§372 marriage 213
c. True marriage love fi nds its origin, its means, and its essence in the marriage of what is good
and what is true, so it comes from heaven: 2728 , 2729. About angelic spirits who can tell whether
there is a marital quality present from people’s concepts of the union of what is good and what is
true: 10756. Marriage love precisely parallels the union of what is good and what is true, with
some description: 1094 [ 1904 ], 2173 , 2429 [ 2729 ], 2503 [ 2508 ], 3101 , 3102 , 3155 , 3179 , 3180 , 4358 ,
5407 [ 5807 ], 5835 , 9206 , 9495 , 9637. How and for whom the union of what is good and what is
true takes place: 3834 , 4096 , 4097 , 4301 , 4345 , 4353 , 4364 , 4368 , 5365 , 7623 – 7627 , 9258. Only
people who are focused by the Lord on what is good and true know what real marriage love is:
10171. In the Word, a marriage refers to a marriage of what is good and what is true: 3132 , 4434 ,
4834 [ 4835 ]. It is in real marriage love that the kingdom of the Lord and heaven is found: 2737.
by angels and by us in divine truths, truth being the only vessel for the
good. So nothing from the Lord and heaven can be accepted by people
who are not interested in truth. To the extent that true elements are
united to what is good within us, then, we are united to the Lord and
heaven. This is the actual source of marriage love, which means that it is
the actual matrix for the infl ow of the Divine.
This is why the union of the good and the true in the heavens is
called the heavenly marriage and why heaven is compared to a marriage
in the Word and is even called “a marriage.” It is why the Lord is called
the Bridegroom and Husband, and heaven and the church are called the
bride and wife.c
When the good and the true are united in an angel or in one of us, 372
they are not two entities but one, since the good then follows from the
true and the true from the good. This union is like the one that occurs
when we think what we intend and intend what we think. Then our
thought and our intention form a unity; the thought forms or presents in
a form what our volition intends, and our volition gives it its appeal. This
is also why two spouses in heaven are not called two angels, but one.
Again, this is the meaning of the Lord’s words,
Have you not read that the one who made them from the beginning
made them male and female and said, “For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will
become one fl esh.” So they are no longer two, but are one fl esh. What
God has united, let no one sever. Not everyone accepts this word,
only those to whom it is given. (Matthew 19 : 4 – 6 , 11 ; Mark 10 : 6 – 9 ;
Genesis 2 : 24 )Here we have a description of the heavenly marriage angels are in and at the
same time the marriage of the good and the true. “Let no one sever what
God has united” means that the good is not to be severed from the true.