Doc. of Lord (Dick) n. 59

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

59. This is what is said in the Creed concerning the Trinity and the Unity of God. There follows next what relates to the Assumption of the Human by the Lord in the world, which is called the Incarnation; and those particulars as they are verbally set forth in the Creed are true, if we understand the Human from the mother, in which the Lord was when in the state of humiliation or exinanition and when He suffered temptations and the cross, to be distinct from the Human derived from the Father, in which He was when in the state of glorification or union. For the Lord assumed in the world a Human conceived of Jehovah, who is the Lord from eternity, and born of the Virgin Mary. Hence He had both a Divine and a Human, a Divine from His Divine from eternity, and a Human from the mother Mary in time. This latter, however, He put off, and put on a Human which was Divine. This is what is called the Divine Human, and what is meant in the Word by the Son of God. When therefore the particulars which come first in the Creed concerning the Incarnation are understood as relating to the maternal Human in which He was when in the state of humiliation, and those particulars which follow are understood as relating to the Divine Human in which He was when in the state of glorification, then all the particulars agree with the truth.

The following passages, which come first in the Creed, relate to the maternal Human in which He was when in the state of Humiliation:

Jesus Christ was God and Man, God of the substance of the Father, and Man of the substance of the mother, born in the world; perfect God and perfect Man, consisting of a rational soul and a human body; equal to the Father as to the Divine, but less than the Father as to the Human.

Also:

This Human was not converted into the Divine, nor mingled with it; but it was put off, and the Divine Human was assumed in its place.

The following passages, which come after in the Creed, relate to the Divine Human in which He was when in the state of glorification:

Although our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man, yet there are not two, but one Christ; indeed, He is altogether one, for He is one Person; for as the soul and body make one man, so God and Man are one Christ.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church