All You Really Need Is "Heart"? Part 1

^{Editor’s Note: This article was originally posted on March 2, 2007.}

Fundamentalism features a lot of talk about the heart these days. It probably always has. Speakers emphasize the importance of “hearts on fire for God,” a children’s CD warns against the dangers of developing a cold heart, and a college hosts an annual Heart Conference.
These are not bad things, and we’d be worse off without them, but where are the children’s CDs dramatizing the dangers of an empty head? Where is the preaching emphasizing the need for “heads full of facts for God”? And why isn’t there a Brain Conference somewhere in Fundamentalism?

The absence of these things, or the reluctance to call them what they are if they do exist, suggests that many feel that the rational and cognitive in us is, at best, second rate. It’s not very “spiritual.” Some feel that matters of the intellect are inherently hostile to the things of God in a way that “matters of the heart” are not.

As always, the question for us is, “What does the Bible teach?”

Scriptures Against the Intellect?

For those who believe in the superiority of the nonintellectual and nonrational, certain passages of Scripture are old friends. First Corinthians 13 emphasizes the vanity of everything without love. Proverbs 4:23 describes the heart as the springs of life. And Revelation 3 reveals Jesus’ deep disgust for the Laodiceans’ lukewarmness.

In addition to these, the apostle Paul offers more direct comparisons. In 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, he emphasizes that it’s “foolishness” God has chosen to use rather than “wisdom.” And in 1 Corinthians 8:1 he writes, “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (NKJV).

As compelling as these passages may seem, other Scriptures force us to say, “Not so fast.” More diligent study reveals that none of these passages contrasts the intellectual or rational with the nonintellectual or nonrational, and none of them exalts the latter as more helpful for living a life that pleases God.

“Heart” in 1 Corinthians 13 and Proverbs

The love chapter is clear. Without a heart of love behind them, even the noblest works are just junk; and with love behind them, they are treasures. But the passage does not define love as “heart” or depict it as being in a tug-of-war with the intellect. The problem Paul confronts is not too much reasoning but the lack of proper motives for what we do.

Proverbs also lends no support to the idea that the intellect is inferior to the affections, emotions, or will in godly living. In Proverbs, the heart feels the whole range of emotions (15:13, 15; 13:12; 14:10) and makes choices (3:1, 5; 5:12). But it also understands (2:2; 8:5), devises plans (6:18; 16:9), studies (15:28), teaches (16:23), and thinks (23:7). So when Proverbs 4:23 warns us to diligently keep our hearts, it is calling us to “keep” (natsar, “guard”) our entire inner man—including both the intellectual and the nonintellectual. The verse does not suggest that intellect poses a larger problem than does any other feature of our being.

“Heart” and Lukewarmness

Jesus’ rebuke of the Laodiceans also offers no elevation of “the heart” above “the head.” In Revelation 3, Jesus rebukes the delusional, self-sufficient pride of the Laodicean church. But far from implying that the church got that way by over-emphasizing intellect, Jesus blames their condition, at least in part, on a lack of intellectual effort. “You … do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked” (3:17, emphasis added). Christ calls this church first to think and then to “be zealous and repent.”

Some argue that the Laodiceans had “head knowledge” rather than “heart knowledge.” But this passage offers no evidence that these different kinds of knowledge even exist, much less that having one rather than the other was to blame for the lethargy. (Interestingly, the phrases “heart knowledge” and “head knowledge” appear nowhere in Scripture.)

“Heart,” Foolish Things, and Knowledge

So neither 1 Corinthians 13, nor Proverbs, nor Revelation 3 calls us to eye “intellect” with suspicion and to embrace “heart” as superior, but what about Paul’s exaltation of foolishness and his criticism of knowledge as mere pride fuel?

Context is the key. Though Paul does say God “has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27), he also says God has chosen what is “weak,” “base,” “despised,” and “things which are not.” So, if we take his remarks about foolish things to mean that intellectual pursuits are useless or worse, we must say the same of physical strength, high quality in general, and existence itself. Consistency would require that we just lie down and die.

Fortunately, that wasn’t Paul’s point! Given the emphasis of 1 Corinthians as a whole, it seems that the church was enamored with the impressive appearance and sound of certain philosophers who exercised a God-excluded brand of intellectual activity. Paul viewed such thinkers as having been thoroughly discredited by God (possibly meaning that reality had proved them to be, as we say today, nut jobs).

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? (1 Cor. 1:20)

The apostle wasn’t claiming that all intellectual activity had been set aside by God, but rather that the forms of godless thought the Corinthians valued had been mocked and discarded by God.

As for knowledge puffing up (1 Cor. 8:1), Paul cannot have meant all knowledge of every kind. For example, how can our pride be inflated by the knowledge that we were dead in sin and children of wrath by nature before God quickened us (Eph. 2:1-3)? That kind of knowledge doesn’t inflate. It deflates!

It should come as no surprise, then, that Paul emphasizes the importance of knowledge elsewhere (Eph. 3:19, 4:13; Phil. 1:9; Col. 1:10, 2:2; 2 Tim. 2:25). It’s likely that Paul’s intent in 1 Corinthians 8:1 was not to contrast the mental activity of learning to the warm fuzziness of love, but rather to contrast loveless knowledge (which puffs up) to knowledgeable love (which builds up). The context bears this fact out. Many believers knew idols to be nothing. Paul urged these knowledgeable ones to consider how their actions hurt those who lacked knowledge. Without love, their knowledge was leading them to act arrogantly, but with love, the knowledge was no problem at all.

How Safe Is “Heart”?

Though intellectual pursuits are not without danger, the Bible does not teach that the effects of the Fall impact the intellect more than the affections, will, and emotions.

Through Jeremiah, God declared the heart to be “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). Jesus said the heart was the source of all kinds of corrupt attitudes and actions (Matt. 15:18-19). And much of the believer’s ongoing struggle with sin centers on the heart.

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience … (Heb. 10:22).

If you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth (James 3:14).

If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things (1 John 3:20).

Finally, consider the case of Solomon. Wiser than any man, he excelled in intellectual activities.

He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand and five. Also he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree of Lebanon even to the hyssop that springs out of the wall; he spoke also of animals, of birds, of creeping things, and of fish (1 Kings 4:32-33).

Yet this man wandered from God in his later years. Did his intellectual pursuits lead to his undoing? Scripture suggests otherwise. It was not the chilling effect of too much reasoning that corrupted Solomon the wise but rather his affections. His numerous foreign wives “turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal” to God (1 Kings 11:4).

Perhaps his downfall was a failure to submit his affections to the wisdom of his reasoning. In that sense, might he have been better off with more facts and less fire? One thing is certain: Fiery passion is not inherently good, nor is cool reasoning inherently bad.

Summary

Is the intellect more hostile to godly living than the warmer faculties of the inner man? Is reasoning less trustworthy than “heart”? So far, we’ve seen that biblical support for these ideas is weak at best. What remains for us is to understand what relationship the rational and nonrational have with each other and to consider what implications that relationship has for our pulpit rhetoric and ministry methods. These will be the main concerns of Parts 2 and 3.

Aaron Blumer, SI’s site publisher, is a native of lower Michigan and a graduate of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He, his wife, and their two children live in a small town in western Wisconsin, where he has pastored Grace Baptist Church (Boyceville, WI) since 2000. Prior to serving as a pastor, Aaron taught school in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and served in customer service and technical support for Unisys Corporation (Eagan, MN). He enjoys science fiction, music, and dabbling in software engineering.