The Last Judgement #20
20. Anyone who has learned about God's order can also understand that man was created so as to become an angel, because in him order reaches its ultimate stage (see 9 above). In this stage something of the wisdom of heaven and the angels can be formed, and it can be reconstituted and multiplied. God's order never stops half-way, and forms anything there without the ultimate stage; for it is not in its fullness and perfection unless it goes to the ultimate. But when it is there, then it takes shape and uses the means at its disposal there to reconstitute and extend itself, which it does by reproduction. The ultimate is therefore the seed-bed of heaven.
This too is what is meant by the description of man and his creation in the first chapter of Genesis:
God said, Let us make 1 man in our image, according to our likeness. And God created man in His image, in the image of God did He create him. Male and female He created them; and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Genesis 1:26-28.
Creating in the image of God and in the likeness of God means conferring on him the whole of God's order from first to last, and so making him an angel as regards the interiors of his mind.
Footnotes:
1. [Reading faciamus as AC for faciemus (We shall make).]
Arcana Coelestia #3168
3168. 'And they ate and drank' means making one's own the good and truth introduced in this way. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' as being communicated and joined together, thus being made one's own, dealt with in 2187, 2343, and more specifically (since 'eating' has reference to bread and 'bread' means good, 276, 680, 2165, 2177, 2187) making good one's own; and from the meaning of 'drinking' as being communicated and joined together, thus being made one's own, dealt with in 3089, and more specifically (since 'drinking' has reference to wine and 'wine' means truth, 1071, 1798) making truth one's own. The situation is as stated above in 3167, namely that when truth is introduced into good in the rational, more so when it is joined to it, the good and truth of the spiritual man, that is, spiritual things, become made over to the natural as its own.
