341. (8) Muslims today are permitted to take more than wife because they do not acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as being one with Jehovah the Father and thus God of heaven and earth, and they cannot for that reason receive truly conjugial love. In conformity with the religion handed down from Muhammad, Muslims acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Son of God and a very great prophet, and they believe that He was sent by God the Father into the world to teach mankind. They do not believe, however, that God the Father and He are one, and that His Divinity and Humanity constitute one Person, being united as soul and body, in accordance with the faith of all Christians based on the Athanasian Creed. Therefore followers of Muhammad could not acknowledge our Lord as being any kind of God from eternity, but only as a perfect natural man. Because that is what Muhammad thought and what his disciples and successors consequently continue to think, and because they know that God is one and that that God is He who created the universe, therefore they could not help but pass over our Lord in their worship, and this the more because they also proclaim Muhammad to be the greatest prophet. Nor do they know what the Lord taught. On that account the interior elements of their minds - which in themselves are spiritual - could not be opened (these being opened by the Lord alone, as may be seen just above in no. 340). [2] The interior elements of the mind are opened by the Lord when people acknowledge Him as God of heaven and earth and go to Him, and this in those who live according to His commandments, for the actual reason that otherwise there is no conjunction, and without conjunction there is no reception. The Lord's presence in a person is one thing, and conjunction with Him another. Going to Him occasions His presence; and living according to His commandments brings about conjunction. His presence alone does not involve reception; but His presence and at the same time conjunction with Him are accompanied by reception. [3] On this subject I will relate something new from the spiritual world. Thinking about a person there causes him to be present, but no one is joined to another except by an affection of love; and an affection of love is instilled by doing as the other says and wishes. This familiar fact in the spiritual world takes its origin from the Lord, in that it is the way He is present and the way He is joined with others. So much has been said to make known why Muslims are permitted to take more than wife; and the reason is that truly conjugial love, which exists only between one man and one wife, has not been possible with them, because they have not as a matter of religion acknowledged the Lord as equal to God the Father and thus as God of heaven and earth. (We have already shown that conjugial love depends in everyone on the state of the church in him, as may be seen in no. 130 above and in a number of other places in the preceding discussions.)