by the Rev. Lee Woofenden
Lectures delivered atFryeburg New Church AssemblyFryeburg, Maine
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Here's fair warning: My reasons for choosing "The Blood of the Covenant" had nothing to do with feeling that I was especially well-versed in this topic, or that I had a lot to say to you about it. In fact, I was attracted to this topic mainly because I've spent a lot of time debating fundamentalist Christians this past year--both online and in person. These folks have an entirely different way of viewing the Bible than what I grew up with. And to be quite honest, some of the passages they brought forward about being saved through Christ's blood had me scratching my head. So part of my reason for taking this particular topic was to give myself an excuse to do some reading and thinking about "the blood of the covenant" mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments.
I know that from a Swedenborgian perspective, those passages can be explained through reference to the spiritual sense. And we will get into that during this hour. However, almost by definition a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist because he or she takes the Bible literally. This means that traditional Swedenborgian interpretations based on the spiritual sense of the Bible, which we take for granted, simply won't fly with fundamentalists.
Does this make it impossible to find any common ground with fundamentalist Christians? Let's face it: some of our beliefs directly contradict statements made in the literal sense of the Bible. For example, the Bible says, "God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day" (Psalm 7:11). We say God is never angry with anyone, and that when the Bible mentions the wrath of God it is an "appearance of truth." In other words, the way it is written in the Bible is how it often appears to us in our less-than-perfect grasp of spiritual reality; but looked at deeper, the real truth is different. Yes, we do have some problems talking to fundamentalist Christians based on the literal sense of the Bible. (Though some of their core beliefs are contradicted in the literal sense of the Bible as well!)
However, I believe it is too easy an out to simply throw up our hands and say, "It's no use to talk to people who take the Bible literally; there's no common basis for a discussion." Swedenborg also wrote:
In the sense of the letter all things that teach the way to salvation, and so to life and faith, stand out clearly. And every doctrine of the church is to be drawn from the sense of the letter of the Word and confirmed by it, and not by the pure spiritual sense. Union with heaven, and through heaven with the Lord, is not given by the spiritual sense alone, but by the sense of the letter. And the Divine inflow of the Lord through the Word is from firsts through lasts. (The Word of the Lord from Experience #15. See also True Christian Religion #229)
And even more plainly:
It might be thought that the doctrine of genuine truth could be acquired by means of the spiritual sense of the Word, of which we are granted knowledge by correspondences. However, doctrine is not acquired through this, but is merely illustrated and confirmed. For a person who knows a few correspondences can falsify the Word by combining and applying them to prove whatever the principles he has adopted and established in his mind. What is more, the spiritual sense is not granted to anyone except by the Lord; and he guards it just as the heaven of the angels is guarded, for this heaven possesses this sense. (True Christian Religion #230)
This suggests to me that we do have a basis for discussing religion even with fundamentalist Christians. They draw their doctrine from the literal sense of the Bible; according to Swedenborg, so should we. If we find ourselves speechless in the face of a Bible-quoting fundamentalist--and especially if we find ourselves thought-less--perhaps we simply do not have a thorough enough knowledge of the Bible in its plain, ordinary, literal meaning.
Incidentally, when speaking with traditional Christians, "the Bible" means the entire Protestant Bible, including the books we Swedenborgians do not consider to be a part of the Word of God because they do not have a spiritual meaning. In particular, you cannot discuss doctrine effectively with fundamentalist Christians without a working knowledge of the Epistles (the letters of the Apostles), since that is where most of their doctrine is drawn from.
If you haven't read the Epistles, please do! There is no need to yield these books to the fundamentalists. Swedenborg calls the writings of the Apostles "good books of the church, insisting on the doctrine of charity and its faith as strongly as the Lord himself has done in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation, as may be seen and found evident by all who, while reading them, focus their attention on these points" (From Swedenborg's third letter to Dr. Beyer, In R.L. Tafel's Documents Concerning Swedenborg #224).
