FROM ESSENCE TO PERSON
A Sermon by Rev. Martin Pryke
It is taught in the Writings that man's concept of God
affects everything of his thinking (see DLW 13 and TCR 5). The
picture of God that we have in our minds will profoundly
influence our thought regarding both spiritual and natural
things. If man is created in the image of God, how can we
understand man if we do not properly understand God? How can
we know the life we should lead if we do not know the nature
of Him who guides and directs us in that life? If marriage
depends upon a mutual turning to the Lord, how can we find
true marriage if we do not know Him to whom we are to look?
If God is a jealous God and an angry God, our lives will
be devoted to appeasing that anger. If God is a God of love,
our purpose will be to make ourselves receptacles of that love
so that His will may be fulfilled. Our concept of proper human
behavior, of the nature of true morality, will spring from our
understanding of the nature of God. And so it is that every
thinking man seeks to know and understand His maker. As we
read in our first lesson, Moses felt an urgent need to see the
God who would bring the Israelites into Canaan. Yet he could
not see His face. Indeed we cannot see the infinite God
Himself, but we can see an image of Him that will guide us in
our thought and in our lives.
Because of the importance of this knowledge, God has
always made Himself known to man. It is true that frequently
man has turned away from, and so has darkened, or completely
destroyed, the picture of His Maker, but somewhere in every
age there have been those who possess this vital knowledge.
The vision has varied according to the ability of man to
comprehend, sometimes more obscure, sometimes more clear, but
there has persisted throughout the history of man a vision of
God as a Divine and infinite man.
This is the essential, that we do not see our God simply
as infinity, as a formless force, as a hidden power, but as a
supreme man, as one possessed of infinite love and wisdom.
This must be our starting point as we reflect on the nature of
God. He is love, love itself, the very beginning and only
love. For love is life; it is the very driving force in all
that is done; it is the impetus to action. Without it we would
be stocks and stones. God's love is directed to the blessing
of man; He longs to establish a kingdom in which He can bring
eternal joy to those who are created in His image, and so can
respond to His love. Yet He is also infinite wisdom, for
without wisdom, love can achieve nothing. Wisdom is the tool
by which love operates.
God, then, possessed of infinite love and wisdom, created
man in His own image with whom He might be conjoined and whom
He might bless. And so man is also possessed of love and
wisdom, albeit finite love and finite wisdom. We are created
in His form, but, because we know our own form first, we speak
of God being in the human form, although truly we are in the
Divine form.
Above everything else, then, we are to know and under-
stand that God is Divine man; this is the Divine Human. We may
speak of a thousand Divine attributes, of His omniscience, of
His omnipresence and omnipotence; we may speak of His provi-
dence, of His mercy and of His forgiveness; but all of these
must be seen within the framework of the human form. This is
not abstraction; it is the very opposite, for what do all
these attributes mean if we try to see them apart from
substance and form - the Divine infinite substance and the
human form?
It is this Divine human form which God has made known to
man from the very inception of the human race. It has appeared
in different terms because of different needs at different
stages of the development of man, but always the existence of
Divine love and wisdom has been the central theme of revela-
tion.
It was so in the angelic instruction of the Most Ancient
Church, in the parabolic forms of the Ancient Word, in the
veiled teachings of the Old Testament, in the very incarnation
of God, the revelation of Him in the person of Jesus Christ,
and finally in the rational terms of the Writings of the new
Church. All of this means, of course, that we have limitless
opportunities to use those visions of God to guide our
theological thinking, our philosophies of life, our standards,
our principles, our morals, as well to guide the very lives we
lead.
Yet, if this welter of knowledge is not to be misdirect-
ed, there are certain stumbling blocks against which we are
warned. The principal of these is the one pointed out to the
boys who saw spirits coming down out of heaven appearing as
dead horses. This was the warning that we must not be led into
thinking of God from person, but that we must think of Him
from essence. The angel said to the boys, "Therefore, my
pupils, think of God from essence, and thence of person, and
do not think from person and thence of essence." AR 611.
