I think there are several problems
with this. One is that hell can’t
create anything from itself; it has no
intrinsic life to put into something
created. What it can create is only
fantasy. And second, it means that
no fierce or predatory animals could
have existed before men were not
only created, but had also eaten of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil
and had turned away from the Lord.
I am not a paleontologist of any
kind. I don’t have a degree in ancient
history or biology or archeology or
anything like that. I have a degree in
engineering, and I spent my career in
the design of machinery for mining
coal and other bedded deposits.
The closest I have come to anything prehistoric was to see on the roof of
a coal mine the fossilized imprint of a length of what had obviously been a
bit of tree trunk, with a diamond pattern of branch scars on it. That was cool!
Furthermore, I don’t pretend to have a final answer to the problem I’m going
to outline here, but I would like to open it and then hear what others have
thought about it. I have been getting New Church Life for a long time, but no
other doctrinal publications, and I’ve never seen anything there.
Swedenborg knew that
animals represented
human affections, and
that the domesticated
or tamed animals
represented good and
charitable affections,
while fierce or predatory
animals represented evil
or selfish affections.
Evil Animals
So, I’ll start with those places in the Writings that cause me discomfort. Here
are two quotes from the Writings in full, followed by five other references that
say pretty much the same thing:
The first is from True Christian Religion 78: “ . . . about hell, that no such
things are seen there as are seen in
heaven, but only their opposites .
. . there are seen birds of night . . .
wolves, panthers, tigers, rats, mice,
venomous serpents . . . brambles and
nettles . . . heaps of stone and bogs . .
. All these are correspondences of the
affections of the loves of those in hell.
Which affections are the lusts of evil.
Notwithstanding these things are not
created there by God, nor were they
Hell can’t create
anything from itself;
it has no intrinsic life
to put into something
created. What it can
create is only fantasy.
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