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.

289. This shows us the senselessness of concepts people have when they think about God in nonhuman terms and about divine attributes as not being in a human God. Separated from person, these concepts are nothing but theoretical constructs.

On God as the essential person, from whom we are human by virtue of our acceptance of love and wisdom, see 11-13 above. I stress this here for the sake of what follows, to make it clear that the universe was created by God because God is a person.

156. We cannot say that the creation of the universe and everything in it happened from one place to another or from one moment in time to another, that is, gradually and sequentially. We must say that it happened from eternity and from infinity, and not from an eternity of time, since there is no such thing, but from a nontemporal eternity that is the same as Divinity, and not from an infinity of space, since there is no such thing, but from a nonspatial infinity that is also the same as Divinity.

I know that all this transcends any mental images that arise in physical light, but they do not transcend mental images that arise in spiritual light. There is no trace of space and time in these latter images. Actually, this does not completely transcend images that arise in physical light, since everyone would agree on the basis of reason that there is no such thing as an infinity of space. The same holds for eternity, which is an infinity of time. If you say "to eternity," this can be understood in temporal terms; but if you say "from eternity," that is incomprehensible unless you banish time.