The Swedenborg Library Vol 2/Chapter 10
X.
WHY HEAVEN IS IN THE HUMAN FORM.
O angel in all the heavens ever conceives of the Divine under any other than the human form. And what is wonderful, those in the superior heavens are unable to think otherwise of the Divine. This necessity of their thought flows from the Divine itself, and also from the form of heaven according to which their thoughts extend themselves around. For every thought which the angels have has extension into heaven, and their intelligence and wisdom is in proportion to that extension. Hence it is that all there acknowledge the Lord, because in Him only is the Divine Human.
These things have not only been told me by the angels, but it has also been given me to perceive them when I have been elevated into the interior sphere of heaven. Hence it is evident that the wiser the angels are, the more clearly do they perceive this truth. And hence it is that the Lord appears to them; for the Lord appears in a Divine-angelic form which is the human, to those who acknowledge and believe in a visible Divine, but not to those who acknowledge and believe in an invisible Divine; for the former can see their Divine, but the latter cannot.
THE ANGELIC CONCEPTION OF GOD.
Because the angels have no conception of an invisible Divine which they call a Divine without form, but of a visible Divine in a human form, therefore it is common with them to say that the Lord alone is Man; and that they are men from Him; and that every one is a man so far as he receives the Lord. By receiving the Lord they understand receiving good and truth which are from Him, since the Lord is in his own good and truth. This also they call intelligence and wisdom. They say that every one knows that intelligence and wisdom make the man, and not the face without them. This is manifest also from the angels of the interior heavens. Because they are in good and truth from the Lord, and thence in wisdom and intelligence, they are therefore in the most beautiful and most perfect human form; whilst the angels of the inferior heavens are in a form less perfect and less beautiful.
It is the opposite in hell. Those there, when viewed in the light of heaven, scarcely appear as men but as monsters; for they are not in good and truth, but in evil and the false, and thence in the opposites of intelligence and wisdom. Therefore also their life is not called life, but spiritual death.
Because the whole heaven and every part of it resembles a man from the Divine Human of the Lord, therefore the angels say that they are in the Lord, and some that they are in his body; by which they mean that they are in the good of his love. As the Lord Himself also teaches, where he says: "Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me;—for without Me ye can do nothing.—Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love." John xv. 4-10.
Such being the conception of the Divine in the heavens, it is therefore implanted in every man who receives any influx from heaven, to think of God under a human shape. So thought the ancients, and so the moderns likewise think, both those without and those within the church. The simple see Him in thought as an old man encompassed with brightness.
But all those have extinguished this implanted perception, who have removed the heavenly influx by their self-derived intelligence or by a life of evil. They who have extinguished it by self-derived intelligence, are not willing to acknowledge any but an invisible God; but they who have extinguished it by a life of evil, are not willing to acknowledge any God. Nor is either class aware that any such implanted perception exists, because it no longer exists with them; when yet this is the Divine celestial itself, which primarily flows from heaven into man, because man was born for heaven; and no one enters heaven without an idea of the Divine.
Hence it follows that one who has no true idea of heaven, that is, of the Divine from whom heaven exists, cannot be elevated to the first threshold of heaven. As soon as he approaches it, he is sensible of a resistance and strong repulsion. The reason is, that his interiors which ought to receive heaven are closed, since they are not in the form of heaven; yea, the nearer he approaches heaven, the more tightly are they closed. Such is the lot of those within the church who deny the Lord, and who, like the Socinians, deny his Divinity.
That the ancients had an idea of the Human [linked with their idea] of the Divine, is manifest from the appearances of the Divine to Abraham, Lot, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah, his wife and others, who, although they saw God as a man, still adored Him as the God of the universe, calling him the God of heaven and earth, and Jehovah. That it was the Lord who was seen by Abraham, He Himself teaches in John viii. 56; that it was He, also, who was seen by the rest, is evident from the Lord's words, "That no one has seen the Father and his shape, or heard his voice," John i. 18; v. 37.
GOD IS A DIVINE MAN.
But that God is a Man, can with difficulty be comprehended by those who judge everything from the sensual conceptions of the external man. For the sensua! man cannot think of the Divine except from the world and the objects therein; thus he cannot think otherwise of a Divine and Spiritual Man, than as of a corporeal and natural one. Hence he concludes that if God were a Man He would be as large as the universe; and if He ruled heaven and earth He would do it by means of many subordinate officers, after the manner of kings in the world. If he were told that in heaven there is no extension of space as in the world, he would not at all comprehend it; for he who thinks solely from nature and its light, thinks of no other sort of extension than that which is visible before him.
But people commit a great mistake when they think in this manner concerning heaven. Extension there is not like extension in the world. Extension in the world is determinate, and therefore measurable; but in heaven extension is not determinate, and therefore not measurable.
The inhabitants of heaven are astonished that men should imagine themselves intelligent who think of an invisible Being, that is, of a Being incomprehensible under any form, when they think of God; and that they should call those not intelligent and even simple, who think otherwise; when yet the contrary is the truth. They suggest that if those who imagine themselves intelligent because they think God has no form, would examine themselves, they would find that they regard nature as God; some of them nature as manifest to the sight, others nature in her invisible recesses.
And are they so blind as not to know what God is, what an angel is, what a spirit is, what their own soul is which is to live after death, what the life of heaven in man is, and many other things of intelligence? When yet those whom they call simpletons, know all these things in some measure. Their idea is, that God is the Divine in a human form; that an angel is a heavenly man; that their own soul which is to live after death, is like an angel; and that the life of heaven in man is to live according to the divine precepts. These, therefore, the angels call intelligent, and fitted for heaven; but the others, on the contrary, not intelligent. (H. H., n. 79-86.)
