The Visible God

We have noted that it was as the Visible God that the Lord became Redeemer. All the acts of redemption were done by Him as He stood forth to view; and the three great acts of redemption were the following: The subjugation and re-ordering of the hells; the restoration of order in the heavens and the institution of a new heaven, and the establishment of a new church (at that time the First Christian Church) on earth. Another way of saying that the acts of redemption were done by the Visible God is to point out that these acts were accomplished by means of the setting forth of the Lords glory. The glory of His Soul was in Him from conception; but by means of His combats and victories in the world He took that glory into His Body also, His Human also; for His Body and His Natural Mind, conceived of the Father and born of the virgin mother, expelled in combat all that was from the mother, and so became by victories born of the Father as well as conceived of Him. Let me give special emphasis to this point by repeating it, but in the words of the Writings themselves: The Lords Divine Human was not only conceived, but was also born of Jehovah (AC 2628; 2649:2; 2798). And as He glorified His Human, so He revealed it. As He gained, so He gave. It was necessary that His glorification should take place visibly, for else there could have been no active response, no co-operation, on the part of man. Men could not see all His glory. Not even the angels are able to do this: and yet John was inspired to write: We beheld His glory. (John 14). And the glory that men saw was the glory of the truth the taught, and the glory of the infinite good of love shown in His acts. These were the things that made men free: for by these means the order and the way of the Prince of Peace were set at variance with the order and the way of the Prince of the world.

So men could choose. This is what lost hell its power among men, which led to its total subjugation; this is what provided a new basis for influx from heaven through the world of spirits, causing the great judgment there, and the consequent liberation of the good and the formation of a new heaven from them; and this is what gave the impetus to the gathering together of a feeble beginning of a new Church on earth. The words and acts of the Son of Man accomplished these things. The Word incarnate, showing forth both its truth and its good, did them. And as the Lord in the world had commenced His work of redemption and salvation, so He continued it afterwards by means of the Spirit of truth operating in and through the New Testament, which bare record of Him, and in and through the re-opened Old Testament likewise.

The Spirit of Truth

The Spirit of truth is the Holy Spirit. It is clear from this connection between the Lords work while on earth and His work afterwards that His operation as Holy Spirit must be visible also. We did not complete our study of the Visible God in our former chapter. That study must now continue--in fact, it should never be completed, even as the work of the Holy Spirit never is.

The essential point with reference to the Holy Spirit is that it is the Lords operation by means of the Weld, consequently by means of teachings that enter into man through his physical senses. Not that the Holy Spirit is the literal statements themselves of ultimate, written. Divine Revelation, but that it is the Spirit of what is there said. Even so the Lord taught, saying: The words that I speak unto you are Spirit and are Life (John 6:63). That is to say: His words have within them the outgoing Divine truth, which in turn carries within it the Divine good which is Life. That Spirit and Life are what express themselves, or speak, in the words of Revelation. They are themselves without language, and are not translatable into other language. Not even the angelic language, in which the Word in heaven is written, can be said to be the Spirit itself and the Life itself that go forth from the Lord and as it were speak through that language too. The Spirit is Divine light, and the Life is the Life within the Light. The Word was with God, and the Word was God ... In it was Life; and the Life was the Light of men (John 1:1, 4). So when the Lord promised His disciples the Spirit of truth, whom He also called the Holy Spirit and the Comforter, He spoke of the Divine light in which is life--the light proceeding from Him by means of the Sun of heaven, and the heat within that light. The Writings say openly that that light is Divine truth, and that heat Divine good.

This then shows in what manner the Lord remained with His disciples after His resurrection, and in what manner He remains with all men and angels in His kingdom to all eternity. He would continue to speak to His followers, and to work His works among them: no longer by means of the body born of Mary, but by means of the Revelations of His Divine Human which were given, one at His first Advent and the other at His second. He does not require a body born from a virgin in order to speak to men. He did, for a short while, require it, in order that it might be revealed that He is with men in ultimates, and that He is God-Man. Yet even while He spoke in that body, the Divine truth that healed and saved did not consist of the Aramaic words that His Human employed, but of the light itself that was conveyed by means of those words. He chose His words as vehicles of light and life, as all Divine Revelation is ever a vehicle of these things alone. So also the body itself that was born of Mary was not His own Human, nor was it the Son of God. He expelled what was from Mary, and put on the Divine. His Human--as already observed was born of the Father within Him, not of Mary. So therefore, if the words were spoken by lips from Mary, yet they were inspirited and infilled with His Divine life by the outgoing Divine Human that made use of the words.

