Monday, September 26, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
School of Theology - Sesh #13 - Q&A
Q: What would you say to rationality oriented ministers?
A: In one case, I suggested that he needed to read some novels. He needed to gain some imagination.
Q: Relatedly, @David Peterson, You talked about using powerful words in moving people, is there a theology of language to back that up for our preaching practise?
A: It seems that God uses significant words to us, justification, love, joy, etc. So God uses powerful words, towards us.
Q: In terms of the way words are used, what about a model for the way words are used.
A: There is a model in the bible. Things like parallelism, and use to persuade people. We need to look at that carefully.
Q: In charismatic tradition, there's an emphasis on the personal response. The evangelical tradition it's more on what God has done. What are the dangers and what's the balance.
A: Have a balance. Also, have a mixture of 'we' songs and 'I' songs.
Q: Given that language is powerful and words have content, Jesus says 'today, you'll be with me in paradise', what did he intend the thief to hear.
A: It's helpful for us to think about what words MEAN but also what words DO. When we unpack the meaning of the promise, TODAY has strong biblical overtones, and Luke is massively speaking with salvation-historical overtones, so could that today perhaps be a reference to the Day of the Lord.
Q: Passion v affections and moral evaluations of those things. Is there a way of morally evaluating those things? Are we able to make distinctions at both levels of higher and lower emotions?
A: Gibbo This where the cognitive thing in the last 20 years comes into play. Someone's angry, but who are they angry at, why, to what degree, etc. In the Bible, it seems that envy is the only emotion that there's not possible positive expression for.
Q: When is tapping into the emotions manipulation?
A: Rhys Bezzant: you need to help people to understand what you're actually doing.
A: Peter Bolt - manipulation can be positive. If you're doing it to align people to the word of God then it's a good thing.
Q: @Peter Bolt. Can you give us some tips at reading the Bible to help the congregation hear narrative well? (public reading in the congregation)
A: Clifford Warne's book, "How to Read the Bible Out Loud" is still the best one I've read for that.
A: Rhys. It's at bettergatherings.com
Q: Do you have comments on the way we use songs in our meetings and do we have the right kinds of songs to use? (Sometimes can't find the right ones.)
A: Rob Smith. Blessing of our day is that there are so many options out there, but it takes time to find the right one and then the congregation may not know it! The song selectors really need to just work hard to find the right resources. Sometimes the song itself doesn't work as the bridge, so you have to provide the link yourself.
A: David Peterson: someone needs to build a website to do it. Also, if there's no song that's suitable, then don't put one in. use a psalm, or pray instead.
Q: (Michael Jensen) @Richard Gibson - Does God have feelings?
A: Do you really want me to answer that?
Q: Yes.
A: Reading the bible it certainly seems to be so. It does too much violence to Scripture for me to have systematics be enough to mute that. The huge creedal statements God expresses his emotions, even as he says that he is a god and not a man. In terms of immutability and impassibility, I recognise that we need to protect the transcendence of God, but perhaps these are clumsy tools with which to do it. If you look at where the assumptions come from it's from Hellenistic philosophy as opposed to Biblical presuppositions. These opinions are personal (though come to through pain and heartache) and aren't necessarily the opinions of the management.
Q: Though we have a responsibility to care for the whole person (seems more like counselling), how is that to be balanced with helping people to be godly and have joy in their circumstances.
A: It's not that we go in and heal emotions, but that we do care for the whole person, of which that is a part.
A: Rhys: We need to have a little bit of modesty in what we can do as pastors is helpful.
Q: What is the management position on Richard's comments?
A: Not sure *looks around* who you think here represents management...
Q: So are there any dangers to the position that Richard outlined, could anyone speak to that?
A: David Peterson - keep the conversation between systematics and biblical scholars going. I'd love to have a discussion with Gerald about the way he handled the Hebrews material in terms of Jesus as sympathetic high priest.
Q: how do you not turn a narrative into a lecture?
A: Peter Bolt - What I was trying to get at is that preaching involves communicating the emotional and affective elements of the text, and working out how to effectively get that across. What experiences that the hearers have had connect with what's going on in the text, because emotions cross over from experiences to others.
Q: Not wanting to demonise the congregation, but in all of us there's a tendency to distance ourselves from God because he's threatening. Thus, I've tried for novelty as a way of cutting through. How do you get past people's defenses when we want to disengage our emotions to stay comfortable.
A: Having a service where the elements varied is helpful, but requires skilful service leaders to know how to do that. Quite useful though. Abruptness can provoke, might dislodge, but you want to be cultivating a long-term pattern of healthy habits.
A: David Peterson - let the bible do the work. Resist the temptation to invent new, non-gospel tricks. Thoughtful reflection on how we use the Bible.
A: In one case, I suggested that he needed to read some novels. He needed to gain some imagination.
Q: Relatedly, @David Peterson, You talked about using powerful words in moving people, is there a theology of language to back that up for our preaching practise?
A: It seems that God uses significant words to us, justification, love, joy, etc. So God uses powerful words, towards us.
Q: In terms of the way words are used, what about a model for the way words are used.
A: There is a model in the bible. Things like parallelism, and use to persuade people. We need to look at that carefully.
Q: In charismatic tradition, there's an emphasis on the personal response. The evangelical tradition it's more on what God has done. What are the dangers and what's the balance.
A: Have a balance. Also, have a mixture of 'we' songs and 'I' songs.
Q: Given that language is powerful and words have content, Jesus says 'today, you'll be with me in paradise', what did he intend the thief to hear.
A: It's helpful for us to think about what words MEAN but also what words DO. When we unpack the meaning of the promise, TODAY has strong biblical overtones, and Luke is massively speaking with salvation-historical overtones, so could that today perhaps be a reference to the Day of the Lord.
Q: Passion v affections and moral evaluations of those things. Is there a way of morally evaluating those things? Are we able to make distinctions at both levels of higher and lower emotions?
A: Gibbo This where the cognitive thing in the last 20 years comes into play. Someone's angry, but who are they angry at, why, to what degree, etc. In the Bible, it seems that envy is the only emotion that there's not possible positive expression for.
Q: When is tapping into the emotions manipulation?
A: Rhys Bezzant: you need to help people to understand what you're actually doing.
A: Peter Bolt - manipulation can be positive. If you're doing it to align people to the word of God then it's a good thing.
Q: @Peter Bolt. Can you give us some tips at reading the Bible to help the congregation hear narrative well? (public reading in the congregation)
A: Clifford Warne's book, "How to Read the Bible Out Loud" is still the best one I've read for that.
A: Rhys. It's at bettergatherings.com
Q: Do you have comments on the way we use songs in our meetings and do we have the right kinds of songs to use? (Sometimes can't find the right ones.)
A: Rob Smith. Blessing of our day is that there are so many options out there, but it takes time to find the right one and then the congregation may not know it! The song selectors really need to just work hard to find the right resources. Sometimes the song itself doesn't work as the bridge, so you have to provide the link yourself.
A: David Peterson: someone needs to build a website to do it. Also, if there's no song that's suitable, then don't put one in. use a psalm, or pray instead.
Q: (Michael Jensen) @Richard Gibson - Does God have feelings?
A: Do you really want me to answer that?
Q: Yes.
A: Reading the bible it certainly seems to be so. It does too much violence to Scripture for me to have systematics be enough to mute that. The huge creedal statements God expresses his emotions, even as he says that he is a god and not a man. In terms of immutability and impassibility, I recognise that we need to protect the transcendence of God, but perhaps these are clumsy tools with which to do it. If you look at where the assumptions come from it's from Hellenistic philosophy as opposed to Biblical presuppositions. These opinions are personal (though come to through pain and heartache) and aren't necessarily the opinions of the management.
Q: Though we have a responsibility to care for the whole person (seems more like counselling), how is that to be balanced with helping people to be godly and have joy in their circumstances.
A: It's not that we go in and heal emotions, but that we do care for the whole person, of which that is a part.
A: Rhys: We need to have a little bit of modesty in what we can do as pastors is helpful.
Q: What is the management position on Richard's comments?
A: Not sure *looks around* who you think here represents management...
Q: So are there any dangers to the position that Richard outlined, could anyone speak to that?
A: David Peterson - keep the conversation between systematics and biblical scholars going. I'd love to have a discussion with Gerald about the way he handled the Hebrews material in terms of Jesus as sympathetic high priest.
Q: how do you not turn a narrative into a lecture?
A: Peter Bolt - What I was trying to get at is that preaching involves communicating the emotional and affective elements of the text, and working out how to effectively get that across. What experiences that the hearers have had connect with what's going on in the text, because emotions cross over from experiences to others.
