Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom — Key Ideas to Explore

Love as the Substance of Life

Swedenborg's opening argument is deceptively simple: if you remove affection that comes from love, thought and action grow cold. He presents this as something a person of discernment can perceive without special knowledge. The text does not define love by its objects—God, neighbor, spouse—but by its function as the substrate of all mental and bodily activity. This reverses the ordinary assumption that we first think, then perhaps feel. For Swedenborg, thought is merely the first effect of life, and sensation and action the second effect. The life itself is love.

This position is not mystical effusion but a rigorous attempt to ground psychology in ontology. He challenges the reader to test the claim by introspection: can any thought occur without some affection? The argument anticipates modern neuroscientific questions about the role of emotion in cognition, though Swedenborg frames it within a theological cosmology where divine love is the source of all being.

The Two Capacities: Rationality and Freedom

A central section of the excerpts examines two capacities that every human possesses from the Lord: rationality (the ability to understand) and freedom (the ability to will). Swedenborg reports that even evil spirits—those he calls devils—could perceive the arcana of angelic wisdom as clearly as good spirits when their affection for knowing was excited. They declared they could will according to those truths but did not wish to. This observation serves to distinguish capacity from use: the power to understand and choose is universal, but its direction depends on the ruling love.

The text insists that a bad man abuses these capacities to confirm evils and falsities, while a good man uses them to confirm goods and truths. Swedenborg illustrates this by noting that any proposition, however false, can be confirmed by an ingenious person until the light of truth is extinguished. He cites Machiavelli and the possibility of filling volumes with justifications for murder, adultery, and atheism. The natural man, he argues, can raise his understanding into higher light only so far as the delight of his love permits; beyond that, truth is falsified or contemptuously left behind.

The Limits of Confirmation and the Role of Experience

Swedenborg's method relies heavily on reported spiritual experiences. He writes of listening to evil spirits and observing their capacity to understand truths they rejected. This empirical stance—within the framework of his claimed visionary encounters—gives the work a distinctive texture: it is not merely abstract theology but a record of what he says he has witnessed in the spiritual world. The reader is asked to consider that the wicked equally with the good possess freedom, because the Lord dwells in every person in both capacities.

The text also warns against the seduction of confirmation. Swedenborg notes that when falsities are confirmed they appear in a delusive light, while truths become obscure. He advises setting aside confirmations and viewing a proposition from one's own rationality to see its falsity. This epistemological caution is woven into a larger argument about the nature of divine providence and human responsibility. The excerpts do not reveal the full architecture of Swedenborg's system, but they show a thinker deeply concerned with how knowledge and will interact—and how easily the mind can deceive itself.

Readers approaching this work should set aside expectations of conventional devotional literature. Swedenborg writes as a systematic philosopher who happens to draw on reported spiritual experiences. The text rewards careful attention to its definitions and distinctions, particularly the recurring contrast between capacity and use. Those interested in the history of psychology, rationalist theology, or eighteenth-century thought will find here a rigorous attempt to map the structure of human consciousness onto a divine ground.

That rainy afternoon, Swedenborg’s claim that love is life itself—not feeling but substance—settled into me like weight. I kept circling his idea that truth is useless unless it serves affection. Later, drying the pages, my fingers found another volume waiting: Sermons by the Fathers of the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle, Volume VI. — Reading Companion. Its quiet homilies seemed to answer his abstractions with ordinary kindness.