“The Lord God Jesus Christ reigns, whose kingdom shall be for ages of ages.” - True Christian Religion §791
Kempton New Church

Week 2
Day 2

    Listen:

The Most Excellent Use

The use of conjugial love is the most excellent of all uses, because therefrom comes the procreation of the human race, and from the human race the angelic heaven. —Conjugial Love 183

The Lord’s Divine Providence and the Most Excellent of All Uses

Genesis 1:27-28. And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be·fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.

DP 27. The Lord’s Divine Providence has as its end a heaven from the human race. Since heaven is from the human race, and heaven is an abiding with the Lord to eternity, it follows that this was the Lord’s end in creation; and since heaven was the end in creation this is the end of His Divine providence. The Lord did not create the universe for His own sake, but for the sake of those with whom He is to be in heaven; since spiritual love is such that it wishes to give its own to another; and so far as it can do this, it is in its being [esse], in its peace, and in its blessedness. Spiritual love derives this from the Lord’s Divine love, which is such infinitely. From this it follows, that the Divine love and the Divine providence therefrom have as their end a heaven consisting of men who have become or are becoming angels, upon whom the Lord is able to bestow all the blessings and felicities that belong to love and wisdom, and to communicate these from Himself in them.

CL 386. That two universal spheres proceed from the Lord for the conservation of the universe in the state created; one of which is the sphere of procreating, and the other the sphere of protecting what is procreated. The Divine, proceeding from the Lord, is called a sphere because it proceeds from Him, surrounds Him, fills each world, the spiritual and the natural, and works out the effects of the ends which the Lord predestined in the creation…. From the Lord through the sun [of the spiritual world] proceeds the sphere of heat and light, or what is the same the sphere of love and wisdom, for the working out of ends, which are uses. But that sphere is designated by different names, according to the uses; the Divine sphere looking to the preservation of the universe through successive generations, in the state created, is called the sphere of procreating; and the Divine sphere looking to the preservation of the generations in their beginnings, and afterwards in their progressions, is called the sphere of protecting what is procreated…. The operations of uses through these spheres are the Divine Providence.

CL 391. It was said above (n. 386), that the operations of uses by the Lord, through the spheres going forth from Him, are the Divine Providence. … But because with the living, to whom freedom of choice is left, this cannot be done immediately by the Lord, it is done mediately, through His love implanted in fathers, mothers, and nurses. That their love is love from the Lord with them they do not know, because they do not perceive the influx, still less do they perceive the omnipresence of the Lord. But who does not see that it is not of nature, but of the Divine Providence operating within nature, by nature? And that there could be no such universal except from God, through some spiritual sun which is in the center of the universe, and whose operation, because without space and time, is instant and present from things first in the last? But it shall be told in what follows how this Divine operation, which is the Lord’s Divine Providence, is received by animate beings. That they are not able to protect and sustain themselves is not the cause of the love which moves mothers and fathers to protect and sustain infants, but is a rational cause from that love falling into the understanding. For from this cause alone, without the love that inspired and inspires it, or without a law and a penalty enforcing it, man would no more provide for infants than a statue.

Questions and Comments
  1. What does it mean for the end of the Lord’s Divine Providence to be a heaven from the human race?
  2. Without the sphere from the Lord of “protecting what is procreated,” CL 391 says “man [homo] would no more provide for infants than a statue.” How does this teaching strike you?
  3. How do the spheres of procreating and protecting what is procreated affect people whether they are parents or not?
  4. What challenges are there to these two spheres in our surrounding culture that we should mindful of?
  5. Do evil spirits want more children to be born?
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