Religion and Science

by Geoffrey S. Childs

In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance. Isaiah 19: 23-25.

These words are allegorical. One can sense their poetry - and a hidden promise. A key to understanding them lies in the correspondences of the countries named, for each country represents a quality of the mind. Egypt is the sciences - its consistent representation throughout the Old and New Testaments. Assyria, it is revealed, is the rational, and Israel the spiritual. (AC 1462: 3) This even deepens the beauty of the prophecy, giving it almost an astonishing meaning - promising unity between science, reason and religion. The spirit of our day often is one of war between science and religion, with the rational of a true man not knowing which way to turn.

However, once one accepts the Lord as God of heaven and earth, it is obvious that there cannot be a war between religion and science. If such a war exists, then the fault lies either with misunderstood religion or with misunderstood science, or with both. That is, when there is an apparent conflict between these major fields of the mind, there is something spurious present. There is no question today but that the former church has been radically undermined by the new sciences. This is because that former religion was false, a man-made creation, with fatal weaknesses in it. In fact today, certain aspects of the sciences have taken over as substitutes for religion; this is particularly true of the fields of social science, and of the sciences of the natural mind, psychology and psychiatry. (Cf. DP 141) And even the physical sciences today offer such promising new worlds - particularly in the marvelous culmination of the space flights. Excitement and challenge seem to have left the field of religion and alighted upon the sciences. Yet almost paradoxically, there are scientists who believe in God and who must deeply wish that a full highway existed between Assyria and Egypt, with Israel a blessing in the midst.

What is wrong? Why aren't science and religion a one, each giving and adding to the other? The actual fault cannot lie with God, or even with religion and science per se. The fault lies in man, in his drastic limitations. Even with a true revelation, the Writings, our understanding of it is quite limited. That is, even when man has a true religion, he only partially understands it. But science too has some fatal weaknesses - not the honest scientist, who is a seeker after scientific truth, without prejudice or preconception, but rather the so-called scientist who theorizes above his field of facts, who attempts from science to fly into the realms of philosophy and religion. In the process he flies too high, as Icarus of Greek mythology.

Science misused is as a cloud between man and spiritual truth. This may sound exaggerated, but the Writings seem to go even further. It is written through Swedenborg:

I conversed ... with the spirits and angels ... concerning ... the sciences, or the wisdom of the present day, which is of such a nature as not to be capable of serving as a plane for spiritual truths, still less for celestial truths; but [the sciences form a plane] like [the false] heaven, which immediately perverts the truths descending from the [interior] heaven into the contrary. (SD 249)

The reference here is to the false heaven before the last judgment in 1757, which was as a great dark cloud interposed between the mind of man on earth and the true heavens. This false heaven was cutting off all spiritual light, and threatening the extinction of the human race - hence the necessity of the last judgment. This same number continues:

At the present day whatever is taught by the sciences concerning the natural causes of phenomena . . . and also whatever is [hence] deduced respecting the knowledge of the soul, . . . all these deductions are full of false hypotheses, in which not a single truth comes into sight. Moreover, by these hypothetical and false deductions the way [to interior things] is closed, so that the thoughts cannot be extended beyond nature . . . on which account spiritual and celestial things are considered as nothing. (Ibid.)

The misuse of the sciences in Swedenborg's day, then, was establishing a likeness of a false heaven. Isn't this still partly true? Doesn't this false heaven still exist, with its threat to any true religion? Yet the Writings are far, far from condemning the true scientific spirit - the search for genuine scientific truth. In fact, the sweep of the new revelation is to encourage such research as one of the greatest uses of our earth. The condemnation by the Lord is of those who would explore spiritual things through scientific facts, who out of powerful human conceit attempt to take the camel through the eye of the needle. Thus, the Lord attributes the false scientific heaven to those "who study the sciences in such a way as to be unwilling to believe anything without them." (SD 250) Of these false scientists, it is said that with them "the spiritual principle can scarcely operate, unless that false . . . plane be shaken entirely to pieces and perish." (Ibid.)

