ROOTS AND FRUITS

It is startling to realize how much life is lived in terms never examined for reliability. How many of us read all the fine print on packaged foods at the supermarket? How can we tell whether the tires we buy were manufactured with integrity? On what basis did the TV newscaster decide what to show or not show, what to say, or leave unsaid? Butterfield says somewhere that each age lives and thinks within an iron cage whose existence and dimensions can only be perceived after the lapse of a couple of centuries.
As Christians we are not immune to this. We call a person "dumb" or we say, "Why don’t you use your head?" when he does not seem so intelligent as we are or when he cannot reason through to solution as quickly as we do. In reality, the problem is more likely to be one of the heart than the head, and more probably ours than his. We simply talk in the fashion of our times and never give the occurrence a second thought.
Even a sensitive humanist like Schumacher can teach us something at this point. We like to think that our logic is sound and our conclusions correct. We suppose that the fact that we are educated North Americans, or, even more, the fact that we are Christians, automatically insures the reliability of our ideas. Schumacher points out that the ideas we think and feel with, accumulate throughout our childhood years without critical evaluation. And when we begin to think, in a critical way, we do so with those ideas!
Nor did the ideas, even if we are Christians, come always from the Bible. Most of us attended secular schools or at least studied secular textbooks. All of us live under the influence of the most powerful, manipulative, secularized media the world has ever known. We are all battered, daily, by the thoughts and words of people who are thoroughly non-Christian in their ways of thinking.
The problem is compounded by the fact that Protestant Christians are in practice committed most of the time to the Roman Catholic view-point that it was man’s will and not his intellect which was affected by the fall in Eden. No matter what Protestant creed we may profess, we live as though it were possible to get at the "truth" in the "natural" areas of life (science, economics, politics, education, etc.) simply by using the logical approach of the scientific method. It does not occur to us that our approach contradicts Christ’s claim to be "the Truth" (John 14:6) – a claim without limitation of any sort. It holds in science and education as much as in theology. And who among us would endorse the heretical notion that a man can by intellectual searching "find out God?" (Job 11:7).
Across the unexamined perspective on life the Word of God slashes like the living sword it is (Hebrews 4:12). The Bible suggests to us that the terms in which we live our lives need not be unexamined. God has spoken and He is still speaking. If we are disposed to listen, it is possible for us to hear with our ears and to understand with our hearts. Then life will take on an altogether different aspect (2 Corinthians 5:17). An important place to begin listening is the way in which we define "mind."
Whatever anyone may think, nothing in this article is intended to oppose the legitimacy of the scientific endeavor. That endeavor is commanded by God as one of the ways in which we are to "have dominion" over his world (Genesis 1:28). It is only when science assumes the autonomous position of the final arbiter of truth that it becomes an "ism." Then it is idolatry that must be rejected by those who think in terms of God’s self-revelation in creation, Scripture, and Jesus Christ.
What, then, is a Biblical idea of the "mind?"

IT ISN’T AND IT IS

The Greeks, whose idea of the mind is prominent in modern Western thought, conceived of the mind as the organ of knowledge. To them reason was the god-like quality in humans and theoretical thought about observations made with the senses was the proper use of the mind. Feeling, willing, and acting in relation to an object were of lesser importance. Plato made reason the most excellent of the three parts of man’s soul (reason, will, and appetite) and conceived of it as "an independent sphere, i.e. pure thought whose object is the idea." (see footnote 2) The Bible is unalterably opposed to this dualistic way of thinking about man, a way that could describe him as " a rational soul in an animal body."
Biblically speaking, the mind is not merely the rational or intellectual part of man. Probably that is what it is most often supposed to be today. One of Webster’s definitions calls it "the perceptive and thinking part of consciousness, exclusive of will and emotion." The success of science in unlocking the mysteries of the physical universe has given weight to such a definition, while science’s claim to freedom from values has escaped us as a warning sign that the mind (which always works with some kind of value orientation) must be something more than mere reasoning power. No, it is not mere rationality. Nor is it an exercise of feelings only, as when we speak of a sympathetic or compassionate mind. Nor an instrument of resolution and action, as in the "strong-minded."
The "mind," in Biblical terms, is all of these as well as their combination. But it is more. It is an attitude of fearing God. Hence Proverbs says, "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning (margin: ‘chief part’) of knowledge . . ." (Proverbs 1:7). It is an attitude of humility. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus . . ." (Philippians 2:5). It involves faith. "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear" (Hebrews 11:3). It involves loving God. " . . . Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" (Matthew 22:37). How do all these elements fit together?

MIND, HEART, AND LIFE

In John 12:40 our Lord speaks to the very core of this topic when he says, ". . . Lest they should see with our eyes, and perceive with their heart, and should turn, and I should heal them." The word "perceive" is from the same root as the word "mind." Picking up on the thought of Isaiah 6:10, Christ is saying that thinking (and so the mind) is really a function of heart. Behm says, "Knowledge has religious and moral significance as a function of the central organ of the life of the human spirit." (see footnote 3).
The New Testament as well as the Old describes man, not primarily in terms of mind and body, or even of body, soul, and spirit, but consistently in terms of the heart. "Keep thy hearty with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23). " . . . for out of the abundance of the heart is the main organ of physic and spiritual life, the place in man at which God bears witness to himself." (see footnote 4)
Life is not merely a biological, psychological, or social phenomenon. Life is a matter of a relation to God and to the task God has given man. All men bear God’s image, distorted though it is by sin. All men live near to God (Acts 17:28); some with their backs toward Him in rebellion, some with their faces toward Him in Jesus. But human life is always lived out of the heart and before the Lord; it is always a response to Him. This is as true of our knowing as of our feeling or acting.
The central citadel of human life is the heart, where God bears witness to himself. He does this through the creation (Romans 1:20) as well as through the Bible and, most effectively, through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. This is why the Bible calls on us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds (Ephesians 4:23). This is why repentance is defined as a "change of mind," and why "the mind of the Spirit," which is a believing mind, "is life and peace" (Romans 8:6). All of life, for a Christian, is a response to God. That means not only worship, but marriage, parenthood, work, thought, expression, political, economic and social activity, everything! This is why Hebrews 11:3 indicates that true knowing (the function of the mind) is not accessible to the senses alone, nor to man’s reason alone, but to both only on the basis of faith. Behm says again, "To understand . . that God’s will as Creator is the basis of all things is to think in terms of faith . .. For the author of Hebrews this reality is . . . the reality of salvation. For him, then, knowledge of God the Creator is rooted in faith in the God reveled in salvation history." (see footnote 5).
The Christian mind is, then, the heart, the inner, living core of our personhood where we are always responding to the true God in Jesus Christ or to some false God of our own choosing. That being so, "knowing" in Biblical terms means something quite different from what is commonly understood in our secularized 20^th century. To that topic we will turn next time.

Editor: Al Greene

Alta Vista College

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