The Finiting
OF
THE INFINITE

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.  In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)

The finiting of the Infinite is fundamental to our understanding of the soul, what it is, and the mind and its development.  Without this, we grope in darkness to understand the goal of creation – an angelic heaven from the human race. (DLW 329)  It is now permitted for us to enter into these mysteries understandingly (TCR 508), since the Lord has made His Second Coming in the Word.

In His first coming, the Lord judged the doctrines of the Israelitish Church, showing that their traditions had made the Word of God of no effect.  His coming dispelled the imaginary heavens and brought into view the reality of the kingdom of God.  The Word of God was made flesh! (John 1:14)  The Only Begotten, with its derivations in three discrete degrees - celestial, spiritual and natural - walked among the human race revealing the Veriest Reality. (AC 5272, 6880)  But until the hells had been fully subjugated, the bound minds struggled to receive what they saw and heard.  Many of His own disciples in one incident would say, “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” (John 6:60)

In John chapter 16, verses 12, 13 and 25, we read:

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. … These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.

Even as the Lord was about to enter the final temptation to make Divine the Human in His natural, it still was not possible to reveal to His disciples the most rational sense of the Word; their minds not being opened to receive on that level.  But after His glorification when the spiritual world was back in its rightful order, influx from the Divine through the heavens could reach even to the lowest level of their minds. Their minds being set on fire on the day of Pentecost, they went forth and preached.  But keep in mind, causes still were not seen by them, only effects, and what they preached were statements. (AC 7055; TCR224)  Statements not seen by causes soon wane and drift into error and naturalism.  And so it did with the primitive Christian Church. (See AE 790: 4, 5; LJP 315; AE 1220:2, 3; DP 264; also 220: 6, 7)

... for without a knowledge of these [discrete] degrees, causes cannot be seen.  It is known indeed that end, cause, and effect follow in order, like prior, subsequent, and final; also that the end begets the cause, and, through the cause, the effect, that the end may have form; also about these many other things are known; and yet to know these things, and not to see them in their applications to existing things is simply to know abstractions, which remain in the memory only so long as the mind is in analytical ideas from metaphysical thought.  From this it is that although end, cause, and effect advance according to discrete degrees, little if anything is known in the world about these degrees.  For a mere knowledge of abstractions is like an airy something which flies away; but when abstractions are applied to such things as are in the world, they become like what is seen with the eyes on earth, and remains in the memory. (DLW 189; See also Doc. of Faith 25-33; cf. AC 3726)

The Lord does not want us ignorant concerning spiritual things. What distinguishes the New Church from the primitive Christian Church, as I stated above, is that the Lord has made His Second Coming in the Word; we now have the Word in its most rational sense. Simultaneously, the internal and external can be seen and understood.  Not only can we see creation in its effects, we can see why and how. We can also understand the soul, what it is and the mind in its three degrees, and how it is to be developed. We are not left with a false hope of an afterlife and an imaginary heaven because of contrived ideas of God, worshiping we know not what, (See John 4:21-24), but we can participate in our own reformation and regeneration.

There is nothing written in the Word that does not regard the Lord, His kingdom, and the Church – even the least of the things that occur in the Word.  As such things were signified, therefore the Lord said of the Word that in it were written the things concerning Himself.  Yet the things written of the Lord in the literal sense of the Old Testament are few; but those in its internal sense are all so written, for from this is the holiness of the Word.  This is what is meant by His saying that "all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Him." (Luke 24:44; AC 5620:14; AC 1540:2; Doc of the Lord 2)

This brings me to finiting of the Infinite.  The study of creation has gone on for years, and what I have to say in this article will certainly not do it justice, but I hope it will invigorate your hunger to dig in further into Word in its spiritual sense and not just be a sideline spectator but an activist in God’s goal of creation – an angelic heaven from the human race.  No procreation of angelic minds is possible or can occur except in those and from those who inhabit an earth, the ultimate of creation. (DW VII:3)  Thus the Divine proceeding to create would contain in it all of the possible uses required for an angelic heaven, so What are human souls except potential uses?

