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.

308. There is also a union of heaven through the Word with people who are outside the church, where the Word is not found; for the Lord's church is everywhere and exists with everyone who acknowledges something divine and lives considerately. People like this are taught by angels after their decease and accept divine truths. ¹ There will be more on this below in its proper chapter, where we discuss non-Christians.

In the Lord's sight, the universal church on earth is like a single individual just as heaven is (as noted above in 59-72). However, the church where the Word is and the Lord is known through it is like the heart and lungs of that person. It is common knowledge that the viscera and members of the whole body get their life from the heart and lungs by various routes. So too the human race that is outside the church where the Word is gets its life in the same way and constitutes the members of that person. Heaven's union through the Word with people who are at a distance can be compared to light that spreads in all directions from a center. The divine light is in the Word, and the Lord is present there with his heaven. People who are far off also receive light from that presence. It would be different if there were no Word, which can be more fully understood by reference to what has been presented above about the form of heaven that determines its gatherings and communications.

Still, this arcanum is understandable to people who are in spiritual light but not to people who are only in natural light. People who are in spiritual light, that is, see quite clearly countless things that people who are in natural light alone either do not see at all or see only as a single vague entity.

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