GOD
1. The Unity of God
2. The Essence and Existence of God
3. The Infinity of God
4. The Creation of the Universe by God
5. The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom.
6. Creation from both the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom
7. The End of Creation which is a Heaven of Angels
8. Omnipotence; Omniscience; Omnipresence
THE LORD THE REDEEMER
9. In God is Love and Wisdom, or Divine Good and Divine Truth
10. He descended in respect of the Divine Truth
11. That Truth is the Word
12. What the Holy Spirit, and the Power of the Highest are
13. The Human of the Lord is the Son of God
14. The Lord’s state of Exinanition while in the world
15. The Uniting of Divine Truth and Good in the Human
16. After uniting them, He returned to the Father
17. He glorified Himself successively
18. The Union is like that of Soul and Body
REDEMPTION
19. A Church declines successively from good to evil
20. The end of a Church is whenever the power of evil and hell prevails over good and heaven
21. Similarly there is a departure from what is internal to what is external
22. The description in the Word of the end and of the progression
23. A total damnation is then imminent
24. The Lord redeemed men and angels
25. The temptations of the Lord, the Christ
26. Redemption can be effected only by God Incarnate
THE HOLY SPIRIT
27. The Holy Spirit is the Divine proceeding
28. It proceeds from God by means of the Human
29. It passes into the world through heaven
30. And after that, to men by means of men
31. The Holy Spirit is the Word
32. Its Operation is Instruction, Reformation, etc.**
33. God is recognized from Divine Truth**
34. What is meant by a man’s spirit**
THE TRINITY
35. There is a Divine Trinity
36. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are the three essentials of the One God
37. Before the world was created, the Trinity did not exist
38. The Trinity, after the world was created, came into existence in Jesus Christ
39. This Trinity is derivable from the Word as well as from the Apostles’ Creed, but not from the Nicene Creed
40. Discordant ideas derived from the Nicene Trinity**
41. This Trinity has perverted the Church
42. It has also falsified the Word
43. Thence there is the “affliction” and desolation foretold by the Lord
44. There cannot be any salvation unless a new Church is established by the Lord
45. The Trinity is in the Lord the Saviour, wherefore He Alone is to be approached that there may be salvation, or eternal life
* Sk. has “Index of General Subjects or the Christian Religion”.
** Chapter is missing from the text.
**At this day nothing but the self-evidencing reason of love will restore [the Church], because [men] have fallen away.
The present-day Church is in error about God, in error about faith, and in error about charity, also it knows nothing about eternal life; and so it is in gross darkness.
The whole of religion is based upon the idea held about God, and is in conformity with it.
This is the Church towards which all Churches from the first have pointed as it were in a regular series, and about which Daniel prophesied.
* Sk. does not contain the statements printed on this page, but has the following at the beginning:
The reason the New Church could not be established before the last judgment had been accomplished was so that holy things should not be profaned. It has been foretold that the spiritual sense of the Word is to be disclosed then, also that the Lord alone is the Word whose advent then takes place.
The reason religion exists with few at the present day is that
1. It is not known of the Lord, that He is God alone in person and essence, and that the Trinity is in Him; when yet all religion is founded upon a knowledge of God and upon the adoration and worship of Him;
2. It is not known that faith is nothing but the truth, or whether what they call faith is the truth or not;
3. It is not known what charity is, nor what evil is, or good;
4. It is not known what eternal life is.
In so far as truths of life are made a matter of life, truths of faith become a matter of faith, not a fraction more nor a fraction less. Some truths are matters of knowledge, not matters of faith.
** The Latin of this sentence is elliptical-as follows:
Quod hodie non aliud quam suisona ratio amoris instaurabit, quia lapsi sunt.
I. THERE IS ONE GOD.
II. THAT ONE GOD IS BEING (Esse) ITSELF, WHICH IS JEHOVAH.
III. THAT GOD HIMSELF IS FROM ETERNITY, AND THEREFORE IS ETERNITY ITSELF.
IV. GOD, BECAUSE HE IS BEING (Esse) ITSELF, AND IS FROM ETERNITY, IS THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE.
V. THAT ONE ONLY GOD IS LOVE ITSELF AND WISDOM ITSELF, THUS LIFE ITSELF.
VI. HE CREATED THE UNIVERSE FROM DIVINE LOVE, BY MEANS OF DIVINE WISDOM, OR WHAT IS THE SAME THING, FROM DIVINE GOOD, BY MEANS OF DIVINE TRUTH.
VII. WITH HIM THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE HAD AS AN END AN ANGELIC HEAVEN FROM THE HUMAN RACE.
VIII. AND IN CONSEQUENCE, WITH MEN AND ANGELS, THE COMMUNICATION AND CONJUNCTION OF HIS LOVE AND WISDOM, AND THEREBY THEIR BLESSEDNESS AND HAPPINESS TO ETERNITY.
IX. THAT END WAS IN GOD THE CREATOR FROM ETERNITY, AND IS IN HIM TO ETERNITY, HENCE THERE IS THE PRESERVATION OF THE CREATED UNIVERSE BY HIM.
X. By MEANS OF HIS DIVINE PROCEEDING GOD HAS OMNIPOTENCE, OMNIPRESENCE AND OMNISCIENCE. Apocalypse Revealed, n. 31.*
* Marginal Notes:
“The Essence and Existence of God; the immensity and eternity of God; or chiefly such ….
Theological things occupy the highest region of the human mind; they are innumerable.
In the midst of them is God.
There is an influx from Him, like that from a sun, into every single thing round about underneath.
Therefore a mode of speaking, so that a knowledge of Him penetrates and fills them all.
Conjunction with Him makes a man an image of Him.
Conjunction is effected by means of love and wisdom.”
The above propositions were copied by Johansen immediately after X above and numbered consecutively 11 to 17. Worcester says, “The first of them seems to be imperfect and is not found in the Skara MS.” Nordenskjold regarded them as belonging to Chapter II and following no. 7 there.
THE UNITY OF GOD, OR THAT THERE IS ONE GOD
1. The recognition and acknowledgement that God is One is the highest and innermost, consequently the universal, of all the doctrinal things of the Church.
2. Unless there were one God, the universe could not have been created and preserved.
3. In a man who does not acknowledge God, there is not the Church, and so there is not heaven.
4. In a man who acknowledges not one God but several, nothing of the Church holds together.
5. From God, and out of the angelic heaven, there is a universal influx into man’s soul, that there is a God, and that He is One.
6. Human reason can, if it will, perceive from many things in the world that there is a God and also that He is One.
7. It is due to this that there is not a nation in the whole world having religion and sound reason that does not acknowledge and confess One God.
8. Scripture, and therefrom the doctrines of the Churches in Christendom, teach that there is One God.
9. But as regards what kind of God this One is, peoples and nations have deviated and do deviate into different opinions.
10. There are several reasons for past and present deviation into different opinions about God and about His unity.
THIS ONE GOD IS BEING (Esse) ITSELF, AND THIS IS JEHOVAH or THE ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE OF GOD IN HIS VERY SELF
1. That One God is termed Jehovah from Being (Esse), thus from the fact that He is
He who is, who was, and who is to come
or, what is the same, that He is
the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. [Rev. i 8, 11; xxii 13; Isa. xliv 6.]
2. Therefore this one only God is very Essence, Substance, and Form; and men and angels are spiritual essences, substances and forms, or images and likenesses, in so far as they derive quality from that very and one only Divine.
3. The Divine Being (Esse) is Being (Esse) in itself.
4. The Divine Being (Esse) in itself is Divine Existing (Existere) in itself as well.
5. The Divine Being (Esse) and Existing (Existere) in itself cannot produce another Divine that is Being (Esse) and Existing (Existere) in itself.
6. Consequently another God of identical essence with the One God is not possible.
7. The plurality of gods in ancient times, and partly in modern times, did not originate from any other source than the Divine Essence not being understood.
THE INFINITY OF GOD
1. Because God existed before the world, thus before there were spaces and times, He is infinite.
2. Because God is and exists in Himself, and all things in the world are and exist from Him, He is infinite.
3. Because God, after the making of the world, is in space apart from space and in time apart from time, He is infinite.
4. Because God is the All in all things of the world, and especially the All in all things of heaven and the Church, He is infinite.
5. The Infinity of God, in relationship to spaces, is termed Immensity; and in relationship to times, termed Eternity.
6. Although the Immensity of God is in relationship to spaces, and His Eternity is in relationship to times, still there is nothing of space in His Immensity, and nothing of time in His Eternity.
7. By the Immensity of God is meant His Divinity in respect of Being (Esse), and By His Eternity, His Divinity in respect of Existing (Existere); each in itself, or in Him.
8. Every created thing is finite; and the infinite is in finite things as in its receptacles.
9. Because angels and men are created and therefore finite, they cannot comprehend either the Infinity of God, or His Immensity and Eternity, such as these are in themselves.
10. Nevertheless those who are enlightened by God can see as through a lattice that God is Infinite.
11. Indeed there is an image of the Infinite stamped upon varieties and propagations in the world; upon varieties, in that there are never two things identical; and upon propagations, animate and inanimate, in that there is the multiplying of one seed to infinity, and its prolification to eternity; besides many other things.*
12. According to how far and in what way a man and angel acknowledges the Unity and Infinity of God, he becomes, if he lives well, a receptacle and image of God.
13. It is useless to think about what there was prior to the world, or what there is outside of it, for prior to the world time did not exist, and outside of it space does not exist.
14. By thinking about these things a man can become crazy if he is not partly withdrawn by God from the space and time idea, for this is inherent in each and all things of human thought, and it clings to each and all things of angelic thought.
* Marginal Notes:
There are certain forms-the squaring of the circle, the hyperbola, series of numbers tending to infinity, the diversity of human faces, and of minds also; then too, the angelic heaven of light can be increased without limit, [and] the starry heaven, etc.
THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE BY THE ONE, INFINITE GOD*
1. No one can form to himself an idea of God creating the universe, or perceive that He created it, without first knowing something about the spiritual world and its Sun, as well as about the correspondence and the conjunction thereby of spiritual things with natural things.
2. There are two worlds, the spiritual world where spirits and angels are, and the natural world where men are.
3. There is a sun in the spiritual world and another in the natural world; also the spiritual world came into existence and continues in existence from its sun, and the natural world by means of its sun.
4. The Sun of the spiritual world is pure love from Jehovah God who is in the midst of it; and the sun of the natural world is pure fire.
5. Everything that goes forth out of the Sun of the spiritual world is alive; and everything out of the sun of the natural world is dead.
6. Consequently everything that goes forth out of the Sun of the spiritual world is spiritual and everything out of the sun of the natural world is natural.
7. Jehovah God created the spiritual world by means of the Sun in the midst of which He is, and the natural world indirectly by means of the spiritual world.
8. Spiritual things are substantial and natural things are material; and these latter came into existence and continue in existence from the former, as that which follows does from that which precedes, or as what is exterior from what is interior.
9. Consequently all the things in the spiritual world are, with a difference in perfection, also in the natural world; and conversely.
10. Because what is natural originates from what is spiritual, as the material does from the substantial, they are everywhere together, and thus by means of the natural the spiritual carries on its activities and performs its functions.
11. In the spiritual world a conception of creation is constantly coming into existence, inasmuch as all things that exist and take place there are created in a moment by Jehovah God.
12. Around every angel in heaven there is the concept of creation.**
13. There is a correspondence between the things of the spiritual world and the things of the natural world; and by means of the correspondence there is conjunction between them.
14. From these things it is clear that, without knowledge beforehand of the spiritual world and its Sun, and about correspondence, the creation of the universe by the one infinite God cannot be comprehended at all; and it is due to this that there have appeared hypotheses, based upon naturalism, about the creation of the universe, that are foolish.
* Marginal Note:
See above concerning Jehovah or the Being (Esse) of God: also no. 1; also the thing lacking here may be selected therefrom.
