January-June 2008
In This Issue
Editorial Remarks
Dr. Gregory L Baker needs no introduction to our readers; he has
contributed to the journal over several decades, most recently in the July-
December issue 2006 with “Boundary Issues in Science: An Historical
Approach.” In “Human Free Choice and Divine Omniscience: Toward
Resolution of an Apparent Incompatibility” he brings thought from history,
logic, and relativity theory to bear on the topic...
Human Free Choice and Divine Omniscience:
Toward Resolution of an Apparent
Incompatibility
Gregory L. Baker
For at least two thousand years, the question of the interplay between
human free choice and Divine omniscience has been vexing, if not to
the average layman, at least for many theologians and philosophers. During
the twentieth century1 Swedenborgians have also shown interest in
this question. For most Swedenborgians, both human free choice and
divine omniscience are operable in the process of spiritual development.
To accept this reality, without worrying about the details, is enough for
many Swedenborgians as they go about the business of spiritual growth.
For those with a more philosophic inclination, the apparent conflict between
human free choice and divine omniscience is often resolved as
follows...
Joyous Readings and Misreadings of
Swedenborg
Sylvia Montgomery Shaw
It is an honor and a great pleasure for me to be here with you as we
gather to acknowledge once again our appreciation of one of the most
remarkable men, Emanuel Swedenborg. My object tonight is three-fold: to
comment briefly on Swedenborg as a writer who faced the daunting task
of transposing spiritual experience into natural language; to offer a partial
listing of the many writers who were influenced by him; and then to focus
on six of these writers: a marooned diplomat who read from the Arcana
Coelestia largely out of boredom, a brash Frenchman who wrote a novel
about an androgynous angel, a depressed Swedish dramatist who clung to
his sanity by reading descriptions of hell, a highly imaginative Argentinean
poet and master storyteller who made the Spanish-speaking world aware
of Swedenborg, an Eastern Orthodox priest and Buddhist scholar whose
spiritual journey was invigorated by his study of the Writings, and lastly a
Mexican physician who translated the Writings for thirty years without
receiving payment or seeing them published, and yet he went on with his
solitary project, like a character out of a Borges story...
Footnotes to Swedenborg
Karl Birjukov
Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that philosophy is footnotes to
Plato. While this has become something of an aphorism, it is not so
well-known how he qualified this statement, for he identified the times in
which Plato lived as belonging to “an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened
by excessive systematization”
This is a telling statement. There are periods of time that can often be
identified by the degree to which they break with the restrictions of an age
that is felt to be past its sell-by date, which in turn leads to the inception of
new ideas and new thinking, such that their sudden appearance has the
effect of breaking down the rigidity of traditional thought, and they force
themselves into existence under the impulse of an entirely different head
of steam...
Just War Theory: A New Church Perspective
David Nils Gyllenhaal
Only the dead have seen the end of war. (Plato)
There are hundreds of proverbs, truisms, and aphorisms on the nature
of war, but all have been outlasted by Plato’s ancient, stark maxim.
Still, many have chosen to deny it. It was the Romans who first thought
they could end war.
News, Notes, and Comments
Our readers’ attention is drawn to two works recently published by
The Swedenborg Society, London: newly-translated The White horse,
and the arms of morpheus.
Style Guide for The New Philosophy
Abbreviated Titles of a Selection
From Swedenborg's Works
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