242. On the point that the angels receive all their wisdom from the Word, they themselves assert this. They have as much light as they have understanding of the Word. Heaven's light is divine wisdom; before angels' eyes this divine wisdom takes the form of light.

In the sanctuaries where their copies of the Word are kept, the light is fiery or shining white. There is more light in such places than anywhere else in heaven.

The wisdom of heavenly angels goes almost as far beyond the wisdom of spiritual angels as the wisdom of spiritual angels goes beyond our human wisdom. The reason for this is that heavenly angels have a love from the Lord for what is good, while spiritual angels have wisdom from the Lord about what is true. Where love for what is good exists, there dwells wisdom also. Where truths exist, there dwells only as much wisdom as there is love for what is good. This is why the Word is written one way in the Lord's heavenly kingdom and another in his spiritual kingdom. The heavenly kingdoms form of the Word expresses loving forms of goodness in letters and conveys the specific types of love with diacritical marks. The spiritual kingdoms form of the Word expresses truths of wisdom in letters and conveys inner perceptions of truth with diacritical marks.

From all this you can imagine what kind of wisdom lies hidden in the Word that we have in this world. Inside it there lies all angelic wisdom, which is inexpressible. If we are made angels by the Lord through the Word, we will come into that wisdom after death.

41. 4. Love and wisdom are united in God. All the goodness of love and goodwill comes from God, and so does all the truth of wisdom and of faith, as any wise person in the church knows. In fact, all human reason is capable of seeing that this is true, once it is aware that love and wisdom originate in the sun that surrounds Jehovah God in the spiritual world; or to put it another way, once it is aware that love and wisdom come from Jehovah God through the sun that surrounds him. The heat radiating from that sun is essentially love, and the light radiating from it is essentially wisdom. From this it becomes as clear as day that love and wisdom are united at their source - namely, God, who is the origin of that sun.

This point can be visualized [by thinking] of the sun in the physical world. It is nothing but fire. Heat radiates from its fieriness; light radiates from the glow of its fieriness. At the outset, then, heat and light are one.

[2] As they radiate, however, they are separated, as you can tell from the fact that some objects they strike take in more heat and some more light. A more extreme separation occurs in us. With us, the light of life (intelligence) and the heat of life (love) are distinct. This separation exists because we need to be reformed and regenerated, and this will not happen unless the light of life, or intelligence, teaches us what we should want and what we should love.

It is important to know that God is continually building a partnership between love and wisdom in us, but if we are not facing God and believing in him, we ourselves are constantly separating the two.

The greater the partnership within us, then, between these two things - the goodness of love or of goodwill and the truth of wisdom or of faith - the more we become an image of God and are raised toward heaven and even into heaven where the angels are. On the other hand, the more these two things are separated in us, the more we become an image of Lucifer and of the dragon and are cast down from heaven to earth and then below the earth into hell.

When love and wisdom have a partnership in us, we become like a tree in springtime, when heat joins equally with light to make the tree bud, flower, and bear fruit. On the other hand, when love and wisdom are separated in us we become like a tree in winter, when heat withdraws from light, making the tree bare and bald of all its foliage.

[3] When spiritual heat, or love, withdraws from spiritual light, or wisdom, or equally when goodwill withdraws from faith, we become like humus that rots and becomes acidic - worms breed in it, and if seedlings come up at all, their leaves are covered with little leaf-eating grubs. Then enticements to love evil, which are really cravings, burst forth in us. Rather than controlling and restraining them, our intelligence loves them, takes care of them, and feeds them.

In a word, to separate love and wisdom or goodwill and faith - two things God is constantly trying to bring together - is comparable to taking all the redness out of a face so that it becomes as pale as death, or taking all the whiteness away from the redness so that the face becomes as inflamed as a firebrand.

Separating love and wisdom is also comparable to breaking a couples marriage bond and turning the wife into a prostitute and the husband into an adulterer. Love is like a husband, and so is goodwill; wisdom is like a wife, and so is faith. Their being separated causes spiritual prostitution and whoring, in the form of falsifying what is true and contaminating what is good.