** Marginal Note: In the spiritual world creation can be visible before the sight; there all things are created by the Lord as in a moment; houses, things of use in the house, foods, garments; fields, gardens, plains; flocks and herds; all are created. These and innumerable other things are created in accordance with the angels’ affections and their perceptions therefrom, and they come into sight round the angels and last so long as the angels are in those affections, and they are taken away as soon as the affections cease. Also in the hells, serpents, and harmful animals and birds are created; not that these are created by the Lord, but the good are turned into evil. Hence it is clear that all things in the world are created by the Lord, and fixed by means of the natural things encompassing them.
THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM IN GOD
1. Love and Wisdom are the two essentials and universals of Life; Love is the Being (Esse) of Life, and Wisdom the Existing (Existere) of Life from that Being.
2. God is Love and Wisdom itself, because He is very Being (Esse) and Existing (Existere) itself.
3. Unless God were Love and Wisdom itself, there would not be anything of love or anything of wisdom with angels in heaven or with men in the world.
4. To the extent that, by means of wisdom and love, angels and men are united to God, they are in true love and in true wisdom.
5. Two things go forth from Jehovah God, by means of the Sun in the midst of which He is, heat and light; the heat going forth from it is love, and the light wisdom.
6. The light going forth out of it is the splendour of love, meant in the Word by “glory.”
7. That light is life itself.
8. Angels and men are alive to the extent that from God they are in wisdom derived from love.
9. It is the same whether you say God is Good itself and Truth itself or He is Love itself and Wisdom itself; because all good is of love and all truth is of wisdom.
10. Love and wisdom are inseparable and indivisible; similarly, good and truth; on which account, such as the love is with angels and men, such is the wisdom with them, or what is the same, such as the good, such the truth; not, however, the converse.
THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE BY THE ONE INFINITE GOD, FROM THE DIVINE LOVE BY MEANS OF THE DIVINE WISDOM
1. Enlightened reason sees that the very first origin of the world is love, and that the world was created from that by means of wisdom. It is owing to this and not anything else that the world is, from its first things to its last things, a work that is eternally self-consistent,
2. That the world was created from love by means of wisdom, thus by means of the Sun* which is pure Love with Jehovah God in the midst of it, can be seen from the correspondence of love with heat, and wisdom with light. By means of these two, heat and light, the world continues in existence, and year by year all the things on its surface are created; and if they were both withdrawn, the world would fall into chaos, and so into nothing.
3. There are three things that follow in regular sequence and go forth in inseparable companionship, namely, Love, Wisdom, and Use.
4. Love comes into existence by means of wisdom, and in use continues in existence.
5. These three are in God, and the three of them go forth from God.
6. The created universe consists of an endless number of receptacles of those three.
7. Because love and wisdom come into existence and continue in existence in use, the created universe is a receptacle of uses, which, by reason of their source, are limitless.
8. As all good is from God and good and use are one, and as the created universe is the fullness of uses in forms, it follows that the created universe is the fullness of God.
9. That creation was effected from the Divine Love by means of the Divine Wisdom is meant by these words in John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. All things were made by Him . . . and the world was made by Him. [John i 1, 3, 10.]
By ” God ” there is meant the Divine Good of love, and by ” the Word ” which also was God, the Divine Truth of wisdom.
10. Evils, or evil uses, did not come into existence until after creation.
* This ‘Sun’ is the Sun of the spiritual world, not to be confused with the sun of the natural world. See above, chapter iv.
THE VERY END OF CREATION: IT IS AN ANGELIC HEAVEN FROM THE HUMAN RACE
1. In the created world there are continuous progressions of ends, that is, progressions from first ends, through intermediate ends, to last ends.
2. First ends are of love or are things relating to love; intermediate ends are of wisdom or are things relating to wisdom; last ends are of use or are things relating to use. This is so because the infinitely all things in God and from God are of love, wisdom, and use.
3. These progressions of ends advance from first things to last things, and then return from the last things to the first things; they advance and return in periods, called the cycles of things.
4. These progressions of ends are more universal and less universal and are aggregates of individual ends.
5. The most universal end, which is the end of ends, is in God, and it goes forth from God from the first things of the spiritual world to the last things of the natural world; and then from these last it returns to those first things, thus to God.
6. That most universal end, or end of ends from God, is an angelic heaven from the human race.
7. That most universal end is the aggregate of all ends and of their progressions in both the spiritual and natural worlds.*
* In the original MS., according to N., the three paragraphs following, numbered 8, 9 and 10, have a line deleting them. In Sk. this line is not noted, and 8 and 9 make one paragraph numbered 8, and what is here numbered 10 is numbered 9
“8. That most universal end is the inmost and as it were the life and soul, the force and effort, in every single created thing.
9. On account of this there is a binding connection between all things in the created universe from the first to the last and from the last to the first.
10. The preservation of the universe results from this end being implanted in created things, in the whole and in the part.”
Cf. no. 11 of the alternative version of this chapter.
1. Love is a spiritual conjoining.
2. True love cannot remain inactive in itself, nor be restricted within its own confines; but it desires to go out and embrace others in love.
3. True love desires to be conjoined to others and to impart and give its own things to them,
4. True love desires to dwell in others, and to dwell in itself from others.
5. Divine love, which is love itself and God Himself, desires to be in a subject that is an image and likeness of Himself; consequently it desires to be in man, and desires man to be in Him.
6. For this to be brought about, it follows from the very essence of the love that is in God, and hence for an impelling reason, that a universe had to be created by God, in which there should be earths, upon which there should be men, and in the men minds and souls with which a Divine love can be conjoined.
7. All the things, therefore, that have been created have regard to man as an end.
8. Because the angelic heaven is formed of men, of their spirits and souls, all the things that have been created have regard to an angelic heaven as an end.
9. The angelic heaven is the dwelling-place itself of God with men, and of men with God.
10. Eternal blessednesses, happinesses, and delights are ends of creation at the same time because they are of love.
11. This end is inmost; thus it is as it were the life and soul, and as it were the force and effort in every single created thing.
12. That end is God in them.
13. This end implanted in created things in the whole and in the part causes the universe to be preserved in its created state, in so far as the ends of a contrary love do not hinder or overthrow.
14. God, in His Divine Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience unceasingly provides that contrary ends from contrary loves shall not prevail, and the work of creation be overthrown to the point of utter destruction.
15. Preservation is an unceasing creation, just as subsistence is an unceasing coming forth.
12. CHAPTER VIII
GOD’S OMNIPOTENCE, OMNISCIENCE, AND OMNIPRESENCE
1. God’s Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence do not come within the scope of the human understanding because God’s Omnipotence is infinite power, God’s Omniscience is infinite wisdom, and Omnipresence is infinite presence in all the things that have gone forth and that do go forth from Him; and indeed the Infinite Divine does not come within the scope of a finite understanding.*
2. That God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent is acknowledged without rational investigation; for this flows in from God into the higher part of the human mind, and thence, with all with whom there is religion and sound reason, into acknowledgement. It flows in also with those with whom there is not religion; but with these, there is not reception, and hence not acknowledgement.
3. That God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent, a man can himself confirm from innumerable things that are matters of reason and at the same time of religion, as for instance these that follow:
4. First, God alone is and exists in Himself; and every other being and every other thing is from Him.
5. Second, God alone loves, is wise, and lives and acts from Himself; every other being and every other thing does so from Him.
6. Third, God alone has power from Himself; every other being and every other thing has power from Him.
7. Consequently, God is the soul of the whole, from which all beings and all things are, live, and move.
8. Unless every single thing in the world and in heaven had relation to One who is, lives, and has power from Himself, the universe would be dissipated in a moment.
9. On this account the universe was created by God a fullness of God, wherefore He Himself said that He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega, who was, is, and will be, the Almighty. [Rev. i 8, 11.]
10. The preservation of the universe which is an unceasing creation is complete evidence that God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent.
11. The reason contrary things, which are evils, are not taken away because God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent, is that evils are extraneous to subjects and created things and so do not penetrate to the Divine things that are within.
12. Of the Divine Providence, which indeed is universal in the very smallest things, evils are removed more and more from the interiors and cast out to the outside, and in this way are conveyed away and separated in order that they should not do any harm to the internal things that are Divine.**
* In Sk. words follow here which N. regarded as a marginal note:
“All things proceed according to order. God is order.”
** The three following paragraphs are regarded by N. as annotations and are not numbered. In Sk. the first and second are united as number 13, and the last is numbered as 14.
“There is Divine Omnipotence by means of His Human; this is ‘sitting at the right hand’ [Mark xiv 62; xvi 19; Matt. xxvi 64) and being ‘the First and the Last’, as is said of the Son of Man in the Revelation [i 8, 11, and it is there said that He is ‘the Almighty’. The reason is that God acts from first things by means of the last, and thus holds all things together.
The Lord acts from first things by means of the last things with men; not by means of anything of man’s, but by what is His Own in man; in the case of the Jews He acted by means of the Word with them, thus by what was His Own; by it also He performed miracles through Elijah and Elisha; but because the Jews perverted the Word. God Himself came and made Himself ‘the Last’; and so then He performed miracles from Himself.
There is an order first created, according to which God may act and therefore God Himself made Himself Order.
* Marginal Note:
“Falsities of faith cannot be conjoined with the good of charity. The things successively predicted in Daniel and all the prophets. About Christ [Matt. xxiv].”
In Sk. this note has only a comma after “prophets”.
IN JEHOVAH GOD THERE ARE TWO THINGS OF THE SAME ESSENCE, DIVINE LOVE AND DIVINE WISDOM, OR DIVINE GOOD AND DIVINE TRUTH
1. Both as a whole and individually, all things in the two worlds, the spiritual and the natural, have relation to love and wisdom, or to good and truth, for God, Creator and Establisher of the universe, is Love itself and Wisdom itself, or Good itself and Truth itself.
2. Exactly as all things in man, both as a whole and individually, have relation to the will and the understanding, inasmuch as the will is the receptacle of good or love, and the understanding is the receptacle of wisdom and truth.
3. And exactly as all things in the universe in respect of coming into existence and continuing in existence have relation to heat and light; and the heat in the spiritual world is in its essence love and the light there in its essence is wisdom; and the heat and light in the natural world correspond to the love and wisdom in the spiritual world.
4. It is on this account that all things in the Church have relation to charity and faith, inasmuch as charity is good and faith is truth.
5. Consequently in the prophetical Word there are pairs of expressions, the one of which has relation to good, and the other to truth, and thus they have relation to Jehovah God who is Good itself and Truth itself.
6. In the Word of the Old Testament “Jehovah” signifies the Divine Being (Esse) which is Divine Good, and “God” signifies the Divine Existing (Existere) which is Divine Truth; and “Jehovah God” signifies both; so also does “Jesus Christ”.
7. Good is good, and truth is truth, to the extent that they are conjoined and according to the manner in which they are conjoined.
8. Good has existence by means of truth consequently truth is good’s form, and therefore good’s quality.
JEHOVAH GOD IN RESPECT OF DIVINE WISDOM OR DIVINE TRUTH DESCENDED AND TOOK TO HIMSELF A HUMAN IN THE VIRGIN MARY
1. Jehovah God took to Himself a Human in order that He might, in the fullness of time, become Redeemer and Saviour.
2. He became Redeemer and Saviour by means of the Righteousness which He then in respect of the Human put on.
3. He could not become Righteousness, and thus Redeemer and Saviour in respect of His Human, except by means of the Divine Truth, as it was by means of the Divine Truth that from the beginning all things were made that were made.
4. It was possible for the Divine Truth to fight against the hells, and it could be tempted, blasphemed, reviled, and undergo suffering.
5. But it was not possible for the Divine Good nor for God, except in a human conceived and born in accordance with Divine order.
6. Jehovah God therefore descended in respect of the Divine Truth and took to Himself a human.
7. This is in agreement with Sacred Scripture and with reason enlightened therein and therefrom.
16. CHAPTER III
THIS DIVINE TRUTH IS MEANT BY “THE WORD” WHICH BECAME FLESH ” [John i.]*
1. “Word” in Sacred Scripture signifies various things; for instance, it signifies “a thing that really comes into existence”, then “the mind’s thought”, and thence “speech”.
