Celestial Man by Rev. Paul Booth
Lessons: Genesis 2: 1-4
Revelation 19: 6-9
Arcana Coelestia 81
Revelation 19: 6-9
Arcana Coelestia 81
A celestial man believes and perceives spiritual and celestial truth and good, acknowledging no other faith than which is from love, from which also he acts. The ends which influence celestial man regard the Lord, and thereby His kingdom and eternal life. The celestial man is not in combat, and when assaulted by evils and falsities, he despises them, and is therefore called a conqueror. His bonds, which are not apparent, are perceptions of good and truth.
Yet, today's average Christian knows nothing of these prior Churches. They only know of the Churches since the Lord's disciples established the Apostolic Church. They are unaware of the Most Ancient Church, the Ancient Church, and the External Churches - the representative Church of the Israelites - the Natural Church. Not only are they, and probably others of different religious faiths, unaware of these churches, they have no knowledge of their purpose or use and, further, do not think knowing about them is of any saving value. Other than the historical knowledge they would gain, they would use that knowledge to bolster their own belief and support their doctrine. This is because they do not understand that for a Church to exist among people it must exist within the person within his or her heart and mind or in their will and understanding. In other words, the Lord must somehow be conjoined with man that a Church may exist. Anyone, who reads the Lord's Word with the belief that He is God, will realise that the purpose of the Church is just that, that the Lord be conjoined with man, for that is the purpose of the Word and that is why he is 'called out'.
Also, from a reading of the book of Genesis of the Old Testament, we know mankind was created to be conjoined with the Lord God. In fact, Man was made in the Lord's image and after His likeness and learn that he enjoyed and delighted in all what the Lord created. Mankind then lived in a blessed state and, it can be seen that there was conjunction with the Lord through their hearts and minds - through the will and the understanding of man. This conjunction is what constitutes the Church with man. The important thing here is that the conjunction is within or is internal; it is a spiritual and celestial conjunction. It was not a natural or an external conjunction alone, but the external is conjoined only through the internal and is but a cover. In fact, even when the Lord came, and was born on earth as a man, a man must be conjoined with Him through love and wisdom even as the man of the Most Ancient Church was. You can say the good news is that the Lord is still conjoined with man's celestial, but the bad news is that man has turned away from the Lord and His goods and truths to himself and, so, he has closed his celestial and now cannot live in that state. In fact, he does not live in even the spiritual state unless he becomes regenerated.
Now, with God, there is Order in everything that He does and all that proceeds from Him. So, it is only logical that the first Church was conjoined with man's celestial and, as we just pointed out, such conjunction with the Lord is both spiritual and celestial; therefore, that first Church with and in man could not exist unless it were celestial. That celestial Church is called in the Third Testament the Most Ancient Church. If we admit that a Church is from a conjunction of the Lord with a man and, that it is an internal or celestial and spiritual conjunction through the man's will and his understanding, then the Lord's good, which is of His love and is His essence, and His Wisdom, which is His truth and His existence, then this truly is His Church, for the Lord is with man in His Proceeding Love and Wisdom.
Now, do we see this conjunction in the man of the Most Ancient Church? Yes, we do, but in what or how do we see it manifested? It is in a man and his wife and in the wife and her husband, for as it is written, 'Man (or Adam) and Eve his wife ' is that conjunction. Of course, we can understand this from a literal understanding of the Word written in the book of Genesis. But if there's anything that describes what a man is it is that he is intelligent and wise, for that is what makes a man and this is seen in the Third Testament. A woman also, has intelligence and wisdom, but her intelligence is expressed or manifested through her affection or love. It is in this way, that we can know that 'man' signifies wisdom and 'woman' love and, when these two - love and wisdom - are conjoined or married as 'man and wife' signify the Lord within man as the Church. Thus, the Lord's good and His truth are conjoined in a person's understanding and his will and constitute the Church. And, since love and wisdom or good and truth proceed from the Divine, then the first Church within man was celestial, for that is according to Divine order in that the Lord God is Divine and what proceeds first and primary from Him is what is called celestial or Love. Such Divine Love has wisdom united with it, which we have said is what makes the man intelligent and wise.
Before we speak about the Most Ancient Church, we should know that the Lord did not create man with the Church within him. In other words, a man has to be first regenerated before he is made in the Lord's image and His likeness, or before there is a conjunction between him and the Lord. This is seen in the first chapter of Genesis in the six days of creation where on the sixth God spoke of making man in His image. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness&…; And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him&…; (Gen. 1: 26, 27). Thus, man came into the state of regeneration and is here first called a 'man' who now was made in the image and after the likeness of the Lord, where before, he was not called man. This work or man's regeneration being completed or finished is seen in the statement that the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them (Gen. 2: 1). 'Heaven' refers to man's internal and 'earth' to his external, and the 'host of them' love, faith and cognitions thereof. Here, we can see that the Church is within man, for these things - Heaven and earth, a man's internal and his external - are all predicated of man. For such a man is a temple of the Lord and is said to be so, even as Heaven and the Church is the Lord's temple. So, man made as Heaven and the earth is the result of the six-days of his regeneration. After the regeneration we see the Lord rested from all His work which He had made (Gen. 2: 2). The results: man became celestial from being spiritual. This was the Most Ancient Church.
Until man becomes celestial his desire is for himself, but when he becomes celestial, he acts according to the 'good pleasure' of the Lord and no more for his own pleasure. So, as a 'likeness' of the Lord, he enjoys internal peace and happiness. He is now a 'new creation'. He is regenerated and is the 'work of God'.
The first thing we see in the Most Ancient Church is that the man is put into a garden and, in fact, the celestial man is called a garden in the Third Testament. We said earlier that intelligence is what makes a man. It distinguishes him from the beasts. However, it is love that causes man to become intelligent and, such is the order of all life. Such is the life of a celestial man of the Most Ancient Church. We can understand from this that a 'garden' signifies intelligence and by 'the garden East in Eden' the intelligence of the celestial man of the Most Ancient Church. For, Eden is of love and East, we often see in the Word as meaning the Lord.
Today, we know something about the conscience of a man. We will sometimes even say that certain people do not have a conscience indicating that such people are in evil. This of course, in the Word is called a person who is dead and without life. That is why it is said that man would die if he ate or appropriated the knowledge of good and evil. While both the conscience of today's man of the Church and the perception of the man of the Most Ancient Church is of and from the Lord in man there is in them an internal sensation. In the celestial man it is perception. In the spiritual man, it is conscience. They are vastly different. A celestial man could perceive whether a thing is true and good. His faith is grounded in love, while a spiritual man has a conscience that comes from a faith that he learns from his religion. In other words, the spiritual man is endowed with conscience of what is good and right 'as it was' through his faith which is grounded in his understanding of the Lord, not in his will, as it was in the celestial man.
The celestial man's will which is central and primary to him is his love to the Lord and is his faith. We see here that faith is secondary. So much so that he never speaks of his faith unless it is couched in love. That is why the 'heart' is thought of when one is expressing his love. With the celestial man this was the Lord, and thus, we may also understand the heart as the Lord's possession in a man.
Thus, the man of the Most Ancient Church was permitted to enjoy all things of the Lord. He was put into the garden that was East in Eden, which are things of truths and goods. However, he was not permitted to possess them as his own. And Jehovah God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden eating thou mayest eat. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in that day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die (Gen. 2: 16, 17). He was to know from perception what is good and true, but was not to know them through his self; that is, he could not possess them as his own. We need to understand this. God is Good and Truth; He cannot divide Good and Truth, for it is Him, and is impossible. There is only one Truth and one Good and that is the Lord. By this is meant that the celestial man's faith should not be derived from the knowledge that comes from a man's sensuous and corporeal nature.
What we are here speaking of is the cause of the fall of the celestial man of the Most Ancient Church and of the subsequent fall of every Church since then. The essence of this fall is that man wanted to be wise from himself and from the world and not from the Lord. He wanted to believe himself and not the Lord; he wanted to believe that what comes from him is true and good. Remember man in himself is a 'void and an emptiness', as we have seen before he is regenerated. He is also like the ground in which there is no seed. The celestial man receives life through the Lord's love. The spiritual man's life is through faith from the Lord; that is, it is through the truth. However, the natural man, the worldly and corporeal man only receives knowledge, and as such, he should be subservient to his spiritual and celestial.
It is not too difficult to understand that through man's desire to know from self, that is, his love of self, the garden within man gradually changes from celestial and spiritual things - truths and goods - to falsities and evils from sensuous things and their scientifics. It is from the sensuous of a man that evil has risen. The celestial man abused the faculties of rationality and liberality or his understanding and his thinking, willing, and acting freely. Let's be honest with ourselves, we are wise from the Lord and from His Word and so, we are enlightened in matters of reason and science.
