4831. 'And her name was Tamar' means the essential nature of the Church - a Church representative of spiritual and celestial things. This is clear from the meaning of 'name' as the essential nature, dealt with in 144, 145, 1754, 1896, 2009, 2724, 3006, 3421, in this case the essential nature of the Church because Tamar in this chapter represents the Church, in particular the Church representative of spiritual and celestial things which was to be established among the descendants of Judah. Tamar's representation of that Church is evident from what follows. This whole chapter deals in the internal sense with the Jewish Church, with how it was intended to become a Church representative of the spiritual and celestial things of the Lord's kingdom, as the Ancient Church had been, and to become such not only in external form but also in internal. For a Church is not a Church by virtue of its externals, that is, of its religious observances, but by virtue of its internals; for these are the essential realities, the externals merely forms expressing those realities. But the descendants of Jacob were the kind of people who had no wish to receive internal things. Among them therefore the Ancient Church could not be raised up, only that which was a representative of that Church, 4307, 4444, 4500. The internal dimension of the Church is meant here by 'Tamar', and the external by 'Judah' together with his three sons by his Canaanite wife.

3006. These are the things that angels perceive when the names Jesus Christ are used, and the things that are meant by its being said that in no other name is there salvation, and by what the Lord stated so many times concerning His name, as in John,

Whatever you ask in My name, I will do. John 14:13-14.

In the same gospel,

These things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John 20:31.

And elsewhere. 'His name' means everything in its entirety by which the Lord is worshipped, and so the essential nature of all worship and doctrine, see 2724. Here therefore the good of love and charity is meant when joined to the truth of faith, which constitutes the fabric of doctrine and worship in their entirety.