1. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

Divine Providence Is the Form of Government Exercised by the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom

To understand what divine providence is--that it is the way the Lord's divine love and wisdom govern us--it is important to be aware of the following things, which were presented in my book on the subject.

In the Lord, divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love (Divine Love and Wisdom 34-39).

Divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created (Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51).

Everything in the universe was created by divine love and wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 52, 53, 151-156).

Everything in the created universe is a vessel of divine love and wisdom (54-60 [55-60]).

The Lord looks like the sun to angels; its radiating warmth is love and its radiating light is wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 83-88, 89-92, 93-98, 296-301).

The divine love and wisdom that emanate from the Lord constitute a single whole (Divine Love and Wisdom 99-102).

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from himself and not from nothing (Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295). These propositions may be found in the work titled Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom.

93. That sun is not God. Rather, it is an emanation from the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The same is true of warmth and light from that sun. "The sun that angels see" (the sun that gives them warmth and light) does not mean the Lord himself. It means that first emanation from him that is the highest form of spiritual warmth. The highest form of spiritual warmth is spiritual fire, which is divine love and wisdom in its first correspondential form. This is why that sun looks fiery and also is fiery for angels, though it is not for us. What we experience as fire is not spiritual but physical, and the difference between these two is like the difference between life and death. The spiritual sun, then, brings spiritual people to life with its warmth and maintains spiritual things, while the physical sun does the same for physical people and things. It does not do this with its own power, though, but by an inflow of spiritual warmth that provides it with effective resources.

146. The Divine love and wisdom which emanate from the Lord as the sun and which constitute the warmth and light in heaven are the emanating Divine which is the Holy Spirit. In The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord we showed that God is one in person and essence, who has in Him a Trinity, and that that God is the Lord. We showed as well that the Trinity in Him is called the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - the Divine which is the origin of all else being called the Father, the Divine Humanity the Son, and the emanating Divine the Holy Spirit.

People call the Holy Spirit the emanating Divine, and yet no one knows why it is called emanating. People do not know because they have not known before that the Lord appears to angels as the sun, and that from that sun emanates warmth which in its essence is Divine love, and light which in its essence is Divine wisdom. As long as this remained unknown, people could not but suppose that the emanating Divine was a distinct Divine entity, which is also the reason we find it said in the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity that there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and still another of the Holy Spirit.

[2] Now, however, when it is known that the Lord appears as a sun, a proper idea may be had of the emanating Divine which is called the Holy Spirit - namely, that it is inseparable from the Lord, but emanates from Him like heat and light from the sun. This, too, is the reason that the more love and wisdom angels possess, the more Divine warmth and light they have.

Without knowing that the Lord appears in the spiritual world as the sun, and that His Divinity emanates from it in the way described, no one could ever know what is meant by its emanating - whether it means, for example, only a communication of those qualities which are properties of the Father and Son, or simply enlightenment and instruction. But even so, it is not the mark of enlightened reason to acknowledge it as a distinct Divine entity, and to call it a God and set it apart, when it is also known that there is one God, and that one omnipresent.