Thus, we next see that the Most Ancient Church from its most flourishing state begins to incline toward their own self - the proprium- and from there their posterity, also because of their inclination, that is, from heredity, continues towards the love of self. It is this love or desire to have one's own life that the Lord took what is a man's own, which is dead and enlivened or vivified it. In the celestial man's proprium from the Lord are all the things of the Lord and so, man is governed by them from the Lord while he is in such a state. It is the very celestial itself. The further removed from this celestial state man descended because of his desire for a proprium even though this a was vivified proprium given to him, the further from the Lord the man of the Most Ancient Church descended. Until, if it were not for the Lord Himself as the Divine, becoming the Divine Human, mankind would surely have ceased and would become worse than wild beasts.
A man, even a natural man, must know what is good and what is truth and their qualities, as the celestial man did, if he is to be conjoined with the Lord and the Church. We see that the celestial man knew these qualities. 'And Jehovah God formed out of the ground every beast, and every fowl of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call it; and whatsoever the man called every living thing, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to every beast, and to the fowl of the Heavens.' To bring them to the man to see what he would call them, is to enable him to know their quality (Arcana Coelestia 142). Beasts are the celestial affections and fowls the spiritual affections, thus those of the will and the understanding. Still, he was inclined to his proprium. What we understand here is that a man receives what is of self and, so, he has identity. It gave the man a life 'as if' his own, that he can think, speak, and act 'as if' from himself. Thus, it is that he was let down into a state in which he might seem to have what is his own or a proprium. This he freely chose to do of his own will, for we have pointed out he has both liberality and rationality. Thus, a man does not know that he is in falsity until he comes out of 'sleep' as it were, and enters into reformation and regeneration where he is awakened. And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept (Gen. 2: 21). But when he begins to know that this is false, he is then roused as it were out of sleep, and becomes awake (Arcana Coelestia 147e). It is this way that a man may return to the Lord, that he comes into regeneration and is joined together with the Lord, that he may be in the Lord's True Church, which now includes His Kingdom on earth.
The man of the Most Ancient Church, because he wanted to live 'as if' from himself, began to decline from his celestial state, first to the spiritual state, and even to the corporeal and worldly state. He gradually lost his perception of what is good and true. Yet, we know the Lord's love is stronger than man's evil, for His Love includes all Wisdom. Today, because of His love, a man can be regenerated, he can be conjoined spiritually with the Lord and begin to enjoy His presence in the Word and within his heart and mind. Thus, man can be saved.
(Arcana Coelestia 81)
Mankind, before the Lord Jesus Christ came on earth, knew nothing about the Church or what it is. Still, today very few people know what a Church really is, except that it is a congregation of people who are like-minded who believe in the same doctrine and worship together. From that description, it can be inferred that the Israelites and Jewish nation's religious practices could also be called a Church, though it was not so called. However, that is not what constitutes a Church. Here, it may be observed that religion scholars know that the Word 'Church', "Ecclesia" or "Ekklesia" means those who are 'called out' from among the worldly and, of course, this being so, it brings us closer to understanding what a Church really is. One who has religious understanding can see that God or Deity calls people from a life of sin, from a life of their own, to live a life according to principles taught - doctrines- that are the qualities of and from God. In that respect, we can say that there have been many different churches from the beginning of man's creation. Of course there is only one true Church, which is led by the one true Lord who is God of both Heaven and earth and that over the many ages many false churches rose and fell.Yet, today's average Christian knows nothing of these prior Churches. They only know of the Churches since the Lord's disciples established the Apostolic Church. They are unaware of the Most Ancient Church, the Ancient Church, and the External Churches - the representative Church of the Israelites - the Natural Church. Not only are they, and probably others of different religious faiths, unaware of these churches, they have no knowledge of their purpose or use and, further, do not think knowing about them is of any saving value. Other than the historical knowledge they would gain, they would use that knowledge to bolster their own belief and support their doctrine. This is because they do not understand that for a Church to exist among people it must exist within the person within his or her heart and mind or in their will and understanding. In other words, the Lord must somehow be conjoined with man that a Church may exist. Anyone, who reads the Lord's Word with the belief that He is God, will realise that the purpose of the Church is just that, that the Lord be conjoined with man, for that is the purpose of the Word and that is why he is 'called out'.
Also, from a reading of the book of Genesis of the Old Testament, we know mankind was created to be conjoined with the Lord God. In fact, Man was made in the Lord's image and after His likeness and learn that he enjoyed and delighted in all what the Lord created. Mankind then lived in a blessed state and, it can be seen that there was conjunction with the Lord through their hearts and minds - through the will and the understanding of man. This conjunction is what constitutes the Church with man. The important thing here is that the conjunction is within or is internal; it is a spiritual and celestial conjunction. It was not a natural or an external conjunction alone, but the external is conjoined only through the internal and is but a cover. In fact, even when the Lord came, and was born on earth as a man, a man must be conjoined with Him through love and wisdom even as the man of the Most Ancient Church was. You can say the good news is that the Lord is still conjoined with man's celestial, but the bad news is that man has turned away from the Lord and His goods and truths to himself and, so, he has closed his celestial and now cannot live in that state. In fact, he does not live in even the spiritual state unless he becomes regenerated.
