I had a discussion recently w/ some peers on the whole Head, Heart, Hands thing. There was a consensus reached among them that one could start w/ any of the three and end up arriving at all three. I disagreed and disagree. I kept insisting w/ my friends that this is a trichotomy that makes no sense for if we think God’s thoughts after Him (Head) the heart (emotions) & hands (service) will follow like heat and light follow fire. There is no need to pursue Christian emotion (heart) or Christian duty (hands), for when we are thinking God’s thoughts after them these will inescapably follow. If they don’t follow then we aren’t thinking God’s thoughts after Him.
A counter example was raised using the hypothetical person who has a great deal of “head knowledge” but does not serve his fellow man. The solution for this man, it was offered, was that he needed to jump in to some Christian duty. However, can it honestly be said that a person who has “head knowledge” and has either no passion for Christ or service unto Christ really has knowledge? I would contend that our hypothetical person has a desperate need to know Christ if his “knowing” Christ yields no passion or service. The problem of this hypothetical person isn’t that they have “head knowledge” it is that they don’t know Christ, and launching them into some kind of Christian service or urging them to have proper Christian emotions is not going to fix what is wrong with their Christianity.
Thinking Christianly always results in proper affections and rigorous duty. If it doesn’t then one isn’t thinking Christianly. The cure for the person who is stone cold emotionally is not to get them to gin up their emotions. The cure for moribund affections is to know the Christ of the Scriptures. How could anybody be without religious affections who genuinely conversant with their sin and misery and the deliverance they has been granted by Christ? How could anyone not have compassion on people who does not know how much compassion Christ daily has for them? A proper heart disposition is impossible apart from the mind being tutored by Christ, but if the mind is tutored by Christ the heart will always be right. It is not possible to seek Christian emotions apart from the mind for emotions are but the residue of a mind properly oriented. If one has the right mind one will have the right emotions. If one doesn’t think Christianly then it is a guarantee that they will feel pagan(ly).
Christian duty (hands) can not be Christian unless those hands are first instructed by a Christian mind. Lot’s of good works might be done but if those works don’t have the mind of Christ behind them they are just so much chaff. This needs to be articulated repeatedly given the great problem the Church currently has with the Social Gospel. Many people tend to think that if they do good deeds they are Christian. Now, doing good deeds is better than doing bad deeds but good deeds are only genuinely good when they are directed by the mind of Christ.
This idea of majoring on the feelings or the doing absent majoring on thinking rationally is what has led the church to to value the “experiential” and the “emotive” above all else. Currently Christianity is flooded and defined by Pentecostalism and Charismatic-ism. This is a consequence of people not valuing the life of the Christian mind and the result is that the church in the West is irrational, insipid, and irrelevant. Certainly the experiential and the emotive have a important and significant place in the Christian life but the genuine articles will never be reached apart from the a Christian mind that learns Christ by thinking God’s thoughts after Him.
I am reminded of this when I hear of Reformed Churches explicitly teach that the heart is more important than the head and where Pastor’s believe that much of Christian truth is paradox and should be considered “mystery.” I am reminded of this when I constantly hear that “what is important is a right heart and not right doctrine,” as if a heart could ever be right absent of right Christian doctrine. I am reminded of this when it seems that the people who have the most difficult time finding a Church home are people who are interested in prioritizing the life of the mind.
The church is in desperate need of being sanctified and set apart unto Christ. This will never happen if the Church doesn’t once again return to the life of the mind. Not the life of the mind that leaves people cold and sterile in their faith but the life of the mind that floods them with Christian affections and emotions and gives them a mad desire and zeal to do all that they do to the glory of God.
If we horizontalize this and put in terms of human relationships it certainly is the case that I don’t approach my wife the way a Scientist approaches the object under his microscope but neither do I expect to increasingly love my wife unless I increasingly know my wife. Fitting emotions for my wife and duty towards my wife are dependent upon me knowing her better and better.
In the end the head must be right for the head is the engine that pulls the cars of emotion and duty. Orthodoxy ALWAYS leads to orthopraxy. Where it doesn’t the problem is the absence of orthodoxy. One can only fix the absence of orthopraxy by the re-establishing of orthodoxy.
