Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine WisdomSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom
Swedenborg, Emanuel
God (Christianity) -- Love; God (Christianity) -- Wisdom
He created the universe out of Himself, and not out of nothing; also that
His Human Body cannot be thought great or small, that is, of any one
stature, because this also pertains to space; consequently that in things
first and last, and in things greatest and least, He is the same; and
still further, that the Human is the inmost in every created thing,
though apart from space. That the Divine is the same in things greatest
and least may be seen above (n. 77-82); and that the Divine apart from
space fills all spaces (n. 69-72). And because the Divine is not in space,
it is not continuous [nec est continuum], as the inmost of nature is.
286. That God unless He were a Man could not have created the universe
and all things thereof, may be clearly apprehended by any intelligent
person from this, that he cannot deny that in God there is Love and
Wisdom, mercy and clemency, and also goodness itself and truth itself,
inasmuch as these are from God. And because he cannot deny this, neither
can he deny that God is a Man; for abstractly from man not one of these
is possible; for man is their subject, and to separate them from their
subject is to say that they are not. Think of wisdom, and place it outside
of man - is it anything? Can you conceive of it as something ethereal, or
as something flaming? You cannot; unless perchance you conceive of it as
being within these; and if within these, it must be wisdom in a form such
as man has; it must be wholly in the form of man, not one thing can be
lacking if wisdom is to be in that form. In a word, the form of wisdom is
man; and because man is the form of wisdom, he is also the form of love,
mercy, clemency, good and truth, because these make one with wisdom. That
love and wisdom are not possible except in a form, see above (n. 50-53).
287. That love and wisdom are man is further evident from the fact that
the angels of heaven are men in beauty in the measure in which they are
in love and its wisdom from the Lord. The same is evident from what is
said of Adam in the Word, that he was created into the likeness and into
the image of God (Gen. 1:26), because into the form of love and wisdom.
Every man on earth is born into the human form as regards his body, for
the reason that his spirit, which is also called his soul, is a man; and
this is a man because it is receptive of love and wisdom from the Lord;
and so far as these are received by the spirit or soul of man, so far it
becomes a man after the death of the material body which it had drawn
about it; and so far as these are not received it becomes a monster, which
derives something of manhood from the ability to receive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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