571. And on its heads a blasphemous name. This symbolizes their denial of the Lord's Divine humanity and affirmation of their church's doctrine, drawn not from the Word but from their own intelligence.
The seven heads symbolize irrationality resulting from absolute falsities, as said in no. 568 above. And this irrationality utters blasphemy when it denies the Lord's Divinity present in His humanity. It also does this when it does not draw the doctrine of the church from the Word, but hatches it from its own intelligence.
As regards the first, that it is blasphemy to deny the Lord's Divinity present in His humanity, the reason is that someone who denies it goes against the creed accepted throughout the Christian world called the Athanasian Creed, which plainly says that in Jesus Christ, God and man - which is to say, the Divine and the human - are not two but one, and that they constitute one person, being united as soul and body. Consequently people who deny the Divinity in the Lord's humanity are close to being Socinians 1
and Arians, 2
especially when they think of the Lord's humanity by itself as being like that of any other man, and do not think at all then of His Divinity from eternity.
[2] As regards the second, that it is blasphemy not to draw the doctrine of the church from the Word, but to hatch it from one's own intelligence, the reason is that the church is founded on the Word and its character is such as its understanding of the Word (see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 76-79), and the doctrine that faith alone - that is, faith apart from works of the law - justifies and saves, comes not from the Word, but from a single saying of Paul (Romans 3:28), 3
falsely interpreted (see no. 417).
Moreover, every doctrinal falsity takes it origin from no other source than people's own intelligence. For what is more universally taught in the Word than to refrain from evil and do good? And what is more evident there than the precept that God is to be loved, and the neighbor also? Who does not see, too, that no one is capable of loving the neighbor unless he lives in conformity with the works of the law? Also, anyone who does not love his neighbor does not love God either, for it is in love for the neighbor that the Lord conjoins Himself with a person and that a person conjoins himself with the Lord; that is to say, that it is in that love that God and man join together. What, then, is it to love the neighbor except to refrain from doing evil to him, in accordance with the commandments of the Decalogue (Romans 13:8-11)? And to the extent a person wills not to do evil to the neighbor, to the same extent he wills to do good to him.
It is apparent from this that it is blasphemy to eliminate works of the law from salvation, as those people do who make faith alone the only saving faith, namely, faith divorced from good works.
The blasphemy referred to in Matthew 12:31-32 means to deny the Lord's Divinity, as Socinians do, and to reject the Word. For people who so deny the Lord's Divinity cannot enter heaven, as the Lord's Divinity is everything in everything connected with heaven, and anyone who rejects the Word rejects everything connected with religion.
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