Creation
Lawson Smith | Friday, July 15, 2011 The third piece in our series on homosexuality is contributed by Lawson Smith. Rather than speaking out against homosexuality directly, Lawson focuses on the creation story and what it means to be created in the image of God, male and female. He draws passages together that suggest that the highest use we can perform in this world would be to raise children who can come to know the Lord and serve Him. -Editor.
Coleman did a very good job introducing this difficult subject. He referred us to a site where we can find several studies from doctrine on it. Dylan brought in a key teaching from the New Testament on love toward the neighbor. Perhaps it would be useful to look through some passages in bite-sized pieces, rather than in the form of an extended dissertation. Here are some reflections on one passage, the creation story.
When we open the Word, the first story is creation. That in itself tells us a lot about who the Lord God is.
On the sixth day, when God created mankind, it says, “And God created man in His [own] image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply…” (Gen. 1:27-28)
From these verses, we can infer a couple of things. One is that the image of God consists in male and female together. “Man,” meaning mankind or the human race, is incomplete without both male and female. The Heavenly Doctrine says that married love makes both a husband and a wife become more and more truly “man,” that is, human: “In a marriage that is of love truly conjugial each becomes a more and more interior man (homo)1; for that love opens the interiors of their minds, and as these are opened man becomes more and more a man (homo), and to become more a man on the part of the wife is to become the more a wife, and on the part of the husband it is to become the more a husband” (Conjugial Love 200).
Another thing we can see is that God blessed us by making us male and female, and thus providing for marriage between husband and wife. Over and over the Doctrine teaches that the happiness of heaven springs from married love as its fountain (see Conjugial Love 316:3 for example). Sometimes the differences between masculine and feminine approaches to life can be perplexing, but the distinct and complementary natures are what allow men and women to bring unique gifts to each other. “Form makes one more perfectly in proportion as those things which enter into it are distinct from one another and yet are united” (Divine Providence 4).
A third point we can see is that one of the main points of marriage is to be fruitful and multiply. Clearly these words have a spiritual meaning, which is the soul and life of what the Lord is saying to us here. Fruitfulness consists in receiving new states of love to the Lord and toward the neighbor, and multiplication refers to the multiplication of truths and insights that form a good and wise life.
But the literal sense is also very important. The Lord’s purpose in creating the universe and mankind in it is that there may be a heaven from the human race, where angels who have been people on earth love Him and are eager to be with Him, and so are willing to receive the blessings He longs to give. To achieve this purpose, human beings need to be born in the natural world, where we have the opportunity to learn about God and choose whether or not to believe in Him and follow Him. This is “job number one” in creation: that human beings may be born and equipped to make a free, rational choice for heaven and the Lord, if they are willing.
The Doctrine says that the reason that all joys and all delights from first to last are gathered into married love is that marriage has the highest use, namely, to participate in the creation of human beings along with the Lord (Conjugial Love 68). Happiness, peace and satisfaction come with the performance of useful services. There is no higher service than “to let the little children come to Me” (Mark 10:14), by having children and raising them for a useful life both in this world and forever. All other uses, from government to business, professions and trades, all the formal and informal ways in which we help each other, essentially are in support of this greatest use, that children may be born and grow up into a useful life with the Lord. The Lord blesses us by sharing His uses with us.
A husband and wife become fruitful and multiply spiritually and grow closer to one another in the work of raising children more than in any other way (see Conjugial Love 174175176).
These are some points that stand out to me in this first story of the Word. What do you see? Maybe you would like to bring in some other passages.
Foot Note
1In the Latin original, homo is a word that means a human being, while vir means a male. Unfortunately English does not have words to distinguish these meanings very well.
Lawson Smith
Lawson is the husband of Shanon Jungé, father of eight, and pastor of the Kempton New Church.Wondering about the inspiration for this article? Look up the New Church, which is based on the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Reader Comments (55)
Frank, I feel the need to point out that none of your citations holds up.