Q: Not wanting to demonise the congregation, but in all of us there's a tendency to distance ourselves from God because he's threatening. Thus, I've tried for novelty as a way of cutting through. How do you get past people's defenses when we want to disengage our emotions to stay comfortable.
A: Having a service where the elements varied is helpful, but requires skilful service leaders to know how to do that. Quite useful though. Abruptness can provoke, might dislodge, but you want to be cultivating a long-term pattern of healthy habits.
A: David Peterson - let the bible do the work. Resist the temptation to invent new, non-gospel tricks. Thoughtful reflection on how we use the Bible.
School of Theology - Sesh #12 - "Music, singing and emotions. Exploring the Connections" with Rob Smith
For the sake of this talk, I'll be using 'music' to refer to instrumental music and 'song' to refer to the spoken word in music. (I hope he'll be consistent in that, otherwise my blogging may also be)
Music's power to arouse certain emotions or resemble them by a simple structural similarity. Eg, a weeping willow looks like a person bent over in anguish.
Is there an objective component to it though the subjective response of each listener is necessarily distinct and different?
Music, however, is never heard on its own. it's a part of a range of affective factors that influence its perception.
In fact, music can affect levels of hormone in the body. Can increase melatonin or reduce cortisol (not sure if I got those chemicals right).
Music has a number of possible healing effects, in both acute and long-term settings.
What about when we add the human voice into things?
"Each of these basic emotions has a characteristic vocal acoustic signature and an acoustic profile that is associated with a strong characteristic emotional state." Graham Welch.
So even if we don't understand the words a person is using, we can generally understand which of these emotions is being expressed by the acoustic signature.
"Words make you think a thought; music makes you feel a feeling; a song makes you feel a thought." - Yip Harburg
Neuro-imaging studies have shown that while the sensory-moto processes of speaking and singing are largely the same, singing engages parts of your brain that speaking alone doesn't.
People who've experienced emotional trauma often find it difficult to sing. They shut down their emotional processes in order to protect themselves, and singing would threaten to arouse that. This is entirely understandable. And yet, singing could perhaps be a part of the process by which healing could occur.
Singing truth helps us to engage with the emotional significance of reality. To help us bridge the rational and emotional knowledges. (instance of allowing one to feel a thought)
Soundings from the word that God has spoken
a) The OT
Miriam's song in Exodus 15. Sings the song of salvation.
Isaiah 12:1-6 "sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously" (*kutz* Also an emphasis on singing as proclamation to the world in this passage)
Where there is salvation, there is joy. And where there is joy, there is singing.
These follow each other as night follows day.
Psalm 98 "Sing to the lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things..."
Yet, not only joy, but also grief, sadness and lament.
"Our common experience is not one of well-being and equilibrium, but a churning disruptive experience of dislocation and relocation." Walter Brueggeman.
And these too are also meant to be sung! A number of lament psalms are 13, 22, 51, 88, etc... are all addressed "to the choirmaster".
The importance of the vocalisation of the laments is that it aids in moving from disorientation to reorientation. The purpose of acknowledging our emotional and situational realities is to aid in dealing with the pain that's brought about by such distress and to bring us to the point of healing and finally, praise.
"As paradigms of faith and piety, the Psalms champion the affective dimension of devotion to and trust in God as elicited by the story of God's care for Israel." Karl Kuhn
b) The NT
Topic: the emotional elements of the positive work of the spirit, what elements of the fruit of the spirit are emotional? There are certainly some.
And if learning to bear some of these fruits are to grow in the image of Christ, then I take it that growing up emotionally is a part of that.
"Through the Spirit, we are given the priceless opportunity of - ... "Jeremy Begbie
"It is perhaps in worship and prayer, when we engage with God directly and consciously that this will be most evident"
"Music is particularly well suited to be a vehicle of emotional renewal in worship, a potent instrument through which the Holy Spirit can remake..." (too slow at typing... :-( )
Ephesians 5:18-21
One active verb "be filled by the spirit" along with 5 participles, "addressing, making melody, singing, submitting and giving thanks"
So, are these 'result' participles, whereby if you are filled with the Spirit then you'll do the rest?
I'll suggest that they are 'means' participles. The means by which the Spirit fills the church with the fulness of Christ (or something like that.). Thus, they are essentially a part of the command.
"To grow up into Christ is to grow up emotionally as much as anything else, and carefully chosen music in worship may have a larger part to play than we have yet imagined." Jeremey Begbie
Nervous nellies (or great ones with cautious concerns)
Augustine quotes.
On how music, when sung, actually aids in devotion to God, as well as warming the heart.
Also, on how he feared that if the music moves him more than the subject of the song that there's a real problem.
Calvin - same sort of twin appreciation and concern.
Firstly, that evil words can infect us easier with music
and also that the melody can more stick in the minds of people than the words.
More positive
Luther
Music is next to God, pretty much.
But not music in itself, but music as a vehicle for communicating about God and proclaiming God. For Luther, singing is word ministry. Not a substitute for the preached word, but a complement to it. unlike the preached word, it has this emotional component to it, an additional power.
"Music is a vehicle for proclaiming the Word of God The gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man to let him know that he should praise God..." too slow again.
Edwards
"'Tis plain from Scripture that it is the tendency of true grace to cause persons very much to delight in such religious exercises." Jonathan Edwards
"The ends of [singing] are two; to excite religious and holy affection, and secondly to manifest it."
The only reason to sing, rather than simply speak, is that this has a tendency to move our affections.
Conclusions
Personally
- You are not the only saint who enjoys the goodness of expressing the truth of God in song, and to find that helpful! There have been many more through the centuries.
- Make use of music. Learn to be blessed by it. Avail yourself of every gift of God to draw near to him. Particularly learn to use your voice, in singing to the Lord and singing of the Lord.
For church life
- While music and singing are not essential, they are of the well-being of the church. Not the main game, but are for the health. We'd be mad to neglect them, when they are so beneficial and stir the affections. Hence, we must also guard and protect them.
- Singing with other people engages you with them, it connects you and allows you to be sympathetic with them, as you sing the same content.
Questions:
Q: Surrounded in our world by so much commercially recorded music, that's the context in which we hear music in church, so some will be angered by the fact that our musicians aren't up to that standards, so the music may end up working at cross-purposes to its intention.
A: Well, people do need to be mature and have reasonable expectations. Secondarily, just acknowledge where we're at, and recognise the gifts that God has given us. We're not meant to sound like the CD, that's not the purpose. It's to sing together.
Q: Also, dichotomy between over-produced music, and the stuff made for more simple things.
A: It does also put on people like myself who produce music to produce stuff that is more copy-able.
Q: Why do we only sing certain sentiments, and should we move past that, and hwo can we?
A: We should do it! Write more lament songs, sing more of them, etc.
Q: Congregationaly, because it's not the same for everyone.
A: Put aside our individualism, and be mature and grow into the things in the song and recognise that it may minister to others.
Q: Are we lacking something in our culture because we don't seem to burst out into song?
A: Maybe, but we may be gaining something too. Each culture has its pluses and minuses.
School of Theology - Sesh #11 - "Touching God's Emotions. Preaching the Gospels for Divine Effects" with Peter Bolt
Narrative Power and Gospel Engagement
1: Emotional Power of Narrative Form
The gospels are narrative. And it has become almost universally axiomatic that narrative is so effective because it engages with our emotions.
Similes, metaphors, etc speak directly to the emotional mind because it connects with pre-existing ideas and memories.
Emotional content then is essential if we want our people to learn. Some people are more attuned to them than others.
Not everyone, however, is not well-connected to their emotional mind.
2: Emotional problems encountered by the preacher
As we preach the gospel narratives, those narratives will not always be heard by emotionally healthy people. Many people will be damaged, regardless of whether the psych department declares them within the bounds of 'normal'.
Some are normal.
Some overfeel and lives are chaos.
Others are scared and threatened by emotions.
Some of them attack others because of this fear.
Some who've suffered trauma can have emotions diminished.
Some just aren't connected emotionally, naturally.
This is your congregation.
And, of course, you're not immune yourself. :)
3: Narrative in therapy
While narrative works best with an emotionally healthy person, it also has a role in helping those who are not. We now have even something called 'narrative therapy'.
We all tell ourselves a story of our lives, complete with things that help or hinder us from moving forward. When the story told is not a positive one, the therapist helps the person re-story their history and thus re-story their future. This recognises the power of the narrative to help and affect people.
