Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom | Page 2

is sufficient here to say that the Lord, who is the God of the universe,
is uncreate and infinite, whereas man and angel are created and finite.
And because the Lord is uncreate and infinite, He is Being [Esse] itself,
which is called "Jehovah," and Life itself, or Life in itself. From the
uncreate, the infinite, Being itself and Life itself, no one can be created
immediately, because the Divine is one and indivisible; but their
creation must be out of things created and finited, and so formed that
the Divine can be in them. Because men and angels are such, they are
recipients of life. Consequently, if any man suffers himself to be so far
misled as to think that he is not a recipient of life but is Life, he cannot
be withheld from the thought that he is God. A man's feeling as if he
were life, and therefore believing himself to be so, arises from fallacy;
for the principal cause is not perceived in the instrumental cause
otherwise than as one with it. That the Lord is Life in Himself, He
Himself teaches in John:
As the Father hath life in Himself, so also hath He given to the Son to
have life in Himself (5:26) He declares also that He is Life itself (John
11:25; 14:6).
Now since life and love are one (as is apparent from what has been said
above, n. 1, 2), it follows that the Lord, because He is Life itself, is
Love itself.
5. But that this may reach the understanding, it must needs be known
positively that the Lord, because He is Love in its very essence, that is,
Divine Love, appears before the angels in heaven as a sun, and that
from that sun heat and light go forth; the heat which goes forth
therefrom being in its essence love, and the light which goes forth
therefrom being in its essence wisdom; and that so far as the angels are
recipients of that spiritual heat and of that spiritual light, they are loves

and wisdoms; not loves and wisdoms from themselves, but from the
Lord. That spiritual heat and that spiritual light not only flow into
angels and affect them, but they also flow into men and affect them just
to the extent that they become recipients; and they become recipients in
the measure of their love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor.
That sun itself, that is, the Divine Love, by its heat and its light, cannot
create any one immediately from itself; for one so created would be
Love in its essence, which Love is the Lord Himself; but it can create
from substances and matters so formed as to be capable of receiving the
very heat and the very light; comparatively as the sun of the world
cannot by its heat and light produce germinations on the earth
immediately, but only out of earthy matters in which it can be present
by its heat and light, and cause vegetation. In the spiritual world the
Divine Love of the Lord appears as a sun, and from it proceed the
spiritual heat and the spiritual light from which the angels derive love
and wisdom, as may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell (n.
116-140).
6. Since, then, man is not life, but is a recipient of life, it follows that
the conception of a man from his father is not a conception of life, but
only a conception of the first and purest form capable of receiving life;
and to this, as to a nucleus or starting-point in the womb, are
successively added substances and matters in forms adapted to the
reception of life, in their order and degree.
7. THE DIVINE IS NOT IN SPACE.
That the Divine, that is, God, is not in space, although omnipresent and
with every man in the world, and with every angel in heaven, and with
every spirit under heaven, cannot be comprehended by a merely natural
idea, but it can by a spiritual idea. It cannot be comprehended by a
natural idea, because in the natural idea there is space; since it is
formed out of such things as are in the world, and in each and all of
these, as seen by the eye, there is space. In the world, everything great
and small is of space; everything long, broad, and high is of space; in
short, every measure, figure and form is of space. This is why it has
been said that it cannot be comprehended by a merely natural idea that

the Divine is not in space, when it is said that the Divine is everywhere.
Still, by natural thought, a man may comprehend this, if only he admit
into it something of