This is not apparent, though, to any except those who know what
the names and the words stand for in the Word’s spiritual and heavenly
meanings. Some words and names apply to something good, others to
something true; some words and names apply to both goodness and
truth. If we do not know this, we cannot see the marriage in the individ-
ual details in the Word; this secret has not been discovered before,
because of this blindness.
Because this type of marriage exists in the individual details in the
Word, there are often two-part expressions whose elements seem like rep-
etitions of the same thing. These are not in fact repetitions. One element
relates to goodness and the other to truth. Both of them taken together
form a composite and become one thing. The divine holiness of the
Word is a result of this also. In every divine work there is goodness
united to truth and truth united to goodness.
The heading above states that in the individual details in the Word 249
there is a marriage between the Lord and the church and thereforea mar-
riage between goodness and truth, because wherever there is a marriage
between the Lord and the church a marriage between goodness and truth
is also present, since the latter marriage comes from the former one.
When a whole church, or just an individual within a church, has
truths, the Lord flows into these truths with goodness and brings them to
life. To put it another way, when people who are part of a church under-
stand something true, the Lord flows into their intellect and enlivens it
by bringing goodwill into it.
We all have two faculties of life called the intellect and the will. Our
intellect is a vessel for truth and therefore for wisdom; our will is a vessel
for goodness and therefore for goodwill. For us to become part of the
church, these two parts of us have to become one. The two parts do in fact
become one when we build our intellect with genuine truths (which hap-
pens to all appearances as if we were doing the building ourselves) and our
will is filled with goodness and love (which is done by the Lord). Then the
life of truth and the life of goodness are in us—the life of truth in our intel-
lect and the life of goodness in our will. When these two lives are united,
they become one life, not two. This is the marriage between the Lord and
the church; it is also the marriage between goodness and truth in us.
Readers who pay attention to it can see that the Word has two-part 250
expressions whose elements seem to be repetitions of the same thing. For
example, brother and friend, the poor and the needy, wasteland and desert,
emptiness and void, enemy and adversary, sin and wickedness, anger and
§250 sacred scripture 317