A. Craig Troxel

“One of the most significant modern-day misconceptions about the heart – even among evangelical Christians – is that the heart is opposed to the head. It is said that if we really want to follow our heart, then we will be guided more by our intuitions and non-thinking subconscious than by our thinking and mind. That is, people are lovers before they are thinkers. To embrace this kind of thinking is to be true to Greek philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche echoed this thought when he denied that great intelligence and a warm heart could coexist. But to put the heart and the intellect into a relationship of tension is not being true to Scripture. Such a false dichotomy is not just a form of anti-intellectualism; it is a misleading antithesis because it seems to create the impression that the mind is somehow less spiritual or less noble than the affective or volitional part of who we are. Actually, such ideas are nothing new. Paul heard the same complaint from the childish Corinthians and expressed how puzzled he was by their eagerness for the supposedly ‘higher’ gifts that bypassed the mind (1 Cor. 14:12, 15, 19, 20; cf. 12:7).”
― A. Craig Troxel, With All Your Heart: Orienting Your Mind, Desires, and Will toward Christ