: . .
the nascent New Church groups in Cuba, and seeing their enthusiasm for the
Heavenly Doctrines after hearing them for the first time, has really helped to
reinvigorate my own affection for these life-changing teachings that we tend
to take for granted.”
Brad and Cathy have six children: three girls (Linnea, Denali and Reyana)
and three boys (Deacon, Calvin and Joram). They love to travel on long road
trips through the United States and Canada. His personal interests include
hiking, canoeing, backpacking, and photographing landscapes and wildlife.
Here is his favorite passage from the Writings:
There are therefore two principles; one of which leads to all folly and insanity, and
the other to all intelligence and wisdom. The former principle is to deny all things,
or to say in the heart that we cannot believe them until we are convinced by what
we can apprehend, or perceive by the senses; this is the principle that leads to all
folly and insanity, and is to be called the negative principle. The other principle is
to affirm the things which are of doctrine from the Word, or to think and believe
within ourselves that they are true because the Lord has said them: this is the
principle that leads to all intelligence and wisdom, and is to be called the affirmative
principle. (Arcana Coelestia 2568:4)
Contact: [email protected]
O U R N E W C H U RC H V O C A B U L A R Y
Part of a continuing series developed by the Rev. W. Cairns Henderson, 1961-1966.
CHASTITY
This term is included as one which has in the Writings a meaning different from that
assigned to it in common usage. In that usage, chastity means continence, virginity, or
celibacy, and is therefore a quality that is lost by marriage. This definition is unacceptable,
both because it implies that the body is depraved and marriage impure and because it refers
only to the body, whereas the Writings teach that chastity is essentially a state of the spirit.
As the terms are used in the Writings, chastity and unchastity are predicated of marriages
and the things that belong to them. Conjugial love is said to be chastity itself, and the term
describes the union of one man with one wife when both acknowledge the Lord and each
confines their love to the other. Such a union is chaste because inmostly within it there is an
aversion to adultery.
The distinction between chastity and unchastity is therefore much deeper than one as to
bodily acts. Before marriage, chastity is a proper attitude toward marriage which influences
the imagination as well as the conduct – one which looks earnestly to a chaste and eternal
union and spurns what is opposed to it. (See Conjugial Love 139ff, 49e)
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