20. 2. The one God is substance itself and form itself. Angels and people are substances and forms from him. To the extent that they are in him and he is in them, to that extent they are images and likenesses of him. Because God is the underlying reality, he is also substance. Unless the underlying reality becomes substance it is a figment of the imagination; but as a substance it becomes an entity. And one who is substance is also form, for substance without form is another figment of the imagination. We can attribute both of these to God, provided he is seen as the sole, the only, and the archetypal substance and form.

The work Divine Love and Wisdom, published in Amsterdam in 1763, demonstrates that God's form is the human form itself, that is, that God is the Human Being, and all God's attributes are infinite. That work also shows that angels and people are substances and forms that have been created and arranged to receive divine qualities flowing into them through heaven. In the Book of Creation they are called images and likenesses of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Elsewhere they are called God's children and people born of God.

As the sequence of topics in this book will show in many ways, the more we live under divine guidance, meaning the more we submit to God's leading, the more and more deeply we become an image of God.

If human minds do not form an idea of God as the archetypal substance and form, and of God's form as the Human Form itself, they render themselves highly susceptible to delusions and speculations about God, about the development of the human race, and about the creation of the world. Their thought of God is restricted to a thought of the expanse of nature underlying the universe, or else a thought about emptiness or nothing at all. The development of the human race they think of as a lucky coincidence - elements just happened to come together in this form. As for the creation of the world, they see its substances and forms as originating in geometry's points and then lines; and because these are nondimensional and one-dimensional they are actually nothing. In such minds, everything that has to do with the church is like the river Styx or the thick darkness in Tartarus.

343. 3. The Way We Receive Faith Is by Turning to the Lord, Learning Truths from the Word, and Living by Those Truths

Before I begin demonstrating how faith arises (which occurs when we turn to the Lord, learn truths from the Word, and live by those truths) and before we move into individual aspects of faith, I first need to present categories of faith to give you an overview. This will help you understand more clearly not only things in this chapter on faith, but also points made in chapters to come on goodwill [392-462], free choice [463-508], repentance [509-570], reformation and regeneration [571-625], and the assignment of spiritual credit or blame [626-666]. Faith runs through each and every part of a systematic theology the way blood runs through the body's limbs, bringing them to life.

What the church today has to say about faith is generally known in the Christian world and specifically known among those in its religious hierarchy. Books only about faith and about faith alone fill the libraries of the church's theologians. In fact, hardly anything other than faith is considered to be a valid theological topic these days. Before taking what the church is saying nowadays about its faith and examining it in an appendix, I will first list the general points that the new church teaches about its faith. They are as follows: