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.

54. It seems as though what is infinite cannot be united to what is finite because there is no ratio between the infinite and the finite and because the finite cannot contain the infinite. There are two reasons, though, why there can be a union. The first is that the Infinite One created everything from himself (as explained in Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284); and the second is that the Infinite One cannot focus on anything in finite beings except what is infinite from him. This can seem to finite beings as though it were within them; and this provides a ratio between what is finite and what is infinite. The ratio does not come from anything finite but from the Infinite One within it. In this way, too, the finite can contain the infinite. What does this is not the finite being in and of itself, but the finite being in its apparent autonomy, derived from the One who is intrinsically infinite. (There will be more on this subject later [55, 64, 202, 219, 294].)

93. That sun is not God, but it is an emanation from the Divine love and wisdom of the human God. So, too, the heat and light from that sun. In referring to that sun, visible to angels, from which they have their heat and light, we do not mean the Lord, but we mean the first emanation from Him, which is spiritual heat in its highest degree. Spiritual heat in its highest degree is spiritual fire, which is Divine love and wisdom in their first correspondent form.

So it is that that sun appears fiery, and to angels also is fiery, but not to people. The fire which is fire to people is not spiritual but natural, and the difference between these is as the difference between something animate and something inanimate. Therefore the spiritual sun by its heat animates spiritual beings and renews spiritual things, while the natural sun animates and renews natural beings and things, though doing so not on its own but as a result of an influx of spiritual heat, to which it contributes subsidiary assistance.