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A Treatise concerning Religious Affections
... Hij is wellicht ongeëvenaard in zijn vaardigheid deze twee draden succesvol door elkaar geweven te hebben.'17 Edwards, Religious Affections (1746;1959), p. 120 / Religious Affections (1746; 1961), pp. 49-50 / Works 1 [Banner] (1974), p. 243. ...
... Edwards, Religious Affections (1746;1959), pp. 259-260 / Religious Affections (1746 1961), p. 185 / Works 1 [Banner] (1974), p. 280; het beeld komt terug in de preek over Matt 16:17 ' A Divine and Supernatural Light'(Edwards, Works 2 [Banner] (1974), pp. ...
A volume (in Dutch) of articles published between 1995-2020, in four sections: I. Zechariah and the King; II Hebrew Language; III Gospel and Sexual Diversity; IV The Gospel of Gods Glory.
... us, emotions are considered separate from and inferior to reason. Edwards (2001) provides a slightly di erent view when he locates the emotions within the part of the soul he described as the inclination. In this way emotions are joined with those functions of the mind by which a person responds to that which is perceived. ...
... love, desire, hope, joy, gratitude, complacence), those that relate to the disapproval of the will (i.e. hatred, fear, anger, grief ) and those emotions that re ect a mixture of approval and rejection (i.e., pity) (Edwards, 2001). Elliott (2006) argues that emotions are a form of cognition, that emotions should not be equated with irrationality, that there is a physiological aspect to emotion, that emotions have an object, that emotions have a motivational quality, and that emotions play an important role in human experience. ...
The use of Ingram's (1995) model with Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy serves to differentiate the assumptions that inform EFCT and to provide a roadmap for theological reflection. By utilizing the categories of Bios, Socius, Logos, and Theos it has been demonstrated that EFCTs use of Bowlby's Attachment Theory, EFCT's assumption that emotions are a form of cognition, and the humanistic values of dignity, worth, growth, and self-realization each find fresh meaning when considered from the perspective of theological anthropology. Indeed, reflection on these categories further demonstrates that a Christian worldview offers a transformative context for employing the techniques of EFCT. In this way the use of Ingram's model is validated as a tool for theological reflection that draws the practitioner to look beyond a methodology of correlation and to consider the unique perspective offered by the Christian worldview.
... In the religious history of the west, the most dramatic renewals of religious commitment and non-coercive expansions of religious community across boundaries of national, ethnic, and class identity have been attended by these manifestations. As with all signals, the benefit of cooperation with those whose commitments are trusted, is paid for by the exclusion of those whose commitment is doubted: each of the above affects have functioned as emblems of authenticity, which were interpreted by those experiencing them as signs of not only commitment, but of salvation, and criticized by non-participants as destructive excess (Edwards 1746(Edwards /1982. More recently, the Pentecostal movement, which started with a small, racially-integrated group of several hundred people in 1906, has spread to every country on earth, is estimated to number 500 million, and has become the most rapidly growing religious tradition-the fastest spreading religious meme-in history. ...
... [For extensive theological discussions of the relationship beween displays and commitment, that I am commenting on here, see for example, Edwards 1741Edwards /2007Edwards , 1746Edwards /1982Wesley 1766Wesley /2006Wilberforce 1797Wilberforce /1997 Since exhortations against self-deception are themselves vulnerable to intentional or self-deception and an infinite regress is possible in principle, it is amenable to two types of constraints. First, once the moral connection between affective display and normative cooperative action has been overtly identified-"genuine religion cares for widows and orphans in their affliction" -significant instances of self-bias can be empirically identified. ...
... Holy affections are not heat without light, but evermore arise from some information of the understanding, some spiritual instruction that the mind receives, some light or actual knowledge. (Edwards 1746(Edwards /1959 The 18th century saw a proliferation of new ideas about sentiments and sensibility, as well as about passions and affections. But in almost all theoretical works, the various feelings and emotions of the human heart and intellect were understood to fall into at least two categories: the more violent and selfregarding "passions" and "appetites" on the one hand, and the milder and more enlightened "interests," social "affections," and "moral sentiments" on the other (DeJean, 1997;Dixon, 2003;Hirschman, 1997). ...
