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The Biblical Heart and Process Anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Robert E. Doud
Robert E. Doud*
Affiliation:
Pasadena City College
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Abstract

This article aims to integrate the biblical theological idea of the heart with Alfred North Whitehead's ideas concerning human selfhood. It begins with a biblical theological description of the heart, drawing to a focus upon Ezekiel's idea of God creating in us a new heart. It then interprets these ideas by correlating them with key ideas of Whitehead, such as actual entity, actual occasion, living person, historic route, the four phases of the actual entity, initial aim, and subjective aim. This correlation peaks in the idea that for process anthropology a new heart is created in us every new instant.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Fall 1996 , pp. 281 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1996

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References

1 Rahner, Karl, “‘Behold This Heart!’: Preliminaries to a Theology of Devotion to the Sacred Heart” and “Some Theses for a Theology of Devotion to the Sacred Heart,” Theological Investigations, vol. 3, trans. Karl-H, . and Kruger, Boniface (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967), 294–302.Google Scholar

2 Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality, ed. Sherburne, Donald W. and Griffin, David Ray (New York: Free Press, 1978).Google Scholar See also my “Identity and Commitment” in Religious Experience and Process Theology, ed. Lee, Bernard and Cargas, Harry James (New York: Paulist, 1975).Google Scholar

3 Rahner, Karl and Vorgrimler, Herbert, Theological Dictionary, trans. Strachan, Richard (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965).Google Scholar See the articles on “Existential State,” 161; “Heart,” 199; “Man,” 270f.; “Mystery,” 300; “Ontology,” 324; “Sermon on the Mount,” 433; “Transcendence,” 465. In other places I have attempted more complete correlations of the work of Rahner and Whitehead. See my “Rahner's Christology: A Whiteheadian Critique,” Journal of Religion 57/2 (1977): 144–55;CrossRefGoogle Scholar“Matter and God in Rahner and Whitehead,” Philosophy & Theology 8/1 (1993): 63–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Cobb, John B. Jr., A Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965);Google ScholarWhitehead, , Process and Reality, 235.Google Scholar

5 Tracy, David, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury, 1975), 172–87.Google Scholar

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7 Gnuse, Robert B. Karl, To Sing a New Song: New Perspectives for Doing Old Testament Theology, Yamauchi Lectures in Religion (New Orleans: Loyola University, 1994), 7.Google Scholar See also, Gnuse, Robert B. Karl, “New Directions in Biblical Theology: The Impact of Contemporary Scholarship in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62/3 (1994): 893–918.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Ibid, 901.

9 McKenzie, John L., Dictionary of the Bible (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1965), 343–44.Google Scholar

10 Bultmann, Rudolf, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, trans. Grobel, Kendrick (New York: Scribner's, 1955), 223.Google Scholar

11 Rahner, Karl, “The Apostolate of Prayer” in Theological Investigations, vol. 3, 213;Google ScholarRahner, and Vorgrimler, , Theological Dictionary, 199.Google Scholar

12 Rahner, , “Some Theses,” 335.Google Scholar

13 Rahner, , “Behold This Heart!” 327.Google Scholar

14 Rahner, , “Sermon on the Mount,” in Theological Dictionary, 433.Google Scholar

15 Rahner, , “Transcendence,” 465.Google Scholar

16 Rahner, Karl, “The Theology of the Symbol” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4, trans. Smith, Kevin (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), 245–52.Google Scholar

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18 Delitzsch, Franz Julius, A System of Biblical Psychology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1966).Google Scholar

19 Ibid., 295.

20 Häring, Bernard, The Law of Christ, vol. 1, trans. Kaiser, Edwin G. (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1965), 206, 210.Google Scholar

21 Häring, Bernard, Free and Faithful in Christ, vol. 1 (New York: Seabury, 1978), 90-93, 185-89, 225, 228.Google Scholar

22 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, 18.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 190.

24 Ibid., 107.

25 Ibid., 102.

26 Ibid., 19.

27 Ibid., 149. The stages of concrescence are also found described on pages 163-66.

28 Ibid., 18-20. In the process of prehension, a datum already prehended would be a prehensum, and a datum about to be prehended would be a prehendum. “Each actual entity is ‘divisible’ in an infinite number of ways, and each way of ‘division’ yields its definite quota of prehensions. A prehension includes in itself the general characteristics of an actual entity: it is referent to an external world, and in this sense will be said to have a ‘vector’ character; it involves emotion and purpose, and valuation, and causation” (19).

