Divine Love and Divine Wisdom

46. ...are regarded, nothing of life can be seen in nature, much less anything of love and wisdom, and consequently nothing of God.

47. THAT DIVINE LOVE AND DIVINE WISDOM MUST NECESSARILY EXIST IN OTHER BEINGS OR EXISTENCES CREATED FROM THEMSELVES. It is an essential quality of love not to love itself, but to love others and to be joined to them through love. It is also essential to love to be loved by others, because it is through this that a connection original: "conjunction" is formed. The essence of all love consists in this connection—indeed, the very life of love consists in what we call enjoyment, pleasure, delight, sweetness, blessedness original: "beatitude", happiness, and joy original: "felicity". Love consists in our wanting what is ours to belong to another, and feeling their delight as if it were our own. This is what it means to love. However, for a person to feel their own delight in another, rather than the other’s delight in themselves, is not love. In the latter case, he loves himself, but in the former, he loves his neighbor. These two types of love are diametrically opposite to each other. Both do create a connection, and it might not seem that a man loving his own interests in another—that is, loving himself—causes a separation. Yet it separates them so thoroughly that the more someone has loved another in this way, the more he later hates them. This connection eventually dissolves on its own, and then such love turns into an equal degree of hatred.

48. Anyone capable of looking into the essence of love can see that this is true. For what is it for a man to love only himself, and not anyone outside of himself who might love him back? This is dissolution rather than connection. The connection of love arises from reciprocation, and reciprocation cannot happen within oneself alone. If it seems to exist there, it is only because of an imaginary reciprocation from others. Therefore, it is clear that divine love must exist in other beings whom it loves and by whom it is loved. Since this quality exists in all love, it must exist in the highest degree—that is, infinitely—in Love itself.

49. Regarding God, it is not possible for Him to love and be loved in return by other beings who possess anything of the infinite, or anything of the essence and life of love in itself—that is, anything of the Divine. If they had anything infinite or Divine in them, then He would not be loving others, but would be loving Himself; for the Infinite, or the Divine, is one. If this existed in others, it would be itself, and God would be practicing self-love, of which not even the smallest amount is possible in Him. This is because self-love is completely opposite to the divine essence. Therefore, this mutual exchange of love must take place between God and other beings in whom there is nothing of the self-existent Divine. That this exchange takes place in beings created from the Divine will be seen below. But for this to exist, there must be infinite wisdom, which must be one with infinite love; that is, there must exist...