1. The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself

Everyone says that the Word comes from God, is Divinely inspired, and so is holy. But even so, no one has known before this wherein the Divinity in it lies. For in its letter the Word appears as though written in the ordinary way, in a foreign style, neither as sublime or nor as lucid as writings of the present age seem to be.

As a result, a person who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and so thinks prompted by self and his own self-interest, and not prompted by heaven in response to the Lord, may easily fall into error regarding the Word, and into scorning it, and when reading it, saying to himself, “What is this? What is that? Is this Divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak so? Where is the holiness in it, and what makes it holy, other than some teaching of religion and so conviction?”

68. Another reason for people’s affiliation with angels through the Word’s natural or literal sense is that every person has in him from creation three degrees of life — celestial, spiritual and natural. However, as long as he lives in the world a person is in the natural degree, and in the spiritual degree then to the extent he is governed by genuine truths, and in the celestial degree to the extent he lives a life in accordance with them. Yet it is still only after death that he enters actually into the spiritual or celestial degree.

But more on this subject elsewhere.