Ishmael and Isaac

What do we need an inner sense of the Word for? Isn't the literal sense good enough?

This would be a frequently asked question if it were widenly know that there is a inner sense of the Word, and has been since the time of the American Revolution. That it isn't widely known shows why it became necessary. The Word is the link between heaven and our world, allowing people of faith formed by it to live heavenly lives, charitable lives now in the world. This is true of the literal sense and the inner sense of the Word. The Word allows us to become spiritual from being natural in a process little known from its literal sense but extensively explained in the inner sense, a process of interiorization by which we learn spiritual truths as teachings, then as spiritual insights, then as conscience, then as actions, then as characteristics or virtues. The inner sense serves us in this way (though not alone, not without the ongoing work of the Divine Human - this is not a natural process, but a spiritual process) so long as it is not blocked for us by other influences, some of which are evil and others which are, well, ignorant. Evil and ignorance are the classic opponents of spiritual growth, and spiritual growth or transformation is why we are here, in this life. Evil is a topic for another time; today I want to talk about ignorance, spiritual ignorance. It opposes spiritual influences by lack of receptivity to them. By 'spiritual' I mean certain kinds of truth, love and power. The relevant truths are about the structure and processes of this world beyond the natural. The loves are of God, of our neighbors and in a special way of our spouses. If a person has no receptivity to these loves and truths, or knows of them but in a completely distorted way, he or she cannot be transformed by them or use them as they are meant to be used. The differences can be seen as those between Ishamael and Isaac. (see AC 1949-1950) Ishmael was the son of Abram and his wife's slave Hagar, and represents the first rational, the natural rational, which can know of spiritual truths but not as spiritual, but only as natural knowledge. As such, he uses this knowledge as he uses any other natural knowledge, as tools of his primary love, of himself in a narrow sense, one that puts him at odds with everyone else. His love is disjunctive, and his knowledge serves that intent. But spiritual loves are conjunctions with others, and only a very different kind of rationality can serve conjunctions. That kind is represented by Isaac, the son of Abram and Sarai, who represents truth conjoined with good, truth from good. This latter kind of rationality, a spiritual rationality, is the work of the Word and the Divine Human in our lives in conjunction with our own efforts to follow the Lord, shun evil and treat our neighbors with charity.

The inner sense of the Word shows up in our world during the Enlightenment, when Ishmael-type reason was doing its worst to destroy religion entirely by declaring it irrational. The great conflict between science and religion it began has only recently begun to wind down. In his recent book the Future of Faith, Harvey Cox says it is all but over now. (I'm not convinced.) The inner sense of the Word has a great deal of material about what spirituality is, about how it is a kind of rationality, not an opponent of rationality. If a person has been completely turned off to religion because he or she thinks it is irrational, how might he or she become receptive to religion except by learning about a very different (and far more powerful, transformative) kind of rationality?

Harvey Cox says Christianity is entering a new era, an Age of Spirit, in which it resembles the early centuries of the faith. Christianity is now more southern hemisphere and Eastern than it is northern hemisphere and Euro-American, and the trend is continuing. In the near future the strangeness of spiritual knowledge like that of the Word's inner sense may become a lot less off-putting.