1. I. The Sacred Scripture, or the Word, is the Divine Truth itself.

It is generally agreed that the Word is from God, is divinely inspired, and therefore holy; but hitherto it has remained unknown wherein its divinity resides; for the Word in the Letter appears like common writing in a strange style, lacking the sublimity and brilliance which are apparently features of the literature of the world. For this reason the man who worships nature instead of God, or in preference to God, and who consequently thinks from ¹ himself and his proprium ² and not from ¹ heaven from ¹ the Lord, may easily fall into error respecting the Word and into contempt for it, and say within himself as he reads it, What does this mean? What does that mean? Is this Divine? Can God, to whom belongs infinite wisdom, speak in this way? Where is its sanctity, or whence derived but from man's religious credulity?

Footnotes:

173. I explained in Teachings for the New Jerusalem on Sacred Scripture 104-113 that people who are outside the church and do not have the Word also receive light by means of the Word. Since light comes to us through the Word, and since we derive from that light a discernment (which both evil and good people possess), it follows that from its source light comes into those derivative forms that are our sensations and thoughts about whatever concerns us. The Lord said that we can do nothing apart from him (John 15:5), that we can acquire nothing unless it is given us from heaven (John 3:27), and that the Father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Here as elsewhere in the Word, the sun in its spiritual sense means the divine good of divine love, and the rain means the divine truth of divine wisdom. These are given to evil people and good people, to just people and unjust people, because otherwise no one would have either sensation or thought.

I have already explained [157] that there is only one life that is the source of life for us all; and sensation and thought are functions of life, so we get sensation and thought from the same source as life. I have also presented ample evidence that all the light that constitutes our discernment comes from the sun of the spiritual world, which is the Lord.