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.

99. The spiritual warmth and light that result from the emanation from the Lord as the sun form a single whole just as his divine love and wisdom do. Part 1 explains how divine love and wisdom form a single whole in the Lord. Warmth and light form a similar whole because they are emanations, and emanations constitute a whole by reason of their correspondence. The warmth answers to love, and the light to wisdom.

It therefore follows that since divine love is the divine reality and divine wisdom is the divine manifestation (see 14-16 above), spiritual warmth is divinity emanating from the divine reality and spiritual light is divinity emanating from the divine manifestation. This means that just as divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love because of this union (see 34-39 above), spiritual warmth is a property of spiritual light and spiritual light is a property of spiritual warmth. As a result of this kind of oneness, it follows that warmth and light are a single whole as they emanate from the Lord as the sun.

We will see later, though [125], that they are not accepted as a single whole by angels or by us.

290. The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, produced from Himself the sun of the spiritual world, and out of it created the universe and all of its constituents. We discussed the sun of the spiritual world in Part Two of this work, and in it we showed the following:

That Divine love and wisdom appear in the spiritual world as the sun (nos. 83-88). That from that sun emanate spiritual heat and light (nos. 89-92). That that sun is not God, but that it is an emanation of the Divine love and wisdom of the human God; so, too, the heat and light from that sun (nos. 93-98). That the sun in the spiritual world is at a middle height and appears as distant from the angels as the sun in the natural world does from people (nos. 103-107). That in the spiritual world, the east is where the Lord appears as the sun, and the other points of the compass are determined in relation to it (nos. 119-128). That angels turn their faces continually to the Lord as the sun (nos. 129-139). That the Lord created the universe and everything in it by means of that sun, which is the first emanation of His Divine love and wisdom (nos. 151-156). That the sun in the natural world is nothing but fire, and that nature, which takes its origin from that sun, is consequently lifeless; moreover, that the sun in the natural world was created in order that the work of creation might be completed and concluded (nos. 157-162). That without the two suns, one alive and the other lifeless, creation would not exist (nos. 163-166).