The heart needs ears, too
He will come openly, and he will not be silent (Ps 50:3). It says, “He will not be silent,” because he was silent when he was being judged. But as for the words we need to hear, when has he been silent? He wasn’t silent when there were patriarchs and prophets; he wasn’t silent when he spoke with a human mouth. And if he were silent now, the Scriptures would not speak. The reader goes up into the pulpit, and he is not silent. The preacher speaks, and if he speaks the truth, it is Christ who is speaking. And if Christ were not still speaking, I would not be saying these things. And with your voice, too, he was not silent–when you were singing, it was he who was speaking. He is not silent, and it’s up to us to listen, but to listen with the ear of the heart, since it’s easy to listen with these physical ears. We have to listen with the ears that the Master himself sought when he said: “Let those who have ears to hear listen” (Mt 13:9). Was there anyone there in front of him as he said this who did not have ears? They all had ears, and few of them had ears, for not all of them had ears to hear [audiendi], that is, to obey [obediendi]. (Augustine, Sermon 17, 1; PL 38, 124)
I hate that metaphor “the ears of the heart”. It conjures up a really ugly image. What did Augustine mean by “heart”? Its meaning is so nebulous, and yet not nebulous at all.
Ann: the metaphor belongs with the constellation of them that set out the theme of the inner senses, corresponding to the five outer ones. Thus to recognize Christ as the Bread of Life requires that the heart be hungry, to be able to see God requires that one’s inner eye be clear. So in one sermon he says, “You hear, but you’re deaf” (I’ve often heard one of my sisters complain about that to her husband!); Christ healded physical deafness, the preached word heals the heart’s deafness; he said that he was glad one day when about to address a difficult question that he would not be speaking to “deaf hearts, to scornful minds [or souls]“, the two phrases probably identical in meaning; the very point he made above he makes in another sermon in terms of “the ears of the inner man”.
Cor has some of the same associations as does our “heart,” as the seat of affections and emotions, but also often carries greater links with thought than we do when we distinguish “heart” and “head.” The restlessness of Augustine’s cor inquietum is not just emotional.
It is very surprising that there is no entry for “heart” in the encyclopedic Augustine through the Ages, and gets no attention in the article on his anthropology. In any case, one should not look for consistent vocabulary in his works.
Did St. Augustine write any poetry?
Oh, I get the meaning of the metaphor just fine. It’s the image that conveys it that creeps me out. Or maybe folks at that time didn’t have a very vivid image of what a heart looks like and does.
I was curious about his meaning of “heart” because in recent decades there has been so much philosophical discussion of what a “self” is. Consider the mind-body question, the philosophical meanings of “self”and of the use of first person singular pronouns plus the search for consciousness/soul by the brain scientists. But with all of this interest, it seems to me that the “heart” is neglected as a real and important part of the self. I dont know if the oriental religions have such a notion, but it is certainly in the Bible, and I think that its meaning has remained fairly consistent if mushy, so I suspect it refers to some real, distinct part of our inner self of great importance, if not supreme importance. Certainly the theologians and poets recognize it.
But just what is it? Is it composed of simpler parts? I doubt it. The way the mystics talk about it, it just gets simpler and simpler the deeper they get into it. (That assumes they’re really talking about the same thing.) And it doesn’t seem to be exactly the same thing as the soul, at least not for some of them.
Sigh. (Is it the heart that says “sigh”? Can the heart both listen and speak? Hmm.)
It’s definitely the intellect that says “Hmm”.
What says, “Yikes!”? And “Bleh”? “Bleh” actually goes all the way back to Sanscrit!
Is the heart what grasps the indefinable?
One of the most famous uses of this image is in the Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict, which isn’t a bad Lenten reflection in itself:
Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord. First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to him most earnestly to bring it to perfection. In this goodness, he has already counted us as his sons, and therefore we should never grieve him by our evil actions. With his good gifts which are in us, we must obey him at all times that he may never become the angry father who disinherits his sons, nor the dread lord, enraged by our sins, who punishes us forever as worthless servants for refusing to follow him to glory Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: It is high time for us to arise from sleep (Rom 13:11). Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts (Ps 94 [95]:8). And again, You that have ears to hear, listen to what the Spirit says to the churches (Rev 2:7). And what does he say? Come and listen to me, sons; I will teach you the fear of the Lord (Ps 33 [34]:12). Run while you have the light of life, that the darkness of death may not overtake you (John 12:35).
http://www.bluecloud.org/rule.html
The bible use the word “heart” over 1,000 times. A few years ago i gave a series of conferences to a Benedictine community. As preparation, I read the psalter and marked every use of the word “heart” – it was a staggering exercise. I did that exercise because Cassian says that the goal of the monastic life is “purity of heart” (think of the Beatitudes). The biblical tradition loves to put the listening heart and the hardened heart into opposition.
