Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 473
59
What Hell Fire Is and What
the Gnashing of Teeth Is
566. What eternal fire is, and what the gnashing of teeth is,
which are mentioned in the Word in reference to those who
are in hell, scarcely anyone as yet has known, because the
contents of the Word have been thought about only in a
material way, and nothing has been known about its spiritual
sense. So fire has been understood by some to mean material
fire, by others to mean torment in general, by others remorse
of conscience, and others have held that it is mentioned merely
to excite terror in the wicked. Likewise some have supposed the
gnashing of teeth to mean actual gnashing, and some only a
horror, such as is excited when such a collision of teeth is
heard. But anyone who is acquainted with the spiritual
meaning of the Word may know what eternal fire is, and what
the gnashing of teeth is; for every expression and every
meaning of the expressions in the Word contains a spiritual
meaning, since the Word in its bosom is spiritual; and what is
spiritual can be set before man only in natural forms of
expression, because man is in the natural world and thinks
from the things of that world. Therefore it shall now be told
what is meant by “eternal fire” and “the gnashing of teeth” into
which the spirits of evil men enter after death, or which their
spirits, then in the spiritual world, endure.
567. There are two origins of heat, one the sun of heaven
which is the Lord, and the other the sun of the world. The heat
that is from the sun of heaven, that is, the Lord, is spiritual
heat; and this in its essence is love (see above, n. 126–140); but
the heat from the sun of the world is natural heat, and this in