2759. Over on the right side there came up out of the lower earth what looked like a rolling wave. I was told that it consisted of many spirits from the lower levels of society who were uneducated but not wicked. They were peasants and other simple people. I spoke to them, and they said that they knew the Lord to whose name they entrusted themselves. Beyond this their knowledge of faith and its mysteries was small. Others subsequently came up who knew somewhat more. I perceived that the interior parts of their minds were capable of being opened, for in the next life such possibilities may be perceived quite plainly. They possessed a conscience, which was communicated to me so that I might know of it, and I was told that they had lived in conjugial love in simplicity. They said that they loved their married partners and refrained from adultery of any kind. That in this way they were governed by conscience was clear from the fact that they said they were unable to behave in any other way since to do so was against their will. Such persons receive instruction in the next life and are perfected in the good of love and in the truth of faith; and at length they are received among the angels.
PREFACEa
How deluded those people are who confine themselves to the sense of the letter and do not look for the internal sense in other places where this is explained in the Word becomes quite clear from the great number of heresies there are, each one of which confirms its own doctrinal position from the literal sense of the Word. It is particularly clear from that great heresy which insane and hellish self-love and love of the world have made out of the Lord's words to Peter,
I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matt 16: 15-19.
[2] People who keep rigidly to the sense of the letter imagine that these words refer to the man Peter and that such great power was given to him. Although they know that Peter was just an ordinary simple human being who by no means exercised such power, and that the exercise of that power is contrary to the Divine, they nevertheless adopt and stoutly defend a literal interpretation of what the Lord said, because of the insane and hellish self-love and love of the world which fill them with the desire to arrogate such power to themselves on earth and in heaven and to make gods of themselves. But the internal sense of those words is that faith itself in the Lord, which exists solely with those in whom love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour are present, possesses that power, yet not faith but the Lord, the Source of faith. In the words addressed to Peter 'rock' is used to mean that faith, as it is everywhere else in the Word. It is on this faith that the Church is built, and against this faith that the gates of hell do not prevail. It is that faith also which holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven, for that faith closes heaven to prevent evils and falsities entering in, and it opens heaven to goods and truths. This is the internal sense of these words.
[3] Like the twelve tribes of Israel the twelve apostles represented nothing else than all aspects of such faith, 577, 2089, 2129, 2130 (end). Peter represented faith itself, James charity, and John the good works that flow from charity - see the Preface to Gen. 18 - as in a similar way did Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, Jacob's three eldest sons, in the Jewish and
Israelitish representative Church, a point that is clear from a thousand places in the Word. And it was because Peter represented faith that those words were addressed to him. From all these considerations one may recognize what darkness it is into which people plunge themselves, and others with them, who explain everything literally, as they do who, taking literally the words addressed to Peter, use them to take the power of saving the human race away from the Lord and arrogate it to themselves.
This page is part of 
© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church