213. As for love and wisdom, love is the purpose, wisdom the means, and service the result. Further, service is the composite, vessel, and foundation of wisdom and love, such a composite and such a vessel that every bit of love and every bit of wisdom is actively present in it. It is their total presence. We need to be absolutely clear, though, that in keeping with what was presented in 189-194 above, what are present in service are all the elements of love and wisdom that are of the same kind, harmonious.

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.

Notes de bas de page:

6314. As it is with light, so it is with the heat that is vital to a person's existence. In no way at all does that vital heat originate in the heat radiated by the sun in the world; rather, it originates in spiritual heat, which is love and radiates from the Lord. This heat is what angels have. Consequently the amount of vital heat a person has is determined by the amount of love he has. His body however is warmed by worldly heat, as is his sensory awareness within it; yet vital heat flows into that worldly heat and imparts life to it. Differences in the purity and intensity of this heat are akin to variations in the clarity of the light. This vital heat is what one should understand by the holy fires mentioned in the Word, and therefore heavenly loves are meant by those fires. But in a contrary sense that worldly heat is what one should understand by the fires of hell, and therefore hellish loves and the desires that go with them are meant when these fires are mentioned in the Word.