The Lords Presence with Man

The amazing point that evolves from these observations is that He is with men after His resurrection essentially in the same manner as before His resurrection. Note again that His maternal human was not His presence with men. It was a tool and an agent only; but it was His Divine Human that shone forth by means of it that was His real presence with men: That alone was Immanuel, God-with-us.

For this reason He spoke of His presence with the disciples after His resurrection simply as a continuation of His sojourn with them in the Flesh. The mode was to be different. That is why He refers to His new presence as another Comforter (implying that He had been their Comforter in the Flesh also). Indeed the mode of His presence after the completion of His work in the Flesh was to be superior to that used by Him before that work was fulfilled. Did He not say: It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you (John 16:7)? The body from Mary was in the long run a hindrance for His Divine work. It could not but call some attention to His maternal human. Thus obscuring the vision of the Divine Human itself which made use of the maternal human only so that it might have lips to speak with and hands to act through. That is why it was expedient for Him to go away from that maternal human. Or as He taught the same lesson in other words and at another time: The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit (John 12:23, 24).

But though the mode was different, yet the gift itself--the Divine work itself--was the same. In each case--before, as after the resurrection--the Divine truth and the Divine good were revealed. He did not suffer any of His words or any of His acts to rise up from the maternal human. He spoke and acted only as He conquered, only as the maternal human was overcome and put oft. Everyone knows that He was not fully glorified until the end of His life in the world. But this did not make His acts and words prior to that time any less Divine; for again: as He glorified, so He revealed, or so He spoke and acted. But the vision of the glorified Human was obscured by that which was not as yet glorified. What He did was ever perfect: but the scope of mens vision, mens response, was circumscribed. Only when the grave was seen empty were all limitations broken. Only then was Thomas able to stammer, for himself and the rest, in awe and wonderment: My Lord and my God (John 20:28). He--they--had not known this before, not understood. Afterwards they recalled, and understood as it were in retrospect: but at the time their eyes had clung to the son of Mary.

Their eyes had clung to the son of Mary ... Yet not only thus. They had seen too that the Spirit of God Himself worked through this great Master from Nazareth. Peter confessed, saying: Thou hast the words of eternal life (John 6:68). Both aspects of their experience were true: they saw, and they did not see. They were stirred within their hearts, but confused by the testimony of their senses. Hence the same Peter who in an exalted state made the confession just cited was able later on to take Him aside and rebuke and contradict Him, saying: Be it far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee (Matt. 16:22)--as if the Lord did not at all possess the words of eternal life, but was fallible and could be mistaken.

But when He was fully glorified, then He could show Himself immediately in His Divine Human Body, and no longer surrounded by the infirm human body from the mother. Then the disciples saw with the eyes of their spirits alone, and not at the same time with the eyes of their material bodies. Then they saw truly. And then it was that He could be with them--the same Lord as before, but now without any of His former shackles--more fully their Comforter than before, and so like as it were another Comforter. Hence it was then that He breathed on the disciples and said: Receive ye the Holy Spirit (John 20:22).

The Holy Spirit Proceeds from the Lords Human

As the disciples had seen His Divine Human before, so--only more fully--were they to see Him operating from that Human as the Holy Spirit. They were not only to see their Lord as a pictorial image in their memory. They were to see Him, as they had ever seen Him: at work--see Him going along before them as they followed, see Him teach and cure and bless. This is to see the Holy Spirit the Comforter. The promise was: He shall abide with you for ever: even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth within you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you (John 14:16-18)

This concept of the Holy Spirit is vastly different, in fact diametrically opposed to that held by the Church that has fallen. There the thought seems to be from space. It is assumed that the invisible Father, sitting somewhere in heaven on His throne and taking counsel with His Son, who by mystifications has likewise been made invisible, sends out an invisible secret messenger from that throne to the soul of man, touching and sanctifying that soul and pronouncing it saved. We can see the folly, the artificiality and lifelessness of such a concept. Yet the ideas of the Old Church linger on. New Church people too tend to think of the Holy Spirit as descending from above, as through space, to light upon the mind of man, working there the works of salvation altogether in secret. New Churchmen know that the Holy Spirit is not another God, but that He, or it, is the operation of the Lord. They know too that the Father and the Son, from whom the Spirit goes forth, are one in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently they have accustomed themselves to thinking of the Divine Trinity as being in the Lord alone, even as His infinite Soul, His Divine Human Embodiment, and the activity in teaching and working from that Human Embodiment. This is good and well. But I suggest we are inclined to thinking from terms; that we are too much dependent on our memory for the right way of speaking and thinking; thus that we know about the Holy Spirit, but that we have perhaps not really seen Him as we should. We ought to see Him: not once and for all, but once and thenceforth in ever greater clarity and power to eternity.

