Biblical Belief: The Mind or the Heart?

So many people who love the Bible and its teachings seem to give priority to an intellectual belief in doctrines over loving Jesus and loving others. Some Protestants tell me that I must intellectually believe like they do or I am lost. They inform me of their belief in Luther’s Five Solas* and Calvin’s religious principles of  TULIP**. Neither of these belief systems is even in the Bible, and neither even mentions love. Love, of course, is the main message of the New Testament. Jesus gave us two new commandments: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Any casual reader of both St. John and St. Paul sees that they both emphasize love an awful lot in their writings.

Of course, most of these casual readers don’t even know that they are excluding love (their hearts) from their biblical knowledge, because their minds, their egos, and their intellects override their heart and their emotions to such an extent that they can’t even see what they are missing. My personal opinion is that they have taken a huge bite of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and they have totally neglected to eat of the fruit of the tree of life that we Catholics know as the Eucharist. (The cross is the New Testament Tree of Life because, without the cross, we would all be headed for eternal death in hell. The Eucharist is therefore the fruit of the cross, Jesus Himself.)

Intellectual Belief

An intellectual belief that Jesus is God and that He came to save us is indeed a wonderful start to one’s faith journey, but this part of the story about Jesus is not complete. The love of Jesus for His Father, His Mother, and us, His children, is the rest of the story, along with the good works of Jesus. He expects us to reflect that love through our own hearts, our own minds, and our own good works. In other words, we are to imitate Jesus in EVERY way, not just admire Him and believe in intellectual “dogmas” made up by the so-called “reformers.”

I once told a Calvinist that the message of the New Testament is that Jesus is love and that He loves us infinitely. He then accused me of spreading “hippie theology,” which stunned me. To me, the message is so obvious. Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 13:13 that love is greater than faith, which is why I abhor the “we are saved by faith alone” preaching of Luther and his followers. This conviction simply isn’t true. The Bible says in 1 Peter 3:21 that Baptism saves us, in Acts 15:11 that we are saved by grace, and in Ephesians 2:8 that we are saved by faith. In other words, adding the word “alone” to faith implies that nothing else saves us, which is a biblical lie. Using the phrase “faith alone” is like saying that a car moves forward by “gas alone,” ignoring the pistons, the electricity, and the wheels.

The mind is normally associated with knowledge and understanding of facts, figures, historical events, and so on, while the heart is usually associated with feelings and emotions. For the Christian, a total integration of the heart and mind imitating the life of Jesus and His teachings is necessary to be a true follower of the Messiah. Love can be an emotion, for sure, coming straight from the heart. But love can also be an act of the intellect and the will, voluntarily giving up one’s freedom, money, and actions for the good of another. Emotional love along with self-sacrificial love is the true imitation of Christ. He wept for Lazarus emotionally (John 11:35), and he voluntarily sacrificed his life for us as an act of His will. We all must do the same as His followers. Most of us crave the emotional love and loathe the self-sacrificial kind of love, but to imitate Christ is to do both in the daily carrying of our cross.

Heart and Mind in the Old Testament

Exodus 36:2 – And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab andevery ablemanin whose mindtheLordhad put ability, every one whose heartstirred him up to come to do the work.

1 Samuel 2:35 – And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind; and I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed for ever.

1 Chronicles 22:19 – Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God.

1 Chronicles 28:9 – And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every plan and thought.

Psalm 7:9 – O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, but establish thou the righteous, thou who triest the minds and hearts, thou righteous God.

Psalm 26:2 – Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind.

Proverbs 14:33 – Wisdom abides in the mind of a man of understanding, but it is not known in the heart of fools.

 

Jeremiah 20:12 – O Lord of hosts, who triest the righteous, who sees the heart and the mind, let me see thy vengeance upon them, for to thee have I committed my cause.

The Old Testament verses above make it plain that our heart and our mind are both important to God in our spiritual endeavors to serve Him. To neglect one over the other, rather than to unite them in our search for God, would be like running a race with only one leg.

Heart and Mind in the New Testament

Matthew 22:37 – And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

Romans 8:27 – And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Philippians 4:7 – And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Hebrews 8:10 – This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

1 Peter 3:8 – Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love of the brethren, a tender heart and a humble mind.

 

Revelation 2:23 – …and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches shall know that I am he who searches mindand heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve.

Revelation 17:17 – …for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.

* Luther’s Solas: sola scriptura (Scripture alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola gratia(grace alone), and soli Deo gloria (glory to God alone)

**Calvin’s TULIP: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints