7. It is well known that the doctrines of the Christian churches teach that God is one. This is because all their doctrines are taken from the Word, and they hold together so long as one God is acknowledged not only with the lips but also in the heart. For those who acknowledge one God only with their lips, while in their hearts they admit three, which is what happens with many people in Christendom to-day, God is nothing more than a verbal expression. Their whole theology is nothing but a golden idol locked in a case, to which only their leaders have the key. When they read the Word, they do not receive any enlightenment about it and from it, not even the perception that God is one. For them the Word is, as it were, blotted with erasures and obscured where it speaks of the oneness of God. These are the people described by the Lord in Matthew.
Hearing you will hear and not understand, and seeing you will see and not discern. They have closed their eyes, so that they should not risk seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, and understanding in their hearts, and so that they should not turn again and let me heal them. Matt. 13:14, 15.
All of these people are like those who run away from daylight, and shut themselves in windowless rooms, where they grope around the walls searching for food and money. Finally they are granted a power of sight like that of owls, so that they can see in the dark. They resemble a woman with several husbands, no true wife, but a wanton prostitute. They are like a girl who accepts rings from several suitors, and after she is married hires herself out for the night not just to one, but to the rest as well.
This page is part of 
© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church