1. THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

Containing THE UNIVERSAL THEOLOGY OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW CHURCH

THE FAITH OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW CHURCH

This faith is presented at the outset in its general and in its particular form. It is so presented that it may serve as a preface to the whole work which follows, as a gateway, as it were, by which entrance is made to a temple, and as an epitome in which the subsequent details are duly summarized. It is said to be "The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church" because heaven, where angels are, and the Church, in which men are, act as one like the internal and the external with man. Hence it is that the member of the Church, who is in the good of love from the truths of faith, and in the truths of faith from the good of love, is an angel of heaven as to the interiors of his mind. Thus he enters into heaven after death, and there enjoys happiness according to the degree in which those principles are united in him. It should therefore be known that this faith in its summary form is the index and gateway of the new heaven now being formed by the Lord.

263. Few understand how the Lord is the Word, for it is generally supposed that the Lord, by means of the Word, can enlighten and teach men, and yet He cannot, on this account, be called the Word. It should be known that every man is his own will and his own understanding, and so one person is distinguished from another. Since the will is the receptacle of love, and thus of all the good of that love, and since the understanding is the receptacle of wisdom and thus of all the truth of that wisdom, it follows that every man is his own love and his own wisdom, or what is the same thing, his own good and his own truth. A man is a man for no other reason than this, and there is nothing else in him that is man. In the case of the Lord, He is Love itself and Wisdom itself, thus Good itself and Truth itself; and these He became by fulfilling all the good and all the truth in the Word. For he who thinks and speaks nothing but truth, becomes that truth; and he who wills and does nothing but good, becomes that good. Thus the Lord, by fulfilling all the Divine Truth and all the Divine Good in the Word, both in its natural sense and in its spiritual sense, became Good itself and Truth itself and thus the Word.