200. "'The beginning of the workmanship of God.'" This symbolically means the Word.
That the Word is the beginning of the workmanship of God is something not yet known in the church, because it has not understood 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 through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men... He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, but the world did not know Him... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father... (John 1:1-14)
Someone who understands these words in respect to their inner meaning, and at the same time compares them with what we wrote in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, as well as with some sections in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, can see that the Word which was in the beginning with God, and which was God, means the underlying Divine truth in the Word that previously existed in this world (as reported in no. 11), and that which is present in the Word that we have today. It does not mean the Word viewed in respect to the words and letters of its languages, but viewed in terms of its essence and life which is inmostly present in the meanings of its words and letters. By this life the Word animates the will's affections of the person who reads it reverently, and by the light of this life it enlightens the thoughts of his intellect. Therefore we are told in John, "In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men." (John 1:4) The Word does this because the Word comes from the Lord and has the Lord as its subject and so is the Lord.
All thought, speech, or writing takes its essence and life from the one doing the thinking, speaking, or writing. It has the person in it, along with his character. And the Word has in it the Lord alone.
Still, no one senses or perceives the Divine life in the Word but one who, when reading it, is impelled by a spiritual affection for truth, for through the Word he is conjoined with the Lord. He experiences something inmostly affecting his heart and spirit, which flows with enlightenment into in his intellect and testifies.
[2] The following words in the first chapter of Genesis have a similar symbolic meaning to those in John:
In the beginning God created heaven and earth... And the spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (Genesis 1:1-3)
The spirit of God is Divine truth, and also light, the Divine truth being the Word; and therefore in John 1:4, 8-9 the Lord calls Himself the Word, and also the light.
A similar meaning is found in this declaration in the book of Psalms:
By the word of Jehovah the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. (Psalms 33:6)
In short, without the Divine truth of the Word, which in its essence is the Divine goodness of the Lord's Divine love and the Divine truth of His Divine wisdom, no mortal could have life. The Word is the means of the Lord's conjunction with a person, and of the person with the Lord, and through that conjunction comes life. There must be something from the Lord that a person can receive which makes possible that conjunction and so eternal life.
[3] It can be seen from this that "the beginning of the workmanship of God" means the Word, and if you would believe it, the Word such as it is in the sense of its letter, for this sense embraces the inner, holy levels, as we showed many times in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture.
Moreover, wonderful to say, the Word has been so written that it communicates with the whole of heaven, and every particular with some society there, as I have been given to know through personal experience, of which more elsewhere.
That the Word in its essence is such as described is still more apparent from these words of the Lord:
The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:63)
