Arcana Coelestia #2115
2115. 'From the son who is a foreigner' means all who are rational outside the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'son who is a foreigner' as those who are outside the Church, dealt with above in 2049, thus gentiles who do not possess the Word and therefore do not know anything about the Lord. And that these equally are saved when they are rational, that is, when they live together in charity or mutual love and have received something of a conscience in accordance with their own religion, has been shown in Volume One, in 593, 932, 1032, 1059, 1327, 1328.
Arcana Coelestia #1328
1328. 'And from there Jehovah scattered them over the face 1 of the whole Earth' means that internal worship ceased to exist. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'scattering' as being dispersed. In the proximate sense those who wanted to build the city of Babel are meant by 'being scattered over the face 1 of the whole earth'. But because they are people who deprive others of all knowledge of truth, as has been stated, these words at the same time mean the loss of internal worship; for one is the consequence of the other. Here the consequence is meant because this is the third time that this statement is made. That the first Ancient Church had been deprived of cognitions of truth and good is clear from the consideration that the nations which constituted that Ancient Church became for the most part idolatrous, though they still possessed some form of external worship. The lot of idolaters outside the Church is far better than that of idolaters inside it. The former are external idolaters, but the latter are internal. The fact that the lot of the former is better is clear from what the Lord says in Luke 13:23, 28-30; Matthew 8:11-12. This then is the reason why the state of this Ancient Church was altered.
Fußnoten:
1. literally, the faces