Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

by Emanuel Swedenborg

I stand at the door, and knock; if anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me (3:20).

The door is opened by man's removing evil, fleeing and turning away from it as infernal and diabolical. Whether one says "evil" or "the devil," it is one and the same, in turn whether one says "good" or "the Lord," for within all good is the Lord and within all evil is the devil. From these considerations the truth of this proposition is plain.

[4] 3. If good with its truth were introduced before or further than evil with its falsity is removed, man would depart from the good and go back to his evil. This is because evil would be the stronger, and what is stronger conquers, eventually if not then. As long as evil is stronger, good cannot be introduced into the inner chambers but only into the entry hall; for evil and good, as we said, cannot exist together, and what is in the entry hall is removed by its enemy in the chamber. Thus good is receded from and evil is returned to, which is the worst kind of profanation.

[5] Furthermore, it is the enjoyment of man's life to love himself and the world above all else. This enjoyment cannot be removed in a moment, but only gradually. In the measure in which it remains in man, evil is stronger in him and can be removed only as self-love becomes a love of uses, or as the love of ruling is not for its own sake but for the sake of uses. Uses then make the head, and self-love or the love of ruling is at first the body under the head and finally the feet, on which to walk. Who does not see that good should be the head, and that when it is, the Lord is there? Good and use are one. Who does not see that when evil is the head, the devil is there? As civil and moral good and, in its external form, spiritual good, too, are still to be received, who does not see that these then constitute the feet and the soles of the feet, and are trodden on?

[6] Inasmuch, then, as man's state of life is to be inverted so that what is uppermost may be lowermost, and the inversion cannot be instantaneous, for the chief enjoyment of his life, coming of self-love and the love of ruling, can be diminished and turned into a love of uses only gradually, the Lord cannot introduce good sooner or further than this evil is removed; done earlier or further, man would recede from good and return to his evil.

[7] 4. When man is in evil many truths may be introduced into his understanding and kept in memory, and still not be profaned. This is because the understanding does not flow into the will, but the will into the understanding. As the understanding does not flow into the will, many truths can be received by the understanding and held in memory and still not be mingled with the evil in the will, and the holy thus not profaned. Moreover, it is incumbent on everyone to learn truths from the Word or from preaching, to lay them up in the memory and to think about them. For by truths held in the memory and entering into the thought, the understanding is to teach the will, that is, the man, what he should do. This is therefore the chief means of reformation. Truths that are only in the understanding and thence in the memory are not in man but outside him.

[8] Man's memory may be compared to the ruminatory stomach of certain animals in which they put their food; as long as it is there, it is not in but outside their body; as they draw it thence and consume it, it becomes part of their life, and their body is nourished. The food in man's memory is not material but spiritual, namely truths, rightly knowledges; so far as he takes them thence by thinking, which is like ruminating, his spiritual mind is nourished. It is the will's love that has the desire and the appetite, so to speak, and that causes them to be taken thence and to be nourishing. If that love is evil, it desires or has an appetite for what is unclean, but if good, for what is clean, and sets aside, rejects and casts out what is unsuitable; this is done in various ways.

[9] 5. But the Lord in His divine providence takes the greatest care that truths are not received from the understanding by the will sooner or more largely than man as of himself removes evil in his external man. For what is from the will enters man, is appropriated to him, and becomes part of his life, and in that life, which is man's from the will, evil and good cannot exist together, for so he would perish. The two may, however, be in the understanding, where they are called falsities of evil and truths of good, and without being mingled; else man could not behold evil from good or know good from evil; but there they are distinguishable and separated like the inner and outer sections of a house. When a wicked man thinks and speaks what is good, he is thinking and speaking externally to himself, but inwardly when he thinks and speaks what is evil; his speech, therefore, when he speaks what is good, comes off a wall, as it were. It can be likened to fruit fair outside but wormy and decayed inside, or to the shell, especially, of a serpent's egg.

[10] 6. Should the will welcome truths sooner or in larger measure, it would adulterate good and the understanding would falsify truth by mingling them with evils and falsities. When the will is in evil, it adulterates good in the understanding, and good adulterated in the understanding is evil in the will, for it confirms that evil is good and good is evil. So evil deals with all good, which is its opposite. Evil also falsifies truth, for truth of good is the opposite of the falsity of evil; this is done in the understanding by the will, and not by the understanding alone. Adulterations of good are depicted in the Word by adulteries and falsifications of truth by whoredoms. These adulterations and falsifications are effected by reasonings from the natural man which is in evil, and also by confirmations of appearances in the sense of the letter of the Word.

[11] The love of self, the head of all evils, surpasses other loves in the ability to adulterate goods and falsify truths, and it does this by misuse of the rationality which every man, wicked as well as good, enjoys from the Lord. By confirmations it can in fact make evil look exactly like good and falsity like truth. What can it not do when it can prove by a thousand arguments that nature created itself and then created human beings, animals and plants of every kind, and also prove that by influx from within itself nature causes men to live, to think analytically and to understand wisely? Self-love excels in ability to prove whatever it desires because a certain glamour of varicolored light overlays it. This glamour is the vainglory of that love in being wise and thus also of being eminent and dominant.