"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with your soul
and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5)
and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5)
Teachers and scholars alike have consistently looked upon this text and concluded that some kind of division-of-personhood either can be or ought to be drawn out of this text. Contextually, the text is saying that we're to love God with our entire being. And if that's true, here's a catalog of the parts of our being: heart, soul, and strength.
On an intuitive level, this seems to make good sense. "Strength" points to the physical, material aspect of our being. "Soul" is the spiritual part. And "heart" is that bridge between the two, the interface of the spiritual in and through the material. Now from this, arguments flare up as to whether a human being is 2-fold (material & immaterial) or 3-fold (material, immaterial, and paramaterial [I made up that term just now.]). Is this text meant to be a hard-line division among the aspects? Does "heart" come first because it is not a separate aspect but a mediator between soul and strength?
Personally, I question whether this text means to do any such thing at all. This is the temptation and danger of systematic theology: to go to texts that do not intend to say something and attempt to draw out truths from it. What do I think the text is doing?
I'll argue that the 3-fold list is actually a refrain, a rhetorical device used for emphasis. Such a device is commonly found in the Old and New Testaments. For example, Psalm 99:9 says, "for the Lord our God is holy." This, in itself, is sufficient to draw us to see the absolute holiness of God. There is nothing inadequate or missing in this statement. Yet when we come to Isaiah 6:3 and see the seraphim crying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty," we feel the force of the 3-fold refrain. This is a rhetorical device, a literary tool used to make emphasis. (Note that any attempts to draw out the doctrine of the Trinity from this 3-fold refrain is a secondary consideration, if legitimate at all.) It's also been observed that prayers end with "Amen." So for Jesus to say, "Amen, Amen" or "Truly, truly" before many of His teachings is a rhetorical device. The 2-fold repetition is for emphasis, an attention-getting device.
Examples like these are throughout the Bible. So what does this mean for Deut. 6:5?
Let's start with an interesting pattern in Deuteronomy: the command to love God "with all your heart and with all your soul". This 2-fold refrain is used in Deuteronomy 4 times:
"And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul." (Deut 10:12)
"So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul..." (Deut 11:13)
"The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul." (Deut 13:3)
"The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live..." (Deut 30:6)
Now when Joshua wishes to remind Israel of that covenant in Deuteronomy he picks up on that repeated, 2-fold refrain and says to Israel:
"But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the LORD gave you: to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul." (Joshua 22:5)
Now does this mean that God is making a theological statement as to a 2-fold division of humanity? One might be tempted to conclude this. But let's hold off on that and first conclude that this 2-fold refrain was the understood-pattern meaning: love God with ALL of your being.
With this in mind, let's go back to Deut 6:5 and revisit the 3-fold refrain:
"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with your soul and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5)
If the purpose of such statements were to make a comment on that nature of humanity, we're stuck with an odd choice between the 2-fold division repeated 4 times or the 3-fold division said once but with prominence. (This text was one put in the phylacteries of devout Jews, a text written on a small scroll and put in small boxes strapped to one's head or arm.)
Rather than wending down that twisty road, it's far more intuitive and biblically sound to see that both the 2-fold refrain and 3-fold refrain are for emphasis and not for a commentary on the nature of humanity. It would be quite sufficient if the Lord were to say, "Love the Lord with all your heart." That statement is not lacking anything. It's good enough to convey the idea of "love God with ALL your being." Adding on other "parts" of a person are for rhetorical emphasis. It's like saying, "God is amazing!" versus "God is amazing, fantastic, stupendous!"
The 2-fold refrain of love God with all your "heart" and all your "soul" is very emphatic. Just like the double "Amen, amen" refrain used by Jesus. This makes the 3-fold, triple refrain of Deut 6:5 SUPER emphatic. It's no wonder the Israelites latched onto this as being the most important of all the commandments. And they were right about that. They got the force of the rhetorical emphasis dead-on.
To make it even clearer that a "division of humanity" is not in view, when you get to the New Testament, and Jesus is referencing Deut 6:5, He says in Matthew 22:37,
"Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" (Matthew 22:37)
So instead of "strength," He says "mind." Is this a misquote? Is Jesus getting the division of humanity wrong? No, because Jesus understands what the original Deut 6:5 text was trying to do: use the 3-fold refrain for emphasis not for a precise division of a human being. You can substitute whatever terms you wish to make the same point.
But what's the MOST amazing part of this whole discussion is the parallel quotes of Jesus in Mark and Luke:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:30)
"He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'." (Luke 10:27)
Jesus makes it into a 4-fold refrain! To my knowledge, the only such thing in the entire Bible. It affirms that Matthew's version is not a misquote of Deut 6:5 but rather an abridged version of the quote to keep consistency with the 3-fold refrain. But Mark and Luke capture the entire quote of Jesus who adds a fourth aspect! Again, does this mean that there's a 4-fold division of humanity? Again, that's missing the point. This is a rhetorical device.
If the 2-fold refrain was emphatic, the 3-fold super emphatic, the 4-fold refrain is mega-, hyper-, super duper emphatic! The Sadducees ask Jesus what is the greatest commandment of all. Jesus knows that the 3-fold refrain is God's signal in the Old Testament that THAT is the most important of all. And not only does Jesus recognize and affirm this, He steps it up another notch by re-emphasizing just how important this is esp. in the New Covenant of grace.
Loving God with all our being is THE most important command of all. As a rhetorical device, the 2-, 3-, and ultimately Jesus-affirmed 4-fold refrain is extremely effective. The Israelites of the Old Testament got it. In principle, we pretty much got it, too. But in our theological haste, we overlooked WHY we got it.
3 comments:
odd, don't you think? that Jesus would be redundant? i suggest a different angle. Jesus added the word MIND on purpose. it was a definite and strategic addition.
under the sacrificial system the priest did the thinking out of the relationship between God and the people. after the work of Jesus on the cross people had to each use their minds to interpret the law, their lives in relationship to the law, and their lives in relationship to God. they had to use their minds to love him.
I agree hawaiibeachboy. I love loving the Lord my God with my mind--learning about Him in His Word, knowing why I stand for what I believe in, etc.
Thanks for this post Chris. I've often pondered just the points you comment on so well here. I think it is a rhetorical device too after reading what you have to say. All these terms relate to the 'inner man' and as you've suggested the repetition underlines the point that our love is to be from the core of our being.
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