What is a Human? Part 4 The Mind
The Modern Western view of the mind is it’s the seat of the intellect. It’s where the thoughts are generated by the subconscious, and then considered by the conscious part of the mind, and acted upon.
The connection between the mind and body is mysterious and even philosophers struggle to define it, calling it the Mind-Body Problem.
It is common for people in the West to think the mind goes to Heaven when we die. And the body, which is left behind to rot, is just a fleshy shell. It’s not the real person. The mental part of the individual contains the personality, the identity and the essence. And the body doesn’t contribute to who the individual truly is.
What is the Mind?
Whereas the Modern Westerners struggle with this question, the Bible is more clear.
1 Corinthians says that the believer has the Mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:16
For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Does this mean we have the intellect of Jesus? Does this mean we can think like Christ?
For the early Christian, the mind was called the nous. It is not the same as the modern psychological understanding of the mind, but something very different.
Just as the ear is used to sense sound waves. And the tastebuds on the tongue tastes food, so the nous senses God and the spiritual (or noetic) realm. It is through the nous, we connect with God and build a relationship with Him.
At the Fall, Adam’s sin caused the nous to be darkened.
Romans 12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (nous). Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Once our nous is transformed through Christ, we can then know what God’s will is for us. If our nous remains darkened, we walk in darkness.
The difference between the Nous and the modern concept of the Mind is significant. And if we want to read the Bible more accurately, we need to understand the difference.
What is the Subconscious?
In the Modern worldview, the sub-conscious is the part of our mind which is unknown. It is hidden. It dreams dreams. It is veiled from view.
The subconscious is a relatively recent term, first coined by Pierre Janet in 1889. He was trying to describe the layers of consciousness within the person.
The Bible writers do not use this term. And it doesn’t even explicitly talk about the concept of the subconscious.
However, in the Middle Ages, Gregory of Palamas wrote about the Essence Energy Distinction. This idea explains how we can experience the energies of a person, but we can’t know their essence. We interact with people’s energies, when we converse, engage with them and touch them.
While the essence of someone is unknowable. Much like the modern idea of the subconscious. It is veiled in mystery. I wonder if Pierre Janet was explaining what Palamas might call someone’s essence.
Another way of looking at the subconscious is that it is an expression of the heart and the nous. I say this, because thoughts come from both these sources.
Heart and Nous
There appears to be a deep connection between the Heart and the Nous.
Ephesians 1:18
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people
The ‘eyes of the heart’ is also known as the nous. It is how our heart perceives the external spiritual world. So in this verse, Paul is praying for the nous to be enlightened.
As shown in my experimental model of the human from my previous post, the heart and spirit contributes to the organising principle.
This principle is what the nous uses to focus and filter out thoughts. It’s almost like we are standing in the rain and the the nous is collecting the rain drops (thoughts) which fits in with the priorities of the organising principle.
So if our organising principle is to focus on Christ, thoughts about Christ will come to us.
If the focus of the nous is on sinful or worldly things, the thoughts we receive will be centred around this.
Where do Thoughts Come From?
If the Bible is not in line with the Modern understanding of the mind, the question of where thoughts come from arises?
If someone has an idea, they normally use the idiom, ‘a thought came to me’. No one ever says I created a new thought.
The Modern view is thoughts come from within the person’s subconscious and bubbles up into their conscious mind.
The early Christian view is that thoughts come to us from outside. We do not generate them.
A good analogy is that of a walled garden. Where every so often, the wind blows a floating dandelion seed over the wall and it lands in a garden bed. The seed takes root and begins to grow.
The dandelion seed is like a thought. It comes into the mind from outside. It then settles in our heart. As the gardener, the nous can either weed out the thought and get rid of it or we can allow it grow.
Sometimes these thoughts are good and need to be entertained. These are from God. While bad and destructive thoughts are from demonic sources. Whether these thoughts get removed depends on our nous.
This also reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the sower. Here Jesus compares the soil to the heart.
Matthew 13 v 18-19
“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.
As I said previously, our nous filters out the thoughts depending on what we value and what we treasure.
Our nous needs to be renewed to filter out bad thoughts, and this happens through focussing on and building a relationship with God.
As I’ve said previously in this series, some of this is from my own ponderings. But the Nous is a very important idea in the Bible and is easily misunderstood by our Modern Western conception of the mind.
Learning about this has challenged and changed the way I see my heart and mind. And even how I understand my thought-life. I have found this post quite difficult to write and have removed large sections. I may write these up on my sister publication, Agloria, at a later date. There is so much to talk about on this topic.
Next time, we will look at the body and how it is differentiated from the flesh.
Below is the paywall. Beyond this, I discuss more controversial topics around the mind.
I talk about how dreaming fits into my model of a human and the effects of psychedelics on the nous.
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