October 23, 2020

Doing From Love What Wisdom Teaches

Selection from Divine Love and Wisdom ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

In man love and wisdom appear as two separate things, yet in themselves they are one distinctly, because with man wisdom is such as the love is, and love is such as the wisdom is.

• The wisdom that does not make one with its love appears to be wisdom, but it is not

• The love that does not make one with its wisdom appears to be the love of wisdom, but it is not 

— for the one must derive its essence and its life reciprocally from the other. 

With man love and wisdom appear as two separate things, because with him the capacity for understanding may be elevated into the light of heaven, but not the capacity for loving, except so far as he acts according to his understanding. Any apparent wisdom, therefore, which does not make one with the love of wisdom, sinks back into the love which does make one with it - this may be a love of unwisdom, yea, of insanity. Thus a man may know from wisdom that he ought to do this or that, and yet he does not do it, because he does not love it. 

But so far as a man does from love what wisdom teaches, he is an image of God.

(Divine Love and Wisdom 39)