You misquoted Married Love 457. The words are not "holy marriage;" it says marital union. The pearl of great price is not even mentioned here, and it refers to one's concept of God, not marriage (AR 727). Please don't put quotes around something without checking your sources.
The book of Leviticus is a collection of out-of-date laws that are absurd when taken at face value. Swedenborg says that in the Books of Moses, "nothing is apparent but mere history," but we can find heavenly secrets within its figurative meaning. When the mind is kept in the sense of the letter, the internal things are not seen at all (AC 1408).
Swedenborg calls Paul one of the worst of the apostles, ensnared by the love of self, acting from a love of control and self-consequence. The rest of the apostles (in the next life) have rejected him, and refuse to acknowledge him as one of their own. He allied himself with one of the worst devils. Swedenborg goes on, saying, "If all the things I know about Paul should be described, it should fill pages. The fact that he wrote epistles does not prove his good character, for even the impious can preach well, and write letters...Moreover, in his epistles he did not mention the least word about the Lord, or what He taught, nor does he mention a single parable of His, so he received nothing from the life and preaching of the Lord" (SE 4412).
Swedenborg is critical of the Book of Romans in particular, because of Paul's misleading language (DP 115).
In CL 79, Swedenborg does not quote from Corinthians, he simply references it with a footnote during a conversation in the other world. And furthermore, Corinthians was written by Paul.
DP 144 does not mention homosexuality. It speaks of adultery, and the ideal of married love. In fact, it's discussion of adultery specifically denotes male-female sex, because it mentions the fact that offspring can from adulterous unions as well as marital ones.
Kristin, I'd like to respond to your previous comment.
1st paragraph: I think we are already clear that we disagree that: evil is limited to states of being within a person's control and that evil is limited to those things which we can observe to do harm to others.
2nd paragraph: This is key for me. If this were a conversation only between people who agreed that homosexuality was wrong, then we would likely be talking about a) how to express love toward people who suffer from it (not always involving shunning and verbalizing our rejection of their life style. b) what are the possibilities for change/recovery.
Not that the current conversation isn't valuable, but the one I just mentioned also needs to happen, because confronting people practicing homosexuality is not something that anyone is advocating.
3rd paragraph: Every ill and every time it is manisfest in different people requires different treatment. I would argue that we do ostracize all of the categories you've mentioned. " liars, cheaters, hypocrites, adulterers, and abusers." Sometime it is intentional, loving and effective forms of ostrasization and other times it is harmful ostracization. I reject all evils "wholesale" and then try to figure out nuances, specific, appropriate ways to deal with each type that shows up in my life or in my communities.
I do think that homosexuality is given way too much attention in our society today such that it appears to be far more significant than all the other bad stuff that goes on. But I think there are two reasons. The "battle" here is joined with opposing forces with a legislative backdrop. Issues like legalizing drugs get some attention because of the legislative back drop and opposing sides. But we don't spend our time talking about lying at the civil level because their aren't huge lobby efforts to legalize and celebrate lying. And, I think the whole subject of homosexuality and the people who deal with it, suffer as a result of this overblown attention. (Though I do also see some good coming out of the attention). I thinking "kicking people out" is tactic that is only very rarely called for, but you would certainly hear from me if anyone want to celebrate as good and appropriate "control in their marriage, or flirting with the secretary, or yelling at their kids?"
Side note: I feel pretty strongly against the practice of homosexuality. I think deep, mutual love between two men is possible. I experience this in several of my relationships. However, I think the degree of this love is qualified by CL 55 which puts it not only at a lower level than Conjugial Love between a man and a woman but also below love between a man (or woman) and other (non spouse) members of the opposite sex.
In paragraph 3: You mentioned that mutual love between is not sexual addiction. I'm not sure if you are refering to homosexuality here. I am quite convinced that some homosexuality can be usefully seen as sexual addiction. This is on the testimony of some ex-gays and the theory fits with my thinking on subject as one viable way to look at some situations of homosexuality.
Dylan,
:)
6 points for adding humor.
11 points for a delightfully clever reversal.
4 points for an appropriate reminder to me not to take things personally.
