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Divine Love and Wisdom
by Lee Woofenden
Essay, Commentary, Bibliography
ES Quotes
Even though love and wisdom seem to be two separate things in us, essentially they are distinguishably one. This is because the quality of our love determines the quality of our wisdom and the quality of our wisdom the quality of our love. Any wisdom that is not united to our love seems like wisdom, but it is not; and any love that is not united to our wisdom seems like wisdom's love even though it is not. Each gets its essence and its life from the other in mutual fashion.
Love that has been polluted in and by our discernment becomes limited to nature, our senses, and our bodies. An earthly love separated from spiritual love is opposed to spiritual love. This is because earthly love is love for ourselves and love for the world, and spiritual love is love for the Lord and love for our neighbor. Love for ourselves and for the world looks downward and outward, and love for the Lord looks upward and inward. So when an earthly love is separated from spiritual love, it cannot be raised away from our self-absorption. It remains immersed in it and even mired in it, to the extent that it loves it. If our discernment does rise up and see elements of wisdom in heaven's light, then our love drags it back down and unites it to itself in its self-absorption. There it either discards the elements of wisdom or distorts them or arranges them outside itself sothat it can mouth them for the sake of reputation. (DLW n. 424.l9; Dole)
Love is our life. For most people, the existence of love is a given, but the nature of love is a mystery. As for the existence of love, this we know from everyday language. We say that someone loves us, that monarchs love their subjects, and that subjects love their monarch. We say that a husband loves his wife and that a mother loves her children, and vice versa. We say that people love their country, their fellow citizens, their neighbor. We use the same language about impersonal objects, saying that someone loves this or that thing.
Even though the word "love" is so commonly on our tongues, still hardly anyone knows what love is. When we stop to think about it, we find that we cannot form any image of it in our thoughts, so we say either that it is not really anything or that it is simply something that flows into us from our sight, hearing, touch, and conversation and therefore influences us. We are wholly unaware that it is our very life--not just the general life of our whole body and of all our thoughts, but the life of their every least detail. Wise people can grasp this when you ask, "If you take away the effects of love, can you think anything? Can you do anything? As the effects of love lose their warmth, do not thought and speech and action lose theirs as well? Do they not warm up as love warms up?" Still, the grasp of these wise people is not based on the thought that love is our life, but on their experience that this is how things happen. (DLW n. 1; Dole)
Synopsis
Divine Love and Wisdom, by Emanuel Swedenborg, is the book for anyone who wants to understand the big picture of reality. Yes, it’s a mind-bender. But those who make the mental effort to grasp its contents will be well on their way to understanding the fundamental nature of the universe.
Here are a few of the basics.
Divine love is the substance of God. This love wants to love others outside of itself, who can also love God in return. Real love is mutual. And real love wants to make others happy by giving them what is its own.
Divine wisdom is the form of God. It is the structure by which love acts. This wisdom expresses itself in the spiritual and physical laws that govern the universe, as well as in the infinite variety of compositions, shapes, forms, and organisms that make up the universe.
When love and wisdom work together they always result in some sort of action. Love is never content just to feel. It must act. It does so by means of all the knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom at its disposal, so that its actions will be constructive and useful.
This “trinity” of love, wisdom, and action is present in everything that exists, including us as human beings. As we come to understand divine love and wisdom more fully, we come to understand ourselves, the spiritual and physical worlds around us, and the God from whom it all emanates. top
Essay
Divine love and wisdom is the core reality of God and the the universe.
Yes, I said “is,” not “are.” Even though we can mentally distinguish them from each other, the love and wisdom that form the core of God make one being, not two.
In abstract terms, divine love is the substance of God, while divine wisdom is the form of God. Without substance there can be no form, and without form there can be no substance. Together, substance and form make a single reality—and that reality is God.
But we humans have a hard time thinking in pure abstractions. We need something concrete to rest our minds on.
Something concrete . . . . Okay, how about a bridge? Concrete and steel. Very solid. Very real to our senses.
A bridge also has substance and form. The substance is . . . well . . . the concrete and the steel. The form is the structure and shape of the parts that make up the bridge—the pylons, the girders, the slabs of concrete, and the way all of these parts are put together. The form is also the overall “bridgy” shape of the bridge. Without both the materials and the shape of the bridge, there would be no bridge. Together, the substance and the form of the bridge is the bridge.
