When a man shuns and turns away from evils because they are sins he not only sees from the light of heaven that there is a God and the God is one, but also that God is a Man.  For he wishes to see his God, and he is incapable of seeing Him otherwise than as a Man.  Thus did the ancients before Abraham and after him see God; thus do the nations in lands outside the church see God from an interior perception, especially those who are interiorly wise although not from knowledges; thus do all little children and youths and simple well-disposed adults see God; and thus do the inhabitants of all earths see God; for they declare that what is invisible, since it does not come into the thought, does not come into faith.  The reason of this is that the man who shuns and turns away from evils as sins thinks from heaven; and the whole heaven, and everyone there, has no other idea of God than that He is a Man; nor can he have any other idea, since the whole heaven is a man in the largest form, and the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is what makes heaven; consequently to think otherwise of God than according to that Divine form, which is the human form, is impossible to angles, since angelic thoughts pervade heaven.

(That the whole heaven in the complex answers to a single man may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell, n. 51-86; and that the angels think according to the form of heaven, n. 200-212.)

This idea of God flows in from heaven into all in the world, and has its seat in their spirit; but it seems to be rooted out in those in the church who are in intelligence from what is their own (proprium), indeed so rooted out as to be no longer a possible idea; and this for the reason that they think of God from space.  But when these become spirits they think otherwise, as has been made evident to me by much experience.  For in the spiritual world an indeterminate idea of God is no idea of Him; consequently the idea there is determined to someone who has his seat either on high or elsewhere, and who gives answers.

From a general influx which is from the spiritual world men have received ideas of God as a Man variously according to the state of perception; and for this reason the triune God is with us called Persons; and in paintings in churches God the Father is represented as a man, the Ancient of Days.  It is also from a general influx that men, both living and dead, who are called saints, are adored as gods by the common people in Christian Gentilism, and their sculptured images are esteemed.  The same is true of many nations elsewhere, of the ancient peoples in Greece, in Rome, and in Asia, who had many gods, all of whom were regarded by them as men.  This has been said to make known that there is an intuition, namely, in man’s spirit, to see God as a man.  That is called an intuition which is from general influx. (A.E., n. 955.)