1414. Because this speaks of the Lord, it contains more hidden wisdom than could ever be thought or expressed. In an inner sense it is talking about the Lord's first state, when he was born. This state is a deep mystery, so it cannot be explained intelligibly. All that can be said is that although he was conceived by Jehovah, he was otherwise like any other person. He was born to a woman, a virgin, and by birth to her he acquired weaknesses like those of any ordinary person. Such weaknesses arise from the body, and the current verse says he would withdraw from them so that heavenly and spiritual entities could be presented to his view.
There are two heredities that we acquire by birth, one from our father and the other from our mother. 1 The Lord's heredity from his Father was divinity, but his heredity from his mother was human frailty. This frailty, which we all acquire by inheritance from our mothers, is something corporeal that disintegrates when we are being reborn. 2 What we receive from our fathers, though, remains forever, and the Lord's heredity from Jehovah, as noted, was divinity.
Another secret is that the Lord's humanity also became divine. In him alone, everything belonging to his body corresponded to something divine, with exquisite or infinite perfection. This led to union between his physical elements and his divinely heavenlike attributes, and between his sensory experiences and his divinely spiritual attributes. So he is the complete and perfect human, and the only human.
Footnotes:
1. In Swedenborg's time there was considerable dispute about the nature of heredity. William Harvey (1578-1657) and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) had discovered the production of eggs in female animals and the union of the egg and the sperm as the creative act forming an embryo. Opinions in the learned world, however, varied on the degree to which various traits were transmitted by each parent: some authorities claimed that individuals inherited everything from the father; others, that they inherited everything from the mother; and still others held that heredity was effected by some admixture of particles coming from both parents. As this passage indicates, Swedenborg was among those who argued that both father and mother play a part in heredity, although he tended to cast what is inherited from the father as belonging to the inner self and what is inherited from the mother as belonging to the outer self and the body; see §§1444, 1573:3, and notes 321 [In NCBS, note 2, just below], 529 [In NCBS, in §1815]. [RS, JSR]
2. Swedenborg returns now and then throughout his theological works to the theory that the soul of an individual comes from the father and the body from the mother, a theory that dates back at least to the time of Aristotle in the fourth century b.c.e. (Generation of Animals 1:20-22). For the mechanics of this theory, see note 1 in §1815 below. The theory is important to Swedenborg's theology because it explains how Jesus came to have a divine inner nature and yet a human outer nature (see §§1444:2, 1460:1 below). Nevertheless, Swedenborg now and then indicates that the father plays a role even in the formation of the body: In some passages he indicates that the body comes from, and is an image of, the soul, and the soul comes from the father (True Christianity 82:3; Secrets of Heaven 10125:2, 10269). Some passages give the impression that an image of the father is always trying to assert itself but is not always successful; and if it does not succeed in the firstborn, it may manifest in younger members of the family (True Christianity 103:2); or it may manifest to a greater degree as the child pursues the interests and occupation of the father (Sketch for "True Christianity" [Swedenborg 1996a] "God the Redeemer" chapter 9:2 §22 [Coulson's numbering]). In a passage contrasting our heavenly Father with our earthly father, Swedenborg asserts that God is the source of our life, whereas our earthly father merely supplies our body (Divine Providence 330:1). This is not to say that the soul that human beings inherit from their earthly fathers is good, however; in Draft of "The Lord" (Swedenborg 1994-1997b) §70, he writes, "We are all born ignorant of truth and desirous of evil because the soul we receive from our father is a disposition toward evil." If a late, unpublished manuscript can be trusted (it now exists only in copies), Swedenborg appears to have made some statements toward the very end of his life that assign the origin of one's nature and hereditary evil to both parents without distinction: see Draft for "Coda to True Christianity" (Swedenborg 1996b) §35:1, 2. See also §§1438, 1444:2, 1573:3, and note 1 in §1414. [JSR, RS]