... Preachers and theologians, as well as secular moralists, most often found themselves discoursing on these subjects in order to demonstrate the importance of governing the passions and cultivating the affections. During the religious revivals of the 18th century, in which the feelings and sympathies of the human heart were so important, preachers such as Edwards (1746Edwards ( /1959 and Whitefield (1772) spoke and wrote in the language of the Bible. The terms "passions," "lusts," "desires," and "affections" all had a biblical pedigree. ...
The word "emotion" has named a psychological category and a subject for systematic enquiry only since the 19th century. Before then, relevant mental states were categorised variously as "appetites," "passions," "affections," or "sentiments." The word "emotion" has existed in English since the 17th century, originating as a translation of the French émotion, meaning a physical disturbance. It came into much wider use in 18th-century English, often to refer to mental experiences, becoming a fully fledged theoretical term in the following century, especially through the influence of two Scottish philosopher-physicians, Thomas Brown and Charles Bell. This article relates this intellectual and semantic history to contemporary debates about the usefulness and meaning of "emotion" as a scientific term.
... ii. 7, cited several times in Plantinga 2000, chs. 7-9); second, Calvin's 'testimony of the Holy Spirit' (Ibid., I. vii), in conjunction with Aquinas's 'internal invitation' of the Spirit (Aquinas 1945, 11-11, Q. 2, A. 9), which he elaborates in chapter 8; and third, Jonathan Edwards's 'religious affections' (Edwards 1959, cited and discussed in ch.9). Plantinga thus extends his A/C model further to include Edwards, giving us what he might have called an A/C/E account of faith. ...
... In abnormal psychology textbooks, for example, the description of premodern understandings of psychopathology typically focus on demon possession, the burning of witches, and the mistreatment of people with psychosis and mental impairment (Comer, 2009;Holmes, 1997). is occurs in spite of the fact that much contrary historical evidence is widely available. For example, though they did not understand the precise mechanisms, the physiological basis of severe depression was widely recognized (Baxter, 1682(Baxter, /1981Burton, 1621Burton, /1875Edwards, 1959; Burton even discusses social and stress-related causation). More recently, from a philosophy of psychology standpoint, Slife and Reber (2009) have argued that mainstream psychology's commitment to naturalism has resulted in a pervasive implicit bias against theism throughout the discipline. ...
Humans tend to be embedded in their prior communally-based understanding, by means of winicin they interpret the world. Postformai reasoning, promoted by dialogue with others, strives for a metasystemic understanding that incorporates the wisdom of multiple systems of thought. Intellectual majority-minority relations can inhibit postformai thought and dialogue by inclining majorities not to listen to minorities and inclining minorities to doubt themselves and their potential contributions. Principled pluralism is a political framework that promotes the contributions of minority communities. These assertions are explored with relation to psychologists and therapists within the Christian com-munity and within the current field of psychology as a whole.
... Jonathan Edwards later wrote these first stirrings of revival "seemed to prepare the way in diverse places for that more extensive revival of religion which in five years after followed."38 After 1739, when the Great Awakening was in full swing, Jonathan Edwards approved of the revivals but disapproved of the excessive enthusiasm of certain ministers and congregates,39 frowning on the showy and confusing aspects of the revival.40 Edwards wrote extensively on the Great Awakening. ...
This collection offers a fresh assessment of John Calvin and the tradition of Calvinism as it evolved from the sixteenth century to today. The essays are written by scholars who present the latest research on a pluriform religious movement that became a global faith. The volume focuses on key aspects of Calvin’s thought and its diverse reception in Europe, the transatlantic world, Africa, South America, and Asia. Calvin’s theology was from the beginning open to a wide range of interpretations and was never a static body of ideas and practices. Over the course of his life his thought evolved and deepened while retaining unresolved tensions and questions that created a legacy that was constantly evolving in different cultural contexts. Calvinism itself is an elusive term, bringing together Christian communities that claim a shared heritage but often possess radically distinct characters. The handbook reveals fascinating patterns of continuity and change to demonstrate how the movement claimed the name of the Genevan Reformer but was moulded by an extraordinary range of religious, intellectual, and historical influences, from the Enlightenment and Darwinism to indigenous African beliefs and postmodernism. In its global contexts, Calvinism has been continuously reimagined and reinterpreted. This collection throws new light on the highly dynamic and fluid nature of a deeply influential form of Christianity.
