It sounds strange to say that the universe was created by divine truth – “truth” doesn’t

sound like an active, building kind of thing – but it makes more sense when we think of

“truth” in its deepest sense: as love expressed, as love given form. Because the Lord was

love itself He had to create so He would have something to love. And truth is the thing

that turns love into creation, by giving love expression and giving it form.

That’s not easy to visualize. But it’s interesting – and a bit stunning – how those ideas

from the Writings were borne out by Albert Einstein 130-some years later. One of

Einstein’s most important findings was that mass and energy are really the same thing.

That’s expressed in the famous equation e=mc^2 , in which “e” is energy, “m” is mass and

“c” is the speed of light. It meant that mass – the “stuff” things are made of, the stuff we

can feel and heft – is actually made up of huge amounts of energy trapped in very small

spaces. This meant that breaking up “stuff” and releasing the energy would be very

powerful – it is the basis of nuclear weapons and powerplants – and also meant that the

universe was ultimately one big energy field, folded and crinkled to form mass, in ways

complex enough to form the world we know.

These things were not known or even imagined when the Writing were written, but

replace energy with “love” and mass with “truth” and you can see how alike it is. Truth is

love in patterns, crinkled and folded to form solid concepts, just as mass is energy in

patterns, folded and crinkled to form physical things. And that natural reality of mass and

energy is an extension of the spiritual reality of truth and love.Arcana Coelestia 9410:5Athanasian Creed 145

20. Verse 3 And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. This is at the outset when a person starts to realize that good and truth are something superior. Thoroughly external people do not even know what good is and what truth is, for they imagine that everything which comprises self-love and love of the world is good, and that everything that panders to those loves is truth. Thus they do not know that the things which they imagine to be good are in fact evil, and that those which they imagine to be true are in fact false. But when a person is conceived anew, first he starts to recognize that the good in him is not really good, and then, when he enters more into light, to recognize the existence of the Lord and that the Lord is good and truth themselves. The Lord Himself says in John that men ought to know He exists,

Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. John 8:24.

The point that the Lord is good itself, which is life, and truth itself, which is light, together with the consequent point that no good or truth exist except from the Lord, is made once more in John,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness. He was the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world John 1:1, 3-5, 9.