4: Healing through Gospels preaching
The narratives themselves hold the key to solve the problems that themselves make the narratives hard to grasp. As the spirit makes new, it does so emotionally too.
The preacher models how to perceive the narratives in order to have it rightly order the emotions.
(He's doing so much, not sure I can blog this right now, sorry, or I'll miss it all myself!)
Narratives entangle people.
The discourse is 'what's in front of you'. Pay attention to it, and you'll see how a narrative works its narrative power.
What you want is for the actual reader to become the implied reader. For the reader to become the person for whom the text was written. And it's the preacher's job to help this.
Emotions have a significant role in the reading experience, because the narrative uses them to entangle the reader. Why are we revolted by the pharisees? Because the text makes them revolting. (Not sure what he said in that last sentence. it's not what I just wrote,though, I'm pretty sure. But you kinda get the idea. I hope)
Of course it's good to use the narrative study tools to analyse the gospels as narrative, and yet they're far too complex to be categorised by simple schemata.
Nope, brain fried. Just listening for a bit.
Narrative studies recognise that the affective elements of a text are key in helping the reader to comprehend the text and make the text meaningful. The emotions are not simply an 'after effect' of the text, but they are intimately involved in the exercise of comprehension itself. It's also predictive. It helps the reader to anticipate an outcome well before the actual thinking or encountering of it takes place.
Narratives work by producing an affective impact. They don't only address the cognitive mind, but work by engaging, affecting and manipulating (in a positive sense) the emotions of the reader towards a certain goal.
But towards what?
The gospels, generally, move people towards following Jesus, the Son of God.
yet, complex narratives show a high degree of indeterminacy, so that the goal can be different for different readers so that their responses become more or less unique to them. We're nervous about diffferent meanings for different people here.
But what I'm suggesting is that there is a clear forward movement of the narrative itself, but there are individual outcomes by the person who is affected by it.
When we talk about application, therefore, we need to leave a large degree of room for the Spirit and text to do its individual work on the individual hearer?
It this is so, what is emotional exegesis?
Well, because a text will rub up against the previous emotional experiences of the reader, emotional exegesis will anticipate this interface and help and aid it.
A suggestion is that the sympathy that readers are designed to feel helps to make them a better human being, thus to become more empathetic.
EE won't read a book as a flat text, but as an emotional landscape, with movements and shift and change.
A case study in Emotional Exegesis
Luke 23:55-24:8
Two explicit emotions.
What is the effect on the reader when emotions are explicitly mentioned? The reader will map the even that they're seeing to an event where they've experienced the same emotion themselves. So you may never have discovered an empty tomb, yet you'll have had their feeling of perplexity before, and so can enter into that. Same with angel-induced fear.
Because we, the readers, know what it is to be afraid and to be afraid of death, we are drawn into the text and with them waiting for the next thing to happen.
As we hear the angel's words to the women, we are enabled to hear that speaking coming into our own experiences of perplexity and fear. "He is not here. He is risen."
(again, masses of gold I can't get down quick enough. Ie, the presence of women softens the scene for us. The presence of the spices tells us we're in the place of grief. etc...)
The thick presence of death, in the stench of rot and the sweetness of spices, enlivens the feelings of death that hangs over us all as a sentence. Death is the stench in the text.
And so everything that we're expecting, and that the characters are expecting, is the opposite of what they find. What they find is so foreign to all the elements being set up so far that the perplexity is given a much fuller sense for the narrative reader.
...
The effects
The affective elements of the text help us to move to a different world than that with which we are familiar. "He is not here, he is risen." This sentence now stands against the reality in which we stood, which is under the shadow of death. The same world that we live in is the same world in which a man rose from the dead.
Emotional Exegesis: A Preacher's Checklist
1: Emotional Power of Narrative Form
The gospels are narrative. And it has become almost universally axiomatic that narrative is so effective because it engages with our emotions.
Similes, metaphors, etc speak directly to the emotional mind because it connects with pre-existing ideas and memories.
Emotional content then is essential if we want our people to learn. Some people are more attuned to them than others.
Not everyone, however, is not well-connected to their emotional mind.
2: Emotional problems encountered by the preacher
As we preach the gospel narratives, those narratives will not always be heard by emotionally healthy people. Many people will be damaged, regardless of whether the psych department declares them within the bounds of 'normal'.
Some are normal.
Some overfeel and lives are chaos.
Others are scared and threatened by emotions.
Some of them attack others because of this fear.
Some who've suffered trauma can have emotions diminished.
Some just aren't connected emotionally, naturally.
This is your congregation.
And, of course, you're not immune yourself. :)
3: Narrative in therapy
While narrative works best with an emotionally healthy person, it also has a role in helping those who are not. We now have even something called 'narrative therapy'.
We all tell ourselves a story of our lives, complete with things that help or hinder us from moving forward. When the story told is not a positive one, the therapist helps the person re-story their history and thus re-story their future. This recognises the power of the narrative to help and affect people.
4: Healing through Gospels preaching
The narratives themselves hold the key to solve the problems that themselves make the narratives hard to grasp. As the spirit makes new, it does so emotionally too.
The preacher models how to perceive the narratives in order to have it rightly order the emotions.
(He's doing so much, not sure I can blog this right now, sorry, or I'll miss it all myself!)
Narratives entangle people.
The discourse is 'what's in front of you'. Pay attention to it, and you'll see how a narrative works its narrative power.
What you want is for the actual reader to become the implied reader. For the reader to become the person for whom the text was written. And it's the preacher's job to help this.
Emotions have a significant role in the reading experience, because the narrative uses them to entangle the reader. Why are we revolted by the pharisees? Because the text makes them revolting. (Not sure what he said in that last sentence. it's not what I just wrote,though, I'm pretty sure. But you kinda get the idea. I hope)
Of course it's good to use the narrative study tools to analyse the gospels as narrative, and yet they're far too complex to be categorised by simple schemata.
Nope, brain fried. Just listening for a bit.
Narrative studies recognise that the affective elements of a text are key in helping the reader to comprehend the text and make the text meaningful. The emotions are not simply an 'after effect' of the text, but they are intimately involved in the exercise of comprehension itself. It's also predictive. It helps the reader to anticipate an outcome well before the actual thinking or encountering of it takes place.
Narratives work by producing an affective impact. They don't only address the cognitive mind, but work by engaging, affecting and manipulating (in a positive sense) the emotions of the reader towards a certain goal.
But towards what?
The gospels, generally, move people towards following Jesus, the Son of God.
yet, complex narratives show a high degree of indeterminacy, so that the goal can be different for different readers so that their responses become more or less unique to them. We're nervous about diffferent meanings for different people here.
But what I'm suggesting is that there is a clear forward movement of the narrative itself, but there are individual outcomes by the person who is affected by it.
When we talk about application, therefore, we need to leave a large degree of room for the Spirit and text to do its individual work on the individual hearer?
It this is so, what is emotional exegesis?
Well, because a text will rub up against the previous emotional experiences of the reader, emotional exegesis will anticipate this interface and help and aid it.
A suggestion is that the sympathy that readers are designed to feel helps to make them a better human being, thus to become more empathetic.
EE won't read a book as a flat text, but as an emotional landscape, with movements and shift and change.
A case study in Emotional Exegesis
Luke 23:55-24:8
Two explicit emotions.
- Perplexity
- Fear
What is the effect on the reader when emotions are explicitly mentioned? The reader will map the even that they're seeing to an event where they've experienced the same emotion themselves. So you may never have discovered an empty tomb, yet you'll have had their feeling of perplexity before, and so can enter into that. Same with angel-induced fear.
Because we, the readers, know what it is to be afraid and to be afraid of death, we are drawn into the text and with them waiting for the next thing to happen.
As we hear the angel's words to the women, we are enabled to hear that speaking coming into our own experiences of perplexity and fear. "He is not here. He is risen."
(again, masses of gold I can't get down quick enough. Ie, the presence of women softens the scene for us. The presence of the spices tells us we're in the place of grief. etc...)
The thick presence of death, in the stench of rot and the sweetness of spices, enlivens the feelings of death that hangs over us all as a sentence. Death is the stench in the text.
And so everything that we're expecting, and that the characters are expecting, is the opposite of what they find. What they find is so foreign to all the elements being set up so far that the perplexity is given a much fuller sense for the narrative reader.
...
The effects
The affective elements of the text help us to move to a different world than that with which we are familiar. "He is not here, he is risen." This sentence now stands against the reality in which we stood, which is under the shadow of death. The same world that we live in is the same world in which a man rose from the dead.
