ANGELIC WISDOM ***
Produced by William J. Rotella
Angelic Wisdom about DIVINE PROVIDENCE
by
Emanuel Swedenborg
Translation By
WILLIAM FREDERIC WUNSCH
_Standard Edition_
SWEDENBORG FOUNDATION INCORPORATED NEW YORK ESTABLISHED IN 1850
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
CONTENTS[1]
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 of the book. Nor did he prefix a recital of all the propositions and subsidiary propositions to come in the book; this was the work of the Latin editor. For this the above, giving the reader a succinct idea of the book's contents, is substituted. _Tr._
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
THE Book
The reader will find in this book a firm assurance of God's care of mankind as a whole and of each human being. The assurance is rested in God's infinite love and wisdom, the love pure mercy, the wisdom giving love its ways and means. It is further grounded in an interpretation of the universe as a spiritual-natural world, an interpretation fully set forth in the earlier book, _Divine Love and Wisdom_, on which the present work draws heavily. As there is a world of the spirit, no view of providence 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 the human spirit. There also any eternal goal--such as a heaven from the human race--must exist. A view of providence limited to the horizons of the passing existence can hardly resemble the care which the eternal God takes of men and women who, besides possessing perishable bodies, are themselves creatures of the spirit and immortal. The full title of the book, _Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence_, implies that its author, in an other-world experience, had at hand the knowledge which men and women in heaven have of God's care. Who should know the divine guidance if not the men and women in heaven who have obviously enjoyed it? "The laws of divine providence, hitherto hidden with angels in their wisdom, are to be revealed now" (n. 70).