2. First of all it signifies everything that comes into existence from the mouth of God, and goes forth, thus the Divine Truth; then derivatively it signifies Sacred Scripture, for therein Divine Truth is in its essence and form. It is because of this that the Divine Truth is termed in a single expression “the Word”.
3. The “ten words” of the Decalogue signify all Divine truths in the aggregate.
4. “The Word” in consequence signifies the Lord, the Redeemer and Saviour; for all things therein are from Him, thus Himself.
5. It can be seen from these things that by “the Word that in the beginning was with God” and that “was God” and that was “with God before the world was” is meant the Divine Truth, which before creation was in Jehovah, and after creation was from Jehovah, and finally was the Divine Human which Jehovah took to Himself in time; for it is said that “the Word became flesh”, that is became Man.
6. The hypostatic Word is nothing else than the Divine Truth.
* Marginal Note:
“The Hypostatic Word
The Son would not have been able to call Himself God, thus call Himself the Father. No Son of God from eternity could descend in accordance with the declaration of the doctrine of the present Church, inasmuch as:
1. He would not have been able to call Him His Father;
2. Nor would He have been able to say that all things of the Father were His.
3. Nor that He who sees Him sees the Father;
4. At the Baptism and the Transfiguration God the Father would not have been able to say:
This is My beloved Son. [Matt. iii 17; xvii 5.]
besides a number of passages from the Old Testament Word about the Coming of the Lord, brought together in THE DOCTRINE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CONCERNING THE LORD, no. 6, and in them, that Jehovah would come.”
In Sk. this note follows in the text as number 8 of chapter ii.
17. CHAPTER IV
THE “HOLY SPIRIT” WHICH CAME UPON MARY SIGNIFIES THE DIVINE TRUTH, AND THE “POWER OF THE HIGHEST” WHICH OVERSHADOWED HER SIGNIFIES THE DIVINE GOOD FROM WHICH THE FORMER IS
1. The Holy Spirit is the Divine going forth, thus the Divine Truth teaching, reforming, regenerating, and making alive.
2. This is the Divine Truth, which Jehovah God spoke through the prophets, and which the Lord Himself spoke from His own mouth when He was in the world.
3. This Divine Truth, which also is “the Word”, was in the Lord from His birth as a result of His conception. Afterwards it was increased beyond all measure, that is, infinitely, and this is meant by the Spirit of Jehovah having been put upon Him. [Isa. xlii 1; Matt. iii 16.]
4. The Spirit of Jehovah is called the Holy Spirit inasmuch as “holy” in the Word is said of Divine Truth. It is because of this that the Lord’s human born in Mary is said to be “Holy” (Luke i); and the Lord Himself is said to be the “Only Holy” (Rev. xv 4); and that others are said to be holy, not from themselves, but from Him.
5. In the Word, Divine Good is termed “the Highest”; and so the “Power of the Highest” [Luke i 35] signifies Power proceeding from Divine Good.
6. These two things, therefore, “the Holy Spirit coming upon” and “the power of the Highest overshadowing” signify both, namely, Divine Truth and Divine Good-the latter making the soul and the former the body-and their being communicated.
7. Consequently, in the Lord when newly-born those two were distinct, as soul and body are, but afterwards they were united.
8. In the same way as takes place in a man, who is born and afterwards regenerated.
18. CHAPTER V
THE HUMAN OF THE LORD JEHOVAH IS THE SON OF GOD SENT INTO THE WORLD
1. Jehovah God sent Himself into the world by taking to Himself a human.
2. This Human, conceived of Jehovah God, is termed “the Son of God which was sent into the world” [John iii 17].
3. This Human is termed the Son of God and “the Son of Man”; “the Son of God” on account of the Divine Truth and the Divine Good in it, which is “the Word”; and “the Son of Man” on account of Divine Truth and Good from Himself, which is the doctrine* of the Church from the Word thence.
4. No other “Son of God” is meant in the Word than the Son who was born in the world.
5. A “Son of God born from eternity” who is a God by Himself is not from Sacred Scripture and is also contrary to reason that is enlightened by God.
6. This was devised and produced by the Nicene Council as a refuge into which those could betake themselves who wanted to keep clear of the scandals spread by Arius and his followers concerning the Lord’s Human.
7. The Primitive Church, called Apostolic, knew nothing about the birth of any Son of God from eternity.
* This rendering follows Sk. N. has “doctrinae ecclesiae”, which would be “of the doctrine of the Church”. There is a crossed out note,
“See below chap. v, no. 9.”, which may refer to the section on “The Holy Spirit”.
19. CHAPTER VI
THE LORD, IN THE DEGREE THAT HE WAS, IN RESPECT OF THE HUMAN, IN DIVINE TRUTH SEPARATELY, WAS IN A STATE OF EXINANITION; BUT IN THE DEGREE THAT HE WAS WITH DIVINE GOOD, CONJOINTLY, HE WAS IN A STATE OF GLORIFICATION
1. The Lord had two states: the one called a state of exinanition,* the other a state of glorification.
2. The state of exinanition was also a state of humiliation before the Father, but the state of glorification was a state of being united with the Father.
3. The Lord, when in the state of exinanition or humiliation, prayed to the Father as to one absent or far off, but when in the state of glorification or of being united He spoke with Himself when He spoke with the Father; exactly as in the case of man there are states of the soul and the body before and after regeneration.
4. The Lord, when in the Divine Truth, separately, was in the state of exinanition, inasmuch as the Divine Truth could be attacked by the hells, or by the devils there, and could be reviled by men; therefore the Lord when in the Divine Truth separately could be tempted and could suffer.
5. On the other hand, however, the Lord when in Divine Good conjointly could not, either by devils in hell, or by men in the world, be tempted or made to suffer; for the Divine Good cannot be approached, still less assailed.
6. The Lord, in the world, was alternately in those two states.
7. In no other way was it possible for the Lord to become Righteousness and Redemption.
8. The like takes place with a man being regenerated by the Lord.
9. This from experience, reason, and Sacred Scripture.
* The term “exinanition” is used in the Latin Vulgate in Philipp. ii 7, “made himself of no reputation”. The literal translation of the Greek is “emptied himself”. Cf. Isa. liii 12, “he poured out his soul unto death”. See also True Christian Religion, no. 104.
THE LORD, BY MEANS OF TEMPTATIONS, AND FULLY BY THE PASSION OF THE CROSS, UNITED THE DIVINE TRUTH TO THE DIVINE GOOD, AND THE DIVINE GOOD TO THE DIVINE TRUTH, THUS THE HUMAN WITH THE DIVINE OF THE FATHER, AND THE DIVINE OF THE FATHER WITH THE HUMAN
1. The Lord, in the world, admitted into Himself, and underwent severe and terrible temptations from the hells, and in the end the last of them, which was the passion of the cross.
2. In the temptations the Lord fought with the hells, but He conquered and subjugated them.
3. He thereby reduced the hells to order, and then at the same time the heavens where angels are and the Church where men are, as the state of the one is at all times dependent on the state of the other.
4. The Lord, furthermore, by means of His temptations and rejections, and finally by the passion on the cross, represented the state of the Church, such as it then was, in respect of Divine Truth, thus in respect of the Word.
5. The Lord, by fulfilling the Word and by means of temptations, and fully by the last of the temptations which was the passion on the cross, glorified the Human.
6. He thus took away the universal damnation threatening not only Christendom but the whole world also and the angelic heaven as well.
7. This is what is meant by His “bearing” and “taking away” the sins of the world.
8. He underwent the temptations and the rejections when in the state of truth separately, which was His state of exinanition.
9. The conjoining of the spiritual man with the natural, and of the natural man with the spiritual, is effected by means of temptations.
AFTER THE UNITING WAS COMPLETED, HE RETURNED INTO THE DIVINE IN WHICH HE WAS FROM ETERNITY, TOGETHER WITH, AND IN, THE GLORIFIED HUMAN
1. From eternity Jehovah God had a human such as angels in the heavens have, but of infinite essence, thus Divine: He did not have such a human as men on the earths have.
2. Jehovah God took to Himself such a Human as men on the earths have in accordance with His Divine Order, which is, that it should be conceived, be born, grow up, and should drink in Divine Wisdom and Divine Love, successively.
3. Thus He united this Human with His Divine from eternity, and in this manner He “came forth from the Father and returned to the Father” [John xvi 28].
4. Jehovah God, in this Human, and by means of it, “executed righteousness” and made Himself Redeemer and Saviour.
5. And by uniting it with His Divine He made Himself Redeemer and Saviour to eternity.
6. Jehovah God by the union of this Human with His Divine exalted His Omnipotence. This is meant by “sitting on the right hand of God” [Mark xvi 19].
7. Jehovah God in this Human is above the heavens, enlightening the universe with the light of wisdom, and inspiring into the universe the excellence of love.
8. Those two gifts are what they receive who approach Him as a Man and live according to His precepts.
9. In the view of angels Jehovah God alone is a full Man.
JEHOVAH GOD SUCCESSIVELY PUT OFF THE HUMAN FROM THE MOTHER AND PUT ON THE HUMAN FROM THE FATHER, AND IN THIS WAY HE MADE THAT HUMAN DIVINE
1. The soul of an offspring is from its father and it clothes itself in the womb with a body from the mother’s substance; as, by analogy, a seed does in the earth, and from the earth’s substance.
2. Hence there is present in the body an image of the father, at first obscurely, afterwards more and more plainly, as a son applies himself to his father’s pursuits and duties.
3. Christ’s body, in so far as it was from the mother’s substance, was not life in itself, but a recipient of life from the Divine within Him, which was Life in itself.
4. Successively, as He exalted the Divine Wisdom and the Divine Love with Himself, Christ took upon Himself the Divine Life, which is Life in itself.
5. In the proportion that He took upon Himself Life in itself from the Divine in itself, Christ put off the human from the mother and put on the Human from the Father.
6. Christ thereby made His Human Divine, and from being Mary’s son, He became the Son of God.
7. In this and in no other way was it possible for Christ Jesus to be in angels and men, and angels and men to be in Him.
8. But because His mother Mary afterwards represented the Church, she is in that respect to be given the name “His mother”.
9. When He was in the maternal human Christ was in the state of exinanition and could be tempted, could be reviled, and could suffer.
10. In this state He prayed to the Father, because then He was as it were absent from Him.
23. CHAPTER X
THE DIVINE FROM ETERNITY AND THE HUMAN IN TIME, UNITED AS SOUL AND BODY, ARE ONE PERSON WHO IS JEHOVAH
1. In Jesus Christ the Divine from eternity and the human in time are united as are the soul and body in a man.
2. The uniting was and is reciprocal, and is thus a full uniting.
3. Consequently, God and man, that is the Divine and the human, are One Person.
4. In the Lord’s Human all the Father’s Divine things are present at the same time.
5. Thus the Lord is the One only God who from eternity had, and to eternity will have, all power in the heavens and on the earths.
6. He is “the First and the Last the Beginning and the End”, “who was, is, and is to come”, “the Alpha and the Omega”, “the Almighty”.
7. He is “Father of Eternity”, “Jehovah our Righteousness”, “Jehovah Saviour and Redeemer”, “Jehovah Zebaoth”.
8. Those who approach Him as Jehovah and as the Father are united to Him, become His sons, and are spoken of as “sons of God”.
9. They are receptacles of His Divine Human.
24. REDEMPTION*
CHAPTER I
A CHURCH IN THE COURSE OF TIME TURNS AWAY FROM THE GOOD OF CHARITY, AND WHILE DOING SO TURNS TOWARDS FALSITIES OF FAITH, AND SO DIES AWAY
1. There is a Church in the heavens and a Church on earth, and they make a one, like the internal and the external with a man.
