62. There were theologians who assigned to God attributes that are merely human and unworthy of God. Their purpose in doing so was to preserve the integrity of the doctrine of justification, once it was established, and dress it up in some plausible fashion. They said that anger, revenge, damnation, and other things of the kind were traits possessed by God’s justice, and this is why such things are mentioned so many times in the Word and are (seemingly) attributed to God.

Mention of “the anger of God” in the Word actually refers to that which is evil in us. Because this evil goes against God it is called the anger of God. This expression does not mean that God is angry at us but that our own evil makes us angry at God. Because evil carries its own punishment with it (just as goodness carries its own reward), when evil brings punishment on us it looks as though God is punishing us.

This is the same, though, as criminals blaming the law for their own punishment, or our blaming the fire for burning us when we put our hand in it, or our blaming the drawn sword in the guard’s hand when we hurl ourselves onto the tip of it. This is the nature of God’s justice. (For more on these points, see Revelation Unveiled. On the justice and judgment that exist in God and come from God, see §668 there; on the Word attributing anger to God, see §§635, 658; on the Word attributing revenge to God, see §806.)

These are features of the Word’s literal meaning. They occur because the literal meaning is written in correspondences and in expressions of an appearance. These features do not appear in the Word’s spiritual meaning, however; in this meaning the truth stands forth in its own light.

I can attest that when angels hear anyone saying God was angry and locked the whole human race into damnation, or was reconciled from being our enemy through the Son as a second God born from the first God, they become like people who are about to vomit because their stomachs and internal organs have been violently heaved this way and that. The angels say, “What more insane thing could anyone possibly say about God?”

31. Brief Analysis

First I will say something about the origins of the idea that there is a trinity of persons in the Divine, and therefore there are three gods. There are three creeds that specifically mention a trinity; they are known as the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed mention the Trinity; the Athanasian Creed specifies a trinity of persons.

These three creeds are found in many psalm books. The Apostles’ Creed is set to music in a hymn that is sung; the Nicene Creed appears after the Ten Commandments; and the Athanasian Creed appears by itself.

The Apostles’ Creed was actually written after the time of the apostles. The Nicene Creed was written as part of the council that was held in the Bithynian city of Nicaea. In the year 325 the emperor Constantine summoned all the bishops of the Near East, Africa, and Europe to attend this council. After the council, some person or people composed the Athanasian Creed for the purpose of overthrowing the Arians; later on it was received by many churches as an ecumenical creed.

The first two creeds led to the confession of the Trinity. The third, the Athanasian Creed, promoted the claim that there was a trinity of persons; as we will see in the following sections [§§33– 34], this led to the idea that there are three gods.