Produced by William J. Rotella
Angelic Wisdom about DIVINE PROVIDENCE
by
Emanuel Swedenborg
Translation By
Standard Edition
Originally published in Latin at Amsterdam 1764
First English translation published in U.S.A. 1851
51st Printing, 1975
(5th Printing Wunsch Translation).
ISBN 0-87785-059-3 (Student)0-87785-060-7 (Trade)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-30441
Manufactured in the United States of America
Translator's Preface
I. What Divine Providence Is
II. The Goal of Divine Providence
III. The Outlook of Divine Providence
IV. Providence has its Laws
V. Its Regard for Human Freedom and Reason
VI. Even in the Struggle against Evil
VII. The Law of Noncompulsion
VIII. The Law of Overt Guidance
IX. The Law of Hidden Operation
X. Divine Providence and Human Prudence
XI. Binding Time and Eternity
XII. The Law Guarding against Profanation
XIII. Laws of Tolerance in the Laws of Providence
XIV. Why Evil is Permitted
XV. Providence Attends the Evil and the Good
XVI. Providence and Prudence in the Appropriation of Good and Evil to Man
XVII. The Salvation of All the Design of Providence
XVIII. The Steadfast Observance of its Laws by Providence
Index of Scripture Passages
Subject Index
[1]Swedenborg gave neither numbers nor brief captions to the chapters ofthe book. Nor did he prefix a recital of all the propositions andsubsidiary propositions to come in the book; this was the work of theLatin editor. For this the above, giving the reader a succinct idea ofthe book's contents, is substituted. Tr.
THE Book
The reader will find in this book a firm assurance of God's care ofmankind as a whole and of each human being. The assurance is rested inGod's infinite love and wisdom, the love pure mercy, the wisdom givinglove its ways and means. It is further grounded in an interpretation ofthe universe as a spiritual-natural world, an interpretation fully setforth in the earlier book, Divine Love and Wisdom, on which the presentwork draws heavily. As there is a world of the spirit, no view ofprovidence can be adequate which does not take that world into account.For in that world must be channels for the outreach of God's care to thehuman spirit. There also any eternal goal—such as a heaven from the humanrace—must exist. A view of providence limited to the horizons of thepassing existence can hardly resemble the care which the eternal Godtakes of men and women who, besides possessing perishable bodies, arethemselves creatures of the spirit and immortal. The full title of thebook, Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence, implies that its author,in an other-world experience, had at hand the knowledge which men andwomen in heaven have of God's care. Who should know the divine guidanceif not the men and women in heaven who have obviously enjoyed it? "Thelaws of divine providence, hither