My reading of the Bible since beginning to engage fundamentalist Christians in conversation has convinced me that the Bible--including the Epistles--really does not support their position very well, even in its literal sense. Yes, there are some individual passages that can be tough to deal with. And it does not serve us well to approach fundamentalist Christians with too cocksure an attitude on our part. But taken as a whole, the Bible simply doesn't teach that faith alone saves, nor does it teach a trinity of persons, nor does it teach the Vicarious Atonement. As Swedenborg said, these traditional Protestant doctrines are based on only a few passages in the Bible, which are misunderstood and taken out of context.
However, if we do choose to engage fundamentalist Christians in conversation, I would suggest that we not do it with the idea that we are going to change their minds by proving to them that the Bible does not support their beliefs. Swedenborg is also careful to say that "the genuine truth in the literal sense of the Word, on which doctrine is based, is not visible to any but those who are enlightened by the Lord" (True Christian Religion #231). In other words, if people's eyes have not been opened to see deeper truths in the Bible, they simply will not see it, even if the words are right in front of their eyes.
I have repeatedly quoted for fundamentalist Christians the one and only use of the phrase "faith alone" in the Bible. It occurs in James 2:24, and it specifically rejects faith alone as saving. It reads, "You see that a person is justified by works, and not by faith alone." Yet instead of accepting that plain teaching of the literal sense of the Bible, they will ignore it, or quote passages from Paul in an attempt to show that faith alone does save us, or resort to convoluted arguments as to why James did not mean what he said. They simply do not see that their teaching is not supported by the Bible; and everything they read, they interpret according to their doctrine.
They have every right to do this. We do the same. So in talking to fundamentalist Christians, aside from the pure exchange of views, I have adopted the goal of attempting to soften some of their hardest positions on such things as the idea that all people outside of their particular belief system will go to hell, and to plant some seeds that may, when they are spiritually ready for it, grow into a deeper view of the Bible.
The benefit for us in engaging fundamentalist Christians in conversation is that it causes us to go back to the Bible and sharpen our understanding of our own beliefs, and the ways in which they are supported (or not!) in the Bible. I believe that one of the reasons for the success of fundamentalist churches, under the Lord's providence, is that they are leading many people back to a study of the Bible. If engaging fundamentalists in doctrinal conversation leads a few Swedenborgians back to a study of the Bible in its literal sense, and to think more deeply on how our own beliefs may be found there, that would be a good thing!
This is exactly what my conversations with fundamentalists has done for me with regard to the meaning of the Biblical phrase "the blood of the covenant." I do not want to dwell too long on fundamentalist views of the blood of the covenant and the blood of Christ. But it may serve to put our views in sharper relief if I say a few words about what could be viewed as the primary opposition to our view of atonement and salvation.
Perhaps the crudest of version of Vicarious Atonement theology, based very much on the "wrath of God," is expressed in an old hymn by Isaac Watts:
Come, let us lift our joyful eyes
Up to the courts above,
And smile to see our Father there
Upon a throne of love.
Once 'twas a seat of dreadful wrath,
And shot devouring flame
Our God appeared "consuming fire,"
And Vengeance was his name.
Rich were the drops of Jesus' blood
That calmed his frowning face,
That sprinkled o'er the burning throne,
And turned the wrath to grace.
Now we may bow before his feet,
And venture near the Lord;
No fiery cherub guards his seat,
Nor double-flaming sword.
The peaceful gates of heav'nly bliss
Are opened by the Son;
High let us raise our notes of praise,
And reach th' almighty throne.
To thee ten thousand thanks we bring,
Great Advocate on high;
And glory to th' eternal King,
That lays his fury by.
In this version, the blood of the new covenant--Christ's blood--bought our salvation by turning away the God's wrath toward the whole human race because of our sinful nature. The death of Jesus on the cross was the perfect sacrifice, and when God sees the very literal blood of his son Jesus as he dies on the cross, this appeases his wrath, and turns it to mercy toward all those who believe that Jesus died instead of them.
