Breaking from the conception of God held almost universally by the Christian church, a conception which makes Him a Trinity of Persons, Swedenborg says: "The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are the three essentials of one God that make One, even as the soul, body, and operation in man." Swedenborg thus formulates his idea of the Divine Oneness: "Jehovah, the Creator of the universe, descended and assumed the human that he might redeem and save men. He descended as the Divine Truth which is the Word, and yet He did not separate the Divine Good. The human by which He sent Himself into the world, is what is called the Son of God."

In support of the statement that Jehovah thus became man, Swedenborg quotes extensively from the Prophets; thus: "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, who shall be called God with us." "Unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."

According to Swedenborg: "There are two things which make God's essence, the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, or, what is the same, the Divine Good and the Divine Truth." Elsewhere, Swedenborg called the Divine Will the receptical and mover of the Divine Good. Supporting his view that Jehovah God descended as Divine Truth, or the Word, or the Christ, Swedenborg quotes from John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

Swedenborg also identifies the Word with the New Church, and its body of doctrine. Passing through the heavens even into the world, the Word became accommodated both to angels and men, and so we have the earthly church of the New Jerusalem; in fact Divine Truth, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit sent by the Lord as he had promised. The Word that is God "descended as Divine Truth that redemption might be accomplished; in other words, that the hells might be subjugated, the heavens arranged in order, and the church established."

Swedenborg held that both interiorly and exteriorly, man was created in the image of God; also that the angelic heavens are in God's sight as one man, having the human form, and corresponding with every organ and part of physical man; moreover, in conformity with the Divine Order, established by God at creation, Jehovah necessarily assumed the human form upon this earth.

Swedenborg claimed that every earth of our solar system, and even the moon, holds a humanity in the human form. He believed he had been brought into rapport with the angelic societies belonging to each whereof he says: "All spirits and angels are from the human race, and they are near their respective earths."

Swedenborg assures his readers that from such angels, he had learned much concerning the peoples of the many worlds made known to him, some of which lay beyond the limits of our solar system, and others even in remote regions of the sky. In the farthest he still discovered the human form varying not greatly from the type suited to our planet.

Having as he believed discovered a physical humanity on every earth, near or far, Swedenborg makes the astonishing statement that many sciences cultivated on our globe, are unknown to men elsewhere; for instance: astronomy, geography, mechanics, physics, medicine, optics, and, what seems wholly incredible, the arts of writing and printing. In respect to these two, Swedenborg explains that only on our earth, where corporeal and terrestrial things are over-much loved, the divine things of heaven cannot flow in and be received; hence the necessity of writing and printing every kind of knowledge conducive to human welfare.

Assent to this statement prepares one for the following reasons why the Lord was born on our earth, and not on another; the chief reason is: "because of the Word, in that it might be written on our earth, and afterwards published broadcast, and then preserved to all posterity, and so make manifest to all in another life that God was made man." The second reason is that "because of man's materiality, the Lord could not otherwise be manifest to him."

Though the Lord incarnated on our earth alone, Swedenborg makes plain that other worlds were by no means left in spiritual darkness. Concerning the worship common to the inhabitants of other earths, he says: "Those not idolators, all acknowledge the Lord to be the only God; for they adore the Divine not as invisible but as visible, for the following reason, as well as others, because when the Divine appears to them, he appears in human form, even as when he appeared to Abraham. Hence all who adore the Divine under a human form, are accepted of the Lord."

Having drawn from a mass of verbiage some of the chief ideas distinguishing Swedenborg's conception of the Word, and what is directly related thereto, let us now discover first, those similarities which would connect his conception with that of the Ancient Wisdom Religion, and, second, those differences which after all separate the two views of certain matters common to both philosophies.

The Jehovah of the Jews exhibited the characteristics of a partial, jealous, and revengeful tribal god, but the Jehovah of Swedenborg is conceived of in a far nobler way. On the other hand, Jesus probably never used the name Jehovah; one not uncommon with his forerunners the prophets. His God was the Father invoked in the Lord's Prayer. The God of the Wisdom Religion is a Unity manifest as a trinity of attributes. So also the Jehovah of Swedenborg.

The Buddhi-Manas of the Wisdom Religion is equivalent to the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom of Swedenborg's system, while Atma, or Spiritual Will, the great Father principle of the older system, is the vehicle of Buddhi, as with Swedenborg the Divine Will is the vehicle of the Divine Good.

According to Swedenborg, when Jehovah, the creator of the universe, descended to assume the human, He came as the Divine Truth which is the Word. This human is called the Son of God, the Christ. The doctrine of the Christ is not peculiar to the Christian church. In the Wisdom Religion, the word Ishvara held a meaning in some ways similar to that afterwards attached to the word Christ.