Divine Love and Wisdom (Rogers) n. 146

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146. The Divine love and wisdom which emanate from the Lord as the sun and which constitute the warmth and light in heaven are the emanating Divine which is the Holy Spirit. In The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord we showed that God is one in person and essence, who has in Him a Trinity, and that that God is the Lord. We showed as well that the Trinity in Him is called the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-the Divine which is the origin of all else being called the Father, the Divine Humanity the Son, and the emanating Divine the Holy Spirit. People call the Holy Spirit the emanating Divine, and yet no one knows why it is called emanating. People do not know because they have not known before that the Lord appears to angels as the sun, and that from that sun emanates warmth which in its essence is Divine love, and light which in its essence is Divine wisdom. As long as this remained unknown, people could not but suppose that the emanating Divine was a distinct Divine entity, which is also the reason we find it said in the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity that there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and still another of the Holy Spirit. [2] Now, however, when it is known that the Lord appears as a sun, a proper idea may be had of the emanating Divine which is called the Holy Spirit-namely, that it is inseparable from the Lord, but emanates from Him like heat and light from the sun. This, too, is the reason that the more love and wisdom angels possess, the more Divine warmth and light they have. Without knowing that the Lord appears in the spiritual world as the sun, and that His Divinity emanates from it in the way described, no one could ever know what is meant by its emanating-whether it means, for example, only a communication of those qualities which are properties of the Father and Son, or simply enlightenment and instruction. But even so, it is not the mark of enlightened reason to acknowledge it as a distinct Divine entity, and to call it a God and set it apart, when it is also known that there is one God, and that one omnipresent.


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