36. People who have separated faith from love do not even know what faith is. When they do entertain an idea about faith, some of them see it only as mere thought, others as thought directed towards the Lord, and a few as the doctrine of faith. But faith involves not only knowledge of all the things that the doctrine of faith embraces and the acknowledgment of them; it is first and foremost obedience to everything that doctrine teaches. The primary point that it teaches for men's obedience is love of the Lord and love of the neighbour. Whoever is devoid of this is devoid of faith, a point which the Lord teaches so plainly in Mark as to leave absolutely no room for doubt,

The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Therefore you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. The second is also like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Mark 11:28-33.

In Matthew, He calls the former 'the first and great commandment', and says 'on these commandments the Law and Prophets depend', Matthew 22:35-40. The Law and the Prophets are the doctrine of faith in its entirety and the whole of the Word.

10411. 'And built an altar in front of it' means worship. This is clear from the meaning of 'an altar' as the chief representative of Divine worship, dealt with in 4541, 8935, 8940, 9714, 10242, 10245, but at this point that which is representative of devilish worship since those whose interest lies in external things and not in what is internal are in contact with the hells and not with the heavens. (For a person's internal is his heaven, and his external is his world. His internal furthermore has been so created as to conform to an image of heaven, thus to receive such things as belong there, and his external to conform to an image of the world, thus to receive such things as belong here, see in the places referred to in 9279, 10156. Consequently when the internal is closed, so is heaven, and then the external is no longer ruled from heaven but from hell.) Therefore their worship is not Divine but devilish. They do, it is true, speak of the Divine and also offer Him worship, but outwardly and not inwardly, that is, with their lips but not with their heart. Nor do they worship ¹ the Divine for His sake but for the sake of themselves and the world. Where the heart is, in that place there is worship. From all this it is evident that 'building an altar in front of the golden calf' means worship of the devil.

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