Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence by Emanuel Swedenborg (best book reader txt) 📕

56. That divine providence in all that it does looks to what is infinite and eternal from itself is evident from the fact that every created thing proceeds from a first, which is the infinite and eternal, to things last, and from things last to the first whence it is (as was shown in the work Divine Love and Wisdom, in the part in which the creation of the world is treated of). But the first whence anything is, is inmostly in all the progression, and therefore the proceeding Divine or divine providence in all that it does has in view some image of the infinite and eternal. It does so in all things, in some obviously so that it is perceptible, in others not. It makes that image evident to perception in the variety, and in the fructification and multiplication, of all things.

[2] An image of the infinite and eternal is apparent in the variety of all things, in that no one thing is the same as another nor can be to eternity. The eye beholds this in the variety of human faces ever since creation; in the variety of minds, of which faces are types; and in the variety of affections, perceptions and thoughts, for of these the mind consists. In all heaven, therefore, no two angels or spirits are the same, nor can be to eternity. The same is true of every object to be seen in either the natural or the spiritual world. Plainly, the variety is infinite and eternal.

[3] An image of the infinite and eternal is manifest in the fructification and multiplication of all things, in the vegetable kingdom in the capacity implanted in seeds, and in the animal kingdom in reproduction, especially in the family of fishes. Were the seeds to bear fruit and the animals to multiply in the measure of ability, they would fill all the world, even the universe, in a generation. Obviously there is latent in that ability an endeavor after self-propagation to infinity. And as fructification and multiplication have not failed from the beginning of creation and never will, plainly there is in that ability an endeavor after self-propagation to eternity also.

57. The like is true of human beings as to their affections, which are of love, and their perceptions, which are of wisdom. The variety of either is infinite and eternal; so, too, is their fructification and multiplication, which is spiritual. No person enjoys an affection and perception so like another's as to be identical with it, nor ever will. Affections, moreover, may be fructified and perceptions multiplied without end. Knowledge, it is well known, is inexhaustible. This capacity of fructification and multiplication without end or to infinity and eternity exists in natural things with men, in spiritual with the spiritual angels, and in celestial with the celestial angels. Affections, perceptions and knowledges have this endless capacity not only in general, but in every least particular. They have it because they exist from the infinite and eternal in itself through what is infinite and eternal from itself. But as the finite has in it nothing of the Divine, nothing of the kind, not the least, is in the human being as his own. Man or angel is finite and only a receptacle, by itself dead. Whatever is living in him is from the proceeding Divine, joined to him by contact, and appearing in him as if it were his. The truth of this will be seen in what follows.

58. Divine providence regards what is infinite and eternal from itself especially in saving mankind because its object is a heaven from mankind (as was shown, nn. 27-45), and therefore it is man's reformation and regeneration or salvation to which it especially looks, since heaven consists of the saved or regenerate. To regenerate man, moreover, is to unite good and truth or love and wisdom in him, as they are united in the Lord's proceeding Divine; to this especially, therefore, providence looks in saving the race. The image of the infinite and eternal is not to be found elsewhere in man than in the marriage of good and truth. This marriage the proceeding Divine effects. Men filled by the proceeding Divine, which is called the Holy Spirit, have prophesied, as we know from the Word; men enlightened by it see divine truths in heaven's light; above all, angels sensibly perceive the presence, influx and conjunction, though they are aware that the conjunction is no more than can be termed adjunction.

59. It has not been known that divine providence in all its procedure with man looks to his eternal state. It can look to nothing else because the Divine is infinite and eternal, and the infinite and eternal or the Divine is not in time; therefore all future things are present to it. It follows that there is eternity in all that the Divine does. But those who think from time and space perceive this with difficulty, not only because they love temporal things, but also because they think from what is on hand in the world and not from what is at hand in heaven; this is as remote to them as the ends of the earth. Those, however, who are in the Divine, inasmuch as they think from the Lord, think from what is eternal as well as from what is at present, asking themselves, "What is that which is not eternal? Is not the temporal relatively nothing and does it not become nothing when it is past?" The eternal is not so; it alone is; its esse has no end. To think thus is to think both from the present and the eternal, and when a man not only thinks so but lives so, the proceeding Divine with him or divine providence looks in all its procedure to the state of his eternal life in heaven and guides to it. In what follows it will be seen that the Divine looks to the eternal in everybody, in an evil as well as in a good person.