In a sermon on Jn 6, on eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ, Augustine said to the Catechumens, also called the “Hearers” (Audientes), that they might indeed have heard the words with their bodily ears but their “ears of the hearts” were still closed because they did not yet understand, as believers did, what the words meant as realized in the eucharist–the disciplina arcani. So here the reference is less to moral dispositions than to intellectual knowledge or comprehension.
Ann: There is quite a debate going on in Augustinian studies about the relation between Augustine’s emphasis on the “inner man” and modern fascination with the self, e.g., to what degree the Augustinian dubito can be thought to anticipate the Cartesian cogito. There’s a whole book on Augustine’s “invention of the self.” On the other hand, there are some who emphasize how much Augustine’s interiority differs from that of modern philosophy and theology.
I think there is something in Augustine that speaks to the postmodern inward turn. Part of the core corriculum in my (secular) college was a section on primary sources of Christian theology. Most of the students disliked Aquinas, Paul, and Anselm, but Augustine’s Confessions was almost universally loved.
Prof. Cunningham and JAK,
Thanks your for your comments.
Does Jesus talk about “heart” or even simply refer to it? Did He have an equivalent Aramaic word? Did the Greeks? My old Jowett translation of Plato doesn’t even list “heart” in the Index, so I doubt they had one. Heartless people. No wonder Paul made such an impression on them.
I wish somebody would do a linguistic consideration of “heart” in the Judeo-Christian traditions and then do some phenomenological ones. Not asking for much, am I. But I think “self” is a central problem for the contemporary world, involving as it does morality, theology, and, in the practical order, political rights. IMHO “heart” is necessary for moral thinking and has something to do with our very real capacity to intuit what is *fitting*, as contrasted with what is necessary according to scientific observation and law.
As I see it, in the political order “the heart” is central to a very fundamental, totally contemporary conflict between extreme conservatives and extreme liberals. For the liberals who derive from the Romantic tradition morality is morality is a matter of feeling or intuition — of heart, and it is feeling that tell us we are obliged to help the poor. I don’t think the extreme conservatives even think there *is* such a thing as heart, and for them the Catholic preferential option for the poor is strictly a matter of theology, not ethics. (We really, really need a thread on this issue!)
Unfortunately, Thomas doesn’t give “heart” much attention, I suppose because of his Aristotelian view of man’s soul which is fractured into all those differentiated faculties. He talks some about “connatural knowledge” but it’s a very mushy notion, I think. (It’s not his notion in the first place. Is it in Augustine?) Hume gives feeling a place in moral thinking, but he really doesn’t think there’s a self in the first place (very Buddhist). I suspect that is one reason why the current intellectuals are having such trouble with the “self”and duties — if the self doesn’t persist in time, then we’re not responsible for our past sins.
Not to mention what the mystics have to say about heart. (I suspect the idea originated with them, but I”m not sure.)
A can of worms is what this topic is.
Thanks, Kathy. But again, I run into contradiction in Augustine. He requires obedience, but didn’t he also say “Love God and do what you will”??
I hate the saying “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, (( think it was Emerson and I can’t stand Emrson.) But I think there’s truth in it. Sometimes honesty requires us to reach contradictory conclusions — because there’s something wrong somewhere in our premises. But to correct it requires us to admit there’s something wrong with our premises. Hard to do.
“Cognitive dissonance’ is an important new idea, I think.)
So what’s the trouble with Augustine? Or should I ask: what does he MEAN by “Love God and do what you will”? Yes, I think it has something to o with heart. Maybe a lot.
Ann: The Index Thomisticus lists 6562 uses of the word cor in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a first perusal indicates that it has most of the associations, physical and metaphorical, that we are familiar with. The verbum cordis is integral to his psychological analogy for the Trinity.
The Greeks certainly did have a word for heart, kardia. NT dictionaries have lengthy articles on “heart” in both Testaments. It’s main reference is to interiority, to the inner seat of emotions, passions, thoughts, desires, etc.
Jesus uses it often in both the Synoptics and in John’s Gospel.
There is also the famous text of Pascal: “The heart has reasons that reason does not know”…
In comment on your second post above: I agree entirely about Emerson, can’t stand him. Try to grab hold of one of his ideas, and it floats away like smoke. But Newman said something similar about consistency in language or vocabulary. I think one has to distinguish between patterns of experience. The language of everyday life doesn’t need to be bound by the strict rules of a philosophical treatise. Aquinas had systematic interests that Augustine never had as a preacher, bishop, and polemicist.
