80. There Is a Marriage of the Lord and the Church in the Details of the Word and a Consequent Marriage of Goodness and Truth

UNTIL the present time, no one has seen that there is a marriage of the Lord and the church in the details of the Word and a consequent marriage of goodness and truth, and no one could see it because the spiritual meaning of the Word had not been uncovered, and without this, the marriage cannot be seen.

There are two levels of meaning in the Word that are hidden within the literal meaning, namely, a spiritual level and a heavenly level. Spiritually understood, the contents of the Word refer for the most part to the church, while understood on a heavenly level they refer for the most part to the Lord. On a spiritual level they also refer to divine truth and on a heavenly level they refer to divine goodness. As a result, this marriage is found in the literal meaning of the Word.

However, this is not apparent to anyone who does not know the meanings of words and names on the basis of the spiritual and heavenly meanings of the Word, since some words and names focus attention on what is good and some on what is true, and some include both, so unless this is realized the marriage in the details of the Word cannot be seen. That is why this mystery has not been disclosed before.

3632. Divine order and consequent heavenly order do not extend beyond man as their furthest limit - beyond the things related to his body, namely his gestures, actions, facial expressions, speech, external sensations, and the delights that go with these. Such bodily things are the furthest limits to which order extends and to which influx extends. But the interior things which flow in are not in themselves such as they are seen to be in external things but have a totally different face, countenance, sensation, and delight. Correspondences teach the nature of interior things, as do representations, dealt with already. The fact that they are different is clear from actions which flow from the will, and from utterances which flow from thought. Actions of the body are not such as they are in the will, nor are verbal utterances such as they are in thought. From this it is also evident that natural acts flow from spiritual, since things of the will and those of thought are spiritual; and that spiritual things in a correspondential way present a likeness of themselves in natural, even though in themselves they are quite different.