Q and A

I had a friend ask this question to me and post it on her facebook. I'm a dork and like researching things like this so I thought I would post my response. Scripture inspires questions and there's no such thing as a dumb question about God. It's a good thing there are a lot of smart people out there...in particular the dudes that wrote the Bible.

Question:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul" (Deut. 6: 4-6)...which one of these is harder, or more important? I have been thinking on this for well over a year....this is deep..seems easy...but is it? The heart and mind are connected...which is more of a struggle to control?

Answer:

I did some reading up on this and found some good stuff.

Here's the dealio...

1. I looked at www.scripture4all.org to see the actual Hebrew translation. Turns out that verse, Deut. 6: 4-6 says, "you love Elohim of you, in all of heart of you, all of soul of you, and all of utterly you." The word "mind" is not in the original text. The end of that verse, "all of utterly you" sums it up best because the answer to your question is they are basically all the same thing. None of them takes precedence over the other.

2. I found a good nugget of wisdom regarding the "heart, soul, mind, and spirit" in this book called "The Faith Once For All" by a professor named Jack Cottrell. His body of work is awesome and he's my favorite theologian. He's a Restoration Movement guy (like Trent). I also think it would be wise to look up some Reformed theology guys like Mark Driscoll, D.A. Carson, Dallas Willard, N.T. Wright. But...I'm positive they would all come to this conclusion. Here's what Cottrell wrote...

"The 3 key words for the spiritual side of our nature are 'heart', 'spirit', and 'soul'. The words for heart (leb, lebab, and kardia) are used hundreds of times, almost always in the spiritual sense equivalent to soul or spirit. (Exod. 35:21, Ps 73:26, Eccl. 11:10, Ezek 44:7, Rom. 2: 28-29, Heb. 10:22, 1 Pet. 3:4). The functions of the heart include all those we associate with personhood and the mind, e.g., intellectual activity (thinking, reasoning, understanding), volitional activity (decisions, desires), emotional activity (joy, sorrow, fear), religious activity (receiving God's Word, faith, repentance, obedience, worship), as well as sin and unbelief. We should note especially that in the Bible there is a total absence of the common distinction between the head as representing reason and the heart as representing feelings. What the Bible calls the 'heart' refers to both 'heart and mind'. It refers to the inward person as a whole."

3. Our spirit is not divine or part of God. It is the aspect of us that is most like God. See Genesis 1 for that, "we are created in God's image". We are "like" him, not "part" of him.

So, to answer your question, the heart and mind are not only connected, they are one and the same. They are synonyms of each other.

Hope that helps! Miss having these fun conversations with you,

Aaron