484. The fact that the church called Seth shared a close similarity with the earliest church can be seen from the fact that it says the human fathered [a child] in his likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth. The likeness has to do with faith and the image with love. This church, you see, was not like the earliest church in loving, and therefore believing in, the Lord, as can be seen from the statement just above, "Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and called their name Human" [Genesis 5:2]. These words, as noted above [§476], symbolize the spiritual person of the sixth day, so that Seth's likeness was to the spiritual person of the sixth day. In other words, love was not so much the primary concern in this church, yet faith was still bound up with love.

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.