The topic of intelligence involves questions that cut deep into ultimate concerns and human identity, and the study of intelligence is an ideal ground for dialogue between science and religion. This volume investigates the notion of spiritual intelligence from a variety of perspectives, bringing together contributions from theology, computer science, linguistics, psychology, biology, and cognitive science. It defines spiritual intelligence as “processing things differently, not processing different things” and aims to describe it in naturalistic terms. Spiritual intelligence is not regarded as a separate mental module or a magical ability to interact with the supernatural but rather as a specific, more spiritual way of engagement with reality, which has observable cognitive, phenomenal, and linguistic characteristics. The book is valuable reading for those working at the interface between science and spirituality.
With chapters by Harris Wiseman, Nicholas Ostler, Catherine Pickstock, Fraser Watts, Sara Savage, William Clocksin, Marius Dorobantu, Michael Reiss, Michiel Bouman, Mark Vernon, Fraser Watts, Jordan Joseph Wales, and Rowan Williams
Awe is an emotion defined by an experience of vastness and cognitive accommodation that is unique among other positive emotions in that its cognitive effects are more similar to those of negative emotions. The current study posits that because of its unique cognitive effects, awe may related to resilience to stressors introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was hypothesized that awe would significantly correlate with resilience to COVID-19 even when controlling for religiosity. Religiosity was included in the analyses because of strong support in previous research connecting it to both awe and resilience. Regression analyses revealed that awe and religiosity were both significant correlates of resilience but when placed in the same model, the relationship between religiosity and resilience disappeared. An exploratory mediation analysis was conducted to further explore this result. Implications for understanding resilience in the face of COVID-19 and directions for future research are discussed.
Though the concept of ‘emotion’ is often accepted uncritically, a historical approach shows that, in the form it takes in modern psychology, it is a product of the 19th century, and replaced an earlier more differentiated vocabulary. In the 17th century there had been another significant shift in the meaning of emotion words when they came to refer to subjective feelings in a new way. There has been much controversy about the concept of ‘basic’ emotions, which is unpopular with historians of emotion. However, I am persuaded that some such distinction is needed; a distinction between primary and secondary emotions is somewhat akin to the earlier distinction between passions and affections. Emotions have various manifestations, including behavioural, physiological and subjective. These are often aligned, though they do not have to be. There has been considerable interest in the couplings between different manifestations. Most current work on the history of emotions is being done by historians but it would be good to see more psychological interest in a historical approach to emotions, and cross fertilisation between the work of historians and psychologists.
special issue on "Theology, Philosophy, and Ethics: In Memory of William J. Wainwright"
For some time interest has been growing in a dialogue between modern scientific research into human cognition and research in the humanities. This ground-breaking volume focuses this dialogue on the religious experience of men and women in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Each chapter examines a particular historical problem arising from an ancient religious activity and the contributions range across a wide variety of both ancient contexts and sources, exploring and integrating literary, epigraphic, visual and archaeological evidence. In order to avoid a simple polarity between physical aspects (ritual) and mental aspects (belief) of religion, the contributors draw on theories of cognition as embodied, emergent, enactive and extended, accepting the complexity, multimodality and multicausality of human life. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the chapters open up new questions around and develop new insights into the physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects of ancient religions.
