. . . There is a widely prevalent theory, that truth may be of the feelings as well as of the intellect; that it may not only come thus from two independent sources, but may be contradictory so that what is true to the feelings may be false to the intellect and visa versa; and that as moral character and so Christian life are rooted in the voluntary nature, of which the feelings are an expression, the Christian life may be developed and, some say, would better be developed, without reference to such intellectual conceptions as doctrinal statements.
This theory is radically false. There is no knowledge of the heart. Feeling can give knowledge no more than can excitement. As Prof. Bowen has well said, “Feeling is a staate of mind consequent on the reception of some idea.” That is, it does not give knowledge; it presupposes it. There must be knowledge by the head before there can be feeling with the heart.
Once more you see the point. The religion of the heart and the theology of the head cannot be divorced. Unless the heart be disposed toward Christ, the head cannot, because it will not, discern the truth of Christ. As our Lord said, “It is only he who wills to obey God, whose heart is right toward Him, who shall know the doctrine whether it be of Him.” On the other hand, zeal in Christ’s cause will be strong and abiding in proportion as the faith from which it springs and by which it is nourished is intelligent. Zeal without knowledge is dangerous and short-lived.
William Brenton Greene, Jr.
“Broad Churchism and the Christian Life,” Princeton Theological Review, 4 (July 1906), pp. 311-13.
… the Scriptures make no distinction between the head and the heart, as if mathematics came from the head and faith from the heart. The Old Testament frequently contrasts the heart and the lips – sincerity versus hypocrisy – but the term heart, at least seventy-five percent of the time in the Old Testament, means the mind or intellect.
Gordon Haddon Clark
What Is Saving Faith — p. 55
The whole idea that, “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing,” has been one of the most injurious wounds ever inflicted upon the Christian faith. How many times, as a Pastor, have I heard people tell me that they had to “follow their heart,” usually with the consequence that they have to break God’s standard in one area or another.
Of course to lift “the heart” up as a extra-sensory means of epistemological knowing is to denigrate and lower God’s Revelation in Scripture as our epistemological foundation. When we insist that there is a knowing which is uninformed by and even unrelated to sound Biblical doctrine we elevate, most usually, our experience or lust at the expense of God’s revelation being lowered. So, when we make “heart knowledge” a co-ordinate authority with head knowledge we end up exalting “heart-knowledge” at the expense of head-knowledge.
The advantage in heart knowledge is that the heart knower does not have to bother to study to show himself approved because what does the heart need with all that head knowledge? Also the advantage to the heart knower is that he or she can never be told they are wrong by the head knower because, after all, “the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.”
Heart knowledge is another example of unmediated personal and individual experience being used to trump God’s revelation.
Having said all this I perfectly understand that their is a distinction between passion and cold calculated logic. However, even when passion is white hot it is white hot based on what someone is thinking.
