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Divine Providence#1

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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.

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

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Divine Love and Wisdom#55

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55. Everything in the created universe is a vessel for the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. We acknowledge that everything in the universe, great and small, has been created by God. That is why the universe and absolutely everything in it is called "the work of Jehovah's hands" in the Word.

People do say that the whole world was created out of nothing, and they like to think of "nothing" as absolutely nothing. However, nothing comes from "absolutely nothing" and nothing can. This is an abiding truth. This means that the universe, being an image of God and therefore full of God, could be created by God only in God. God is reality itself, and everything that exists must come from that reality. To speak of creating something that exists from a "nothing" that does not exist is a plain contradiction of terms.

Still, what is created by God in God is not a continuation of him, since God is intrinsic reality and there is no trace of intrinsic reality in anything created. If there were any intrinsic reality in a created being, it would be a continuation of God, and any continuation of God is God.

The angelic concept involved is that anything created by God in God is like something within ourselves that we have put forth from our life, but the life is then withdrawn from it. It then agrees with our life, but still, it is not our life. In support of this, angels cite many things that happen in their heaven, where they say that they are in God and that God is in them, and yet that they have in their being no trace of God that is actually God. This may serve simply as information; more of the angels' evidence will be offered later [116].

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

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Divine Love and Wisdom#307

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307. All useful functions, which are the goals of creation, are in forms, and they get these forms from the material substances characteristic of earth. All the things I have been talking about so far--the sun, the atmospheres, and the earth--are simply means toward goals, and the goals of creation are what are brought forth from earth by the Lord as the sun, through the atmospheres. These goals are called useful functions, and they include everything involved in the plant kingdom, everything involved in the animal kingdom, and ultimately the human race and the angelic heaven that comes from it.

These are called useful functions because they are receptive of divine love and wisdom and because they focus on God the Creator as their source and thereby unite him with his master work in such a way that they continue to exist through him in the same way they arose. I say "they focus on God the Creator as their source and unite him with his master work," but this is talking in terms of the way things seem. It actually means that God the Creator works it out so that these useful functions seem to focus on and unite themselves to him on their own initiative. I will describe later [310-317] how they focus on and thereby unite themselves to him.

I have already dealt with these subjects to some extent in appropriate places; in 47-51, for example, divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created; in 54-60 [55-60], everything in the created universe is a vessel of divine love and wisdom; and in 65-68, the useful functions of every created thing tend upward to us step by step, and through us to God the creator, their source.

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