2. The Church in either world is together before the Lord as one man, and appears so before angels.
3. Hence a Church may be compared to a man who is first an infant, then a youth, afterwards a man, and finally an old man.
4. While it is an infant a Church is in the good of charity, while a youth and a man it is in the truths of faith from that good, and when an old man it is in the marriage of charity and faith.
5. When a Church is such, and continues to be such, it lasts for ever, but it is otherwise if it recedes from the good of charity of its infancy,
6. If a Church recedes from the good of charity of its infancy, it is in the dark about truths, and falls into falsities as a blind man falls into pits.
7. The four essentials of a Church are the recognition of God, the recognition of the goods of charity, the recognition of the verities of faith, and a life in accordance with them.
8. When a Church recedes from charity it recedes also from those four essentials. At the same time falsities in regard to God, charity, faith and worship, flow in.
9. These flow in into the Church’s leaders and from them into the people, as from a head into its body.
10. There are two reasons why falsities flowing into the leaders flow out again from them: one is the love of having dominion, arising from the love of self, the other is understanding things from one’s proprium** and not from Sacred Scripture.
11. When that is the case, from a single falsity there flow forth falsities in a continual series, and this goes on until there is nothing of truth remaining.
12. When Sacred Scripture is applied in confirmation of them, it is then completely falsified and so the Church perishes.
* It would appear from the copy made by Johansen that before proceeding with this section Swedenborg made some notes in the MS. A title for the section on “The Holy Spirit” was written and scored out. This was followed by a draft of chapter headings for that section, which we have included in a footnote at the beginning of that section, where it evidently belongs. See n. 32. Then, immediately after the heading “Redemption”, the following general observations are found in both MS. copies. N. leaves them unnumbered and marks them as “Annotations in the Margin”, while Sk. calls them “Summaries” and numbers them as here:
1 . Redemption itself consisted in subjugating the hells and putting the heavens into order, and thus preparing for a new spiritual Church.
2. Without that redemption no man could have been saved, nor could any angel have continued in his state of happiness.
3. The Lord redeemed not only men but angels as well.
4. Redemption was a work purely Divine
5. This redemption could not have been effected except by God Incarnate.
6. The passion of the cross was the final temptation which He as the greatest Prophet endured, and by means of which also He might truly subjugate the hells and glorify His Human; thus it was a means of redemption, but was not redemption.
7. [The belief] that the passion of the cross was redemption itself is a fundamental error of the Church.
8. That error, together with the error about three Divine Persons from eternity, has perverted the whole Church to such a degree that there is no spiritual residue of it remaining.
The errors that have arisen from the present-day [belief] that redemption is the passion of the cross are to be enumerated.
** The Latin word proprium means “what is one’s own”. Swedenborg uses it in a special sense involving what is of the self.
THE END OF A CHURCH IS NEAR WHEN IN THE NATURAL WORLD THE POWER OF EVIL THROUGH FALSITIES BEGINS TO PREVAIL OVER THE POWER OF GOOD THROUGH TRUTHS, AND THEN AT THE SAME TIME AS THAT THE POWER OF HELL ABOVE THE POWER OF HEAVEN
1. Every man comes after death into his own good and the truth thence, in which he was in the world; or similarly into his own evil and the falsity thence.
2. Those who are in good and thence in truth come into heaven: those in evil and thence in falsity come into hell.
3. Those who are in good on earth are interiorly in truths, and, if they are in falsities, still after death they receive truths agreeing with their good; the reverse is the case, however, with those who are in evils. This is because good and evil are of the will, and the will is a man’s being (esse), the understanding having existence therefrom.
4. To what extent good is prevailing on earth over evil, or evil over good, is discerned in the spiritual world from the state of heaven and of hell; inasmuch as every man is gathered to his own after death, that is, he comes into his own evil or his own good, and as heaven and hell are from the human race.
5. This for many reasons cannot be discerned at all on earth.
6. Between heaven and hell there is an interval, wherein evil breathed out from hell ascends and good from heaven descends, and where they meet.
7. Midway in this interval there is equilibrium between good and evil.
8. It is from this equilibrium that the extent to which good is prevailing against evil, or evil against good, is discerned.
9. There the Lord weighs it, as in a balance.
10. This equilibrium becomes raised towards heaven as evil prevails against good, and is depressed towards hell as good prevails against evil, the fact being that good from heaven depresses it and evil from hell raises it.
11. This equilibrium is as it were a footstool for the angels of heaven into which their good comes to a termination and upon which it rests.
12. In the degree that this equilibrium is raised, the happiness of the angels of heaven, arising from their goods and the truths thence, is diminished.
13. When evil prevails against good on earth, then at the same time hell prevails against heaven.
14. It is clear from the above that the end of the Church is near, when the power of evil prevails over the power of good.
15. It is said “the power of good through truths” and “power of evil through falsities” because it is through truths that good has power, and through falsities that evil has power.
26. CHAPTER III
AS A CHURCH TURNS AWAY FROM GOOD TO EVIL, SO ALSO DOES IT TURN AWAY FROM INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL WORSHIP
1. In so far as evil increases in a Church, the man of the Church becomes external.
2. In so far as the man of the Church becomes external, he becomes divided, that is, evil in internals and having the appearance of good in the externals.
3. Every man after death becomes finally such as he was in internals, not such as he was in externals.
4. It is moreover owing to this that the world, judging as it does from externals, does not discern what the state of the Church is; then too, it does not discern either how the Church is growing weaker and declining to its end.
5. Every man has an internal and an external, termed the internal man and the external man.
6. In the internal man it is the will, thus the life’s chief love, that has dominion; but in the external man his understanding has dominion, and this is well disposed towards the internal, whether it be clearly, cautiously, or craftily.
7. If the internal man is evil and the external man good, then in the latter the internal man is a dissembler and a hypocrite.
8. No man is good in respect of his internal man unless he is so from the Lord.
THE PROGRESSION OF A CHURCH TOWARDS ITS END, AND THE END ITSELF, ARE DESCRIBED IN VERY MANY PLACES IN THE WORD
1. A successive decreasing of good and truth and increasing of evil and falsity in a Church is termed in the Word its “being laid waste” and “becoming desolate”.
2. Its final state, when there is nothing of good or truth remaining, is there termed “consummation” and “being cut off”.
3. The end itself of a Church is the “fullness [of time]”.
4. The same things also are meant in the Word by “evening” and “night”.
5. And also by these things in the Prophets and in the Gospels: then shall the sun be darkened, the moon shall not give her light, the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.*
6. Then the Church exists no longer except in name; nevertheless, there is this “remnant” in it, that a man, if he wishes, can know and understand truths, and can do goods.**
* See Isa. xiii 10; Ezek. xxxii 7; Joel ii 10, 31; iii 15; Amos viii 9; Matt. xxiv 29; Mark xiii 24; Luke xxi 25, 26; Rev. vi 12, 13 viii 10, 12.
** In the margin of N. by another hand are the words: “But now hardly one in the whole of Christendom wishes to know.”
AT THE END OF A CHURCH TOTAL DAMNATION IS THREATENING BOTH MANKIND ON EARTH AND THE ANGELS IN THE HEAVENS
1. Every man is in the equilibrium that is between heaven and hell, and on that account in freedom to look or to turn either towards heaven or towards hell.
2. Every man after death comes at first into this equilibrium, and so into a state of life similar to the one in which he was in the world.
3. Those who in the world had looked and turned towards heaven or towards hell look and turn in the same way after death.
4. At the end of a Church when the power of evil is prevailing over the power of good, this equilibrium is swollen and filled out by the wicked arriving like a flood from the world.*
5. The result is that the equilibrium is pushed up nearer and nearer to heaven and, according to its nearness to them, infests the angels there.
6. All who are within the raised equilibrium are interiorly infernal and exteriorly moral.
7. These, being of such a nature, are constantly endeavouring to destroy the heaven above them, doing so moreover by crafty methods derived from hell, with which in respect of their interiors, they make a one.
8. This is why at the end of a Church destruction and consequent damnation threaten angels in heaven also.
9. Unless a judgment is then effected, no man on earth could be saved nor could any angel in the heavens continue in his state of safety.
* For a fuller description of this equilibrium between heaven and hell see Heaven and Hell, nos. 589-596. See also chapter ii above, no. 25.
JEHOVAH GOD, BY HIS COMING INTO THE WORLD, WITHSTOOD THAT TOTAL DAMNATION, AND THEREBY REDEEMED MANKIND ON EARTH AND ANGELS IN THE HEAVENS
1. Jehovah God Himself came into the world to deliver men and angels from the insolence and violence of hell and thus from damnation.
2. This He effected by combats against hell and by victories over it; and He subjugated it, reduced it to order, and set it under His control.
3. Moreover, after this judgment He created, that is formed, a new heaven, and by means of this a new Church.
4. By these acts Jehovah God put Himself into the ability to save all who believe in Him and do His commandments.
5. So He redeemed all in the whole world and all in the whole heaven.
6. This is the Gospel He commanded to be preached in all the world.
7. This Gospel is for those who are penitent, but not for those who purposely transgress His commandments.
30. CHAPTER VII
THE LORD WHEN IN THE WORLD ENDURED THE MOST GRIEVOUS TEMPTATIONS FROM THE HELLS AS WELL AS FROM THE JEWISH CHURCH, AND BY VICTORIES IN THEM HE REDUCED ALL THINGS TO ORDER, AND AT THE SAME TIME GLORIFIED HIS HUMAN; THUS HE REDEEMED ANGELS AND MEN AND IS FOR EVER REDEEMING THEM
1. All spiritual temptations are combats against evils and falsities, and therefore against the hells; these temptations are the more grievous in proportion as they assail a man’s spirit and his body at the same time, and torture both.
2. The Lord endured the most grievous temptations of all, because He fought against all the hells, and against the evils and falsities of the Jewish Church as well.
3. In the Gospels the Lord’s temptations are only described to a small extent, by his combat with wild beasts, that is with satans in hell, during the forty days in the wilderness, and afterwards by the attacks of the devil, and finally by His anguish in Gethsemane and by the cruel suffering on the cross.* . . . His temptations or combats with the hells are, however, described in greater detail and fullness in the Prophets and in David; these because they were not visible, could not be openly declared. [Isa. lxiii.]
4. The Lord underwent these temptations to subjugate the hells that were attacking heaven, and at the same time the Church, and to deliver angels and men from that attack, and so to save them.
5. The end-in-view of all spiritual temptation is the subduing of evil and falsity, and so of hell as well, then too the subduing of the external man at the same time, for it is into this that evils and falsities from hell inflow. For temptations are concerned with the dominion of evil over good, and of the external man over the internal. Whichever side, therefore, secures victory secures dominion also. And so, when victory is on the side of good, good seizes dominion over evil, as does also the internal man over the external.
6. The Lord suffered those temptations from childhood right on to the last period of his life, and so subjugated the hells successively, and successively glorified His Human; and in the last temptation on the cross, the most grievous of all, He fully conquered the hells, and made His Human Divine.
7. The Lord fought with the hells, and also against the falsities and evils of the Jewish Church, as Divine Truth itself, or the Word, which He was; and He suffered Himself to be reviled, to have indignities heaped upon Him, and to be put to death, just as the Church at that time did with the Word. It was in almost the same way the prophets were treated, because they represented the Lord in respect of the Word, and so in the case of the Lord, who was The Prophet, because He was the Word itself. That this was done was in accordance with Divine Order.**
8. An image of the Lord’s victories over the hells and of the glorification of His Human, by means of temptations, is presented in man’s regeneration; for just as the Lord subjugated the hells and made His Human Divine, so, in a man’s case, He subjugates them and makes him spiritual, and so regenerates him.
9. It is well known that the Lord rescues a man from the jaws of the devil, that is of hell, and raises him to Himself into heaven, and that He does this for the man by drawing him back from evils, which is effected through his contrition and repentance. These two states are temptations which are means of regeneration.***
* N. has a mark here as if there were some omissions. Perhaps space was left for references to the Word.
