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Swedenborg, Emanuel - The Infinite - The Great Work
Identifier
021742
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Swedenborg believed the plan – the Great Work - was unaffected by minor events, in effect this was quite definitely a strategic plan.
As time is applicable to the physical world only, [the Finite in Swedenborg's quote], any plan is executed within time but conceived out of time [the Infinite]. The plan thus has no 'start dates' or 'end dates'.
Practically all computer strategic plans are conceived first as logical orders of development. Time is not attached to them unless there is some very definite date by which something has to be achieved and in all cases the addition of time is only done after the logical ordering has taken place.
Since there is no pressure on God [!], there is no need for any time to be attached. Each interval can take as long in our physical universe as it needs to.
A description of the experience
Emmanuel Swedenborg –The Infinite and the final cause of creation
… its abettors are not so gross as to think that it pleases God to be changing daily and constantly framing new designs for every new conjuncture of circumstances; that is to say, to be continually modifying His plan at the bidding of events, so that what He would do today, He would not do tomorrow, because of the altered condition of things; or so that His will and decision would depend upon a succession of mutable causes, as is the case in finite man......
…If He is infinite, then all things were present to Him that are future to us. For can anything be predicated of the Infinite in a finite sense? Is not that then present in Him which is successive or finite in time?……….
If He, the Infinite, operated and provided successively and in time with a constant substitution of new acts according to events and if He must want for the events before He knew what they would be, or whether they would happen, or not – if this were the case, we again say, what would become of His infinity. If providence is successive, like time, where is the Infinite? Succession itself is an implied condition of the future.
Seeing therefore that God is Infinite, why should we seek to limit Him by time, chance, or any other predicament whatever that would necessarily involve the existence of finiteness in His essence?