Augustine’s comment meant that if one genuinely loved God and neighbor, and as one should, then that love would never want to do what is bad, and so one can safely follow what love proposes. It’s the great theme, very well developed in both Augustine and Aquinas, of true Christian freedom being achieved by moving from doing things simply because they are commanded or avoiding them simply because they are forbidden to doing them because they are good, and one loves the good, and not doing them because they are evil, and one hates evil. And for both great saints, this is the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Aquinas unites the Pauline theme of freedom with the Aristotelian notion of the liber sui causa.
JAK –
Thanks for all the information. I guess I’m most interested in both the variety and origins of its various meanings, especially Jesus’ meanings.
I’ve always thought that Pascal’s use referred to something non-rational, which coming from a great mathematician is fascinating. But what did he mean by “reason” there? At any rate, I think that saying suggests that there is something in us that reaches beyond reason — it’s not anti-reason. It concerns objective realities, not just our feelings in the ordinary sense, as in “My heart told me that it would be wrong to deny her request”.
I realize that Thomas uses the word often — he’s bound to if for no other reason than he is constantly commenting on Scripture. But the non-literal, non-anatomical senses of “heart” are not part of his Aristotelian concept of the psychological structure of a human being, and I don’t remember Thomas considering it in a systematic way the way he comments on all the other mental/spiritual parts of the Aristotelian self. Of course, Aristotle gave little attention to the will, and it seems to me that “heart” is more closely related to the will and its operations than to the intellect. Thomas did analyze operations of the will in very great detail, but I don’t remember his identifying heart with the will or some operation of the will, though maybe he did.
Yes, I know the Greeks had a word for anatomical hearts, but I was wondering if they used that word with a sense analogous to Augustine’s — as something fundamental in us, something mental or spiritual, which intuits/feels what is right/good/ true, or the empathetic part of the self. That sort of meaning doesn’t seem to be in either Plato or Aristotle. Sappho uses it in a couple of poems, but it seems to have just a romantic sense there, and that’s obviously not what Augustine is talking about.
Just checked McGinn’s work on mysticism, “The PResence of God”, and his indexes list only “the heart of Jesus” image. “The heart of Jesus” plays an important part in the experiences of some medieval visionaries. It’s the precursor, apparently, of the Sacred Heart of Jesus devotion, but I doubt that has anything to do with what Augustine is talking about. Nevertheless, as I remembrer that a lot of other mystics use the term, too.
More from Pascal; note the line, “not of the phiosophers and the learned” “non des philosophes et des savants.”
The year of grace 1654,
Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,
FIRE.
GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.
Kathy –
Pascal was a Jansenist, and Jansenism was condemned as heretical. Perhaps he could have done with a bit more philosophy. Jansenism is really ugly, sort of a theological masochism, I think.
Lord, Ann! There’s so much more to say about Pascal than that he was a Jansenist! And in any case, there aren’t any traces of Jansenism in the quotes from him that have been adduced here.
JAK –
Aw, c’mon. Unless you want to defend Jansenism, you can hardly object to calling him a Jansenist. So he had some merits. I’m sure the Bishop did too. But the fact remains that that mind-set gets some very basic Christian teachings very, very wrong.
Further, that Mermorial taken as a whole is quite ambiguous. It’s a flight from the world — to God, I’ll grant you, but consider “Renunciation. Total and sweet.” You can argue for renouncing the world, but for normal people renunciation is hard, not “sweet”. Coming from a Jansenist, the likeliest interpretation of that line is that it’s a masochist talking.
NOt that I think that highly neurotic people or crazy ones can’t be holy. Far, far from it. Therese of Lisieux was obviously another not-very-well-balanced person, and one of the greatest of saints. But too often I think the Church canonizes the sickness as well s the holiness. Yes, there was a lot of that in the Middle Ages. (I blame Bernard of Clairvaux for a lot of it — great poet, great saint, bad influence.) All this really wouldn’t really matter, except that it especially turns young people off and thus turns them away. And that is particularly true in this time of hedonism.
Aw, c’mon Ann. I didn’t object to your calling Pascal a Jansenist, but that your post was so dismissive of a great thinker. I don’t know to which bishop you’re referring.
The fragment found sewn in Pascal’s coat describes a mystical experience. It speaks of renunciation, but does not specify that it is of the world. I would myself take it to refer to a self-renunciation–as in “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and body”–which is not total if not sweet, and is sweet when total–”My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” said Jesus, and many people, not all of them masochists, have found this to be true.
