116. However, this calls for an explanation of how angels can feel and sense this as their own and so accept and retain it when in fact it is not theirs, given the statement that angels are not angels on their own but by virtue of what is within them from the Lord. The essence of the matter is this. There is freedom and rationality in every angel. These two qualities are there so that angels can be open to love and wisdom from the Lord. Neither of these, though--neither the freedom nor the rationality--belongs to the angels. They are in them but belong to the Lord. However, since these two elements are intimately united to angels' life, so intimately united that you could call them linked to their life, it seems as though they belong to the angels. Freedom and rationality enable them to think and intend and to speak and act; and what they think, intend, speak, and act as a result seems to be done on their own. This gives rise to the reciprocal element that is the means to union.

Still, the more that angels believe that love and wisdom are within them and claim them for themselves as their own, the more there is nothing angelic within them. To the same extent, then, there is no union with the Lord for them. They are outside the truth; and since truth is identical with heaven's light, they are correspondingly unable to be in heaven. This leads to a denial that they live from the Lord and a belief that they live on their own and therefore that they possess some divine essence. The life called angelic and human consists of these two elements--freedom and rationality.

This leads to the conclusion that angels have a reciprocal ability for the sake of their union with the Lord, but that the reciprocal element, seen as an ability, is the Lord's and not theirs. As a result, angels fall from angelhood if they abuse this reciprocal element that enables them to feel and sense what is the Lord's as their own by actually claiming it for themselves. The Lord himself teaches us in John 14:20-24, 15:4-5, 6 that union is reciprocal, and in John 15:7 that the Lord's union with us and ours with him occurs in things that belong to him, things called "his words."

2795. 'And return to you' means conjunction after that. This too becomes clear without explanation. The subject of this chapter being the Lord's severest and inmost temptations, all the states are described which He assumed when undergoing those temptations. The first state is described in verse 3, the second state in the present verse, the third state in the verse that follows next and in all the rest after that. But these states cannot possibly be explained to the ordinary mind unless many other things are known first, not only about the Lord's Divine which is represented here by 'Abraham' but also about His Divine Human which is represented by 'Isaac', and about the state - when He went into and underwent the conflicts brought about by temptations - of this Rational, meant here by 'the boy'. In addition to this one has to know what the first rational was, and the nature of it, as well as the natural that went with that rational, and also the nature of the state when one was joined to the other, and the nature of the state when they were more or less separated. What is more, one needs to know many things regarding temptations, such as what exterior and interior temptations are, and from this what were the inmost and severest temptations that were the Lord's, which are the subject in this chapter. As long as all these matters remain unknown the things within this verse cannot possibly be described intelligibly. And if they were described, even in the clearest possible manner, they would still appear obscure. To angels, since they dwell in the light of heaven flowing from the Lord, all these matters are plain and clear, and indeed blessed because these matters are supremely heavenly.

[2] This alone need be said here, that the Lord could not possibly be tempted when He was one with the Divine itself, for the Divine is infinitely above all temptation. But He could experience temptation as to His human. This is the reason why, when He was to undergo the severest and inmost temptations, He joined the first human to Himself, that is to say, the rational and the natural degrees of it, as described in verse 3, and after that separated Himself from them, as stated in the present verse, though still retaining certain traits through which He could be tempted. It is for this reason that here Isaac is not spoken of as 'my son' but as 'the boy', an expression used to mean the Divine Rational in that particular state, that is to say, in a state of truth, equipped for the severest and inmost conflicts brought about by temptations, see 2793. The truth that neither the Divine itself nor the Divine Human could be tempted may become clear to anyone merely from the fact that not even angels can approach the Divine, still less the spirits who bring temptations about, and least of all the hells. From all this it is evident why the Lord came into the world and took on the human state of being with all its weakness, for by doing so He was able to be tempted as regards the human and by means of temptations to suppress the hells. He was able to restore every single thing to obedience and to order, and to save the human race which had removed itself so far away from the Supreme Divine.