Before the world was, before spaces and times, the Creator, Former, and Maker of the universe, gave finiteness to all things; and this He did by means of His sun, in the midst of which He is, and which is constituted of the Divine essence that goes forth from Him as a sphere. There, and from that, is the first of the finiting process, and its progress reaches even to the outmost things of the world's nature; consequently in Himself God is infinite because He is uncreated. (TCR 29)

God did not create the universe out of nothing, for from nothing an idea of absolute nothingness is fostered. Yet out of absolute nothingness, nothing is or can be made.  This is an abiding truth.  The universe, therefore, which is God's image, and hence full of God, could only be created in God from God.  For God is Esse itself, and from Esse must be whatever is. To create what is, from nothing which is not, is a direct contradiction.  But yet, that which is created in God from God is not continuous from Him.  For God is Esse in itself, and in created things there is not any Being in itself.  If there were in created things any Esse in itself, this would be continuous from God and that which is continuous from God is God.  The angelic idea of such a matter is that what is created in God from God is like that in a man which he had drawn from his life, but from which the life has been withdrawn.  This is of such a nature that it conforms to his life, yet is not his life. (DLW 55)

“In God,” “from God,” is the theme of the doctrine of discrete degrees – God outside of God creating.  God did not just speak and wham, creation instantly came into existence.  No, the substances that were emitted from the Infinite were rendered finite, degree by degree. (TCR 33)  However, for anything to exist and subsist, there had to be an unbroken series from the first to the last, yet it could not be a continuation of what is uncreate, otherwise there would be pantheism.  Therefore, discrete degrees – prior and posterior degrees that touched by contiguity, by means of passings over, were created. (See AC 8603; DLW 56, 184; DP 57; AE 392:2; LJP 303-323)  Subsistence is a perpetual coming forth, and consequently preservation in connection and form is perpetual creation. (AC 4322)

Swedenborg in his Principia (philosophical work) likened the Infinite finiting to a whirlpool coming to a point; he called it the first natural point. In the doctrinal writings for the New Church two Latin words are used, Esse (Being) and Existere (Coming forth) which is Being coming into Existence (See AC 6880); in another pre-revelatory work, the first natural point is identified as the Only Begotten of the Father. (Infinite 10-17; See also ISB 20; John 17:5)  This pure and total motion of the Infinite coming into existence is living and uncreate, nothing finite.  In it contained the means toward accomplishing its goal.

We read in Diving Love and Wisdom:

Not that the created universe is God-Man, but that it is from Him; for nothing whatever in the created universe is substance and form in itself, or life in itself, or love and wisdom in itself, yea, neither is man a man in himself, but all is from God, who is Man, Wisdom and Love, also Form and Substance, in itself.  That which has Being-in-itself is uncreate and infinite; but whatever is from Very Being, since it contains in it nothing of Being-in-itself, is created and finite, and this exhibits an image of Him from whom it has being and has form. (52)

On the one side of the first natural point – what is Infinite – Esse and Existere (uncreate, without limitation, without beginning, without end, substance in se) and from the other side – what is finite (that pure and total motion turned in upon itself making a border, a limit drawn from Life, but from which the Life has been withdrawn, exhibiting an image of Him from whom it has being and has form).

From the spiraling point were formed first and second finite things, (See AC 7408), both in free activity yet with mutual regard, the heavenly marriage of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom – this heavenly marriage ought to be the source of and pattern for all marriages on earth. (See AC 162; Matthew 19:4-6)

We read in the Arcana Cœlestia of these radiant belts:

He who does not know how the case is with order in successive things, cannot know how it is with influx; wherefore it must be briefly told.  The truth which proceeds immediately from the Lord, being from the infinite Divine Itself, cannot possibly be received by any living substance which is finite, thus not by any angel; and therefore the Lord created successive things by which, as media, the Divine truth that proceeds immediately can be communicated.  But the first in succession from this is more full of the Divine than can as yet be received by any living substance which is finite, thus by any angel, and therefore the Lord created another successive through which the Divine truth that proceeds immediately might be in part received; this successive is the truth Divine which is in heaven.  The first two are above the heavens, and are as it were radiant belts of flame which encompass the sun, which is the Lord.  Such is the successive order down to the heaven nearest the Lord, which is the third heaven, where are those who are innocent and wise.  From this the successives are continued down to the ultimate heaven, and from the ultimate heaven down to the sensuous and bodily of man, which receives the influx last. (See AC 7270:2-4; also DLW 151; Ath Crd 189-191).

