My Dissertation

Here is my theological school dissertation. It's called "Comparing the Divine, Heavenly, and Natural Marriages." It's a study of the marriage of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, the marriage of the Lord and the Church, the marriage of the Divine and Human within the Lord, the marriage of goodness and truth in creation, the marriage of the will and intellect in our minds, the marriage of our intellectual faith with our practical good works, the marriage of masculinity and femininity, and the marriages of husbands and wives. The study analyzes the differences and similarities between these different marriage. How far can we take these "analogies" in different situations? The study also analyzes the difference between the "masculine" and "feminine" elements of each of these marriages. The study is based on the Christian theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg. I hope you enjoy it, and find it useful.  You can read it here: Solomon Keal's Dissertation.  Watch the video of the presentation here.

Is the Lord Asking Us to be Perfect?

Here is a link to a sermon I gave in the Bryn Athyn Cathedral, on New Year's Day, 2012. "Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matt 5:48). Is the Lord really asking us to be perfect?

Is the Lord Asking Us to be Perfect?  (Audio)

The Recipe for Spiritual Growth

Here are some links to a sermon I gave on the Parable of the Leaven (Luke 13:20,21). Why does the Lord compare the Kingdom of God to a woman adding leaven to bread-dough? Isn't leaven usually symbolic of something bad in the Word? And what does this have to do with us? What does this parable teach us about the recipe for our own spiritual growth?

Ivyland Adult Sermon (Video)

Ivyland Question and Answer (Video)

Ivyland Children's Talk about the Lord being the "Bread of Life." (Video)

Bryn Athyn Church Informal (Contemporary) Service (Audio)

Bryn Athyn Cathedral Sermon (Audio)

Moving from Haran to Canaan

Here is the link to a family talk I gave in the Bryn Athyn Cathedral. The subject is about Jacob leaving the land of Haran and returning to his homeland of Canaan. Spiritually the story is about changing what motivates us. Moving from the land of "doing good things for selfish reasons," to the land of "doing good things for unselfish reasons."

"Moving from Haran to Canaan" (Audio)

The Creatress?

I just read a really fascinating number in Swedenborg's book Divine Love and Wisdom. The end of the number says, “Since we have been created to be recipients, then, and since we are recipients to the extent that we love God and are wise because of our love for God (that is, the extent to which we are moved by what comes from God and think as a result of that feeling), it therefore follows that the divine essence, the Creatress, is divine love and wisdom.” (DLW 33)

This is from the Dole translation, the New Century Edition of the Writings of Swedenborg. There is a footnote that follows the word 'Creatress.' In the note the translator says, "Swedenborg's use here of the feminine noun Creatrix, 'Creatress,' is striking. While it may be prompted by the fact that Essentia, 'essence,' is a feminine noun, there is no grammatical necessity for a noun to agree in gender with a noun with which it is in apposition. This feminine noun occurs again in [DLW] 262 and in True Christianity 178, in both instances in apposition with natura, 'nature'; in these instances, it is quite possible that 'nature' was visualized in female form."

In DLW 262, the translator translates the word as 'creatress,' but in that number it is obviously referring to the concept of 'mother nature' or nature as the source of everything in the universe as an appearance of truth or a false belief (similarly in TCR 178), while in DLW 33, the word 'Creatress' seems to be referring to the Lord, the Divine Love and Wisdom!

Most of the other translations of DLW 33 translate the Latin word Creatrix as "Creator." One translates Creatrix as "the creative cause." But there are other Latin words for "Creator": creator, genitor, conditor, plastes, aedificator, all of which are masculine words. But the Latin word creatrix, is a feminine word and according to William Whitaker's Words is properly translated as: "mother, she who brings forth; creator (of the world); authoress, creatress." So in many ways this NCE translation, while being perhaps a little controversial and confusing, is the most accurate translation of this particular portion of this passage. And I appreciate that.

However, as the footnote said, this is "striking." We are used to masculine language used in reference to the Lord. This is mostly because of the masculine image of Jehovah and Jesus presented in the Bible. But it does seem somehow fitting that in the book Divine Love and Wisdom, a discussion of the more philosophical side of what the Lord is, it would remind us that God is the source of both masculinity and femininity, with this striking reference to the "Creatress."