We do need an ultimate picture of God, a shape which we
can conjure in our minds. It is not enough to have vague, ill-
defined, concepts, concepts which we have difficulty in
picturing. We need an objective concept in which our more
interior ideas may rest. This must be found in the realm of
nature if it is to be an ultimate for spiritual visions. Such
a shape, which will clothe spiritual concepts of God, can be
nothing else than the human shape. In mind and body we are
created in the image of God, and so this human bodily form is
the only appropriate ultimate.
Of course the most complete and perfect revelation of God
in the human shape was made at the incarnation; God took on
the human form in ultimates. Our vision, through the Word, of
Jesus as He walked in Palestine serves as a lively, yet
ultimate, picture of God for us. In His life and in His words,
and in the vision we have in our minds of Him healing and
teaching, we rest all our ideas of God.
But there are dangers. Firstly there is the danger that
we rest content with this most ultimate, and, in a sense
crude, picture of the Lord. The Lord cannot be presented only
in sensual imagery. This leaves us with concepts confined to
fixed space and time.
This ultimate view must be infilled, not replaced, for we
will sometimes need to return to it. It must be infilled with
spiritual concepts concerning His infinite love and wisdom,
His omnipotence, His providence, and the many attributes which
make up His divinity.
To take this line of reasoning one step further, the
Writings, as we have seen, show us that the spiritual view
must take precedence; we must look from essence to person, and
not from person to essence. Our guiding thoughts must regard
those qualities of which we have spoken, but they must be
ultimated in, clothed by, a picture of God in the human shape.
To do the opposite limits our thinking to the things of
nature; we think in material terms instead of in spiritual
terms.
Perhaps we can understand this better if we think about
how we regard other people. First we only know their physical
appearance, later we come to see something of their abilities
and of their character; if we come to know them intimately we
come to know something of their sense of spiritual values,
although we can never make spiritual judgments. The more we
know a person, the more we are able to infill our first
impressions of their physical form with more important and
more interior ideas of them. We will rarely completely forget
the physical appearance, but more and more that means less to
us, and we think first of the real man within.
So it is with our concept of God. We first, in childhood,
think of Him in physical terms, but as we grow and learn, we
infill this knowledge with concepts which mean much more to us
than Jesus walking in Galilee.
The danger that we are being warned against, is that we
remain in earlier concepts and do not infill them, or keep
them in the right perspective. If we dwell unduly on God
incarnate, Jesus, then we may begin to worship the human from
Mary, instead of the Divine which was within. This is one
reason why, in the New Church, we do not usually use the term
"Jesus" unless we are speaking of those years when He was on
earth, or unless we use the total phrase: the Lord God Jesus
Christ. It is very important that we do not worship the human
from Mary, for this was finite and not infinite, the most
sensual concept possible of our God. Such thinking may, we are
warned, lead to a denial (perhaps an unconscious denial) of
the divinity of Christ (see AC 4733).
It is noteworthy that the Writings also point out the
danger of thinking from person and not from essence when
regarding the neighbor. We can easily get caught up with the
external appearance and manners, with the personality, of
another person, and so have little or no regard for his
essence - that is his real nature, the real man. This may lead
to friendships of love which can be so dangerous because, from
a love of the personality, we justify those things which are
false and evil in them. This is significant for young people
as they choose their partners. An attractive personality is a
slim basis for a lasting spiritual relationship.
To conclude, or summarize: it is of vital importance to
all our thinking that we have a just idea of God; that idea
will rest in the human shape, but it must be very much more
than that. We must think from the essence of God which is that
He is possessed of infinite love and infinite wisdom; that His
love is for the salvation of the human race and that His
providence looks to no other end. He is the one God of heaven
and earth, whom we may know, whom we may obey and whom we may
come to love - a love which makes it possible for us to dwell
happily, peacefully, joyfully, in both His earthly and
heavenly kingdoms. Amen.
Preached in Bryn Athyn July 29, 1990
Lessons: Exodus 33:12-23, John 1:1-5, 14-18, AR 611 (parts)
Apocalypse Revealed 611 (parts)