A somewhat less bloodthirsty version of the Vicarious Atonement focuses less on wrath and more on God's justice. In this version, the perfect justice of God the Father must be satisfied. And yet, since we are all sinful by nature, we can never reach the perfection demanded by God's justice; on our own we would all fall under eternal condemnation. Therefore, to save us, Christ lived a perfect life and became a perfect sacrifice, giving his life for us. This formed a new covenant between God and human beings with Christ as the mediator, taking away the penalty of our sins by shedding his own sinless blood on the cross and suffering the penalty of death instead of us, thus satisfying the perfect justice of God the Father. We are saved "vicariously" by believing that Christ died instead of us.
Now, I recognize that for some people whose minds do not reach very far above physical conceptions of reality, these beliefs can be very meaningful. Swedenborg takes a step in their direction when he writes:
For those who may be so simple-minded as to be unable to think with their understanding about anything other than what they see with their eyes, I advise them, when they take the bread and wine, and then hear the Lord's flesh and blood mentioned, to think to themselves that the Holy Supper is the holiest act of worship, and to remember Christ's passion and his love for our salvation. For he says, "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19); and, "The Son of Man came to give his soul as a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45); and, "I lay down my life for the sheep" (John 10: 15, 17; 15:13). (True Christian Religion #709)
Still, what strikes me about the Vicarious Atonement is that there is a misdirected emphasis on changing God, when we are the ones who need changing! In both the wrath-based version and the justice-based version of the Vicarious Atonement, Christ came to change God's mind about us. God the Father was angry with us because of our sin, or felt obliged to condemn us for our sin. Christ's act of perfect sacrifice on the cross turned God's wrath into love, or satisfied God's justice so that he could express love instead of condemnation toward us. Either way, Christ's blood on the cross accomplishes a change in God.
Granted, the Bible in its literal sense does talk about God changing his mind. However, the Bible is not simply God's Word, but God's word to us. In order to put the infinite truth of God into a form that our limited, finite minds can grasp, it must be put into an outward form that addresses the human perspective. This means that it sometimes talks in terms of the way things look to us, instead of the way they look to God.
The Bible itself tells us, "I, the Lord, do not change" (Malachi 3:6), and in another place, "God is not a mortal, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19). The problem with the Vicarious Atonement is that it aims to reconcile God to human beings, when it is we who need to be reconciled to God. Paul expresses it this way:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-20, emphasis mine)
This begs us to take a different view of the blood of the covenant than that of traditional Protestant doctrine. The blood of the covenant is meant to reconcile us to God. Paul gives us a big hint about how this takes place in the first verse just quoted: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" The blood of the new covenant--the blood of Christ--is meant to banish our old self and make us into a new creation. According to Swedenborg, this is precisely what the covenant is all about:
"A covenant" means nothing but spiritual rebirth and the things that relate to rebirth. This becomes clear from many places in the Bible where the Lord himself is called "the Covenant." For it is he alone who brings about our rebirth, to whom a reborn person looks, and who is the All in all of love and faith. . . . From this it is now clear what . . . "the blood of the covenant" is, namely, it is the Lord himself (Exodus 24:6, 8), who alone brings about our rebirth. So "a covenant" is rebirth itself. (Arcana Coelestia #666)
Paul and Swedenborg agree, then, that the new covenant offered to us by Jesus Christ as he appears in the New Testament is one that involves a complete change in us, reconciling us to God by causing us to be reborn as a new creation in God's image.
What role does the blood of the covenant play in this change that must take place in us in order for us to be reconciled to God? I would suggest that even based on the literal sense of the Bible, the blood of the new covenant is meant to be taken almost entirely non-literally--that is, spiritually.
I say almost entirely because there is a very literal sense in which God showed the depth of his love for us by his willingness to come to us in human form and suffer everything we fallen, evil humans could throw at him--up to and including a painful and bloody death. As Jesus himself says, "No one has greater love than this: that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Christ did literally shed his blood for us, showing us right down to the physical level that his love for us is so great that he will hold back nothing in order to save us.
