Conjugial Love #130

130. 11. Conjugial love depends on the state of the church in a person, because it depends on the state of his wisdom. We have said several times before that conjugial love depends on the state of wisdom in a person, and we will be saying it several times again after this. We will explain here, therefore, what wisdom is, and show that it is inseparably bound up with the church.

People are capable of knowledge, intelligence and wisdom. Knowledge has to do with concepts, intelligence with reason, and wisdom with life.

Regarded in its fullness, wisdom has to do with concepts, reason and life at the same time. Concepts come first; reason is formed by means of them, and wisdom by both concepts and reason together - and this when a person lives reasonably or rationally according to truths formed as concepts.

Wisdom, therefore, has to do with both reason and life together. It is on the way to becoming wisdom when it is a matter of reason first and consequently of life; but it is wisdom when it has become a matter of life first and consequently of reason.

The most ancient people in this world did not acknowledge any other wisdom than wisdom of life. This was the wisdom of those who were formerly called sages. The ancients, however, who came after those most ancient people, recognized as wisdom a wisdom of reason, and they were called philosophers. But today, many even call knowledge wisdom, for the educated, the learned, and the merely knowledgeable are called wise. Thus has wisdom fallen from its peak to its valley.

[2] Nevertheless, something must also be said respecting what wisdom is in its rise, progress, and then full state.

Concerns that have to do with the church and are called spiritual have their seat in the inmost recesses in a person. Concerns that have to do with the civil state and are called political occupy a position below them. And concerns that have to do with knowledge, experience and skill and are called natural - these form their footstool.

Concerns that have to do with the church and are called spiritual have their seat in the inmost recesses in a person, because they are connected with heaven and through heaven with the Lord. For it is just these concerns that enter a person from the Lord through heaven.

Concerns that have to do with the civil state and are called political occupy a position below spiritual matters, because they are connected with the world, since they have to do with the world. For they are the statutes, laws and regulations by which men are bound, in order that they may be formed into a stable and united society and state.

Concerns that have to do with knowledge, experience and skill and are called natural - these form the footstool, because they are closely connected with the five senses of the body, and the senses are the lowest elements, on which rest, so to speak, the interior elements that have to do with the mind and the inmost elements that have to do with the soul.

[3] Now because concerns that have to do with the church and are called spiritual have their seat in the inmost regions, and whatever has its seat in the inmost regions forms the head, and because the concerns that follow next below them, which are called political, form the body, and the lowest concerns which are called natural form the feet, it follows that when these three come one after the other in their proper order, a person is a proper human being. For one level then flows down into the next, in a manner similar to the way activities of the head flow down into the body and through the body to the feet. So do spiritual concerns flow down into political concerns, and through political concerns into natural ones.

Furthermore, because spiritual concerns reside in the light of heaven, it is apparent that they illumine with their light the concerns that follow in order, and animate them with their warmth (which is love), and that when this happens, a person has wisdom.

[4] Since wisdom is, as we said above, a matter of life first and consequently of reason, the question arises, what wisdom of life is. In brief summary, it is this: to refrain from evils because they are harmful to the soul, harmful to the civil state, and harmful to the body, and to do good things because they are of benefit to the soul, to the civil state, and to the body.

This is the wisdom that is meant by the wisdom to which conjugial love attaches itself. For it attaches itself through wisdom's shunning the evil of adultery as a pestilence injurious to the soul, to the civil state, and to the body. And because this wisdom springs from spiritual concerns which have to do with the church, it follows that conjugial love depends on the state of the church in a person, because it depends on the state of his wisdom. This also means, as we have frequently said before, that a person is in a state of truly conjugial love to the degree that he becomes spiritual. For a person becomes spiritual through the spiritual things of the church.

More on the wisdom to which conjugial love joins itself may be seen below in nos. 163, 164, and 165.