Head and Heart: John 14:1-12: Having Jesus In Your Heart But Not In Your Head

The Head and Heart Antipathy? Who wins?

What is the difference between faith and intellectual assent, or what we call reason? Between head and heart? Is there a difference between faith and belief?

I want everyone to go to this link to get an excellent example of the difference between messianic thought and modern thought on this issue. Yes, my friends, another contribution by our perennial religionist Mr. Morissey.

I am not singling his scattershot out by any means. This kind of thing is modus operandi going all the way back to just after the deaths of the apostles, which is a liberal tick within a conservative pretension. Its what Paul warned about when he said

Acts 20:28-30 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

I know, everyone with a theological ax to grid uses this as some kind of proof they are right in a sea of wrongs. It’s one “doctrine” against another “doctrine,” that is,  what you have made up your mind about set forth in a faith statement that is supposed to be original to Christ. My take, however, is not between my doctrine (διδαχή didachḗ) and another unless “doctrine” that definition stays firmly in its 1st-century usage as the kind of teaching by Jesus in the Gospels. This particular kind of teaching cements the definition of “blood” and “purchase” and “feed,” in the above verse, into a certain scriptural matrix in a way that makes our general idea of doctrine just a useful means of avoiding it by linguistic sleight. Therefore, my “doctrine” is only the phenomenal messianic stream of the Old Testament set against everything else we would use to throttle it.

I did an article on the real Christian doctrine before. I just wanted to stir the pot a little. For now, we have but one “doctrine” to tackle.

Is our big problem having Jesus in our heads and not our hearts, as the Church teaches, or is it having Jesus in your heat but not in your head? As Paul said, we believe a certain thing to draw disciples after us, or we believe things that draw the Truth after us. It’s not so easy to spot which is which sometimes.

With that in mind, how do we take this into the perennial sermon in our Church about the doctrine of notitia, assensus and fiducia, thought properly broached by the difference between the “head” and the “heart” with respect to genuine faith in Jesus?

Don’t think that it is an innocent omission of Mr. Morrissey that he does not mention the oracles of Christ even once in his talk on faith. There is a good reason why he should avoid it: it destroys his faith-without-content narrative, which he effectively sets as a holy antagonist to reason.

“Why, your faith in Jesus is, well, just faith…trust…it has nothing biblical to do with what motivates you about your faith in Jesus except that Jesus said it. Its all about you and your inner experience, your trust in him from the emotions of your heart, but it certainly can’t be about the prophets…that would involve reason ( I don’t say “reason,” I say “moral thought.”). We don’t want to think that we are going into death without complete (Catholics and Protestants alike) assurance that there is nothing we have forgotten to respect except the idea of Jesus.”

What I call opaque religiosity is an attempt to domesticate Jesus, to make him appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable, to dumb him down, to separate him from legal biblical thought and knowledge, so that most of the world can get under his banner and feel good, resulting in more money into collection plates.

The usual false dichotomy, that is also used for Mr. Morrissey’s argument, is that between the “head” and the “heart.” “Don’t have Jesus in your head and not in your heart” is the refrain, but never “don’t have Jesus in your heart but not in your head.” Morrissey uses the same when he talks about “those who trust in Jesus and not just believe or have what is sometimes called ‘intellectual faith’ will be vindicated.” The writer avoids at all cost biblically defining faith, pistis, in all this, as much as the Church does in refusing to operate on the biblical definitions of kephale and kardia. Why? So let’s start here.

Faith

From Thayer

1. conviction of the truth of anything, belief
2.fidelity, faithfulness, i. e. the character of one who can be relied on: Matt. 23:23; Gal. 5:22; Philemon 1:5 (? see above in b. α.); Titus 2:10. of one who keeps his promises:

From Friberg:

active, as belief directed toward a person or thing confidence, faith, trust, reliance on (MT 9.2);

From Liddel-Scott:

Generally, persuasion of a thing, confidence, assurance

 It is used here: Acts 17:31:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

J.P. Holding in his excellent article uses this and Acts 2:22-36  to bring out three things about faith:

1. 1. [Peter] appealed to the evidence of the wonders and signs performed by Jesus;
   2. he appealed to the empty tomb,
   3. and he appealed to fulfillment of OT prophecy.

