Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence Part 2

29. All conjunction in the spiritual world is effected by intent regard.

When anyone there thinks of another with a desire to speak with him, the other is at once present, and the two come face to face. Likewise, when one thinks of another from an affection of love; by this affection, however, there is conjunction, but by the other only presence. This is peculiar to the spiritual world; for there all are spiritual beings. It is otherwise in the natural world where all are physical beings. In the natural world something similar takes place in the affections and thoughts of the spirit; but as there is s.p.a.ce here, while in the spiritual world s.p.a.ce is appearance only, what takes place here in one's spirit occurs outwardly there.

[2] We have said so much to make known how conjunction of the Lord with angels and their seemingly reciprocal conjunction with Him is effected.

All angels turn the face to the Lord; He regards them in the forehead, and they regard Him with the eyes. The reason is that the forehead corresponds to love and its affections, and the eyes correspond to wisdom and its perceptions. Still the angels do not of themselves turn the face to the Lord, but He faces them toward Himself, doing so by influx into their life's love, by this entering the perceptions and thoughts, and so turning the angels to Him.

[3] There is such a circuit from love to thoughts and under love's impulse from thoughts to love in all the mind's activity. It may be called the circling of life. On these subjects see some things also in the treatise _Divine Love and Wisdom:_ as that "Angels constantly turn the face to the Lord as a sun" (nn. 129-134); "All the interiors of both the mind and the bodies of the angels are likewise turned to the Lord as a sun" (nn. 135-139); "Every spirit, whatever his character, turns himself likewise to his ruling love" (nn. 140-145); "Love conjoins itself to wisdom and causes wisdom to be conjoined reciprocally with it" (nn.

410-412); "Angels are in the Lord and He in them; and as the angels are only recipients, the Lord alone is heaven" (nn. 113-118).

30. The Lord's heaven in the natural world is called the church; an angel of this heaven is a man of the church who is conjoined to the Lord; on departure from this world he also becomes an angel of the spiritual heaven. What was said of the angelic heaven is evidently to be understood, then, of the human heaven also which is called the church.

The reciprocal conjunction with the Lord which makes heaven in the human being is revealed by the Lord in these words in John:

Abide in Me, and I in you; ... he who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing (15:4, 5, 7).

31. It is plain from this that the Lord is heaven not only in general with all in heaven, but in particular with each one there. For each angel is a heaven in least form; of as many heavens as there are angels, does heaven in general consist. In substantiation see _Heaven and h.e.l.l_ (nn.

51-58). Since this is so, let no one cherish the mistaken idea, which first visits the thought of so many, that the Lord dwells in heaven among the angels or is among them like a king in his kingdom. To the sight He is above them in the sun there; He is in them in their life of love and wisdom.

32. (ii) _By creation the human being is such that he can be conjoined more and more closely to the Lord._ This becomes evident from what was shown about degrees in the treatise _Divine Love and Wisdom,_ Part III, especially in the propositions: "By creation there are three discrete degrees or degrees of height in the human being" (nn. 230-235); "These three degrees are in man from birth, and as they are opened, the man is in the Lord, and the Lord in him" (nn. 236-241); "All perfection increases and mounts with and according to the degrees" (nn. 199-204).

Evidently, then, man is such by creation that he can be conjoined with the Lord more and more closely according to these degrees.

[2] But one must know well what degrees are and that there are two kinds --discrete degrees or degrees of height, and continuous degrees or degrees of breadth; also how they differ. It must be known, too, that every human being has by creation and hence from birth three discrete degrees or degrees of height, and that he comes at birth into the first degree, called natural, and can grow in this degree continuously until he becomes rational. He comes into the second degree, called spiritual, if he lives according to spiritual laws of order, which are divine truths. He can also come into the third degree, called celestial, if he lives according to the celestial laws of order, which are divine goods.

[3] These degrees are opened in a person by the Lord according to his life and actually opened in the world, but not perceptibly and sensibly until after his departure from the world. As they are opened and later perfected a man is conjoined to the Lord more and more closely. This conjunction can grow to eternity in nearness to G.o.d and does so with the angels. And yet no angel can attain or touch the first degree of the Lord's love and wisdom, for the Lord is infinite and an angel is finite, and between infinite and finite no ratio obtains. Man's state and the state of his elevation and nearness to the Lord cannot be understood without a knowledge of these degrees; they have been specifically treated of, therefore, in the treatise Divine _Love and Wisdom,_ nn. 173-281, which see.

