Why I accept the Dutch Thesis

So, I've been profiting from this long break from intensive lay preaching to go deeper into the Latin Testament.

The overall structure of the Third Testament is interwoven with numerous encounters with angels and devils and spirits of various kinds to mirror the God Man's gradual  glorification and our gradual regeneration.

While it is certainly true that our own encounters with angels, devils and spirits of various kinds are not so visually  dramatic as those recounted by Swedenborg; yet are these occurring in the form of the fluctuations in our feelings and our thoughts.

We cannot feel or think without its being in relation to other people in a community, whether visible or not. All feeling and thought involves you in relationships. 

And the Latin Word contains an elegant series of expressions of these feelings, thoughts, and their interactions in a best fit taxonomy.

Since we have both good and evil desires, and true and false thoughts, the Latin Word, like the Hebrew Word and the Greek Word,  contains numerous correspondences in the heads and tails position.

That is why True Christian Religion contains the correspondence "king of Persia" in the upright and reversed positions (True Christian Religion 245 & 515); which involves positive and negative states in relation to truths concerning charity. The one state means those who practice these truths about love (245); and the other state means those who hoard truths about charity without actually bothering to practice them (515). 

And that is why Earths in the Universe mentions the correspondence "eagle" in the upright and reversed positions (Earths in the Universe 140).

These are neon signs that the Lord put there to indicate that we are to look for correspondences in the Writings and determine where possible whether these are heads or tails.

Likewise, we should look for chiastic structures and whether these are upright and reversed.

Examples of chiastic structures in the Writings include thousands and ten thousands; and pleasure and delight. There are many other chiastic structures as well, and all these exist in the Threefold Word to express all possible  interrelations of desire and thought of relevance to keeping or not the commandments of God.

Now, what is called the Dutch Thesis in the New Church was first enunciated by Reverend Edward Hyatt of the General Church in 1891-96. This doctrinal position holds that the Writings of the Latin Word have both a spiritual and a natural sense. 

A denomination later broke away from the General Church in 1937 due to what they considered to be doctrinal writing from God through the lay teacher H. D. G. Groeneveld in a series of fascicles called De Hemelsche Leer (The Heavenly Doctrine). This breakaway denomination is still known as the Lord's New Church.

Incidentally, I who accept this very Dutch Thesis posted not long ago in the Lord's New Church Facebook page with the curious query as to why they believed what they believed. 

I noted that I had substantial resources like the inspired sermons of Reverend Theodore Pitcairn; and like the books of Professor Leon James; and like the fascicles of De Hemelche Leer; but that I wanted to hear testimonies from individuals at a more personal level.

We should, after all, be eager to answer questions like that; and well able to answer questions like that. As it says in 1 Peter, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15).

Being eager to answer questions like that and well able to answer questions like that is part of healthy evangelicalism, growth, and popularization of the beliefs that one holds. 

One will note that not a single person replied in a Facebook group that had ~1000 people in it; and dedicated to that very denomination which accepts the same Dutch Thesis that I do. 

Well, I am personally eager to make the Threefold Word come alive for a broader, larger audience. I am eager to answer queries of that nature and give a reason of the hope that is in me.

This brings me to the Providential timing of the Lord's New Church denomination's appearance on the scene in 1937.

This occurred approximately when the Space Age was kicking off; thus just before we began to accumulate much data to speak of about the other planets in our Solar System.

What connection does this Providential timing have to being ready always to give to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness in fear? 

Simple. A New Church denomination holding that the Writings have an inner meaning and are fully the Word of the Third Testament arose just as planetary science began to reveal a rather different picture of the solar system than that depicted in the Writing Earths in the Universe. 

Earths in the Universe contains numerous mentions of faces and has more to do with interiors than it does with aliens. This is not a denial of the possibility that intelligent and ensouled life may dwell in every planet (even as this Writing confidently asserts in the literal sense). 

Rather, this is a sidestepping of the matter of who lives or does not live on the other planets of the solar system; so as to focus on what is more important than planetary science, meaning spiritual life. 

One said that Earths in the Universe should be understood more as a Writing about faces, interiors of people as to love and truth, as in the following:

"[4] They also believe that after death they will sense a fire that will warm their faces from within. They get this notion because the wiser of them know that, spiritually understood, fire means love, that love is the fire of life, and that for angels this fire is the source itself of their life. 1 If they have led lives devoted to heavenly love their dream comes true [after death] and they feel their face grow warm and the deeper levels of their mind catch fire with love.

