between any one of those inner functions and the outer functions—
could we speak any more than a piece of wood can?
[ 9 ] “Take another example: Our hands are two of our extremities.
There are inner parts that extend into our hands from our head through
our neck, and then through our chest, shoulder blades, upper arms, and
lower arms. There are countless muscle tissues, countless arrays of motor
fibers, countless troops of nerves and blood vessels, and a number of
bone joints with ligaments and membranes involved. Do we know any-
thing about them? And yet every one of them is involved in making our
hands work. Suppose that as those inner parts reached our wrist they
were sent off in another direction to the left or right and did not run all
the way into our hands. Our hands would just dangle from our forearms
like disconnected things, bereft of spirit, and rot. In fact, believe it or
not, our hands would then be just like a body with its head cut off.
“It would be exactly the same with our mind and its two lives, the
will and the intellect, if the divine functions related to faith and goodwill
were to stop midway and not extend all the way into us. Truly, if that
were the case we would be less than brutes; we would be mere pieces of
dead wood shot through with rottenness.
“The points just made follow the lines of reason.
[ 10 ] “Now—if you are still willing to listen to me—the same points
also accord with Sacred Scripture. The Lord says, ‘Live in me and I [shall
live] in you. I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who live in
me and I in them bear much fruit’ (John 15 : 4 , 5 ). Surely those fruits are
the good works that the Lord does through us and that we do on our own
from the Lord. The Lord also says that he is standing at our door and
knocking, and that if we open it, he will come in and will dine with us
and we with him (Revelation 3 : 20 ). The Lord gives us money and talents
so that we will trade with them and make a profit, and if we make a profit
he gives us eternal life (Matthew 25 : 14 – 34 ; Luke 19 : 12 – 26 ). The Lord
gives us all a reward according to our labor in his vineyard (Matthew
20 : 1 – 16 ). But these passages are just a few. Whole volumes could be filled
with quotations from the Word that say we are to produce fruit like a
tree, to work on following the commandments, to love God and our
neighbor, and more.
[ 11 ] “I am aware, however, that your own intelligence as it truly is
cannot have anything in common with these quotations from the Word.
Although you yourselves quote them, your ideas nonetheless pervert
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