Divine Love and Divine Wisdom

interior, as well as exterior and even more exterior aspects. Inmost thought, which is a perception of ends original: "ends"; here meaning purposes or goals, is actually the first effect of life. However, these will be discussed later when we address the degrees of life.

3. We can gain some understanding of love as the life of man by looking at the heat of the sun in the natural world. This heat, as we know, is essentially the shared life of all plant life. When heat begins in the springtime, vegetables of all kinds shoot up from the ground, are adorned with leaves, then with flowers, and finally with fruit; in this way, they "live." But when the heat retreats in the autumn and winter seasons, they are stripped of these signs of life and wither. The case is similar with love in man, for love and heat correspond to each other; this is why love is described as being warm.

4. GOD ALONE, AND THEREFORE THE LORD, IS LOVE ITSELF BECAUSE HE IS LIFE ITSELF; AND ANGELS AND HUMANS ARE RECIPIENTS OF LIFE. This will be illustrated extensively in the treatises Divine Providence and Life. Here, we shall only observe that the Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite, whereas humans and angels are created and finite. Because the Lord is uncreated and infinite, He is Being Itself original: "Esse Itself", which is called Jehovah, and He is Life Itself, or Life in Himself. No being can be created directly from the uncreated, infinite Being Itself and Life Itself, because the Divine is one and cannot be divided. Instead, beings are created from created and finite substances which are formed so that the Divine may reside within them. Since humans and angels are such beings, they are recipients of life. Therefore, if any person allows themselves to be so misled as to think they are not a recipient of life, but are life itself, they cannot be stopped from thinking they are a god. The feeling that one is life itself, and the belief that follows, is based on a fallacy. This is because in the instrumental cause the tool or means used to perform an action, the principal cause the primary force or agent behind an action is perceived as being one and the same with it. The Lord teaches that He is Life in Himself in the Book of John: "As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself" (John 5:26); and "that He is the Life" (John 11:25; 14:6). Now, since life and love are one—as shown in sections 1 and 2—it follows that the Lord, being Life Itself, is Love Itself.

5. In order for this matter to be rightly understood, it is necessary to know that the Lord—being love in its very essence, that is, divine love—appears before the angels in heaven as a sun. Heat and light proceed from that sun. In its essence, the heat proceeding from that sun is love, and the light proceeding from that sun is wisdom. To the degree that angels are recipients of that spiritual heat and light, they are embodiments of love and wisdom; they do not possess love and wisdom from themselves, but from the Lord. This spiritual heat and spiritual light not only flow original: "descend by influx" into the angels and affect them, but also—