[5] Because of this, the inhabitants of that planet frequently wash and cleanse their faces and carefully protect them from the heat of the sun. They have a bluish covering made from the bark or cork of a tree that they put around their heads to shield their faces" (Earths in the Universe 52). 

We see mention of their face growing warm and the deeper levels of their mind catching fire with love. This passage exists as a training module exists: it teaches about how "fire" and "love" are the same, and how "face" and "deeper levels of their mind" are the same. 

Our "faces" grow "warm" when we become more loving people.

As to that heat of the sun from which we must protect ourselves, that is self-love. We wrap our heads, our understandings, around with specifically blue bark to indicate being protected by truths about self-love which permit us to oppose its strident opposition to the love of God and the neighbor.

We find confirmation of this interpretation of protecting one's face from the heat of the sun in the following:

"This is a description of the genius of the Jewish nation, that they are in the love of self and in falsities therefrom. Jonah was of that nation, and therefore also was sent to Nineveh; for the Jewish nation had the Word, and was therefore able to teach those who were outside of the church and who are called Gentiles; these are signified by "Nineveh." Because the Jewish nation was, above others, in the love of self and in the falsities from that love, they did not wish well to any but themselves, thus not to the Gentiles, but these they hated. Because that nation was such, and Jonah represented it, he was very angry that Jehovah should spare Nineveh, for it is said:

Jonah was ill with a great illness, so that he was angry, and from the illness of anger he said, Take, O Jehovah, my soul from me, for my death is better than my life (Jonah 4:1, 3).

This evil in that nation is signified by the gourd which the worm smote so that it dried up. "The sun that smote upon the head of Jonah" signifies the love of self which was in that nation; and "the scorching east wind" the falsity therefrom; and "the worm that smote the gourd" signifies the destruction of this evil and the falsity thence. That this is the signification of "the gourd" is evident from its being said in this description that Jonah at first "was glad over the gourd," and after the gourd had been smitten by the worm and had dried up that "he was angry over it, even unto death," and also from its being said that "he had pity over the gourd." That the Jewish nation, because it was in such a love and in such falsity therefrom was liable to damnation is meant by these words to Jonah, "thou didst not cause it to grow up, because thou didst become a son of night, 6 and a son of night perisheth." (That such was the Jewish nation, see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 248.)" (Apocalypse Explained 401).

One will now return to Earths in the Universe and the importance of the Dutch Thesis becoming prominent right as the Space Age kicked off. You see, the General Church denomination continues to hold that the Writings do not have an internal meaning; whereas the Lord's New Church continues to hold that they do. 

Who do you think looks more rational before people outside of the New Church interested in the Writings? Who do you think occupies the rhetorical high ground? The ones who have literal aliens to offer? Or the ones who have spiritual aliens to offer? 

Of course it is those who explain Earths in the Universe as an allegory of internal states as to love and truth who occupy the rhetorical high ground here; whereas if people defend Earths in the Universe without recourse to its internal meaning the optics are, I assure you, not good at all!

Mind you, the other planets have scarcely been explored. If we as a species took many centuries before we learned, via Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, that a drop of pond water teems with microorganisms; then how can we, who have scarcely begun to explore the solar system's planets, really say much concerning their harboring life or not?

We humans have a quite anthropomorphic conception, the Goldilocks habitable zone, which posits that conditions appropriate to life on our planet can occur within a specific band of space conceived of as optimum. 

We humans likewise pride ourselves on having a discipline of exobiology. But do we really? 

We do not really have an exobiology until we have at least two biospheres as a basis for comparison; two items in the set 'life'. Without at least two items in that set, our sense of a Goldilocks habitable zone may in reality be utterly toxic for most species in the universe. 

One does not intend by this to endorse the literal sense of Earths in the Universe per se; but to carefully indicate that our species knows far too little about life on other planets or its absence. It would not do to ridicule Earths in the Universe just yet. One is sure that the other planets hold surprises. And how many centuries would it take before some human colonist on the surface of Titan or in the clouds of Jupiter, some Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, finally established the existence of life in what we previously regarded as simply hydrocarbon seas or a gas mixture?

Does one believe that accepting the Dutch Thesis is joined at the hip to Earths in the Universe in particular? Absolutely. Going back to that rhetorical high ground one mentioned, this Writing can be either an embarrassment or an opportunity.

If people feel forced for clunky, doctrinal reasons to explain Earths in the Universe to outsiders without recourse to its having an internal meaning, this Writing will be embarrassing.

