By the capacity to be wise is not meant the capacity to reason about truths and goods from memory-knowledges, nor the capacity to confirm whatever one pleases; but the capacity to discern what is true and good, to choose what is suitable, and to apply it to the uses of life. They who ascribe all things to the Lord do thus discern, choose, and apply....
Monday, January 14, 2008
Good Definition of Wisdom
In his weekly inspirational reading email Rev. Chris Bown quoted Arcana Coelestia 10227:3, which provides a great definition of wisdom.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Two other excellent definitions of Wisdom:
Conjugial Love 130
[Wisdom of life] is this: to refrain from evils because they are harmful to the soul, harmful to the civil state, and harmful to the body, and to do good things because they are of benefit to the soul, to the civil state, and to the body.
Heaven and Hell 351:2-3
True intelligence and wisdom is seeing and perceiving what is true and good, and thereby what is false and evil, and clearly distinguishing between them, and this from an interior intuition and perception. . . . The interiors can be formed only in one way, namely, by man's looking to the Divine and to heaven, for, as has been said, the interiors are formed in heaven; and man looks to the Divine when he believes in the Divine, and believes that all truth and good and consequently all intelligence and wisdom are from the Divine; and man believes in the Divine when he is willing to be led by the Divine. In this way and none other are the interiors of man opened. The man who is in that belief and in a life that is in accordance with his belief has the ability and capacity to understand and be wise; but to become intelligent and wise he must learn many things, both things pertaining to heaven and things pertaining to the world-things pertaining to heaven from the Word and from the Church, and things pertaining to the world from the sciences. To the extent that man learns and applies to life, he becomes intelligent and wise, for to that extent the interior sight belonging to his understanding and the interior affection belonging to his will are perfected.
Post a Comment