TCR 80 - thinking

TCR 80

. . . thinking sensually . . . blocks any ideas
from a more inward mode of thinking.

The Lord Is Hope

Out of the depth I cry to You, O Lord;
O Lord, hear my voice.
Let Your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.

If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with You there is forgiveness;
therefore You are feared.

I wait for the Lord,
my soul waits,
and in His Word I put my hope.
. . . for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with Him is full redemption.

(Psalm 130:1-5,7)

TCR 78 - God's creations

TCR 78 [3]

God is love itself and wisdom itself,
and His love contains infinite affections,
and His wisdom infinite perceptions;
all the things to be seen upon earth
are correspondences of these affections and perceptions.
This is the origin of birds and animals,
trees and shrubs, crops and grain, plants and grasses.
For God has no extension,
but is everywhere in space;
so He fills the universe from first to last.
Because He is omnipresent,
there are such correspondences
of the affections of His love and wisdom
throughout the natural world.

His Statutes Last Forever

Hear my voice in accordance with Your love;
preserve my life, O Lord, according to Your laws.
Those who devise wicked schemes are near,
but they are far from Your law.
Yet You are near, O Lord,
and all Your commands are true.
Long ago I learned from Your statutes
that You established them to last forever.

(Psalm 119:149-152)

TCR 73 - the order of order

TCR 73 [2]

The omnipotent God created the world
from the order within Him,
that is, into the order in which He is,
and in accordance with which He rules;
and He impressed upon the universe
and each and all things of it its own order,
upon mankind his order,
upon the beast its order,
upon bird and fish and worm,
and every tree and even every blade of grass,
upon each its own order.

. . . The laws of order enjoined upon a person are,
that he should acquire for himself truths from the Word,
and reflect upon them naturally,
and as far as he can, rationally,
and thus acquire for himself a natural faith.

The laws of order on the part of God then are,
that He will draw near
and fill these truths with His Divine light,
and thus fill the person's natural faith
(which is mere knowledge and persuasion)
with a Divine essence.
In this and in no other way can faith become saving.
It is the same with charity.

Teach Me, O Lord

Teach me, O Lord, to follow Your decrees;
then I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding,
and I will keep Your law
and obey it with all my heart.
Direct me in the path of Your commands,
for there I find delight.
Turn my heart toward Your statutes
and not toward selfish gain.
Turn my eyes away from worthless things;
preserve my life according to Your Word.
Fulfill Your promise to Your servant,
so that You may be feared.
Take away the disgrace I dread,
for Your laws are good.
How I long for Your precepts!
Preserve my life in Your righteousness.

(Psalm 119:33-40)

TCR 71 - a few of the laws of order

TCR 71 [2,3]

God is Order itself.

He created man from order according to order
and to be subject to order.

A consequential law of order is therefore
that a person ought to enter into faith
by means of truths from the Word,
and into charity by means of good deeds,
and so reform and regenerate himself.

It is a law of order
that a person should by his own efforts and ability
cleanse himself from sins,
and not stand idly confident of his inability to act,
waiting for God to wipe away his sins in an instant.

It is also a law of order that a person
should love God with all his soul and all his heart,
and his neighbor as himself . . ..

It is a law of order too
that a person should by his efforts and ability
acquire for himself faith
by means of truths from the Word,
while believing that not a grain of faith
comes from himself,
but from God;
and that a person should by his efforts and ability
aim to justify himself,
but he is to believe
that not a jot of justification comes from himself,
but from God.

Holy and Awesome Is His Name

Praise the Lord.

I will extol the Lord with all my heart
in the council of the upright and in the assembly.

Great are the works of the Lord;
they are pondered by all who delight in them.
Glorious and majestic are His deeds,
and His righteousness endures forever.
He has caused His wonder to be remembered;
the Lord is gracious and compassionate.
He provides for for those who fear Him;
He remembers His covenant forever.
He has shown His people the power of His works,
giving them the lands of other nations.
The works of His hands are faithful and just;
all His precepts are trustworthy.
They are steadfast forever and ever,
done in faithfulness and uprightness.
He provided redemption for His people;
He ordained His covenant forever --
holy and awesome is His name.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
all who follow His precepts have good understanding.
To Him belongs eternal praise.

(Psalm 111)

TCR 59 - light

TCR 59
. . . in the Word,
every time light is mentioned,
wisdom is meant.

He Wraps Himself in Light

Praise the Lord, O my soul.

O Lord my God, You are very great;
You are clothed with splendor and majesty.
He wraps himself in light
as with a garment;
He stretches out the heavens like a tent
and lays the beams of His upper chambers
on their waters.
He makes the clouds His chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.

(Psalm 104:1-3)

TCR 50 - wisdom

TCR 50

The fact that God's omnipotence,
omniscience and omnipresence arise
through the wisdom of His love
is what is meant by the following passage from John:
 
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
All things were made through Him,
and without Him was nothing made which was made.
In Him was life,
and the life was the light of men;
and the world was made through Him;
and the Word was made flesh.
(John 1:1, 3, 4, 10, 14)

'Word' here means Divine Truth,
or, what comes to the same thing,
the Divine Wisdom.
That is why it is also called life and light;
for these are nothing but wisdom.

