76 HEAVEN and HELL §136
l. Truths apart from what is good are not truths intrinsically because they do not have any life; in
fact, all the life of things true is from what is good: 9603 ; so they are like a body without a soul:
3180 , 9454 [ 9154 ]. Truths without good are not accepted by the Lord: 4368. The nature of truth
apart from goodness, and therefore the nature of faith without love; and the nature of heartfelt
truth and therefore the nature of faith from love: 1949 , 1950 , 1951 , 1964 , 5830 , 5951. It boils down
to the same thing whether you say “truth” or “faith,” “good” or “love,” because truth is an attri-
bute of faith and goodness is an attribute of love: 2839 , 4353 [ 4352 ], 4997 , 7178 , 7623 , 7624 ,
10367.
m. “The Word” in Sacred Scripture has various meanings—speech, the thought of the mind,
every entity that actually comes into being, or anything at all, and in the highest sense divine
truth and the Lord: 9987. “The Word” means divine truth: 2803 , 2884 [ 2894 ], 4692 , 5075 , 5272 ,
7830 [ 7930 ], 9987. “The Word” means the Lord: 2533 , 2859.for truth without goodness, since the truth that is attributed to faith is
light and the goodness that is attributed to love is warmth.l
All this becomes even clearer from the warmth and light of our
world, to which heaven’s warmth and light correspond. From the
warmth of our world, united to its light, all things on earth come to life
and blossom. They are united in spring and summer. However, nothing
comes to life or blooms from light separated from warmth—everything
languishes and dies. They are disunited in winter, when the warmth is
gone but the light remains. It is from this correspondence that heaven is
called a paradise, because there the true is united to the good, or faith to
love, as light is united to warmth in springtime on earth.
This gives even clearer support to the truth discussed above in §§ 13 –
19 , that the Lord’s divine nature in heaven is love for him and thought-
fulness toward one’s neighbor.137 It says in John,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God
was the Word: all things were made by means of him, and without him
nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the
light of humankind. He was in the world, and the world was made by
means of him. And the Word was made fl esh, and dwelt among us,
and we saw his glory. (John 1 : 1 , 3 , 4 , 10 , 14 )It is clear that the Lord is the one who is meant by “the Word,” since it
says that the Word was made fl esh. Precisely what is meant by “the
Word,” though, is not yet known and must therefore be stated. The
Word in this passage is the divine truth that is in the Lord and from the
Lord,m so here it is also called the light, which is divine truth, as has been
shown earlier in this chapter. Now we need to explain the statement that
all things were made and created by means of divine truth.