July-December 2009
In This Issue
Editorial Remarks
We are delighted to bring to our readers an issue with a variety of
articles ranging from one about the first translation of a work by
Swedenborg into Russian to the latest news about The New Philosophy
online in the Swedenborg Library’s Digital Collections...
Transactions of the One Hundred and Twelfth Annual Meeting
Publisher/Editor's Report
Treasurer's Report
God’s Ecology and Spiritual Gardening
Edward F. Sylvia
God created this beautiful planet to be of service to humankind—but
to be used wisely. The urgent environmental issues and ecological
crisis in the world is an indication of a deeper, spiritual crisis. A polluted
world is the result of polluted thinking. Soil erosion is the result of an
erosion of character, based on artificial, dead and disjointed principles.
The situation is not hopeless and every one of you has the power to
make real positive changes—with God’s help. In fact, these changes will
increase the vitality of an ecosystem that stretches from earth all the way to
heaven!
Search For The Soul
Response to Search For The Soul
Sonia Soneson Werner
Response: David Lister
Thousands of years ago, King Solomon loved the Lord and earnestly
prayed: “Therefore give to your servant an understanding heart to
judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil” (I Kings
3:9). Clearly he wanted a balance of thoughts and emotions that would
give him the wisdom needed to be an effective leader of his people. The
phrasing of Solomon’s prayer to God suggests an assumption that a good
conscience would be located in his heart, that this is where he would
receive the Lord’s influx. To this day, people speak of feeling love in their
hearts, while they consider the brain to be the location of human thoughts.
But where does the Lord actually conjoin Himself with us? Does He meet
us in the conscience, where we “discern between good and evil,” and is
that the same as the seat of the soul? “Conscience is a new will and a new
understanding received from the Lord and so is the Lord’s presence with a
person” (AC 4299)...
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Darwin, Wallace, Tennyson and
Swedenborg: Religion and Science in the
Nineteenth Century
Richard Lines
I hope I need no excuse for speaking about the life and achievements of
Charles Darwin in his bicentenary year. Darwin was born early in 1809,
on the 12th February (exactly the same day as Abraham Lincoln), and the
bicentenary similarly got off to an early start with television programs,
books, articles and exhibitions. 2009 also happens to be the 150th anniversary
of the publication (in November 1859) of his most famous book, On
the Origin of Species. That work, which set out in five hundred pages of
argument and evidence the theory of evolution by natural selection, accomplished
an intellectual revolution which changed the world for ever...
Sacred Geometry
Steve Hendricks
For most of the history of mankind, Beauty was not in the eye of the
beholder. For the craftsmen and artists who built the first Gothic
cathedrals, their work in wood and stone was made so the beauty of the
permanent could shine through into the world of the transient. They were
known as the masters of the compass rather than architects....
On The Decimal: The First Russian Translation of Swedenborg
David Dunér
The first Russian translation of Emanuel Swedenborg has been discovered
in the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint
Petersburg. It is a translation, from just before New Year 1725, of
Swedenborg’s proposal for the division of our coins and measures from
1719. Here I will sketch the background of the translation, the significance
of Swedenborg’s pamphlet, and how it became translated into Russian...
The Divine Proceeding
Douglas Taylor
The Divine Proceeding (Divinum Procedens) is the Divine, not as it is in
Itself (in Se) but as it goes forth to sustain the creation and to redeem
and save mankind. It is synonymous with the Divine Operation, the
Divine Providence, and generally with the Holy Spirit.
The New Church man may easily fall into the notion that the Divine
Proceeding is, so to speak, a Thing or Object, instead of an activity, even as
the Christian Church has long regarded the Holy Spirit as a Divine Person.
It is therefore most important to see that the term, proceeding, is not a noun
but part of a verb—a present participle. This emphasizes the fact that our
attention is to be focused on the Divine as It is operating rather than on the
Divine Being in Itself...
The New Philosophy Online
Marvin B. Clymer
The advantage of periodicals over books is their ability to convey
current information in a more timely fashion. Their main disadvantage
is the tendency to hide relevant material “somewhere” in piles of
unreferenced back issues. This, unfortunately, also applies to The New
Philosophy. Within the covers of this journal, which dates back to 1898, can
be found a wealth of knowledge about Emanuel Swedenborg, his scientific
works and his philosophy. The problem, however, is locating relevant
articles for casual reading or research. Besides, no respectable author
would want to discover after his or her article has been printed that
another person had already written a similar article “just a few years ago.”...
Style Guide for The New Philosophy
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