For the Lord Is the Great God

Who will rise up for me against the wicked?
Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?
Unless the Lord had given me help,
I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
When I said, "My foot is slipping,"
Your love, O Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
Your consolation brought joy to my soul.

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before Him with thanksgiving
and extol Him with music and song.
For the Lord is the great God,
and the great King above all gods.
In His hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to Him.
The sea is His, for He made it,
and His hands formed the dry land.

Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for He is our God
and we are the people of His pasture,
the flock under His care.

(Psalm 94:16-19; 95:1-7)

TCR 43 - the essence of God; TCR 48 - an image & likeness

TCR 43
The essence of God consists of two things,
love and wisdom;
while the essence of His love consists of three things,
namely, to love others outside of Himself,
to desire to be one with them,
and from Himself to render them blessed.
And because love and wisdom in God make one,
. . . the same three things
constitute the essence of His wisdom;
and love desires these three things,
and wisdom brings them forth. 


TCR 48 [7]
A person is a receptacle of God,
and a receptacle of God is an image of God;
and as God is love itself and wisdom itself,
a person is a receptacle of these;
and the receptacle becomes an image of God
in the measure in which it receives.
And a person is a likeness of God
from his feeling that the things that are from God
are in him as his own;
and yet from that likeness
he is only so far an image of God
as he acknowledges that love and wisdom,
or good and truth,
are not his own in him,
and are not from him,
but are solely in God,
and consequently from God.

The Lord Reigns

The Lord reigns,
He is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength.
The world is firmly established;
it cannot be moved.
Your throne was established long ago;
You are from all eternity.
The seas have lifted up, O Lord,
the seas have lifted up their voice;
the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.
Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,
mightier than the breakers on the sea -
the Lord on high is mighty.

Your statutes stand firm;
holiness adorns Your house for endless days,
O Lord.

(Psalm 93)

TCR 40 - the perils of thinking from the senses

TCR 40 [2]

Let everyone therefore beware of convincing himself
that he owes his life to himself,
or his intelligence, belief, love, perception of truth
or his willing and doing good.
In so far as he convinces himself of these ideas,
so far does he cast down
his mind earthwards from heaven,
and from being spiritual becomes natural,
influenced by the senses and the body.
For he thus shuts off the higher regions of his mind,
so that he becomes blinded to everything
which relates to God, heaven and the church.
Everything he may then think, reason and say
is mere foolishness, because he is in darkness;
yet at the same time he becomes confident
that these are the products of wisdom.
For when the higher regions of the mind,
the abode of the true light of life, are shut off,
the region of the mind below these,
which is illuminated only by the faint glimmer of the world,
is opened up.
This glimmer,
unsupported by the light of the higher regions,
is a misleading illumination,
in which falsities look like truths,
and truths like falsities;
reasoning from falsities looks like wisdom,
and from truths like madness.
Then a person believes himself to have
the keenness of sight of an eagle,
though he can see no more of wisdom
than a bat in daytime.

Righteousness Goes Before Him

I will listen to what God the Lord will say;
he promises peace to His people, His saints -
but let them not return to folly.
Surely His salvation is near those who fear Him,
that His glory may dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness meet together;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs forth from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
The Lord will indeed give what is good,
and our land will yield its harvest.
Righteousness goes before Him
and prepares the way for His steps.

(Psalm 85:8-13)

TCR 27, 31 - time and space

TCR 27
There are two properties peculiar to the natural world
which make everything in it finite.
One is space, the other time.
Because that world was created by God,
and spatial distances and periods of time
were created along with it
and serve to define it,
their two starting-points,
immensity and eternity,
need to be discussed.
For the immensity of God relates to space,
and His eternity to time,
while His infinity embraces both immensity and eternity.

TCR 31 [2]
The angels in heaven understand
by the immensity of God
the Divinity as to Its Being (Esse),
and by His eternity
the Divinity as to Its Coming-into-Being (Existere);
they understand also
by immensity the Divinity as to Love
and by eternity the Divinity as to Wisdom.
This is because the angels banish 
space and time from their ideas of the Divinity, 
and this is the result.
But because human beings are incapable of thinking
except by means of ideas formed from
spatial and temporal concepts,
they cannot form any idea 
of the immensity of God before space existed 
or His eternity before time existed.
In fact,
when the human mind wishes to form such an idea,
. . . in the attempt to penetrate these mysteries,
it can easily become deranged,
and thus be led to deny the existence of God.

Remember

I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago.
I will meditate on all Your works
and consider all your mighty deeds.

(Psalm 77:11-12)

TCR 25 - infinitely the same

TCR 25 [3]

. . . the Divine Being, which is in itself God,
is the same;
not the same in a simple way,
but infinitely the same,
that is, the same from eternity to eternity.
He is the same everywhere,
the same with each person and in each person;
but all the changes and differences occur
in the person who receives Him,
and it is his state which causes this.

The Lord Is My Refuge

When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before You.

Yet I am always with You;
You hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with Your counsel,
and afterward You will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but You?
And earth has nothing I desire besides You.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

Those who are far from You will perish;
You destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me,
it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

(Psalm 73:21-28)