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Divine Providence # 2

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2. Further, if we put these propositions together with what I said about creation in that work, it shows that the way the Lord's divine love and wisdom look after us is what we call divine providence. However, since that book was about creation and not about how the state of things was maintained after creation (which is the way the Lord is looking after us), I need to deal with that now. In this section, though, I will be dealing with the way the oneness of divine love and wisdom (or of what is good and true in divinity) is maintained in what has been created; and I will do so in the following sequence:

1. The universe as a whole and in every detail was created out of divine love, by means of divine wisdom.

2. Divine love and wisdom radiate from the Lord as a single whole.

3. There is some image of this whole in everything that has been created.

4. It is the intent of divine providence that everything created, collectively and in every detail, should be this kind of whole, and that if it is not, it should become one.

5. The good that love does is actually good only to the extent that it is united to the truth that wisdom perceives, and the truth that wisdom perceives is actually true only to the extent that it is united to the good that love does.

6. If the good that love does is not united to the truth that wisdom perceives, it is not really good, but it may seem to be; and if the truth that wisdom perceives is not united to the good that love does, it is not really true, but it may seem to be.

7. The Lord does not let anything remain divided. This means that things must be focused either on what is both good and true or on what is both evil and false.

8. If something is focused on what is both good and true, then it is something; but if it is focused on what is both evil and false, it is not anything at all.

9. The Lord's divine providence works things out so that what is both evil and false promotes balance, evaluation, and purification, which means that it promotes the union of what is good and true in others.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

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Divine Love and Wisdom # 93

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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.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

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Divine Love and Wisdom # 83

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83. PART TWO

Divine love and wisdom appear in the spiritual world as the sun. There are two worlds, one spiritual and the other natural, and the spiritual world does not derive any of its character from the natural world, nor the natural world any of its character from the spiritual world. They are completely different worlds, communicating only through correspondent relationships, the nature of which we have shown many times elsewhere.

To illustrate this, take the following example. Heat in the natural world corresponds to the good of charity in the spiritual world, and light in the natural world corresponds to the truth of faith in the spiritual world. Who does not see that heat and the good of charity, and that light and the truth of faith, are altogether different in character?

[2] At first sight these appear to be so different as to be two completely disparate entities. That is how they appear if one ponders what the good of charity has in common with heat, or the truth of faith with light - when in fact spiritual heat is that good, and spiritual light is that truth.

Even though these are so different in themselves, still they accord by correspondence. They so accord that when a person reads in the Word of heat and light, the spirits and angels who are with the person then perceive, instead of heat, charity, and instead of light, faith.

We have cited this example to show that the two worlds, spiritual and natural, are so different that they have nothing in common with each other, and yet have been so created that they communicate - indeed, are conjoined - through correspondent relationships.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.