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All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
By Brian David
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
9360. In addition to the reasons already introduced there is the consideration that the inhabitants, spirits, and angels belonging to our planet correlate in the Grand Man with external or bodily perceiving, 9107, and external or bodily perceiving is the lowest level, in which more internal levels of life terminate and on which they rest as their general foundation, 5077, 9212, 9216. The same applies to God's truth in its literal form, which is called the Word; it has been provided for a like reason on this planet and not on another. Furthermore, since the Lord is the Word, since He is its first and last, His will was that He should be born and become the Word on this planet, in order that everything might take place in keeping with true order, according to the following words in John,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father. Nobody has ever seen God; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known. John 1:1-3, 14, 18.
'The Word' is Divine Truth. But this is an arcanum about which only few can have any understanding.