Rationality and Faith

Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar, and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” Then Abimelech king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her. (Genesis 20:1–2)

The last three articles in this series covered the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, and the lead-up to it in Genesis 18:16–33—a very tough story. Even though this series is about the inner life of Jesus, we have drifted away from that theme in the last few articles, toward humankind and our spiritual struggles. This is not a coincidence. Even Swedenborg, in interpreting Genesis 19 and its terrible events in Secrets of Heaven (Arcana Coelestia)—his massive verse-by-verse commentary on the books of Genesis and Exodus—focuses more on the human condition than on Jesus’ inner condition.

In this article we return more fully to Jesus’ inner story, while continuing to look at our inner story also. One of the beautiful teachings of Swedenborg is that Jesus’ story is the pattern for our story. Jesus’ life—his struggles and triumphs, his inner story—is the model for human lives. This means that no matter which level of meaning we focus on, we can gain insights for our own spiritual growth.

We now move on to the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Abimelech in Genesis 20, which I invite you to read at the link.

Factual knowledge

Let’s give the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Abimelech some background. In summarizing the deeper meaning of Genesis 20, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) mentions that this chapter parallels the story in Genesis 12. He writes:

In Chapter 12 the subject was Abraham’s sojourn in Egypt, which meant the instruction that the Lord received in factual knowledge when he was still a boy. In this chapter the subject is Abraham’s sojourn in Gerar, where Abimelech was. This sojourning in a similar way means instruction received by the Lord, but now it is in teachings about kindness and faith. Dealt with specifically here is the origin of the teachings of kindness and faith—that these teachings are spiritual from a heavenly source, but are not from our rational mind. (Arcana Coelestia #2496)

Genesis 12 tells the story of Abraham sojourning in Egypt. In Genesis 20, Abraham sojourns in Gerar, which is in the part of Canaan where the Philistines lived later in the Bible.

Spiritually speaking, the story of Abraham sojourning in Egypt is the story of Jesus as a young boy when he was learning all the “facts” of his religion. He was studying the Scriptures—the Law and the Prophets. We know that by the time Jesus was twelve, he had a very solid knowledge of the Scriptures of Judaism. This knowledge didn’t come automatically. Jesus had to sit down and study the Scriptures and the teachings of his religion. Spiritually, the story of Abraham’s sojourn in Egypt is the story of Jesus gaining the factual knowledge of his religion’s beliefs. This was required as a foundation for everything that came later.

The Bible’s literal and spiritual meanings

Let’s step back even farther for a moment, and consider the relationship of the spiritual meaning to the literal meaning of the Bible.

One of the general principles of God providing a revelation for humankind is that God must speak at the level where the minds of the people on this earth are. If we look at the Old Testament, there is very little about truly spiritual subjects. The Old Testament says almost nothing about the spiritual world; it says almost nothing about the inner aspects of our spiritual growth; it says almost nothing about the entire higher level of religion. It also says very little about the inner nature of God.

The Bible’s literal meaning is like this because it was delivered to people at a time in human history when almost everyone was focused entirely on the outward level of life—on behavior. People’s attitude toward religion and God was: “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Or maybe I won’t do it. I may refuse to do it.” But it was all on the level of outward behavior, not on the level of inner, spiritual life.

If we want to gain deeper meaning from this, it must be on a whole different level. As a result, the spiritual meaning of the Bible is often very different from the literal meaning. In fact, it is often so different that people who haven’t studied correspondences and learned something about the nature of the spiritual meaning may think that it is very farfetched. How in the world could these meanings come out of that story? It just doesn’t compute. That’s because when we look at the literal meaning, we are dealing with a whole different level of human existence. We are dealing with the outward, behavioral level, whereas the spiritual meaning deals with the inner level—the level of our thoughts and feelings, and of our inner struggles. And those levels of ourselves often look very different from what we do outwardly, even though that’s where the things we do outwardly come from.

Even if the meanings given here for the story in Genesis 20 may sound a little farfetched, that is what happens when we go to the higher levels of meaning in the Bible. In this article I will not explain all the reasons why these things mean what they do. For that you’ll have to turn to Swedenborg. He spends many, many pages interpreting Genesis chapter 20, and all the other chapters in Genesis and Exodus, in his work Secrets of Heaven, starting at #2496.

Jesus’ inner life—and ours

When we begin to grasp its deeper meanings, the Bible talks not only about Jesus’ inner life, but about our inner life, and the struggles we go through on an inner, spiritual level.

