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
will and the wisdom of the understanding, will be able to see in a kind
of image the things mentioned above (n. 404), and thereby attain to a
confirmed belief. But since a few only are familiar with the anatomical
details respecting the heart and lungs, and since confirming a thing by
what is unfamiliar induces obscurity, I omit further demonstration of
the analogy.
406. (9) Through these three conjunctions love or the will is in its
sensitive life and in its active life. Love without the understanding,
or affection which is of love without thought, which is of the
understanding, can neither feel nor act in the body; since love without
the understanding is as it were blind, and affection without thought is
as it were in thick darkness, for the understanding is the light by which
love sees. The wisdom of the understanding, moreover, is from the light
that proceeds from the Lord as a sun. Since, then, the will's love,
without the light of the understanding, sees nothing and is blind, it
follows that without the light of the understanding even the bodily
senses would be blind and blunted, not only sight and hearing, but the
other senses also, - the other senses, because all perception of truth
is a property of love in the understanding (as was shown above), and all
the bodily senses derive their perception from their mind's perception.
The same is true of every bodily act; for action from love without
understanding is like man's action in the dark, when he does not know what
he is doing; consequently in such action there would be nothing of
intelligence and wisdom. Such action cannot be called living action, for
action derives its esse from love and its quality from intelligence.
Moreover, the whole power of good is by means of truth; consequently good
acts in truth, and thus by means of truth; and good is of love, and truth
is of the understanding. From all this it can be seen that love or the
will through these three conjunctions (see above, n. 404) is in its
sensitive life and in its active life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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