DP 219 [3]
Your conversation shall be "Yes, yes," "No, no."
Anything more than this springs from evil.
(Matthew 5:37)
Such
is the conversation of all in the third heaven.
For they never reason
about Divine matters
as to whether something is so or not so,
but they
see in themselves from the Lord
whether it is so or not.
Consequently,
reasoning about Divine matters
as to whether they are so or not
is
occasioned by the reasoner's
not seeing them from the Lord
but
endeavoring to see them from self,
and what a person sees from self is
evil.
Still, however, the Lord wills
not only that a person think
and speak
about Divine matters,
but also that he reason about them
in
order to see that something is so or not so.
And this thinking, speaking
and reasoning,
provided it has as its end to see the truth,
may be said
to be from the Lord in the person,
though it is from the person
until
he sees the truth and acknowledges it.
In the meantime it is only owing
to the Lord
that he can think, speak and reason;
for he has this ability
from the two faculties
called freedom and rationality -
faculties that a
person has from the Lord alone.
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