20. Anyone who has learned about God's order can also understand that man was created so as to become an angel, because in him order reaches its ultimate stage (see 9 above). In this stage something of the wisdom of heaven and the angels can be formed, and it can be reconstituted and multiplied. God's order never stops half-way, and forms anything there without the ultimate stage; for it is not in its fullness and perfection unless it goes to the ultimate. But when it is there, then it takes shape and uses the means at its disposal there to reconstitute and extend itself, which it does by reproduction. The ultimate is therefore the seed-bed of heaven.

This too is what is meant by the description of man and his creation in the first chapter of Genesis:

God said, Let us make ¹ man in our image, according to our likeness. And God created man in His image, in the image of God did He create him. Male and female He created them; and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Genesis 1:26-28.

Creating in the image of God and in the likeness of God means conferring on him the whole of God's order from first to last, and so making him an angel as regards the interiors of his mind.

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303. Heaven's Union with Us through the Word

People who think from their deeper rationality can see that there is a connection of all things, through intermediate ones, with a First, and that anything that is not so connected will disintegrate. When they think about it, they know that nothing can exist on its own, but requires something prior to itself, which means that everything goes back to that First. They know that the connection with what is prior is like that of an effect with its efficient cause, since when the efficient cause is removed, the effect comes apart and collapses. Since this has been the thought of the learned, they have both seen and pronounced that existence is a constant becoming, so that all things are constantly coming into being - that is, existing - from that First from which they originated.

But there is no way to explain briefly the nature of that connection of everything with what is prior and therefore with the First that is the source of everything, because it is varied and diverse. We can say generally only that there is a connection of the natural world with the spiritual world that results in a correspondence between everything in the natural world and everything in the spiritual world. (On this correspondence, see 103-115, and on the connection and consequent correspondence of everything in us with everything in heaven, see 87-102)