I suppose that this does term some young people off, especially in a time of hedonism, but there are others, not all of them masochists either, who are attracted by the call of Christ, who, I now remember, also said something about losing one’s self in order to find it.
My problem is that though Pascal might have lot to recommend him (not that I’ve really read him), Bishop Jansen’s invention has been such a terrible influence on the Church, so it’s best not to recommend him.
Yes, the Lord said some extreme things, but that was the way He made some points exceptionally clear. But overstatement isn’t the style of the founders of French classical writing, i.e.., Pascal and Racine, both Jansenists. They didn’t need to overstate because they wrote so extremely simply and clearly to begin with. That’s why I don’t think your interpretation of Pascal’s Memorial is likely the right one. I think he probably mean exactly what he said: that renunciation is *sweet* — not that it leads to something sweet, but that it *is* sweet.
Well, as you say, Ann, you haven’t really read him.
No, but I’ve seen some dreadful effects of his writings.
What effects? Which writings?
I don’t believe the Lord thought he was being “extreme” when he cited from the Old Testament the command to love the Lord our God with a whole mind, body, heart and soul. This, he said, was the first and greatest of the commandments.
I would also wonder if words hurriedly jotted down on a scrap of paper in the midst of, or right after, a mystical encounter with God are to be interpreted along the same lines as his other prose. I too think that Pascal meant exactly what he said: that the renunciation was both total and sweet, and I don’t have any grounds for doubting that what he said was true of himself.
JAK–
I grew up being told, and I have no reason to doubt it, that our local Catholicism has strong elements of Jansenism, no doubt through the influence of the Ursuline nuns. This was countered, no doubt, by the Jesuits who taught the boys. It led to a complex sort of Catholicism which I won’t go into, but it definitely is real — a sort of combination of let-the=good-times-roll and Ash Wednesday.
Jansenism was also very influential in Ireland, and through the Irish-American clergy in the U. S. it has also been highly influential generally in the U. S. I have myself seen its effects — scrupulosity about all sexual matters and an over-emphasis on the importance of sexual sin — as well, I think, as a fascination with it, plus a prudishness among Irish-Americans (at least those of my generation and older) which you don’t find in even the French-Americans in New Orleans.
It is my understanding that Jansenism has been influential throughout the Church, but I don’t know whether it has been as influential in other places as it has been in France and Ireland. I can’t help but wonder what it’s ultimate influence has been on the Vatican’s culture.
Here’s a quote from Pascal’s “Provincial Letters” (courtesy the Stanford online encyclopedia of philosophy): ‘concupiscence and force are the sources of all our actions. Concupiscence causes voluntary actions, and force causes those that are involuntary’ (II, 570) (in Fragment 90 of the Pensées) Note well — he doesn’t say *many* actions, or even *most* actions, but *all* our actions. I find that a most extraordinary statement. One can see why he placed such emphasis on renouncing everything and repressing our animal natures. And I think that has been bad for the Church. (Preoccupied with sex and violence — the man sounds positively Freudian.)
A “renunciation”, including Pascal’s, is not the same thing as a whole-hearted committment such as Christ enjoins us to make. It is — perhaps– or for some — a condition of a committment, as is the “submission” to Christ and his director which Pascal refers to.
I don’t doubt that he found his renunciation sweet. But I just don’t think that is normal. Sure, a commitment can be sweet. but a renunciation? A renunciation is painful, though for a masochist I suppose it could be sweet. (Ugh.)
Though such submission to confessors is, I know, common in the Church (or was) I also cannot understand how an adult can submit all of his judgments of conscience to a confessor for approval or disapproval. And if you ask me — which you haven’t — this allowing anyone, including priest-confessors, to determine such decisions has been a very bad thing. It has led to a lot of immaturity, in my opinion. There are times when we should be arguing with Father, not obeying him.
Given the sex scandal, the more I think about this the more wonder just how much influence Pascal has had on Catholic morality, especially in the Vatican. These days the Vatican is regularly said to be sick on the subject of sexuality, and Pascal and the other Jansenist theologians might be part of an explanation of how it got that way. I wonder if anyone has studied the subject.
The stylistic extremism of Jesus I was referring to is found in His exaggerated sayings such as “If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out”. He obviously didn’t mean that literally. It is an exaggeration to get a point across. And, of course, I don’t think it was “extremism” of Him to tell us to love the God with our whole self.
