14. (vii) ANY PERSON WHO DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE GOD IS EXCOMMUNICATED FROM THE CHURCH AND DAMNED.

The reason why a person who does not acknowledge God is excommunicated from the church is that God is everything to the church and the Divine truths, which we call theology, are what make it a church. Consequently to deny God is to deny everything to do with the church; and it is this very denial which excommunicates a person, so that it is not God but the person who excommunicates himself. The reason why he is damned is that by being excommunicated from the church he is also excommunicated from heaven. For the church on earth and the heaven of angels act as one, like the internal and the external, or the spiritual and the natural in the case of a person. Man was created by God so as to have his internal in the spiritual world and his external in the natural world. Thus he was created a denizen of either world in order that the spiritual, which is heavenly, should be planted in the natural, which is worldly, just as a seed is planted in the ground, and he might thus become steadfast and enduring to eternity.

[2] A person who by denying God has excommunicated himself from the church, and thus from heaven, has shut off his internal man in respect of the will, and so in respect of the love which gives him pleasure. For a person's will is the receiver of his love and becomes its dwelling-place. But he cannot shut off his internal man in respect of the understanding, for if he could do this he would cease to be a human being. But the love in his will makes the higher regions of the understanding foolish with false notions, so that the understanding becomes as it were shut off from the truths which have to do with belief and the kinds of good which have to do with charity; thus he becomes more and more opposed to God and at the same time the spiritual side of the church. Thus he is cut off from communion with the angels of heaven, and by this exclusion he brings himself into communion with the satans of hell, and thinks exactly like them. All satans deny God and have foolish ideas about the spiritual side of the church, and a person who is linked with them does likewise.

[3] When this person is under the guidance of his spirit, which is when he is left to himself at home, he allows his thoughts to be guided by the pleasures of evil and falsity which he has conceived and brought to birth in himself. He then thinks that God does not exist, or that He is a mere word resounding from pulpits, to oblige the common people to obey the laws of the land, on which the community depends. He also thinks that the Word, which makes ministers keep harping on God, is a collection of visions or a mere compilation, the holiness of which has been established by authority. He regards the Ten Commandments or the catechism as a book, which when it has been worn out through handling by children, can be thrown away. For it laid down that parents are to be honoured, one is not to kill or go whoring, not to steal or bear false witness; and does not everyone know these same rules from the code of civil law? He thinks of the church as a mere congregation of the simple, the gullible and the weak-minded, who fancy they see what they do not. He regards human beings, and he includes himself among them, as animals; and his life after death as no different from that of an animal after death.

[4] This is how his internal man thinks, however differently the external man speaks. As said before, every man has an internal and an external: the internal, which is called the spirit, is what makes him human, and this lives on after death, while the external, which allows him to play the hypocrite by a show of morality, is buried. Then he is damned, because he denied God. Everyone is in his spirit associated with people like himself in the spiritual world, and is so to speak one with them. I have often been allowed to see the spirits of people still alive, some of them in communities of angels there, and others in communities of hell. I have been allowed to talk with them for days, and I was astonished to find that the person, who was still alive in the body, knew nothing at all of it. This experience made it clear that those who deny God are already among the damned, and after death are gathered to their own kind.

384. (ii) All those in the Christian world have no faith who reject the Lord and the Word, although they live moral lives, and talk, teach and write rationally, even about faith.

This follows as the conclusion to be drawn from all that has been said before. For it was shown that the true and only faith is in the Lord and comes from the Lord, and that faith which is not in Him and from Him is not spiritual, but natural faith; and a purely natural faith does not contain in itself the essence of faith. Moreover, faith is from the Word and from no other source. This is because the Word is from the Lord and so the Lord Himself is in the Word; which is why He says that He is the Word (John 1:1-2). From this it follows that those who reject the Word also reject the Lord, since they make an indissoluble whole. It also follows that those who reject one or the other of these also reject the church, because the church is from the Lord by means of the Word; and further, that those who reject the church are outside heaven, because the church is the way into heaven. Those who are outside heaven are among the damned, and these have no faith at all.

The reason why those who reject the Lord and the Word have no faith, although they live moral lives and speak, teach and write rationally, even about faith, is that they have no spiritual, but only natural moral life, and no spiritual but only a natural rational mind; and morality and rationality which are wholly natural are in essence dead. So, being dead, these people cannot have any faith. A person who is wholly natural, who is dead so far as faith is concerned, can certainly talk and teach about faith, charity and God, but not under the impulse of faith, charity or God.

[2] The following passages prove that faith is possessed only by those who believe in the Lord, and that the rest have none:

He who believes in the Son is not judged; but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God, John 3:18.

He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him, John 3:36.

Jesus said, When the Spirit of truth comes, He will try the world concerning sin, for not believing in me, John 16:8-9.

And addressing the Jews:

If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins, John 8:24.

For this reason David says:

I will bring news of a decree, said Jehovah. You are my son, to-day have I begotten you. Kiss the son, so that he may not be angry and so that you do not perish on the way. Blessed are all who trust in him, Psalms 2:7, 12.

The Lord predicts in the Gospels that at the ending of the age there will be no faith, because there will be none in the Lord as the Son of God, God of heaven and earth and one with the Father; the ending of the age means the final period of the church, when He says that the abomination of desolation will come about, and affliction such as has never been nor shall be; and that the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky (Matthew 24:15, 21, 29). Also in Revelation, that Satan when released from his imprisonment will go out to lead astray the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, and whose number is like the sand of the sea (Revelation 20:7-8). Because the Lord foresaw this, He also said:

Yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith upon the earth? Luke 18:8.