November 6, 2008

Follow Your Heart...If You Dare

If the title of this post causes you concern, it should--if you believe the heart is merely the source of emotions and feelings, entirely separate from the functions of the mind. But on the other hand, if you have a biblical perspective of the heart as the center of personality as John Frame suggests, then you need not be alarmed by the statement.

Frame writes in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God that "knowledge of God is a heart-knowledge" citing Ex 35:5, Ps 4:4, Isa 6:10, Matt 5:8, Eph 1:18 and more. Accordingly, scripture "represents it as the source of thought, of volition, of attitude, of speech. It is the seat of moral knowledge." (P. 322)

If we conceive of the heart as inseparable from the mind or the conscious, regarding them rather as a single entity with a variety of out workings, then we need to rethink the manner in which we speak of them. The mind is not the place for only intellectual activity and the heart is not only where we feel and find inspiration. The heart is not alone the seat of spirituality, relegating the so-called nonspiritual activity of logic and reason to the mind. Scripture calls us to understand the heart and mind singularly, paying respect to its ability to reason, hope, love, grieve, and more.

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