4. The Word's literal meaning alone, when it monopolizes our thinking, can never provide a view of the inner contents. Take for example this first chapter of Genesis. The literal meaning by itself offers no clue that it is speaking of anything but the world's creation, the Garden of Eden (paradise), and Adam, the first human ever created. ¹ Who supposes anything else?

The wisdom hidden in these details (and never before revealed) will be clear enough from what follows. The inner sense of the first chapter of Genesis deals in general with the process that creates us anew — that is to say, with regeneration — and in particular with the very earliest church; ² and it does so in such a way that not even the smallest syllable fails to represent, symbolize, and incorporate this meaning. ³

Footnotes:

920. This verse depicts the worship of the ancient church in general, using the images of an altar and a burnt offering, which were the main elements in all representative worship. First, however, I need to tell what the worship of the earliest church was like and how people came to worship the Lord in a representative manner.

The people of the earliest church had no other kind of worship than internal worship — the kind of worship in heaven. In that church, heaven communicated with humankind in such a way as to form a single unit with it. The method of communication was perception, which is discussed frequently above. ¹ So because the people of that church were angelic and had depth, they did not care about superficial bodily or worldly things, although they were, of course, aware of them. In the individual objects of the senses, rather, they perceived something divine and heavenly.

When they saw a tall mountain, for example, they did not picture a mountain but perceived the idea of height, and the idea of height led them to the idea of heaven and the Lord. This is how it came about that the Lord was said to live on the heights, that he was called the Highest One and Most Exalted, and that worship of him was later held on mountains.

It was the same with all other phenomena. When they thought of morning, for instance, they did not think of the early hours of the day but of the quality of heaven, which is like the morning or dawn in a person's mind. So they called the Lord the morning, the east, and the dawn. Likewise when they perceived a tree with its fruit and leaves, they ignored these details, seeing in them instead the representation of a human being — love and charity being the fruit, and faith, the leaves. As a result they not only compared members of the church to a tree (and to a whole paradise), and character traits to the fruit and leaves, but also called them such.

This is what people who have a heavenly, angelic way of thinking are like.

[2] Everyone is capable of realizing that our general viewpoint governs all our specific perceptions, including, of course, all our sense impressions, whether acquired through our eyes or ears. In fact we lack any interest in the objects of our senses unless they make part of that overall picture. To those whose hearts are glad, for instance, everything they hear or see appears cheerful and smiling. But to the depressed, everything they see or hear seems grim and melancholy. The same is true in all other cases as well, because our general mood pervades everything and causes us to see and hear everything within the context of our overall mood. Nothing outside that context is even visible but is virtually absent or irrelevant.

The situation was the same with the people of the earliest church. Whatever they saw with their eyes had a heavenly character for them. So for them, absolutely everything seemed alive. This indicates what their worship of God was like: internal and not at all external.

[3] When the church deteriorated, as it did in succeeding generations, and that perception, that communication with heaven, began to die out, the situation started to change. People were no longer perceiving anything of heaven in the objects of their senses as earlier generations had, but only things of the world, and the less perception they had left, the more this tendency increased. At last their final inheritors, who lived just before the Flood, saw nothing but what was worldly, physical, and earthly in those objects.

By this means, heaven was separated from humankind and ceased to communicate with it, except in a very remote way. A line of contact with hell then opened for humanity, and this became the source of their general perspective, which in turn is the source of all particular notions, as has been noted. After that, when the suggestion of something heavenly came up, they discounted it, until finally they did not even want to admit that anything spiritual or heavenly existed. So humankind's condition turned upside down.

[4] Since the Lord foresaw that this was what the human condition would become, he arranged for religious teachings to remain preserved and available, so that from them people could learn what was heavenly and what was spiritual. Those teachings, obtained from the people of the earliest church, were gathered by the individuals known as Cain and as Enoch, who have already been discussed. This is why it is said of Cain that a mark was put on him to prevent his murder, and of Enoch that God took him. See the treatment of these details at Genesis 4:15, §§392, 394, and at Genesis 5:24 [§521].

These doctrinal formulations consisted exclusively in symbolic language and so in what seem to be enigmatic sayings, telling what was meant by things found on earth, such as mountains (symbolizing heavenly attributes and the Lord), the morning and the east (again heavenly attributes and the Lord), different kinds of trees and their fruits (people and their heavenly qualities), and so on.

In such things did their articles of doctrine consist, and they were gathered together out of the signs and symbols of the earliest church. In consequence, their writing exhibited the same character. Since what they admired for its antiquity (and felt they could discern) in that literature was the divine and heavenly component, they were allowed to establish for themselves a form of worship based on similar features. That was the inspiration for their worship on mountains, in groves, and among the trees; for their open-air sculpture; and for the altars and burnt offerings that eventually became the main features of all worship.

The people of the ancient church initiated this worship, and from them it spread to their descendants and to all the surrounding nations, as did many other aspects of their worship. This will be discussed later [§§1238, 1241, 2180:4], the Lord in his divine mercy willing.

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