Nine Questions #2

By Emanuel Swedenborg
  
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2. QUESTION 2.

Did the Lord have from Jehovah the Father a rational soul to which the Divine Esse was united, whence He became truly God and truly Man?

ANSWER

The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, was Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and He then had a Divine Celestial and a Divine Spiritual; but before He assumed the Human He did not have a Divine Natural; and because the rational can be attributed solely to the celestial and spiritual natural, it follows that Jehovah, the Lord, did also put on the Divine Rational by assuming the Human. He had a Divine Rational before assuming the Human, but this was by means of an influx into the angelic heaven, and whenever He manifested Himself in the world it was by means of an angel filled with His Divinity. For the purely Divine Essence, which, as has been stated, was purely Divine Celestial and Divine Spiritual, transcends both the angelic and the human rational, but existed by means of influx. Its nature can be inferred from what is said below in connection with the sixth question. Luther and Melancthon teach that in Christ Man is God and God is Man; and this is in accordance with Holy Scripture. See True Christian Religion 137. But Calvin denied this, affirming merely that only Christ is God and Man.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.