Volume 26, Issue 5, 2009
Science and Human Nature
David Bradshaw
Pages 576-598
The Mind and the Heart in the Christian East and West
One of the most intriguing features of Eastern Orthodoxy is its understanding of the mind and the heart. Orthodox authors such as St. Gregory Palamas speak of “drawing the mind into the heart” through prayer. What does this mean, and what does it indicate about the eastern Christian understanding of the human person? This essay attempts to answer such questions through a comparative study of the eastern and western views of the mind and the heart, beginning with their common origin in the Bible and continuing through their later divergence.