This is, I suggest, the burden of the chapter in the True Christian Religion which is at present under review. If so, it is of course also the burden of all the teachings in the Writings concerning this most holy subject.

The Holy Spirit and Human Co-operation

Let me emphasize again, as before, that the purpose of the Lord revealing Himself visibly is that men may be made free. They have the proprium with its inclinations to evil of all kinds; and they are not able to choose anything else if they do not know anything else. They see the world and its pleasures. They must see the Lord also, and the happiness that is from Him. And if they are free, then are they able to co-operate with the God of their own choosing, the Lord of their hearts who is at the same time the Lord of Life itself. Thus they are able to respond, and to be in the Lord even as He is in them. And it is this free-will response that spells happiness; they have themselves chosen it, and they love it.

In view of this it will surprise no one that all the acts predicated of the Holy Spirit are such as result from the co-operation of the Lord and man; none of them is accomplished by the Lord without man, thus without his consent and active participation. These are the works of the Divine Virtue and Operation signified by the Holy Spirit as enumerated in our Chapter: In general, reformation and regeneration; and following upon these, renewal, vivification, sanctification and justification; and following upon these again, purification from evils and remission of sins; and finally salvation ... [and] with the clergy, in particular, enlightenment and instruction (TCR 142, 146).

Let us review these works in brief outline. Reformation consists of the inbuilding of truths in the understanding, so that man may think not from the testimony of his senses but from truths which are above the senses, thus interpreting the things of the world in the light of things of heaven.

Regeneration is the creation of a new will within that understanding, and it is formed as man suffers himself to obey the truths he sees in his understanding: for when he bows himself in obedience, then his proprial affections find no outflow: they are as it were suffocated and closed up; and instead the affections of conscience are opened up and released; and it is from these affections flowing down into the reformed understanding that his new will is made. In this wise there is renewal of our understanding according to the words: Renew a right spirit within me; also new life to the will, and through it to the whole mind, in fulfilment of the following: Create in me a clean heart, O God (Ps. 51:10).

Sanctification results, because in the degree that those things are accomplished. in that degree the Divine truth with the Divine good within enters the mind and dwells with man, and this is the truth that is called holy (sanctus), and which is therefore said to sanctify. It need not be specially mentioned that this is the presence and dwelling with man of the Holy Spirit.

Justification, or--what is the same--making righteous. is applied to created man, although the Lord alone is Righteousness, and every man and angel of himself is nothing but evil; and this on account of the fact that the will of man, having suffered itself to be created anew, receives into itself an eternal influx of the Divine Righteousness. Man is neither holy nor righteous; but he--that is, his understanding and will--are sanctified by the influx of divine truth, and justified by the flow of Divine good, and by the willing reception of these. We may therefore say that renewal and vivification refer to the process of making the new understanding and the new will; but sanctification and justification to influx into these things in the degree that they have been made new. The first two speak of the Lord labouring with man in the six days of creation: the latter two of His resting with man on the Sabbath day-- resting, that is to say, in the relaxed love of use, full of ardent longing and eager application.

The final aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit, purification from evils, remission of sins, and salvation, are there to remind us that purification from evils comes, not before the reception of God (the good of conscience), but after its reception and after this good has been employed (by means of its truths) in combat against their opposite numbers in the state of temptation. The same applies to the removal of falsities by means of truths. It is true, of course, that things good and true from the Lord are not received in such a way as to be confirmed, until after combat, but it is also true that they must exist in the internal man, in the region of conscience, before there can be any battle. By their being condemned is meant that they are received in the external man also: and that of course involves the full reception by the whole man; but they must exist in the internal beforehand. Let no man think that he can be delivered from his evil affections and false concepts by anything else than good affections he himself has known beforehand and by truths he himself has recognized and acknowledged beforehand. Else he could have no part in the battle. He would be swayed in the struggle as a reed in the wind. But now he is called upon to fight as from himself: and he can do this, because the good he: knows gives strength to his arm, and his truth fives a sword into his hand. This matter, however, is made more deal. by the following from the Doctrine of Life: As evil and food are two opposites, precisely as hell and heaven are, or as the devil and the Lord are, it follows that if man shuns an evil as sin, he comes into the good that is opposite to the evil ... [and] that the latter is removed by the former (Life 70, 71).

The ensuing state of remission of sins is the resulting state. Remission is nothing else than the blessed state that descends into the mind after the disturbing and quarrelsome evils there have been removed. The prayer, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, has been said.