These radiant belts, one within and one without, (DLW 156), both active, gave rise to the first aura (spiritual uses), and from that proceeded three spiritual atmospheres, (containers of these uses), successively formed in discrete degrees – celestial, spiritual and natural.  But the spiritual universe could not exist without a natural universe whereby these uses could be realized; therefore, at the same time, the creation of a natural sun, followed by its three atmospheres – magnetic, ethereal and aerial, ending in water particles and angular particles (lands) – a gradual reduction of Divine activity – becoming more compressed and inert, and finally, in outmosts, becoming so compressed and inert as to be no longer atmospheres, but substances at rest, and in the natural world, fixed like those in the lands that are called matters … now fitted for the production of all uses in their forms. (DLW 302-306; 89; 157-159; 173-176; 179)

A natural universe came into existence from its own sun; for all influx proceeds from a sun – spiritual influx from its sun, natural influx from its sun. (ISB 4; See Memorable Relation in True Christian Religion no.76)  The sun of the natural world was created that its heat and light might receive spiritual heat and light and convey them by means of atmospheres even to outermost things on earth, so as to work out the effects of the ends which the Lord has in His sun, and also to clothe spiritual things with suitable garments, that is, with matter, for expressing last ends in nature. This is accomplished when spiritual heat is added in the natural. (CL 235)

You see this in the parable the Lord taught in Mark 4, concerning the “sower sows the Word.”  The ground does not grow up, but the spiritual use clothes itself with a suitable garment – use being made apparent in three degrees.  All uses are from a spiritual origin, thus from the sun where the Lord is. (DLW 348)  Nature serves the spiritual, which is from the God, in fixing the things which flow in unceasingly into nature. (See AE 1207:2-4)

Once the mineral kingdom (from its sun) was in place, the heat and light from – Divine Love and Divine Wisdom – the spiritual sun brought with them what there was in that substance from the Divine.  And by continuations, through atmospheres as mediums, caused the earth to begin to bring forth and bud; first the vegetable kingdom and then the animal kingdom, and finally the human race and an angelic heaven which is from it.  Who does not see clearly that uses are the ends of creation, when he considers that from God the Creator nothing can have form, and therefore nothing can be created, except use; and that to be use, it must be for the sake of others; and that use for the sake of self is also for the sake of others, since a use for the sake of self looks to one's being in a state to be of use to others?  Whoso considers this is also able to see, that use which is use cannot spring from man, but must be in man from that Being from whom everything that comes forth is use, that is, from the Lord. (DLW 305-308) 

There are only two universal forms produced out of the earth is known from the two kingdoms of nature, called the animal and the vegetable kingdoms.  Also all the subjects of either kingdom possess many things in common. Thus the subjects of the animal kingdom have organs of sense and organs of motion and members and viscera that are actuated by brains, hearts, and lungs.  So the subjects of the vegetable kingdom send down a root into the ground, and bring forth stem, branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. Both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, as regards the production of their forms, derive their origin from spiritual influx and operation out of the sun of heaven where the Lord is, and not from the influx and operation of nature out of her sun; from this they derive nothing except their fixation ... All animals, great and small, derive their origin from the spiritual in the outmost degree, which is called the natural;

        Man alone from all three degrees, called the celestial, spiritual, and natural.

As each degree of height or discrete degree decreases from its perfection to its imperfection, as light to shade, by continuity, so do animals.  There are therefore perfect, less perfect, and imperfect animals. The perfect animals are elephants, camels, horses, mules, oxen, sheep, goats, and others which are of the herd or the flock; the less perfect are birds; and the imperfect are fish and shell-fish; these, as being the lowest of that degree, are as it were in shade, while the former are in light.  Yet animals, since they live only from the lowest spiritual degree, which is called the natural, can look nowhere else than towards the earth and to food there, and to their own kind for the sake of propagation; the soul of all these is natural affection and appetite.

The subjects of the vegetable kingdom comprise, in like manner, the perfect, less perfect, and imperfect; the perfect are fruit trees, the less perfect are vines and shrubs, and the imperfect are grasses.  But plants derive from the spiritual out of which they spring that they are uses, while animals derive from the spiritual out of which they spring that they are affections and appetites. (DLW 346)

But what about the crown of the creation – mankind – from whom would come an angelic heaven? The soul of man distinguishes him from the two kingdoms beneath – animal and vegetable.  His origin would begin above the three spiritual atmospheres and three natural atmospheres.  His human internal would begin in the first aura and would encapsulate all derivative atmospheres, causing him to be a microcosm of the macrocosm. (DLW 319, 345-346; HH 39; See also 230, 231; cf. CL 183).

