New Church Life January/February 2016 | Page 16

new church life: jan uary/february 2016 combination of fallible, finite human genes and an infallible, Infinite, Divine soul. But like every ordinary human being, the soul governed the development of the body and the will inspired by that soul governed the understanding. So when things came to His awareness, as they do incrementally with every child, He “processed” them all from the perspective of His love – a profound love for the salvation of the entire human race. Was He fully conscious of this love from birth? No, He couldn’t be, because the awareness of love is according to the vessels prepared to receive it, which are things we learn from experience in the world. But it seems very clear from what the doctrines show us that whenever some new information came to His awareness He interpreted and acted on it from His infinite love. This produced a kind of learning that is not possible for any other person. We read: As regards the Lord’s instruction in general, the nature of it is very clear in the int ernal sense of this chapter (Genesis 20); namely, that it was by continual revelations, and thus by Divine perceptions and thoughts from Himself, that is, from His Divine; which perceptions and thoughts He implanted in Divine intelligence and wisdom, and this even to the perfect union of His Human with His Divine. This way of growing wise is not possible with any man; for it flowed in from the Divine itself, which was His inmost, being of the Father, of whom He was conceived; thus from the Divine love itself, which the Lord alone had, and which consisted in His desire to save the universal human race. (Arcana Coelestia 2500:2). To be as clear as possible, this passage goes on to explain that the Lord’s learning was still progressive, just as it is with any other person. It points out that wisdom and intelligence actually are contained within love itself, and so in the Lord’s case provided a most perfect insight into everything He experienced. Still, as just noted, He could only get this insight in a focused, conscious, way to the extent that He acquired knowledge through the senses, and the senses were of course perfected gradually through life in the world, just as they are with any child, only in His case much more quickly and more perfectly. But here’s the critical qualifier: because it is knowledge (or concepts) from the Word that most fully and completely contain the inflowing celestial and spiritual life, we are taught specifically “that in His childhood the Lord did not will to imbue Himself with any other concepts than those of the Word.” (Arcana Coelestia 1461) These are the things He both needed and wanted, and we know that He began learning them in His earliest infancy, soon after His birth. (Ibid.1414) For example, it is said that the truths the Lord learned first of all involved “seeing all earthly and worldly things as created by God, seeing every single thing as having a purpose, and seeing in every single thing a certain likeness of God’s kingdom.” Further, “Such truth is implanted in none but the celestial man, and since the Lord alone was a celestial man, these and similar truths were implanted in Him in (His) earliest childhood.” (Ibid. 1434:e) 12