This is salvation. It is salvation, because salvation is not just getting away from something evil and dangerous. It is the replacement of evil and danger with what is opposite to these things: with good and its peace. Salvation is the same as regeneration, and regeneration is the same as heaven, and heaven is the same as eternal happiness in the kingdom of uses.

The Operation of the Holy Spirit with the Clergy

Now in addition to these works of the Holy Spirit there are said to be, in particular, enlightenment and instruction with the clergy. Here I would suggest two points; first that every man can have enlightenment, and that everyone, according to his station, is able to instruct others in the truth; but that nevertheless these qualities are bestowed upon the clergy in a particular way; and second, that enlightenment and instruction are given in a purely mystical way, thus never without a mans active search for both enlightenment and ability to instruct. Hence our chapter adds after stating that the first Divine works relate to both clergy and laity, that these things are received by those who are in the Lord. and who have the Lord in them (TCR 146): and with regard to the things ascribed in particular to the clergy, that there is not only the zeal that is from the Lord, hut also a zeal of apparently the same nature which nevertheless is derived from mere falsities and the worship--perhaps the secret and tacit worship--of nature (ibid). True and humble and active reciprocation is ever involved. Else the result could not be ascribed to the Holy Spirit, for the Divine works that are done totally in secret by the Lord, thus without mans active response, are not said to be works of His Holy Spirit. They are the fruits of His immediate influx through the soul--that is to say, the fruits of exactly the same Divine light and lifer for there is but one Divine; but of that influx coming to man in an invisible and not at the same time visible way. We mention this in passing, for this is not the place to compare this purely secret influx with the influx that is called the Holy Spirit: only let it be said that the former influx bestows upon man his faculties themselves, the faculties of freedom and rationality; even as it also bestows all the secret powers of the body, whereby organs and glands function without our conscious control. The influx that is called the Holy Spirit, however, is not through the soul. But through the angelic heaven upon the mind, as it were from the side--namely from the spiritual environment of that mind; and this as received in the truths lifted up into the mind from the pages of Revelation. Not that the sphere of angels is employed by the Lord to pass on things from them to man, but to pass on things of His own by means of them. The sphere is theirs, but the light and heat of heaven accommodated by their sphere is the Lords alone. It is this light and heat that is the real influx: and it is the light and heat, or the spirit and the life. of the words of Revelation.

This is how it is possible for man as it were to reach out for the Lords Holy Spirit; and this is how the clergy receive enlightenment and instruction as of themselves--as is the case with anything that comes from the Holy Spirit.

The reason why the clergy have these things in particular that is, in a particular way, is because their office itself, or their function itself, employs their minds in a particular way. And as their minds are turned and respond, so they receive. Influx with them, as with all and for ever, is according to reception.

The Holy Spirit is the Divine Power

Finally, two points. First that power is attributed to the Lord as the Holy Spirit. This is in keeping with the universal doctrine in the Writings that power belongs to truth from good, or good by means of truth (AE 205; 209:4; 376: 22, et al). This, let us note, is not just an academic truth. It means that even as all Divine truth is from Divine good, so the power of the Divine truth is seen and received by man precisely in so far as he sees and perceives the good that is in the truth. Truth without good does not affect the mind, or warm the mind. It does not influence the mans life. It does not cause him to change his manner of thinking, and still less his pattern of behaviour. Truth without good has no meaning. It is like a picture we do not understand, a person we meet and talk to but do not get to know. But let a man see the good to which the truth would lead, and still more the love in the name of which it speaks, and the man has been won over. He has seen the point! He takes note! For the first time he understands! Now he is affected, influenced, and he will always remember. We never forget what we have once truly understood; words and formulas may be forgotten, but not the idea itself that we once saw. It is thus that the truth comes to a man with power.

This brings to mind the teaching that the Word does not make the Church, but the understanding of it, and the Church is such as is the understanding of the Word with those who are in the Church (TCR 243). It is not as though this passage simply wanted to say that it is not enough to have the Word on the book shelf, but that it must be read and talked about too. The warning is to those who do read it, quote from it, and talk about it; for they are the ones who may mistake an external knowledge for a real understanding. Truth such as it is itself is not just a formula.

Truth is both the form in which it comes to view and the contents of that form. And what is contained is good. This means that truth is not understood, unless the good of it is also perceived. Truth and good make one. They can be separated only in idea, but not in reality and in life. Do we not read concerning the Divine Truth itself, the Word, that in it was life; and the life was the light of men (John 1:4)? So, then, to understand a truth is to understand the life of it. That is why the Church is such as is the understanding of the Word with those who are in the Church.