Emotional Exegesis: A Preacher's Checklist
- Who are the Characters and How are they Related?
- What emotions are explicitly mentioned?
- What emotional nuances lie behind the words?
- How does the text use language of the senses?
- What is the direction the passage moves its reader towards?
- What outcomes might be provoked, but perhaps not prescribed?
- And so on...
Preaching the gospels for divine effects
Preach the gospels in the way they come to us. Touch on the emotions in the text, such that they touch the emotions of those we are preaching to.
Questions:
Q: Any comments about how our congregations are so familiar with the gospel stories and so we lose the disfamiliarity part of the the process and skip it and so lose the effect.
A: With a well-told story, we can still cherish it. It's a bit hard to actually be a first-time reader.
School of Theology - Sesh #10 - "Together, with feeling: Corporate Worship and Emotions" with David Peterson
Hebrews 10:25-25
Gospel focussed gatherings
If we're convinced that worship is about:
Gospel focussed gatherings
If we're convinced that worship is about:
- All of life
- motivated out of thankfulness
- to be conducted with respect and awe
Surely this, then, should shape how our Christian meetings should happen.
It's a bit silly, then, to get caught up in not using worship for a church service, because it is a special part of the whole of life and so certainly falls under the category of worship.
In context, Hebrews 13:15 is talking about a sacrifice of praise as primarily one done outside the camp, as it were.
Corporate worship should be appealing to the whole person. Don't ignore any one aspect.
Exhortation for change
It is, in Scripture, designed to have a life-transforming outcome.
Exhortation is the antidote to apostasy.
Hebrews 5, everybody should be moving towards the point where they are able to participate in the ministry of exhortation.
Defn from Paul: An appeal on the basis of instruction. (David's synthesised understanding from all of Paul, not an argument from a single verse) Ie, "I beseech you, based on the mercies of God, to ...".
Three elements to Christian communication:
- Proclamation, expounding the truths.
- Teaching, relating that to our Christian life.
- Appeal, if this is not there, then we're not teaching in a NT way.
Easy for appeal to be disconnected from teaching, but also easy for teaching to be unapplied.
Should we use illustration in sermons? Well, if you ask Paul what appeal is, he'd say paraklesis, it's ramming the message home and getting people on board with something.
How does Paul engage in exhortation? Romans 15:30, appeal to you by LJC and the love of the Spirit, etc
He appeals on the basis of some aspect of the character of God in his mercy towards us. It's the meek Christ who's appealing to you, not just me, Paul.
1 Corinthians 2 has often been misunderstood as saying that Paul never used any rhetoric.
Emotional engagement
Romans 12:9-15. Several of these commands involve emotional content. Very strongly so. We are to 'burn' or 'boil' for the lord. (zeon).
Spirit-directed prophecy or preaching, will stir up the body of Christ.
Romans 12:15, simple but covers the highs and lows of life. We're encouraged to be empathetic, being with people in all cases. Does our congregational life make it difficult for us to follow these commands? How well do we know each other? Is our culture so intellectualised that emotion is discouraged? Is there room for testimony and personal reflection. Do we have enough pastoral contact to know if the preaching is getting through and relating?
I remember hearing at Barney's Broadway a person giving a testimony about having an ingrown toenail, and thinking, "why are we giving time to this?!?!?!". But as time went on it became clear how this had overtaken this person's life, and that they wanted to give thanks to God for bringing them out of it.
Unavoidable public grief or joy
How did they handle the fact that someone had died overnight, when they had chapel the next morning?
Leading such events appropriately is difficult, because you can be overwhelmed by strong emotions.
I saw a minister leaving, giving his final sermon, and the preacher spent the whole message sobbing and crying. At first good, allowing the congregation to express their emotion too, but after that it became distracting because though the congregation had grieved, he'd not finished yet. It made the message unclear and made people think about the minister instead of the message.
Planned public grief or joy
Sermons or whole services designed to move people to repentance over something!
Obviously not contrived or manipulative, but Paul's 3rd letter to the Corinthians was designed to encourage godly grief, which might lead to the salvation of many. And even godly grief will only last for a while, because it's not the end in itself, but it's the practical repentence. Ie, what do people go out and do after this?
Or perhaps to elicit joy?
Joy is an understanding of existence that covers elation and depression, because one is able to see past particular events and see them in the context of a God who stands above all events, and behind them.
Words and music
BK - people fear emotions, instead of over-emotionalism.
Emotions give no indication of the heart's commitment. (*Pete* really? I thought we were saying they're a part of the mix? But I take the point. Someone can be excited and not actually end up doing the thing they're excited about.)
Expressing biblical truth together
The poetry of prayer. How we talk to God. God has given us a way of talking to him that's not simply prosaic.
The epistles also engage your emotions, not just the gospels (that Peter Bolt is about to speak on).
The Psalms as enabling us to express difficult and the full-range of emotions to God. Why don't we use the Psalms for this? Why not use the words God has given us to help us in this? Why have we abandoned it altogether?
We rely massively on songs to teach theology. Songs have completely replaced the practise of reciting of biblical texts together. (he didn't yell this, just thought it was an interesting point so I bolded it.)
Are we abandoning Biblical resources and categories in our prayers and liturgy?
*reads out a Puritan prayer* (Wow, that was pretty amazing.)
We live in a prosaic culture. We're supposed to be plain, unemotional and non-rhetorical. As well as losing biblical content from our services, we're losing its emotion. Public prayers are often bland and predictable.
Experiencing God's Spirit together
It's the Holy Spirit's task to make possible an experience of God's love. The Spirit works in every area of our personality. Love is key, to both our relationship with God and with others. This is holisticly true and connected. It should encompass our whole person.
Worshipping without emotion is not the offering of our whole self to Christ that the New Testament envisions and commands.
Questions:
Q:
A: Some Bible translations are bland because they're seeking to make things simple and easy to understand.
Q: What makes your critique of modern church simply a feature of your grey hair? (Asked with apologies and grace)
A: I want people to pray the Bible!! And what I hear in services is so insipid!
Q: I want that too! But I'm picking up your critique of the blandness, and seeing some difference there. Eminem is the master of words!
A: We're saying get hyped up on words, and music is a vehicle for that. (Sorry, this was a convoluted discussion with lots of interjections and I'm not sure any of us understood everything that each contributor was getting at exactly)
Q: Is "emotion as an end in itself" the wrong thing to be scared of? What's the problem with emotionalism?
A: We should all ask ourselves, 'what are we scared of' what are we trying to avoid'? A good end to work to is 'love one another with a brotherly affection'.
School of Theology - Sesh #9 - "From sad and mad to glad: The Pilgrim's Passion"
I was told: "The Christian life is like a train. The engine of the train is the facts. The main carriage of the train is faith, facts pulls faith. The caboose is the feelings. They must come last. Any other order and you crash your locomotion."
This lecture is going to be an exercise in pastoral theology. I want us to think about emotions as a positive feature of living as a Christian, particularly how we care for our and others' emotions, and place this is a broader theology of God.
Isaiah 51:11 - sad and mad may be today, but one day we can be sure that we will know gladness forever.
A Gift, a Given.
Part of our lives
'fearfully and wonderfully made' (Ps 139:14) - emotions are a part of who we are created to be. So it saddens me when so many people relegate the emotions to an added extra, a 'leisure pursuit'. A marginal feature of our Christian existence.
Pastors can easily avoid strong emotions, in themselves or in those for whom they are responsible. A pandora's box that we don't want to open lest it distract us from ministry and soak up our time. Or perhaps we think of them as stronger than God, and if we rouse them we may never be able to put them back in their place again.
Part of our ministries
People are scared of ground wars, where emotions may make things more complicated, we prefer to fire shots from afar. (the pulpit?)
Driscoll's model of leadership: prophet, king, priest
But my problem with this, though having some regard for gift mix stuff, is that by using the word priest we bias the sample. Ezra the priest made his audience cry, he didn't comfort.
Emotions: A Christian Gift
Emotions are noble endowments
God graciously granted the Philippians suffering.
Would suggest not a hierarchy of rationality, will and emotions, but that they are a complex mix that function together.
Edwards against the faculty psychology of his forbears. Instead held that our emotions and our thoughts together form this bundle that he called 'the affections'. And that these have a gravitational pull either towards or away from God.
Edwards fought on two fronts. The extreme rationalists and the extreme revivalists with their 'manifestations of the spirit'. This involved book burnings and nudie runs through New London, apparently.
