- These essentials of divine love were the reason the universe was created, 46
and they are the reason it is maintained.By examining and scrutinizing the
three essentials of divine love, one can come to see that they were the rea-
son for creation. The first essential, loving others outside of himself,was a
reason for creation in that the universe is outside God (just as the world
is outside the sun). The universe is something to which God could
extend his love and in which he could put his love into action and so find
rest. We read that after God had created heaven and earth he rested; and
that he made the Sabbath day for that reason (Genesis 2 : 2 – 3 ).
You can see that the second essential, God’s wanting to be one with oth-
ers,was also a reason for creation from the fact that people were created in
the image and likeness of God. The “image” and the “likeness” mean that
we were made as forms that are receptive to love and wisdom from God—
forms that God could be one with, and on whose account he could be
one with all the other things in the universe, which are all nothing but
means. A connection with the final cause is also a connection with the
intermediate causes. Genesis, the Book of Creation, makes it clear that all
things were created for the sake of humankind (Genesis 1 : 28 – 30 ).
That the third essential, God’s blessing others from himself,is a reason
for creation you can see from the fact that the angelic heaven was pro-
vided for everyone who has let God’s love in, a place where the blessings
of all come from God alone.
The three essentials of God’s love are the reason the universe is main-
tained as well, because maintaining is an ongoing creation, just as contin-
uing to exist is the same as perpetually coming into being. Divine love is
the same from eternity to eternity. The nature God’s love has now and
will have in the future is the same nature it had when creating the world.
If you understand all this in the right way, you will be able to see the 47
universe as a coherent work from beginning to end, a work holding pur-
poses, means, and results in indissoluble connection.
Every love has a purpose. All wisdom moves toward fulfilling that
purpose by intermediate means, using those means to achieve effective,
useful results. Therefore it follows that the universe is a work that
embodies divine love, divine wisdom, and usefulness of all kinds. In
every conceivable way, then, it is a coherent work from beginning to end.
The fact that the universe consists of constant useful functions pro-
duced by wisdom under love’s initiative is something all wise people can
contemplate as if they were seeing it in a mirror. Once they acquire a
§47 god the creator & creation 65