33. We shall say briefly how man can be more and more closely conjoined to the Lord, and then how the conjunction seems closer and closer. _How man is more and more closely conjoined to the Lord:_ this is effected not by knowledge alone, nor by intelligence alone, nor even by wisdom alone, but by a life conjoined to them. A man's life is his love, and love is manifold. In general there are love of good and love of evil. Love of evil is love of committing adultery, taking revenge, defrauding, blaspheming, depriving others of their possessions. In thinking and doing such things the love of evil finds its pleasure and joy. Of this love there are as many derivatives, which are affections, as there are evils in which it can find expression. And there are as many perceptions and thoughts of this love as there are falsities favoring and confirming such evils. The falsities make one with the evils as understanding makes one with will; they are mutually inseparable; the one is of the other.

[2] Inasmuch as the Lord flows into one's life's love and by its affections into the perceptions and thoughts, and not the other way about, as we said above, it follows that the Lord can conjoin Himself more closely to a man only as the love of evil is removed along with its affections, which are l.u.s.ts. These l.u.s.ts reside in the natural man. What a man does from the natural man he feels that he does of himself. For his part, therefore, a man should remove the evils of that love; so far as he does, the Lord comes nearer and conjoins Himself to him. Anyone can see from reason that l.u.s.ts with their pleasures block and close the door to the Lord and cannot be cast out by the Lord as long as the man himself keeps the door shut and presses and pushes from outside to keep it from being opened. It is plain from the Lord's words in the Apocalypse that a man must himself open the door:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me (3:20).

[3] Plainly, then, so far as one shuns evils as diabolical and as obstacles to the Lord's entrance, he is more and more closely conjoined to the Lord, and he the most closely who abhors them as so many dusky and fiery devils. For evil and the devil are one and the same, and the falsity of evil and satan are one and the same. As the Lord's influx is into the love of good and into its affections and by these into the perceptions and thoughts, which have it from the good in which a man is that they are truths, so the influx of the devil, that is of h.e.l.l, is into the love of evil and its affections, which are l.u.s.ts, and by these into the perceptions and thoughts, which have it from the evil in which the man is that they are falsities.

[4] _How the conjunction seems closer and closer._ The more the evils in the natural man are removed by shunning and turning away from them, the more closely a man is conjoined to the Lord. Love and wisdom, which are the Lord Himself, are not in s.p.a.ce, as affection which is of love, and thought which is of wisdom, have nothing in common with s.p.a.ce. In the measure of the conjunction by love and wisdom, therefore, the Lord seems nearer; and, contrariwise, in the measure of the rejection of love and wisdom, more distant. There is no s.p.a.ce in the spiritual world; distance and presence there are appearances according to similarity or dissimilarity of the affections. For, as we said, affections which are of love, and thoughts which are of wisdom, in themselves spiritual, are not in s.p.a.ce (on this see what was shown in the treatise _Divine Love and Wisdom,_ nn. 7-10, 69-72, and elsewhere).

[5] The Lord's conjunction with a man in whom evils have been put away is meant by the Lord's words:

The pure in heart shall see G.o.d (Mt 5:8);

and by the words:

He who has my commandments and does them . . . with him will I make an abode (Jn 14:21, 23).

"To have the commandments" is to know and "to do them" is to love, for it is also said: "he who does my commandments, he it is that loves Me."

34. (iii) _The more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the wiser one becomes._ As there are three degrees of life in man by creation and so from birth (see just above, n. 32), there are specifically three degrees of wisdom in him. These degrees it is that are opened in man according to conjunction, that is, according to love, for love is conjunction itself.

Love's ascent by degrees, however, is only obscurely perceived by man; but wisdom's ascent is clearly perceived by those who know and see what wisdom is. The degrees of wisdom are perceived because love by its affections enters the perceptions and thoughts, and these present themselves to the internal mental sight, which corresponds to the external bodily sight. Thus wisdom appears, but not the affection of love which produces it. It is the same with all a man's deeds; he is aware how the body does them, but not how the soul does them. So he perceives how he meditates, perceives and thinks, but not how the soul of these mental activities, which is an affection of good and truth, produces them.