** A marginal note here reads: See Doctrine of the Lord nos. 16, 17 in reference to the representations of the Church; as well as its being said four times of Ezekiel that “he bears the iniquities of the house of Israel”; and that the Lord was called the greatest Prophet.
*** The following annotations, of which the first is underlined, are found at the end of this chapter:
The Lord as a Prophet carried the iniquities of the Jewish Church, He did not take them away.
His glorification, or His being united with the Divine of the Father, which was in Him as the soul is in a man, could only be accomplished by a reciprocal process; the Human co-operates with the Divine; it is however originally from the Divine, nevertheless there is reception and action, or rather reaction, by the Human as of Itself.
To the extent that there was conjunction, it was brought about by both together.
In the same way as a man is regenerated and made spiritual by the Lord.
When He was an infant, He was as an infant is;
When He was a child and from childhood onwards, He grew in wisdom. Luke ii 40, 50.
It was not possible for Him to be born wisdom, but He could become wisdom in accordance with order. He progressed to full conjunction.
31. CHAPTER VIII*
IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR REDEMPTION TO BE EFFECTED, NOR CONSEQUENTLY FOR THERE TO BE SALVATION, EXCEPT BY GOD INCARNATE
1. The Word of the Old and New Testaments teaches that God became incarnate.
2. All the Church’s worship prior to God becoming incarnate foreshadowed and had respect to Him who was afterwards incarnate; for that reason, and for no other, that worship was Divine.
3. God Incarnate is “Jehovah our Righteousness”, “Jehovah our Redemption”, “Jehovah our Salvation”, “Jehovah our Truth”; and all these are meant by the two names, Jesus Christ.
4. It was not possible for God not incarnate to fight against the hells and overcome them.
5. It was not possible for God not incarnate to be tempted, and still less for Him to suffer the cross.
6. It was not possible for God not incarnate to be seen and recognized, nor consequently to be approached and thus conjoined with men and angels, except through Himself incarnate.
7. There cannot be faith in a God not incarnate, only in Him incarnate.
8. This is why it was said by people of old that no one can see God and live [Exod. xxxiii 20], and why the Lord said that no one hath seen the Father’s shape nor heard His voice [John v 37].
9. And why, too, God showed Himself visibly to people of old through angels in a human form, a form representative of God Incarnate.
10. All God’s operating is effected from first things through last things, thus from His Divine through His Human. It is on this account that God is “the First and the Last, who is, who was, and who is to come” [Rev. i 8, 11, 17].
11. In the ultimates of God all Divine things are present together, thus in our Lord Jesus Christ are all things of His Father.
12. It follows from these propositions that redemption could not have been effected by any means whatever except by God Incarnate.
13. Nor can there be salvation either, except by God Incarnate, thus only by the Lord Redeemer and Saviour; and this salvation is a perpetual redemption.
14. It is for this reason that those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ “have eternal life”, and that those who do not believe in Him have not that life [John iii 15, 16, 36].
* This chapter was not in Sk.
[UNIVERSALS]*
**I. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE DIVINE THAT PROCEEDS FROM THE ONE, INFINITE, OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT, AND OMNIPRESENT GOD.
II. IN ITS ESSENCE THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THAT GOD HIMSELF, BUT IN THE THINGS SUBORDINATE TO HIM WHERE IT IS RECEIVED IT IS THE DIVINE PROCEEDING.
III. THE DIVINE, CALLED THE HOLY SPIRIT, PROCEEDS FROM THAT GOD HIMSELF BY MEANS OF HIS HUMAN, COMPARATIVELY AS THAT WHICH PROCEEDS FROM A MAN, THAT IS, WHAT HE TEACHES AND PERFORMS, FROM HIS SOUL BY MEANS OF HIS BODY.
IV. THE DIVINE, CALLED THE HOLY SPIRIT, PROCEEDING FROM GOD BY MEANS OF HIS HUMAN, PASSES THROUGH THE ANGELIC HEAVEN, AND THROUGH THIS INTO THE WORLD, THUS THROUGH ANGELS INTO MEN.
V. THENCE IT PASSES THROUGH MEN TO MEN, AND, IN THE CHURCH, CHIEFLY THROUGH THE CLERGY TO THE LAITY; THAT WHICH IS HOLY IS CONTINUALLY GIVEN, AND IT DRAWS BACK IF THE LORD IS NOT APPROACHED.
VI. THE DIVINE PROCEEDING, CALLED THE HOLY SPIRIT, IN ITS OWN SPECIAL SENSE, IS THE HOLY WORD, AND IN THIS, THE DIVINE TRUTH.
VII. ITS OPERATION IS INSTRUCTION, REFORMATION, AND REGENERATION, AND IN CONSEQUENCE VIVIFICATION AND SALVATION.
VIII. TO THE EXTENT THAT ANYONE RECOGNIZES AND ACKNOWLEDGES THE DIVINE TRUTH THAT PROCEEDS FROM THE LORD, HE RECOGNIZES AND ACKNOWLEDGES GOD, AND TO THE EXTENT THAT ANYONE DOES THIS DIVINE TRUTH, HE IS IN THE LORD AND THE LORD IS IN HIM.
IX. SPIRIT, IN THE CASE OF A MAN, IS INTELLIGENCE AND WHATEVER PROCEEDS THEREFROM.
* The following is written here in the original, but crossed out:
“Universals. Special attributes, not general or communicable. Alternative, essential attributes.”
** A draft of headings for this section is found in N. at the end of the section on “The Lord the Redeemer”, as follows:
“The Holy Spirit is the Divine that proceeds from the One Infinite God; and it is the operation and virtue proceeding from God [by means of the Human, which] was taken on in the world.
It proceeds out of the Lord and from God the Father.
It proceeds to the clergy and from them to the laity.
It proceeds from the Lord by means of the Word.
It is the Divine virtue and operation that is meant by the Holy Spirit: this is renewal, reformation, regeneration, and following these, vivification, sanctification, and justification, and following these, purification from evils, remission of sins, and salvation.
By a man’s spirit is meant his intelligence, and so it is also his virtue and operation proceeding from that.
The Holy Spirit is the Divine operation and virtue proceeding from the One God.
It proceeds out of the Lord from God the Father, and not the reverse.
It is operation and virtue that is understood . . . .
The end-in-view of this operation by the Lord through the Word.
It is an inflowing into men who believe in the Lord, and, if in accordance with order, into the clergy and so by means of them to the laity.”
In Sk. the last five of these propositions are, with some combination and modification, added to the nine “universals” above, making twelve in all, and numbered accordingly.
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE DIVINE THAT PROCEEDS FROM THE ONE, INFINITE, OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT, AND OMNIPRESENT GOD BY MEANS OF HIS HUMAN TAKEN ON IN THE WORLD
1. The Holy Spirit is not by itself, or independently, a God, nor does it proceed from God the Father by means of the Son, like a Person proceeding from Persons, in accordance with the doctrine of the present-day Church.
2. This is quite inconsistent, the definition of the term “person” being that it is not a part or quality in another, but has a continuing existence on its own.
3. It is also inconsistent that, although the peculiar nature and quality of the one are separate from those of the other, nevertheless they are one undivided essence.
4. Not only does this result inevitably in an idea of three Gods, but in an avowal of three Gods as well; yet, in accordance with the Athanasian Creed, these three must not, on account of Christian faith, be spoken of as three but as one.
5. The truth is that, from eternity or before creation, there were not three Persons each one of Whom was God; thus there were not three Infinites, three Uncreates, three Immeasureable, Eternal, Omnipotent Beings, but One.
6. On the contrary, it was after creation that a Divine Trinity came into being, for then from the Father was born the Son, and from the Father by means of the Son proceeds the Holy called the Holy Spirit.
7. Consequently, because the Father is the Soul and Life of the Son, because the Son is the Human Body of the Father, and because the Holy Spirit is the Divine proceeding, it follows that they are of one and the same Substance, and therefore they do not continue in existence independently, but conjointly.
8. And because the peculiar attributes of the one, in accordance with order, are derived into and pass over into the second, and from this into the third, they are One Person, and so One God.
9. Comparatively as in every angel and in every man all his activity proceeds from the soul by means of the body.
10. Reason, enlightened by Sacred Scripture, perceives this; accordingly it is the trinity of a Person that is God’s Trinity, not a Trinity of Persons, because this is a Trinity of Gods.
34. CHAPTER II
THE HOLY SPIRIT, BECAUSE* IT PROCEEDS FROM THE ONE GOD BY MEANS OF HIS HUMAN, IS IN ITS ESSENCE THAT SAME GOD; BUT IN REFERENCE TO SUBORDINATE THINGS WHICH ARE SPATIAL IT IS TO ALL APPEARANCE THE HOLY SPIRIT
1. What God was before creation, such He is after it; and so, such as He has been from eternity, such He is to eternity.
2. Before creation God was not in an extended space, nor is He after creation either, to eternity.
3. Consequently God is present in space apart from space and in time apart from time.
4. Thus the Holy Spirit proceeding from the One God, by means of His Human, is that same God.
5. Because God is everywhere the same, it cannot be said that He proceeds, except in appearance in reference to spaces, for these do proceed; just as is the case to all appearance with subordinate things which are in spaces.
6. And because these spaces are in the created world, it follows that the Holy Spirit there is the Divine proceeding.
7. The fact of God’s Omnipresence is ample proof that the Holy Spirit is the Divine proceeding from the One and Indivisible God, and is not a God as a person by himself.
* N. here has qui (“who” or “which”), but Sk. has quia (“because”).
THE DIVINE CALLED THE HOLY SPIRIT, PROCEEDING FROM GOD BY MEANS OF HIS HUMAN, PASSES THROUGH THE ANGELIC HEAVEN INTO THE WORLD, THUS THROUGH ANGELS INTO MEN
1. The One God in His Human is above the angelic heaven, being visible there as a Sun, from which proceed love as heat and wisdom as light.
2. Thus the Holy of God, called the Holy Spirit, flows in regular order into the heavens, directly into the highest heaven, called the third heaven, directly and also mediately into the middle heaven, called the second, and likewise into the outermost heaven, called the first.
3. Through these heavens it flows into the world, and through this into men there.
4. Nevertheless angels of heaven are not the Holy Spirit.
5. All the heavens together with the Churches on earth are, in the sight of the Lord, as a single man.
6. The Lord alone is the soul and life of that man, and all those who are filled with breath by Him, and live from Him, are His body; this is the reason for its being said that the faithful compose the Lord’s body, and that they are in Him, and He is in them.
7. The Lord flows in into angels of heaven and into men of the Church in much the same way as the soul, with men, flows into the body.
THENCE IT PASSES THROUGH MEN TO MEN, AND, IN THE CHURCH, CHIEFLY THROUGH THE CLERGY TO THE LAITY
1. No one can receive the Holy Spirit except from the Lord Jesus Christ, because It proceeds from God the Father through Him, and by the Holy Spirit is meant the Divine proceeding.
2. No one can receive the Holy Spirit, that is, the Divine truth and good, unless he approaches the Lord directly and is at the same time in charity (dilectione).*
3. The Holy Spirit, that is, the Divine proceeding, never becomes man’s but is constantly the Lord’s with him.
4. The Holy, meant by the Holy Spirit, therefore, does not become inherent in man, and it only remains with the man receiving it for so long as he believes in the Lord and is at the same time in the doctrine of truth from the Word and a life in accordance with it.
5. The Holy meant by the Holy Spirit is not transferred from one man to another, but from the Lord, through one man to another.
6. God the Father does not send the Holy Spirit, that is, His Divine, through the Lord into man; the Lord sends it from God the Father.
7. A clergyman, because it is from the Word he has to teach doctrine concerning the Lord, and concerning redemption and salvation by Him, should be inaugurated by the solemn promise (sponsionem) of the Holy Spirit and by a representation of its transfer; but it is received from** the clergyman according to the faith of his [the recipient’s] life.
