§546 evil spirits choose hell 331
a. Blazing wrath is attributed to God in the Word, but it is the wrath in us; and the Word says
such things because it seems that way to us when we are being punished and condemned: 798
[ 5798 ], 6997 , 8284 , 8483 , 8875 , 9306 , 10431. Even evil is attributed to the Lord, though nothing
comes from the Lord but what is good: 2447 , 6073 [ 6071 ], 6992 [ 6991 ], 6997 , 7533 , 7632 , 7677
[ 7679 ], 7926 , 8227 , 8228 , 8632 , 9306. Why the Word says such things: 6073 [ 6071 ], 6992 [ 6991 ],
6997 , 7643 , 7632 , 7679 , 7710 , 7926 , 8282 , 9009 [ 9010 ], 9128. The Lord is pure mercy and clem-
ency: 6997 , 8875.
realizing that the spiritual meaning of the Word, which makes sense of
the letter, is wholly different. So the real doctrine of the church, which
is from the spiritual meaning of the Word, teaches something else. It
teaches that the Lord never turns his face away from anyone or spurns
anyone, never casts anyone into hell or is angry.a
Anyone whose mind is enlightened perceives this while reading the
Word simply from the fact that the Lord is goodness itself, love itself,
and mercy itself. Good itself cannot do harm to anyone. Love itself and
mercy itself cannot spurn anyone, because this is contrary to mercy and
love and is therefore contrary to the divine nature itself. So people who
are thinking with an enlightened mind when they read the Word per-
ceive clearly that God never turns away from us, and that because he
does not turn away from us, he behaves toward us out of goodness and
love and mercy. That is, he wills well toward us, loves us, and has com-
passion on us.
Enlightened minds also see from this that the literal meaning of the
Word where things like this are said has a spiritual meaning concealed
within it, a meaning needed to explain expressions that in the letter are
adapted to human comprehension, things said in accord with our pri-
mary and general conceptions.
Enlightened people also see that good and evil are two opposite 546
things, as opposite as heaven and hell, and that everything good is from
heaven and everything evil from hell. Further, since the Lord’s divine
nature constitutes heaven (see §§ 7 – 12 ), nothing fl ows into us from the
Lord but what is good, and nothing from hell but what is evil. So the
Lord is constantly leading us out of evil and toward good, while hell is
constantly leading us into evil. Unless we were in between, we would
have neither thought nor intention, much less any freedom or choice.
We have all these gifts because of the balance between good and evil. So
if the Lord were to turn away and we were left to our own evil, we would
no longer be human.