I found out recently that this Sunday marks the founding of the National Science Foundation.  Thinking about this took me back to one of my favorite classes in college entitled, “the Doctrinal Framework of the Natural Sciences” by Rev. Dr. Reuben Bell.  He encouraged us to engage with nature as “affirmative principle” scientists, and that if we did we would come to see in it a reflection of the spiritual in the natural every time we took a walk.  What that in mind, this week’s spotlight features the connection between the natural sciences and spiritual thought.

Love and Peace,

Ethan

From the American Academy of Religions site:

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish nobleman widely known as a scientist, engineer, inventor, and (in later life) visionary theologian. A graduate of Uppsala University, he spent most of his career as an overseer on Sweden’s Board of Mines, and he was also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (as well as an active member of the Swedish parliament). 

He is best known for his prolific theological writings, which he produced and published following a spiritual awakening in his mid-fifties, and for the substantial influence those works have had on philosophical thought and spiritual/religious movements in the centuries since his death.

From the work Heaven and Hell:

In respect to those who have acquired . . . wisdom through knowledge and science, who are such as have acknowledged the Divine, loved the Word, and lived a spiritual moral life, to such the sciences have served as a means of becoming wise, and also of corroborating the things pertaining to faith. 

The interiors of the minds [of those like this] have been perceived by me, and were seen as transparent from light of a glistening white, flamy, or blue color…and this in accordance with confirmations in favor of the Divine and Divine truths drawn from science. Such is the appearance of true . . . wisdom [in the spiritual world].

All this makes clear that it is by means of knowledges and sciences that a person may be made spiritual, also that these are the means of becoming wise, but only with those who have acknowledged the Divine in faith and life.  (Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell 356)