Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 209

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209. THE SPIRITUAL-NATURAL:* THAT THE TRUTHS OF FAITH CAN BE PREACHED BY A NATURAL MAN That is called the spiritual-natural which is within natural lumen, enabling man to reason in general, and even about spiritual and celestial things and the truth of faith, and indeed, enabling him to preach and persuade, although he is a natural man. It is to be observed that these things are matters of memory which are excited by natural lumen and, indeed, from various causes and cupidities near and remote. The spiritual which gives the faculty of reasoning in a natural man is a spiritual that does not have the celestial in it, for if it had the celestial, it would proceed from the celestial, and so from a genuine source, namely, from love, thus from God Messiah. Still this spiritual can be conceived as being encompassed by the celestial: for without the celestial no faculty of reasoning is possible. * Spirituale naturale; the entry in the Index is naturale spirituale (natural spiritual).


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