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Truth in Readily Available Form
Address by Lars-Erik Wiberg
for Sunday, June 30, 2002
Readings: (Old Testament) Deuteronomy 13:1-5, (New Testament) John 3:14-21, John
8:31-32
Each of us at some time has been truly moved deep down inside when
first entering what we feel to be a sacred space. This is a feeling
we have; there is nothing intellectual about it at all. The word
that describes the effect that the space is having upon us is
"numinous" which is defined as "spiritually elevated." For my part,
that is precisely how I felt the very first time I entered this
sacred space, "spiritually elevated." And I can testify that it is a
feeling which, when genuine, never goes away. You don't lose it.
Simply reflecting upon the space, wherever you may be, recaptures the
feeling.
The first visit of mine into this holy place was in 1978 when I
started to worship here. The Rev. Wilfred Gould Rice was pastor and
a skilled communicator of Emanuel Swedenborg's religious thought.
You can't imagine how amazed I was when I was first told of the
widely held notion that Swedenborgianism was often dismissed as just
a cult. I have read this since, naturally with nothing much to back
it up - - just an assertion. We hear or read in the media rather
often about this or that cult without much effort ever being made to
define what a cult actually is. In its negative sense, the usual
meaning is that of a belief system that demands selfless devotion to
an authority figure, and that can be harmful to its followers through
that authority figure's exercise of mind control. We Swedenborgians
were even considered by some to be spiritualists. My new friends and
I who were worshiping in this consecrated Chapel were cultish or
spiritualist? What nonsense! But these were the untruths that I
became aware of.
Your average Swedenborgian, looking at this cultism or spiritualism
notion from the inside out, would have a hard time giving it enough
credence to pay more than nominal attention. We know that free will
is at the very heart of our doctrine, and we know that there are no
authority figures, or for that matter any figures at all, placed
between ourselves and the Lord. What I discovered was that few
Swedenborgians lost any sleep over these notions because they were so
silly.
Your average non-Swedenborgians, moved for whatever reason to look at
the issue from the outside in, could be persuaded to give the silly
ideas credence for two main reasons. One of these is that the line
of least resistance would lead them to look up what other
non-Swedenborgian authorities had to say on the matter. Of course
there were many such, all of them having done the same so-called
research, who had run into
the ever present criticism and simply mimicked it. So the same
argument went round and round unrefreshed by informed scholarship.
Another reason for persistence of the cult/spiritualism accusation,
is the difficulty inherent in developing such informed scholarship.
Emanuel Swedenborg's writings are hard to get into without help from
another Swedenborgian, either personally as I was helped by Rev. Rice
and and also Rafael Guiu, or through authoritative texts by
Swedenborgian scholars. But such dedication to the proof or disproof
of a widely held contention takes effort, and in the case of
Swedenborgianism, it takes a lot of effort for the simple reason that
there is so much ground to cover. Just look at the thirty or so
volumes of daunting genius in The Writings, and reflect on the task
at hand, whether you read Swedenborg in the original, or rely on
scholarly commentary. Add to this abundance the difficulty of
getting into it - - a difficulty that is inherent in any extensive
body of interlocking principles - - and the problem of placing
Swedenborgianism in a reasonable relation to the Christian tradition
is made just that much more demanding.
So if one added the outside-in perspective to that of inside-out, one
came up with very little progress in refuting the prevailing
untruths. What was actually needed was a timely union of
authoritative scholarship and active presence. With this in mind,
let me pursue what might seem to be a digression, but it is really an
explanation. All will come back together later on.
I have often mentioned how we Swedenborgians like to look at events
through the perspective of our religious doctrine. Emanuel
Swedenborg wrote so much for our guidance that it would be wasteful
for us not to use it. He has taught much about God's Divine Love and
Wisdom, how they proceed from Him and are the source of our very life
itself. Here in the natural world of our present, as distinct from
the spiritual world to come, God's Love and Wisdom are experienced
with great power albeit indirectly.
Love and Wisdom have a special relationship. For one thing, neither
can be explained in terms of the other. Nevertheless they are firmly
bound one to the other, because it is Love, and Love alone, that
animates Wisdom; and it is Wisdom, and Wisdom alone, that informs
Love. Here in the natural world we experience these life forces at
work in derivative pairs, often referred to as Will and
Understanding, or of affections and
knowledges, or even of feeling and thinking. It is easy for us to
comprehend, for example how our affections animate our knowledges - -
how our feelings vivify our thinking. Looking at it from the other
direction, we see that our knowledges inform our affections, and our
thinking instructs our feelings. How does this process work?
For example, reflect for a moment on one of the most useful
instructional media ever invented, the video tape. When we choose
one that involves a certain subject, we display affection, which is
to say interest in the subject. Looking at it another way, if we
were not interested in the subject, we would have left it on the
rack. Without enough affection for the material, we would have left
it alone, but we didn't. We now place it in the VCR and prepare to
slake our interest. What is happening is that our feelings have
animated our thinking and they are about to be instructed. The reason
that a video is such a magnificent instructional method is that it
speaks to the Will in a manner most conducive to learning which is
directly through hearing combined with carefully coordinated visual
effects for our observation.
