20. (ii) THE ONE GOD IS SUBSTANCE ITSELF AND FORM ITSELF, AND ANGELS AND MEN ARE SUBSTANCES AND FORMS DERIVED FROM HIM; TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY ARE IN HIM AND HE IN THEM, SO FAR ARE THEY IMAGES AND LIKENESSES OF HIM.

Since God is Being, He is also substance, for unless being is substance, it is an imaginary entity, for substance is a subsisting entity. One who is substance must also be form, for substance without form is an imaginary entity. Both can therefore be predicated of God, but on condition that He is the sole, very and prime substance and form. It was proved in THE WISDOM OF THE ANGELS ON THE DIVINE LOVE AND THE DIVINE WISDOM (published at Amsterdam in 1763) that this form is the very form of man, that is, God is very man, and all of his attributes are infinite; and likewise that angels and men are substances and forms created and ordered so as to receive the Divine influences reaching them through heaven. In the Book of Creation they are therefore called images and likenesses of God (Genesis 1:26-27); elsewhere they are called His sons and begotten of Him. It will be proved at length in the course of this book that in so far as a man lives under Divine guidance, that is, allows himself to be led by God, so far does he become, more and more inwardly, an image of God.

[2] If the minds of men did not form the idea that God is prime substance and form, and that His form is the very form of man, they would easily fall into fantastic, ghost-like, ideas about God Himself, the origin of man and the creation of the world. They could not avoid thinking of God as the primeval nature of the universe, and consequently as its expanse, or as it were a void or nothingness. They would think of the origin of man as if it were a fortuitous concourse of atoms to make such a form; of the creation of the world as owing its substances and forms to geometric points and lines, which since they lack attributes are in themselves non-existent. In the case of such people everything relating to the church is like the river Styx or the thick darkness of Tartarus.

5225. 'And there was no one to interpret them for Pharaoh' means that no knowledge existed of what was going to happen. This is clear from the meaning of 'interpreting' as knowing what was going to happen, dealt with in 5141, and therefore 'no one to interpret' means no knowledge of it since 'no one' in the internal sense means the absence and so non-existence of some reality. For the idea of a person is converted in the internal sense into that of some reality. For example, the idea of a man, husband, woman, wife, son, daughter, boy, or virgin is converted into the idea of some truth or form of good. Or, as above in 5223, the idea of a magus and a wise man is converted into that of factual knowledge, interior and exterior. The reason for this is that in the spiritual world, that is, in heaven, angels' attention is fixed not on persons but on spiritual realities. For persons narrow an idea down and focus it on some finite thing, whereas spiritual realities do not involve any such narrowing down or focusing but spread to what is Infinite, and so to the Lord. This explains too why in heaven no one ever perceives a person mentioned in the Word; instead they perceive the reality represented by that person. Nor for the same reason does anyone in heaven perceive a people or nation, only its essential nature. Indeed in heaven they have no knowledge at all of any historical detail in the Word about any person, nation, or people; consequently they have no knowledge of who Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or the people of Israel are, nor of who the Jewish people are. Instead they perceive what is represented by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the people of Israel, the Jewish people, and so on with everything else. This explains why angelic language has no limitations and is also a universal one compared with other languages.