Edwards argues that "the affections are that bundle of me that is either attracted towards God or repelled from him". 'The Religious Affections' is ambitious, trying to write philosophically, pastorally and theologically (and something else I missed) all at the same time.
Assertion that emotions should be ridden and felt in all their power. Recognition that emotions need to be retrained or unpacked. They are a gift from God, and so we do need to receive them, train them and unpack them in order that we honour that gift. In a number of ways, we don't leave emotions where we find them.
We must relate all our gifts to the giver.
Emotions and the Glorious Giver
Questions:
Q: Why don't people feel that our churches are safe places to share emotion.
A: Could be lots of things, many of them are subtle (even furniture arrangement). Do we feel that church is a schoolroom, not a hospital, etc... (I missed lots of a good answer)
Q: How do we deal with the average emotionally disengaged Australian male? Do we try to retrain them emotionally?
A: Yes, we do need to retrain our emotions a bit. The manner, of course, will be difficult and slow. Perhaps an extreme experience of someone else's strong emotion could actually be a good thing. The debrief from that experience then could be the most helpful part of the process then.
Q: Given that we often think we have to be shiny happy people, how do you think that the emotional state in the new heaven will be and how do we step towards that?
A: Avoid glib happiness, but we do want people to be moving towards a healthy emotional state. I do want to see movement, some emotional dynamism. Case by case this will look different. Be realistic about what's achievable.
Q: Thoughts or suggestions on the place of Scripture in pastoral care re emotions?
A: At one level the Scriptural story is a powerful antidote in itself, the movement to the new heavens and new earth. A place for actually using the texts. But don't just flip the Gideon's 'fear' section if someone says they're scared. Be careful how you use, make sure it applies to that particular situation.
This lecture is going to be an exercise in pastoral theology. I want us to think about emotions as a positive feature of living as a Christian, particularly how we care for our and others' emotions, and place this is a broader theology of God.
Isaiah 51:11 - sad and mad may be today, but one day we can be sure that we will know gladness forever.
A Gift, a Given.
Part of our lives
'fearfully and wonderfully made' (Ps 139:14) - emotions are a part of who we are created to be. So it saddens me when so many people relegate the emotions to an added extra, a 'leisure pursuit'. A marginal feature of our Christian existence.
Pastors can easily avoid strong emotions, in themselves or in those for whom they are responsible. A pandora's box that we don't want to open lest it distract us from ministry and soak up our time. Or perhaps we think of them as stronger than God, and if we rouse them we may never be able to put them back in their place again.
Part of our ministries
People are scared of ground wars, where emotions may make things more complicated, we prefer to fire shots from afar. (the pulpit?)
Driscoll's model of leadership: prophet, king, priest
But my problem with this, though having some regard for gift mix stuff, is that by using the word priest we bias the sample. Ezra the priest made his audience cry, he didn't comfort.
Emotions: A Christian Gift
Emotions are noble endowments
God graciously granted the Philippians suffering.
Would suggest not a hierarchy of rationality, will and emotions, but that they are a complex mix that function together.
Edwards against the faculty psychology of his forbears. Instead held that our emotions and our thoughts together form this bundle that he called 'the affections'. And that these have a gravitational pull either towards or away from God.
Edwards fought on two fronts. The extreme rationalists and the extreme revivalists with their 'manifestations of the spirit'. This involved book burnings and nudie runs through New London, apparently.
Edwards argues that "the affections are that bundle of me that is either attracted towards God or repelled from him". 'The Religious Affections' is ambitious, trying to write philosophically, pastorally and theologically (and something else I missed) all at the same time.
Assertion that emotions should be ridden and felt in all their power. Recognition that emotions need to be retrained or unpacked. They are a gift from God, and so we do need to receive them, train them and unpack them in order that we honour that gift. In a number of ways, we don't leave emotions where we find them.
- With the help of a pastor or friend
- Through the structure of liturgy
- We can use it to take people through the highs of praise, the lows of confession, etc...
- despite physiological/biochemical contributions
- A new type of therapy being advocated, known as ACT.
The purpose of the gift is to enable us to engage better with the reality with which we face, the environment in which God has placed us. Even a depressive mood can flag for us something that needs to be owned or addressed.
An example of interpreting feeling: Bonhoeffer's letters and poems
Two angels from God. the first is pain. But because that one must be overcome afresh each time, there is a greater angel, joy in God.
Who am I? They often tell me that I am... ... Whoever I am, my God. Thou knowest me. I, lord, am thine.
We must relate all our gifts to the giver.
Emotions and the Glorious Giver
- Answerable to the Giver: Every perfect gift is from above (James 1:17)
- Renewing teleological framework for moral formation. We must realise that we don't have only duties, but an end to which we work towards.
- Emotions aid spiritual integrity: immune system and boundary-riders. We as pastors have the job to help people to know how to do their own work of handling their emotions.
- Godly expression: we need to be giving people examples of safe methods of dealing with emotion. An example of honesty in recognising and sharing our emotions. An example of skilled coaches, in knowing when to push, when to pull back, when to listen, etc...
- For evangelistic opportunities to connect the emotional life to God.
Pastoral care is a theological opportunity to prepare for the City of God.
Questions:
Q: Why don't people feel that our churches are safe places to share emotion.
A: Could be lots of things, many of them are subtle (even furniture arrangement). Do we feel that church is a schoolroom, not a hospital, etc... (I missed lots of a good answer)
Q: How do we deal with the average emotionally disengaged Australian male? Do we try to retrain them emotionally?
A: Yes, we do need to retrain our emotions a bit. The manner, of course, will be difficult and slow. Perhaps an extreme experience of someone else's strong emotion could actually be a good thing. The debrief from that experience then could be the most helpful part of the process then.
Q: Given that we often think we have to be shiny happy people, how do you think that the emotional state in the new heaven will be and how do we step towards that?
A: Avoid glib happiness, but we do want people to be moving towards a healthy emotional state. I do want to see movement, some emotional dynamism. Case by case this will look different. Be realistic about what's achievable.
Q: Thoughts or suggestions on the place of Scripture in pastoral care re emotions?
A: At one level the Scriptural story is a powerful antidote in itself, the movement to the new heavens and new earth. A place for actually using the texts. But don't just flip the Gideon's 'fear' section if someone says they're scared. Be careful how you use, make sure it applies to that particular situation.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
School of Theology - Sesh #8 - "On Being Moved: A theological anthropology of the emotions" with Michael Jensen
When I choked up and cried while giving the eulogy for my mother-in-law, I was very surprised. I had no control over the sobs. The my will and choice was to do the opposite, it was I who was sobbing, no one else. How do I make sense of the problem with agency, with my body whence these emotions must have come and my reason.
Two problems in the traditional theological account of human being
1: the imago dei
If we take the imago dei as being a capacity that we share with God, then it makes sense that the capacity for rational thought is what has been thought of as the sense in which we are in his image.
2: body and soul
While rejecting a platonic view of soul and body as individual and distinct entities, the early fathers held to a psychosomatic duality, a body and soul which were both created good, but were still in essence distinct.
For Descartes, however, the mind and the soul are completely independent of the body.
This raises the question of how medical science is able to demonstrate the reliance of the mind upon the physical brain. So, though it modified it, the church's acceptance of platonic dualism seems, perhaps, to not be necessary.
The human being as a whole being
1: The Aristotelian dualism of Thomas Aquinas
While the person is not reducible to the physical atoms that make up a body, what is encountered in interacting with a person is not other than that found in that body. The idea does not exist without its expression.
2. the imago dei as the whole being addressed by God
the imago dei must be seen in the way in which the second Adam redeems the image, and enables the regeneration and creation of the new self, which we put on as being renewed after the image of its creator.
Human image in genesis is given in the context of rule. And as given to rule, the being is created with the capacities to do so. It is with the whole being that the person is to respond in love to God, ala Deuteronomy.
For the task of ordering and caring for, humans have been given remarkable abilities, including the ability to think. It not only recognises order, but also able participants in bringing order to it!
Yet we are not called to merely a dominion over the world, but a dominion within it. 1) Our emotions alert us to our community and collective task. 2) We are to be affected by it, as well as affecting it.
The image is not so much a metaphysical one, but a historico-narrative one. We have a job to do, working with the God who gave it to us.
Thus our capacities reflect the job we've been given, and the image takes in everything about us as human.
3. beyond body-soul dualism
Man does not have a nephesh, he is a nephesh. - Hans Volfffff (unsure whether it starts with W or V and how many f's are at the end.)(Linden says it's Wolff. W and two ff's.)
