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Genesis 2

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1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden: and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11 The name of the first is Pison, which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx-stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same that compasseth the whole land of Cush.

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: which floweth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die.

18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him a help meet for him.

19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was its name.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field: but for Adam there was not found a help meet for him.

21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.

22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, he made woman, and brought her to the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

   

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True Christianity #520

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520. From Birth We Have a Tendency toward Evils of Every Kind. Unless We at Least Partly Lay Them Aside through Repentance, We Remain in Them, and If We Remain in Them We Cannot Be Saved

We are all born with a tendency toward evils. As is recognized in the church, from our mother's womb we are nothing but evil. Now, the reason this is recognized is that the church councils and leaders have passed down to us the notion that Adam's sin has been passed on to all his descendants; in this view, this is the sole reason why Adam and everyone since has been condemned; and this damnation clings to us all from the day we are born. Many teachings of the church are based on these assertions. For example, [we are told that] the Lord instituted the washing of regeneration that is called baptism so that this sin would be removed. This sin was also the reason for the Lord's Coming. Faith in his merit is the means by which this sin is removed. The churches have many other teachings as well that are based on this notion.

[2] Nevertheless, the teachings that were brought forward above in 469 make it clear that there is no such thing as evil that we inherit from Adam. Adam was not the first human being. "Adam" and "his wife" are used symbolically to describe the first church on this planet. The Garden of Eden symbolizes the wisdom of the people in that church; the tree of life symbolizes their focus on the Lord who was to come; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes their focus on themselves instead of the Lord. Secrets of Heaven, which was published in London, uses many parallel passages found elsewhere in the Word to demonstrate thoroughly that the first chapters of Genesis describe this church in symbolic terms. Once people comprehend and absorb the teachings presented in that work, they experience a collapse of their formerly cherished opinion that the evil bred into us by our parents comes from [Adam's sin]; they realize that inherited evil comes not from Adam but from some other source.

As was amply demonstrated in the chapter on free choice [466-469], the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil exist within every human being; and the fact that these trees are said to have been placed in a garden means that we have free choice to turn ourselves toward the Lord or to turn ourselves away from him.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.