But if people have recourse to the internal meaning of Earths in the Universe, then they can discern precisely Archimedes' lever large enough to move the world.

The very Writing that some find embarrassing and would fain hide away, lest it frighten away those who might seriously consider the heavenly doctrine, should rather be heading the charge of the cavalry.

It is an opportunity, not an embarrassment; and it has that in it which would give pause to someone outside the New Church who is yet in what we call the affection for truth. That is, the intellectually honest among them would be slow to ridicule Earths in the Universe thus explained; even as the same people would be rather skeptical of focusing on its having only a literal meaning.

Now, one earlier spoke of accepting the Dutch Thesis as occupying the rhetorical high ground when expaining Earths in the Universe to strangers, people outside of the Church. Let one be clear and note that this rhetorical high ground is not a case of the following:

" Our ability to justify whatever we please is not intelligence. It is only cleverness, which even the worst of us may have. There are people who are brilliant at justifying things who do not know anything true. They can still justify both truth and falsity. Some of them say, "What is truth? Is there any such thing? Anything is true if I make it true." In this world, these people are considered intelligent, but they are nothing but whitewashers. The only people who are intelligent are the people who can tell that a truth is true and who corroborate this by a constant awareness of truths" (Divine Providence 318). 

Rather, this rhetorical high ground happens to coincide with a theological position to which I sincerely subscribe. I am fully persauded that the Writing in question has much to teach me, in its internal meaning, as to truths with which I may protect myself from self-love.

It has much to teach me and us in our "faces", our interiors, about love and self-love, truth and falsehood. It is with these faces that we will see face to face who yet now see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12).

One will now draw attention to another feature of the Writings, the basis of the substitution method: the explicit refrain "It is the same if you say..." and the matter of fact arrangements of two correspondences side by side as meaning the same thing.

We saw this earlier, in fact, in "fire means love" (Earths in the Universe 52).

This same substitution method may of course be employed also in the Hebrew Word and the Greek Word, as in the chiastic structures birds and beasts and stones and beasts:

"For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee” (Job 5:23).

" In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety" (Hosea 2:18).

In this instance one correspondence predicated of the understanding, "stones", may be substituted by another such predicate, "birds"; for it is the same if you say stones or birds or truths concerning love of God and the neighbor. 

One will not belabor the point but stress simply that the Threefold Word abounds in one form or another of arrangement side by side of equivalent correspondences of the will or the understanding respectively.

One therefore encourages people to look for them and substitute at will among them in the course of teasing out meaning from all parts of the Word.

To continue, we also see the refrain in the Writings, "But more on this, of the Lord's divine mercy, elsewhere..."

This phrasing indicates for us that the Lord regards giving us truth and instruction in truth as an act of mercy. 

It is a merciful act to instruct people in truth concerning love; and the differences between good and evil and truth and falsehood.

To use the language of the verse which concludes Jonah, it is a merciful act if you instruct people so that they who have much cattle, many desires and behaviors, may know their right hand from their left; that is, so that they may know good from evil and truth from falsehood:

"And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" (Jonah 4:11). 

It is the same if you say to instruct in love of God and the neighbor; or if you say to instruct in the right hand and the left those who have much cattle. But more on this, of the Lord's divine mercy, elsewhere. And ever more elsewhere, ever more interiorly in proportion as we are willing to practice that truth thus mercifully unveiled before our spiritual sight. 

It is the same if you say that Ezekiel could no longer touch the bottom of the river with his feet (Ezekiel 47:5):

" Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over". 

When we can no longer touch bottom, we have become so overwhelmed with an enormous amount of information that we can scarcely wrap our heads around it for a long time. 

But the mountains have filled up with chariots of fire, and the essential structure of the Third Testament has consolidated amid the inchoacy, a firmament amid the waters; and it is the same if you say that angels and devils are encountering Swedenborg or you are visited by good and evil desires and true or false thoughts. But more of this, of the Lord's divine mercy, elsewhere. And ever more elsewhere.

"And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this? Then he brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river" (Ezekiel 47:6). 

He has brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river. One's feet can touch ground again. It is as though innocence had been instructed, as though the Third Testament had now a solidity which was not there before. I no longer feel that sinking feeling of sorts which accompanies having to swim or tread water in waters too tall for one; in matters of spiritual life and its cognition after reading all of the Writings and consequently finding oneself quite overwhelmed. 

One senses a change in the way one relates to the internal meaning of the Latin Word which is like the shift between Jacob's ascendancy and that of Esau.

The Living God is here.