Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

by Emanuel Swedenborg

[4] Man's second state—of reformation—is his state when he begins to think of heaven for the joy there, thus of God from whom he has heaven's joy. But at first the thought comes from the enjoyment of self-love; to him heaven's joy is that enjoyment. While the enjoyments of that love and of the evils flowing from it rule, moreover, he cannot but think that to gain heaven is to pour out prayers, hear sermons, observe the Supper, give to the poor, help the needy, make offerings to churches, contribute to hospitals, and the like. In this state a man is persuaded that merely to think about what religion teaches, whether this is called faith or called faith and charity, is to be saved. He is so minded because he gives no thought to the evils in the enjoyments of which he is. While those enjoyments remain, the evils do. The enjoyments of the evils are from the lust for them which continually inspires them and, when no fear restrains, brings them to pass.

[5] While evils remain in the lusts of love for them and so in one's enjoyments, there is no faith, piety, charity or worship except in externals, which seem real in the world's sight, but are not. They may be likened to waters flowing from an impure fountain, which one cannot drink. While a man is such that he thinks about heaven and God from religion but gives no thought to evils as sins, he is still in the first state. He comes into the second state, which is one of reformation, when he begins to think that there is such a thing as sin and still more when he thinks that a given evil is a sin, explores it somewhat in himself, and does not will it.

[6] Man's third state, which is one of regeneration, sets in and continues from the former. It begins when a man desists from evils as sins, progresses as he shuns them, and is perfected as he battles against them. Then as he conquers from the Lord he is regenerated. The order of his life is changed; from natural he becomes spiritual; the natural separated from the spiritual is in disorder and the spiritual is in order. The regenerated man acts from charity and makes what is of his faith a part of his charity. But he becomes spiritual only in the measure in which he is in truths. Everyone is regenerated by means of truths and of a life in accord with them; by truths he knows life and by his life he does the truths. So he unites good and truth, which is the spiritual marriage in which heaven is.

85.* Man is reformed and regenerated by means of the two faculties called rationality and liberty, and cannot be reformed or regenerated without them, because it is by means of rationality that he can understand and know what is evil and what is good, and hence what is false and true, and by means of liberty that he can will what he understands and knows. But while the enjoyment of an evil love rules him he cannot will good and truth freely or make them a matter of his reason, and therefore cannot appropriate them to him. For, as was shown above, what a man does in freedom from reason is appropriated to him as his, and unless it is so appropriated, he is not reformed and regenerated. He acts from the enjoyment of a love of good and truth for the first time when the enjoyment of love for the evil and false has been removed. Two opposite kinds of enjoyments of love at one and the same time are impossible. To act from the enjoyment of love is to act freely and is also to act according to reason, inasmuch as the reason favors the love.

* This number must be kept though there is no number 84; long established references to Swedenborg's books make it necessary to keep the numbering in the Latin original.

86. Because an evil man as well as a good man has rationality and liberty, the evil man as well as the good can understand truth and do good. The evil man cannot do this in freedom according to reason, while a good man can; for the evil man is in the enjoyment of a love of evil, the good man in the enjoyment of a love of good. The truth which an evil man understands and the good he does are therefore not appropriated to him, as they are to the good man, and aside from appropriation there is no reformation or regeneration. With the evil man evils with their falsities occupy the center, as it were, and goods with their truths the circumference, but goods with their truths the center with the good man and evils with their falsities the periphery. In each case what is at the center is diffused to the circumference, as heat is from a fiery center and cold from an icy one. Thus with the wicked the good at the circumference is defiled by evils at the center, and with the good evils at the circumference grow mild from the good at the center. For this reason evils do not condemn a regenerating man, nor do goods save the unregenerate.

87. (v) A man can be reformed and regenerated by means of the two faculties so far as he can be led by them to acknowledge that all truth and good which he thinks and does are from the Lord and not from himself. What reformation and regeneration are has been told just above, likewise that man is reformed and regenerated by means of the two faculties of rationality and liberty. Because it is done by those faculties, something more is to be said of them. From rationality a man can understand and from liberty he can will, doing each as of himself. Yet he does not have the ability to will good in freedom and to do it in accord with reason unless he is regenerated. An evil man can will only evil in freedom and do it according to his thinking, which by confirmations he has made to be his reasoning. For evil can be confirmed as well as good, but is confirmed by fallacies and appearances which then become falsities; evil so confirmed seems to accord with reason.

88. Anyone thinking from interior understanding can see that the power to will and the power to understand are not from man, but from Him who has power itself, that is, power in its essence. Only think whence power is. Is it not from Him who has it in its full might, that is, who possesses it in and from Himself? Power in itself, therefore, is divine. All power must have a supply on which to draw and direction from an interior or higher self. Of itself the eye cannot see, nor the ear hear, nor the mouth speak, nor the hand do; there must be supply and direction from the mind. Nor can the mind of itself think or will this or that unless something more interior or higher determines the mind to it. The same is true of the power to understand and the power to will. These are possible only from Him who has in Himself the power of willing and understanding.

[2] It is plain, then, that the two faculties called rationality and liberty are from the Lord and not from man. Man can therefore will or understand something only as if of himself, and not of himself. Anyone can confirm the truth of this for himself who knows and believes that the will to good and the understanding of truth are wholly from the Lord, and not from man. The Word teaches that man can take nothing of himself and do nothing of himself (Jn 3:27; 15:5).

89. As all willing is from love and all understanding is from wisdom, the ability to will is from divine love, and the ability to understand is from divine wisdom; thus both are from the Lord who is divine love itself and divine wisdom itself. Hence to act in freedom according to reason has no other source. Everyone acts in freedom because, like love, freedom cannot be separated from willing. But there is interior and exterior willing, and a man can act upon the exterior without acting at the same time on the interior willing; so hypocrite and flatterer act. Exterior willing, however, is still from freedom, being from a love of appearing other than one is, or from love of an evil which the person intends in the love of his inner will. An evil man, however, as has been said, cannot in freedom according to reason do anything but evil; he cannot do good in freedom according to reason; he can do good, to be sure, but not in the inner freedom which is his own, from which the outer freedom has its character of not being good.