344 HEAVEN and HELL §565
This love takes many forms, though. We may love wealth in order to
be raised to exalted rank simply because we love exalted rank. We may
love exalted rank and high position for the sake of wealth. We may love
wealth for the sake of the various pleasures it offers in the world. We may
love wealth simply for the sake of wealth, which is avarice, and so on.
The purpose of being wealthy is called its use, and purpose or use is what
gives a love its quality. That is, the quality of a love is determined by the
goal it aims at. Everything else serves it as means.Hellfi re and Gnashing of Teeth
566
U
NTIL now, hardly anyone has known the meaning of the eternal
fi re and gnashing of teeth ascribed to people in hell in the Word.
This is because people think materialistically about statements in the
Word, in ignorance of its spiritual meaning. So some of them under-
stand the fi re to be material fi re, some think it is torment in general,
some the pangs of conscience, some that it is just words meant to strike a
terror of evil into us. Some understand the gnashing of teeth to be a kind
of grinding, some only the kind of shudder we feel when we hear this
kind of clash of teeth.
Anyone familiar with the spiritual meaning of the Word, though, can
realize what eternal fi re and gnashing of teeth are, since there is spiritual
meaning in every expression and in the meaning of every expression in
the Word. At heart, that is, the Word is spiritual, and spiritual meaning
can be expressed to us only in natural terms because we are in a natural
world and think on the basis of what we encounter in it.
In the following pages, then, I shall explain what the eternal fi re and
gnashing of teeth are that evil people fi nd after death, or that their spirits
experience once they are in the spiritual world.567 There are two sources of warmth. One is the sun of heaven, which
is the Lord, and the other is our world’s sun. The warmth that comes
from heaven’s sun or the Lord is spiritual warmth, which in its essence
is love (see above, §§ 126 – 140 ). The warmth that comes from our world’s
sun, though, is a natural warmth that in its essence is not love but serves