Chapter 12 (part 10)

Every object or person we see in the world is nothing but a symbol of existing ideas; every event taking place in external life is the outcome of invisibly acting forces. The historical correctness of the occurrences described in the Bible may be questioned, but what they describe are facts known to those who have experienced them themselves. The truth of the religion of Christ does not depend on the verification of external historical events; for true p. 262 [paragraph continues] Christianity is based neither upon a knowledge of cosmology nor upon history, but upon love. "The innermost ground in man is Christ; but not according to man's human nature, but according to His , the divine quality in His celestial essence, which He has regenerated. The second ground is the soul, i.e. , eternal nature, wherein Christ (the light) becomes revealed; and the third ground is the external man, out of the limus of the earth with the stars and the four elements. In the first ground is the active life of divine love; in the second is the natural fire-life of the created soul, wherein God is called a fiery God; and in the third is the creation of all the qualities wherein Adam stood in the temperature , and which was objectified in the fall." ( Grace , iv. 37.) "'Christ' means a penetrator; the act of taking away the power of the wrath; the illumination of the darkness by light; the transmutation (in the soul of man), by which the gladness of love rules over the lust of the fire in its wrathful aspect; the superiority of light over darkness." ( Signature , vii. 3 2.) To "love Christ" means simply to love the divine light of wisdom and truth, and is practised by being obedient to divine law. 1 Footnotes 242:1 If we take of the history of redemption the ordinary theological view, and regard it as the work of an extracosmic God, getting offended and p. 243 angry, and becoming reconciled by having his son killed by man, it becomes at once absurd and incredible; but if we look at it in its true light, namely, as an allegory describing an intracosmic process going on in the body of macrocosmic and microcosmic man, it then becomes intelligible. It was not an outside deity, but the divine will, active within the heart of humanity, that willed that humanity should be saved by the awakening of the divine will in man, and the same process takes place even now in the organism of every individual on entering from spiritual darkness into light. 243:1 The term "body," as a matter of course, does not refer to the visible form of earth, which is merely an instrument for its inner inhabitant, but to that principle of which that form is an external expression. 243:2 In other words, there is no other way of restoring the order except by means of its restoration. 244:1 If the light shines merely upon the surface, it then does not penetrate into the depths. The will had to become active within the flesh. This divine will is love, which is substantial and not a mere dream. 245:1 The tombs from which man must arise are error, passions, and temptations. 245:2 The light could not have redeemed the darkness in any other way than by entering therein; neither could anything entirely spiritual and unsubstantial have acted upon matter. 247:1 Little would it benefit man to believe that another person overcame his temptations, while he himself would succumb to his own. He who conquers that which is mortal in him conquers death. 248:1 The first temptation which meets every one on the road to regeneration is the hunger of the lower qualities in him. "The first cause of real temptation is the transcendent abundant love of God.