, is the Lord's. The human internals are said to "belong to the Lord Himself," although "they have no life in themselves, but are forms recipient of the Lord's life" (AC 1999:3,4). There is every appearance of self-life, since everything we feel and think and plan, etc., seems to us to rise up within ourselves as from a self-originating source. In fact, if it were not for Divine Revelation (and Divine Revelation has existed in one form or another from the beginning of mankind) we would have no way of knowing about our utter dependency on God.

The Writings explain the situation more fully than any earlier Revelation has done. They tell us that all created things consist of forms which are organic substances, and that it is these forms that are "so vivified by continual Divine influx, that they appear to themselves to live from themselves" (AC 3484). DP 279 and 319 also tell us that the affections we feel and the thoughts we think are nothing but changes and variations within those substances and forms. Yet it is most important to realize that the activation of the organics and their forms (the inmost of which are our limbus) is "life from life," and is in no sense life in se; also that it is this "life from life" that we feel in ourselves as our own. The inflowing life itself, which does the vivifying, we do not feel.

It is important too to realize that this "life from life," as I have called it, is "our own," namely in the sense that we have ourselves chosen that life. By heredity a certain activity and twist are stamped on our inmost organics. That activity and that twist reject and divert the influx that comes from the Lord through heaven. But to counterbalance such an adverse quality on the organics the Lord provides remains from earliest infancy. These remains are our "heredity from heaven," for they are implanted under the Lord's auspices through angels. Moreover, as we know, they continue to be implanted throughout life, in the case of persons who suffer themselves to be led by the Lord, and then in heaven for ever. These remains are in the form of heaven, that is, they are turned and twisted in agreement with the spheres, or the flux, of heaven. Therefore they are receptive. Yet the remains are distinctly different with each individual, just as is his parental and ancestral heredity. (My view is that remains become distinct, coming as they do later than the hereditary traits, by virtue of their direct opposition to those traits).

Since now affections and their forms, which are latent perceptions, are stored away in our remains for our future use (if we so choose), and since they must be different with each individual, it follows that they respond to influx out of heaven in their distinct way. The same applies to the response of hereditary traits to influx from hell. Angelic affections, by means of which the Lord bends His influx through heaven, do not find identity with the affections in man that await and respond to the inflowing sphere. There is agreement but not identity. Hence the following teaching: "Therefore as far as man's affection agrees with the affection that inflows, so far is that affection received by him in his thought, since man's interior thought is wholly in accord with his affection or love" (ΗΗ 298). By this means the distinctive qualities of the mediating affections from heaven, and the receiving affections with man, are preserved. The same applies to the opposite influx and the opposite affections.

In keeping with the above, therefore, there is the spiritual law that "like are as it 'were of themselves carried to their like, for with their like they are as with their own" (ΗΗ 44). This, clearly, is the origin of our proverb: "Birds of a feather flock together."

I said that we have chosen the "life from life" that we have from the Lord. The choice is in our thought, for it is in thought that we become intellectually, or reflectively, aware of an affection within us. That affection may be sensed by us as a mere impulse, or as a more enduring feeling. Either way, it is in thought we choose to entertain it, or as the case may be, to reject it. That is why the Lord says, "By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matt. 12:37). Words, interiorly judged, are as the thoughts, being the ultimations of these.

If now "love (his love) is the life of man," it follows that everything in the mind is such as is the essential love of that mind. All affections are simply "prolongations and derivations" of love (D. Love 47 or XVI:1). His love is also "the life of all his thoughts;" and intelligence and wisdom (if any), being from love, it follows that a man is also "his own intelligence and wisdom" (CL 34-36).

All these things together, plus the actions of his hands and the speech of his lips, constitute the life of man. It is this life the man feels "as his own." It has its own esse, distinct from the Lord's Esse, and from that its own existere, and from these two all the derivations in his mind, and in fact even in his body as well. For you can speak of esse and existere, substance and form, love and wisdom, also life, and ascribe all these to man, provided that in this case you are talking about things "created and finite" (DLW 53).

It is therefore possible to be the Lord's without being the Lord. Swedenborg prayed, "I am Thine and not my own" (Journal of  Dreams, 104 and 117); and as for angels, the higher they are, the more they have no other feeling than that they are their own, and at the same time no other acknowledgment and perception than that they are the Lord's (DP 158; 42). This most beautiful combination of appearance and reality stems from the fact that the life of the mind of angel or man appears to be self-originating, that is, from self; whereas it is not self-originating, not from self, but is (if good) from the Lord with that  mind. It is a reaction, or a response, to the life that inflows from the Lord, but (again if good) a reaction that is "action with the Lord." There is correspondence, agreement; and the Lord "smells an odor of rest" (Gen 8:21), for there is no conflict between the life that inflows and the life that receives.

The exact opposite occurs if man turns aside the Divine influx into his mind. But then too he is a receptacle; then too there is an "as from self." "Man can will and he can think from the Lord, that is, from the Word; and also he can will and think from the devil, that is, against the Lord and the Word. The Lord gives to man this freedom" (TCR 371:6). It is therefore not a question of whether or not the life of man is independent; the only question is: (on Whom -- or on what -- does it choose to depend?) We are speaking here of the life of the mind, not the life of the inmost soul above the mind; for it is the mind that is the arena of choice; it is there that the life of man acts with the Lord -- or, acts with the devil. The inmost soul, being above consciousness and therefore above choice, is alike a receptacle of life from the Lord with angel or devil.

