In John 14:6, 'the way' is doctrine, 'the truth' is every thing pertaining to doctrine, and 'the life' is the essential good which is the life of truth.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 2531)

52. 2. We cannot comprehend God's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence unless we know what the divine design is, and unless we learn that God is the divine design and that he imposed that design on the universe as a whole and on everything in it as he created it. Astounding quantities and varieties of folly have crept into human minds and slithered into the church through the heads of its founders as a result of their not understanding the design that God built into the universe and everything in it. A mere list of these foolish notions, which appears below [56-58], will make this clear.

For now let me open a discussion of the divine design with a general definition: A "design" is the quality of arrangement, boundaries, and interaction among parts, substances, or entities that together make up a form. This quality results in a state - a state that is perfect when produced by wisdom acting on the basis of love, and imperfect when spawned by unsound reasoning acting on the basis of mere desire.

This definition uses the terms substance, form, and state. By substance we mean form as well, because every substance is a form, and the quality of that form is its state. The perfection or imperfection of that state is a result of the design it has.

Because these points are metaphysical, though, they are unavoidably cloaked in thick darkness; but in the ensuing discussion, application of these terms in illustrative examples will dispel this darkness.