476. The symbolism of male and female as the marriage between faith and love has been stated and demonstrated before [§§54-55]. The male or a man symbolizes the intellect and everything connected with it, so it symbolizes the qualities of faith. The female symbolizes the will or the properties of the will, so it symbolizes the qualities of love. This is also why the woman was named Eve from [the Hebrew word for] life, which belongs exclusively to love.

As a further result, a female also symbolizes the church, again as shown earlier, and a male symbolizes the individual of the church [§§253, 288].

The subject here is the state of the church when it was spiritual, although it soon became heavenly. This is why male comes first, just as it did in Genesis 1:26-27. The word create also has to do with a spiritual person. Immediately afterward, however, when the marriage was complete or, in other words, the church had developed a heavenly character, they are called not male and female but Human Being, meaning both, because of the marriage. This is why the next words are and he called their name Human Being, which symbolizes the church.

54. Male and female he created them.

The inner meaning of male and female was very familiar to the earliest church, although their successors lost touch with this secret when they lost sight of any deeper import to the Word.

These earliest people found their greatest happiness and pleasure in marriage. ¹ Whenever they could possibly draw a comparison between something else and marriage, they did so, in order to perceive the happiness of marriage in that other entity. ² Being people of depth, they enjoyed only the deeper aspects of things. External objects were just for looking at; their thoughts were occupied instead with the things those objects represented. External objects, then, were nothing to them, serving only as a springboard for reflection on inner realities, and these for contemplation of heavenly realities and so of the Lord, who was everything to them. The same process caused them to reflect on the heavenly marriage, ³ which they could tell was the source of the happiness in their own marriages.

As a result, they called the intellect in the spiritual being male and the will there female; and when the two worked together, they called it a marriage.

That religion initiated the practice, which became quite common, of calling the church Daughter or Virgin ⁴ (as in "the Virgin Zion," "the Virgin Jerusalem") and also Wife, on account of its desire for good. For more on this, see the treatment of Genesis 2:24 and 3:15. ⁵

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