goodness and truth; love in general; love for the world and love for ourselves
in specific; our outer and inner selves;and people who are merely earthly and
sense-oriented.
These points will be brought to light so that when readers see the
things that come later, their rational sight will not feel as if it were in a
fog, rushing along city streets until it had no idea of the way home. What
is theology without understanding or with an intellect that remains
unenlightened while we read the Word? It is like having a lamp in our
hand but not lighting the candle inside it, like the lamps held by the five
foolish young women who had no oil. Therefore these individual topics
will be taken up in sequence.
- The will and the intellect. 397
(a) There are two faculties that constitute our life. One is called the
will, the other the intellect. They are distinct from each other, yet they
were created to be one. When they are one, they are called “the mind.”
Therefore they are the human mind, where all of our life has its first
beginnings, from which life then comes into our body.
(b) Just as everything in the universe—everything that is in the
divine design—relates to goodness and truth, so everything in us relates
to our will and our intellect. Goodness in us belongs to our will and
truth in us belongs to our intellect. In fact, these two faculties or “lives”
within us are vessels and abodes for goodness and truth. Our will is the
vessel and abode for all things related to goodness, and our intellect is
the vessel and abode for all things related to truth. Forms of good and
truth exist nowhere else inside us. And since forms of good and truth
exist nowhere else, love and faith do not exist anywhere else either, since
love relates to goodness and goodness relates to love, and faith relates to
truth and truth relates to faith.
(c) The will and the intellect also constitute our spirit. That is where
our wisdom and intelligence, our love and goodwill, and our life in gen-
eral reside. The body is merely an obedient servant.
(d) Nothing is more important to know than how the will and the
intellect become a single mind. They become a single mind the way
goodness and truth become one. The marriage between the will and the
intellect is in fact similar to the marriage between goodness and truth. As
will be shown in the next passage, which concerns goodness and truth,
the nature of this marriage is that goodness is the underlying reality of a
thing and truth is the resulting manifestation of the thing. Therefore in
§397 goodwill & good actions 487