8. The Divine, meant by the Holy Spirit, proceeds to the layman from the Lord by means of the clergyman, through the things preached, in accordance with [the layman’s] reception therefrom of the teaching of the truth.
9. Also by means of the sacrament of the Holy Supper in accordance with his repentance beforehand.
* Dilectio is used in the Vulgate for love or charity. In T.C.R. 409 it is stated, “This is why He so frequently taught loving-kindness (dilectio), and this is charity.”
** The Latin reads “sed quod e clerico recipiatur secundum fidem vitae ejus”, which is susceptible of several interpretations. Worcester assumes the “e” to be a copyist’s error for “a”, and renders “but it Is received by the clergyman according to the faith of his life”. But the two MSS, have “e”, and it is unlikely that both should have made the mistake. Retaining the “e”, there are two explanations: (A) that “clerico” refers to the officiating clergyman and the “ejus” to the one to be inaugurated, which is the one here adopted; (B) that the “ejus” refers to the Church, thus “but it is received from the clergyman according to the faith of its [the Church’s] life”. For both (A) and (B) the Latin is imperfect, though of course sufficient as a note for Swedenborg himself.
THE DIVINE PROCEEDING, CALLED THE HOLY SPIRIT, IS, IN ITS PROPER SENSE, THE WORD, WHEREIN IS THE HOLY OF GOD
1. The Word is the Holy Itself in the Christian Church, on account of the Divine of the Lord that is within it and from it. Therefore the Divine proceeding, called the Holy Spirit, is in its proper sense the Word and the Holy of God.
2. The reason the Lord is the Word, is that it is from the Lord and it is about the Lord, thus it is, in its essence, the Lord Himself.
3. Because the Lord is the Word, He alone is Holy, and He is “the Holy One of Israel” so often mentioned in the Prophets, of whom, moreover, it is there said that He alone is God.
4. It is on this account that the place where the ark was in the tabernacle-because in it was the Law, the beginning of the Word, and above it the mercy seat, and above this the Cherubim, all these things signifying the Lord as the Word-was spoken of as the “Sanctuary” and the “Holy of Holies”.
5. It is on this account, too, that the New Jerusalem, the Church that approaches the Lord only and draws truths out of His Word, is spoken of as “holy” and also “the city of holiness”, and that the men in whom that Church is are spoken of as “the people of holiness”; also that this Church is “the kingdom of the saints (lit: holy ones), that shall last for ever”*, mentioned in Daniel [Dan. vii 18-27].
6. The Prophets and the Apostles, because the Word was written through them, are spoken of as “holy”. [Luke i 70; Rev. xviii 20].
7. The Holy Spirit, with reference to the Holy Word taught by the Lord, is termed “the Spirit of Truth” [John xiv 17; xv 26; xvi 13], of which the Lord says that He speaks not from Himself but from the Lord [John xvi 13, 14]; and further that He is that Spirit [John xiv 18; xvi 14-22].
8. The reason why a man, “who speaks a word against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven” [Matt. xii 32], is because he denies the Divinity of the Lord and the holiness of the Word; for this man is devoid of religion.
9. The reason why one “who speaks a word against the Son of Man” is forgiven [Matt. xii 32] is because he denies that this or that is Divine truth from the Word in the Church, yet he believes that there are Divine truths in and from the Word. “The Son of Man” is Divine truth from the Word in the Church; and this Divine truth cannot be seen by everyone.
[Four pages of the original are missing here.]
* The words “that shall last for ever” are omitted in Sk.
38. THE DIVINE TRINITY
1.* The idea the common people have of the Divine Trinity is that God the Father is seated on high with His Son at His right hand, and that they send the Holy Spirit to men.
2. The idea the clergy have of the Divine Trinity is that there are three Persons, each one of Whom is God and Lord, and that these three have one and the same essence.
3. The idea the wise among the clergy have is that there are three communicable natures and qualities; it is however three natures and qualities not communicable that are meant by three Persons.
4. The existence of a Divine Trinity is demonstrable from Sacred Scripture and from reason.
5. From a trinity of persons there results inevitably a trinity of Gods.
6. If God is One, there is of necessity** a Trinity belonging to God, and thus a trinity of the Person.
7. God’s Trinity, which is also a Trinity of the Person, is from God Incarnate: it is Jesus Christ .***
8. This is established from Sacred Scripture.
9. And from reason as well, in that there is a trinity in every man.
10. The Apostolic Church had never any thought of a Trinity of Persons: shown by their Creed.
11. A Trinity of Persons was first devised by the Nicene Council.
12. Thence it was spread into the Churches that have existed since, right up to the present time.
13. Before now it has not been possible for that doctrine to be corrected.
14. The “Trinity of Persons” has turned the whole Church upside down and falsified every single thing in it.
15. Everyone has declared it to be beyond comprehension, and that the understanding must be held down under obedience to faith. What is “a Son born from eternity”?
16. In the Lord there is one Trinity, and in the Trinity there is Unity.
* These statements, numbered but not set out in paragraphs, are found here before chapter i. A vertical line drawn down the margin of N. suggests that perhaps they may be annotations, but Worcester in the A.P. and P.S. Edition has supplied the title “Observanda” and printed them in the text. In Sk. nos. 8 and 9 are incorporated with the preceding number, and the subsequent paragraphs numbered accordingly.
** Sk. has recessoria, whereas N. had recessoria subsequently altered to necessaria, which is taken as correct.
*** N. has “sit a Dec incarnato, seu Jesus Christus”, so underlined. The Skara MS. has “in” instead of “a” Worcester reads “in Deo incarnato, seu Jesu Christo”, that is, “in God Incarnate, or Jesus Christ”.
A DIVINE TRINITY EXISTS, NAMELY, FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT
1. The Unity of God has been acknowledged and admitted everywhere in the world where there has been religion and sound reason.
2. It was not possible, therefore, for God’s Trinity to be known. For if it had been known, indeed if it had only been mentioned, a man would have thought of God’s Trinity as a plurality of Gods; and this both religion and sound reason abhor.
3. Knowledge of God’s Trinity, therefore, could only be acquired from revelation, thus only from the Word, and it could not be admitted unless the Trinity was also the Unity of God, for otherwise there would be a contradiction, and this brings forth nothing real.
4. God’s Trinity did not come forth into actual existence until the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, was born, nor, before then, did there exist a Unity in Trinity and a Trinity in Unity.
5. The salvation of the human race depends upon God’s Trinity which is at the same time a Unity.
6. By God’s Trinity which is at the same time a Unity is meant a Divine Trinity in One Person.
7. The Lord, the Saviour of the world, taught that there is a Divine Trinity, namely, Father, Son, and Spirit:
for He commanded the disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. [Matt. xxviii 19.]
He said also that He would, from the Father,* send the Holy Spirit. [John xv 26.]
Moreover, He frequently spoke of the Father, and of Himself as His Son, and He “breathed upon His disciples, saying, Receive ye the Holy Spirit”. [John xx 22.]
Again, when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, there came a voice from the Father saying, “This is My beloved Son”, and the Spirit appeared above Him in the form of a dove. [Matt. iii 16, 17; Mark i 10, 11; Luke iii 22; John i 32, 33.]
The angel Gabriel, too, told Mary, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee and the Power of the of Highest shall overshadow thee, and the Thing that is born of thee shall be called the Son of God”; the “Highest” is God the Father. [Luke i 35.]
Many times, too, the apostles in their epistles mention the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and John in his first epistle wrote, “There are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit” [1 John v 7.]; etc.
* The words “from the Father” are omitted in Sk.
THOSE THREE, FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT, ARE THE THREE ESSENTIALS OF THE ONE GOD, BEING A ONE IN THE SAME WAY AS SOUL, BODY, AND ACTIVITY, WITH MAN ARE A ONE
1. The Divine Trinity, which is at the same time a Unity, cannot be comprehended by anyone in any other way than as being like soul, body, and activity, in the case of man; consequently in no other way than that the Divine Itself called the Father is the soul, the Human called the Son is the body of that soul, and the Holy Spirit is the activity proceeding.*
2. Everywhere in the Christian Church, therefore, there is acknowledgement that in Christ God and man, that is the Divine and the human, are One Person, as are soul and body in man. This acknowledgement is there due to the Athanasian Creed.
3. Anyone, therefore, who has an understanding of the union of soul and body, and the resulting activity, comprehends God’s Trinity, and at the same time His Unity, in an obscure sort of way.
4. A rational man knows, or can know, that the soul of a son is from his father, and that the soul clothes itself with a body in the mother’s womb, and that afterwards all activity proceeds from both.
5. Anyone who has a knowledge of the union of soul and body, also knows, or can know, that the life of the soul is in the body, and that the life of the body is thus the soul’s life.
6. Consequently, that the soul lives, and accordingly feels and is active, in the body and from it, and the body lives, feels, and is active from itself, yet all the while from the soul.
7. This is so, because all things of the soul are the body’s, and all things of the body are the soul’s. It is due to this and to nothing else that there is union between them.
8. It is only an appearance that the soul acts separately of itself through the body, the fact being that it acts in the body and from the body.
9. From these things a rational man acquainted with the interaction between soul and body can grasp the meaning of these words of the Lord:
that the Father and He are One; [John x 30]
that all things of the Father are His, and all His are the Father’s; [John xvi 15; xvii 10]
that all things of the Father come to Him; [John vi 37]
that the Father hath given all things into the Son’s hand; [John xiii 3]
that as the Father works, the Son works also [John v 17, 19]
that he who sees and knows the Son, sees and knows the Father also; [John xiv 7, 9]
that they who are one in the Son, are one in the Father; [John xvii 21]
that no one hath seen the Father, save the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and who has brought Him forth to view; [John i 18; v 37; Matt. xi 27; Luke x 22]
that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father; [John xvii 21]
that no one cometh to the Father but by the Son [John xiv 6]
that as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; [John v 26]
that in Jesus Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; [Col. ii 9]
besides several other places. In these passages, by “the Son” is meant the Father’s Human.
10. From these statements it follows that the Godhead and the soul of the Son of God, our Saviour, are not distinctly two, but are one and the same.
11.** That the “Son of God” is God the Father’s Human has been fully shown above, for what else did the mother Mary give birth to but a Human in which was the Divine from God the Father? It is owing to this that from birth He was called “the Son of God”; for the angel Gabriel tells Mary, “the Holy thing that will be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” [Luke i 35.]; and the Holy thing that was born of Mary was a Human in which was the Divine from the Father.
* In N. the words ab utroque, “from both,” are added here by another hand.
** In N. this paragraph is unnumbered. In Sk. it is no. 11.
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS CREATED GOD’S TRINITY DID NOT EXIST
1. That God is one, the Sacred Scripture teaches, and reason enlightened by the Lord sees this in Scripture and from it. But that God was triune before the world was created, Sacred Scripture does not teach, and reason enlightened from it does not see. What is said in David concerning the Son, “this day have I begotten Thee” [Ps. ii 7.], does not mean “from eternity” but “in the fullness of time”, for in God what is to come is present, thus it is “this day”, in the same way as this passage in Isaiah, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and His name God, Hero, Father of eternity” [Isa. ix 6].
2. What rational mind, hearing that before the world was created there were three Divine Persons named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has not said within himself when he thinks about them, What does it mean-a Son born from God the Father from eternity? And how could He be born? And then, what is a Holy Spirit proceeding from God the Father through the Son from eternity? And how could it proceed and become a God by itself? Or how could a person beget a person from eternity, and both produce a person? Isn’t a person a person? How can three Persons, each one of whom is a God, be conjoined into One God, in any other way than by being conjoined into One Person? Yet this latter is contrary to Theology, though being conjoined into One God is in agreement with it. How can the Godhead be distinguished into three Persons, yet not into three Gods, when nevertheless each Person is God? How can the Divine Essence which is One, and the Same, and Indivisible, come under numerical consideration, consequently be either divided or multiplied? And how could three Divine Persons have been together and have held consultations with one another in the absence of extended space, as the case was before the world was created? How could three equal to Himself have been produced by Jehovah God, who is One, and consequently the Only, Infinite, Immeasurable, Eternal, Omnipotent? How is it possible to conceive of a trinity of persons in God’s unity, or of God’s unity in a trinity of persons? Apart from the fact that the idea of plurality destroys the idea of unity, and conversely. Perhaps too one might suppose that, if this were feasible, it would have been feasible for the Greeks and Romans also to combine all their Gods, many as they were, together into one God, merely by means of “identity of essence”.