I do think there's an important distinction though. I'm not concerned about having you object to a type of thinking or a specific argument. It even seems fair to me that you can make the case that "argument A or approach to thinking B, because of their objective nature (which we can examine) communicate hatred." That is fine with me. (This type of argument becomes more and more difficult to make, the more broadly you are attempting to categorize a type of thought. For example, trying to support the statement that "the Republican Party is a hateful political affiliation")
What I object to, (and I acknowledged that you had not done this) is being called a "hater." This is a judgment on my spiritual state which is something that another person cannot do. I don't think that everyone who practices homosexuality or everyone who supports the practice of homosexuality does it from hateful or otherwise hellish motivations. I couldn't know that. And I suspect that there are large numbers of people who do not do it for these reasons.
Brian
Brian,
I'll own that when I talk about ostracism, I'm really just thinking of my experiences in Bryn Athyn. It seems to me that the people who lose their jobs, get kicked out of schools, get the evil eye in church on Sunday, and are made to feel that they belong on the outskirts -- these people tend to be gays, or women who have less-than-truly-conjugial sexual situations. It seems to me that a man who cheats on his wife has a very good chance at being accepted back into the fold in Bryn Athyn, compared with a gay person who has almost none.
We do preach against control and mean-spiritedness sometimes. I can't remember the last time I heard a sermon against violence, or yelling. We tell the kids not to lie about whether they've done their chores. But the overwhelming theme from my time in Bryn Athyn, from the pulpit, in the classroom, and walking down the street, is that your sexual feelings and behaviors define your spiritual life. We're obsessed with sex -- with carefully trimming it down, cutting it back, reining it in, and forcing it into a box small enough that it will fit on a shelf in the closet (to be taken down one or two evenings a week, I assume). But the reality is that sexuality is huge, messy, complicated, diverging and absolutely intrinsic part of being human. And Swedenborg still has only a few pages to say on it, compared to volumes on serious vices which we comparatively ignore.
None of that is personally directed, by the way. It's just my read on the culture I grew up in.
I also think it's worth mentioning that a conversation like this IS a confrontation. Like Dylan suggested, the act of sitting around discussing the okay-ness or the evilness of homosexuality is very probably alienating, discouraging, hurtful, and humiliating to any gays who are reading. And I'm sure there are.
Kristin,
1) I quoted Conjugial Love No. 457 EXACTLY as it appears in my 250th Anniversary copy.
2) In Conjugial Love 79 -Swedenborg and an angel quote Paul's statement in I Corinthians 6:9 which says:
""Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor EFFEMINATE, nor ABUSERS OF THEMSELVES WITH MANKIND..."
3) If you think the Apostle Paul's a bad preacher please tell Swedenborg to stop quoting him! Thank you.
4) You say "The book of Leviticus is out of date"- please tell that to Swedenborg and the angels who reference the "Prohibitive degrees" or "Foul Conjunctions" in Leviticus in the writings- and while you're at it, tell Swedenborg to stop calling homosexuality a "foul conjunction"! Doesn't he know Kristin cannot bring herself to think of homosexuality as foul?
Kristin, as a journalist I made sure to read my references before listing them, and, you conveniently forgot to mention my reference to DIVINE PROVIDENCE No. 144 which give multiple reason why homosexuality is "heinous" starting with:
i. Man's seed contains the rudiments of another human being.
ii. The male- female sexual organs correspond to heavenly societies
iii. Hell is adultery itself
I encourage everyone to read the passages I listed in previous posts for themselves. There are many more places in the Three-Fold Word that clearly shows Homosexuality to be adultery. Also, in Swedenborg's SPIRITUAL DIARY there are passages detailing SODOMY and LESBIANISM- showing them to be, "abominable".
And finally, the Rev. William L.D. Heinrichs has done research on the subject of homosexuality and points to verses in the Writings that clearly describe the hellish practices of homosexuality and lesbianism.
Kristin, I know we're on opposite sides of this issue but maybe we'll agree on the next one.
