4. God alone, thus the Lord, is love itself, because He is life itself; and angels and people are recipients of life. This observation will be clarified in a number of places in my treatises on Divine Providence and on Life.* Here we will say only that the Lord, who is God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite, while people and angels are created and finite; and because the Lord is uncreated and infinite, He is the underlying that-which-is or being itself which is called Jehovah,** and is life itself or life in itself. From Him who is uncreated, infinite, being itself and life itself, no one can be created directly, because the Divine is one and indivisible. Rather he must be created out of elements already created and finite, so formed that the Divine can be present in them. [2] Because people and angels are such creations, they are recipients of life. Consequently, if anyone allows himself to be so led astray in his thinking as to suppose he is not a recipient of life, but is life, he cannot be averted from the thought that he is God. A person's feeling as though he were life and so believing it to be the case is owing to a fallacious appearance; for in any instrumental cause, the principal cause is invariably perceived as inseparable from it. That the Lord is life in Himself, He Himself teaches in John:
...as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son (also) to have life in Himself... (John 5:26)
And He says that He is "the life" (John 11:25, 14:6). Now since life and love are one (as is apparent from the discussions above in nos. 1, 2), it follows that because the Lord is life itself, He is love itself. * I.e., The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem. ** Cf. Exodus 3:14, 15.
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