n e w c h u r c h l i f e : j u ly / au g u s t 2 0 1 5
Lord says: “This church through the desire to investigate from itself [selfintelligence] the truths of faith, and by reasonings, first lapsed into errors
and perversions.” (Ibid. 975) Here again we find the people of the church
questioning and doubting the integrity and authority of the Word.
Happily there is a recovery in this church, and we might wish that we had
available more of the symbolic stories from the Ancient Word of the good
states of this Ancient Church. However, in chapter 10, here comes the account
of Nimrod, “mighty in hunting,” and we are told that the beginning of his
kingdom was Babel.
Represented here are “those who form new kinds of worship out of
memory-knowledges by means of reasonings.” (Ibid. 1134) Again the teaching
of the Word is being set aside and eclipsed by corrupted natural/sensual loves
and the kinds of false thinking that proceeds from them.
“ ‘Hunting’ signifies in general persuading, specifically captivating the
minds of men by favoring their sensual inclinations, pleasures and cupidities,
by using doctrines which they explain at their own pleasure in accordance
with their temper and that of the other, and with a view of their own exaltation
and enrichment – thus by persuading.” (Ibid. 1178)
Does that sound familiar? I think of some of the religious television
channels.
We come to Genesis 11, and now we have the account of the Tower of Babel.
The opening verses treat of good and healthy states in the Ancient Church, but
almost immediately the Lord chooses to turn our attention to the decline and
vastation of this church. They went back from true charity and their worship
became unclean and profane. Then “they said a man to his fellow, Come, let us
make bricks, and let us burn them to a burning. And they had brick for stone,
and bitumen they had for mortar.” (Genesis 11:3)
Instead of holding to their Divine revelation as the guide for thought and
life, they began to fashion falsities for themselves from love of themselves,
and instead of truths they had falsities, and instead of good they had the evil
of cupidity.” (Arcana Coelestia 1294) In the passage that follows, the Lord
distinguishes between the falsity of ignorance and the falsity of cupidities. Of
particular concern here is the falsity of cupidities:
. . . “the falsity of cupidities” exists when the origin of the falsity is the cupidity of
love of self and the world; as when one seizes upon some point of doctrine and
professes it in order to captivate the minds and lead them, and explains or perverts
the doctrine in favor of self, and confirms it both by reasonings and from memoryknowledges, and by the literal sense of the Word. The worship derived from this is
profane, however holy it may outwardly appear; for inwardly it is not the worship
of the Lord, but the worship of self. Nor does such a man acknowledge anything as
true except in so far as he can explain it so far as to favor himself. Such worship is
that which is signified by Babel. (Ibid. 1295)
330