Our 'with-Christness' consists in his love. (ie, our life with Christ is not a bit of our soul that got caught up to heaven)
Our capacity for emotion is a part of our full body, as human, but also as a sign of our limitedness as finite creations. Very good. But as corrupted as the rest.
On Being Moved
1: 'responsive agency'
We are affected by the world around us, and also are pushed around by emotions inside us.
Feeling revulsion when we are intending to sin which stops us from doing so, is a point at which emotions serve us well. Suppressing emotion at that point is a consequence of the sinful nature.
Jesus' emotions condition his agency in his encounters with crowds, etc. Our emotions tell us a truth about the world and our experience in it.
2: bodily feelings
We can't experience anything outside of our bodies, even our dreams.
Our bodies belong to us as an aspect of our whole being. There's no experience that we have that happens outside of or apart from our body.
There's no non-material part of us which more readily is sanctified or may commune with God. Paul prays wholisticly, for mind, body and soul for the Philippians.
3: thinking and feeling as components of knowing
Turning concepts into substantives, we rationally separate ourselves from ourselves. Compartmentalising actually disintegrates us. These nouns could perhaps be talked about as verbs, thinking and feeling. These are activities carried out by a person.
What we call our subjectivity is vital for us to gain knowledge. A judge's objectivity is a reorientation of our subjectivity to a particular person.
Questions:
Q: What about those with disabilities, if our ability to speech is a part of the image?
A: The speech ability is not the image, but is the equipment given by God because a person is in the image. Their dignity is derived from the fact that they're addressed by God and called on by God.
Q: Some people have tried to use a tripartite division to explain humanity, thoughts?
A: Soul and spirit are generally pretty much synonymous, so the question becomes what is
Q: If there's no body-soul dualism, then can you give an account of ghosts.
A: No, I can't. But I know you have a different view of this. Zombies I'd be more able to explain.
Q: Jesus said to the thief, today you'll be with me in paradise, what does it mean?
A: Well, whatever happened on that day, the today was when Jesus went into the tomb. So the today wasn't necessarily literal in that sense. Hard to make ontological conclusions based on a promise to this guy, that's not the point.
Q: Will we still have emotions in our resurrected body? Ie, anger, etc.
A: There's no need for mourning. We're created for a responsive agency, so we'll encounter things and be moved by them. That would suit our finite, created being. But I'd imagine a completely reconditioned emotional life. Miroslav Volf has talked about how we'll be able to have joy despite knowledge of the past.
Q: Are our faculties also analogous to God's nature, or simply given by God as the task only.
A: No, the image is the task, not the capacity. So we create, but we create from stuff not nothing.
Q: So can we say that from you would say that God feels?
A: There is some analogy from our being to God's. Yet I am hesitant to ascribe exactly our feelings to God. The analogy has to have some content to it, but I don't want to say exactly how much.
Q:
A:
Two problems in the traditional theological account of human being
1: the imago dei
If we take the imago dei as being a capacity that we share with God, then it makes sense that the capacity for rational thought is what has been thought of as the sense in which we are in his image.
2: body and soul
While rejecting a platonic view of soul and body as individual and distinct entities, the early fathers held to a psychosomatic duality, a body and soul which were both created good, but were still in essence distinct.
For Descartes, however, the mind and the soul are completely independent of the body.
This raises the question of how medical science is able to demonstrate the reliance of the mind upon the physical brain. So, though it modified it, the church's acceptance of platonic dualism seems, perhaps, to not be necessary.
The human being as a whole being
1: The Aristotelian dualism of Thomas Aquinas
While the person is not reducible to the physical atoms that make up a body, what is encountered in interacting with a person is not other than that found in that body. The idea does not exist without its expression.
2. the imago dei as the whole being addressed by God
the imago dei must be seen in the way in which the second Adam redeems the image, and enables the regeneration and creation of the new self, which we put on as being renewed after the image of its creator.
Human image in genesis is given in the context of rule. And as given to rule, the being is created with the capacities to do so. It is with the whole being that the person is to respond in love to God, ala Deuteronomy.
For the task of ordering and caring for, humans have been given remarkable abilities, including the ability to think. It not only recognises order, but also able participants in bringing order to it!
Yet we are not called to merely a dominion over the world, but a dominion within it. 1) Our emotions alert us to our community and collective task. 2) We are to be affected by it, as well as affecting it.
The image is not so much a metaphysical one, but a historico-narrative one. We have a job to do, working with the God who gave it to us.
Thus our capacities reflect the job we've been given, and the image takes in everything about us as human.
3. beyond body-soul dualism
Man does not have a nephesh, he is a nephesh. - Hans Volfffff (unsure whether it starts with W or V and how many f's are at the end.)(Linden says it's Wolff. W and two ff's.)
Our 'with-Christness' consists in his love. (ie, our life with Christ is not a bit of our soul that got caught up to heaven)
Our capacity for emotion is a part of our full body, as human, but also as a sign of our limitedness as finite creations. Very good. But as corrupted as the rest.
On Being Moved
1: 'responsive agency'
We are affected by the world around us, and also are pushed around by emotions inside us.
Feeling revulsion when we are intending to sin which stops us from doing so, is a point at which emotions serve us well. Suppressing emotion at that point is a consequence of the sinful nature.
Jesus' emotions condition his agency in his encounters with crowds, etc. Our emotions tell us a truth about the world and our experience in it.
2: bodily feelings
We can't experience anything outside of our bodies, even our dreams.
Our bodies belong to us as an aspect of our whole being. There's no experience that we have that happens outside of or apart from our body.
There's no non-material part of us which more readily is sanctified or may commune with God. Paul prays wholisticly, for mind, body and soul for the Philippians.
3: thinking and feeling as components of knowing
Turning concepts into substantives, we rationally separate ourselves from ourselves. Compartmentalising actually disintegrates us. These nouns could perhaps be talked about as verbs, thinking and feeling. These are activities carried out by a person.
What we call our subjectivity is vital for us to gain knowledge. A judge's objectivity is a reorientation of our subjectivity to a particular person.
Questions:
Q: What about those with disabilities, if our ability to speech is a part of the image?
A: The speech ability is not the image, but is the equipment given by God because a person is in the image. Their dignity is derived from the fact that they're addressed by God and called on by God.
Q: Some people have tried to use a tripartite division to explain humanity, thoughts?
A: Soul and spirit are generally pretty much synonymous, so the question becomes what is
Q: If there's no body-soul dualism, then can you give an account of ghosts.
A: No, I can't. But I know you have a different view of this. Zombies I'd be more able to explain.
Q: Jesus said to the thief, today you'll be with me in paradise, what does it mean?
A: Well, whatever happened on that day, the today was when Jesus went into the tomb. So the today wasn't necessarily literal in that sense. Hard to make ontological conclusions based on a promise to this guy, that's not the point.
Q: Will we still have emotions in our resurrected body? Ie, anger, etc.
A: There's no need for mourning. We're created for a responsive agency, so we'll encounter things and be moved by them. That would suit our finite, created being. But I'd imagine a completely reconditioned emotional life. Miroslav Volf has talked about how we'll be able to have joy despite knowledge of the past.
Q: Are our faculties also analogous to God's nature, or simply given by God as the task only.
A: No, the image is the task, not the capacity. So we create, but we create from stuff not nothing.
Q: So can we say that from you would say that God feels?
A: There is some analogy from our being to God's. Yet I am hesitant to ascribe exactly our feelings to God. The analogy has to have some content to it, but I don't want to say exactly how much.
Q:
A:
School of Theology - Sesh #7 - "He rejoiced in the Spirit - The Spirit's Perfecting Work on the Emotions" with David Hohne
Describing the outworking of the Spirit in the general life of humans, in order to get at the outworking of the Spirit in terms of affections and emotions.
Two approaches to knowledge:
In the red corner, the romantics. The reconciliation of opposites is a central idea for them.
In the blue corner, the sceptics. Preferring to suspend judgement entirely should insufficient evidence be available. Their default position is to doubt everything. Strict use of Aristotelian logic over metaphor.
Both are deeply devoted to freedom for the individual conscience.
Charismatics tend towards the romantic perspective on reality.
Evangelicals have a bias towards scepticism. (Evidentialist vs presuppositionalist apologetics) We are the sceptics with street-wise readings of Genesis, loosely held views on Revelation.
Jesus challenges both views.
God shows limits to the human imagination in Jesus. God addresses us only in Him.
God himself in Jesus demonstrates a lack of reliance upon the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction.
Interaction between the divine life and creaturely experience
Basil describes the Spirit as working as perfecting/completing the works of God. It inherently holds in it an idea of eschatology. A goal towards which things are being moved.
