"Over all God's ways there is a covering. His very revelation is veiled in the clouds. The Word that professes to show God to us clothes him in the limitations of finite human nature, and we gain the most contradictory impressions of his attributes. God is infinite and eternal, and yet our human passions and ignorance are ascribed to him. God says in Scripture, 'Fury is not in me' (Isa. 27:4) and 'I am not angry, you provoke yourselves unto anger' (Jer. 7:19), yet God also pours out fierce wrath upon the earth. God is presented as one who 'doth not repent' (1 Sam. 15:29), and he does repent. God gives to each person according to their own works, and yet God visits the sins of the previous generation upon its children (cf. Exod. 20:5 and Deut. 24:16). There is a long series of such apparent contradictions, and it is natural that many people cannot see any order underlying such a chaos of irreconcilable ideas. If we believe in a God at all worth of love, we cannot think of him as angry, capricious, or changeable. It seems as though these conceptions must have been part of the barbarism of the times when the Bible was written.

"Swedenborg develops a philosophy of divine revelation that is reasonable. He points out that, as in science, every revelation of new ideas from God must be suited to the states and capacities of those who receive them. He undertakes to show that the literal statement of the Bible is an adaptation of Divine Truth to the minds of people who are very simple or sensuous or perverse. He demonstrates that there is a spiritual sense within the literal verse, suited to the higher intelligence of the angels who also read God's Word and think with us, although they are invisible. In this superior sense is the fullness of Divine Truth."