This is not a mere sidelight of salvation, but a part of its essential nature. We Swedenborgians sometimes spiritualize Scripture so much that we miss direct and powerful meanings that are right there in the literal sense. When Jesus was telling his disciples about his impending death on the cross, he said, "when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to me" (John 12:32). If we put this together with his statement about the love shown by laying down our life for our friends, we have a literal picture of how the blood of Christ shed on the cross can bring about change in us. We are drawn to Christ when we feel the infinite, divine love that would give everything for us, even when, on our own, we are selfish, greedy, fallen creatures with little to recommend us to anyone's love.
This also gives us a clear path to seeing the deeper meaning of the blood of the covenant, which even the literal sense of the Bible draws us toward. To be blunt, if we attempt to take the blood of the new covenant too literally, the result is disgusting. Consider this passage from John, which was so difficult to accept even when Jesus originally said it that "from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him" (John 6:66):
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you. All who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink." (John 6:53-55)
Who volunteers to take this literally? The disciples didn't. And Jesus never offered them his literal flesh to eat nor his literal blood to drink. In fact, he very pointedly substituted a symbolic blood--wine--for his literal blood at the last supper. Speaking of the wine, he said:
This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:28. See also Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20)
Even as various disciples were deserting him after he spoke about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he was saying to them, "Does this offend you? . . . The spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life" (John 6:61, 63). The Bible does not get much more explicit in saying that a particular statement is meant to be interpreted spiritually rather than physically.
Many other passages could be quoted from the Bible to show that the primary meaning and intent of the blood of the covenant was spiritual rather than literal even when the Old and New Testaments were originally written. Swedenborg collects many of these passages in various places, including Arcana Coelestia #1001, 4735, 6804, and 9392-9401; Apocalypse Revealed #379; and True Christian Religion #706. It would take much too long to bring all those passages forward, so I would simply recommend that if you are interested, you read these sections from Swedenborg yourself.
For now, let's take a brief look at what the blood of the covenant may mean to us spiritually and personally. Jesus said, "No one has greater love than this: that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Christ's blood on the cross, as he laid down his life for us, was a demonstration of infinite divine love. And though later in his works Swedenborg interprets blood--and the wine that represents it in the Holy Supper--as divine truth, his first explanation of the blood of the covenant in the earlier numbers of the Arcana is that it represents the Lord's divine love (Arcana Coelestia #1001).
It would be a fascinating sidebar to see what the context was that caused this shift of the meaning of blood from love to truth. What is important for us now is to realize that if we take the flesh and blood of the Lord together, they represent the "substance" of who he is.
What is the substance of God? The Apostle John answers this question very clearly: "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4:8). And he continues a little later, "We know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16).
Truth is also a part of the essential nature of God. The Gospel of John opens by saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Later, the same Gospel says, in words that we use in our traditional Communion service, "Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth" (John 17:17).
What emerges is a picture of the flesh and blood of Christ being, not literal flesh and blood, which "counts for nothing" and would involve death, but instead the true, divine flesh and blood: the substance and nature of God, which is his divine love and divine truth.
If you have difficulty reading Bible passages that speak of sprinkling the blood of the covenant on the people, or washing us clean in the blood of the Lamb, or eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood, try the simple experiment of substituting "love" for "flesh" and "truth" for "blood." If you do this, you will find that these passages explode with meaning! It is the meaning of the Lord's love and the Lord's truth continually available to us, and their power to transform us into entirely new beings when we open ourselves up to God's presence on all levels of our being--head, heart, and hands.
I can think of no better way to conclude than to give you an example, using the passage quoted earlier from John 6:53-55. As you listen, picture yourself eating and drinking with your spirit--absorbing the Lord's presence into your loves, your feelings, your attitudes, your thoughts--and you will see how this blood of the new spiritual covenant can, indeed, transform each one of us into an entirely new creation:
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the love of the Son of Man, and drink his truth, you have no life in you. All who eat my love and drink my truth have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my love is real food, and my truth is real drink."
