13. The Lord's Divine Nature in Heaven Is Love for Him and Thoughtfulness toward One's Neighbor

In heaven, the divine nature that emanates from the Lord is called divine truth, for reasons that will be given below. This divine truth flows into heaven from the Lord, out of his divine love. Divine love and the divine truth that derives from it are like the sun's fire and the light that comes from it in our world. The love is like the sun's fire, and the derivative truth is like the light from the sun. By reason of correspondence, fire means love and light means the truth that flows from it. ¹

This enables us to determine the character of the divine truth that emanates from divine love: in its essence, it is divine good united to divine truth, and because it is united, it gives life to everything in heaven the way the warmth of the sun, united to its light, makes everything fruitful on earth in spring and summer. It is different when the warmth is not united to light, when the light is therefore cold. Then everything slows down and lies there, snuffed out.

The divine good we have compared to warmth is the good of love within and among angels, and the divine truth we have compared to light is the means and the source of this good of love.

Notas a pie de página:

84. Since these two worlds are so different, it can be clearly seen that the spiritual world exists under another sun than that of the natural world. For the spiritual world has in it heat and light just like the natural world - only the heat there is spiritual, and so, too, the light; and spiritual heat is the good of charity, and spiritual light is the truth of faith.

Now, because heat and light can originate from no other source than a sun, it can be seen that there is in the spiritual world another sun than that in the natural world, and furthermore that the sun in the spiritual world is in its essence of such a character that spiritual heat and light can emanate from it, while the sun in the natural world is in its essence of such a character that natural heat and light can emanate from it.

Everything spiritual has some relation to good and truth, and as such it can spring from no other origin than Divine love and wisdom, for all good is connected with love, and all truth with wisdom. That these spring from no other origin every wise person can see.