29 Whitehead, Alfred North, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1967).Google Scholar Here a subjective form is also called “an affective tone determining the effectiveness of that prehension in that occasion of experience.”

30 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, 43.Google Scholar In Whitehead, decision constitutes the very meaning of actuality.

31 Ibid., 224-25.

32 Ibid., 67.

33 On God's relation to initial aims, see Cobb, John B. Jr., A Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965), 150–57.Google Scholar

34 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, 275.Google Scholar

35 McKenzie, , “Covenant” in Dictionary of the Bible, 153–57.Google Scholar

36 Rahner, , “Heart,” 199.Google Scholar See also Rahner, “‘Behold This Heart!’”: “[Speaking about heart], he is evoking the unity of his being which is anterior to the dichotomy between body and soul, action and thought, internal and external…” (323). See also Rahner, , “The Theology of the Symbol,” 251;Google ScholarRahner, Karl, “The Theological Meaning of the Veneration of the Sacred Heart” in Theological Investigations, vol. 8, (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1971), 222–26.Google Scholar The heart is the point of origination of God's unfathomable mystery which is here made present to us at the same time as the horizon of all our being and acting, inviting ethical responses from us in love. On this, see Beauchesne, Richard J., “The Supernatural Existential as Desire: Karl Rahner and Emmanuel Levinas Revisited,” Église et Théologie 23 (1992): 221–39.Google Scholar

37 Rahner, , “Heart,” 199.Google Scholar See also Rahner, “Some Theses”: “[A primordial word like heart] occurs in all languages and belongs to the primitive patrimony of man's speech” (332).

38 Rahner, , “Heart,” 199.Google Scholar Knowledge of the heart has to be a self-knowledge attained by a return into oneself made possible by concrete experiences of deciding, loving, and acting in the world (Rahner, Karl, “Priest and Poet” in Theological Investigation, vol. 3, 309Google Scholar).

39 Rahner, “‘Behold This Heart!’”: “But [only man, not God or angels,] goes out and away from himself, he must realize himself in something other than he has done and suffered, and can only in this way, in this other, looking away from himself, become conscious of the well-spring and the unity of his being” (324).

40 Rahner, , “Heart,” 199.Google Scholar See also Rahner, “‘Behold This Heart!’”: “This unity of man, original, originating and holding together what it originates, is a personal unity, that is to say, one which knows itself, ventures forth and freely makes its own choice …” (323).

41 “Matter names the way spirit knows and loves in the world … the reason for emanation is that the human spirit is such that it cannot become itself except by incarnating” (Tallon, Andrew, “Personal Becoming,” The Thomist 43 [1979]: 34Google Scholar).

42 “He [the poet ] experiences it [coming-to-himself and being with himself]… in that concreteness full of images which is in fact a poetic and concentrated expression where everything is given in one … to be able to understand oneself, by uttering one-self” (Rahner, , “Priest and Poet,” 309Google Scholar).

43 Tallon, , “Personal Becoming,” 45.Google Scholar Tallon cites Rahner to explain the dynamism of the human spirit: “spirit lets sensibility emanate from itself, bears it permanently in itself as its power, and informs it from the outset with the laws of its own essence” (Rahner, Karl, Spirit in the World, trans. Dych, William [New York: Herder and Herder, 1968], 284Google Scholar). And also, “Spirit produces its sensibility in this desire for being which constantly pre-apprehends absolute being … it produces sensibility as a condition of its own fulfillment….”

44 Rahner, , “Priest and Poet,” 294-302, 322, 332.Google Scholar

45 Rahner, Karl, “Poetry and the Christian” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4, 357–67Google Scholar: “is there a preparation which he must undergo to be or become a Christian, which turns out to be a receptive capacity for the poetic word” (357).

46 Rahner, , “Priest and Poet,” 316.Google Scholar Transcendence, or orientation to God, is experienced as incompleteness or yearning at the basis of all experience whatsoever.

47 Compare Rahner's “gates” in this passage to Merton's “doors” in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 1973), 153–55.Google Scholar On Merton's “doors,” see Carr, Anne E., “Merton's East-West Reflections,” Horizons 21/2 (Fall 1994): 252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Rahner, , “‘Behold This Heart!’” 323.Google Scholar

49 Rahner, , “Mystery,” 300Google Scholar, and “‘Behold This Heart!’” 323.

50 Rahner, , “Some Theses,” 335.Google Scholar