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?”

61. I have been granted to see many people after death who believed they would shine like stars in the sky, because, as they said, they had held the Word holy, read it often, took much from it, used it to affirm the dogmas of their faith, and because of that were celebrated in the world as learned. They believed that on that account they would be Michaels and Raphaels.

[2] But many of them were examined to discover what love prompted them to study the Word, and some were found to have done so out of a love of self, in order to appear great in the world and be worshiped as leaders of the church, and some out of a love of the world, in order to gain riches. When they were examined to discover what they knew from the Word, they were found to know nothing of any genuine truth from it, but only the kind of truth that we call truth falsified, which in itself is false. Moreover, they were told that this was the case with them because they had themselves and the world as their goals — in other words, what they loved — and not the Lord or heaven. And when self and the world are the goals, then when people read the Word, their minds remain fixed on themselves and the world, and as a consequence they think continually in terms of their own self-interest, which is in darkness as regards anything having to do with heaven. A person in this state cannot be withdrawn by the Lord from his self-interest and so be raised into the light of heaven, and so neither can he receive any influx from the Lord through heaven.

[3] I have also seen people like this admitted into heaven; but when they were found there to be without truths, they were cast down. Yet even so the conceit remained in them that they were deserving of heaven.

A different experience befell people who had studied the Word out of an affection to know the truth because it was true, and because it fostered useful life endeavors, not only their own, but also the neighbor’s. I have seen them raised into heaven and so into the light that surrounds Divine truth there, and they were raised at the same time into angelic wisdom, and into its felicity, which is eternal life.

53. 2. Doctrine must be drawn from the Word’s literal sense and verified by it. That is because there and nowhere else is the Lord present with a person so as to enlighten him and teach him the church’s truths. The Lord also never does anything except in fullness, and the Word is in its fullness in its literal sense, as we showed above. It is because of this that doctrine must be drawn from the literal sense.