37. (i) GOD IS LOVE ITSELF AND WISDOM ITSELF, THESE TWO MAKING UP HIS ESSENCE.

Our earliest ancestors realised that love and wisdom are the two essentials to which are to be ascribed all the infinite qualities which are in God or emanate from Him. But succeeding ages gradually lost this vision, as they allowed their minds to sink down from heaven and plunge into worldly and bodily affairs. They began to be unaware of what love is in its essence, and so what wisdom is in its essence, for they did not know that love cannot exist in the abstract without form, but works in and through a form. Now since God is the very, sole and prime substance and form, the essence of which is love and wisdom, and since it was from Him that all things came that were made, it follows that He created the universe in all its parts out of love by means of wisdom, and thus the Divine Love together with the Divine Wisdom is present in every single created object. Love too is not only the Essence which forms everything, but it also unites and joins them, so keeping together what has been formed.

[2] Countless things in the world can serve to illustrate this. For instance, the sun's heat and light, which are the two essentials and universals which enable every single thing on earth to come into and continue in existence. They are there because they correspond to the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom; for the heat radiated by the sun of the spiritual world is in its essence love, and the light from this source is in its essence wisdom. Another illustration might be the two essentials and universals which enable human minds to come into and continue in existence, namely, will and understanding. Every mind is composed of these two faculties, and the same two are present and function in every one of its acts. The reason is that the will is a receiver and seat of love, and the understanding likewise of wisdom. Therefore these two faculties correspond to the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, from which they originally came. Yet another illustration is the two essentials and universals which enable human bodies to come into and continue in existence, namely, the heart and the lungs, or the systolic and diastolic motion of the heart and the breathing of the lungs. It is well known that these two function in every part of the body; the reason is that the heart corresponds to love and the lungs to wisdom. This correspondence was fully proved in my book ANGELIC WISDOM ABOUT THE DIVINE LOVE AND THE DIVINE WISDOM published in Amsterdam.

[3] Countless examples in both the spiritual and the natural worlds can be adduced to prove that love like a bridegroom or husband produces or begets all forms, but by means of wisdom as bride or wife. Only one can be mentioned here: the whole heaven of the angels is arranged into its form and preserved in it by the Divine Love acting by means of the Divine Wisdom. Those who infer that the world was created from any other source, and are unaware that the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom make up the Divine Essence, sink from the vision of reason to the vision of the eye. They embrace nature as the creative force of the universe, thus conceiving chimeras and giving birth to ghosts. Their thoughts are fallacies, from which they reason and draw conclusions like ¹ eggs containing night birds. Such minds do not deserve that name; they are mere eyes and ears devoid of understanding, or thoughts devoid of soul. They talk of colours as if they could come into existence without light, about trees as if they could grow without seed, about everything on earth as if it could come into existence without sunlight. What they are doing is to confuse derived things with the principles from which they are derived, and caused things with causes. This stands everything on its head, and they lull their wakeful reason to sleep, until they are dreaming.

Footnotes:

214. IV. The Divine truth in the literal sense of the Word is in its fulness, holiness and power.

The Word in its literal sense is in its fulness, holiness and power, because the two prior or interior senses, called the spiritual and celestial senses, are simultaneously present in the natural or literal sense, as stated above (210, 212). But it needs to be explained further in what way they are simultaneously present. In heaven and in the world there exist two kinds of order, successive and simultaneous order. In the case of successive order one comes after and follows the other from highest to lowest; in simultaneous order, however, one is alongside the other from inmost to outermost. Successive order is like a column which spreads out in steps from top to bottom; but simultaneous order is like an object made up of cohering rings from centre to outermost surface.

[2] It must now be explained how at the lowest level successive order becomes simultaneous. It is like this. The highest levels of a successive order become the inmost parts of a simultaneous order, and the lowest levels of a successive order become the outermost parts of a simultaneous order. This can be illustrated by a stepped column subsiding to become a coherent object in a single plane. So the simultaneous is formed from the successive, and this operates in every single thing in the natural world, and in every single thing in the spiritual world. For everywhere there is a first, middle and last, and the first reaches out through the middle and advances towards its last. But it needs to be clearly understood that it is degrees of purity which determine the development of either order.

[3] Now if we apply this to the Word, the celestial, spiritual and natural proceed from the Lord in successive order, and are in simultaneous order at the last level. So that is how the celestial and spiritual senses of the Word are simultaneously present in its natural sense. Once this has been grasped, it can be seen how the natural sense of the Word is the container, basis and support of its spiritual and celestial senses, as well as how Divine good and Divine truth are present in the literal sense of the Word in their fulness, holiness and power. From this it can be established that the Word in its literal sense is the real Word, for it contains in itself spirit and life. This is what the Lord said:

The words which I speak to you are spirit and life, John 6:63.

For the Lord uttered His words in their natural sense. The celestial and spiritual senses without the natural sense are not the Word, for that would be like spirit and life without a body; and they are (as said before in 213) like a palace which has no foundations.