In the Middle Ages, many priests utterly condemned the initial discoveries of science. There were among the orthodox theologians those who knew that the earth was flat, who knew that the earth was the center of the universe, and any scientists who taught differently were regarded as heretics. But this was a religion that had lost the truth, and therefore must be utterly defensive. With the New Church it is to be different, or else our approach is similar to that of the Middle Ages. That is, we should welcome any genuine discovery of science, for it can only extend and enlighten our faith, giving it a more beautiful foundation. Yet in this we must be alert to the false scientist with his false heaven. That is, to those who leave the areas of science and attempt with authority to teach about spiritual things. The fact that they cannot penetrate the eye of the needle does not mean that they won't try.

The areas of false persuasion, of the false scientific heaven, are fairly clear. These are areas where they put out hypotheses that negate the Lord and spiritual realities. Scientific facts can never do this, only the twisting of them to suit false theories. For example, any theory that teaches that man arose solely out of the animal kingdom, without God as the cause, is a theory of the false heaven. That there was an ascent in the animal kingdom, even an evolution of higher forms from spiritual influx into lower may be true. But that it happened by selective accident is simply laughable in the eyes of the angels, and in the eyes of genuine reason, for accident is not intelligent. Any theory which teaches that evil does not exist - that all evil results only from emotional maladjustment - is again of, the false scientific heaven and is a dangerous half-truth. Spiritual evils come through spiritual free choice. Mental maladjustment is, the Writings directly teach, from an illness on the lower plane of the mind. (DP 121)

The sad thing is that misuse of the sciences may have darkened our minds to seeing how wonderful they are when used truly, how true sciences are as diamonds in the crown of a king. In support of this are many direct teachings in the Writings. In a key passage, it is said:

It is never forbidden to confirm the truths of faith and spirituals by the things that are in nature, because a correspondence of all is given; for then truth has command, and natural truths serve to confirm it. Human minds are so constituted that they thus better acknowledge spirituals, for no one can have any idea of purely spiritual things save by the things in the world. (SD 2301)

Men from this earth "may better acknowledge" spiritual things when they see confirmations in nature, in the sciences. In the grand man of the universe, formed from the inhabitants of millions of planets, the use of our earth is in one sense the lowest, or one of the lowest. The inhabitants and spirits of our earth have relation to the external sense. (SD 1531) They are as it were part of the senses, through which outer nature and scientific facts are perceived. Such knowledges are the lowest in the scale of human perceptivity. But being the lowest, they are the foundation of all the higher faculties. It is said, in an amazing number, that "the Lord has loved our earth more than others; for, to the end that order may be perfect, celestial and spiritual truths ought to be enrooted in natural truths." (Ibid.) We have the Word in natural form, and we have the sciences. We suggest that both of these serve as ultimate foundations for the highest of uses. And because in ultimates there is power, "the Lord has loved our earth more than others." Love is according to the excellence of the use-actual, or even potential.

How much true science can contribute to the perfection of the mind, and thus the perfection of the church, is seen from this teaching in Heaven and Hell:

. . . In respect to those who have acquired . . . wisdom through knowledge and science, who are such as have . . . acknowledged the Divine, loved the Word, and lived a spiritual moral life, to such the sciences have served as a means of becoming wise, and also of corroborating the things pertaining to faith. The interiors of the mind of such have been perceived by me, and were seen as transparent from light of a glistening white, flamy, or blue color, like that of translucent diamonds, rubies, and sapphires; and this in accordance with confirmations in favor of the Divine and Divine truths drawn from science. Such is the appearance of true . . . wisdom . . . in the spiritual world. (HH 356)

The true scientist is unaware of this on earth, for he is not conscious on the higher spiritual plane; but he is aware of delights, of awe of truth, which he cannot define. This number concludes:

All this makes clear that it is by means of knowledges and sciences that man is made spiritual, also that these are the means of becoming wise, but only with those who have acknowledged the Divine in faith and life. Such also are accepted in heaven before others, and are among those there who are at the center, because they are in light more than others. (Ibid.)

There are those for whom science does this today. Yet, in complete contrast, there are others for whom science has become a false heaven. In the history of the human race, there will be an increasing judgment of this false heaven; this is prophesied in Isaiah: "And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians [the sciences against the sciences]: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof." (Isaiah 19: 2, 3) But that this shall change with mankind even as it can with the individual now, is seen from the further prediction: "In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts. . . . There shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt.... They shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and He shall send them a savior.... And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day. . . . And the Lord shall smite Egypt: He shall smite and heal it: and they shall return even to the Lord. . . . In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." (Isaiah 19: 18-25, selections)

-New Church Life 1976;96:88-92

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