544. People in the world still believe that there is a devil who rules the hells and that he was created as an angel of light but was cast into hell with his gang after he led a rebellion. The reason for this belief is that the Word talks about the devil and Satan, and about Lucifer as well; and in these cases the Word is understood literally. However, in these passages the devil and Satan mean hell. The devil means the hell toward the rear where the worst people live, the people called evil demons; and Satan means the hell that is toward the front where the less malevolent people live, the people called evil spirits. Lucifer means the people who are from Babel or Babylon, the ones who extend their control all the way into heaven.

We can also see that there is no devil to whom the hells are subject from the fact that all the people who are in the hells, like all the people in the heavens, are from the human race (see 311-317), that there are millions there from the beginning of creation to the present day, and that everyone there is the kind of devil he or she became by opposition to the Deity while in the world (see above, 311-312).

44. Divine love and wisdom are substance and form in themselves, thus the one and only absolute. We have just established above that Divine love and wisdom are substance and form; and we have already said as well that the Divine being and expression are being and expression in itself. ¹ We cannot say that they are being and expression from itself, because this involves a beginning - and a beginning moreover from something in it which is being and expression in itself. Yet being and expression itself in itself exists from eternity. Being and expression itself in itself is also something not created, and everything that is created can exist only from something that is not created. Furthermore, whatever is created is also finite, and something finite can come into being only from something that is infinite.

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