34. Love and faith cannot possibly be separated for they constitute one and the same thing. This is why, when first the [great] lights are dealt with and they are taken to be one, it is said [using a singular verb with a plural noun], 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens'. Let some marvels relating to this be mentioned here. Since celestial angels possess from the Lord that kind of love, they possess by virtue of that love every cognition of faith, and by virtue of that love the kind of life and light of understanding that almost defies description altogether. On the other hand spirits who without love have a knowledge of the doctrinal matters concerning faith live such cold lives and are in such dull light that they cannot approach even the outer gateway to heaven before running off in the opposite direction. Some claim to have believed in the Lord, but they have not lived according to His teaching. The Lord refers to these people in Matthew as follows,

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does My will. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? and so on. Matthew 7:21-22-end.

[2] From this is clear that those who have love have faith as well, and so heavenly life, whereas those who claim to have faith and yet have none of the life inherent in love do not. The life of faith devoid of love is like sunlight devoid of warmth, as is the case in wintertime when nothing grows and every single thing is inactive and dies off. But faith deriving from love is like the sunlight in springtime when everything grows and blossoms, for it is the warmth of the sun that brings it out. It is similar with spiritual and celestial things, which are normally represented in the Word by the things found in the world and on earth. An absence of faith, and faith devoid of love, are also compared by the Lord to winter where He foretold the close of the age in Mark,

Pray that your flight may not happen in winter, for those will be days of affliction. Mark 13:18-19.

'Flight' means the final period, also the time when a person dies; 'winter' is life which is destitute of love, 'days of affliction' his wretched condition in the next life.

1661. 'And so it was in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim' means just so many kinds of apparent goods and truths which are not in themselves goods and truths, and which were present with the Lord's external Man. This becomes clear from the meaning of all these in the internal sense, and also from what follows. For the subject is the Lord's conflict against evils and falsities, here His first conflict which came during His childhood and earliest adolescence. That conflict He first entered into and endured after He had been endowed with knowledge and cognitions, hence the expression 'in the days of' these kings.

[2] Nobody can possibly fight against evils and falsities until he knows what evil and falsity are, not therefore until he has received instruction. A person does not know what evil is, still less what falsity is, before he is capable of understanding and of forming judgements for himself, which is the reason why a person does not enter into temptations until he has reached the age of maturity. Thus everyone is tempted in adult life, but the Lord was tempted even in childhood.

[3] Everyone fights first of all from the goods and truths he has received by means of cognitions, and it is from them and by means of them that he forms judgements concerning evils and falsities. Everyone furthermore when he first starts to fight imagines that these goods and truths from which he fights are his own, that is, he ascribes them to himself, and at the same time ascribes to himself the power by which he resists. This is allowed because a person cannot at the time know anything different. Before anyone has been regenerated he cannot possibly know, so as to be able to say that he knows, acknowledges, and believes, that no good or truth at all comes from self, but that everything good and true comes from the Lord; nor can he possibly know that he is unable by his own power to resist any evil or falsity. Indeed he does not know that evil spirits are activating and implanting the evils and falsities, still less that he is in communication with hell by means of evil spirits, and that hell presses on him like the sea against every part of a dike, which he can by no means resist by his own strength. Yet because he cannot do otherwise, until he has been regenerated, than imagine that he resists by his own strength, this too is permitted; and in this condition he is admitted into conflicts, or temptations. Subsequently however he becomes more and more enlightened.

[4] When a person's state is such that he imagines that good and truth originate in himself and that the power to resist is his own, the goods and truths from which he fights against evils and falsities are not really goods and truths, however much they appear to be so, for they have that which is his own within them, and he places self-merit in victory, boasting as though it were he that had overcome evil and falsity, when in fact it is the Lord alone who fights and overcomes. That this is indeed so none can know except those who are being regenerated by means of temptations.

[5] Because the Lord in earliest childhood was led into very serious conflicts against evils and falsities it was inevitable that at that time even He should think that way. This happened both because it was according to Divine order that His Human Essence should through continuous conflicts and victories be brought to the Divine Essence and united to it, and because the goods and truths from which He fought against evils and falsities belonged to the External Man. And because those goods and truths were not completely Divine they are for that reason called appearances of good and truth. His Divine Essence brought the Human Essence to itself in this way in order that it might overcome by its own power. The arcana here however are more than can possibly be described. In short, in those first conflicts the goods and truths residing with the Lord from which He fought were permeated by things inherited from the mother, and insofar as they were permeated by things inherited from the mother they were not Divine. Gradually however, as He overcame evil and falsity they were purified and made Divine.