1. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

Divine Providence Is the Form of Government Exercised by the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom

To understand what divine providence is--that it is the way the Lord's divine love and wisdom govern us--it is important to be aware of the following things, which were presented in my book on the subject.

In the Lord, divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love (Divine Love and Wisdom 34-39).

Divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created (Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51).

Everything in the universe was created by divine love and wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 52, 53, 151-156).

Everything in the created universe is a vessel of divine love and wisdom (54-60 [55-60]).

The Lord looks like the sun to angels; its radiating warmth is love and its radiating light is wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 83-88, 89-92, 93-98, 296-301).

The divine love and wisdom that emanate from the Lord constitute a single whole (Divine Love and Wisdom 99-102).

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from himself and not from nothing (Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295). These propositions may be found in the work titled Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom.

83. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love

Part 2

In the spiritual world, divine love and wisdom look like a sun. There are two worlds, one spiritual and one physical; and the spiritual world does not derive anything from the physical one, nor does the physical one derive anything from the spiritual one. They are completely distinct from each other, communicating only by means of correspondence, whose nature has been amply explained elsewhere. The following example may be enlightening. Warmth in the physical world is the equivalent of the good that thoughtfulness does in the spiritual world, and light in the physical world is the equivalent of the truth that faith perceives in the spiritual world. No one can fail to see that warmth and the goodness of being thoughtful, and light and the truth of faith, are completely distinct from each other.

At first glance, they seem as distinct as two quite different things. That is what comes to the fore when we start thinking about what the goodness of being thoughtful has in common with warmth and what the truth of faith has in common with light. Yet spiritual warmth is that very "goodness," and spiritual light is that very "truth."

In spite of the fact that they are so distinct from each other, though, they still make a single whole by means of their correspondence. They are so united that when we read about warmth and light in the Word, the spirits and angels who are with us see thoughtfulness in the place of warmth and faith in the place of light.

I include this example to make it clear that the two worlds, the spiritual one and the physical one, are so distinct from each other that they have nothing in common, and that still they have been created in such a way that they communicate with each other and are actually united through their correspondences.

125. Since the regions are variations in the way angels accept love and wisdom, I need to say something about the variety that gives rise to the appearance.

As I explained in the preceding section, the Lord is in each angel, and each angel is in the Lord. However, since it looks as though the Lord as the sun were outside angels, it also looks as though the Lord is seeing them from the sun and that they are seeing the Lord in the sun. This is much like seeing an image in a mirror. So if we talk on the basis of the way things seem, that is how it is. The Lord sees and examines angels face to face, but angels do not see the Lord in the same way. When they are engaged in the love for him that comes from him, they do see him straight ahead, so they are in the east or the west. When they are more engaged in wisdom, though, they see the Lord off to the right, and when they are less engaged in wisdom they see him off to the left, so they are respectively in the north or the south.

The reason they have an oblique view is that love and wisdom emanate from the Lord as a single whole, but they are not accepted that way by angels, as I have already noted [99]. Any wisdom that goes beyond love may look like wisdom, but it is not, since there is no life from love in that excess wisdom.

We can see from this where the differences in receptivity come from, the differences that cause the appearance that angels live in the different regions in the spiritual world.