Ann: I agree about the baleful effects of Jansenism. I just don’t think they should all be laid at the feet of Pascal who wrote much but published little, as one author put it. You show a proper modesty when you say that you wonder–that is, do not know–what influence he himself had on the trends you deplore.
The quote you cite is from the “Pensées,” and it is one of some 1,500 fragments of thoughts in view eventually of a defense of Christianity. The whole work should not be dismissed because of a single quote.
Here are two comments from the conclusion of Copleston’s balanced chapter on Pascal: “The value of his general attitude as an apologist for Christianity far outweighs in importance and perennial validity those aspects of his thought which are considered to be questionable or censurable by the Catholic theologian. It is a pity to miss the wood for the trees, and not to appreciate Pascal’s importance and influence in the history of Christian apologetics.” ….
“And perhaps this is the chief legacy of Pascal, that he left in his fragmentary writings a fertile source of stimulus and of inspiration for further development. Not all, indeed, feel this stimulus; and some find him repugnant. Others rank him with Descartes, as one of the two greatest of French philosophers, and feel for him the profoundest admiration. Possibly the former do him less and the latter more than justice.”
I think you should take the “Pensées” off your personal Index of Forbidden Books; Rome put only the “Provincial Letters” on its–you seem to want to include the opera omnia.
The Index of Forbidden Books is one of the worst things that happened in the RCC. I’m hardly likely to have one of my own. But it you there is no list, then it behooves you to express your opinion about what is less than Christian when it claims to be Christian.
I’m not at all surprised that Copleston found that Pascal is very much disliked by some of us. I don’t even know much about the wrorks themselves, but I”ve seen some effects of them, and,yes, just read about them. Sure, he was a great brain, a particularly great mathematician and made some important contributions to science. That’s no reason to think that everything he thought had great spiritual value, or even much of it.
When people these days start wondering why the young and some of the middle aged and even old ones have left the Chutch in droves mention isn’t often made of the scrupulosity imposed on Catholic kids together with a general negativity about the pleasures of this Earth, especially with regards to sexual matters. I happen to think the scrupulosity is the single biggest factor leading to the abandonment of the Church. Just this week in the secular press I read yet another pitiful tirade against the Church because of it. Devastating in more ways than one.
Why are people still leaving? Look to the Jansenist elements, especially now in the Vatican.
Are you at all surprised that Copleston has so many positive things to say about Pascal. He’s far more balanced than you are, but then, of course, he’s read him…
We probably should end this exchange where we began. Copleston has a section on what Pascal means by “heart.”
Here is something from the Pensees which illustrates what I reject. He shows utter contempt for the everyday:
”61. Order.– I might well have taken this discourse in an order like this: to show the vanity of all conditions of men, to show the vanity of ordinary lives, and then the vanity of philosophic lives, sceptics, stoics; but the order would not have been kept”
And here is a gross skepticism I didn’t know was in him:
# 72. “This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses. ”Let us, therefore, not look for certainty and stability. Our reason is always deceived by fickle shadows; nothing can fix the finite between the two Infinites, which both enclose and fly from it.”
(By God, but he can write!)
On the other hand, here he berates Descartes for being uncertain and really Godless. (Descartes was *anything* but Godess.)
“77. I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.
”78. Descartes useless and uncertain.”
I grant you that these weren’t published by P. I would guess that he just didn’t know how to eliminate his contradictions, that he was tormented with an intellectual vise pushing his intellect in two directions. He himself admits that when he criticizes Montaigne he is criticizing himself. Both of them, it seems to me. both believed and disbelieved.
By the way, it also looks to me like Pascal was a great grandfather of the Catholic snarkiness that is also now endemic in the Church, only the poor man held to both sides of the divide — a crystaline faith and an admission of the uncertainties of all our knowledge.
No, bad influence. (Not to mention his total rejection of Reason — while using reason to reject it. What a mass of contradictios. Sheesh.
Well, good. At least you’re reading him. I’ll be interested to know what you think when you finish.
I mostly skimmed the first three sections of the Pensees. Some of his epistemological arguments are i interesting, but he seems to be something of a manic-depressive — wildly enthusiastic about making some progress in finding some certainty about immortality and the existence of God, yet at times he is a terrible skeptic. And his view or other people is positively cynical.
When does he talk about God? If he just goes on and on with this skepticism and cynicism, I don’t want to waste time on him. Does he ever talk about God in such a way that one would want to love Him? So far he just keeps complaining that God’s infinity is totally incomprehensible to us. Who wants to love such a God? Respect, yes. Love? No.
Well, I don’t know that skimming is going to do the trick, particularly for a reluctant and suspicious reader. And, yes, he does talk about God and even more about Christ.