[2] There are three degrees of wisdom: natural, spiritual, and celestial.

Man is in the natural degree of wisdom during his life in the world. This degree can be perfected in him to its height, but even so cannot pa.s.s into the spiritual degree, for the latter is not continuous with it, but conjoined to it by correspondences. After death man is in the spiritual degree of wisdom. This degree also is such that it can be perfected to its height, and yet cannot pa.s.s into the celestial degree of wisdom, because neither is this continuous with the spiritual but conjoined to it by correspondences. Plainly, then, wisdom can be raised threefold, and in each degree can be perfected but only to its peak.

[3] One who understands the elevation and perfecting of these degrees can see to an extent why angelic wisdom is said to be ineffable. So ineffable, indeed, is it, that a thousand ideas in the thought of angels in their wisdom can present only a single idea in the thought of men in their wisdom, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine ideas being unutterable, because they are supernatural. Many a time have I been given to know this by living experience. But, as was said, no one can enter into the ineffable wisdom of the angels except by and according to conjunction with the Lord, for He alone opens spiritual and celestial degrees, and only in those who are wise from Him. Those are wise from the Lord who cast the devil, that is, evil, out of themselves.

35. But let no one believe that he has wisdom because he knows many things, perceives them in some light, and is able to talk intelligently about them, unless his wisdom is conjoined to love. For it is love that through its affections produces wisdom. Not conjoined to love, wisdom is like a meteor vanishing in the air and like a falling star. Wisdom united to love is like the abiding light of the sun and like a fixed star. A man has the love of wisdom when he is averse to the diabolical crew, that is, to the l.u.s.ts of evil and falsity.

36. Wisdom that comes to perception is perception of truth from being affected by it, especially perception of spiritual truth. For there is civil, moral, and spiritual truth. Those who have some perception of spiritual truth from affection by it also have perceptions of moral and civil truth, for the affection of spiritual truth is the soul of those perceptions. I have spoken with angels at times about wisdom who said that wisdom is conjunction with the Lord because He is wisdom itself, and that the man who rejects h.e.l.l comes into this conjunction and comes into it so far as he rejects h.e.l.l. They said that they picture wisdom to themselves as a magnificent and highly ornate palace into which one mounts by twelve steps. No one arrives at even the first step, they said, except from the Lord by conjunction with Him; and according to the measure of conjunction one ascends; also as one ascends, one perceives that no man is wise from himself but from the Lord. Furthermore, they said that the things in which one is wise are to those in which one is not wise like a few drops of water to a large lake. By the twelve steps into the palace of wisdom are meant goods united to truths and truths united to goods.

37. (iv) _The more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the happier one becomes._ The like can be said of degrees of happiness as was said (nn.

32 and 34) of degrees of life and of wisdom according to conjunction with the Lord. Happiness, that is, blessedness and joy, also are heightened as the higher degrees of the mind, called spiritual and celestial, are opened with man. After his life in the world these degrees grow to eternity.

38. No one who is in the pleasures of the l.u.s.ts of evil can know anything of the joys of the affections of good in which the angelic heaven is.

These pleasures and joys are opposites in internals and hence inwardly in externals, though superficially they may differ little. Every love has its enjoyments; the love of evil with those in l.u.s.ts also has, such as the love of committing adultery, of taking revenge, of defrauding, of stealing, of acting cruelly, indeed, in the worst men, of blaspheming the holy things of the church and of inveighing against G.o.d. The fountainhead of those enjoyments is the love of ruling from self-love. They come of l.u.s.ts which obsess the interiors of the mind, from these flow into the body, and excite uncleannesses there which t.i.tillate the fibers. The physical pleasure springs from the pleasure which the mind takes in l.u.s.ts.

[2] After death everyone comes to know in the spiritual world what the uncleannesses are which t.i.tillate the body's fibers in such persons and comes to know the nature of them. In general they are things cadaverous, excrement.i.tious, filthy, malodorous, and urinous; for their h.e.l.ls teem with such uncleannesses. These are correspondences, as may be seen in the treatise _Divine Love and Wisdom_ (nn. 422-424). After one has entered h.e.l.l, however, these filthy delights are turned into wretchedness. This has been told in order that it may be understood what heaven's felicity is and its nature, of which we are now to speak; for a thing is known from its opposite.

