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.

34. Divine love is a property of divine wisdom, and divine wisdom is a property of divine love. On the divine reality and the divine manifestation being distinguishably one in the Divine-Human One, see 14-16 above. Since the divine reality is divine love and the divine manifestation is divine wisdom, these latter are similarly distinguishably one.

We refer to them as "distinguishably one" because love and wisdom are two distinguishable things, and yet they are so united that love is a property of wisdom and wisdom a property of love. Love finds its reality in wisdom, and wisdom finds its manifestation in love. Further, since wisdom derives its manifestation from love (as noted in 15 [14] above), divine wisdom is reality as well. It follows from this that love and wisdom together are the divine reality, though when they are distinguished we call love the divine reality and wisdom the divine manifestation. This is the quality of the angelic concept of divine love and wisdom.

The leading scientific theory of creation is what’s called the “Big Bang.” It says that everything - all energy and matter in the universe, and even time and space themselves - started in one moment of unthinkable power in a point so small as to have no space at all. That power ballooned out to form time and space, and as it kept ballooning the power stretched and cooled enough to start forming patterns, which eventually got dense enough to form sub-atomic particles, which eventually clumped to form atoms, which eventually clumped to form stars, planets, air, water, simple life forms and ultimately people.

That theory has strong parallels to Swedenborg’s statements on reality. In a sense, Divine Love - the infinite love that is the essence and ultimate being of the Lord - is that infinite power that was without time or space at the moment of creation. Divine Wisdom - the “image of love,” as Swedenborg puts it - is that first ballooning to create time and space. It does not have any particular form; it can’t be identified or measured. But it exists, and its existence makes it possible for love to take form.

That sounds pretty distant from the idea of “wisdom” we all have. In everyday life, “wisdom” simply means the ability to make good, thoughtful decisions and judgments. If you dig into that idea, though, it’s not that different really. Those good, thoughtful decisons are generally not simply based in facts - they are a mix of facts and love, of facts and the desire for the best possible outcome. And when you get right down to it, true wisdom actually leads with love, with the desire for the best, most caring and most helpful outcome for all involved. The facts and ideas are really there to be organized by that desire, to give it a way to express itself. So just as in the paragraph above, wisdom is really an arena where love can take form, a medium that allows love to have an image.

Of course, such wisdom for us is sort of a mental area where we can do this kind of thinking. For the Lord this “mental area” is time and space itself, even reality itself, where love can be constantly channeled into forms that draw us toward heaven.

(Riferimenti: Apocalypse Revealed 189; Arcana Coelestia 1226; Conjugial Love 130; Divine Love and Wisdom 34, 35, 39, 180, 213, 287, 358; True Christian Religion 242, 350)