Temples, Sacred Images, and the Invisible Power of Ideas

I hope that you brothers are well. I’m at Panera Bread in Greenville, South Carolina – one of the few places with wireless internet access. I’ll try to find a few more wireless spots in Alabama [maybe at the Chat-n-Chew in Phil Campbell].

I mentioned in the last post that both Eve and Achan illustrate Edwards’s view that “what makes the will choose is something approved by the understanding and consequently appearing to the soul as good” [p. 88]. Or put another way [examining a different facet of the same diamond]: “Every act of the will is some way connected with the understanding, and is as the greatest apparent good is . . . namely, that the soul always wills and chooses that which . . . appears most agreeable” [p.86]. Or put in a different way: “The will necessarily follows this light or view of the understanding not only in some of its acts, but in every act of choosing and refusing. So that the will does not determine itself in any one of its own acts; but all its acts, every act of choice or refusal, depends on, and is necessarily connected with, some antecedent cause . . .” [p. 90].

Cause: Eve sees [understands or perceives] that the fruit is good [the apparent greatest good].
Effect: Eve eats the fruit [an act of the will]

Edwards uses temples and sacred images to illustrate that “the will itself, how absolute and incontrollable soever it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding” [p. 87]:

“Temples have their sacred images; and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind; but in truth the ideas and images in men’s minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them; and to these they all pay universally a ready submission” [p. 87].

So the question is:

How does the knowledge of ourselves, that the soul always wills and chooses that which appears most agreeable to the mind, inform our pedagogy as Christian teachers?