For some time interest has been growing in a dialogue between modern scientific research into human cognition and research in the humanities. This ground-breaking volume focuses this dialogue on the religious experience of men and women in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Each chapter examines a particular historical problem arising from an ancient religious activity and the contributions range across a wide variety of both ancient contexts and sources, exploring and integrating literary, epigraphic, visual and archaeological evidence. In order to avoid a simple polarity between physical aspects (ritual) and mental aspects (belief) of religion, the contributors draw on theories of cognition as embodied, emergent, enactive and extended, accepting the complexity, multimodality and multicausality of human life. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the chapters open up new questions around and develop new insights into the physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects of ancient religions.
This article focuses on the evangelical theology and revival practice of Charles Grandison Finney, popular in his time yet critically under-explored in American philosophy, specifically regarding his role in the emergence of American pragmatism. Spearheaded by American philosophers like Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, pragmatism argues that the significance of abstract concepts lies in their practical consequences in lived experience, as opposed to their internal logic or conformity to intellectual traditions. Whereas this philosophical method is often seen as predominantly secular in its origins, this article approaches pragmatic thinking and practice from the point of view of the spiritual conversion strategies of Charles Finney and antebellum evangelical culture more broadly. I expand on what Leonard I. Sweet has called Finney’s “pragmatic philosophy of revivalism,” addressing his theology and revival practice to disclose its latent pragmatic tendencies and those within antebellum evangelical culture. I argue that by looking at Finney as an early practitioner of this method, we must reappraise his and evangelicalism’s role in the emergence of philosophical pragmatism, challenge its putative secularity, and – as Charles Taylor has recently demonstrated – reassess what academic disciplines mean when they cite the presumed distinction between the religious and the secular.
On Religious Emotions and Their Theological Value: How to Understand the Positive Significance of Christian Affections for Doctrine and Practice?
The purpose of this article is to give a constructive proposal of how to understand the role of Christian affections for theological reflection and work with systematic theology. The last decades have seen an increased interest within different academic disciplines, including theology, in the topic of emotions, feelings and affections, and their significance for human rationality. In a Norwegian theological context, the question of the significance of Christian affections is accentuated by the 250th anniversary of the revivalist and social reformer Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824). Within Pentecostal theology, a consensus has emerged that Christian affections are necessary for right doctrine and right practice to be sustained coherently. However, more work to spell out their relationship in detail is needed. In the first part of the article, I will present a theological understanding of Christian affections, based on the work of Steven Land and Simeon Zahl, exemplified and illuminated by the historical testimonies of Hans Nielsen Hauge and the Thomas Ball Barratt. In the second part, I will give my constructive proposal where I employ «the somatic marker hypothesis» of Antonio Damasio to explain how Christian affections and their positive significance for theological reflection can be understood, in that the bodily conditioned emotional markings of mental images function more properly, which enables the theologian to make more rational choices in her theological work.
This “From the Archives” article provides the text of Eduard C. Lindeman's 1923 article on the farmer's cooperative marketing movement. The article was published in the May, 1923, issue of the Journal of Social Forces, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 447–450.
This dissertation seeks to explicate a rhetorical conceptualization from C. S.
Lewis’s notion of longing, or sehnsucht, in hopes of extending its employment to two
other contemporary contexts—Christian Hedonism and American Humanism. To do so, I
utilize the method of rhetorical criticism to analyze Lewis’s most famous sermon entitled
The Weight of Glory. Following this paradigm chapter, I then compare uses of longing
within the contemporary evangelical philosophy called Christian Hedonism initiated
during the eighties through the seminal text entitled Desiring God: Meditations of a
Christian Hedonist. In doing so, I uncover distinct aspects of longing within a
metaphysical framework of rhetorical transcendence. Through the lens of Betz’s (1985)
Theology of Hope, the sacred substance of joy emerged as a form of immanence offering
sustenance to participants for their continued progression to the Christian Other. Finally,
I rhetorically analyzed the three manifestoes of the American Humanist Association
(AHA) as a means to discover uses of longing within a philosophical framework totally
absent of supernaturalism. Distinctively, humanists, like Christian hedonists, utilize
longing in relation to imagining a futuristic world community. Through this rhetorical
vision, the humanistic discourse of the manifestoes is shown to be a form of religious
rhetoric in that it reveals the world as already in transition through constitutive rhetoric.
The ultimate finding of this dissertation demonstrates that the employment of longing as
a rhetorical motive in these three scenarios all inherently aim for a place, or topos, thus
innovating past perceptions of rhetorical transcendence.
A realistic and humble understanding of the relationship with an ultimate benefactor keeps perspective sharp. The Psalmist sang: “enter into His [Yahweh’s] gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His name” (Ps. 100:4). Genuine thankfulness cements appropriate behavior in connection with those to whom gratitude is owed. With the Christian’s deep indebtedness to Jesus Christ, true and heartfelt thankfulness should be a hallmark of the life of every believer.
It is essential to recognize that religious experience is not a purely rational activity nor does it simply involve explicit, conscious judgment. Recent psychological research (e.g., Corrigan in The Oxford handbook of religion and emotion. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007; Norris in Zygon 40: 181–200, 2005; Roberts in Spiritual emotions: A psychology of Christian virtues. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids 2007) shows that religious and mystical experiences are mediated by complex patterns of neural activity. For this reason, religious experience cannot be reduced to an overly simplistic account of emotion or cognition. Because the wide range of indigenous beliefs and spiritual practices have existed long before Christianity was introduced, it is critical to examine the various strands woven into distinctively Korean Christian passion, spirituality, and character which must be understood in the complex historical and cultural context.
Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) was an American Puritan theologian and philosopher. He is known primarily for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and for his involvement with the First Great Awakening, but he was also a prolific writer and a complex thinker who engaged with a range of early modern philosophical positions, particularly those associated with British thought. He was influential in his own time, and his works are still widely studied. Edwards's upbringing was deeply informed by Puritan Calvinism. He studied at Yale and became a pastor, like his father and grandfather, and his work in the religious awakenings drew international attention, with Isaac Watts overseeing the publishing in London of one of Edwards's accounts of these revivals. Edwards wrote extensively throughout his adulthood, engaging contemporary theological and philosophical debates. He was named President of Princeton University in 1758, but died a few months later after contracting smallpox.
This chapter advances a historical investigation of ecstatic Protestantism. It discusses the Camisard prophets, the Shakers, the Great Awakening described by Jonathan Edwards, and the first generation of American Pentecostalism. The biographies of Ann Lee, Charles Fox Parham, and William Seymour are used to illustrate the institutionally destabilizing power of ecstatic experience, an epistemological problem concerning the cause of ecstatic states, and ritual norms that frame such states. Mullis discusses the theology that informed early understandings of divine gifts—such as ecstatic dancing, glossolalia, and faith healing—which remain relevant in contemporary contexts. The chapter concludes by examining a biblically informed understanding of ritual reenactment and the manner in which ecstatic experience is understood in terms of specific soteriological, eschatological, and pneumatological beliefs.
This dissertation seeks to explicate a rhetorical conceptualization from C. S. Lewis’s notion of longing, or sehnsucht, in hopes of extending its employment to two other contemporary contexts—Christian Hedonism and American Humanism. To do so, I utilize the method of rhetorical criticism to analyze Lewis’s most famous sermon entitled The Weight of Glory. Following this paradigm chapter, I then compare uses of longing within the contemporary evangelical philosophy called Christian Hedonism initiated during the eighties through the seminal text entitled Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. In doing so, I uncover distinct aspects of longing within a metaphysical framework of rhetorical transcendence. Through the lens of Betz’s (1985) Theology of Hope, the sacred substance of joy emerged as a form of immanence offering sustenance to participants for their continued progression to the Christian Other. Finally, I rhetorically analyzed the three manifestoes of the American Humanist Association (AHA) as a means to discover uses of longing within a philosophical framework totally absent of supernaturalism. Distinctively, humanists, like Christian hedonists, utilize longing in relation to imagining a futuristic world community. Through this rhetorical vision, the humanistic discourse of the manifestoes is shown to be a form of religious rhetoric in that it reveals the world as already in transition through constitutive rhetoric. The ultimate finding of this dissertation demonstrates that the employment of longing as a rhetorical motive in these three scenarios all inherently aim for a place, or topos, thus innovating past perceptions of rhetorical transcendence.