Knowledge alone belongs to the external mind, and is stored away only in the external, or ordinary, memory. But the understanding is a faculty of the interior mind (in which, if it is well with man, the true rational is formed); and what engages the understanding is stored away in the interior memory. The exterior memory is illusive and erosive. But the interior memory is one with mans character. Nothing is ever lost from it. His views, beliefs, and affections themselves are preserved there. In fact, his interior memory is his book of life according to which he is judged in the life hereafter. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works (Rev. 20:12; see AC 9841:3, HH 463). The Lords own Book of Life is the Word (because in it all His thoughts and affections, thus His infinite wisdom and mercy, are written). Man is said to have his name written in this Divine Book, if the quality of his mind (which is his internal name) has been derived out of it and formed by it. (See Rev. 13:8, 20:15. AR 874). Such is the case with him. if he has truly understood the Word, so that he has been affected by it, and so has learned to think, will, and act from it, that is to say, if the Word has come to him with its power--its creative power. All things were made by the Word, and without it was not any thing made that was made (John 1:3).

That power of the Word does not belong to its mere letter, therefore not a mere knowledge of the letter. It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the Flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you are Spirit and are Life (John 6:63). What is that Spirit and Life of the Word except the Holy Spirit? Is not the Spirit of Truth another name for the Holy Spirit? (See John 14:16, 17, 26). Thus it is that the Holy Spirit is the Lord, the Visible God, the Son of Man, speaking out of His Word with power and great glory (Matt. 24:30)--speaking, that is to say, to those who understand something of the Spirit of the Word, especially as revealed in His second coming. That is His coming in the clouds of heaven (Matt. 24:30): His coming in the dark sayings and proverbs of old. For He promised: The time cometh, when shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father (John 16:25). Yet then too it is by no means sufficient to remember the lucid words. They too, like anything read or heard, can be stoled away in the external memory only. Again it is necessary to be awake to the Spirit and Life of Divine Doctrine: to respond not only to the truth-form of Revelation, but to sense also the affection of Divine good therein. Otherwise the real rational with man is not touched; doctrine is not written in mans book of life: the profound explanations are not truly understood; and the creative power of the Spirit and Life of the words of the Son of Man, speaking in His second coming, is not shed upon the man. Power belongs to truth from good.

Of Himself from the Father

The second point relates to the following statement in our chapter: The Lord operates of Himself from the Father, and not the reverse (TCR 153).--The reverse would be that God the Father operates the virtues [attributed to the Holy Spirit] of Himself through the Son (see the same number). That such is not the case our passage confirms as follows: No man hath seen God at any time,. the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him (John 1:18): and in another place: Ye have not heard the voice of the Father at any time. nor seen His shape (John 5:37). From these things it therefore follows that God the Father operates in the Son, and into the Son. but not through the Son, but that the Lord operates of Himself from the Father; for He says: All things of the Father are Mine (John 16:15); that the Father hath given all things into the hand of the Son (John 3:35); and also that As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in Himself (John 5:26); as also The words that I speak are spirit and life. (John 6:63; TCR 153).

Apparently the above teaching has mystified many. It means simply that the Holy Spirit, or the Lords operation, goes forth from Him as visible (thus from the Lord in His Human), and not from Him as Invisible (or the Lord in His Divine called the Father). The Lord is not visible as to His infinite Soul itself. It is with reference to this it is said: There shall no man see Me, and live (Ex. 33:20). In other words, the inmost Divine cannot be understood or comprehended by either man or angel. What is finite cannot grasp the infinite. But the Infinite willed to communicate itself to men, wherefore He bowed the heavens and came down (Ps. 18:9). He who was the Word itself, the infinite Truth in the Beginning, became Flesh, and it was only thus that we beheld His glory (John l:1, 14). It is by means of taking on finite coverings that our God becomes visible and comprehensible to us.

Throughout the Writings the name The Lord means nothing but the Lord God as known by means of His advents. It is this that makes the whole doctrine concerning the Lord so powerful. We are not taught concerning One who is not near, but concerning God-with-us: Immanuel. (Cf. AC 14).

Once this is seen, the passage just quoted becomes not only clear, but full of inexhaustible meaning. It is then recognized that the Holy Spirit can operate with man only when man sees Him, and so agrees to respond and work with Him. Why! is it not said that man himself is to open his door, outside which the Lord, the visible God, stands knocking? (Rev. 3:20). It is seen too that the Holy Spirit is the Lord as it were reasoning with man, and this with infinite compassion and tender love. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord (Is. 1:18). The truth is gently revealing to him the power of love. There is no pressure, no force; only omnipotent, holy presence. Nor is the man led blindly, or against his will. He is only invited to co-operate in freedom according to enlightened reason.