269. Words are not adequate to describe the quality of angels' wisdom - it can be suggested only by some generalizations. Angels can express in a single word what we cannot express in a thousand words. Further, in a single angelic word there are countless things that are beyond the capacity of human words to convey. In the details of angelic speech there are actually treasures of wisdom in unbroken connection, utterly beyond the reach of human knowledge. Then too, what angels cannot evoke with the words of their language they fill in with the sound, which embodies their sensitivity to the proper arrangement of things; for as already noted (236, 241), they express their affections through the sounds and the concepts derived from their affections through the words. This is why the things that people have heard in heaven are called ineffable.

Angels can also state completely in a few words the details that are written in a whole volume, giving each word something that raises it toward a deeper wisdom. Their language by nature agrees with their affections, and every word agrees with their concepts. The words actually vary in infinite shadings depending on the way they express in sequence things that are simultaneous in their thought.

[2] The more inward angels can even tell a speaker's whole life from the tone of voice and a few words. From the way the sound is differentiated by concepts into words, they actually perceive the speaker's ruling love, in which, so to speak, the very details of life are engraved. ¹

We can see from all this what angels' wisdom is like. Relative to our wisdom, it is on the order of ten thousands to one. It is like the ratio between the motor energies of the body, which are countless, to some act that results from them, which to our senses seems like a single event. Or it is like the thousands of things we see through a perfect microscope compared to the one fuzzy thing we see with the naked eye.

[3] I should also like to illustrate the matter with one example. An angel, out of his wisdom, described the process of regeneration and presented mysteries about it in their proper sequence, amounting to a hundred. He filled out each single mystery with concepts containing even deeper mysteries, and did this from beginning to end, explaining how the spiritual person is conceived anew; is carried in the womb, so to speak; is born; matures; and is gradually perfected. He said that he could multiply the number of mysteries into the thousands, and that the things he was talking about involved only the regeneration of the outer person. There were countless more about the regeneration of the inner person.

This and other things of the same sort that I have heard from angels have shown me how much wisdom they have and how much ignorance we have by comparison, with hardly any knowledge of what regeneration is and no awareness of a single step when we are being regenerated.

Poznámky pod čarou:

597. 'Noah' means a new Church, which must be called the Ancient Church to distinguish between the Most Ancient Church before the Flood and the Church that followed it. The states of those two Churches were entirely different. The state of the Most Ancient Church was one in which people had from the Lord a perception of good and of truth deriving from it, while that of the Ancient Church, or Noah, came to be one in which it had a conscience concerning good and truth. The nature of the difference between having perception and having conscience is what determined the difference in state between the Most Ancient Church and the Ancient.

[2] Perception is not the same as conscience. Celestial people have perception, spiritual people conscience. The Most Ancient Church was celestial whereas the Ancient was spiritual. The Most Ancient Church possessed immediate revelation through direct contact with spirits and angels, and also through visions and dreams from the Lord. These experiences enabled them to know in a general way what good and truth were, and once they knew them in this general way their general or so to speak primary matters of knowledge were confirmed by means of countless details acquired through perceptions. These countless details constituted the particular and the individual aspects of the general knowledge to which they had reference. In this manner general or so to speak primary knowledge was being corroborated day by day. If anything was not in keeping with general matters of knowledge they perceived that it was not; and if anything was in keeping they perceived that it was. Such is also the state of celestial angels.

[3] The general, so to speak primary, matters of knowledge of the Most Ancient Church were celestial and eternal truths: for example, that the Lord governs the whole universe; that the Lord is the source of all good and truth; that the Lord is the source of all life; that man's proprium was nothing but evil, and in itself something dead; in addition to other general truths such as these. And they received from the Lord a perception of countless considerations confirming and harmonizing with these truths. For those people love was the chief thing of faith, and through love they were allowed by the Lord to perceive anything that was a matter of faith. Consequently faith to them was love, as stated already. The Ancient Church however became entirely different. That difference will in the Lord's Divine mercy be discussed later on.