Now, with God, there is Order in everything that He does and all that proceeds from Him. So, it is only logical that the first Church was conjoined with man's celestial and, as we just pointed out, such conjunction with the Lord is both spiritual and celestial; therefore, that first Church with and in man could not exist unless it were celestial. That celestial Church is called in the Third Testament the Most Ancient Church. If we admit that a Church is from a conjunction of the Lord with a man and, that it is an internal or celestial and spiritual conjunction through the man's will and his understanding, then the Lord's good, which is of His love and is His essence, and His Wisdom, which is His truth and His existence, then this truly is His Church, for the Lord is with man in His Proceeding Love and Wisdom.
Now, do we see this conjunction in the man of the Most Ancient Church? Yes, we do, but in what or how do we see it manifested? It is in a man and his wife and in the wife and her husband, for as it is written, 'Man (or Adam) and Eve his wife ' is that conjunction. Of course, we can understand this from a literal understanding of the Word written in the book of Genesis. But if there's anything that describes what a man is it is that he is intelligent and wise, for that is what makes a man and this is seen in the Third Testament. A woman also, has intelligence and wisdom, but her intelligence is expressed or manifested through her affection or love. It is in this way, that we can know that 'man' signifies wisdom and 'woman' love and, when these two - love and wisdom - are conjoined or married as 'man and wife' signify the Lord within man as the Church. Thus, the Lord's good and His truth are conjoined in a person's understanding and his will and constitute the Church. And, since love and wisdom or good and truth proceed from the Divine, then the first Church within man was celestial, for that is according to Divine order in that the Lord God is Divine and what proceeds first and primary from Him is what is called celestial or Love. Such Divine Love has wisdom united with it, which we have said is what makes the man intelligent and wise.
Before we speak about the Most Ancient Church, we should know that the Lord did not create man with the Church within him. In other words, a man has to be first regenerated before he is made in the Lord's image and His likeness, or before there is a conjunction between him and the Lord. This is seen in the first chapter of Genesis in the six days of creation where on the sixth God spoke of making man in His image. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness&…; And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him&…; (Gen. 1: 26, 27). Thus, man came into the state of regeneration and is here first called a 'man' who now was made in the image and after the likeness of the Lord, where before, he was not called man. This work or man's regeneration being completed or finished is seen in the statement that the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them (Gen. 2: 1). 'Heaven' refers to man's internal and 'earth' to his external, and the 'host of them' love, faith and cognitions thereof. Here, we can see that the Church is within man, for these things - Heaven and earth, a man's internal and his external - are all predicated of man. For such a man is a temple of the Lord and is said to be so, even as Heaven and the Church is the Lord's temple. So, man made as Heaven and the earth is the result of the six-days of his regeneration. After the regeneration we see the Lord rested from all His work which He had made (Gen. 2: 2). The results: man became celestial from being spiritual. This was the Most Ancient Church.
Until man becomes celestial his desire is for himself, but when he becomes celestial, he acts according to the 'good pleasure' of the Lord and no more for his own pleasure. So, as a 'likeness' of the Lord, he enjoys internal peace and happiness. He is now a 'new creation'. He is regenerated and is the 'work of God'.
The first thing we see in the Most Ancient Church is that the man is put into a garden and, in fact, the celestial man is called a garden in the Third Testament. We said earlier that intelligence is what makes a man. It distinguishes him from the beasts. However, it is love that causes man to become intelligent and, such is the order of all life. Such is the life of a celestial man of the Most Ancient Church. We can understand from this that a 'garden' signifies intelligence and by 'the garden East in Eden' the intelligence of the celestial man of the Most Ancient Church. For, Eden is of love and East, we often see in the Word as meaning the Lord.
Today, we know something about the conscience of a man. We will sometimes even say that certain people do not have a conscience indicating that such people are in evil. This of course, in the Word is called a person who is dead and without life. That is why it is said that man would die if he ate or appropriated the knowledge of good and evil. While both the conscience of today's man of the Church and the perception of the man of the Most Ancient Church is of and from the Lord in man there is in them an internal sensation. In the celestial man it is perception. In the spiritual man, it is conscience. They are vastly different. A celestial man could perceive whether a thing is true and good. His faith is grounded in love, while a spiritual man has a conscience that comes from a faith that he learns from his religion. In other words, the spiritual man is endowed with conscience of what is good and right 'as it was' through his faith which is grounded in his understanding of the Lord, not in his will, as it was in the celestial man.
