The Bible

 

John 1:18

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18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

Commentary

 

Explanation of John 1:18

By Brian David

Ancient of Days, by William Blake

The Lord, in His essence, is infinite. He is the source of all energy, the well-spring of reality itself. His love is of such power that we would be destroyed by its direct heat, which is infinitely greater than the heat of the finite sun. His wisdom, the direct outpouring of His love, is of such power that we would be blinded by its brightness, which is infinitely brighter than the light of the finite sun. His immensity – which is beyond immensity – is inaccessible to our finite imaginative powers. In His essence, He is unknowable to us.

Yet we know Him. How? The Writings say that His love and wisdom project as a human form, then pass through that form almost like a filter to come to us as divine truth. That truth is like a container that is conformed to our minds, enough that we can hang onto an idea of the Lord and receive His love. We can have ideas that are filled with the Lord, and feel like we know Him, though really what we know is just the amount we can handle.

That divine truth is, itself, "the only begotten son." It was the son as the soul within the physical man Jesus; it was the son as the inner meaning of the Old Testament; it was the son as expressed by the Lord in other ways before Moses, and it is still the son now as the inner meaning of the Old and New Testaments together. It knows the Father – the love that is the Lord’s essence – and does, in fact, declare the Father to us, if only we will listen.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 2025 [4], 4211, 4724, 5321 [2], 6849, 6887, 7211, 8705, 10579)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

On the Athanasian Creed #145

  
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145. The extension of the Divine into the universe is what can be predicated of the Divine Proceeding, which is the Divine Truth and is called the Word. By this were all things made which were made and the world was created from it, according to the words in John, chapter 1. But an idea is to be held concerning the Divine Itself, the idea as of a Man whose Divine Love appears as a Sun from which the light is Divine Truth and the heat Divine Good. But still the idea of extension is applicable only to the natural world but not to the spiritual world, in which, extension as space and distance is only an appearance concerning which see the work on HEAVEN AND HELL in the chapter dealing with space.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.