916. Every wild animal and every creeping thing symbolize good things in them — the wild animal, good things in the inner self, and the creeping thing, good things in the outer self. In addition, every bird, everything creeping on the earth symbolizes truth — the bird, truth in the inner self, and the thing creeping on the earth, truth in the outer self. This is established by the statements and explanations at the previous verse [Genesis 8:17] concerning the wild animal, the bird, and the creeping thing creeping. (That verse referred to a creeping thing creeping because it symbolized both the goodness and the truth in the outer self.)
Because these words sum up the preceding verses, they include this addendum about the church, specifically about its goodness and truth, and the phrase indicates what kind of church it was: a spiritual one. It also shows that it became the kind of church that placed its chief emphasis on charity, or goodness, which is why the verse mentions the wild animal and creeping thing first and the bird and thing creeping afterward.
[2] A church is called spiritual when it acts from charity, or from the good that charity urges, and never when it claims to have faith without charity. Under those circumstances, it is not even a church. After all, what do the church's teachings about faith deal with if not charity? And why would the church teach anything about faith if not to have its teachings carried out? To know and think as faith teaches cannot have any reality; doing what faith teaches — this alone exists. A spiritual church first becomes a church when it acts as bidden by charity, charity being the true teaching of faith. To put it another way, this is when a person in the church first becomes a church. 1 Consider: what is a commandment? It does not order us to know a precept but to live by what it says. This is when we first have the Lord's kingdom inside us, because the Lord's kingdom consists solely in mutual love and the happiness it brings.
[3] There are some who divide faith from charity and believe that the source of salvation is faith — a faith that is devoid of the good deeds urged by charity. They are followers of Cain, who kill their brother Abel, that is, charity. They are also like birds circling over a corpse, because such a faith is a bird and the corpse is a person who lacks charity. They scrape together a pseudo-conscience that tells them they can behave like devils, hate and persecute their neighbor, spend their whole lives in adultery, and yet be saved, as is extremely familiar in the Christian world. What could be sweeter to us than to hear and persuade ourselves that we can be saved, even if we live like a savage beast? Even non-Christians see that this is false, and many of them shudder at Christian teachings when they observe how Christians live. Another conclusion to be drawn is that nowhere do people live in a more despicable way than in the Christian world.
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