Ok then, is a “head” vs. “heart” dichotomy ever presented in the NT as a valid start to a resolution of the faith problem and solution?

Head

Kelphae (κεφαλη). It’s never used for the intellect. It’s used for the idea of the top of a hierarchy or it’s used to denote your head.

Matthew 26:7 There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

Matthew 21:42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

Heart

Now heart, kardia (καρδια)

Mark 2:6 But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts,

From Friberg

in the NT inner self; (1) viewed as the seat of physical vitality (AC 14.17); (2) viewed as the innermost self, the source and seat of functions of soul and spirit in the emotional life (AC 2.26), the volitional life (2C 9.7), the rational life (AC 7.23)

From Lowu-Nida

the causative source of a person’s psychological life in its various aspects, but with special emphasis upon thoughts – ‘heart, inner self, mind.

From Gingrich

heart as the seat of physical life Ac 14:17. Mainly as the center and source of the whole inner life Mt 18:35; Lk 16:15; 2 Cor 5:12; 1 Th 2:4; 1 Pt 1:22; 3:4. Of the emotions J 16:6, 22; Ro 1:24; Hb 10:22. Of the will Ac 11:23; Ro 2:5, 15; 2 Pt 2:14. καρδία may sometimes be translated mind Lk 24:25; Ac 7:23; Ro 1:21; 2 Cor 9:7, and approaches the sense conscience 1 J 3:20f, ἐν τῇ κ. to oneself Mt 24:48; Ro 10:6; Rv 18:7. Fig. καρδία in the sense interior, center Mt 12:40.

There is no “head” and “heart” in respect to faith, there is only “heart,” and heart involves both the emotions and the intellect.

Mr. Morissey makes the distinction between faith and belief. Is this biblically supported?

On the top links brought up on Google on the search term “faith and belief,” we get these:

• http://purposelydifferent.com/the-difference-between-faith-and-belief/. There is no mention of any biblical language that makes this distinction.
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rea-nolan-martin/faith-and-belief_b_4166117.html. There is no mention of any biblical language that makes this distinction. Again, its all sophistry.
• http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/what-is-the-difference-between-faith-and-belief-a-bible-study/. Again, the same. Where are examples of this concept of faith and belief presented in the Bible as crucial distinctions?

One of the most popular proof texts to argue for this idea is James 2:19: “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” But in this, as in all other occasions where we find the translated word “belief,” we find the Greek word is still pistis (πιστευω), faith.

Ok, fine, you say. But that does not mean there is no value in explaining that there is a difference between the two, faith and belief. My answer is that there may be a philosophical benefit to this, but why do we seem to have a need for it when the ancients took faith and belief as the same thing? If we are so biblically-centered like we say we are, are we not supposed to think as they did in order to get at the meaning of the text?

Well, there is a good reason why we are obsessed with such distinctions: it puts the mind and the emotions at enmity with each other, a war in which the sensibilities, the instincts, the religious feeling wins, and this is very important for the carnal mind when it comes to being able without a nagging conscience to look at Jesus and the NT as being about themselves, about persons, places and things. Or as a simple narrative of quaint stories and innocuous religious ideas. The idea is that the intellect may be important, that center of knowledge and reason, the place where facts and clams are known and legally weighed and judged, but what takes priority is what it means for me, my feelings, the Church or the formulations of propositional “theology.”

Modern man, although he boasts of his great achievements and knowledge, is no less carnal than he was 2000 years ago.

Jesus means more than “Jesus,” “Jesus also means “salvation,” which is a prophecy which he fulfilled, and his apprehension comes more from this uninformed quasi-mystical state we call “faith.” Faith is a function of the entirety of the whole of the inner man, including the emotions, with no one dimension taking precedent. But since we are so carnal, so object-oriented, when we speak of Jesus we speak of his signification coming out of sense experience, as if he were standing in front of us. He is not, only his knowledge is, his representational informational entity and this representation can only exist in the mind and its substance and truth only checked by the actions of the mind.

