—­True Christian Religion, nn. 66, 70

AN INSTRUMENT OF LIFE

Man is an instrument of life, and God alone is life.  God pours His life into His instrument and every part of him, as the sun pours its heat into a tree and every part of it.  God also gives man to feel this life in himself as his own.  God wills that he should do so, that man may live as of himself according to the laws of order, which are as many as there are precepts in the Word, and may dispose himself to receive the love of God.  But still God perpetually holds with His finger the perpendicular above the scales, and regulates, but never violates by compulsion, man’s free decision.  Man’s free will is from this:  that he feels life in himself as his, and God leaves him so to feel, that reciprocal conjunction may take place between Him and man.

—­True Christian Religion, n. 504

“ABIDE IN ME”

Man is so created that he can be more and more closely united to the Lord.  He is so united not by knowledge alone, nor by intelligence alone, nor even by wisdom alone, but by a life in accordance with these.  The more closely he is united to the Lord, the wiser and happier he becomes, the more distinctly he seems to himself to be his own, and the more clearly he perceives that he is the Lord’s.

—­Divine Providence, nn. 32 et al.

TWO MINDS:  TWO WORLDS

Man is so created as to live simultaneously in the natural world and in the spiritual world.  Thus he has an internal and an external nature or mind; by the former living in the spiritual world, by the latter in the natural world.

—­Heavenly Doctrine, n. 36

INALIENABLE POWERS

There are in man from the Lord two capacities by which the human being is distinguished from the beasts.  One capacity is the ability to understand what is true and what is good.  It is called rationality, and is a capacity of his understanding.  The other capacity is the ability to do the true and the good.  It is called freedom, and is a power of the will.  By virtue of his rationality, man can think what he pleases, as well against God as with Him, and with his neighbor or against his neighbor.  He can also will and do what he thinks; and when he sees evil and fears punishment, by virtue of freedom he can refrain from doing.  By these two capacities man is man and is distinguished from the beasts.  Man has these twin powers from the Lord, and they are from Him every moment; nor are they ever taken away, for if they were, man’s humanity would perish.  The Lord is in these two powers with every man, with the evil as well as the good.  They are His abiding-place in the race.  Thence it is that every human being, evil as well as good, lives to eternity.

—­Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 240