Approaching the Concept of the Heart in the Syriac Old Testament

The Maronite concepts of the search for the presence of God, of salvation, and of contemplation, are grounded in the ancient Semitic concept of man, his creation by God, and the faculties which God bestowed upon him. Here we shall commence with some ideas found in the Old Testament, and how they were taken into the Syriac Scriptures.

I shall commence with Jill Gather’s 2014 work, Teachings on the Prayer of the Heart in the Greek and Syrian Fathers. By way of preface to her study, she wrote:

If we wish to understand why the churches of the Eastern Orthodox tradition rather than those of the Christian West have served as repositories for mystical teachings … an important (reason is) … the more liturgical and less apologetic orientation of the … (Eastern) churches.” (10)

That is, the Eastern Churches primarily taught doctrine through their liturgies rather than by analytic logic. (10-11) I would extrapolate from this that the understanding of the faith has, or at least had, always retained an intimate connection with the somewhat mysterious actions of the rites. The faith was absorbed, as it were, not only through the head but also through the senses: the sounds, colours, fragrances, and the stately postures and gestures of the liturgy, with its processions which not only demanded reverence for the sacred objects but displayed  it. The celebrants and servers were vested in special clothes which showed that they were engaged in something which was neither ordinary nor secular but extraordinary and belonged to the realm of the sacred. The teachings, were rarely abstracted, as far as ordinary people were concerned, from the dignified and respectful actions of the liturgy.

The Western Churches had the divine ceremonies; but still, there it is a question of degree. As a result of the Reformation, a strain of anti-sacramentalism began, and eventually, after 500 years, began to influence Catholic opinion-makers. The Eastern Churches were better adapted to demonstrating, through their liturgies, that the faith transcended worldly judgments, and was more than an intellectual construct: it was to be participated in by the whole person, in a believing community, rather than thought about as a private concern. This was part of the heritage of the Western Churches too; but one could hardly claim that the reforms of the second half of the twentieth century did not even further de-sacralise the Latin liturgy. Fortunately, the Eastern Churches did not experience the Maronite Church at first hand, only indirectly, through modernism, which of course entered the East from the West.

When we say that these rites addressed the faith to the whole person and not only to the intellect, we could add that, in Semitic terms, they were addressed to the heart, for in all Semitic thought, whether Hebrew or Syriac, “In the heart, the image of God was implanted at the beginning of time, and it is by purifying this image that direct contact with God can be re-established.” 13-14 As we shall see in future posts, this brings us directly to typology, which I describe as a Semitic theosophy, the discernment of the pattern of heaven upon the earth, and the need to purify whatever is earthly to better correspond to the divine types or archetypes.

The link between the heavenly world and our physical one is very real: and the physical was not on that account to be despised, but rather purified. If heaven and earth were brought together or at least closer during the liturgy, yet the Christian life was to continue in all settings, and would always include the body. As Gather said: “The idea that the suffusion of human flesh by life-giving energy allows for participation in divine life accords a prominent role to the body in the quest for God.” (21)

While the Fathers did indeed see the body as the occasion of sin, because being weak it could not always resist temptation (the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, matthew 26:41); the Eastern tradition sought to purify and transform the body. As Gather states: “If expressions of physical desire were harnessed and the body reintroduced to its natural state, it served as a finely tuned instrument, facilitating the ongoing illumination of the soul.” (23)

The bodily organ, physical but with spiritual effects, was commonly but not exclusively referred to as the “heart.” By searching the heart, they would discover both the good (the interior Kingdom of God – see Luke 17:21) and the evil impulses. The heart-searchers aimed to uproot vice from their hearts and develop the good, and hence: “enter into lasting relations with Divinity.” (32)

In the Old Testament, when it refers to the body, the lēb is often not only the heart, but also, the chest, the breast. It was the But more often, it refers to “the fundamental nature of a person and captures the entire spectrum of human existence …”

The heart, in the Semitic world, was mysterious and intrinsically related or relatable to God, hence in Song of Songs 5:2 we read: “I slept, but my heart was awake.” In the Syriac, this is e.nō dam.Ko w.leb(y) 3eer, “I sleeping, and (but) my heart awake.” Now the word 3eer, here used for “waking” is from the root 3wr “to wake, watch, be vigilant” and is identical with one of the words used for a watcher, guardian, or angel.

So, when the heart is waking, it shares in the quality of the angels; and conversely, one of their very chief defining features is their watchfulness. Further, the heart, the interior man, can be vigilant while “I” sleeps. This is capable of many meanings; one common interpretation being that the speaker was dreaming. But this is barely feasible, for the reasons given in 1977 by Marvin Pope in The Song of Songs (510-511). It seems to me that St Ambrose had the correct interpretation: “Let thy flesh sleep; let thy faith wake, let thy members breathe the odour of Christ’s Cross and grave …” (514).

That is, to be awaken to hear the coming of the Bridegroom is, by implication, to sleep to other things – here called “I” because they are our usual concerns. It is, in short, to have attention trained in a particular direction, for a particular aim.

So, too, in Proverbs 4:23, we read: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” (ESV) b.Kul zou.hōr Tar le.bōK – me.Toul d.me.neh (h)ouw maf.qō.nō d.Ha.ye (with all caution guard your heart, for from it is the going out of life”). This seems a trifle ambiguous in the Syriac, but the critical value of the heart and the need to vigilantly protect it are clear. Further, and this is significant for the later tradition, there seems to be no real difference between keeping watch over the heart, and the heart itself keeping watch.

The heart must therefore be kept pure to be able to hear the voice of God: Scripture calls this is a “heart of flesh,” which it contrasts with a “heart of stone.” See in this respect Ezekiel 11:19-20 (“I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh,  that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them.”) see also 36:26. That a heart of flesh should mean a heart which can hear and obey God shows that the flesh can be redeemed: it is not intrinsically evil.

Finally, Gather relates this to the later Christian tradition, saying:

Ascetical practitioners embraced the notion of the heart as the seat of all human activity. In its original, ordered state, the heart was capable of bringing into accord a person’s thoughts, feelings, wishes and actions, and of subordinating these to the will of God. It was the vital link between the body and the soul. By way of the heart, divine grace was believed to pour into every limb of the physical body, and to sanctify mind as well as matter. If humans chose to cleanse this inner domain by fasting, weeping, and mourning, they were able to acquire direct access to the heavenly realm.” (53)