Chapter 11 (part 7)

48.) "The soul and the Word are not one or one being. The soul is born from the centre of nature, from the essences, and belongs to the body, for she issues from the essences of the body, and attracts to herself the body; but the Word is from the centre of the majesty, and draws the majesty unto itself." ( Threefold Life , vi. 83.) The Word and the soul are not standing separately side by side, but the latter is penetrated and illumined by the former. 2 p. 238 "The soul and the Word are not standing side by side like two persons, but the Word penetrates the soul, and out of the Word shines the life-light; whereby, however, the soul remains free to herself. A red-hot iron is in itself dark and black, but the fire penetrates it, so that it becomes luminous. There has no change happened to the iron itself; it remains iron and the heat remains heat; one is as free as the other, and neither one is the other. Thus has the soul been put into the fire of divinity, so that divinity may penetrate and illuminate the soul, and dwell therein and conceive of her, although the soul cannot conceive of divinity; nevertheless she does not become transformed. Divinity conceives the soul and endows her with the power of majesty." ( Threefold Life , vi. 83.) Christ did not become human merely within the virgin Mary, but also in an unlimited celestial manner. "While Christ lived upon the earth His external form was limited like our own bodies, but the internal man was immeasurable." ( Three Principles , xxiv. 88.) "The Word has become humanity everywhere; that is to say, everywhere became unfolded the divine substantiality wherein our eternal humanity exists. We ought to exist in the same corporeal substantiality in eternity, wherein exists the virgin of God, and we must clothe ourselves with the virgin, for Christ has clothed Himself with her." ( Menschwerdung , i. 8, 12.) "The whole angelic world is the substantiality of Christ according to His celestial essentiality, 'created' in regard to the personality of humanity, but outside of it is untreated and eternal." ( Letters , xii. 56.) The celestial and unlimited corporeity of our Redeemer is incomprehensible to the reasoning intellect; p. 239 but it is nevertheless logical to accept it, because in Christ the infinite God became man. 1 "Reason says: 'The body of Christ is in one place; how then can it be everywhere? It is a creature, and one creature cannot be in every place at once.' But listen, dear Reason. 'When the Word of God became a human being in the body of Mary, was it then not also (at the same time) high above the stars? While it was at Nazareth was it then not also at Jerusalem and everywhere? Or do you think that God, while He became a man, had been confined to His human form?' This is an impossibility, and thus, while God became man, His humanity was everywhere where His divinity existed." 2 ( Three Principles , xxiii. 8.) "Christ has not become man solely in the body of the (terrestrial) virgin Mary (in that sense), as if His divinity or divine essentiality had been captured, imprisoned, or seated therein. As little as God, who is the fulness of all things, resides in one place alone, so little has God moved in only one small portion (of the Word); for He is not differentiated, but everywhere one and a whole, and wherever He becomes manifest there He is manifest as a whole.