60. (iv) An image of the infinite and eternal offers in an angelic heaven. Among things we need to know about is the angelic heaven. Everyone who has any religion thinks about heaven and wishes to go there. Yet heaven is granted only to those who know the way to it and walk in that way. We can know the way to an extent by knowing the character of those who constitute heaven and by knowing that no one becomes an angel or comes into heaven unless he brings with him from the world what is angelic. In what is angelic there is a knowledge of the way from walking in it, and a walking in the way through a knowledge of it. In the spiritual world, moreover, there are actually ways leading to every society of heaven or of hell. Each sees his own way as if for himself. He does so because a way is there for every love; the love discloses the way and takes a man to his fellows. No one sees other ways than the way of his love. Plain it is from this that angels are nothing but heavenly loves; otherwise they would not have seen the ways tending to heaven. This will be plainer still when heaven is described.

61. Every man's spirit is affection and thought therefrom. And as all affection is of love, and thought is of the understanding, every spirit is his own love and his own understanding therefrom. When a man is thinking solely from his own spirit, therefore, as he does in private meditation at home, he thinks from the affection belonging to his love. It is clear, then, that when a man becomes a spirit, as he does after death, he is the affection of his own love and has no other thought than that of his affection. If his love has been one of evil, he is an evil affection, which is a lust; if his love has been one of good, he is a good affection. Everyone has a good affection so far as he has shunned evils as sins, and an evil affection so far as he has not shunned evils as sins. As all spirits and angels, then, are affections, the whole angelic heaven is nothing but the love of all the affections of good and the attendant wisdom of all the perceptions of truth. Since all good and truth are from the Lord and He is love itself, the angelic heaven is an image of Him. Furthermore, as divine love and wisdom are human in form, it also follows that the angelic heaven must be in that form. Of this we shall say more in the following section.

62. The angelic heaven is an image of the infinite and eternal, then, because it is an image of the Lord, who is infinite and eternal. The image of His infinity and eternity is manifest in heaven's being constituted of myriads and myriads of angels, and in its consisting of as many societies as there are general affections of heavenly love; manifest, again, in every angel's being distinctly his own affection; manifest further in that the form of heaven—a unit in the divine sight just as man is a unit—is assembled from so many affections, general and particular; also manifest in that this form is perfected to eternity with the increase in numbers, the greater the number of those entering into the form of the divine love which is the form of forms, the more perfect the resulting unity. It is plain from all this that the angelic heaven presents an image of the infinite and eternal.

63. From the knowledge of heaven to be had from this brief description it is evident that it is an affection of the love of good that makes heaven in a man. But who knows this today? Who knows even what an affection of the love of good is, or that these affections are innumerable, in fact, infinite? For, as was said, each angel is his own particular affection; and the form of heaven is the form of all the affections of the divine love there. Only one Being can combine all affections into this form—only He who is love and wisdom itself and who is at once infinite and eternal. For throughout that form is what is infinite and eternal; the infinite is in its unity and the eternal in its perpetuity; were they removed the form would instantly collapse. Who else can combine affections into a form? Who else can bring about this unity? The unity can be accomplished only in an idea of the total, and the total realized only in thought for each single part. Myriads on myriads compose that form; annually myriads enter it and will do so to eternity. All infants enter it and all adults who are affections of the love of good. Again from all this the image of the infinite and eternal in the angelic heaven is to be seen.

64. (v) The heart of divine providence is to look to what is infinite and eternal by fashioning an angelic heaven for it to be like one human being before the Lord, an image of Him. See in the work Heaven and Hell (nn. 59-86) that heaven as a whole is like one man in the Lord's sight; that each society of heaven also is; that as a result each angel is a human being in perfect form; and that this is because God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, is Man; also (nn. 87-102) that as a result there is a correspondence of all things of heaven with all things in the human being. The entire heaven as one man has not been seen by me, for only the Lord can so behold it; but that an entire society, whether large or small, can appear as one man, I have seen. I was then told that the largest society of all, which is heaven in its entirety, so appears, but to the Lord alone; and that this causes every angel to be in full form a human being.

65. As all heaven is like one man in the Lord's view, it is divided into as many general societies as there are organs, viscera and members in man, and each general society into as many less general or particular societies as there are larger divisions in each of the viscera and organs. This makes evident what heaven is. Because the Lord is very Man and heaven is His image, to be in heaven is called "being in the Lord." See in the work Divine Love and Wisdom that the Lord is very Man (nn. 11-13, 285-289).