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.

52. Everything in the universe was created by the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The universe, from beginning to end and from first to last, is so full of divine love and wisdom that you could call it divine love and wisdom in an image. This is clearly evidenced by the way everything in the universe answers to something in us. Every single thing that comes to light in the created universe has such an equivalence with every single thing in us that you could call us a kind of universe as well. There is a correspondence of our affective side and its consequent thought with everything in the animal kingdom, a correspondence of our volitional side and its consequent discernment with everything in the plant kingdom, and a correspondence of our outermost life with everything in the mineral kingdom.

This kind of correspondence is not apparent to anyone in our physical world, but it is apparent to observant people in the spiritual world. We find in this latter world all the things that occur in the three kingdoms of our physical world, and they reflect the feelings and thoughts of the people who are there--the feelings that come from their volition and the thoughts that come from their discernment--as well as the outermost aspects of their life. Both their feelings and their thoughts are visible around them looking much like the things we see in the created universe, though we see them in less perfect representations.

From this it is obvious to angels that the created universe is an image depicting the Divine-Human One and that it is his love and wisdom that are presented, in image, in the universe. It is not that the created universe is the Divine-Human One: rather, it comes from him; for nothing whatever in the universe is intrinsic substance and form or intrinsic life or intrinsic love and wisdom. We are not "intrinsic persons." It all comes from God, who is the intrinsic person, the intrinsic wisdom and love, and the intrinsic form and substance. Whatever has intrinsic existence is uncreated and infinite; while what comes from it, possessing nothing within itself that has intrinsic existence, is created and finite. This latter presents an image of the One from whom it derives its existence and manifestation.

282. PART FOUR

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from Himself and not from nothing. People throughout the world know, and every wise person from an interior perception acknowledges, that there is one God who is the Creator of the universe. People also know from the Word that God, the Creator of the universe, is called Jehovah, so named from the verb to be, because He alone just is. ¹ That the Lord from eternity is that Jehovah - this we demonstrated in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord by citing many proofs from the Word.

Jehovah is called the Lord from eternity because it was Jehovah who assumed a humanity in order to save people from hell. Moreover at that time He commanded His disciples to call Him Lord. ² Consequently in the New Testament Jehovah is called the Lord, as can be seen from considering the following statement.

[In the Old Testament:]

You shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul... (Deuteronomy 6:5)

And in the New Testament:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul... (Matthew 22:37)

The same substitution is found in other passages taken from the Old Testament and quoted in the Gospels.

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