People often pit the Bible against psychology when what they really ought to mean is to pit the biblical psychology against secularist or materialist psychologies. After all, the word simply means the study of the soul. Only Christians can sufficiently understand what the soul is, and that is because our Lord, above anyone, “knew what was in man” (Jn. 2:25)

Of all of the teachings of Jesus, surely one of the most psychologically profound are the two back-to-back mini-parables in Matthew 13:44-45.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

This may seem like an odd entry-point into this passage. Is not Jesus speaking about what conversion looks like here? Indeed He is. I would only push back and ask, The conversion of what? And while you’re thinking about that, think about this too: Do you suppose that what each dimension of the soul does and how they relate to each other—do you think our answers to those questions might just effect our view into the more surface picture of that conversion? I happen to think so.

There are likely more ways to preach this text that I am aware of. But one way is the one that I have settled on—namely, to examine what conversion to Christ looks like by a kind of “dissection” of the soul. In both parables there is a seeking and finding of treasure. There is a significant nuance of difference between the two, but the same basic theme in each. And in each, the mind, the affections, and the will are on display. Now there are probing questions about the nature of the soul, and more specifically about these “faculties” of the soul, as they used to be called—questions that would be unfitting for the sermon format, but which exploring here may help as we come to this text.

 

The Soul’s “Faculties” — Parts or Powers?

Are the mind, will, and affections parts of the souls of human beings? We can say that all three are aspects of the image of God, and therefore created good by God, and meant to be in unity with each other: “unite my heart to fear your name” (Ps. 86:11). Whether we want to call these “parts” is another matter. The classical theologians would use the word powers, indicating that these are actions that the soul performs.1 This does not make the distinctions between them meaningless. It simply guards us from picture-thinking.

 

Mind (Intellect) and Will (Inclination) 

Mind (or intellect) is the thinking aspect of the soul. It is that by which the soul encounters reality beyond that soul. And remember, we are not philosophical materialists. We do not believe that mind and brain are logically coextensive. The brain is a receiver and transmitter of thought, but it is neither the origin nor the judge of thought. 

What then is the will? Jonathan Edwards wrote that the will is “That by which the mind chooses any thing.”2 It is not that the will is the separate “decision-maker,” as if it were another part of the soul, but rather it is that dimension of our soul in which our mind inclines us toward one object that we prefer over an alternative. 

Moral choices presuppose will. A truly moral action must: (1) have a state of awareness, (2) have voluntary connection to the right choice “A”, and (3) be informed by the belief that A is indeed right as opposed to ~A. 

Because of these same attributes, we are morally responsible for our thinking. This follows the same logic: if what you do is, ultimately, out of what you think, and you are responsible for what you do, then it follows that you are also responsible for what you think. Do you see how contrary biblical psychology is to modern materialist psychology? The more that modern man dissects this thing called “the soul” (psyche), the existence of which he no longer holds, the less morally responsible such a stimuli mechanism is! Not so for the true soul accountable to God. 

 

What is the Heart in Scripture?

Another false lens through which we modern Westerners view the soul and all religious experience is through “the heart.” We are all children of Romanticism, which was ironically a half-hearted rebellion within the Enlightenment against the Enlightenment. The value of all things was reduced to the subjective. How does it all answer to feeling? It would be naive to think that the church was not wholly shaped by such currents of thought. Long story short, human beings for millennia never defined the heart down to mere feelings. When Proverbs 4:23 famously calls us to “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life,” the idea here is much more than simply guarding one’s own feelings from being swept away or hurt.

Sinclair Ferguson writes,

“Modern Westerners tend to think of the heart as the center of a person’s emotive life (hence its use as the symbol of romantic rather than volitional love). But the Hebrew conceptualization placed the emotional center lower in the anatomy and located the intellectual energy center of a person in the heart. Hence, the word heart is frequently used as a synonym for the mind, the will, and the conscience, as well as (on occasion) for the affections. It refers to the fundamental bent or characteristic of an individual’s life.”3

Incidentally, this is really true both about the Hebrew word lev and the Greek word kardia. These are the dominant words used in the Old and New Testaments and their essential meaning is “the inner man.”

 

Are Affections and Emotions the Same (and Are They Bad)?

The better contrasting word to insert at first is the word “passions.” For reasons that would take some detailed argument from Scripture, and great works on the subject, such as Edwards’ Religious Affections, we will have to content ourselves with the surface. Nonetheless, we can give this perfectly accurate summary: (1) Affection is the feeling of the soul, more proper to healthy human beings. (2) Passions are those movements of the body of a sensual, or animal, nature. Emotions may refer to either (1) or (2), as human beings are soul-body unities, yet we are also distorted downward to the temporal and passing objects of desire in the fall.   

Edwards put it like this:

“The affections are no other, than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul … not two faculties; the affections are not essentially distinct from the will, nor do they differ from the mere actings of the will and inclination, but only in the liveliness and sensibility of exercise.”4

Today we use words like “emotions” or “passions” or “feelings” as rough synonyms. However, for Edwards, affections belong more properly to the rational inclinations, whereas passions are more violent like the animal spirits (yet unnatural, since we are not mere animals) and seize more control over the mind, rather than flowing from it. Those bodily fluids may “accompany” the affections, but are not of the essence of them.

To speak of the soul’s mastery over the body at this point bothers some people. They have in their minds only Plato (who further only reminds them of the Gnostics). So any idea that has the soul “over” the body seems to them to denigrate the body. But the Apostle Paul is always speaking about self-control and putting to death the deeds of the body.

“as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment” (Acts 24:25).

“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13).

Yes, it is true that Paul’s use of “flesh” (sarx) is of a spiritual “sinful nature,” and not merely the “flesh and bones” variety. However, the spiritual dimension of man is still that aspect of our being that properly orders our relationship to God, self, neighbor, and world. We do not let our appetites do this because our appetites place quickly corruptible ends before our souls. In fact, there is a battle between worlds between these faculties in our souls: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Col. 3:5).

Experientialists will often complain that more historic forms of the faith downgrade feeling. This need not be. Feeling ought to follow, but we ought never to follow feeling. It should be remembered what happened to the first person who ever “followed her heart” in that sense. Her name was Eve.

Now I say all of this not to bury but to praise each of these powers of the soul. This little bit of definition work is to prepare us as we come to the two treasure-seekers of Matthew 13:44-45. Pay careful attention to the mind, the affections, and the will of these two characters. 

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1. cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pt. I, Q. 77.

2. Jonathan Edwards, The Freedom of the Will in Works of Jonathan Edwards: Volume One (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 4.

3. Sinclair Ferguson, “Preaching to the Heart,” in Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2008), 103.

4. Edwards, Religious Affections in Works, I:237.