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

7503. 'On the horses, on the asses, on the camels' means intellectual concepts of and factual knowledge about the truth of faith. This is clear from the meaning of 'the horses' as intellectual concepts, dealt with in 2761, 2762, 3217, 5321, 6125, 6534; from the meaning of 'the asses' as ideas which are of service to the understanding part of the mind, thus also factual knowledge, dealt with in 5492, 7024; and from the meaning of 'the camels' as factual knowledge in general, dealt with in 3048, 3071, 3143, 3145. These three groups of animals mean things that belong to the understanding part of the mind; the remainder - members of the herd and the flock - mean those that belong to the will part. So far as the understanding part is concerned, it is the one which receives the truths of faith. For the understanding is a person's inner sight, which is enlightened by the light of heaven; and in the measure that it is enlightened the person discerns, sees, and acknowledges the truths of faith when he reads the Word. This explains why those who have a perception of the truth of faith are called the intelligent and wise, and also the enlightened. For the fact that the understanding part is the recipient of the truth of faith, see 5114, 6125, 6222.