3. A rational mind, turning over in the thought and pondering upon a Trinity of Persons from eternity in the Godhead, could have considered, too, what was the use of a Son being born, and of a Holy Spirit going forth from the Father through the Son, before the world was created! Was there any need for the three to hold consultations as to how the universe should be created, and so, for the three to create it? When in fact the universe was created by the One God. Nor was there any need for the Son to redeem, when in fact redemption was effected in the fullness of time after the world was created. Nor for the Holy Spirit to sanctify, because as yet there was no man to be sanctified. So then, if those uses were in God’s design (idea), still it was not before the world but after it that the design came forth into actual existence. From which it follows that a Trinity from eternity would not be a Trinity in reality but only in idea; and still more so, a Trinity of Persons.
4. Who is there in the Church able to understand the following, when he reads the Athanasian Creed, “it is according to Christian verity that each Person by Himself is God, nevertheless according to the Catholic religion it is not lawful to make mention of three Gods”? Is not “religion” to him thus something different from “verity”? And is it not according to verity that three Persons are three Gods, but according to religion they are one God?
5. A trinity of persons in the Godhead before the world was created did not enter the mind of anyone from the time of Adam to the Lord’s Advent, as appears plainly from the Word of the Old Testament and from the accounts of the religion of the people of old. Nor did it enter the minds of the Apostles, as is evident from their writings in the Word. Nor did it enter the mind of anyone in the Apostolic Church which existed prior to the Nicene Council, as appears plainly from the Apostles’ Creed, in which there is no mention of any Son from eternity, but of a Son born of the virgin Mary. A Trinity of Persons from eternity is not only beyond reason, it is contrary to reason.
It is contrary to reason that three Persons have created the universe; that there were three Persons, each one of them God, and yet not three Gods but one; and again, that there were three Persons and not one Person.
Will not the New Church that is to be pronounce the age of the Old Church a dark or barbarian age when people worshipped three Gods? Similarly irrational are the things that have come out of that Trinity.
6. A Trinity of Persons from eternity in the Godhead was first propounded by the Nicene Council, as is evident from two creeds, the Nicene and the Athanasian. After that, it was accepted as the chief dogma and as the fountain-head of their doctrines by the Churches that have existed since up to the present day.
There were two reasons for that Trinity being propounded by the Nicene Council; one was that they knew no other way of dispelling the scandals of Arius, who denied the Divinity of the Lord; the other was that they did not understand what was written by John the Evangelist. [John i 1, 2, 10, 14; xvi 28; xvii 5.] How these statements are to be understood may be seen above.
7. This belief of the Nicene Council and of the Churches since, that the Godhead before the world was created was made up of three Persons, each one of whom was God, and that from the first Person was born the second, and from these two went forth the third, is not only beyond one’s understanding, it is contrary to it as well, and is faith in a paradox, which is contrary to the understanding’s reason; it is a faith that has in it nothing of the Church, but instead a persuasion of what is false, such as that which exists with those suffering from religious mania. Not that this-suffering from religious mania-is said as applying to those who, without seeing things to be contradictory or contrary to Sacred Scripture, put belief in them; and so it does not apply to the Nicene Council nor to the Churches derived from it since that time, inasmuch as they did not see.
GOD’S TRINITY WAS PRODUCED AFTER THE WORLD WAS CREATED, AND CAME INTO ACTUAL EXISTENCE IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME, AND THEN DID SO IN GOD INCARNATE, WHO IS THE LORD, THE SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST
1. It has been shown above that God’s Trinity did not exist before the world was created, and could not do so; further that there are in God Man three essentials of one Person, and it is from these that God’s Trinity is spoken of.
2. That God as the Word came into the world and took to Himself a human in the virgin Mary, and that the “Holy thing” thereby born was called “the Son of the Highest”, “the Son of God”, “the Only-begotten Son” is well known from the Old Word, where it is prophesied, and from the New Word, where it is described.
3. Seeing then that the Most High God, who is the Father, by means of His Divine proceeding, which is the Holy Spirit, conceived the human in the virgin Mary, it follows that the human born from that conception is “the Son”, and the Divine conceiving it is “the Father”, and that both of them together are the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ, God and Man.
4. It follows, too, that the Divine Truth which is the Word, in which is the Divine Good from the Father, was the seed, from which the human was conceived. It is from the seed that the soul is, and by means of the soul that the body is.
5. For confirmation this arcanum will be mentioned: the spiritual origin of all human seed is truth from good, not however Divine Truth from Divine Good in its infinite and uncreated essence, as it is in the Lord, but in a finite and created form of it. See THE DELIGHTS OF WISDOM CONCERNING CONJUGIAL LOVE, nos. 220, 245.*
6. It is well known that the soul adjoins a body to itself to serve it for carrying out uses, and that afterwards it conjoins itself to the body as the latter is of service, and this goes on until the soul becomes ‘the body’s, and the body becomes the soul’s; this is what the Lord says, That He is in the Father and the Father in Him [John x 38].
7. It follows from these things that God’s Trinity was produced after the world was created, and then it was in God Incarnate, who is the Lord the Saviour Jesus Christ.
* These nos. are omitted in Sk.
43. CHAPTER V
A TRINITY OF PERSONS IN THE GODHEAD IS A PRODUCT OF THE NICENE COUNCIL, AND HAS BEEN DERIVED THEREFROM IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND IN THE CHURCHES AFTER IT. IT SHOULD THEREFORE BE CALLED THE NICENE TRINITY, BUT A TRINITY OF GOD IN ONE PERSON, THE LORD GOD THE SAVIOUR, IS OF CHRIST HIMSELF, AND WAS THENCE IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH, AND SHOULD THEREFORE BE CALLED THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY. THIS TRINITY OF GOD IS THE NEW CHURCH’S TRINITY
1. There are three summaries of the Christian Church’s doctrine concerning the Divine Trinity as well as Unity, which are called Creeds, the Apostolic, the Nicene, and the Athanasian. The Apostles’ Creed was drawn up by men termed the Apostolic Fathers; the Nicene Creed by an assembly of bishops and priests summoned by Emperor Constantine to the city of Nicaea for the purpose of dispelling the scandals of Arius in regard to his having denied the Divinity of the Son of God; and the Athanasian Creed by some person or persons immediately* after that Council. These three Creeds have been acknowledged and accepted by the Christian Church as ecumenical and catholic, that is, as the universals of doctrine in regard to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
2. The Apostles’ Creed teaches thus:
I believe in God the Father Almighty, God** of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His Son, our Lord, who was conceived from the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary … I believe in the Holy Spirit, etc.
The Nicene Creed teaches thus:
I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ….
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who came down from heaven and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit out of the virgin Mary, and was made Man ….
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the Prophets . . . .
The Athanasian Creed teaches thus:
The Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. That there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit . . . That Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have one Godhead and coeternal majesty. That the Father is uncreate, immeasurable, eternal, almighty, God and Lord, in like manner the Son, and in like manner the Holy Spirit; nevertheless there are not three uncreates, immeasurables, eternals, almighties, gods and lords, but One. The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created but begotten; the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. In this Trinity none is before or after another, none is greater or less than another, but the whole three Persons are co-eternal and co-equal. But since we are compelled by Christian verity to confess each Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say three Gods and three Lords.
Furthermore, in regard to the Lord Jesus Christ, thus:
That although He is God and Man, yet He is not two but one Christ.
3. From the pronouncements in the three creeds it may be gathered how God’s Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is understood in each case. For the Apostles’ Creed declares in regard to God the Father, that He is the Creator of the Universe; in regard to His Son, that He was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary; and in regard to the Holy Spirit, that it exists.
The Nicene Creed, on the other hand, declares in regard to God the Father, that He is the Creator of the Universe; in regard to the Son, that He was begotten before all ages and that He came down and was incarnate; and in regard to the Holy Spirit, that it proceeds from them both.
Whereas the Athanasian Creed declares in regard to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that they are three co-eternal and co-equal Persons, and that each one of them is God nevertheless there are not three Gods, but one and that although from Christian verity each Person by Himself is God, yet, from the Catholic religion, you may not say three Gods.
4. It is evident from these three Creeds that two Trinities have been handed down, one that came into existence before the world was created, the other that came into existence after that. A Trinity before the world was created is in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, whereas a Trinity after the world was created is in the Apostles’ Creed. Consequently, the Apostolic Church knew nothing of a “Son from eternity”, but only of a Son born in the world; and so it is this Son that it invoked, not one born from eternity. On the other hand, the Church after the Nicene Creed, just as though it was established afresh, acknowledged as God a Son from eternity, but not the Son born in the world.
5. Those two Trinities differ as much from each other as evening and morning, or rather as night and day; accordingly, both of them together cannot possibly be affirmed as true in a member of the Church, because with him religion might perish, and with religion, sound reason. This is because it is not possible from the Nicene and Athanasian Trinities to think of one God, but it is possible to do so in the case of the Apostolic Trinity; and one God may be thought of in the latter case, because this Trinity exists in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God born in the world.
6. That the Divine Trinity is in the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ, He Himself teaches; for He says:
that the Father and He are one [John x 30.]
that He is in the Father, and the Father in Him [John xiv 10, 11.]
that all things of the Father are His [John iii 35; xvi 15.]
that he who sees Him sees the Father [John xiv 9.]
also:
that he who believes in Him, believes in the Father [John xii 44.]
and, according to Paul,
In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily [Col. ii 9]
according to John,
He is the true God and eternal life [1 John v 20.]
and according to Isaiah,
He is the Father of Eternity [Isa. lx 6.]
and elsewhere in the same He is “Jehovah the Redeemer”, “the only God”***, and that, because of Redemption, He is “Jehovah our Righteousness”****; and, where it treats of Him, that He is “God, Father” [Isa. lx 6; lxiii 16]; “His glory will He not give to another” [Isa. xlii 8; xlviii 11]; then that “the Holy Spirit is from Him” [John xx 22].
As, then, God is One and there is a Divine Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, according to the Lord’s words, [Matt. xxviii 19], it follows that this Trinity is in one person, and that it is in the Person of Him who was conceived from God the Father, and born of the virgin Mary, and called, on that account, “Son of the Most High”, “Son of God”, “Only-begotten Son” [Luke i 31-35; John i 18; xx 31; Matt. iii 17 xvi 16; xvii 5]. It is obvious to both internal and external sight that in all these places, and in those quoted above, there is not meant any Son from eternity. Accordingly, with this Divine Trinity, which is indeed the “Fullness of the Godhead, dwelling in Him bodily”, [according to Paul],***** being in the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ, it follows that He alone is to be approached, to be appealed to for help, and to be worshipped; and that, when this is done, the Father is being approached at the according to John, same time, and [the man] receives the Holy Spirit; for He teaches that He Himself is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”; that no one cometh to the Father except through Him; and that he that does not by Him as the Door enter into the sheepfold (i.e. the Church), is not a shepherd, but a thief and a robber [John xiv 6; x 1-9]; then too, that they who believe on Him have eternal life, and they who do not believe, shall not see life, [John iii 15, 16, 36; vi 40; xi 25, 26; 1 John v 20].
7. The Divine Trinity, and with it the Divine Unity, being in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Saviour of the world, this Trinity is the Trinity of the New Church.
[Chapter VI and the first part of Chapter VII are missing. The two pages of the original on which they were written could not be found when the two existing copies were made.]
* The word statim (immediately) is not found in Sk.
