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."

9176. 'Its owner not being with it' means if the good of that truth does not exist along with the general good. This is clear from the meaning of 'owner' as good, dealt with in 9167; and from the meaning of 'not being with it' as not existing along with the general good. The implications of this are made clear by what has been shown above in 9154 regarding truths in good, namely that all truths in general are arranged into order under good. But in the present verse borrowed truths are the subject, that is, truths received from another, see 9174. These truths are either accompanied or not accompanied by their own good. Those accompanied by their own good are truths which stir a person's affections when he hears them, whereas those unaccompanied do not stir his affections then. Truths accompanied by their own good are meant by borrowed things that are broken or die, when the owner is with them; but truths unaccompanied by their own good are meant by borrowed things that are broken or die, when the owner is not with them.

[2] It is indeed possible to provide a description of these truths, but it will be unintelligible except to those who are in the light of heaven coming from the Lord. All others who see things solely in the light of the world, that is, in natural illumination, will find those things incomprehensible, because such people are in thick darkness so far as heavenly realities are concerned. And if they did seem to themselves to comprehend them, they would do so with the help of illusions and material ideas which do more to obscure things and put them in the shade than to cast light on them. It is enough to know simply that the truths of faith joined to their own good or not joined to it are the subject. Truths not joined to it are those that are learned from others but sink in no further than the memory, where they remain as factual knowledge. There is no perception of them as there is of the truths arranged in general under good. From all this one can know to a small extent what those things are like in which angelic wisdom consists; for angels not only comprehend the nature of them but also countless details about them. Thus they comprehend things which man does not even know to exist, let alone know anything about. For angels dwell in the light of heaven, and the light of heaven holds within it an infinite number of things, since the light of heaven is Divine Truth emanating from the Lord.