Calvin, on the other hand, describes the Spirit in a more static, sustaining role. Calvin saw that the power of the Spirit was necessary to sustain the world. Yet there is some evidence of a more nuanced description. 3 things: sustaining providentially, a particular aspect of that for humans and this is most clearly seen in the elect. (The Spirit is the one who affects the ordered disposition of things.)
Does it by the Spirit, but through the son. What does that mean?
Calvin felt free to say that any/all wisdom we need is found in God's spirit.
Some observations:
There is a distinction between God the Spirit and the 'livingness' of things that is mediated to them by the Spirit. Neoplatonist.
The Spirit is not the best of creation. A division has been removed between creation and the Spirit.
Calvin observes that there is a distinction between receiving a gift of the Spirit and using that gift in the service of Him who gave it.
Summary: Calvin says that the Spirit is the agent by which God providentially cares for creation, Basil adds its eschatalogical movement towards completion and Owen said that the Spirit is the one by which the humanity of Jesus is perfected.
Colossians 1:15-25. In Jesus, God meets creation in a way that nothing else does.
The gospel sees Jesus as the spirit-empowered servant.
Two approaches to knowledge:
In the red corner, the romantics. The reconciliation of opposites is a central idea for them.
In the blue corner, the sceptics. Preferring to suspend judgement entirely should insufficient evidence be available. Their default position is to doubt everything. Strict use of Aristotelian logic over metaphor.
Both are deeply devoted to freedom for the individual conscience.
Charismatics tend towards the romantic perspective on reality.
Evangelicals have a bias towards scepticism. (Evidentialist vs presuppositionalist apologetics) We are the sceptics with street-wise readings of Genesis, loosely held views on Revelation.
Jesus challenges both views.
God shows limits to the human imagination in Jesus. God addresses us only in Him.
God himself in Jesus demonstrates a lack of reliance upon the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction.
Interaction between the divine life and creaturely experience
Basil describes the Spirit as working as perfecting/completing the works of God. It inherently holds in it an idea of eschatology. A goal towards which things are being moved.
Calvin, on the other hand, describes the Spirit in a more static, sustaining role. Calvin saw that the power of the Spirit was necessary to sustain the world. Yet there is some evidence of a more nuanced description. 3 things: sustaining providentially, a particular aspect of that for humans and this is most clearly seen in the elect. (The Spirit is the one who affects the ordered disposition of things.)
Does it by the Spirit, but through the son. What does that mean?
Calvin felt free to say that any/all wisdom we need is found in God's spirit.
Some observations:
There is a distinction between God the Spirit and the 'livingness' of things that is mediated to them by the Spirit. Neoplatonist.
The Spirit is not the best of creation. A division has been removed between creation and the Spirit.
Calvin observes that there is a distinction between receiving a gift of the Spirit and using that gift in the service of Him who gave it.
Summary: Calvin says that the Spirit is the agent by which God providentially cares for creation, Basil adds its eschatalogical movement towards completion and Owen said that the Spirit is the one by which the humanity of Jesus is perfected.
Colossians 1:15-25. In Jesus, God meets creation in a way that nothing else does.
The gospel sees Jesus as the spirit-empowered servant.
School of Theology - Sesh #6 - Michael Jensen with special expert guests
Guest #1 - A counsellor lady
Essentially, she's encouraging people to be with that person in their emotions, and reflect back what that person is feeling to them. This allows the patient to feel listened to, something that they may never experience anywhere else. She's encouraging us that this is important and whether or not you feel qualified to help, just doing this can make a huge difference.
Q: Do you use medications in our practice?
A: As a GP, I do prescribe medications because I've seen how powerfully they can help people to be able to act in more healthy ways when they're completely unable to do so without that aid.
New Guest: a pain management dude, a doctor too.
Q: What is pain?
A: Not just a sensation. It is both a biological and a psychological phenomenon. It is an emotion in the sense that it also demands a response.
Q: What happens in the human brain when we experience pain?
A: You may expect to see a single area as the 'pain area' of the brain, but heaps of areas of the brain light up. Some of them are ones that try to perceive where the pain's coming from, but most of them are areas that we associate with emotions.
When you see someone else who looks like they're in pain, your own brain's pain areas light up too. That empathy has a brain activity reality.
Q: What of this is uniquely human?
A: We share a lot with any organism. The difference with us is a lot of the cognitive areas, probably language. The areas that look at the future, "what's going to happen if this keeps on going?".
Q: What things does pain produce in people, and how do you help them?
A: Depression, anger and fear. Chronic pain is an incredibly depressing experience. People often have a very deep hole that's difficult to fill and you often get very involved in that. Some people are worried that in 5 years they'll end up in a wheelchair. Anger is very common, often targetted at the medical sector.
Q: how do you help them?
A: A lot of it is medication, but massively increasing is the cognitive therapies. This is now the most common way of treating pain. Some are moving beyond that, and some people are looking into spiritual aspects.
Q: How are you reacting to talking about spirituality in this area while in a secular environment?
A: There are lots of people interested in it. Having said that, it's very hard to pin down what people think it means by it. The question ends up being, "What is your meaning, your purpose, and how has that been affected by pain?" Even from this loose sort of view, it does seem to tap in.
Q: What do evolutionary biologists make of the phenomenon of chronic pain?
A: Acute pain makes evolutionary sense, but chronic pain and particularly phantom pain makes no sense. it throws up quite a few conundrums from that point of view.
Q: How do you think about the papers that map the brain for the areas that respond to religious experience and use it to say that this means it's all in the mind, especially things that
A: I don't see how recognising what receptors get turned on demonstrates the reality
New girl, a 3rd year PhD student.
Q: What is meta-ethics?
A:
Q: What are philosophers in your area saying about emotions?
A: In moral psychology, they look at the relationship of reasoning with emotions, how emotions help or hinder them. Jonathon Height(sp?) has done experiments that say that emotions are unhelpful in ethical reasoning. Other things such as virtue ethics say that the reasoning behind your action is what defines the morality of the action.
Q: How do emotions connect with virtue ethics?
A: When we think of virtues, we think of courage, or compassion, etc. We usually associate these with a certain emotion that is going on in the display of that virtue.
Q: What's problematic with virtue ethics?
A: Not so much a problem with virtues as concepts. Useful to talk about in moral philosophy. The problem is if it's seen as the primary concept in determining what's ethical. Yet, deontic ethicists will purely look at the act itself to determine its ethical value.
Q: how is an objective basis for morality possible, given our inherent subjectivity as humans?
A: If you think that objective values exist, and are perceivable, then they must in some way perceivable via our emotions. You can't tell by your eyes that a painting is beautiful, it's the emotion where you'll find the criteria based.
Q (Andrew Cameron): Is 'mental anguish' pain in the sense that physically sensed pain is?
A: (Phil - pain dude) - It's hard to tell. Even from the brain scans. I'd say it's a false distinction and there aren't many differences between them.
Q: How do you deal with people who suffocate their pain and don't acknowledge it? (you know they've experienced it because it comes out in all sorts of harmful behavioural cycles)
A: A key is allowing them to understand that there's something going on back there, so ...
Ran out of puff. No more blogging for a bit...
School of Theology - Sesh #5 - "Whose tears? Jesus and his emotional life" with Richard Gibson
Do you notice that (assuming Mark wrote first and that Luke used him as one of his sources) Luke removes almost every reference of Jesus having a personal emotional response where Mark explicitly attributes them to Jesus.
It wasn't a particular type of emotion being removed (only the negatives, or only the angry ones), both negative and tender-hearted emotional responses alike have been excised.
All evidence points towards this being a systematic removal on Luke's part.
Richard doesn't have a really good explanation, so he says, of why Luke does it. On the other hand, he does demonstrate that Luke is far more concerned with the emotional response of the people Jesus talks to than Jesus' response.
A survey of Jesus' emotional responses in the gospels moves us towards an understanding that his responses are those of Yhwh God, and not simply the human nature of the incarnate Son.
Weinandy's attack on Moltmann and others are rendered inert. A suffering God can save us from our suffering. It's only our Western logic that makes this tension an unresolvable one.
School of Theology - Sesh #4 - "Does God have feelings?" with Gerald Bray
The thirty-nine articles starts out with an 'almost' word for word quote from the Augsburg confession.
Cranmer created a new triad, of 'body, parts and passions'. What was for Cranmer a stylistic addition, has now become on of the most controversial parts of classical theism!
