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Genesis 1

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1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first Day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

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'To open,' as in Revelation 9, signifies communication and conjunction.

(Referencat: Apocalypse Explained 537)

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The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #37

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37. Each one of us has an inner level and an outer level, but they are not the same for good people as they are for evil ones. For good people, their inner level is in heaven and in its light, while their outer level is in the world and in its light. Further, for good people this latter light is brightened by heaven's light, so their inner and outer levels act in unison like an efficient cause 1 and its effect, or like what is prior and what is subsequent. For evil people, though, their inner level is in this world and its light, and the same holds true for their outer level as well. This means that they cannot see anything in heaven's light, only in this world's light, which they call " the light of nature. " 2 That is why heavenly matters are in darkness for them and worldly matters are in the light.

We can see from this that good people have an inner self and an outer self, while [in effect] evil people have no inner self, only an outer one. 3

Fusnotat:

1. The term "efficient cause" (Latin causa efficiens) here represents one of the four main categories of cause introduced by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B. C. E.) and adopted by Scholastic philosophers; see Physics 193b21-195b30 (= Aristotle 1984, 330-334). Aristotle's "efficient cause" generally corresponds to what people today think of simply as "cause. " Specifically, the efficient cause of an effect is the force or agent that brings the effect about, as when a fire (the effect) is started by a lit match (the efficient cause). The other three main Aristotelian causes correspond to what are now generally considered purposes or conditions; they are material cause, formal cause, and final cause. [JSR, RS]

2. The idea of an informative "light" that is associated with nature or the material world has been a commonplace in Western theology and philosophy for millennia. One prominent example is attested in the writings of Augustine (354-430); see his On Two Souls: Against the Manichaeans (written in 391), chapters 2-5, a passage that is in fact cited by Swedenborg in this connection in Quotations on Various Philosophical and Theological Topics (= Swedenborg 1976b), 26. Though the specific term the light of nature itself has been put to various uses over the centuries, it is often contrasted to knowledge that stems from religious faith. In the current passage it refers metaphorically to human reason unassisted by the Divine (compare the phrase "light of reason" in True Christianity 473). In short, it is the very sort of "light" that many thinkers of Swedenborg's day considered to be indicated by the term Enlightenment. This is the meaning in which the term was utilized in such philosophical and theological works as Novum Organum (1620; see book 1, aphorism 42 there), by Francis Bacon (1561-1626); An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (1652), by the Cambridge Platonist Nathaniel Culverwell (1619-1651); and The Light of Nature Pursued (1768-1778), by the English utilitarian Abraham Tucker (1705-1774). Generally Swedenborg expresses this idea with the term "this world's light"; for examples of this use and further references to the symbolism of light in Swedenborg's theology, see New Jerusalem 48[3], 49. For examples of Swedenborg's use of the contrasting term "heaven's light," or "the light of heaven," in specific, see the notes in New Jerusalem 24[4] and Last Judgment 38:2. For an overview of the process of being raised from one form of light to a higher form, see Secrets of Heaven 6310-6313, 6315. [SS]

3. The statement that "evil people have no inner self" must be read functionally rather than literally. As pointed out in New Jerusalem 43-44, in evil people the inner self is closed off and therefore undeveloped and largely nonfunctional rather than being literally nonexistent. For further references on this subject, see New Jerusalem 47[11-15]. See also note 1 in New Jerusalem 33, on will and understanding in good and evil people. [LSW]

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.