333. The premise is that for our salvation, divine providence begins at our birth and continues to the end of our life. To understand this, we need to realize that the Lord knows the kind of person we are and the kind of person we want to be and therefore the kind of person we will be. Further, he cannot deprive us of the freedom of our volition if we are to be human and therefore immortal, as amply explained above; so he foresees what our state will be after death and provides for it from our birth all the way to the end of our life. He does this for evil people by both allowing and constantly leading them away from their evils, and for good people by constantly leading them to what is good. So divine providence is constantly at work for our salvation; but it cannot save more of us than want to be saved. We want to be saved if we believe in God and are led by him, and we do not want to be saved if we do not believe in God and we lead ourselves. In the latter case, we are not thinking about eternal life or salvation, while in the former case we are. The Lord sees all this and still leads us, doing so under the laws of his divine providence, laws he cannot violate because that would be to violate his divine love and his divine wisdom, and therefore himself.

[2] Since he foresees everyone's state after death and foresees our place as well--in hell for people who do not want to be saved and in heaven for people who do--it follows that, as just stated, he provides places for the evil by permitting and leading them away and for the good by leading them to their places. It follows also that if this were not being done constantly for everyone from birth to the end of life, neither heaven nor hell would endure. Without this foresight and providence, that is, there would be neither a heaven nor a hell, only confusion. (See 202-203 above on the fact that we are all provided with places by the Lord in his foresight.)

[3] To illustrate this by a comparison, if an archer or musketeer were to aim at a target and a straight line a mile long were drawn behind the target, then if the aim were off just a hair, at the end of that mile the arrow or ball would have strayed far from the line behind the target. That is what it would be like if the Lord did not have his eye on eternity at every moment, every least moment, in his foresight and provision for everyone's place after death. The Lord does this, though, because to him the whole future is present, and to him everything present is eternal.

On the fact that divine providence focuses on what is infinite and eternal in everything it does, see above, 46-69, 214 and following.

180. It is even clearer that there are levels of love and wisdom if we compare angels' love and wisdom with our love and wisdom. It is generally acknowledged that the wisdom of angels is unutterable, relatively speaking. You will see later [267, 416] that it is also incomprehensible to us when we are wrapped up in our earthly love. The reason it seems unutterable and incomprehensible is that it is on a higher level.

416, 15. Otherwise, love or volition pulls wisdom or discernment back from its height so that they act in unison. There is earthly love and there is spiritual love. When we are engaged in earthly love and spiritual love together, then we are rational people. When we are engaged solely in earthly love, though, we can think just as rationally as spiritual people, but we are not really rational individuals. We do lift our discernment up into heaven's light, into wisdom, but the matters of wisdom or heaven's light are not objects of our love. It is our love that is making this happen, but behind it is a desire for respect, praise, and profit. However, once we realize that we are not getting any benefit from this elevation (as we do realize when we are thinking to ourselves on the basis of our earthly love), then we have no love for matters of heaven's light or wisdom. So our love then pulls our discernment down from its height so that the two will act in unison.

For example, when our discernment is filled with wisdom because it has been lifted up, then our love sees what justice, honesty, and chastity are, even what real love is. Earthly love can see this because of its ability to understand and ponder things in heaven's light. It can even talk about, preach, and describe these as both moral and spiritual virtues. When our discernment is not lifted up, though, then if our love is merely earthly it does not see these virtues. It sees injustice as justice, deception as honesty, lust as chastity, and so on. If we do think about the matters we discussed when our discernment was at its height, then we may make fun of them and think that they serve us only to ensnare people's minds.

We can therefore tell how to understand the statement that unless love loves its spouse, wisdom, to that degree, it pulls it down from its height so that they act in unison. (On love's ability to be lifted up if it does love wisdom to that degree, see 414 above.)