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?”

24. A knowledge of correspondences, which makes the Word’s spiritual sense accessible, was not disclosed after those times because Christians in the primitive church were so very simple that it could not be disclosed to them; for if it had been disclosed, it would have been of no use to them, nor would they have understood it.

After that early period darkness arose over the entire Christian world owing to the rule of the papacy, and people under that dominion who confirmed themselves in its falsities were neither able nor willing to apprehend anything spiritual, and so neither anything of the correspondence of natural things in the Word with spiritual ones. For if they had been, they would have been forced to acknowledge that Peter does not mean Peter, but the Lord as a rock. They would also have been forced to acknowledge that the Word is Divine even to its inmost contents, and that a papal edict is of no account in comparison.

After the Reformation, however, because people began to make a distinction between faith and charity, and to worship God under the guise of three persons, thus three gods, whom they thought of as one, then the truths of heaven were hidden from them; and if they had been disclosed, the people would have falsified them and applied them to support faith alone, and not one of them to support charity and love. Thus they would also have closed heaven to themselves.

42. Since our Word in its inmost embrace is, owing to its celestial sense, like a flame that kindles, and since in its intermediate embrace it is, owing to its spiritual sense, like a light that enlightens, therefore the Word in its outmost embrace is, owing to its natural sense and the two inner senses it contains, like a ruby and a diamond — like a ruby because of the celestial flame, and like a diamond because of the spiritual light.

Because that is the nature of the Word in its literal sense as regards its transparence, therefore the Word in that sense is meant by the foundations of the wall of Jerusalem, by the Urim and Thummim in the ephod of Aaron, by the Garden of Eden in which the King of Tyre had been; and also by the curtains and veils of the Tabernacle, and by the outer arrangements of the Temple in Jerusalem. However, it is meant in its real glory by the Lord when He was transfigured.