Biblical Canon
The Word of God is contained in the Bible, which has a symbolic spiritual meaning hidden in its literal sense. Swedenborg's visions primarily explain how and why the Bible is Divinely Inspired, and it is methodically delineated word by word in his massive multi-volume work, the Arcana Coelestia (meaning Heavenly Secrets). The symbolic language, where each passage follows the other in a coherent logical series, is what Swedenborg called "correspondences." This inner meaning was kept hidden, and could only have been discovered through revelation, which was made available when mankind was ready to receive it. It is this hidden inner meaning that separates the Bible from other books, and each statement Swedenborg makes is supported through numerous quotations of Biblical passages. The books that have this inner spiritual meaning is what forms the true Biblical canon, as follows:
Read more about this topic: The New Church
Famous quotes containing the word canon:
“O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on’t! O fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed;”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)