5. 3. There is some image of this unity in everything that has been created. We can tell from what is presented throughout Divine Love and Wisdom that in everything created there is some image of the divine love and wisdom that are a whole in the Lord and that emanate from him as a whole. See especially Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51, 54-60 [Divine Love and Wisdom 55-60], Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295, 316-318 [Divine Love and Wisdom 313-318], Divine Love and Wisdom 319-326, 349-357. I have explained in these passages that Divinity is present in everything that has been created because God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, brought forth the sun of the spiritual world from his actual self, and by means of that sun brought forth the whole universe. This means that that sun, which is from the Lord and is where the Lord is, is not only the first but the only substance of which everything is made. Since it is the only substance, it follows that it is present in everything that has been created, but with infinite variety depending on function.

[2] In the Lord, then, there is divine love and wisdom; in the sun that comes from him there is divine fire and divine radiance; and from that sun come spiritual warmth and spiritual light, with the two making a single whole. It follows, then, that some image of this whole is present in everything that has been created.

This is why everything in the universe is based on what is good and what is true and in fact on their union, or (which amounts to the same thing) everything in the universe is based on love and wisdom and on their union, since goodness is a matter of love and truth is a matter of wisdom. Love in fact calls everything of its own good, and wisdom calls everything of its own true.

We will see now that this union is present in everything that has been created.

4. God alone, thus the Lord, is love itself, because He is life itself; and angels and people are recipients of life. This observation will be clarified in a number of places in my treatises on Divine Providence and on Life. ¹ Here we will say only that the Lord, who is God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite, while people and angels are created and finite; and because the Lord is uncreated and infinite, He is the underlying that-which-is or being itself which is called Jehovah, ² and is life itself or life in itself.

From Him who is uncreated, infinite, being itself and life itself, no one can be created directly, because the Divine is one and indivisible. Rather he must be created out of elements already created and finite, so formed that the Divine can be present in them.

[2] Because people and angels are such creations, they are recipients of life. Consequently, if anyone allows himself to be so led astray in his thinking as to suppose he is not a recipient of life, but is life, he cannot be averted from the thought that he is God.

A person's feeling as though he were life and so believing it to be the case is owing to a fallacious appearance; for in any instrumental cause, the principal cause is invariably perceived as inseparable from it.

That the Lord is life in Himself, He Himself teaches in John:

...As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son (also) to have life in Himself... (John 5:26)

And He says that He is "the life" (John 11:25, 14:6).

Now since life and love are one (as is apparent from the discussions above in nos. 1-2), it follows that because the Lord is life itself, He is love itself.

სქოლიოები:

349. Visible phenomena in the created universe attest that nothing has been or is produced by nature, but everything by the Divine from itself, and this through the spiritual world. Most people in the world speak in accordance with the appearance that the sun by its heat and light produces whatever they see in fields, meadows, gardens and forests; that the sun by its warmth hatches grubs from eggs and causes beasts of the earth and birds of the sky to reproduce; indeed, even that it gives life to mankind.

People who only speak in this way because of the appearance can do so even though they do not ascribe these things to nature, because they are not thinking about it. For example, people who speak of the sun as rising and setting and creating days and years, or as being now at this or that height, speak in this way in accordance with the appearance, and can do so, even though they do not ascribe these things to the sun, because they are not thinking about the sun's stationary position and the revolution of the earth.

On the other hand, people who confirm themselves in the notion that the sun by its heat and light produces the phenomena that appear on the earth, eventually ascribe all things to nature, including as well the creation of the universe, and they become adherents of naturalism and at last atheists. After that they may indeed say that God created nature and endowed it with the power of producing such phenomena, but they say so for fear of losing their reputation. At the same time, however, by God the Creator they mean nature, and some of them the inmost element of nature, and they then regard as of no account any Divine tenets that the church teaches.