[6] L. c. pp. 468, 617, 618. [↑]
[7] According to Swedenborg, the angels in heaven have clothes and dwellings. “Their dwellings are altogether such as the dwellings or houses on earth, but far more beautiful; there are apartments, rooms, and sleeping chambers therein in great number, and entrance-courts, and round about gardens, flowers, meadows, and fields.” (E. v. S. Auserlesene Schriften, 1 Th. Frankf. a. M. 1776, p. 190, and 96.) Thus to the mystic this world is the other world; but for that reason the other world is this world. [↑]
[9] “Quidquid enim unus quisque super cætera colit: hoc illi Deus est.”—Origines Explan. in Epist. Pauli ad Rom. c. l. [↑]
CHAPTER X.
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT OF NOTHING.
Creation is the spoken word of God; the creative, cosmogonic fiat is the tacit word, identical with the thought. To speak is an act of the will; thus, creation is a product of the Will: as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity of the human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity of the Will: not, however, the will of the reason, but the will of the imagination—the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out of nothing.[1] As the eternity of the world or of matter imports nothing further than the essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world out of nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the nothingness of the world. The commencement of a thing is immediately connected, in idea if not in time, with its end. “Lightly come, lightly go.” The will has called it into existence—the will calls it back again into nothing. When? The time is indifferent: its existence or non-existence depends only on the will. But this will is not its own will:—not only because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but for the prior reason that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus the nothingness of the world expresses the power of the will. The will that it should exist is, at the same time, the will—at least the possible will—that it should not exist. The existence of the world is therefore a momentary, arbitrary, unreliable, i.e., unreal existence.
Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omnipotence: but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations, and consecrating this exemption as the highest power and reality: nothing else than the ability to posit everything real as unreal—everything conceivable as possible: nothing else than the power of the imagination, or of the will as identical with the imagination, the power of self-will.[2] The strongest and most characteristic expression of subjective arbitrariness is, “it has pleased;”—the phrase, “it has pleased God to call the world of bodies and spirits into existence,” is the most undeniable proof that individual subjectivity, individual arbitrariness, is regarded as the highest essence—the omnipotent world-principle. On this ground, creation out of nothing as a work of the Almighty Will falls into the same category with miracle, or rather it is the first miracle, not only in time but in rank also;—the principle of which all further miracles are the spontaneous result. The proof of this is history itself; all miracles have been vindicated, explained, and illustrated by appeal to the omnipotence which created the world out of nothing. Why should not He who made the world out of nothing, make wine out of water, bring human speech from the mouth of an ass, and charm water out of a rock? But miracle is, as we shall see further on, only a product and object of the imagination, and hence creation out of nothing, as the primitive miracle, is of the same character. For this reason the doctrine of creation out of nothing has been pronounced a supernatural one, to which reason of itself could not have attained; and in proof of this, appeal has been made to the fact that the pagan philosophers represented the world to have been formed by the Divine Reason out of already existing matter. But this supernatural principle is no other than the principle of subjectivity, which in Christianity exalted itself to an unlimited, universal monarchy; whereas the ancient philosophers were not subjective enough to regard the absolutely subjective being as the exclusively absolute being, because they limited subjectivity by the contemplation of the world or reality—because to them the world was a truth.
Creation out of nothing, as identical with miracle, is one with Providence; for the idea of Providence—originally, in its true religious significance, in which it is not yet infringed upon and limited by the unbelieving understanding—is one with the idea of miracle. The proof of Providence is miracle.[3] Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature; it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which inevitably binds effects to causes; in short, it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of nothing. Miracle is a creatio ex nihilo. He who turns water into wine, makes wine out of nothing, for the constituents of wine are not found in water; otherwise, the production of wine would not be a miraculous, but a natural act. The only attestation, the only proof of Providence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression of the same idea as creation out of nothing. Creation out of nothing can only be understood and explained in connection with Providence; for miracle properly implies nothing more than that the miracle worker is the same as he who brought forth all things by his mere will—God the Creator.