The Last Judgement #20
20. Anyone who has learned about God's order can also understand that man was created so as to become an angel, because in him order reaches its ultimate stage (see 9 above). In this stage something of the wisdom of heaven and the angels can be formed, and it can be reconstituted and multiplied. God's order never stops half-way, and forms anything there without the ultimate stage; for it is not in its fullness and perfection unless it goes to the ultimate. But when it is there, then it takes shape and uses the means at its disposal there to reconstitute and extend itself, which it does by reproduction. The ultimate is therefore the seed-bed of heaven.
This too is what is meant by the description of man and his creation in the first chapter of Genesis:
God said, Let us make 1 man in our image, according to our likeness. And God created man in His image, in the image of God did He create him. Male and female He created them; and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Genesis 1:26-28.
Creating in the image of God and in the likeness of God means conferring on him the whole of God's order from first to last, and so making him an angel as regards the interiors of his mind.
Notas a pie de página:
1. [Reading faciamus as AC for faciemus (We shall make).]
Heaven and Hell #316
316. The reason the Lord rose not only in respect to his spirit but in respect to his body as well is that when the Lord was in the world, he glorified his whole human nature - that is, he made it divine. In fact, his soul, which he received from the Father, was essentially the Divine itself, and his body became an image of that soul (that is, of the Father) and therefore also divine. This is why he, unlike anyone else, rose in both spirit and body. 1 He showed this to his disciples - who believed they were seeing a spirit when they saw him - by saying, "Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I do" (Luke 24:36-39). In this way he pointed out that he was not a person in spirit only, but in body as well.
Notas a pie de página:
1. [Swedenborg's footnote] We rise again as to our spirits: 10593-10594. Only the Lord rose as to his body as well: 1729, 2083, 5078, 10825.
