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?”

78. Furthermore, the Lord is present in a person and conjoined with him through the Word, since the Lord embodies the Word and speaks in it as it were with the person. And because the Lord embodies Divine truth itself, so also does the Word embody it.

It is apparent from this that the Lord is present in a person and at the same time conjoined with him in accordance with his understanding of the Word, for it is in accordance with this that a person possesses truth and a resulting faith, as well as love and a resulting life.

The Lord is indeed present in a person by his reading of the Word, but He is conjoined with the person through his understanding of truth derived from the Word and in accordance with it. And the more conjoined the Lord is with the person, the more the person has the church in him.

The church exists in a person. The church around him is the church in all the other people who have the church in them. This is what the Lord meant when, to the Pharisees asking Him when the kingdom of God was coming, He said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). The kingdom of God there means the Lord and the church formed by Him.

5. 1. What the spiritual meaning is. The spiritual meaning is not the sense that shines from the literal one when one is studying the Word and interpreting it in order to confirm some dogma of the church. This sense is the Word’s literal sense. Rather its spiritual meaning is one not apparent in the literal one. The spiritual meaning lies within the literal one, like the soul within the body, like thought within the eyes, and affection within the face, which operate in concert, like cause and effect.

That spiritual meaning is what principally causes the Word to be spiritual, not only for people, but also for angels. Consequently that meaning is the means by which the Word communicates with the heavens.