189. CHAPTER FOUR

THE SACRED SCRIPTURE OR THE WORD OF THE LORD ¹

I. The sacred scripture, that is the Word, is Divine truth itself.

Everyone professes the Word to be from God, divinely inspired and therefore holy, but up to the present no one has known where in it the Divine is. For taken literally the Word looks like any ordinary book, written in a strange style, neither high-flown nor brilliant as many secular books appear to be. This is why if a person worships nature as God or in preference to God, so that his thought comes from himself and his own personality (proprium) rather than from heaven inspired by the Lord, he can easily fall into error about the Word and come to despise it. Thus he may say to himself when he reads it: 'What does this or that mean? Can this be divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, talk like this? Where is there anything holy in it, and where does this holiness come from, except from religious belief and the conviction it carries?'

Poznámky pod čarou:

A 'sword,' as in Ezekiel 21:9-15, signifies a person so desolated that he can see nothing good and true, but only falsities and contradictions. A 'sword,' in the Word, signifies the truth of faith combating and the vastation of truth. In an opposite sense, it signifies falsity combating and the punishment of falsity.

The 'sword,' in Revelation 1:16, represents a dispersion of falsities by the Lord because the sword came out from His mouth, which means it comes from the Word. Because the Word is understood by doctrine taken from it, this is also symbolically meant. It is called a sharp two-edged sword because it pierces the heart and soul.

A 'flaming sword which turned every way,' as in Genesis 3:24, signifies divine truth in extremes, which, like the Word in its literal sense, can be turned.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 2799)