Scripture teaches that this is eternal life “to KNOW God, the only true God and Jesus Christ who thou has sent.”
Scripture teaches,
This is what the LORD says:
“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,
24 but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
Scripture admonishes us to have this mind in us that was in Christ Jesus. Scripture teaches that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Scripture admonishes us to take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. Proverbs is a whole book dedicated to getting wisdom.
Now certainly, emotions and duty are absolutely necessary but they only come where the mind is been set ablaze by Christ.
Amen!
Edwards’ “Religious Affections” makes this same essential point, that true Christ-minded knowledge cannot but lead to virtuous fruits.
Mark,
I learned all of this from Edwards!
Yet, Edwards would add this: the mind is primary in order, but the affections are primary in importance. Note, the title is not the Religious Mind, but the Religious Affections. The mind informs the affections, which I believe is the point you were making.
One of the few times I disagreed with Dr. Gerstner is when he said, and this would have been 25 years ago or so, that we were coming out of an age of irrationality. Oh, if that were but true. Some of the objections to the mind being primary even is order is because we still live in an age of irrationality. To be fair, I suppose objections come because of the unfounded fear, at least for this time, of rationality yielding to rationalism.
Paul,
I agree w/ all you wrote.
It seems at times that if one desires to simply be rational he is charged with practicing rationalism. I suspect that this is so because irrationality and irrationalism holds the scepter. As such any thing that is rational is automatically guilty of rationalism.
Hard to believe Gerstner was so wrong about our coming out of the age of irrationality. What would he say if could see full blown post-modernism and the emergent church movement?
This is a good post, and true, until you start dealing with Lawyers and Pharisees. Dead-souled and dead-hearted, their disembodied brains grow like a tumor. They are ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
Bret,
The imperative must follow the indicative… if the imperative leads or stands alone it’s an empty suit leading it’s followers to constantly question why they only do what they don’t want to do… and rarely doing what they wish within their redeemed MINDS.
Thanks for writing and posting this!
Mark said he learned this from Edwards…
I learned it from Mcatee! 🙂
the mind is primary in order, but the affections are primary in importance.
That is at best a false dichotomy. In reality the latter are dependent on the former. Without the renewed mind, there are no right affections. You can remove a good number of bricks from a wall and still have a wall. You can’t remove the foundation. Is is always prior to does the one being the effect of the other.
Mark,
I fail to understand you objection. Do you reject the proposition that there is a distinction between the mind and the affections?
Further, is it not fair to summarize your argument thusly: right thinking yields right actions? If accurate it supports my distinction in order for the right thinking precedes the right thinking.
Perhaps your objection is to my assertion that the affections are primary in importance. To which I refer you to Edwards work to refute you objection. One can think rightly, that is understand a proposition, without believing it. Unless the knowing moves the affections, the knowledge only leads to greater condemnation. Thus, the affections are primary in importance, but will never be moved without knowledge.
I fail to understand you objection. Do you reject the proposition that there is a distinction between the mind and the affections?
::sigh:: Since I argued that right affections are dependent on a renewed mind one would think some distinction obvious. But it is a distinction “of” not a distinction from.
Further, is it not fair to summarize your argument thusly: right thinking yields right actions?
No that’s not a correct summary. Your prop is certainly true, right thinking does yield right actions. But right affections are likewise aspects of the mind. I’m talking ontology.
To which I refer you to Edwards work to refute you objection.
You don’t know what the objection is but no matter, when one appeals to someone believed to be an authoritative source, they quote the source in context and then give the title and page where the quote is to be found. All you’ve done is mention a name. I’d like to be able to read Edwards in context. I have all his works.
Your last paragraph appears very confused. There are some real epistemological issues there. Maybe later…. You asserted in your last post a priority of mind in order but an inferiority to the affections in importance. Now in this post you’ve switched from mind to knowledge,(affections are moved by knowledge)seemingly as if the two were the same. Well which is it? Both knowledge and affection are matters of the mind.