step
by step and shall do so in this order:
i. The human being has reason and freedom or rationality and liberty, and
has these two faculties from the Lord.
ii. Whatever a man does in freedom, whether with reason or not, provided
it is according to his reason, seems to him to be his.
iii. Whatever a man does in freedom according to his thought, is
appropriated to him as his and remains.
iv. A man is reformed and regenerated by the Lord by means of the two
faculties and cannot be reformed and regenerated without them.
v. A man can be reformed and regenerated by means of the two faculties so
far as he can be led by them to acknowledge that all truth and good which
he thinks and does are from the Lord and not from himself.
vi. The conjunction of the Lord with man, and man's reciprocal
conjunction with the Lord, is effected by means of these two faculties.
vii. In all the procedure of His divine providence the Lord safeguards
the two faculties in man unimpaired and as sacred.
viii. It is therefore of the divine providence that man shall act in
freedom according to reason.
73. (i) _The human being has reason and freedom or rationality and
liberty, and has these two faculties from the Lord._ Man has a faculty of
understanding, which is rationality, and a faculty of thinking, willing,
speaking and doing what he understands, which is liberty; and he has
these two faculties from the Lord (see the work _Divine Love and Wisdom,_
nn. 264-270, 425, and above, nn. 43, 44). But many doubts may arise about
either of the two faculties when thought is given to them; therefore I
want to say something at this point just about man's freedom to act
according to reason.
[2] First, it should be known that all freedom is of love, so much so
that love and freedom are one. As love is man's life, freedom is of his
life, too. For man's every enjoyment is from some love of his and has no
other source, and to act from the enjoyment of one's love is to act in
freedom. Enjoyment leads a man as the current bears an object along on a
stream. But loves are many, some harmonious, others not; therefore
freedoms are many. In general there are three: natural, rational, and
spiritual freedom.
[3] _Natural freedom_ is man's by heredity. In it he loves only himself
and the world: his first life is nothing else. From these two loves,
moreover, all evils arise and thus attach to love. Hence to think and
will evil is man's natural freedom, and when he has
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