The beginning of John 1 illustrated how divine truth – which is the ultimate expression of the Lord’s love – is the actual creative force of the universe and of reality itself. That idea is reinforced here: "him" refers to Jesus, who was the physical embodiment of divine truth, which indeed made the world.

This verse offers another level, though. "World" represents the church, which is defined in the Writings as "where the Lord is known and where the Word is." By that definition a "church" can be as small as one person, or as large as billions of people worshiping through a wide variety of denominations. And the Writings tell us that the Lord has made sure that such a church always existed, from prehistoric times when the Lord offered "the Word" – His truth – to people directly up through today, when we have the Word in the form of the Bible.

But the world did not know him. At the time the Lord came among us as Jesus, people had turned away from the deeper meanings of the Word (which they then had in the form of the Old Testament), and had little to no concern for knowing the Lord. His church – the church among the Children of Israel – had turned away.

This might seem like a merely historic idea, something that happened then but has little to do with us now. But each one of us is a "church," and each one of us can know the Lord and the Word, or turn away. We all go through states when we are like the church at the time the Lord was born, and He can rebuild us now even as He rebuilt the church then. For that to happen, though, we need to turn to the Word – the Bible – and know the Lord.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 1093; Canons of the New Church 9; The Apocalypse Explained 294 [16])

41. CHAPTER III. BEFORE THE WORLD WAS CREATED GOD'S TRINITY DID NOT EXIST

1. That God is one, the Sacred Scripture teaches, and reason enlightened by the Lord sees this in Scripture and from it. But that God was triune before the world was created, Sacred Scripture does not teach, and reason enlightened from it does not see. What is said in David concerning the Son, "this day have I begotten Thee" [Ps. 2:7.], does not mean "from eternity" but "in the fullness of time", for in God what is to come is present, thus it is "this day", in the same way as this passage in Isaiah, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and His name God, Hero, Father of eternity" [Isa. 9:6].

2. What rational mind, hearing that before the world was created there were three Divine Persons named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has not said within himself when he thinks about them, What does it mean-a Son born from God the Father from eternity? And how could He be born? And then, what is a Holy Spirit proceeding from God the Father through the Son from eternity? And how could it proceed and become a God by itself? Or how could a person beget a person from eternity, and both produce a person? Isn't a person a person? How can three Persons, each one of whom is a God, be conjoined into One God, in any other way than by being conjoined into One Person? Yet this latter is contrary to Theology, though being conjoined into One God is in agreement with it. How can the Godhead be distinguished into three Persons, yet not into three Gods, when nevertheless each Person is God? How can the Divine Essence which is One, and the Same, and Indivisible, come under numerical consideration, consequently be either divided or multiplied? And how could three Divine Persons have been together and have held consultations with one another in the absence of extended space, as the case was before the world was created? How could three equal to Himself have been produced by Jehovah God, who is One, and consequently the Only, Infinite, Immeasurable, Eternal, Omnipotent? How is it possible to conceive of a trinity of persons in God's unity, or of God's unity in a trinity of persons? Apart from the fact that the idea of plurality destroys the idea of unity, and conversely. Perhaps too one might suppose that, if this were feasible, it would have been feasible for the Greeks and Romans also to combine all their Gods, many as they were, together into one God, merely by means of "identity of essence".

3. A rational mind, turning over in the thought and pondering upon a Trinity of Persons from eternity in the Godhead, could have considered, too, what was the use of a Son being born, and of a Holy Spirit going forth from the Father through the Son, before the world was created! Was there any need for the three to hold consultations as to how the universe should be created, and so, for the three to create it? When in fact the universe was created by the One God. Nor was there any need for the Son to redeem, when in fact redemption was effected in the fullness of time after the world was created. Nor for the Holy Spirit to sanctify, because as yet there was no man to be sanctified. So then, if those uses were in God's design (idea), still it was not before the world but after it that the design came forth into actual existence. From which it follows that a Trinity from eternity would not be a Trinity in reality but only in idea; and still more so, a Trinity of Persons.

4. Who is there in the Church able to understand the following, when he reads the Athanasian Creed, "it is according to Christian verity that each Person by Himself is God, nevertheless according to the Catholic religion it is not lawful to make mention of three Gods"? Is not "religion" to him thus something different from "verity"? And is it not according to verity that three Persons are three Gods, but according to religion they are one God?

5. A trinity of persons in the Godhead before the world was created did not enter the mind of anyone from the time of Adam to the Lord's Advent, as appears plainly from the Word of the Old Testament and from the accounts of the religion of the people of old. Nor did it enter the minds of the Apostles, as is evident from their writings in the Word. Nor did it enter the mind of anyone in the Apostolic Church which existed prior to the Nicene Council, as appears plainly from the Apostles' Creed, in which there is no mention of any Son from eternity, but of a Son born of the virgin Mary. A Trinity of Persons from eternity is not only beyond reason, it is contrary to reason.

It is contrary to reason that three Persons have created the universe; that there were three Persons, each one of them God, and yet not three Gods but one; and again, that there were three Persons and not one Person.

Will not the New Church that is to be pronounce the age of the Old Church a dark or barbarian age when people worshipped three Gods? Similarly irrational are the things that have come out of that Trinity.

6. A Trinity of Persons from eternity in the Godhead was first propounded by the Nicene Council, as is evident from two creeds, the Nicene and the Athanasian. After that, it was accepted as the chief dogma and as the fountain-head of their doctrines by the Churches that have existed since up to the present day.

There were two reasons for that Trinity being propounded by the Nicene Council; one was that they knew no other way of dispelling the scandals of Arius, who denied the Divinity of the Lord; the other was that they did not understand what was written by John the Evangelist. [John 1:1-2, 10, 14; 16:28; 17:5.] How these statements are to be understood may be seen above.

7. This belief of the Nicene Council and of the Churches since, that the Godhead before the world was created was made up of three Persons, each one of whom was God, and that from the first Person was born the second, and from these two went forth the third, is not only beyond one's understanding, it is contrary to it as well, and is faith in a paradox, which is contrary to the understanding's reason; it is a faith that has in it nothing of the Church, but instead a persuasion of what is false, such as that which exists with those suffering from religious mania. Not that this-suffering from religious mania-is said as applying to those who, without seeing things to be contradictory or contrary to Sacred Scripture, put belief in them; and so it does not apply to the Nicene Council nor to the Churches derived from it since that time, inasmuch as they did not see.