Man's internal is that from which he is man, and by which he is distinguished from brute animals. By means of this internal he lives after death, and to eternity a man, and by means of it he can be uplifted by the Lord among the angels.  This internal is the very first form from which a man becomes and is man, and by means of it the Lord is united to man.  The very heaven that is nearest the Lord is composed of these human internals; but this is above even the inmost angelic heaven, and therefore these internals belong to the Lord Himself.  By this means the whole human race is most present under the Lord's eyes, for there is no distance in heaven, such as appears in the sublunary world, and still less is there any distance above heaven. These internals of men have no life in themselves, but are forms recipient of the Lord's life.  Insofar therefore as a man is in evil, whether actual or hereditary, so far has he been as it were separated from this internal which is the Lord's and with the Lord, and thereby so far has he been separated from the Lord; for although this internal has been adjoined to man, and is inseparable from him, nevertheless insofar as he recedes from the Lord, so far he as it were separates himself from it. (See AC 1594)  But the separation is not an absolute sundering from it, for then the man could no longer live after death; but it is a dissent and disagreement on the part of those faculties of his which are below, that is, of his rational and of his external man. Insofar as there is dissent and disagreement, there is disjunction from the Lord; but insofar as there is not dissent and disagreement, the man is conjoined with the Lord through the internal, which takes place insofar as the man is in love and charity, for love and charity conjoin. Such is the case with man. (I recommend reading this entire number, AC 1999)

Because man’s soul alone has its origin in the first aura of the spiritual sun with the derivation of all three spiritual degrees of atmospheres beneath, at birth, all three degrees of the mind, which are in potential in the womb, can be opened and developed. (AC 1940; ISB VI:8)

The body with which this mind is clothed and compassed in the world is not in itself the man, for the body cannot be wise from the Lord and love Him from itself, but only from its mind; consequently the body is separated and cast off when the mind is about to depart and become an angel.  And then man comes into angelic wisdom, because the higher degrees of the life of his mind are opened; for every man has three degrees of life; the lowest degree is natural, and man is in that while in the world; the second degree is spiritual, and in that is every angel in the lower heavens; the third degree is celestial, and in that is every angel in the higher heavens.  And man is an angel so far as the two higher degrees are opened in him in the world by means of wisdom from the Lord and by means of love to Him. And yet in the world man does not know that these degrees have been opened.  This he does not know until he has been separated from the first degree which is natural; and the separation is effected through the death of the body.  That he is then wise like an angel, though not so in the world, it has been granted me both to see and hear.  I have seen in the heavens many of each sex who were known to me in the world, and who, while they lived there, believed in simplicity those things that are from the Lord in the Word, and had lived faithfully according to them; and these were heard in heaven speaking things ineffable, as is said of the angels;

        Such a mind can be formed only in man.

For this there are many reasons.  For all Divine influx is from first things into ultimates, and through a connection with ultimates into intermediates, and thus the Lord binds together all things of creation, and for this reason He is called "the First and the Last."  For the same reason He came into the world and put on a human body and therein glorified Himself, that from firsts and also from ultimates He might govern the universe, both heaven and the world. The same is true of every Divine operation.  This is so because in ultimates all things co-exist, for all things that are in successive order are in ultimates in simultaneous order; consequently all things that are in simultaneous order are in a continuous connection with all things in successive order.  This makes clear that the Divine in the ultimate is in its fullness. … From this it is clear that all creation has been effected in ultimates, and that every Divine operation passes through to ultimates and there creates and operates.  That the angelic mind is formed in man is evident from man's formation in the womb, also from his formation after birth, also from the law of Divine order that all things should return from ultimates to the first from which they are, and man to the Creator from whom he is. (DW VIII: 2-3)

I have only scratched the surface.  My hope is that it has sparked an interest in you enough that you will look up the numbers associated and read for yourself.  If you do not have these works*, they are available online (see the Resource Page on this website) or contact our offices, and we will direct you to where they may be purchased.  As I stated above, what distinguishes the New Church from the primitive Christian Church is that the Lord has made His Second Coming in the Word; we now have the Word in its most rational sense.  It is incumbent upon us to cultivate the rational. (HH 464; also 356; AC 5497)  The internal and external senses of the Word can be seen and understood at the same time, allowing for not only the understanding to be healed but also for the will … to heal the understanding alone is to heal man only from without; for the understanding with its thought is the external of man's life, while the will with its affection is the internal of his life; consequently the healing of the understanding alone would be like palliative healing, whereby the interior malignity, shut in and wholly prevented from going out, would destroy first the near and then the remote parts, even till the whole would become dead.  It is the will itself that must be healed, not by means of an influx into it of the understanding, for that is not possible, but by means of instruction, and exhortation by the understanding.  If the understanding alone were healed man would become like a dead body embalmed or encased in fragrant aromatics and roses, which would soon draw from the corpse so foul a stench that they could not be brought near to any one's nostrils. So would it be with heavenly truths in the understanding if the will's evil love were shut in. (DP 282)