Angelic Wisdom about Divine ProvidenceSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Providence and government of God -- Christianity
63. From the knowledge of heaven to be had from this brief description it
is evident that it is an affection of the love of good that makes heaven
in a man. But who knows this today? Who knows even what an affection of
the love of good is, or that these affections are innumerable, in fact,
infinite? For, as was said, each angel is his own particular affection;
and the form of heaven is the form of all the affections of the divine
love there. Only one Being can combine all affections into this form--only
He who is love and wisdom itself and who is at once infinite and eternal.
For throughout that form is what is infinite and eternal; the infinite is
in its unity and the eternal in its perpetuity; were they removed the
form would instantly collapse. Who else can combine affections into a
form? Who else can bring about this unity? The unity can be accomplished
only in an idea of the total, and the total realized only in thought for
each single part. Myriads on myriads compose that form; annually myriads
enter it and will do so to eternity. All infants enter it and all adults
who are affections of the love of good. Again from all this the image of
the infinite and eternal in the angelic heaven is to be seen.
64. (v) _The heart of divine providence is to look to what is infinite
and eternal by fashioning an angelic heaven for it to be like one human
being before the Lord, an image of Him._ See in the work _Heaven and
Hell_ (nn. 59-86) that heaven as a whole is like one man in the Lord's
sight; that each society of heaven also is; that as a result each angel
is a human being in perfect form; and that this is because God the
Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, is Man; also (nn. 87-102) that as
a result there is a correspondence of all things of heaven with all
things in the human being. The entire heaven as one man has not been seen
by me, for only the Lord can so behold it; but that an entire society,
whether large or small, can appear as one man, I have seen. I was then
told that the largest society of all, which is heaven in its entirety, so
appears, but to the Lord alone; and that this causes every angel to be in
full form a human being.
65. As all heaven is like one man in the Lord's view, it is divided into
as many general societies as there are organs, viscera and members in
man, and each general society into as many less general or particular
societies as there are larger divisions in each of the viscera and
organs. This makes evident what heaven is. Because the Lord is very Man
and heaven is His image, to be in heaven is called "being in the Lord."
See in the work _Divine Love and Wisdom_ that the Lord is very Man
(nn. 11-13, 285-289).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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