Coronis,
or Appendix,
to
True Christian Religion
Emanuel Swedenborg
SECOND PROPOSITION (25 - 26)
25. (a).
The first state of this Most Ancient Church, or its rise and morning, is
described in the first chapter of Genesis by these words:
God said, Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness; and God created man in His own image;
in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them (vers. 26,
27);
and also by these in the second chapter:
Jehovah God formed man dust of
the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the soul of lives; and man became a
living soul (ver. 7).
That its rise, or morning, is described by his being
made, or created, "in the image of God," is because every man, when he is first
born and is an infant, interiorly is an "image of God;" for the faculty of
receiving and of applying to himself those things which proceed from God, is
implanted in him; and since exteriorly he is also formed "dust of the earth,"
and there is thence in him an inclination to lick that dust, like the serpent
(Gen. 3:14), therefore if he remains an external or natural man, and does not
become at the same time internal or spiritual, he shatters the image of God, and
puts on the image of the serpent which seduced Adam. But, on the other hand, the
man who strives and labors to become an "image of God," subdues the external man
in himself, and interiorly in the natural becomes spiritual, thus
spiritual-natural; and this is effected by a new creation, that is, regeneration
by the Lord. Such a man is an "image of God," because he wills and believes that
he lives from God, and not from himself: on the contrary, man is an image of the
serpent, while he wills and believes that he lives from himself, and not from
God. What is man but an "image of God," when he wills and believes that he is in
the Lord and the Lord in him (John 6:56, 14:20, 15:4, 5, 7, 17:26), and that he
can do nothing of himself (John 3:27, 15:5)? What is a man, but an "image of
God," when, by new generation, he becomes a "son of God" (John 1:12, 13)? Who
does not know that the image of the father is in the son? The rise, or morning,
of this church is described by Jehovah God's "breathing into his nostrils the
soul of lives," and by his thus "becoming a living soul," because by "lives," in
the plural, are meant love and wisdom, and these two are essentially God; for,
as far as a man receives and applies to himself those two essentials of life,
which proceed continually from God, and flow continually into the souls of men,
so far he becomes "a living soul;" for "lives" are the same as love and wisdom.
Hence it is evident, that the rise and morning of the life of the men of the
Most Ancient Church, who taken together are represented by "Adam," is described
by those two shrines of life.
26. The "likeness of God," according to which man was made, is his being able to
live, that is, to will, to love, and to intend, as also to think, to reflect,
and to choose, in all appearance as from himself; consequently, in his being
able to receive from God those things which are of love and those things which
are of wisdom, and to reproduce them in a likeness from himself as God does; for
God says:
Behold the man was as one of us, in knowing good and evil (Gen.
3:22);
for, without the faculty of receiving and reproducing those things
which proceed into him from God, in all appearance as from himself, man would be
no more a "living soul" than an oyster in its shell at the bottom of a stream,
which is not in the least able to move itself out of its place. Nor would he be
any more an "image of God" than a jointed statue of a man capable of motion by
means of a handle, and of giving forth sound by being blown into; yea, the very
mind of man, which is the same as his spirit, would actually be wind, air, or
ether, according to the idea of the church at this day respecting spirit. For
without the faculty of receiving and reproducing the things flowing in from God,
altogether as from himself, he would not have anything of his own, or a proprium, except an imperceptible one, which is like the proprium of a lifeless
piece of sculpture. But more about the image and likeness of God with man, may
be seen, in a Relation in the preceding work, of which this is the Appendix (n.
48).
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