Though we have been on a different track in the more recent articles in this series, there is a progression to the overall story. Jesus’ story as it is told in Secrets of Heaven is based on a subset of the Bible. Swedenborg starts the story at Genesis 12, and concludes it by the end of Genesis. That section of Genesis is taken as a unit, telling the entire story of Jesus’ inner life. We could also use the entire Bible to tell the same story. Or we could use only the seven days of Creation in Genesis 1 and the first few verses of Genesis 2. But in this instance, Swedenborg uses the book of Genesis starting at the Call of Abram in Genesis 12 to tell the story.

Just to catch up, let’s do a whirlwind tour of where we have been so far in Jesus’ inner life, and in our parallel inner life.

We started with Genesis 12. This is when God called Abram from his family’s home, and sent him on a journey to the Holy Land. In Jesus’ life, this was his first inkling that there is a deeper level to life. As a very young boy, Jesus felt a call from the Divine within to go to a deeper, higher plane of existence. In our life, it is God calling us and telling us that there is more than this outer life. There is more than working, eating, and sleeping. There is a whole new land of deeper reality that God calls us to explore, and to settle into.

We then go through Genesis 13 and 14. Abram had his nephew Lot with him, and there is the first battle in the Bible. This parallels our story. When we first begin to turn our life toward spiritual things, it is not easy. We must battle our old self. We must struggle to attain even the first beginnings of our spiritual life. Jesus had to do that as well.

In Genesis 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham. After we have put out some effort and done some struggling for the spiritual life; after we have “put our money where our mouth is”; after we have actually done something instead of just talking about being spiritual, then we feel God’s presence within us in a new way. We feel a new connection with God—a covenant, or relationship, with God that we hadn’t had before. And Jesus, in his life, gained a far deeper connection and oneness with his own Divine soul within.

Meanwhile, we are still trying to understand what religion and spirituality are all about. And so was Jesus. The story in Genesis 16 of Ishmael being born to Abram and Hagar, his wife Sarai’s slave woman, represents our first attempt to understand the spiritual level of our existence. This early understanding has a lot to do with wanting to feel good about ourselves. We want to think that we are great because we are becoming spiritual. Jesus struggled with this internally as well.

But we do gain a victory in that struggle. In Genesis 17 and 18 there is another covenant—this time, the covenant of circumcision. And that is when the birth of Isaac is predicted. It is also when Abram and Sarai have their names changed to Abraham and Sarah. In the original Hebrew, they both have the name of God placed into their names. Spiritually, we are meant to be named after God. We meant to have a new character that is God’s plan for us. Jesus felt this very deeply. He was God’s presence here on earth. He was now going to be totally dedicated to the Divine.

In Genesis 19 there are many struggles, which we have covered in the last few articles.

Genesis 20, our chapter for today, is the interlude just before the birth of Isaac.

Facts, rationality, and religion

I mentioned earlier that the story of Abraham’s sojourn in Egypt is the story of learning the “facts” of religion. The story of Abraham’s sojourn in Gerar, part of the land of Philistia, lifts that up to a higher level. It involves not just learning the literal meaning of the Word of God, not just learning the teachings of our religion, but bringing it all together, synthesizing it, and coming up with a spiritual perspective or “doctrine.” For Jesus, this involved consciously learning the spiritual principles that he would use as his basis for teaching the people.

Genesis 20 is another story of learning and instruction, but at a higher level. Jesus is not just learning “facts” anymore. Now he is putting it all together into a coherent system.

And the question at issue in this story, both for Jesus and for us, is: Where will these spiritual principles come from? Will they come from our own rational thought? Will we engage our rational mind and figure out the principles that will guide our spiritual life for ourselves? Or will we listen to God’s voice within ourselves and in the Bible?

Thinking our way to spirituality

Let’s look at this question first in terms of Jesus’ inner process.

Jesus had been moving from his earliest sense of his origin and his task on earth, as told in Genesis 12, to a more mature and clearly seen vision. He started out with a feeling of spiritual calling, but he had to have a clear vision—a road map of the way ahead. He had to have a clear sense of what his purpose was in his life on earth.

This required many struggles and false starts, which are told in all the stories from Genesis 12 up to today’s chapter. Genesis 20 is Jesus’ last struggle before the birth of Isaac—before it came fully clear to him what his vision and mission was. In chapter 20, Jesus is almost there, but he is struggling to decide where those spiritual principles will come from.

It was a question of whether he would rely primarily on his thinking capabilities, or on something greater and deeper than that.

Jesus was a very smart guy! If we watch him in action in the Gospels, we find that he was truly amazing in responding to the tough questions that were thrown at him. The people he was going up against were the cream of the crop. They were the top-of-the-line scholars. They were the ones who had been through twenty-five years of college. They were the best! And when he went up against them, he was brilliant. We know that Jesus was incredibly intelligent.

In his younger life, Jesus was tempted to rely upon that brilliance. He was tempted to say (in modern words), “I’m smarter than everyone else. I can figure things out better than everyone else. I can just blow ’em all away!”

