Spiritual Life and the Word of God

by Emanuel Swedenborg

As it is allowable to illustrate spiritual things by means of comparisons drawn from natural things, these will serve to illustrate how interior things, which are spiritual and celestial, and by which a man of the church has communication and conjunction with the heavens, can be drawn and called forth and extracted and eliminated from the Word in its outmosts, that is, the sense of the letter. Comparisons can be made with these, because all things in the three kingdoms of nature, animal, vegetable, and mineral, correspond to the spiritual things that are in the three heavens, as the food of the body with which a comparison has been made, corresponds to the food of the soul, which is knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom; a tree, with which also a comparison has been made, corresponds to man, the tree to man himself, the wood to his good, the leaves to his truths, and the fruits to his uses; so, too, gold, silver, copper, and iron, correspond to goods and truths, gold to celestial good, silver to spiritual truth, copper to natural good, and iron to natural truth. Moreover, these things have these significations in the Word. And what is wonderful, the purer are contained in the grosser and are drawn from them, as the animal spirit and the nerve fluid are contained in blood from which the original substances and nerve fibers draw and extract their distinct portions. So, again, fruits and leaves draw theirs from the gross fluid that is brought up from the soil by the wood and its bark, and so on. Thus comparatively, as has been said, the purer senses of the Word are drawn and called forth from the sense of the letter. (A.E., n. 1084.)

VII. The Sense of the Letter

As there are three senses in the Word, a natural, a spiritual, and a celestial, and as its natural sense, which is the sense of the letter, is a containment of the two senses, the spiritual and celestial, it follows that the sense of the letter of the Word is the basis of those senses. And as the angels of the three heavens receive their wisdom from the Lord through the Word that they have, and as their Words make one with our Word by correspondences, it also follows that the sense of the letter of our Word is the basis, support, and foundation of the wisdom of the angels of heaven. For the heavens rest upon the human race as a house rests upon its foundation; so the wisdom of the angels of heaven rests in like manner upon the knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom of men from the sense of the letter of the Word; for, as has been said above, communication and conjunction with the heavens are effected through the sense of the letter of the Word. For this reason, as a result of the Lord's Divine providence, there has been no mutilation of the sense of the letter of the Word from its first revelation, not even in a word or letter in the original text; for each word, and in some measure each letter, is a support.

From all this it is clear what a profanation it is to falsify the truths and adulterate the goods of the Word, and how infernal it is to deny or to weaken its holiness. As soon as that is done, for that man of the church heaven is closed. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which cannot be forgiven, is the blasphemy of the Word by those who deny its holiness. Since the Word is the basis of the heavens, and since the Word was wholly falsified and adulterated by the Jewish nation by traditions and adaptation of the sense of the letter to favor their evil loves, lest the heavens should be endangered and the wisdom of the angels there should become foolishness it pleased the Lord to come down from heaven and to put on the Human and to become the Word (as is evident from John i. 14), and thus to restore the state of heaven. (A.E., n. 1085.)

There is a successive order and there is a simultaneous order. In successive order things pure and perfect appear above, and those less pure and perfect appear below. The three heavens are in successive order, one above another; and in the higher heavens all things are pure and perfect, while in the lower they are less pure and perfect. Simultaneous order exists in lower things, and fully in the lowest; for higher things let themselves down and place themselves in the order that is called simultaneous, in which the pure and perfect things, which were the higher, are in the middle or center, and the less pure and perfect, which were the lower, are in the circumferences. Therefore all things that have come forth in successive order are together in outmosts in their order.

As all higher things place themselves in what is lowest in simultaneous order, it follows that in the outmosts of the Word, which constitute the sense of its letter, are all things of Divine truth and of Divine good, even from their firsts. And as all things of Divine truth and Divine good are together in their outmost, which is the sense of the letter of the Word, there evidently is the power of Divine truth, yea, the omnipotence of the Lord in saving man. For when the Lord operates He operates not from first things through mediates into outmosts, but from first things through outmosts and thus into mediates. This is why the Lord is called in the Word the First and the Last; and this is why the Lord assumed the Human, which in the world was Divine truth or the Word, and glorified it even to outmosts, which are the bones and flesh, in order that He might operate from first things through outmosts, and not as before from man, but from Himself.

This power in outmosts was represented by the hair with the Nazirites, as with Samson, for the hair with the Nazirites, as with Samson, for the hair corresponds to the outmosts of Divine truth. And for this reason, to produce baldness was regarded in ancient times as disgraceful.

The boys who called Elisha "bald head" were torn in pieces by bears, because Elisha and Elijah represented the Word; and the Word without the sense of the letter, which is like a head without hair, is destitute of all power, and thus is no longer the Word. "Bears" signify those that have strength from the outmost of truth.

The power of the Word in the sense of the letter is the power to open heaven, whereby communication and conjunction are effected, and also the power to fight against falsities and evils, thus against the hells. A man who is in genuine truths from the sense of the letter of the Word can disperse and scatter the whole diabolical crew and their devices in which they place their power, which are innumerable, and this in a moment, merely by careful thought and an effort of the will. In brief, in the spiritual world nothing can resist genuine truths confirmed by the sense of the letter of the Word (A.E., n. 1086.)

Now since all interior things, that is, the spiritual and celestial things that are in the Words of the three heavens, are together in the outmost sense of the Word, which is called the sense of the letter (for in its inmosts there are the things that are in the Word that the angels of the third heaven have, and in its middle parts the things that are in the Words belonging to the angels of the lower heavens, and these are encompassed by such things as exist in the nature of our world and are included in these), so the sense of the letter of our Word is from all these. From this it can be seen that Divine truth is in its fullness in the sense of the letter of our Word. That is said to be full which contains in itself all things prior, even from the first, or all things higher even from the highest; the last is what includes these. The fullness of the Word is like a general vessel of marble, in which are countless lesser vessels of crystal, and in these still more numerous vessels of precious stones, in and about which are the most delightful things of heaven which are for those who perform noble uses according to the Word.