1. Divine Love and Wisdom

Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love

Part 1

Love is our life. For most people, the existence of love is a given, but the nature of love is a mystery. As for the existence of love, this we know from everyday language. We say that someone loves us, that monarchs love their subjects, and that subjects love their monarch. We say that a husband loves his wife and that a mother loves her children, and vice versa. We say that people love their country, their fellow citizens, their neighbor. We use the same language about impersonal objects, saying that someone loves this or that thing.

Even though the word "love" is so commonly on our tongues, still hardly anyone knows what love is. When we stop to think about it, we find that we cannot form any image of it in our thoughts, so we say either that it is not really anything or that it is simply something that flows into us from our sight, hearing, touch, and conversation and therefore influences us. We are wholly unaware that it is our very life--not just the general life of our whole body and of all our thoughts, but the life of their every least detail. Wise people can grasp this when you ask, "If you take away the effects of love, can you think anything? Can you do anything? As the effects of love lose their warmth, do not thought and speech and action lose theirs as well? Do they not warm up as love warms up?" Still, the grasp of these wise people is not based on the thought that love is our life, but on their experience that this is how things happen.

230. There are three infinite and uncreated vertical levels in the Lord, and three finite and created levels in us. The reason there are three infinite and uncreated vertical levels in the Lord is that the Lord is love itself and wisdom itself, as explained above [28-33]. Since the Lord is love itself and wisdom itself, he is also usefulness itself, since love has useful functions as its goal and puts them into effect by means of wisdom. Apart from usefulness, love and wisdom have no definition or boundary, no dwelling. This means that we cannot say they exist or are present unless there is a useful function in which they occur.

These three elements constitute three vertical levels in agents of life. These three are like the first end, the intermediate end that we refer to as the means, and the ultimate end that we refer to as the result. I have already [167-169, 184] explained and amply documented the fact that purpose, means, and result constitute three vertical levels.

327. All of the Lord's creations are useful functions; and they are useful functions in the sequence, on the level, and in the specific way that they relate to humanity and through humanity to the Lord, their source. I have already made the following points on this subject. Nothing can arise from God the Creator that is not useful (308). The useful functions of everything created tend upward, step by step, from the lowest to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source (65-68). The goal of creation--that everything should return to the Creator and that there should be a union--becomes manifest in outermost forms (167-172). They are useful to the extent that they focus on their Creator (307). Divinity cannot fail to exist in and be manifested in others that it has created (47-51). Everything in the universe is a vessel according to its usefulness, and this depends on its level (38 [58, 66]). Seen in terms of its functions, the universe is an image of God (39 [169, 298]). There are many other relevant statements as well. These witness to the truth that all the Lord's creations are useful functions, and that they are useful functions in the sequence, on the level, and in the specific way that they relate to humanity, and through humanity to the Lord, their source. It remains now to say something more detailed about useful functions.