Trinity

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TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD: PROF. M. M. NINAN In the 18th century, Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish mystical philosopher and scientist, also taught this doctrine, as did his disciples, who founded the New Church, also called the Swedenborgians. Swedenborg consistently maintained that the infinite, indivisible power and life within all creation is God. In his theology he asserts the absolute unity of God in both essence (essentia) and being (esse). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit represent a trinity of essential qualities in God; love, wisdom, and activity. This divine trinity is reproduced in human beings in the form of the trinity of soul, body, and mind. Swedenborg accepted that all creation has its origin in the divine love and wisdom and asserted that all created things are forms and effects of specific aspects of that love and wisdom and thus “correspond,” on the material plane, to spiritual realities. This true order of creation, however, has been disturbed by man’s misuse of his free will. He has diverted his love from God to his own ego, and thus evil has come into the world. In order to redeem and save mankind, the divine being of God had to come into the world in the material, tangible form of a human being—i.e., Jesus Christ. Christ’s soul partook of the divine being itself, but in order that there might be an intimate contact of God with fallen mankind, Jesus assumed from Mary a body and a human nature comprising all the planes of human life. During the course of his life on earth, Jesus resisted every possible temptation and lived to their divine fullness the truths of the Word of God; in so doing he laid aside all the human qualities he had received from Mary, and his nature was revealed as the divine embodiment of the divine soul. Redemption, for Swedenborg, consisted in mankind being re-created in God’s image through the vehicle of Christ’s glorification. It was through the example of Christ’s victory over all temptation and all evil that men could achieve a similar harmonious unification between their spiritual and their material aspects. Swedenborg rejected the tripersonalism of the orthodox doctrine of the <strong>Trinity</strong> (i.e., the one God revealed in the Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). To him the <strong>Trinity</strong> was in one Person, the Father being the originating divine being itself, the Son the human embodiment of that divine soul, and the Holy Spirit the outflowing activity of Jesus, or the “Divine Human.” Here is the statement of their stand on trinity as given in the website of the church: “Swedenborg asserts that Jesus Christ Himself was a manifestation of God, the Divine made flesh to enable humanity to be aware of a unique relationship with God. Prior to His Coming, God had been incomprehensible to humans beyond the capacity of our perception and understanding. Through the birth of Christ, humanity was given an 115
TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD: PROF. M. M. NINAN overt expression of God's reality in human terms. Christ is not seen as a separate entity, but as reflective of the multiple consciousness that is the oneness of God. There are not three divine beings comprising the trinity, but one Divine Nature in which the three aspects of God are present. Nor did Christ come to redeem us from original sin. Rather, His mission was that of revealing the nature and reality of the spiritual life, and to provide a living example of it.” http://www.swedenborg.org/Beliefs/Tenets_of_Swedenborgianism.aspx Swedenborg died in London in 1772, where he was buried in the Swedish Church. At the request of the Swedish government, his body was removed to Uppsala cathedral in 1908. http://www.swedenborg.org/Home.aspx Swedenborgian belief include: 116
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The Mystery of tefillin The Manduky
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Trinity

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