Category — Relation of intellectual and voluntary in the marriage of man and woman in the church

“That there is love truly Conjugial which is so rare at this day that it is not known what it is and scarcely that it is?” Does ’’this day” apply to us? There have always been in the world hundreds of thousands of what are called happy marriages. We must therefore make a distinction between what the world calls happy marriages and genuine Conjugial love. This distinction is seldom made even in the Church.

The great importance of knowing what Conjugial love is; We read: ’’Conjugial love is the very plane of the Divine Influx.” (A.C. 370).

Nearly every one thinks he knows what Conjugial love is from first states of marriage.

Is the first state of marriage Conjugial love? No it is a representative of Conjugial love. A state in which Conjugial love is lent by the angels, from without.

Many of our ideas concerning marriage are formed by the literature of the world.

How does Conjugial love differ from what the world calls “being in Love” as to its basis? Love of uses is the basis.
Do the evil fall in love equally with the good?
The evil often fall in love more ardently than the good. Why?

The evil adore and worship each other during the time they are in love, and there is nothing the love of self desires more than to be adored and worshipped.

Falling in love is by itself natural and not spiritual, in fact as a natural love, man has it in common with certain animals. If there is nothing spiritual in it, it is lower with man than with animals, for man is in the love of self more than animals.

Is “being in love” in the natural sense of the word necessary for marriage? Yes as a basis.
What place should the “being in love” in the usual meaning of the words have? The lowest.
What place does it have in nearly all stories, literature and plays? The highest. It is therefore harmful to become overly absorbed in romantic literature.
What is the nature of romantic love? It is the love of person. By itself, it is the friendship of love, which, by itself, is harmful and can never endure.
What is Conjugial love? Love of use and thence love of person.

When the love of use rules, and from this one loves the person, then also the love of person has its genuine delights which are eternal.
In the first state of marriage Conjugial love surrounds man, from heaven, from without, while the love of self, which is quiescent, is within.
If this state is not inverted, love, with its happiness and joy, de¬parts, for the first state is loaned by the angels and has not been appropriated, and therefore can not endure.

In the first state the young man and woman look to each other as to person; and adore each other. While in Conjugial love proper, they are together as uses, and look to uses in the Lord’s Kingdom, the Church and the country and society. In being united as two uses, conjoined as one, for the sake of uses to the Lord’s Kingdom, the Church, the country and society there is a far greater joy and delight, than in loving each other primarily as to person. The former joy and happiness soon passes away, while the latter increases to eternity. This the natural man can never feel, nor internally believe.

Read the full paper on the conjugial love and the love of uses by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn

An Address by the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, delivered before the Assembly of the Lord’s New Church which is Nova Hierosolyma, June 16th, 1946

(Before delivering this address Mr. Pitcairn read to the Assembly the article “The Nineteenth of June 1935″ by Mr. Groeneveld, printed in the Sixth Fascicle of Do Hemelsche Leer, pps. 33-360)

We read: “But because it is unknown in what the masculine and in what the feminine essentially consist, it shall be stated in a few words. The difference consists in the fact that in the male the inmost is love and its clothing is wisdom, or what is the same, he is love veiled over with wisdom, and that in the female the inmost is that wisdom of the male, and its clothing is the love therefrom. But this love is feminine love and is given by the Lord to the wife through the wisdom of the husband, and the former love is masculine love, and is the love of growing wise, and is given by the Lord to the husband according to the reception of wisdom. It is from this that the male is the wisdom of love, and the female is the love of that wisdom.” (C.L. 32)
“Wisdom cannot exist with man except by the love of growing wise. But when from that love a man has acquired wisdom and loves that wisdom in himself, or loves himself on account of it, then he forms a love which is the love of wisdom; and this is meant by the good of the true, or the good out of that true. There are therefore two loves with man. The one, which is prior, is the love of becoming wise, and the other, which is posterior, is the love of wisdom. But this love, if it remains with the man, is an evil love and is called the pride or love of his own intelligence. It will be established in the following pages that it was provided from creation that this love should be taken from the man lest it destroy him, and was transcribed into the woman, so that it may become conjugial love which restores him to integrity” (C.L. 88.)

Both a man and a woman are born unregenerate, born into the natural and its affections and thoughts, which, if not elevated, remain evil. Conjugial love cannot therefore exist between a man and a woman who remain merely natural. There may indeed be a strong appearance of such a love, but it is without an internal. In the first states of marriage it is indeed a good representative love, but if this representation is not infilled it becomes evil no matter how it may appear as love before other and even before the man and woman themselves.
Into the man there inflows from the Lord the potential love of becoming wise. If the man, by shunning evils as sins against the Lord, receives this love of becoming wise, hе is raised above the natural with its thinking and affections and becomes rational. If the man does not from the love of growing wise permit himself to be elevated by the Lord above the natural and its affections into the rational, conjugial love is not possible.

As the female apart from the male cannot be elevated above her natural affections and thus come into wisdom, so the male apart from the female cannot be elevated above the love of the sex and come into conjugial love. For the special gift of the Lord to the man is the love of becoming wise, while the special gift of the Lord to the woman is conjugial love; wherefore the female cannot be in the interior things of wisdom except through the male, and the male cannot be in the interior things of conjugial love except though the female.

Read the full paper by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn on the way leading to conjugial love