This Element examines what we can learn from religious disagreement, focusing on disagreement with possible selves and former selves, the epistemic significance of religious agreement, the problem of disagreements between religious experts, and the significance of philosophy of religion. Helen De Cruz shows how religious beliefs of others constitute significant higher-order evidence. At the same time, she advises that we should not necessarily become agnostic about all religious matters, because our cognitive background colors the way we evaluate evidence. This allows us to maintain religious beliefs in many cases, while nevertheless taking the religious beliefs of others seriously.
The phenomenon of near-death experiences shows a way in which James’ investigations into unusual mental states have engendered other creative, if not also controversial, scientific projects. Also considered are the visions of Swedenborg, who not only claimed to see angels and demons but classified them in interesting physiological ways. According to him, heaven and hell exist in the form of a human body, and this spiritual-somatic connection likely was influential on James, who was a physician as well as a philosopher of religion.
A look into the relationship between general rule of law development, from a distinctly Christian analytical perspective, and wildlife (namely elephant) poaching in Kenya. How can the concrete establishment of a solid legal foundation and rule of law help combat widespread elephant poaching in Kenya and the surrounding regions? How can rule of law development help to create a “Kenyan-specific” solution to this issue?
John Wesley (1703-1791), leader of British Methodism, was one of the most prolific literary figures of the eighteenth century, responsible for creating and disseminating a massive corpus of religious literature and for instigating a sophisticated programme of reading, writing and publishing within his Methodist Societies. John Wesley, Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature takes the influential genre of practical divinity as a framework for understanding Wesley's role as an author, editor and critic of popular religious writing. It asks why he advocated the literary arts as a valid aspect of his evangelical theology, and how his Christian poetics impacted upon the religious experience of his followers.
Across the Global South, contemporary Christian theology is grappling with the best way to understand and respond to the rise of neo-Pentecostalism and the associated emphasis on charismatic experience. Speaking from a vastly different contest, the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer nonetheless offers a way to critique the self-serving excesses of this phenomenon while engaging it seriously and graciously, on its own terms, in a productive ecumenical conversation. Bonhoeffer's understanding of discipleship as the condition in which it is possible to speak truthfully challenges our normal expectations for theological discourse. It redirects our attention from speech that is merely semantically correct and towards the conformation of the act of our speaking with the intention of Christ.
Considerando-se a diversidade terminológica bem como as frequentes e decorrentes polarizações que caracterizam, na contemporaneidade, o campo da psicologia que se volta para os temas da religião, religiosidade e/ou espiritualidade e, neste ensaio, nos ocupamos desta questão. Iniciamos com um breve histórico sobre os estudos da religião e da espiritualidade no âmbito da psicologia e as terminologias empregadas no decorrer de sua evolução, até chegar aos dias de hoje. Em seguida, discutimos as tendências conceituais contemporâneas e suas principais implicações para o contexto brasileiro. Elaboramos, então, com algumas proposições concretas de alternativas conceituais, para se evitar incorrer em problemas éticos e mesmo epistemológicos, especialmente para que se possa atender adequadamente aos princípios de um país oficialmente laico, mas que abriga uma grande diversidade religiosa e uma população que valoriza significativamente o religioso em suas vidas.
“Bruce Andrews is not a poet,” a professor to whom I had shown Andrews’ Getting Ready To Have Been Frightened as an undergraduate told me. (I can’t remember what he said Andrews was, but it wasn’t complimentary.) I am not entirely sure Andrews would disagree with the characterization, although he might point out that nobody else is a poet either, at least not in the sense my professor meant the word. Andrews likens his role as an author to that of an editor: he weaves together slices of political speech, overheard conversation, pop culture, and literature, and in the process examines how intellectual, cultural, and literary production occurs through shifting social relationships, not from the minds of isolated individuals.
