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?”

64. 15 The faith of the modern-day church has given birth to horrifying offspring in the past, and is producing more such offspring now: for example, the notion that there is instantaneous salvation as a result of the direct intervention of mercy; that there is predestination; that God cares only for our faith and pays no attention to our actions; that there is no bond that unites goodwill and faith; that as we undergo conversion we are like a log of wood; and many more teachings of the kind. Another problem has been the adoption of [false] principles of reason that are based on the teaching that we are justified by our faith alone and the teaching concerning the person of Christ, and the use of these principles to judge the uses and benefits of the sacraments (baptism and the Holy Supper). From the earliest centuries of Christianity until now, heresies have been leaping forth from a single source: the body of teaching based on the idea that there are three gods.