358. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love

Part 5

The Lord has created and formed within us two vessels and dwellings for himself called volition and discernment. Volition is for his divine love and discernment for his divine wisdom. I have already discussed the divine love and wisdom of God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, and I have discussed the creation of the universe. Now I need to say something about our own creation.

We read that we were created in the image of God and according to his likeness (Genesis 1:26). In this passage "the image of God" means divine wisdom and "the likeness of God" means divine love, since wisdom is nothing more than the image of love. Love actually presents itself to view and to recognition in wisdom, and since that is where we see and recognize it, wisdom is its image. Then too, love is the reality of life and wisdom is its consequent manifestation. This "image and likeness" of God is strikingly visible in angels. Love shining from within is their faces and wisdom in their beauty, with beauty as the form of their love. I have seen this, and I have come to know it.

65. X. ON THE FORMER HEAVEN AND ITS ABOLITION.

We read in the book of Revelation:

I saw a mighty throne, and one sitting upon it, from whose sight earth and heaven fled, and their place was not found. Revelation 20:11.

And later:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Revelation 21:1.

I showed in the first chapter of this book and elsewhere in it that the new heaven and the new earth and the passing away of the former heaven and the former earth do not refer to the visible sky and the earth on which we live, but to the heaven of angels and the church. For the Word is in essence spiritual and therefore deals with spiritual matters, that is, those which have to do with heaven and the church. Natural things are used in the literal sense to stand for them, because what is natural serves what is spiritual for a base; and without such a base the Word would not be a work of God, because it would be incomplete. It is the natural, standing last in God's order, which completes and gives the interiors, which are spiritual and celestial, a base on which to rest, like a house on its foundations.

[2] Because people have thought about the contents of the Word from a natural instead of a spiritual point of view, they have taken heaven and earth in these and other passages to mean the sky in the natural world and the earth similarly. That is why everyone expects them to pass away and be destroyed, and new ones to be created. To prevent this expectation continuing for ever and being frustrated in each century, the spiritual sense of the Word has been opened up, so that the meaning of many expressions in the Word may be known, which cannot fall within our understanding as long as we think in a natural manner about them; and this includes the heaven and earth which will pass away.