The role of emotions and religious experience is a prominent theme in the theology of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). His concept of ‘the sense of the heart’ involves a synthesis of emotion, perception, intellect and dispositions for moral action. Due to the vague distinctions and relations between these components, an apparently internal tension has been the focus of several interpretations. In this paper I argue that we ought to reexamine Edwards’s position through contemporary emotion theory. By doing this, much of the internal tension of the sense of the heart can be decreased. The theory used in this paper is Jesse Prinz’s modern version of the James-Lange theory, in which emotions are embodied appraisals. Emotions are perceptive in a double way: as feelings of bodily changes and trackers of relations between an organism and an organism-significant environment. There is no necessary conflict between value-content, bodily feelings, cognitions and action-enablers in the emotional process. In the light of this, it is reasonable to conceptualize the sense of the heart as a primarily emotional faculty. Heart, head and body need not exclude each other.
Early in the book Warranted Christian Belief I propose a model according to which belief in God can have the three varieties of positive epistemic status: justification, rationality (in both its external and internal guises), and warrant. But what about specifically Christian belief, belief, not just in God, but in Trinity, incarnation, Christ’s resurrection, atonement, forgiveness of sins, salvation, regeneration, eternal life? How can we think of the full panoply of Christian belief as enjoying justification, rationality in both its internal and external varieties, and warrant? How can we possibly think of these beliefs — some of which, as David Hume loved to point out, go entirely contrary to ordinary human experience — as reasonable or rational, let alone warranted, let alone having warrant sufficient for knowledge? The materials for an answer lie close at hand. Actually, the materials have lain close at hand for several centuries — certainly since the publication of Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections and John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.1 As a matter of fact, they have lain close at hand for much longer than that: much of what Calvin says can be usefully seen as a development of remarks of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura. Indeed, these materials go much further back yet, all the way back to the New Testament, in particular the gospel of John and the epistles of Paul.
My interest in catharsis and memory derives from previous research on the cultural history of “multiple personality” in America (Kenny, 1986). In its latest clinical incarnation multiplicity finds a place in the DSM-IV under the heading of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The presence of amnesias “too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness” is integral to the diagnosis, while “dissociation” figures large in contemporary theorising about the relation between trauma and forgetting. Powerful dysphoric emotion is believed to create disjunctions between consciousness and memory, even to the point of splitting the self into mutually unaware fragments.
The history of the apostle Paul as related in 2 Corinthians and the way in which he experienced the work of God (by the Holy Spirit) in his life is the focal point of this article. The phrase έν πνευματι ἁγιῳ in 2 Corinthians 6:6 is pivotal in an understanding of how Paul experienced not only the difficulties, but also the fact that God by his Holy Spirit, guided him through all these difficulties. These experiences were not limited to Paul alone, but he often involved other believers and illustrated by his example how the power of God could be experienced by them as well. This was done by example and not by Paul presenting himself as an archetype.
I discovered religious experience at Harvard Divinity School, in the Sperry lecture hall, sometime in the late 1980s. By that I do not mean to confess that I had a “first religious experience” there; nor do I mean that, somehow through some activity of my own, I laid hold novelly to the notion of “religious experience,” exposing something new to scholarship, some new direction, or some deep, fundamentally new insight. Rather, I mean quite simply that “religious experience,” the idea, the genre for thinking and reflection, came to my attention for the first time in that room in the late 1980s. In retrospect, I must say that it did so momentously, as I have not been able since to expunge it from my habits of thinking.
Based on a brief discussion of some of the classic problems in the psychology of religion, the concepts metapsychology and discourse are introduced as pointing to the hitherto neglected task of developing adequate models of the inner world (metapsy- chology) and analyzing the written or spoken discourse of religious experience. Finally, it is argued that an inclusion of this more hermeneutic research agenda points in the direction of a reconceptualized psychology of religion, that is, a scientific discipline with a broadened self-understanding and a more independent status vis-a-vis mainstream psychology.
