46. 6. These essentials of divine love were the reason the universe was created, and they are the reason it is maintained. By examining and scrutinizing the three essentials of divine love, one can come to see that they were the reason for creation. The first essential, loving others outside of himself, was a reason for creation in that the universe is outside God (just as the world is outside the sun). The universe is something to which God could extend his love and in which he could put his love into action and so find rest. We read that after God had created heaven and earth he rested; and that he made the Sabbath day for that reason (Genesis 2:23).

You can see that the second essential, God's wanting to be one with others, was also a reason for creation from the fact that people were created in the image and likeness of God. The "image" and the "likeness" mean that we were made as forms that are receptive to love and wisdom from God - forms that God could be one with, and on whose account he could be one with all the other things in the universe, which are all nothing but means. A connection with the final cause is also a connection with the intermediate causes. Genesis, the Book of Creation, makes it clear that all things were created for the sake of humankind (Genesis 1:28-30).

That the third essential, God's blessing others from himself, is a reason for creation you can see from the fact that the angelic heaven was provided for everyone who has let God's love in, a place where the blessings of all come from God alone.

The three essentials of God's love are the reason the universe is maintained as well, because maintaining is an ongoing creation, just as continuing to exist is the same as perpetually coming into being. Divine love is the same from eternity to eternity. The nature God's love has now and will have in the future is the same nature it had when creating the world.

1961. 'And Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore, Ishmael' means the nature of it. This is clear from the meaning of 'the name' as knowing the nature of, dealt with in 144, 145, 1754, and also from the representation and meaning of 'Ishmael' as rational truth, described in verses 11 and 12 by the words,

You will call his name Ishmael because Jehovah has hearkened to your affliction. And he will be a wild-ass man; his hand will be against all, and the hand of all against him; and he will dwell in opposition to ¹ all his brothers.

For the meaning of these words, see the explanation of those two verses. It is the nature of this rational that is described here.

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