The same goes for anything else we can possibly think of. For something to have real existence, there must be some stuff that it is made of, and that stuff must be in some specific form. And, because everything in the universe is created from divine love and wisdom, the stuff that things are made of reflects divine love, and their form reflects divine wisdom.
Understanding divine love and wisdom is the key to understanding not only God, but the entire universe and everything in it, both spiritual and material.
Fortunately, the basics of divine love and wisdom are easy to understand. As outlined above, love is the underlying substance of everything, while wisdom is the underlying form of everything. And if we put these two together, a third emerges from them. That third element is action.
When love and wisdom are together, they always move toward expressing themselves in some practical, useful way. Without action they remain theoretical entities, which tend to wither and die. But with action, they come to fruition in some real outward expression—and that expression completes them and gives them real existence. This action also provides a reason for their existence.
Let’s go back to the example of the bridge. Now, a bridge is a stationary object, so it doesn’t exactly have action. What it has instead is function. What the bridge “does” is provide a way for people to travel easily across some barrier, such as a river. That function gives both meaning and reality to the bridge’s existence. If the bridge did not provide some useful function, why would the architects have bothered designing it, and the builders building it? The function of the bridge is its version of divine action.
With this concrete example in mind, let’s lift our minds up once again to divine love, wisdom, and action.
Divine love, wisdom, and action are God’s love, wisdom, and action. From this point of view, God is not some theoretical, abstract concept, but a very human being. Conversely, we humans are not human only because we have human-shaped bodies—although like the concrete and steel of the bridge, we need bodies to function. No, we are humans because of our capacity to love unselfishly and to think rationally, as well as our ability to act according to what we love and be guided by what we think. We have these human characteristics because we are created “in the image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26-27). In other words, we are human because of God's humanity.
The core of God’s humanity is divine love. And the basic nature of that love is to love others, and to give them joy and happiness from within itself. This is both the motive and the force behind God’s creation of the universe. God’s love desired others to love, who could also love God in return. So it was from the love of God that we humans were created, and the entire universe around us.
The form and direction of God’s humanity is divine wisdom. Love by itself cannot accomplish anything. But when it is guided by knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, it is directed in specific ways that accomplish its desires. In God’s case, divine wisdom provided both the grand plan of creation and the infinite details that all work together to make this the vast, intricate universe that it is. We can think of divine wisdom as being expressed in all the physical and spiritual laws of the universe that cause each part to contribute to the whole in its own unique way.
When that union of infinite divine love and infinite divine wisdom works in perfect balance—as it always does—the result is everything we see around us and everything we are aware of within ourselves and in our relationships with others. Of course, divine love and wisdom did not create anything evil. But that’s a subject for an entire essay of its own.
We will never fully understand the union of divine love and wisdom as it exists in God. But we can see its results everywhere we look. And this helps us to understand ourselves and the physical and spiritual worlds in which we live. In our own small way, it also helps us to understand the mind of God. top
Commentary
In the Christian tradition, 1 John 4:8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” And the teaching that God loves those whom God has created is found throughout the Scriptures.
God’s wisdom is expressed as “the Word” in the opening verses of the Gospel of John, where it is said both to be with God and to be God (John 1:1).
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the Gospels have traditionally been understood as three distinct persons equally coexisting in God. But from a Swedenborgian perspective, these can be understood better by thinking of the Father as the divine love that is the core reality of God; of the Son as the divine wisdom of God, or as John 1:14 expresses it, “the Word made flesh”; and of the Holy Spirit as the divine action, which is everything God says and does toward those whom God has created. top
Bibliography
Hill, George T. Creative Love. Manchester, England: The New Church College, 1975. This 24 page booklet offers a lecture with diagrams illustrating the nature and action of divine love and wisdom.
Hite, Lewis Field. Ultimate Reality. Swedenborg Society Transactions, No. 3. London: Swedenborg Society, 1936.
Hitchcock John L. Atoms, Snowflakes, and God: The Convergence of Science and Religion. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1986. In the course of addressing the congruence of science and religion, this book covers concepts of reality that have much in common with Swedenborg’s treatment of divine love and wisdom.
Swedenborg, Emanuel. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and about Divine Wisdom. Translated by George F. Dole. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2003. top
Note: This module is a draft. It has not yet been fully edited or checked for conformance to the editorial guidelines.
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Divine Love and Wisdom