It's all good. Frankie
......continuation:
Correction: You conveniently forgot to mention in DP 144 the particular points I listed showing the "heinious" acts of homosexuality which pervert God's order:
i. Man's seed contains the rudiments of another human being
ii. The male-female sexual organs correspond to heaven
iii. Hell itself is adultery
There are many translations of Conjugial Love, and my listing of No. 457 is exactly how it's written in my older version.
Besides, the point is the same: No. 457 describes Holy Marriage as existing between "one MAN and one WIFE".....Not a man and another man, or woman and woman. This can never be, because the male-female opposites cause a conjugial pair to be more human. Love inspires the man to be more wise, and the wisdom of the man causes the female's love to grow. And to eternity! Homosexuality causes conjugial cold.
Frank --
Don't know about the 250th Anniversary Edition of CL, but no translation I find mentions the pearl of great price in n. 457. You're right that it's a relatively pointless distinction.
I cited Swedenborg's opinion of Paul, not my own.
As to DP 144, I don't see how any of the three reasons you mention prove that homosexuality is heinous.
My point in all of this is that for each scriptural argument you've made, there is another side to the story. Another way to read it. Another understanding. Doctrine is just not as black and white as you've suggested it is -- it's a deeply complex series of rabbit holes. I really am doing my best to see different angels, through different layers, to come to the conclusion that I feel is most in integrity with the spirit and the letter of the Word.
And please, lay off the sarcasm and condescension. It makes it extremely challenging to carry on any conversation at all.
Kristin,
I'm sorry you confused my humor for sarcasm and condescension. I thought by ending my post with- "Kristin, I know we're on different sides of the issue but....." after which, I used a phrase we often say to each other where I'm from......It's all good!
You also said, " As to DP 144 I don't see how any of the three reasons you mention prove that homosexuality is heinous"- So I'll show you:
1) A man's seed contains the rudiments of another human being.
Explanation: Swedenborg said the angels consider "the commingling of man's seed with an adulterer is "heinous" because it contains the rudiments of another human being. How much more "heinous" is the commingling of man's seed with feces? Common sense dictates why Sodomy is considered an abomination and was forbidden by God in Leviticus.
2) DP 144 states: The male and female sexual organs CORRESPOND to heaven. The anus and feces correspond to hell. Mixing the two through perverted acts is a horrible defilement. This is why the Hebrews were commanded to bury excrement outside of the camp. Swedenborg explains how this relates to "foul conjunctions" and adulteries.
3) DP States: Hell is one big adultery, and heaven is conjugial love.
Explanation: Any and all sexual defilements, including homosexuality, are considered adulteries because they come from hell.
In conclusion: Kristin, I know you're motivated by love towards gays and you want to defend them. Let me be honest and give you my motivation: I also have gay loved ones in my close-knit neighborhood. I would never be as tough on them as I seem to be in our mature, New Church Perspective dialogue. Simply put, they don't know any better! It's difficult enough to try and prove to them there's a life after death! The good news is- I believe there is healing in the spiritual world, but we must make a start in this one! The New Church must keep it's Ideal of marriage as a beacon to all, no matter the current spiritual state of a person, gay or strait. It's just like the Ideal of the Divine Human. We can turn away, or we can strive towards the Lord for healing. We never change the image of the Lord- rather, we co-operate with the Divine Human and he changes us! Jesus' Ideal is- "be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect". Of course the Lord knows we'll never be perfect, but he sets up that IDEAL so we constantly advance forward to better states. Not so if there were no IDEAL. We would all stagnate, degenerate, and die. The IDEAL of Marriage and the DIVINE HUMAN advance together!
Thanks, Frank. I'm glad to hear more of where you're coming from.
Kristin,
Correct me if I am wrong - Swedenborg's negative views of Paul were expressed in a work that he did not intend to publish. This work, the Spiritual Diary, contains his unprocessed dreams, not all of which are revelations.
Swedenborg did not change the canon of the Bible. He just said that some books have inner meanings, and some don't. Paul's letters are still Scripture for all Christians, including Swedenborgian ones.
Roger
Thanks, Kristin.
