Divine Love and Wisdom # 253

253. (3) The nature of the natural person in whom the spiritual degree has not been opened and yet is not closed. The spiritual degree is not open and yet not closed in people who have led some life of charity and yet have known little genuine truth. The reason is that this degree is opened by a conjunction of love and wisdom, or of warmth with light. Love alone or spiritual warmth alone does not open it, neither does wisdom alone or spiritual light alone, but both are required in conjunction. Consequently if the genuine truths of which wisdom or spiritual light consists are not known, love lacks the power to open this degree, but only keeps it in the potential and possibility of being opened. This is what we mean by its being not closed.

The case here is similar to the circumstance in the plant kingdom, that warmth alone does not cause seeds and trees to sprout, but warmth accomplishes it in conjunction with light.

[2] It should be known that all truths are matters of spiritual light, and all goods are matters of spiritual warmth, and that good opens the spiritual degree by means of truths; for good produces a useful effect by means of truths, and useful effects are goods of love, which draw their essence from a conjunction of good and truth.

Regarding the lot after death of people in whom the spiritual degree has not been opened and yet is not closed, they are, because they are still natural and not spiritual, in the lowest regions of heaven, where they sometimes suffer hardships; or they are on the fringes of some higher heaven, where they live as though in the twilight of evening. For, as we said previously, the light in heaven and in each society of it decreases as one goes from the center to the borders, at the center being people who possess more Divine truths than others, and on the borders people who possess few truths.

[3] Those who possess few truths are ones who know no more from religion than that there is a God, that the Lord suffered for them, and that charity and faith are the essentials of the church, without taking the trouble to learn what faith and charity are. And yet in fact faith in its essence is truth, and truth is manifold; and charity is all the work that a person does from the Lord in his occupation - work that a person then does from the Lord when he refrains from evils as being sins.

The case is entirely as stated before, that the end is everything in the cause, and that the end through the cause is everything in the effect. The end is charity or good, the cause is faith or truth, and the effects are good works or useful services. From this it is apparent that no more charity can be introduced into works than that measure of charity which has been conjoined with truths that are called truths of faith. Through these truths charity enters into works and gives them their quality.