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:

6342. 'Reuben my firstborn' means faith which seemingly occupies the first place. This is clear from the representation of 'Reuben' as faith in the understanding, dealt with in 3861, 3866, and the Church's confession of faith in general, 4731, 4734, 4761; and from the meaning of 'firstborn' as occupying the first place, dealt with in 3325. But faith does no more than seem to occupy the first place, see 3539, 3548, 3556, 3563, 3570, 3576, 3603, 3701, 4915, 4926, 4928, 4930, 4977, 6256, 6269, 6272, 6273.