All the best,
Frankie
The subject of Paul is probably somewhat of a digression from the main topic of homosexuality, but it is of interest to me. I grew up knowing that Paul was a boogey-man, like Melancthon and Charles XII, so imagine my surprise when I discovered how frequently the Writings cite Pauline scriptures to back up points made in the Writings!
Swedenborg definitely has little (if anything) nice to say about Paul and the Writings exclude Paul from the canon of the Word. However, somewhere (and as usual I don't have passage numbers) the Writings say the books excluded from the canon are excluded because of their lack of a continuous internal sense. However, they do say that many (all?) of them are "good books" for the church. Another applicable teaching is that the Lord sometimes raises up evil people to do what needs to be done because there aren't enough good people available!
So, if you combine all that stuff, what I conclude is: although Swedenborg states that Paul ends up in hell and that the books of Paul are not canon, that if Swedenborg quotes Paul, that particular quote is true.
Freya,
I have a great respect for Paul (St. Paul) and I consider myself Swedenborgian (whatever that means).
Where does Swedenborg mention, in his published works, that Paul (or anyone) is in hell?
Swedenborg's (or anyone else's) private dreams are not revelation. It is unfortunate that these were published in works such as the Spiritual Diary after his death and without his consent.
By the same token, I have great respect for King David, poet, warrior, prophet, ruler, Messiah. The word Messiah or Christ simply means "anointed one" and is used in the Bible for the legitimate kings of the Davidic dynasty - and once for the Persian Emperor Cyrus. Jesus is the final and ultimate Davidic king, the Messiah par excellence.
In the Book of Samuel, Jehovah is unhappy that the Israelites want a human King instead of having Him as their King, but He allows them a human King nonetheless. In Jesus, this conflict is resolved when Jehovah incarnates as the last and final King (Messiah) of the Davidic dynasty. Jesus is both Absolute God and Human King (Son of David).
Roger
Roger, you've tugged at the loose thread in my argument. I actually agree with you that the Spiritual Diary isn't not divinely inspired or authoritative, because Swedenborg seems to have lifted the really important narratives and included them in his published works. The leftovers are just leftover bits of dream journal, in my opinion, and not to be given too much weight. I think it's also important to acknowledge that many New Church people would vehemently disagree, and they would give the Diary equal status with the Arcana.
Swedenborg does say, in a personal letter, that the works of the Apostles are "good books for the church." In this letter, too, he is much more forgiving of Paul than in his private diary. (Some people like to think of the Spiritual Diary similarly, as a "good book for the church," but lacking divine authority.)
All that being said, I think that it's still relevant in the current case to acknowledge that Swedenborg does vehemently criticize Paul and his teachings. And for myself, I conclude very strongly that neither the Spiritual Diary nor Paul's writings are sufficient ground for excluding or condemning homosexuals.
I like Freya's conclusion: when Swedenborg's published works quote Paul, then that bit is "Scripture" and becomes a trump card, so to speak. (I am just all about the playing card analogies these days!) Otherwise, there is room for debate.
Lest I publish incomplete information on this thread, I would like to supplement my earlier post with the following amendment: King Saul was a Messiah (Moshiach or anointed one in Hebrew). Saul was anointed by Samuel, judge and prophet, even though he was not of David's family. Samuel anointed David, at Jehovah's command, while Saul was still alive -- because of the latter's disobedience.
Also, the High Priests of the lineage of Aaron are also called Moshiach or Messiah in the Tanakh (Old Testament).
Also, most people of color (including myself - I am a colored American of a Middle Eastern ethnicity) feel that homosexuals and their advocates have hijacked the civil rights movement, and that it is inaccurate to position the gay agenda as a civil rights matter. Homosexuals are not subject to discrimination in housing, accommodations, travel, dining and other public contexts as colored people once were. A homosexual man has the same marriage rights as I have - both of us, when not married, can marry a single, adult woman of any race who is not within the forbidden limits of incest. Where is the civil rights issue? Where are the legally sanctioned discrimination against homosexuals?
Roger