Reformation and Regeneration through God’s Love: From “Divine Providence” by Emanuel Swedenborg (vegetarian), Part 2 of 2

Let us continue with selections from “Divine Providence,” where Emanuel Swedenborg (vegetarian) reminds us that all the goodness comes from God.

A man can be reformed and regenerated by means of the two faculties so far as he can be led by them to acknowledge that all truth and good which he thinks and does are from the Lord and not from himself.

“Anyone thinking from interior understanding can see that the power to will and the power to understand are not from man, but from Him who has power itself, that is, power in its essence. Only think whence power is. Is it not from Him who has it in its full might, that is, who possesses it in and from Himself? Power in itself, therefore, is Divine. All power must have a supply on which to draw and direction from an interior or higher self. […]

As all willing is from love and all understanding is from wisdom, the ability to will is from Divine love, and the ability to understand is from Divine wisdom; thus both are from the Lord who is Divine love itself and Divine wisdom itself. Hence to act in freedom according to reason has no other source. Everyone acts in freedom because, like love, freedom cannot be separated from willing. But there is interior and exterior willing, and a man can act upon the exterior without acting at the same time on the interior willing; so hypocrite and flatterer act. […]”

“A person can be reformed and regenerated, we have said, in the measure in which he is led by the two faculties to acknowledge that all good and truth which he thinks and does are from the Lord and not from himself. A man can make this acknowledgment only by means of the two faculties, because they are from the Lord and are the Lord’s in him, as is plain from what has been said. Man can make this acknowledgment, therefore, only from the Lord and not from himself; he can make it as if of himself; this the Lord gives everyone to do. He may believe that it is of himself, but when wiser acknowledge that it is not of himself. Otherwise the truth he thinks and the good he does are not in themselves truth and good, for the man and not the Lord is in them. Good in which the man is and which is done by him for salvation’s sake is self-righteous, but not that in which the Lord is. […]”