His person is an objective reality, but to a righteous faith, He is only a reality, a truth, to the extent that his biblical, prophesied credentials for being Savior are true. A conception of a vital difference between faith and belief is vital only to those who can only participate in Christianity by taking “Christian”  as a dumb name instead of “follower of Messiah,” which means “one who has faith in the Word of God which spoke that he would come.” The Messiah of name, or object, of the un-credentialed person only, is the Messiah who expects no intellectual reason, no inducement by knowledge, to have “faith” and “trust” in him. But “Messiah” will not allow this, because “Messiah,” the idea, is a specialized biblical title qualified upon one individual because only he did and could have fulfilled the prophets.

Now, re-reading John 14, it is easy to see how this could be thwarted through the “head” and “heart” filter, which chapter is as a lesson about the very un-Christian like behavior of actually thinking that you have to know and sort through anything at all in order to trust Jesus. Jesus here in John 14 does nothing different than he had done anywhere else, except speak more plainly. Here is what the Messiah is doing:

• Revelation, the disclosure of the mysteries of heaven: John 14:2
• Prophesying:  John 14:2,3
• John 14:4: Speaks of himself and the foregoing as his informational equivalent, “the way,” revelation, the disclosure of the truths of heaven, and the authority of which rests in fulfilled prophecy.
• Thomas says he does not understand the “way.” He believes Jesus but he does not understand how this “way” could apply to Jesus. This is a familiar motif in John, the carnal being unable to pick up on the fact Jesus uses objects and concepts that on their surface seem prosaic but represent something deeper about this miraculous information.
• Jesus says that he is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by him. These three are spiritual, informational, not only applying to his personal aspect. It means that the way to the Father, to life, as well as to an understanding of the OT scriptures, is through the fulfillments of them, Jesus. In turn, means that the only “way” to salvation is through Jesus and this supernatural knowledge.
• Next, knowing the Father (the OT promises of the Father concerning Him) means knowing him, the fulfillment of the Word.
• Then Phillip says, “show us the Father.” Jesus says if you have seen (believed, have faith in) him, the fulfillment of the Word of the Father, you have seen (known, understood) the Father, the oracles that the Father gave that predicted Me. But, if you did not, from now on you will surely know him and see him.  That is, if you knew anything about the prophets and the Word of God before after I have finished completing them shortly, you will find more and more that speak of me (Luke 24-27), and thereby see more and more that Father.

John 14:10-11 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.

Jesus, the fulfillment, is in the oracles of the Messiah in the OT, and those prophecies of the OT are in Jesus, their fulfillment. Jesus does not speak by his own authority as a personal messianic object, on appearance, on a mere boast. The Father, this Word of God, who lives in him and is him, speaks and performs the works that were commanded that the Messiah must, and those miraculous works were again prophesied works for Messiah. For faith is it sufficient to believe that Jesus is to be found in the OT prophecies, or that this Word of God is expected to be vindicated and shown in the fulfillment of Jesus, as a vital scriptural integration and principle of revelation. Or else you can believe in him and the truth and authority of the oracles only by looking at what you have seen him miraculously done to fulfill prophecy. Either way, you need the oracles for faith.

The importance to faith in an understanding of Jesus, a faith both a certain kind of knowledge and trust from the heart, is what it’s all about. The carnal world, which is illustrative in the web article cited, will never have it, much less accept. They are in fact practicing war against that kind of faith.

Does this mean emotion, feeling, instinct, intuition are nor important in faith? God forbid! Without them, we would not be human, and without them, it would be impossible for the truth to penetrate into the deepest regions of the Heart. Head and Heart are equals.

But our time does not have a problem with having Jesus in the heart but not in the head. Our problem is in self-actualizing theology, radical subjectivism, the priority of religious feeling, intuition, dreams, false miracles, in short, a Jesus of the inner experience alone. The problem we have is in having Him in our hearts but not in your heads, not in our heads but not in our hearts.

I think we should ensure, in this treacherous age, that we make sure we use “heart” the way Jesus did. That however we experience and believe in Christ, we have both parts of Him.

Please see these:

When I Survey the Wondrous Nace, part 1: Passing by Nehushtan

Christ and the Norming of Transcendence: Passing by Nehushtan