The celestial man's will which is central and primary to him is his love to the Lord and is his faith. We see here that faith is secondary. So much so that he never speaks of his faith unless it is couched in love. That is why the 'heart' is thought of when one is expressing his love. With the celestial man this was the Lord, and thus, we may also understand the heart as the Lord's possession in a man.
Thus, the man of the Most Ancient Church was permitted to enjoy all things of the Lord. He was put into the garden that was East in Eden, which are things of truths and goods. However, he was not permitted to possess them as his own. And Jehovah God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden eating thou mayest eat. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in that day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die (Gen. 2: 16, 17). He was to know from perception what is good and true, but was not to know them through his self; that is, he could not possess them as his own. We need to understand this. God is Good and Truth; He cannot divide Good and Truth, for it is Him, and is impossible. There is only one Truth and one Good and that is the Lord. By this is meant that the celestial man's faith should not be derived from the knowledge that comes from a man's sensuous and corporeal nature.
What we are here speaking of is the cause of the fall of the celestial man of the Most Ancient Church and of the subsequent fall of every Church since then. The essence of this fall is that man wanted to be wise from himself and from the world and not from the Lord. He wanted to believe himself and not the Lord; he wanted to believe that what comes from him is true and good. Remember man in himself is a 'void and an emptiness', as we have seen before he is regenerated. He is also like the ground in which there is no seed. The celestial man receives life through the Lord's love. The spiritual man's life is through faith from the Lord; that is, it is through the truth. However, the natural man, the worldly and corporeal man only receives knowledge, and as such, he should be subservient to his spiritual and celestial.
It is not too difficult to understand that through man's desire to know from self, that is, his love of self, the garden within man gradually changes from celestial and spiritual things - truths and goods - to falsities and evils from sensuous things and their scientifics. It is from the sensuous of a man that evil has risen. The celestial man abused the faculties of rationality and liberality or his understanding and his thinking, willing, and acting freely. Let's be honest with ourselves, we are wise from the Lord and from His Word and so, we are enlightened in matters of reason and science.
Thus, we next see that the Most Ancient Church from its most flourishing state begins to incline toward their own self - the proprium- and from there their posterity, also because of their inclination, that is, from heredity, continues towards the love of self. It is this love or desire to have one's own life that the Lord took what is a man's own, which is dead and enlivened or vivified it. In the celestial man's proprium from the Lord are all the things of the Lord and so, man is governed by them from the Lord while he is in such a state. It is the very celestial itself. The further removed from this celestial state man descended because of his desire for a proprium even though this a was vivified proprium given to him, the further from the Lord the man of the Most Ancient Church descended. Until, if it were not for the Lord Himself as the Divine, becoming the Divine Human, mankind would surely have ceased and would become worse than wild beasts.
A man, even a natural man, must know what is good and what is truth and their qualities, as the celestial man did, if he is to be conjoined with the Lord and the Church. We see that the celestial man knew these qualities. 'And Jehovah God formed out of the ground every beast, and every fowl of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call it; and whatsoever the man called every living thing, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to every beast, and to the fowl of the Heavens.' To bring them to the man to see what he would call them, is to enable him to know their quality (Arcana Coelestia 142). Beasts are the celestial affections and fowls the spiritual affections, thus those of the will and the understanding. Still, he was inclined to his proprium. What we understand here is that a man receives what is of self and, so, he has identity. It gave the man a life 'as if' his own, that he can think, speak, and act 'as if' from himself. Thus, it is that he was let down into a state in which he might seem to have what is his own or a proprium. This he freely chose to do of his own will, for we have pointed out he has both liberality and rationality. Thus, a man does not know that he is in falsity until he comes out of 'sleep' as it were, and enters into reformation and regeneration where he is awakened. And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept (Gen. 2: 21). But when he begins to know that this is false, he is then roused as it were out of sleep, and becomes awake (Arcana Coelestia 147e). It is this way that a man may return to the Lord, that he comes into regeneration and is joined together with the Lord, that he may be in the Lord's True Church, which now includes His Kingdom on earth.
The man of the Most Ancient Church, because he wanted to live 'as if' from himself, began to decline from his celestial state, first to the spiritual state, and even to the corporeal and worldly state. He gradually lost his perception of what is good and true. Yet, we know the Lord's love is stronger than man's evil, for His Love includes all Wisdom. Today, because of His love, a man can be regenerated, he can be conjoined spiritually with the Lord and begin to enjoy His presence in the Word and within his heart and mind. Thus, man can be saved.
Amen
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