Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine WisdomSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom
Swedenborg, Emanuel
God (Christianity) -- Love; God (Christianity) -- Wisdom
383. Since the understanding corresponds to the lungs and thought
therefrom to the respiration of the lungs, in the Word, "soul" and "spirit"
signify the understanding; for example:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all
thy soul (Matt. 22:37).
God will give a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek. 36:26; Psalm 51:10).
That "heart" signifies the love of the will was shown above; therefore
"soul" and "spirit" signify the wisdom of the understanding. That the
spirit of God, also called the Holy Spirit, means Divine Wisdom, and
therefore Divine Truth which is the light of men, may be seen in The
Doctrine of the New Jerusalem concerning the Lord (n. 50, 51), therefore,
The Lord breathed on His disciples, and said, Receive ye the Holy
Spirit (John 20:22);
for the same reason it is said that:
Jehovah God breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of lives,
and he was made into a living soul (Gen. 2:7);
also He said to the prophet:
Prophesy upon the breath, and say unto the wind, Come from the four
winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live
(Ezek. 37:9);
likewise in other places; therefore the Lord is called "the breath of the
nostrils," and "the breath of life." Because respiration passes through
the nostrils, perception is signified by them; and an intelligent man is
said to be keen-scented, and an unintelligent man to be dull-scented. For
the same reason, spirit and wind in the Hebrew, and in some other
languages, are the same word; for the word spirit is derived from a word
that means breathing; and therefore when a man dies he is said to give
up the ghost [anima]. It is for the same reason that men believe the
spirit to be wind, or an airy something like breath breathed out from the
lungs, and the soul to be of like nature. From all this it can be seen
that to "love God with all the heart and all the soul" means to love Him
with all the love and with all the understanding, and to "give a new heart
and a new spirit" means to give a new will and a new understanding.
Because "spirit" signifies understanding, it is said of Bezaleel:
That he was filled with the spirit of wisdom, of intelligence, and
of knowledge (Exod. 31:3);
and of Joshua:
That he was filled with the spirit of wisdom (Deut. 34:9);
and Nebuchadnezzar says of Daniel:
That an excellent spirit of knowledge, of intelligence, and of
wisdom, was in him (Dan. 5:11, 12, 14);
and it is said in Isaiah:
They that err in spirit shall learn intelligence (29:24);
likewise in many other places.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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