39. It is impossible to describe in words the blessedness, satisfaction, joy and pleasure, in short, the felicity of heaven, so sensibly perceived there. What is perceived solely by feeling, cannot be described, for it does not fall into ideas of thought nor, therefore, into words. For the understanding sees only and sees what is of wisdom or truth, but not what is of love or good. Those felicities are therefore inexpressible, but still they ascend in like degree with wisdom. They are infinitely various, and each is ineffable. I have heard this, also perceived it.

[2] These felicities enter when a man, of himself and yet from the Lord, casts out the l.u.s.ts of the love of evil and falsity. For these felicities are the happinesses of the affections of good and truth, the opposites of the l.u.s.ts of the love of evil and falsity. Those happinesses begin from the Lord, thus from the inmost, diffuse themselves thence into things lower even to lowermost things, and thus fill the angel, making him a body of delight. Such happinesses are to be found in infinite variety in every affection of good and truth, and eminently in the affection of wisdom.

40. There is no comparing the joys of the l.u.s.ts of evil and the joys of the affections of good. Inwardly in the former is the devil, in the latter the Lord. If comparisons are to be ventured, the pleasures of the l.u.s.ts of evil can only be compared to the lewd pleasures of frogs in stagnant ponds or to those of snakes in filth, while the pleasures of the affections of good must be likened to the delights which the mind takes in gardens and flower beds. For things like those which affect frogs and snakes affect those in the h.e.l.ls who are in l.u.s.ts of evil; and things like those which affect the mind in gardens and flower beds affect those in the heavens who are in affections of good. For, as was said above, corresponding uncleannesses affect the evil, and corresponding cleannesses the good.

41. Plainly, then, the more closely one is conjoined with the Lord the happier one is. This happiness rarely shows itself in the world, however; for man is then in a natural state, and the natural does not communicate with the spiritual by continuity, but by correspondence. The communication is felt only in a certain repose and peace of mind, especially after struggles against evil. But when a person puts off the natural state and enters the spiritual state, as he does on leaving the world, the happiness described above gradually manifests itself.

42. (v) _The more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the more distinctly does he seem to himself to be his own, and the more plainly does he recognize that he is the Lord's._ The appearance is that the more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the less one is one's own. This appearance prevails with all the evil. It also prevails with those who from religion believe that they are not under the yoke of the law and that no one can of himself do good. All these inevitably think that to be free only to do good and not to think and will evil is not to be one's own. Inasmuch as a man who is conjoined to the Lord does not will and cannot think or will evil, they conclude from the look that this is not to be one's own. Yet that is the opposite of the truth.

43. There is infernal freedom, and there is heavenly freedom. Thinking and willing evil and also speaking and doing it so far as civil and moral laws do not prevent, is from infernal freedom. But thinking and willing good and speaking and doing it so far as opportunity offers, is from heavenly freedom. A man perceives as his own what he thinks, wills, speaks and does in freedom. The freedom anyone has always comes from his love. The man in an evil love cannot but deem infernal freedom to be real freedom, and a man in love of the good perceives that heavenly freedom is real freedom; consequently each regards the opposite of his freedom as bondage. No one can deny that one or the other must be freedom, for two kinds of freedom opposed to each other cannot both be freedom.

Furthermore it cannot be denied that to be led by good is freedom and to be led by evil is bondage. For to be led by good is to be led by the Lord, but to be led by evil is to be led by the devil.

[2] Inasmuch as all he does in freedom appears to a man to be his own, coming as it does from what he loves, and to act from one's love, as was said, is to act freely, it follows that conjunction with the Lord causes a man to seem free and also his own, and the more closely he is conjoined to the Lord, to seem so much freer and so much more his own. He seems the more distinctly his own because it is the nature of the divine love to want its own to be another's, that is, to be the angel's or the man's.

All spiritual love is such, preeminently the Lord's. The Lord, moreover, never coerces anyone. For nothing to which one is coerced seems one's own, and what seems not one's own cannot be done from one's love or be appropriated to one as one's own. Man is always led in freedom by the Lord, therefore, and reformed and regenerated in freedom. On this much more will be said in what follows; also see some things above, n. 4.