It may be seen, then, that "the love that is the life of man," and the "Love itself that is Life itself" (DLW 4), are two distinct loves. The one is Life in se; the other is life reactive, life responsive (or rejective!). The one proceeds, the other is produced; and the latter is not -- ever -- a continuation of the former, thus "is not continuous from God ... for that which is continuous from God is God" (DLW 55; see also DLW 4, 5; AC 2004:3; AC 2034:3; AC 3938:2,3).

Reception and the thing received

If therefore the life that inflows is one thing, and the life that is enkindled and awakened in the receiving vessel is another, then it follows that we need to distinguish -- sharply -- between reception and the thing received. There seems to be some confusion in this area here and there in the Church, for one occasionally hears comments which seem to imply that man becomes what he receives, or that what inflows from the Lord immediately, or out of heaven from Him, becomes part of man. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The Divine never blends on equal terms with what it creates or produces. It remains Divine above creation or in creation, Divine also in all the life-forms that it awakens. The distinction is never blotted out; the Divine never "becomes" creation, just as creation never becomes Divine.

One hears too that the Divine ceases to be Divine after reception. Yet this is no more true than the idea that reception is an extension of the Divine. The eye receives light; yet the eye does not become part of the light, nor does the light cease to be light after reception by the eye. Again, the flower receives the heat and light of the sun; but the flower does not become heat and light, nor do the sunrays cease to be sunrays after they have produced growth and color and scent.

We are reminded here of the reference to the "Gordian knot" in the Writings, in connection with the problem we are here discussing. Many have seen, the Writings note, that all things in the universe "have been created out of a Substance that is Substance in itself"; and "yet they have not dared to confirm it, fearing lest they might thereby be led to think that the created universe is God because from God ... [thus] lest their understanding should become entangled in a so-called Gordian knot" (DLW 283; cf. the whole passage, and also AC 3484; DLW 55e; DLW 52).

The confusion probably stems directly or indirectly from an idea that the Divine would somehow be diminished by creating. There is this vast universe. If it all came from a Substance that is Substance in se, would not a lot of that Substance have become absorbed by creation, that is, by the universe? Or, resisting that notion, would not the Divine, lest it lose its identity, have to withdraw from the substance it had created once it had created it?

But the Divine does not diminish by creating, just as love is not diminished or diluted by being spread among many. "The Divine is the same in the greatest and in the least" (DLW 77). "The Divine, without space, infills all the spaces of the universe" (DLW 69). The Divine, therefore, is the same before creation, after creation, and within creation. Could creation rise up against its Maker, and in some way change Him? Does the Word of the Lord shift this way or that by virtue of obedience or disobedience? Even the law of the land, does it change in the faithful citizen or in the criminal? And the sun in our sky, does it change because the earth has winter or summer? "Amid all change, One changing not, yet making all things new."

What we need to understand and teach, is the distinction between make and constitute (facio/constituo), and also the somewhat parallel distinction between continuity and contiguity.

The Lord makes, and what He has made constitutes. The universal principle is heralded when the relation between the Lord and heaven is given: "The angels taken together are called heaven because they constitute it. But yet it is the Divine proceeding from the Lord, which inflows with the angels and is received by them, that makes heaven in general and in particular" (HH 7; see also AC 7268; AE 152:1). The same relation also exists between anything that is from the Lord with man on the one hand, and the recipient on the other. For example, the truths of faith make the faith of man, but the concepts that he forms from those truths, constitute it. The distinction is not always observed in our current translations. Just one example: "Truths interiorly seen and acknowledged make (faciunt) intelligence" (AE 152:1). They do; but it is rendered "constitute intelligence." I suppose another word could be substituted for "make," if good English would seem to require it -such as produce - form - fashion - sculpt. But the main idea must not be lost, namely that the Divine causes things to come about, and the things that have come about constitute what the Divine has made.

Of course there is a parallel distinction between finite things, where one is cause and the other effect. For instance, an author makes, or produces, a book; and then the chapters in it, and the ideas in it, constitute the book. But it is obviously not so important to express correctly the relation between one finite and another, as it is to see clearly, and express clearly, the discreteness between the Divine producing and the thing produced.

As for what is continuous and what is contiguous, we have already touched on this when noting that the life of man is not continuous with the inflowing life from the Lord. Perhaps the most succinct, and at the same time most complete, statement of that point in the Writings is the following: "Every created thing, by virtue of its origin, is such in its nature as to be a recipient of God, not by continuity but by contiguity" (DLW 56; cf. DLW 88; 285e; DP 57e; AR 55e). "Contiguous" comes from contingo, meaning to touch. And Divine touch it is, Divine kiss it is, Divine enkindling it is, but no merging, no commingling.

We should perhaps note too that both the recipient and reception relate to the Lord by contiguity, and not by continuity. A recipient is like esse, and reception like existere. In the case of angel or man, esse is his ruling love, while the things that spring from that love, like perceptions, affections, thoughts, judgments, constitute his existere from that esse. One comprehensive teaching on this matter is the following: "Man's esse is nothing else than a recipient of the eternal which proceeds from the Lord; for men, spirits, and angels are nothing but recipients, or forms recipient, of life from the Lord. The reception of life is that of which existere is predicated" (AC 3938:2; cf. AC 2004:2&3; 3539:4 DLW 56).

One might say that reception, the existere of love, is the life of our love, or from our love, which we feel as if it were our own, though both our love itself and all the life-forms from it, are and exist solely from the Lord, by touch.

Summing up this section we therefore conclude: That what is received, namely life inflowing from the Lord, is Divine; but that the recipient (or that which receives the Lord's life by contiguity and not by continuity), thus the esse or love of man, is created and finite; and that reception, since it is the existere of that esse (or the coming forth of that love) is created and finite also. The recipient itself, and the reception itself, are together what is called "the life of man."

(Continue to part 2)