** The word “God” is here in both MSS. Worcester alters it to “Creator”, which agrees with the usual form of the Creed. See paragraph 3 of this chapter.
*** See Isa, xliii 10-14; xliv 6, 24; xiv 21, 22; etc.
**** See Jer. xxiii 6.
***** The words, “according to Paul”, are found here in N. but not in Sk.
6.* What its quality is, is depicted by the image Nebuchadnezzar saw, in respect of its feet, also by the last beast coming up out of the sea, in Daniel [vii], and by the dragon and its two beasts, in the Revelation [xii, xiii].
7. Its quality is manifest moreover from the following arcanum that was revealed to me: Everyone is allotted a place in heaven, i.e. a place in the societies of heaven, in accordance with his idea of God; and everyone in the hells, in accordance with his denial of God; and further, within the ideas of those who have confirmed themselves in the Nicene** Trinity, there is present a denial of one God.
8. A true soul and life is in the man of the Church who acknowledges the Lord, the Son of God, as the God of heaven and earth. That He is God of heaven and earth, He Himself teaches in Matthew xxviii [18]. That He is the True God and Eternal Life, is in John [1 John v 20]. That in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead, is according to Paul [Col. ii 9]; and that He is Jehovah, our Redeemer, the only God, indeed the Father of Eternity, is according to Isaiah.
* From the “Index of General Subjects” it appears very probable that chapter VI dealt with “Discordant Ideas derived from the Nicene Trinity”, and chapter VII explained how that Trinity had perverted the Church. In Sk. these three paragraphs are attached to the preceding chapter, and numbered 8, 9, 10 respectively. Instead of “What its quality is”, it reads, “What the state of the Church is, perverted by the Nicene Trinity and by the falsification of the Word”. It omits from the beginning of the next paragraph the words before the colon.
** So in Sk. N. has Apostolica scored out, and Athanasia added by another hand.
THE CONFIRMING OF A TRINITY OF PERSONS, EACH OF WHOM IS A GOD FROM ETERNITY, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE NICENE AND ATHANASIAN CREEDS, HAS FALSIFIED THE WHOLE WORD
1. Every heretic is able to confirm his heresy, and does confirm it, by the Word, this having been written by means of appearances and correspondences. On this account the Word is said by some to be “the book of all the heresies”.
2. A man, after confirming his dogmas, sees no otherwise than that they are true, even when they are false.
3. It is possible to confirm a plurality of Gods by many things from the Word; also to confirm a faith that is imputative of Christ’s merit, in which faith three Gods have each their separate part; and, further, that works of charity contribute nothing towards faith, and so nothing towards salvation.
4. A plurality of Gods can be confirmed from the following:
Trinity is mentioned by the Lord.
Trinity made its appearance when the Lord was baptized.
There are “three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit”. [1 John v 7.]
Jehovah God said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”. [Gen. i 26.]
Before Abraham three angels, who are called Jehovah, made their appearance. [Gen. xvii 2, 3.]
In the New Word, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mentioned many times by the Lord in the Gospels, and by the Apostles in the Epistles, and this without its being said that they are One.
Then, too, it can be confirmed that there is a faith by which there is imputation of Christ’s merit, and that this faith is the only saving faith; also that the works of charity do not conduce to salvation. Let it be added that any reasoning mind can augment the above with contributions of its own, and strengthen them.
5. Not a single one of these can be seen to be false and so be dispelled, unless reason, enlightened by the Lord through the Word, confirm that God is One and that there is a conjunction of charity and faith.
6. When this is done, it is obvious that the theology based upon a Trinity of Persons, each one of whom is God, and upon a faith made applicable to each of them separately, and upon the worthlessness of charity for salvation, has falsified the whole Word; for the reason, chiefly, that these three, God, charity, and faith, are the universals of religion to which every single thing in the Word, and every single thing of heaven and the Church therefrom, has reference.
7. The result, with him who has confirmed this enormity, is that, wherever he reads of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit, indeed wherever he reads of Jehovah and God, he thinks of three Gods because he is thinking of one out of the three; further, wherever he reads of faith, he thinks of no other faith than of one by which there is imputation of Christ’s merit; and wherever he reads of charity, he thinks of it as not contributing anything towards salvation, or else he thinks of that faith in its stead, Confirmation once impressed carries this with it.
* In Sk. this chapter is numbered VI and the following chapters accordingly in sequence, no notice being taken of the missing pages.
FROM THIS HAS COME THE “AFFLICTION” AND “DESOLATION” IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH FORETOLD BY THE LORD IN THE GOSPELS AND IN DANIEL
1. Where the Lord is speaking with His disciples about the Consummation of the Age, and of His Coming, that is, about the end of the present Church and the commencement of a new one, He foretold these things:
Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world to this time, nor shall be. [Matt. xxiv 21.]
further that there would be
the abomination of desolation foretold by Daniel the prophet . . . For after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and … the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. [Matt. xxiv 15, 29.]
2. That such tribulation and desolation exists in the Church is altogether unknown and unseen in the world, it being said in every part of the Church that they are in the very light of the Gospel; so that even if an angel were to descend from heaven and teach otherwise, he would not be believed.
The Roman Catholic Church says it, the Greek Church says it, so does each of the three Reformed Churches named after their leaders, Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, and so does every one of the numerous heretical sects.
3. The tribulation and desolation that was foretold, however, has become visible in clear light in the spiritual world,* inasmuch as all men come into that world after death and remain in the religion in which they were in the natural world; for the light there is spiritual light, which uncovers all things.
4. When members of the clergy are asked there about God, faith, and charity, the three essentials of the Church and consequently of salvation, they answer almost like blind people in pits.
Concerning God, they answer, He is One and He is three who are in unanimity; and when they say that the three are one, they are told to express themselves in accordance with their thought; and then, because with those who are in the spiritual world thought and speech act as one, they say out aloud, “three Gods”.
Concerning faith, they reply that it is a faith in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and that God the Father gives it, the Son mediates it, and the Holy Spirit operates it, thus it is a faith in three Gods in order. When they are questioned further about that faith-whether they know the sign of its entering and the sign of its being in anyone-they reply, What does knowing the sign of it mean? Is it not from good pleasure by the election of that one God, without anything from man being intermingled with it?
When they are asked whether that faith-seeing that it is applied to three, and is thus a faith in three Gods, and that man is in complete ignorance about it-is anything, they reply that not only is it something, but it is the all of the Church and the all of salvation. If they are asked whether that is possible, they laugh at the question.
Concerning charity, their reply is that charity exists where that faith is, and that it is both separate from it and not separate; thus it contributes to salvation and does not contribute to it.
5. When the laity are questioned about God, faith, and charity, they know practically nothing, except that a few of them are acquainted with some obscure sayings heard from the clergy, which they call matters of faith; and that these are in general, that God the Father has pity on account of His Son’s passion, that He remits sins, and that He justifies.
6. When both the laity and the clergy are examined as to whether they have in themselves anything of God, of faith, or of charity, they are found to have nothing; consequently there is nothing of heaven and the Church or of salvation, except only with those who have done good deeds from religion, these being able in the spiritual world to receive faith in the Lord God the Saviour.
7. From the few things adduced above it is clear whence is the great “tribulation such as was not since the world began, nor shall be”, and that “abomination of desolation”, which the Lord foretold would come at the end of the Church, which is at this day.
8. The reason that there has not been such tribulation from the beginning of the world, nor will there be, is that neither the Gentiles nor the Jews themselves knew the Lord God the Saviour as the Fountain of salvation; and ignorance excuses; but it is otherwise with the Christians after His Coming, to whom this has been unfolded in the Word of both Testaments.
* Marginal Note:-And is now visible in the brightest light to me in London in the natural world.
UNLESS A NEW CHURCH COMES INTO EXISTENCE, ABOLISHING THE OLD CHURCH FAITH WHICH IS FAITH IN THREE GODS, AND DELIVERING A NEW ONE WHICH IS FAITH IN THE ONE GOD, THUS IN THE LORD GOD THE SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, “THERE CAN BE NO FLESH SAVED”, ACCORDING TO THE LORD’S WORDS
1. Where the Lord is speaking with the disciples about the consummation of the age and of His Coming, that is, about the end of the present-day Church and the beginning of a new Church, He tells them, after having described the “desolation” and the “tribulation”, that:
Except those days should be shortened, there would no flesh be preserved. [Matt. xxiv 21, 22;]
that is, they would utterly perish in eternal death.
2. The reason no flesh would be preserved unless that “tribulation” and “desolation” were taken away, is because by means of the faith of the present-day Church there is no conjunction with God, and consequently no salvation, the latter being entirely dependent on conjunction with God; in fact it is that conjunction.
3. The reason there is no conjunction with God by means of the faith of the present-day Church is because that faith is faith in three Gods, and unless a faith is faith in the One God it does not conjoin; then also, because that faith is in God the Father, who is unapproachable, and also in a Son born from eternity, who would likewise be unapproachable, being of the same essence as the Father, and because it is at the same time a faith in the Holy Spirit, and because there is not any Son nor any Holy Spirit from eternity, faith in those two is a faith in no God. Add to this, that the present-day faith cannot be united with charity; and a faith not united to charity, thus faith alone, does not conjoin. It follows therefrom that unless a new Church be established by the Lord, which will abolish that faith, and teach a new one which is a faith in the One God, and united at the same time to charity, then no flesh could be preserved, that is, not any man could be saved.
4. That the present-day faith has destroyed the entire Church and falsified the whole Word was shown above. On that account unless a new Church, restoring both the Church and the Word to their integrity, is established by the Lord, no flesh can be preserved.
5. In THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED it is shown that those who are in the faith of the present-day Church are meant by the “dragon” and the “false prophet”, and that the faith itself is meant by “the pit of the abyss” out of which the locusts came, as well as by “the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt” where the two witnesses were slain; and likewise it is shown that by “the New Jerusalem” there a new Church is meant. As it says there that after the dragon and the false prophet had been cast into hell the New Jerusalem came down from God out of heaven, it is clear that after the faith of the present-day Church is condemned, a new Church must come down out of a new Heaven from the Lord and be founded.
6. From these things it is clear that unless a new Church comes into existence abolishing faith in three Gods and recovering faith in one God, thus in the Lord Jesus Christ, conjoining this at the same time with charity into a single form, no flesh can be saved.
7. It may, too, be seen above, n. 31, that redemption could not have been effected, and salvation thereby given, except by God Incarnate, thus by none other than God the Redeemer Jesus Christ, for salvation is a perpetual redemption; further, it may also be seen that God, faith, and charity are the three essentials of the Church, and that upon them the whole of theology, and thus the Church, depends. Consequently where falsities in respect of those three are proclaimed and imbibed, a man has no salvation.
7. Conclusion. No one henceforth can come into heaven unless he is in the doctrine of the new Church in respect of faith and life; the reason for this is that the New Heaven now established by the Lord is in a faith and life in accordance with that doctrine.*
* In N. the following, marked as annotations, are found here:
CHAPTER XI
THE DIVINE TRINITY IS IN THE LORD GOD THE SAVIOUR; AND ACCORDINGLY THE LORD GOD THE SAVIOUR OUGHT ALONE TO BE APPROACHED THAT THERE MAY BE SALVATION OR ETERNAL LIFE
These things to be set forth according to what is contained in the following: Sacred Scripture n. 13, etc.
From the doctrine of the present-day Church there results this, that the Lord has no power, for the Father alone imputes merit, He Himself interceding and praying the Father to do this; moreover they do not remember that He said that “all things of the Father are His”, that “all things of the Father come to Him”, and that He had “power over all flesh” and “all power over heaven and earth”.
The Lord is the Head of the Church, and the Church is His body consequently it is He who is its Head who ought to be approached by the body.
The word “Chapter” and the figure “XI” have been crossed out.
In Sk. the last of these “annotations” is altered slightly and appended to the “Conclusion” of paragraph 7 above, reading, “Because the Lord is the Head of the Church, etc.” The second “annotation” is omitted in Sk.
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