In a previous footnote in Divine Love and Wisdom, translator Jonathan Rose states that "The Latin original of this passage [DLW 18, a discussion of the fact that God is Human] contains no hint of God's being either male or female. Although the identification of Jesus in his transformed state as God is central to Swedenborg's theology, as is the related concept of God's humanity, Swedenborg seems stringently to avoid any indication of masculine or feminine gender in God. He consistently uses the neutral term homo, "a human," rather than a gendered term for God's humanity; and where he uses adjectives in the role of nouns as terms for God, such as "the Infinite," "the Divine," "the Divine Human," and "the Human," he casts them as neuter rather than feminine or masculine. (A possible exception to this rule is the use of Creatrix, a feminine noun for the creator; see note 31 below.) The present edition uses the pronoun "he" for God even though it introduces gender implications that are not present in the original, because (a) the text's strong emphasis on the oneness of God contraindicates the use of plural pronouns; (b) the English language has no established gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun; (c) the text's strong emphasis on the humanness of God contraindicates the use of "it"; and (d) the identification of Jesus with God would make any pronoun but "he" awkward." In other words, the complications of using the words "Them," "It," or "She," in reference to God, outweigh the complications of using the word "He."

I suppose one way of looking at this passage is that it is trying to point out that what most people think of as Mother Nature is actually the Lord. I think a liberal translation of this passage could be: “... it therefore follows that the divine essence, which is considered to be Mother Nature, is divine love and wisdom.” But that’s adding a lot of additional vocabulary that isn’t there in the Latin. The original Latin simply says: "sequitur, quod Divina Essentia, quae Creatrix, sit Divinus Amor et Divina Sapientia."

When it comes down to it, I like how this translation really shakes up the false assumption that we often aren’t careful enough with, which is that the Lord is somehow male. Jesus was male. But the Lord (The Divine Love and Wisdom, the Creator of Heaven and Earth) is not male. The Lord is the source of both masculinity and femininity. Both men and women are created in His image. "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." (Genesis 1:27)

Laying on of Hands

In my devotional reading I just read this passage in Numbers: "And you shall bring the Levites before the tabernacle of meeting, and you shall gather together the whole assembly of the children of Israel. So you shall bring the Levites before the Lord, and the children of Israel shall lay their hands on the Levites. ... After that the Levites shall go in to service the tabernacle of meeting." (Numbers 8:9,10,15)

Also in Secrets of Heaven: "It was similar with the laying on of hands when men were being consecrated, as the people did to the Levites, Num. 8:9, 10, 12, ... - the purpose being to confer power. And this is why in our own times the ceremonies of ordination and of blessing are accompanied by the laying on of hands." (AC 878.7)

I thought it was cool that the 'ordination' process for these Levites to work in the Tabernacle was accomplished by the laying on of hands from the congregation rather than from Moses or Aaron or the priests. Wouldn't that be a neat tradition for the ordination of our own ministers? To have members of the congregation lay their hands on the new minister.

God's Anger in the Bible

In the New Church we know that God is never really angry (TCR 650), and that the places in the Bible where it describes the Lord being angry are describing an appearance. The analogy often given is that parents often appear angry to their children, when in fact the parents are acting out of love and a sense of protection. But to the children - from their natural selfish perspective - their parents' actions sometimes seems unfair and cruel.

I've been fortunate enough to grow up in the New Church with a solid sense that God is pure Love itself, as it says in 1 John 4:8,16. And so often times when I'm reading the Bible and I read passages that describe God's anger, I just sort of ignore them, and remind myself that it's just an appearance.

I have children of my own, and lately I was reading a story from the Bible to them. It was the story of the Golden Calf. God wanted to destroy the children of Israel! Moses was trying to intervene for the children of Israel, and to calm God’s anger towards them. (Exodus 32:7-14) I remember - as I was reading the story to them - I was wondering how they were going to take it. We had taught them very clearly that the Lord always loves us, and He never wants anything bad to happen to anyone. So what were they going to think about this?

They didn't bat an eye! Not a single question. And my kids are not afraid to ask questions when they don't understand something. Apparently it made sense to them!

So it got me thinking. It makes sense to children that God would get angry! After all, their parents get angry sometimes. And they themselves certainly get angry a lot of times. It's probably harder for them to grasp the idea of Someone never getting angry. Especially if they are taught that God is Human! I never thought about how important this image of God is for us. God is Somebody that can relate to the anger that we experience in our life.

And not only for children, I think the power in these passages in the literal sense of the Word is important for all of us. We know that we are created in God's image. Well, I experience anger. Where does that come from? As adults it's important for our emotional health to recognize that experiencing anger is a common human feeling. The experience of it is not good or evil in itself, it just is. It's what we do with it that can be good or evil. Maybe these passages about God's anger can remind us, as adults, that the experience of anger is very human. We are not flawed because we experience anger. We just need to learn how to deal with it in a healthy way. Once we do that, we can move away from Hell, and move towards God, who is Love itself.