3. Without this interior life, the Word in its letter is dead. It resembles a human being, in that a human has an outward self and an inward one, as the Christian world knows. 1 The outer being, separated from the inner, is just a body and so is dead, but the inward being is what lives and allows the outward being to live. 2 The inner being is a person's soul.
In the same way, the letter of the Word by itself is a body without a soul.
Footnotes:
1. Swedenborg is not necessarily limiting his conception of the "Christian world" to Christianity proper. In §54 of his 1763 work Sacred Scripture, he uses the term to include not only the Reformed Church (that is, Calvinists) and Catholics but Jews as well. See also note 2 in §3. [RS, GFD]
2. Swedenborg here alludes to a dynamic that infuses his work, as it does practically all of Christianity from its earliest origins: the contrast between the "outer" — equated with the purely physical, which, taken on its own, is lifeless — and the "inner," which is what gives life. This contrast between the inner self and the outer self is a common theme in the Christian tradition, going back to Jesus himself, who strongly emphasized the difference between external appearances of piety and the inner motivation. See the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Luke 18:10-14; also Matthew 23:27: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you make yourselves like bleached tombs, which do indeed look beautiful from the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and uncleanness of every kind." The dynamic can be seen in Paul's Epistles as well: see 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Although our outer self is perishing, our inner self is nevertheless being renewed day by day." Similarly, Paul contrasts those who are Jews "outwardly" with those who are Jews "inwardly;" the former have a circumcision that is "outward in the flesh," while the latter have one "of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter" (Romans 2:28-29). [RS]
