Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

by Emanuel Swedenborg

* Cf. Ezekiel 13:10, 11 and Arcana Caelestia n. 739(2), Apocalypse
Explained nn. 237(5) and 644(25). Tr.

[9] Fourth: Confirmation may be mental and not at the same time volitional, but all volitional confirmation is also mental. Let an example serve to illustrate this. Those who confirm faith separate from charity and yet live the life of charity, and in general those who confirm a falsity of doctrine and yet do not live according to it, are in intellectual confirmation but not at the same time volitional. On the other hand, those who confirm falsity of doctrine and live according to it are in volitional and at the same time in intellectual confirmation. For the understanding does not flow into the will, but the will into the understanding. Hence it is plain what falsity of evil is, and what falsity not of evil is. Falsity which is not of evil can be conjoined with good, but falsity of evil cannot be. For falsity which is not of evil is falsity in the understanding but not in the will, while falsity of evil is falsity in the understanding which comes of evil in the will.

[10] Fifth: Confirmation of evil, both volitional and intellectual, but not confirmation only intellectual, causes man to believe that his own prudence is everything and divine providence nothing. Many confirm their own prudence in themselves on the strength of appearances in the world, and yet do not deny divine providence; theirs is only intellectual confirmation. But in others, who deny divine providence at the same time, there is volitional confirmation; this, together with persuasion, is found chiefly in worshipers of nature and also in worshipers of self.

[11] Sixth: Everything confirmed by the will and at the same time by the understanding remains to eternity, but not what is confirmed only by the understanding. For what pertains to the understanding alone is not within man but outside him; it is only in the thought. Nothing enters man and is appropriated to him except what is received by the will; then it comes to be of his life's love. This, it will be shown in the next number, remains to eternity.

319. Everything confirmed by both the will and the understanding remains to eternity because everyone is his own love, and love attaches to the will; also because everyone is his own good or his own evil, for that is called good or evil which belongs to the love. Since man is his own love he is also the form of his love, and may be called the organ of his life's love. It was stated above (n. 279) that the affections of man's love and his resulting thoughts are changes and variations of the state and form of the organic substances of his mind. What these changes and variations are and their nature will be explained now. Some idea of them may be obtained from the alternating expansions and compressions or dilations and contractions in the heart and lungs, called in the heart systole and diastole, and in the lungs respirations. These are reciprocal extensions and retractions or expansions and contractions of their lobes. Such are the changes and variations in the state of the heart and lungs. Such changes and variations occur in the other viscera of the body and in their parts, too, by which the blood and the animal juices are received and transmitted.

[2] Similar changes and variations take place in the organic forms of the mind, which, as we showed above, are the substances underlying man's affections and thoughts. There is a difference. Their expansions and compressions or reciprocal activities in comparison have so much greater perfection that they cannot be described in words of natural language, but only in words of spiritual language, which can sound only as saying that the changes and variations are vortical gyrations in and out, after the manner of perpetually winding spirals wonderfully massed into forms receptive of life.

[3] Now to tell the nature of these purely organic substances and forms in the evil and in the good respectively: in the good the spiral forms travel forward, in the evil backward; the forward-traveling are turned to the Lord and receive influx from Him; the retrogressive are turned towards hell and receive influx from hell. It should be known that in the measure in which they turn backward these forms are open behind and closed in front; and on the other hand in the measure in which they turn forward, they are open in front and closed behind.

[4] This can make plain what kind of form or organ an evil man is and what kind of form or organ a good man is, and that they are turned in opposite directions. As the turning once established cannot be twisted back it is plain that man remains to eternity such as he is at death. The love of man's will is what effects this turning, or is what either converts or inverts, for, as was said above, each person is his own love. Hence, on death, everyone goes the way of his love, the man in a good love to heaven, and the man in an evil love to hell, nor does he rest except in that society where his ruling love is. Marvelous it is that each knows the way; it is as though he scents it.

320. (iv) If man believed, as is the truth, that all good and truth are from the Lord and all evil and falsity from hell, he would not appropriate good to himself and consider it merited, nor evil and make himself responsible for it. This is contrary to the belief of those who have confirmed in themselves the appearance that wisdom and prudence come from man and do not flow in according to the state of the organization of the mind, treated of above (n. 319). It must therefore be demonstrated, and to be done clearly, it will be done in this order:

1. One who confirms in himself the appearance that wisdom and prudence are from man and thus in him as his, must take the view that otherwise he would not be a man, but either a beast or a statue; yet the contrary is true. 2. To believe and think, as is the truth, that all good and truth are from the Lord and all evil and falsity from hell, seems impossible, yet is truly human and hence angelic. 3. So to believe and think is impossible to those who do not acknowledge the divine of the Lord and that evils are sins, but possible for those who make these two acknowledgments. 4. Those who make the two acknowledgments alone reflect on the evils in themselves, and so far as they flee them and are averse to them, they send them back to hell from which they come. 5. So divine providence appropriates neither evil nor good to anyone, but one's own prudence appropriates both.