Now reflect for a moment on a less popular, yet indispensable means
of instruction, a book. Some of us might select a book from which to
master a subject that is close to our interests, but given the choice
between a good video and the printed word, guess which comes out on
top in popularity. Reading engages thinking through abstract symbols
that comparatively few souls find truly attractive. Of course books
are a bedrock of learning; they do feed the mind, and lots of folks
(other than students) are inveterate readers. But most are not.
Notwithstanding, if you want thorough and authoritative sources of
information, you omit books at great risk that you will fail to learn
what you need to know.
The message then is that for the affections to be satisfied with
enough information, knowledge should be sought via all available
means. The corollary is that without authoritative means, in readily
available form, the knowledge intended to instruct the affections can
be largely insufficient, or neglected, or both. Well, isn't that
just what we have been experiencing in regard to alleged
Swedenborgian cultism and spiritualism? Isn't the authoritative
scholarship that we need the bookish side? Isn't the needed active
presence akin to that video?
Let us digress again for a bit before we come back together for the
last time and explore certain activities of two individuals both of
whom we know well and who are
especially dear to this Society. I am referring to Dr. Eugene
Taylor, our Vice President, and the Rev. F. Robert Tafel, our Pastor.
I refer to them in that order because I am going to speak about
Eugene first.
It was in 1994 that Dr. Taylor was approached to do an article for an
upcoming text dealing with alternative religions in America. This
was to be an authoritative reference. Since Swedenborgianism was
held to be a spin-off from American spiritualist churches, the
article describing the New Church would be placed alphabetically in
the table of contents between Satanism and Witchcraft. They wanted a
maximum of 15 typewritten pages including footnotes. Eugene agreed to
do the article, but he counseled them that their notions of
spiritualism applied to our church were quite wrong. They responded
to the effect that they had experts on American religious history on
their board who could hardly be mistaken.
Eugene wrote the article, and he saw to it that it was the exact
length prescribed so that no editor would have an excuse to fuss with
so much as a comma. He gave the ecclesiastical history of the New
Church in America and treated the major reasons that it had become
confused with spiritualism. The editors apologized, admitted that he
was right, and praised his essay, declaring it to be one of the
finest in the book. Now it is listed in the table of contents, quite
harmlessly, between Quakerism and Unitarianism in the section on
"Variants of Christianity."
The text that was published in 1995 is entitled America's Alternative
Religions, T. Miller (ed), SUNY Press, Albany. Eugene's article is
entitled, aptly, "Swedenborgianism" and is found on pages 77-86. It
is noteworthy that no scholars, seeking to characterize our faith,
can fulfill even the most basic demands of their scholarship without
using this article as authoritative underpinning for whatever they
have to say.
During the 1950s, what is now designated The United Ministry was
inaugurated at Harvard University because certain clergy felt that
religious issues were not receiving sufficient emphasis. This
Ministry has developed over the ensuing years until the religious
communities now represented number roughly 28 denominations as tallied
from the Ministry website. In March of 1991, Rev. Tafel, with Dr. Taylor's
collaboration, submitted a successful application for membership in
this distinguished group. He is the first minister from our
denomination to have done so. Aptly, the dues for membership in this
ministry are paid by Convention's Council of Ministers.
The way membership in the Ministry works is a two step process.
First, the church application must be accepted, and then the
chaplain's acceptance follows. Thus the Swedenborgian Chaplaincy
became a member of the Ministry, and then Rev. Tafel was accepted as
Chaplain. He is thus officially the Swedenborgian Chaplain of the
United Ministry of Harvard University, and has been so designated for
the past 11 years. He has served on the Membership Committee since
his induction including two terms as its Chairman. He was invited to
be nominated for President of the Ministry's Executive Committee, but
had to decline because a pressing health problem, since resolved,
made it inadvisable at the time.
Now just where do the actions and positions of Eugene and Bob leave
the cultishness/ spiritualist issue? - - right in the ash-heap of
untrue speculations where it belongs. No scholars worthy of their
scholarship can avoid the clear exposition that Eugene Taylor has
provided for them in his definitive article in a prestigious source.
That's the written-word contribution from our scholar/writer.
Further, no one can for a moment countenance the notion that Harvard
University would invite into its United Ministry any religious
expression that had the slightest taint of cultishness or of
spiritualism. Bob Tafel is a continuous demonstration, sort of a
flesh-and-blood video, and certainly an active witness to the demise
of a canard. Taken as a team, Eugene and Bob have provided wholly
reliable knowledge, the truth if you will, in readily available form.
It is in the order of things that this readily available truth should
originate around here. This Chapel, this special space that we
cherish, is a likely focal point from which the truth might project.
After all, we sit here in a Swedenborgian environment of long
standing whose legacy has permeated our culture. We have inherited
as part of that legacy, both unique and renowned expressions of will
and understanding from the James's, Peirce, Emerson, Thoreau, Wright,
Hawthorne, the Alcotts and many others. Would such as they have been
gullible enough to believe in Swedenborgian cultishness or
spiritualism? They would have dismissed these silly notions in a
moment, and with
telling authority. It is good to report both to you and to these
illustrious cultural forebears, that this Society has faced up to the
problem posed by spurious accusations directed at its faith and,
through the work and witness of Dr. Eugene Taylor and the Rev. F.
Robert Tafel have put a most effective stop to them. As we who have
the great blessing to worship here have known all along, nothing
whatever has ever happened that could sully the spiritual elevation
of Swedenborg Chapel.
Amen
Copyright 2002 by Lars-Erik Wiberg
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