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:

3736. 'And I come back in peace to my father's house' means even to the point of perfect union. This becomes clear from the fact that 'father's house', used in reference to the Lord, is the Divine itself which was the Lord's from actual conception. 'Coming back to that house' is resuming to Divine Good itself, which is called 'the Father' - Divine Good being 'the Father', see 3704. 'Coming back to that house' clearly means being united. The same was meant by the Lord when He said that He had come forth from the Father and had come into the world, and that He would be going again to the Father. That is to say, His coming forth from the Father means that the Divine itself had taken on the Human; His coming into the world means that He was as a human being; and His going again to the Father means that He would unite the Human Essence to the Divine Essence. This was the meaning of the following words spoken by the Lord in John,

What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? John 6:62.

In the same gospel,

Jesus knew that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come forth from God and was going to God. My children, yet a little while I am with you. Where I am going you cannot come. John 13:3, 33.

In the same gospel,

Now I am going away to Him who sent Me; but none of you asks Me, Where are you going away? It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I did not go away the Paraclete would not come to you; but if I go away I will send Him to you. A little while, and you will not see Me, and again a little while, and you will see Me [because I am going away to the Father. Some of His disciples said to one another, What is this that He says to us, A little while, and you will not see Me, and again a little while, and you will see Me,] and, Because I am going away to the Father? John 16:5, 7, 10, 16-17.

In the same gospel,

I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father. John 16:28.

'Going away to the Father' in these places means uniting the Human Essence to the Divine Essence.