In the spiritual meaning, this is what Sarah being married to Abimelech would mean: thinking that religion means being smarter and more enlightened than everyone else. Abimelech represents our rational mind.

That’s what Jesus was struggling with. The fact is, he was smarter than everyone else. He certainly could have pushed his ministry forward on that basis.

But it was not right for Sarah to be taken by Abimelech. Jesus’ thinking had to come from a higher source. In the story, that source is Abraham, who represents God’s divine love within him—the divine love that is called “the Father” in the New Testament.

The struggle in Jesus’ mind was, would he be a spiritual leader because he was so smart? Or would he be a spiritual leader because he felt the love of God within him? Would he truly be doing God’s work here on earth?

Beyond intellectualism

The beautiful teaching of this chapter is that Jesus moved away from mere intellectualism. He was still the smartest man who ever lived. If we could have given him an IQ test, I guess it would have come out “infinite.” But that wasn’t going to be what drove him. He wasn’t going to rely on external authority or on intellectual learning. He was going to open his spirit to the divine presence within, and get his inspiration from that deeper source. And he was able to do that in a way that none of us are capable of, because God was his own inner soul.

Jesus’ inspiration came from within, not from the people around him. We can see, as he engages in dialog with the Scribes and Pharisees and with the people, that he looked at things from a higher perspective than any of them. It was the perspective of God. It was the perspective of love.

This was Jesus’ struggle. And this was where he moved forward toward a true rationality, which is symbolized by the birth of Isaac in Genesis 21. We will cover that in the next article in this series.

Rational religion?

Now let’s look at the parallel story in our lives.

In our spiritual life, we have the same struggle that Jesus did. And those of us who accept Swedenborg’s Christian teachings are especially susceptible to this temptation. We sometimes make a big deal of saying that ours is a rational religion. And that is true! Swedenborg’s version of Christianity makes sense in a way and with a depth that no other version of Christianity does. But it is a temptation and an illusion to think that the reason we should believe in our religion is that it is so rational.

If we rely upon human rationality, human-derived thoughts, we come to many wrong conclusions—and we reject the deepest parts of Christianity. With apologies to our Unitarian Universalist friends, I would suggest that the current beliefs of the Unitarian Universalist Church are the result of letting human reason determine our religious beliefs. This leads to throwing out the first two basics of Christianity: Jesus Christ is God, and the Word of God is sacred, divine, and inspired. On its own, human reason will leave behind these core beliefs of Christianity because they cannot be derived from human reason.

What is left is the ethical and moral teachings. And those are good! Yet Christian churches that take this path are decapitated of their theology. If we follow the path of mere human rationality, we will lose our personal Lord and Savior. We will also lose the Word of God, where God speaks to us. It’s not so much that what’s left is bad, as that it is limited. It limits us from having the deepest experience of communion with God, both directly within our soul and through the Bible.

People who follow Swedenborg’s teachings also have this choice. Will we accept what Swedenborg says because it makes so much sense? Because we can rationally argue for our beliefs? We can do this if we want. And if we do, we will leave behind the heart of our religion, which is the heart of true Christianity.

A deeper source

Something deeper is needed for true spirituality and religion. First, we must recognize that God has taught us the truth in the Bible. We must subject our reason, not to irrationality, but to teachings from a higher and deeper source. The problem with rationality is not so much that it is wrong, as that it is limited. We can use rationality to support our faith after we have arrived at it. But we cannot rationalize our way to faith. Faith must come from a deeper source.

Our first source is the Word of God. That is why God gave us the Bible. In the Bible we are taught the truth about God and spirit. It provides a reliable source for God’s teachings.

And ultimately, the source of our spiritual beliefs is God’s own presence within us. This was the source that Jesus Christ turned to. If we are Christians we have the Bible outside of us, and God inside of us. And God inside us is Jesus speaking to our heart.

One of the surprising teachings of our church is that faith is actually love.

Really?

Faith is faith! It’s something we think about.

But Swedenborg says no, faith is really love. Faith is really our love within connecting us with God, and connecting us with one another. This is what must drive us.

This is what must drive even our thinking. If we think from a cold, analytical place, we will be cold and analytical about the people around us. We will not truly love them as our neighbors. But if we think from the heart, our rationality can be a supporting actor. We can rationally support our beliefs; yet our faith comes from a deeper source.

Our faith comes from the Word of God, and it comes from the heart—from God’s heart within us.

(Note: This post is a revised version of a talk originally delivered on June 13, 2004. To start at the beginning of the series, please go to the article, “What Child Is This?”)

For further reading:

• Can We Really Believe the Bible?
• Secrets of Heaven, by Emanuel Swedenborg
• How do I Love God with my Whole Heart?
• How Do I Love My Neighbor?
• Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?