As for the intellectual and physical parts [of a man], they are, as we have already noted, in and of themselves, sinless, and natural to us; but the man who has been shaped by the intellectual or even worse, by the carnal [i. e., the physical], is not sinless. He is guilty of granting supremacy within himself to something that was not meant for supremacy, and that is supposed to be in a subordinate position. It turns out that although the intellectual is natural for a man to be intellectual is unnatural; in the same way carnality is natural, but for a man to be carnal is unnatural. . . .
From this you see that according to natural purpose, man must live in the spirit, subordinate everything to the spirit, be penetrated by the spirit in all that is of the soul, and even more so in all that is physical--and beyond these, in the outward things, too, that is, family and social life. This is the norm!
The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It, pp. 74, 75
Posted by Clifton at March 6, 2004 06:00 AM | TrackBack