30. Verses 14-17 And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens, to make a distinction between the day and the night; and they will be for signs, and for set times, and for days and years. And they will be for lights in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth; and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to have dominion over the day, and the lesser light to have dominion over the night; and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

No one can have an adequate understanding of what 'the great lights' are unless he knows what the underlying essence of faith is and how it develops in people who are being created anew. The very essence and life of faith is the Lord alone. In fact it is impossible for anyone who does not believe in the Lord to have life, as He Himself has said in John,

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God will rest upon him. John 3:36.

[2] With people who are being created anew faith develops as follows: First of all they have no life, for life does not exist in anything evil and false but in what is good and true. Then they start to receive life from the Lord by means of faith - first by faith existing in the memory, which is factual faith, then by faith existing in the understanding, which is conceptual faith, and after this by faith existing in the heart, which is loving or saving faith. Factual faith and conceptual faith are represented in verses 3-13 by the inanimate, but faith made alive by means of love is represented in verses 20-25 by the animate. Consequently this is the first point at which love and faith deriving from it, which are called 'lights', are dealt with. Love is 'the greater light which has dominion over the day', and faith deriving from love is 'the lesser light which has dominion over the night'. And because they ought to make one the verb in the phrase 'let there be lights 'is singular and not plural.

[3] Love and faith have their place in the internal man as warmth and light do in the external, bodily man, and for this reason love and faith are represented by warmth and light. Therefore it is said that 'the lights' were set in the expanse of the heavens, that is, in the internal man - the greater light in his will and the lesser in his understanding. Yet they make their appearances in the will and understanding only as sunlight does in the objects it strikes. To the Lord alone belongs the mercy which moves the will with love and the understanding with truth or faith.

1198. 'From whom they came forth' means that cognitions, as these exist with them, are facts. This is clear from what has been stated. These are not said to have been 'begotten' by those who belonged to Egypt but to have 'gone forth', for they are not such as use natural and factual knowledge to reason about spiritual and celestial things and in so doing fabricate for themselves doctrinal teachings, as do those described before. Instead they learn cognitions of faith from another source, but have no other end in view to knowing and retaining these in the memory than they have with other things in which they have no interest beyond merely knowing them, and only then for the reason that by so knowing they may be promoted to positions of importance, and for other like reasons. So different is knowledge of cognitions of faith from knowledge of natural things that the two have scarcely anything in common. This explains why they are not said to have been 'bore' but to have 'gone forth' from them. Such being the character of 'Philistines' they inevitably pervert cognitions of faith by means of reasonings from them, and as a consequence fabricate false doctrines for themselves. They belong therefore among those who are barely able to be regenerated and to receive charity, both because they are uncircumcised at heart and because the false assumptions and consequently the life of their understanding hinder and prevent.