The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #263
263. The Lord is the Word. The sole subject of the deepest meaning of the Word is the Lord, and it describes all the phases of the glorification of his human nature (that is, of its union with the divine nature itself), as well as all the phases of his taking control of the hells and setting in order everything there and in the heavens: 2249, 7014. So in this meaning there is a description of the Lord's whole life in our world, and by means of this there is a constant presence of the Lord with the angels: 2523. At the very center of the Word there is only the Lord, and this is the source of what is divine and holy in the Word: 1873, 9357. The Lord's saying that the Scripture about him was fulfilled [Luke 18:31; 24:44] was referring to everything in the deepest meaning of the Word: 7933.
"The Word" means divine truth: 4692, 5075, 9987. The Lord is the Word because he is divine truth: 2533. The Lord is the Word also because the Word comes from him and is about him (2859); and in its deepest meaning is about no one but the Lord, so the Lord himself is there (1873, 9357); and also because there is a marriage of divine goodness and divine truth throughout the Word and in its every detail (3004, 5502). "Jesus" means divine goodness and "Christ" means divine truth: 3004, 3005, 3009. Divine truth [ coming from divine goodness] is the sole reality, and only what it dwells in-which comes from what is divine-is substantial: 5272, 6880, 7004, 8200. 1 And because divine truth emanating from the Lord is heaven's light and divine goodness is its warmth, and because everything there comes into being from that light and warmth, and because this earthly world as a whole comes into being by means of heaven or the spiritual world, we can see that everything that has been created has been created from divine truth-that is, from the Word, just as it says in John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things that were made were made through him. And the Word became flesh" [John 1:1, 3, 14]: 2803, 2894, 5272, 7678. For more on the creation of everything by divine truth and therefore by the Lord, see §137 of the book Heaven and Hell. A fuller picture can be drawn from two of its chapters: §§116-125 ["The Sun in Heaven"] and 126-140 ["Light and Warmth in Heaven"].
A joining together of the Lord and us is accomplished through the Word, by means of its inner meaning: 10375. Absolutely everything in the Word is a means to this joining together, and this is why the Word is more wondrous than anything else that has been written: 10632, 10633, 10634. Now that the Word has been written, the Lord speaks to us through it: 10290.
Footnotes:
1. Substance, in its philosophical sense, is the basic, underlying constituent that carries the attributes of a thing. Thus, for example, Swedenborg elsewhere stipulates that without substance the attribute of form cannot be present ( True Christianity 52). A rough idea of substance can be obtained by thinking of it as the spiritual equivalent of what we call matter. In this passage, and in several of the Secrets of Heaven passages referred to here (§§5272, 6880, 8200), Swedenborg indicates that divine truth is not merely mental thought, or spoken or written words, but the reality itself that underlies everything in the universe. Therefore all things actually proceed from it, and it literally gives them substance. Although some of these passages appear to ascribe this all-encompassing role to divine truth alone, it seems clear that Swedenborg is not excluding divine goodness: In one of the passages just mentioned, Secrets of Heaven 5272, he writes that "divine truth coming from divine goodness is the most real and most essential thing there is in the universe" (emphasis added; this passage is the origin of the material presented in brackets here in the main text). Elsewhere he presents the two divine attributes as completely integrated, as the singular verbs in the proposition of Divine Love and Wisdom 40 suggest: "Divine love and wisdom is substance and is form. " For further discussion of the idea of substance in Swedenborg's works, see Brown 1919, 398-413; for relevant passages in Swedenborg's works, see those collected at Odhner 1986, 6 with note 1 in New Jerusalem 4. [SS, JSR, RS]