Students disappointed in the psychology of religion may be overwhelmed by its pluralism or looking for answers to inappropriate questions. Yet it is also true that the psychology of religion is sometimes narrowly conceived, inappropriately reduction- istic, or preoccupied with what is obvious. Norager's recommendation that the field reduce its allegiance to psychology and give religion a larger voice is heartily endorsed, though traditional religious psychology may be less helpful than Narager anticipates. Incorporating the new perspectives and insights of the hermeneutic-in- terpretive literature, in conjunction with closer collaboration with our research participants, should also help to make the psychology of religion a more interesting and influential field of study.
Notes that there is little in the pastoral and theological literature about anorexia nervosa. In pursuit of a theological and pastoral understanding of this affliction, it is proposed that beliefs and practices of anorexics share a common rejection of incarnated presence with advocates of the ancient christological heresy of Gnosticism. Examined are 3 parallel theological errors expressed in claims of specialness, all-or-nothing reasoning, and asceticism. Theologically, it is suggested that the eucharistic presence combined with the Apostle Paul's figure of the church as the Body of Christ offers an avenue through which the anorexic can symbolically transfer fusion with his/her own body to another, larger nurturing body with more endurance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
As traditionally understood, faith rests on an interior illumination which makes the believer certain that the doctrine proposed for belief is true. St Thomas calls this illumination ‘the light of faith’, and Calvin, ‘the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit.’ The claim of certainty encounters some serious difficulties, however, and it seems tome we have to accept an interpretation of the ‘light of faith’ in which some doubts are left unresolved. Faith turns out not to be a simple state at all, but is composed of three distinct elements. The first element is an intuition that what is proposed for belief is true, which is accompanied by hesitation and fear of error. The second element is the infusion of a doubt-free state, in which doubts, while not resolved, are removed to the periphery of consciousness, and lose their power to cause anxiety. The third element is an intuition which makes the believer certain that he is morally required to allow this state to continue. Although many of the sources I will be discussing use ‘faith’ in an exclusively Christiansense, I believe my conclusions will hold for theistic faith in general.
This article looks again at the significance of the shift from theories of passions and affections to a new scientific psychology of “emotions” in the nineteenth century. It recovers religious, moral, medical and political ideas about the pathology of the passions, and situates those ideas among the more differentiated affective typologies of earlier periods, with reference to both secular and theological writers including Seneca, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Hutcheson, Jonathan Edwards, and Edmund Burke. The place of the emotions in the writings of nineteenth-century figures from Thomas Brown and Charles Darwin to Oscar Wilde and G. E. Moore is explored with particular reference to transformations in ethical thought, in which emotions could be thought of as providing either a moral compass or the very goal of life. The article concludes by emphasising the reflexive relationships between social history, psychological language and emotional experience, and by asking, with reference to Martha Nussbaum's work, whether there is any place today for the ancient ideals of philosophical detachment and dispassion.
This article is devoted to examining theoretical issues on the interface of the psychology of religion and the psychology of emotion, something which recently has been surprisingly neglected. The broad range of psychological components involved in emotion, and the importance of emotional processes in religion, make it a particularly relevant area of general psychology as far as religion is concerned. The first issue to be examined is the centrality of emotion (or feeling) in religion and the extent to which religion can be conceptualized as a kind of emotional state—an idea that can be found in different forms in Schleiermacher and James. Though both psychology and emotion are now seen as less private than previously supposed, the analogy remains potentially fruitful. The second issue arises from the notable tendency in the psychology of emotion to see emotion as functional, even rational, rather than disruptive. The view of Averill is endorsed that emotions can be psychologically creative when used appropriately. This leads to a review of attitudes toward emotional aspects of religion and religious attitudes to everyday emotions, where a positive but discriminating approach to emotions seems appropriate.
IntroductionSome Basic TermsFeatures of Mystical ExperienceThe Case for Mystical PerceptionCriticisms of the Positive CaseDoes Mystical Perception Satisfy the Causal RequirementCan Reports of Mystical Perception Be CheckedReferencesSuggested Further Reading
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