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?”

116. I have been granted to see peoples born on islands who were rational as regards civic matters, but who knew nothing at all of God. In the spiritual world they look like apes and lead a life almost like that of apes. But because they were born human beings, and so into the ability to receive spiritual life, they are instructed by angels and given new life through concepts of God as a man.

What a person is like on his own is clearly apparent from people in hell, who have among them some clerics and learned who are unwilling even to hear of God and therefore cannot even mention God. I have seen them and spoken with them. And I have also spoken with some who responded with the fire of anger and wrath when they heard someone speaking about God.

[2] Consider, then, what a person would be like if he was told nothing of God, when some people are as described who have heard about God, written about God, and preached about God. Many of the Jesuits are of that character.

They are of such a character because they are prompted by a will that is evil, and, as we said before, this steers the intellect and expels any truth that it has in it from the Word.

If people could have known on their own of the existence of God and life after death, why have they not known that a person remains a person after death? Why have they supposed that his soul or spirit is like a puff of wind or the ether, which has no eyes with which to see, or ears with which to hear, or mouth with which to speak, until it is united to and combines with its corpse and skeleton?

Imagine then a doctrine for use in worship hatched from rational sight alone. Would it not be people themselves who were worshiped, as has been the case from days of old and is the case today by those who know from the Word that God alone is to be worshiped? No other worship can come of a person’s native self, not even worship of the sun or moon.

57. 3. Genuine truth, of which doctrine ought to consist, is apparent in the Word’s literal sense only to people who are enlightened by the Lord. Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone, and it is found in people who love truths because they are true and apply them to useful life endeavors. Enlightenment in the Word is not found in others.

Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone because the Lord is present everywhere in the Word. The reason enlightenment is found in people who love truths because they are true and apply them to useful life endeavors is that they are in the Lord and have the Lord in them. For the Lord embodies His Divine truth. When this truth is loved because it is Divine truth — and it is loved when it is applied to useful endeavor — then the Lord is present in the person in that truth.

This, too, the Lord teaches in John:

In that day you will know that...you (are) in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, is he who loves Me.... ...and I will love him and manifest Myself to him...and (I) will come to him and make (My) home with him. (John 14:20-21, 23)

And in Matthew:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

These are the people who are enlightened when they read the Word, and with whom the Word shines and is translucent.