1013. The fact that because [blood] has made humankind into God's image symbolizes charity, which is God's image, follows logically. 1 The last section discussed the charity symbolized by blood. The fact that it was not to be snuffed out is symbolized by the fact that people were not to shed blood. Now the verse proceeds to say that it has made humankind into God's image, which indicates that charity is God's image.
Hardly anyone today knows what God's image is. People say God's image was thoroughly destroyed in the first human, whom they call Adam. They also say that Adam had previously had God's image within him, which they describe as a certain perfection unknown to themselves. Perfection is what it was, too, because Adam or Humankind 2 means the earliest church, which was a heavenly individual, with perception of a type that no later church possessed. So that church was the Lord's likeness as well. (The Lord's likeness symbolizes love for him.)
[2] After this church gradually died out, the Lord created a new one that was not a heavenly church but a spiritual one. This church was not the Lord's likeness but his image. (An image symbolizes spiritual love, that is, love for one's neighbor, or charity, as also shown earlier, in §§50, 51.) Spiritual love — charity — made this church an image of the Lord, as indicated by the present verse. The reality that charity is itself the Lord's image can be seen from the fact that it says, "because it has made humankind into God's image," which is to say that charity itself made people so.
The fact that charity is God's image is very clear from the essential nature itself of love, or charity. Only love and kindness can create a likeness or an image of anyone. The essential nature of love and kindness is to form something like a single entity out of two things. When we love another as ourselves — and more than ourselves — we see the other in ourselves and ourselves in the other. Anyone can recognize this simply by observing love, or people who love one another. The will of one is the will of the other; they seem to be deeply bound together; only their bodies are distinct from each other.
[3] Love for the Lord makes us one with him, or makes us his likeness. Charity — love for our neighbor — does too, but it makes us his image. An image is not a likeness of something but is in the likeness of that thing.
This oneness rising out of love is something the Lord himself describes in John:
I pray that they may all be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they too may be one in us. I have given them the glory that you have given me, so that they can be one as we are one — I in them and you in me. (John 17:21-22, 23)
This oneness is the mystical union that some people contemplate — a union achieved only through love. 3 In the same author:
I live and you will live; on that day you will know that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commandments and does them, that is the person who loves me. If any love me, they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make a home in them. (John 14:19-20, 21, 23)
These things show that love is what binds together, and that the Lord has a home in those who love him and who love their neighbor (since loving our neighbor is loving the Lord).
[4] This union that makes us likenesses and images is not as clear to see in the human race as it is in heaven, where mutual love makes all angels into something like a single being. Each community, consisting of many people, forms an individual person, so to speak. And all the communities taken together — the whole of heaven, in other words — form an individual person who is also called the universal human (see §§457 and 550). Heaven as a whole is the Lord's likeness, because he is their all-in-all. Each community is also a likeness. So is each angel. Heavenly angels are likenesses; spiritual angels are images. 4 Heaven consists of as many likenesses of the Lord as there are angels, and this comes from mutual love alone — from their loving each other more than themselves (see §§548 and 549).
The reality is that for a whole (all of heaven) to be a likeness, the parts (individual angels) have to be likenesses, or images that are in the [Lord's] likeness. If a whole does not consist of parts that resemble it, it is not a united whole. 5
With these principles in mind, we can easily see what makes us God's likeness and image: love for the Lord and love for our neighbor. As a result we can see that love, or charity, which comes from the Lord alone, makes every regenerate spiritual person an image of the Lord. People motivated by a sense of charity received from the Lord, furthermore, display a perfection, or wholeness. (Later sections, by the Lord's divine mercy, will discuss this perfection [§§5113:2, 3; 5658:2].)
Footnotes:
1. The word "blood" has been inserted here even though most Bible translations supply "he," meaning God, as the subject of the verb "has made." In that more common interpretation of the verse, God is seen as the agent that made humankind into God's image. However, neither the Hebrew nor the Latin of Genesis 9:6 explicitly says who or what that agent was, and several statements in this section imply that Swedenborg understood it to be blood. "Blood" is in fact the nearest noun in the preceding verse. [LHC]
2. "Adam" (אָדָם ['āḏām]) is the Hebrew word for "humankind." See note 2 in §313 and note 1 in §475. [LHC]
3. The mystical union (Latin unio mystica) that Swedenborg mentions here refers to a spiritual union between Jesus Christ and the individual. Although a union of this kind is the central objective of a Christian mystical tradition that stretches as far back as Origen of Alexandria (around 185 to around 254 c.e.), the special term unio mystica was first coined at a much later date by Protestant theologians, and therefore it is specifically to the Protestant mystical tradition that Swedenborg is most likely referring here. For a brief overview of this tradition, see Müller 2002, 303-306. One of the first and most influential writers in this tradition was Johann Arndt (1555-1621), who is seen by some scholars as the founder of Pietism. In his much loved and translated True Christianity, Arndt devoted part 2 of book 5 to this union (see Arndt [1606-1610] 1850, 463-483; for an abridged version in English, see Arndt [1606-1610] 1979, 245-271). Arndt asserts in chapter 8 of book 5, part 2 that this union is a reciprocal bond formed through love (Arndt [1606-1610] 1850, 475; Arndt [1606-1610] 1979, 260). [JSR, DNG]
4. Heavenly angels are angels of the heavenly kingdom; spiritual angels are angels of the spiritual kingdom. Heavenly angels are perceptive and motivated by love; spiritual angels are conscientious and focus more on faith. For more on these differences, see note 1 in §30. [LHC]
5. The idea that the parts are microcosms of the whole is central to Swedenborg's description of heaven; compare note 2 in §947 on the concept that the entirety of heaven resembles a human body. Modern analogies suggest themselves: fractals, geometric shapes that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is a reduced copy of the whole; or holograms, three-dimensional photographs in which the information that enables the reproduction of the whole is contained in each of the smaller parts of the image. Compare Divine Providence 5-6 and Swedenborg [1764] 2003b, 357-358 note 1 in §966, and see Dole 1988, 374-381. [RS, SS]