44. The reason why the more distinctly a man seems to be his own the more plainly he sees that he is the Lord's, is that the more closely he is conjoined to the Lord the wiser he becomes (as was shown, nn. 34-36), and wisdom teaches and recognizes this. The angels of the third heaven, as the wisest angels, perceive this and call it freedom itself; but to be led by themselves they call bondage. They give as the reason for this that the Lord does not flow immediately into the perceptions and thoughts of wisdom, but into the affections of the love of good and by these into the former, and this influx they perceive in the affection by which they have wisdom. Hence, they say, all that they think from wisdom seems to be from themselves, thus seemingly their own, and this gives reciprocal conjunction.

45. As the Lord's divine providence has for its object a heaven from mankind, it has for its object the conjunction of the human race with Him (see nn. 28-31). It also has for its object that man should be more and more closely conjoined to Him (nn. 32, 33); for thus man possesses a more interior heaven. Further, it has for its object that by the conjunction man should become wiser (nn. 34-36) and happier (nn. 37-41), for he has heaven by and according to wisdom, and happiness by wisdom, too. Finally, providence has for its object that man shall seem more distinctly his own, yet recognize the more clearly that he is the Lord's (nn. 42-44).

All these are of the Lord's divine providence, for all are heaven and heaven is its object.

III. IN ALL THAT IT DOES THE LORD'S DIVINE PROVIDENCE LOOKS TO WHAT IS INFINITE AND ETERNAL

46. Christendom knows that G.o.d is infinite and eternal. The doctrine of the Trinity which is named for Athanasius says that G.o.d the Father is infinite, eternal and omnipotent, so also G.o.d the Son, and G.o.d the Holy Spirit, and that nevertheless there are not three who are infinite, eternal and omnipotent, but One. As G.o.d is infinite and eternal, only what is infinite and eternal can be predicated of Him. What infinite and eternal are, finite man cannot comprehend and yet can comprehend. He cannot comprehend them because the finite is incapable of what is infinite; he can comprehend them because there are abstract ideas by which one can see _that_ things are, though not _what_ they are. Of the infinite such ideas are possible as that G.o.d or the Divine, being infinite, is _esse_ itself, is essence and substance itself, wisdom and love themselves or good and truth themselves, thus is the one Self, indeed is veritable Man; there is such an idea, too, in speaking of the infinite as "all," as that infinite wisdom is _omniscience_ and infinite power _omnipotence._

[2] Still these ideas turn obscure to thought and may meet denial for not being comprehended, unless what one's thought gets from nature is removed from the idea, especially what it gets from the two properties of nature, s.p.a.ce and time. For these are bound to restrict the ideas and to make abstract ideas seem to be nothing. But if such things can be removed in a man, as they are in an angel, what is infinite can be comprehended by the means just mentioned. Then also it will be grasped that the human being is something because he was created by infinite G.o.d who is all; also that he is a finite substance, having been created by infinite G.o.d who is substance itself; further that man is wisdom inasmuch as he was created by infinite G.o.d who is wisdom itself; and so on. For were infinite G.o.d not all, and were He not substance and wisdom themselves, man would not be anything actual, thus would either be nothing or exist only in idea, as those visionaries think who are called idealists.

[3] It is plain from what was shown in the treatise _Divine Love and Wisdom_ that the divine essence is love and wisdom (nn. 28-39); that divine love and wisdom are substance itself and form itself, the one Self and the sole underived being (nn. 40-46); and that G.o.d created the universe and its contents from Himself, and not from nothing (nn. 282-284 ). It follows that every creature and above all the human being and the love and wisdom in him, are real, and do not exist only in idea. For were G.o.d not infinite, the finite would not be; were the infinite not all, no particular thing would be; and had not G.o.d created all things from Himself, nothing whatever would be. In a word, we are because G.o.d is.

47. We are considering divine providence and at this point how it regards what is infinite and eternal in all that it does. This can be clearly told only in some order. Let this be the order:

i. The infinite and eternal in itself is the same as the Divine.

ii. What is infinite and eternal in itself cannot but look to what is infinite and eternal from itself in finite things.

iii. Divine providence looks to the infinite and eternal from itself in all that it does, especially in saving mankind.

iv. An image of the infinite and eternal offers in an angelic heaven formed from a redeemed mankind.

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.