10738. Before these things had been said they had supposed that our group as well had consisted of those who wished to confuse them with the idea of three regarding God. Consequently, having heard these things, they said that emissaries from God - whom they would now call the Lord - had also come and taught them about Him, but that they refused entrance to the visitors who disturb them, especially those with ideas of three persons in the Godhead. For they know that God is one and therefore that the Godhead is a oneness, not the unanimity of three, unless those who so insist are prepared to think of God as an angel may be thought of. That is, within an angel there is an inmost, invisible level of life, on which he thinks and is wise; an outward level of life visible in a human form, on which he sees and acts; and an emanation of life from himself, which is a sphere of love and faith surrounding him. For what the love and faith of each spirit or angel are like is recognized at a distance from the sphere of life emanating from him. In the Lord's case, they said, the emanation of life from Him consists in the Divine itself which fills and constitutes the heavens, because the Essential Being (Esse) within the life of love and faith is from Him.
[2] Having heard all this I was led to say that such an idea of three and at the same time of one is in keeping with the angelic idea of the Lord, and that it arises out of the Lord's very own teachings about Himself. For He teaches that the Father and He are one; that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father; that whoever sees Him sees the Father, and whoever believes in Him believes in the Father and knows Him; also that the Paraclete, whom He calls the Spirit of truth as well as the Holy Spirit, goes forth from Him and speaks not of His own accord but of the Lord's, so that by Him is meant the Divine going forth.
[3] And I went on to say that an idea of three and at the same time of one was in keeping with the Essential Being and the Coming-into-being (Esse et Existere) of the Lord's life when He was in the world. The Essential Being of His life was the Divine itself, since He was conceived from Jehovah and the essential being of anyone's life is what he is conceived from; the Coming-into-being of life, springing from that Essential Being, is the Human in [bodily] form. The essential being of anyone's life which the person has from his father is called the soul, and the coming-into-being of life from that essential being is called the body, the soul and the body constituting one complete human being.
[4] The relationship between them both is similar to the relationship between what lies in an endeavour and what lies in an action resulting from it. For the action is the endeavour put into effect, so that the two are one. The endeavour as it exists in a person is called the will, and the endeavour put into effect is called the action. The body is the instrument by which the will that employs it performs an action, and in the performance of it the instrument and the employer of it come together as one. So it is with soul and body.
[5] An idea of soul and body such as this is what angels in heaven have, and from that idea they know that the Lord made His Human Divine by the power of the Divine within Him, which was His soul derived from the Father. The faith accepted everywhere in the Christian world is no different from this, for that faith teaches,
As the body and soul are one man (homo), so also God and man (homo) in the Lord is one Christ.a
Since the unity or oneness in the Lord was such, He rose again not just as to His soul but also, unlike anyone else, as to His body which He had glorified in the world. This too He taught the disciples, when He said,
Handle Me and see; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me have. [Luke 24:39.]
[6] This explains why the Church acknowledges the whole presence of His Humanity within the sacrament of the Holy Supper, which acknowledgement would not be possible unless His Human also were Divine.
These matters were well understood by those spirits, for such matters fall within angelic spirits' range of understanding. They also said that to the Lord alone belongs power in the heavens and that the heavens are His. In response to this I was led to say that the Church knows that too from the mouth of the Lord Himself, who said before He went up to heaven,
All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. [Matt 28:18.]
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