Divine Love and Divine Wisdom

...approach the Lord alone, think of a Divine Humanity, and therefore think of God as a Man.

13. The great importance of having a correct idea of God is clear from this consideration: the idea of God forms the innermost thought of everyone who has any religion; for all aspects of religion and divine worship relate to God. Since God is present both generally and specifically in everything belonging to religion and worship, no communication with heaven is possible unless there is a correct idea of God. This is why, in the spiritual world, every nation is assigned its place according to its idea of God as a Man; for it is in this idea, and no other, that the idea of the Lord is truly found. That the state of every person’s life after death depends on the idea of God they have confirmed within themselves is clearly seen from the opposite: the denial of God constitutes hell, and, in the Christian world, the denial of the Lord’s Divinity does the same.

14. THAT BEING AND EXISTENCE original: Esse and Existere IN GOD-MAN ARE DISTINCTLY ONE.

Where there is Being original: Esse, the essential "to be", there is also Existence original: Existere, the outward manifestation; one is not possible without the other. Being exists through Existence, and not without it. Reason understands this when it considers whether there can be any Being that does not exist, or whether there can be any Existence except from a Being. Since the one occurs with and not without the other, it follows that they are one, but "distinctly one." They are distinctly one in the same way as love and wisdom; for love is also Being and wisdom is Existence, since love does not exist except in wisdom, nor wisdom except from love. Therefore, when love is in wisdom, it exists. These two are so much a single thing that they may be distinguished in thought, but not in action. Because they can be distinguished in thought but not in action, it is said they are "distinctly one." Being and Existence in God-Man are also distinctly one, like soul and body: the soul does not exist without its body, nor the body without its soul. The divine soul of God-Man is understood as the divine Being, and His divine body as the divine Existence. To think that the soul can exist and exercise thought and wisdom without the body is an error resulting from false appearances; the soul of every person is in a spiritual body after they have cast off the material coverings they carried about with them in the world.

15. A Being is not a Being unless it exists, because it is not in a form; and what is not in a form has no quality, and what has no quality is nothing. Whatever exists from a Being makes one with that Being, because it comes from the Being; this creates a union into one. Therefore, one belongs to the other mutually and reciprocally, and one is "all in all" in the other as if in itself.

16. From this, it may appear that God is a Man, and that by being so...