In all the heavens there is no other idea of God than that He is a Man.
This is because heaven as a whole and in part is in form like a man, and
because it is the Divine which is with the angels that constitutes heaven
and inasmuch as thought proceeds according to the form of heaven, it is
impossible for the angels to think of God in any other way. From this it
is that all those in the world who are conjoined with heaven think of God
in the same way when they think interiorly in themselves, that is, in
their spirit. From this fact that God is a Man, all angels and all spirits,
in their complete form, are men. This results from the form of heaven,
which is like itself in its greatest and in its least parts. That heaven
as a whole and in part is in form like a man may be seen in the work on
Heaven and Hell (n. 59-87); and that thoughts proceed according to the
form of heaven (n. 203, 204). It is known from Genesis (1:26, 27), that
men were created after the image and likeness of God. God also appeared
as a man to Abraham and to others. The ancients, from the wise even to
the simple, thought of God no otherwise than as being a Man; and when at
length they began to worship a plurality of gods, as at Athens and Rome,
they worshiped them all as men. What is here said may be illustrated by
the following extract from a small treatise already published:
The Gentiles, especially the Africans, who acknowledge and worship one
God, the Creator of the universe, have concerning God the idea that He
is a Man, and declare that no one can have any other idea of God. When
they learn that there are many who cherish an idea of God as something
cloud-like in the midst of things, they ask where such persons are; and
on being told that they are among Christians, they declare it to be
impossible. They are informed, however, that this idea arises from the
fact that God in the Word is called "a Spirit," and of a spirit they have
no other idea than of a bit of cloud, not knowing that every spirit and
every angel is a man. An examination, nevertheless, was made, whether the
spiritual idea of such persons was like their natural idea, and it was
found not to be so with those who acknowledge the Lord interiorly as God
of heaven and earth. I heard a certain elder from the Christians say that
no one can have an idea of a Human Divine; and I saw him taken about to
various Gentile nations, and successively to such as were more and more
interior, and from them to their heavens, and finally to the Christian
heaven; and everywhere their interior perception concerning God was
communicated to him, and he observed that they had no other idea of God
than that He is a man, which is the same as the idea of a Human Divine
(C.L.J. n. 74).
12. The common people in Christendom have an idea that God is a Man,
because God in the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity is called a
"Person." But those who are more learned than the common people pronounce
God to be invisible; and this for the reason that they cannot comprehend
how God, as a Man, could have created heaven and earth, and then fill the
universe with His presence, and many things besides, which cannot enter
the understanding so long as the truth that the Divine is not in space
is ignored. Those, however, who go to the Lord alone think of a Human
Divine, thus of God as a Man.
13. How important it is to have a correct idea of God can be known from
the truth that the idea of God constitutes the inmost of thought with
all who have religion, for all things of religion and all things of
worship look to God. And since God, universally and in particular, is
in all things of religion and of worship, without a proper idea of God
no communication with the heavens is possible. From this it is that in
the spiritual world every nation has its place allotted in accordance
with its idea of God as a Man; for in this idea, and in no other, is the
idea of the Lord. That man's state of life after death is according to
the idea of God in which he has become confirmed, is manifest from the
opposite of this, namely, that the denial of God, and, in the Christian
world, the denial of the Divinity of the Lord, constitutes hell.