VII.  The Sense of the Letter

As there are three senses in the Word, a natural, a spiritual, and a celestial, and as its natural sense, which is the sense of the letter, is a containment of the two senses, the spiritual and celestial, it follows that the sense of the letter of the Word is the basis of those senses.  And as the angels of the three heavens receive their wisdom from the Lord through the Word that they have, and as their Words make one with our Word by correspondences, it also follows that the sense of the letter of our Word is the basis, support, and foundation of the wisdom of the angels of heaven.  For the heavens rest upon the human race as a house rests upon its foundation; so the wisdom of the angels of heaven rests in like manner upon the knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom of men from the sense of the letter of the Word; for, as has been said above, communication and conjunction with the heavens are effected through the sense of the letter of the Word.  For this reason, as a result of the Lord’s Divine providence, there has been no mutilation of the sense of the letter of the Word from its first revelation, not even in a word or letter in the original text; for each word, and in some measure each letter, is a support.

From all this it is clear what a profanation it is to falsify the truths and adulterate the goods of the Word, and how infernal it is to deny or to weaken its holiness.  As soon as that is done, for that man of the church heaven is closed.  The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which cannot be forgiven, is the blasphemy of the Word by those who deny its holiness.  Since the Word is the basis of the heavens, and since the Word was wholly falsified and adulterated by the Jewish nation by traditions and adaptation of the sense of the letter to favor their evil loves, lest the heavens should be endangered and the wisdom of the angels there should become foolishness it pleased the Lord to come down from heaven and to put on the Human and to become the Word (as is evident from John i. 14), and thus to restore the state of heaven.  (A.E., n. 1085.)

There is a successive order and there is a simultaneous order.  In successive order things pure and perfect appear above, and those less pure and perfect appear below.  The three heavens are in successive order, one above another; and in the higher heavens all things are pure and perfect, while in the lower they are less pure and perfect.  Simultaneous order exists in lower things, and fully in the lowest; for higher things let themselves down and place themselves in the order that is called simultaneous, in which the pure and perfect things, which were the higher, are in the middle or center, and the less pure and perfect, which were the lower, are in the circumferences.  Therefore all things that have come forth in successive order are together in outmosts in their order.