In the world when everyone discussed their deities in terms of human form, the Mosaic prohibition against a graven image was enough to let everyone know that the anthropomorphic descriptions of God as having an eye, hand, etc were figures of speech.
The 'divine attributes' called into question by God suffering.
Transcendence.
Perfection. (/immutability)
Sovereignty.
It can be argued that suffering and feeling are not identical, so perhaps God could still have feelings.
aesthesis and pathos, as two different things. Yet, can these be distinguished in the NT? Ie, Hebrews use of aesthesis for Jesus in temptation.
What does sympathetic mean in that text? Not emotional, but it's because he's not their substitute, it means he can't feel their pain. So we shouldn't read that text as saying that the OT priest was an uncaring cad.
Ie, would a father cut his own finger to help a crying child know that he understands what the child is going through? Not the point of the text.
Using Abraham as an example in order to understand God's feelings is problematic in that Abraham's personal emotions are unknown to us. The purpose of the example is a case of faith trumping personal feeling.
With Absalom, it is difficult because Absalom wasn't like Jesus. Absalom wasn't a volunteer, and David was disapproving of the death.
Is there a confusion in Gerald's argument in that he is relating only to God the father in the thing?
Are we misunderstanding these things because we've shifted the definition of sympathy and hence the meaning of the text?
The impact of the Son's incarnation
How could the divine impassible God suffer as a part of creation? It's not surprising, therefore, that the two great 4th C heresies were related to this question: Arianism and Nestorianism.
To explain their Christology, the church created the concept of 'personhood'. As a person, Jesus was divine and not human.
The early church worked out that the only way the relation of the divine to the human could be explained is in personal terms. As a modern person, I'm more interested in the quality of the human relationship than in the compatibility of our respective beings.
Animals can certainly suffer and die, but do they have feelings? A controversial subject.
As a man, Jesus could suffer and die, which he came to do and why he came in the first place? Did Jesus acquire his ability to have feelings in the incarnation, or did he have them before? If before, then presumably the other members of the trinity have them as well. He would also express them in his divine person too, and so would the other members of the trinity.
Post chalcedon people wouldn't answer this way though. Doctrine of anhypostasia. So the divine second person of the trinity did not die on the cross?!?!?!?!
The Father can forgive me because of his son's sacrifice without having to experience that sacrifice himself. The Spirit, likewise, can do his work without needing to have experience what the incarnate son did.
The post-chalcedon fathers wouldn't have thought of the Son as having feelings towards the divine.
Emotions are present in human love because our relationships are imperfect. But God's love is realised. God's love is so perfectly realised that their love cannot be expressed within the God-head but outside of it. When it comes to personal relationships between God and man. God didn't have to become a man to relate to human beings, even if it did change the nature of it.
So, are the feelings of Jesus human feelings or divine?
Modern questions
A generation ago, people rejected the impassibility of God because of the horrors of the holocaust. Reshaped their view of God in the image of the cross. The purpose of the atoning sacrifice was pushed out of the picture.
If doctors and aid workers are suffering from the same thing that they're curing, they're not much good. God must have immunity to our problem in order to help us out of it. A suffering God would be of no help to us. Not just because he'd be powerless to deal with the problem of suffering, but also because that God's suffering would also be so far removed from our suffering as to have no applicability to us.
Can't blog this. Too heavy. Will try to provide reflections later after chatting with others.
...
What humans want to know is that if God makes a difference in our lives, do we make a difference to his? We can't imagine having a relationship with an emotionally void being. If God is our father, we don't want him to resemble the Victorian pater familias, but a relational adult in whom we can confide.
Relationships demand feelings, which is the basis for the argument that God must have feelings.
Firstly, if there are feelings within God, they must exists at the level of the divine person. Yet they are unknowable to us.
Immutability and feelings are not the same issue, because we can have feelings without experiencing pain from an external source.
How does Jesus' personal relationship with us affect his personal relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit?
Eternity is the issue. What could an emotion look like in eternity?
Questions:
Comment: You can define something without limiting it! The sign infinity is an example!
A: Well, I don't know about that. That is the issue, can you define something without limiting it?
Q: Do I understand you rightly in saying that the emotions are mutable and passable and so they are
A: Yes, so the question is in what sense is the analogy able to be extended to God. We aren't able to extend what we experience into the infinite.
We have an element of the divine, that makes it possible for us to have a relationship with God. To be a human person means to be more than just finite. After we die, I will be the same person, but not the same body. Personhood is the link to the infinite, and the image of God is linked to that.
Cranmer created a new triad, of 'body, parts and passions'. What was for Cranmer a stylistic addition, has now become on of the most controversial parts of classical theism!
In the world when everyone discussed their deities in terms of human form, the Mosaic prohibition against a graven image was enough to let everyone know that the anthropomorphic descriptions of God as having an eye, hand, etc were figures of speech.
The 'divine attributes' called into question by God suffering.
Transcendence.
Perfection. (/immutability)
Sovereignty.
It can be argued that suffering and feeling are not identical, so perhaps God could still have feelings.
aesthesis and pathos, as two different things. Yet, can these be distinguished in the NT? Ie, Hebrews use of aesthesis for Jesus in temptation.
What does sympathetic mean in that text? Not emotional, but it's because he's not their substitute, it means he can't feel their pain. So we shouldn't read that text as saying that the OT priest was an uncaring cad.
Ie, would a father cut his own finger to help a crying child know that he understands what the child is going through? Not the point of the text.
Using Abraham as an example in order to understand God's feelings is problematic in that Abraham's personal emotions are unknown to us. The purpose of the example is a case of faith trumping personal feeling.
With Absalom, it is difficult because Absalom wasn't like Jesus. Absalom wasn't a volunteer, and David was disapproving of the death.
Is there a confusion in Gerald's argument in that he is relating only to God the father in the thing?
Are we misunderstanding these things because we've shifted the definition of sympathy and hence the meaning of the text?
The impact of the Son's incarnation
How could the divine impassible God suffer as a part of creation? It's not surprising, therefore, that the two great 4th C heresies were related to this question: Arianism and Nestorianism.
To explain their Christology, the church created the concept of 'personhood'. As a person, Jesus was divine and not human.
The early church worked out that the only way the relation of the divine to the human could be explained is in personal terms. As a modern person, I'm more interested in the quality of the human relationship than in the compatibility of our respective beings.
Animals can certainly suffer and die, but do they have feelings? A controversial subject.
As a man, Jesus could suffer and die, which he came to do and why he came in the first place? Did Jesus acquire his ability to have feelings in the incarnation, or did he have them before? If before, then presumably the other members of the trinity have them as well. He would also express them in his divine person too, and so would the other members of the trinity.
Post chalcedon people wouldn't answer this way though. Doctrine of anhypostasia. So the divine second person of the trinity did not die on the cross?!?!?!?!
The Father can forgive me because of his son's sacrifice without having to experience that sacrifice himself. The Spirit, likewise, can do his work without needing to have experience what the incarnate son did.
The post-chalcedon fathers wouldn't have thought of the Son as having feelings towards the divine.
Emotions are present in human love because our relationships are imperfect. But God's love is realised. God's love is so perfectly realised that their love cannot be expressed within the God-head but outside of it. When it comes to personal relationships between God and man. God didn't have to become a man to relate to human beings, even if it did change the nature of it.
So, are the feelings of Jesus human feelings or divine?
Modern questions
A generation ago, people rejected the impassibility of God because of the horrors of the holocaust. Reshaped their view of God in the image of the cross. The purpose of the atoning sacrifice was pushed out of the picture.
If doctors and aid workers are suffering from the same thing that they're curing, they're not much good. God must have immunity to our problem in order to help us out of it. A suffering God would be of no help to us. Not just because he'd be powerless to deal with the problem of suffering, but also because that God's suffering would also be so far removed from our suffering as to have no applicability to us.
Can't blog this. Too heavy. Will try to provide reflections later after chatting with others.
...
What humans want to know is that if God makes a difference in our lives, do we make a difference to his? We can't imagine having a relationship with an emotionally void being. If God is our father, we don't want him to resemble the Victorian pater familias, but a relational adult in whom we can confide.
Relationships demand feelings, which is the basis for the argument that God must have feelings.
Firstly, if there are feelings within God, they must exists at the level of the divine person. Yet they are unknowable to us.
Immutability and feelings are not the same issue, because we can have feelings without experiencing pain from an external source.
How does Jesus' personal relationship with us affect his personal relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit?
Eternity is the issue. What could an emotion look like in eternity?
Questions:
Comment: You can define something without limiting it! The sign infinity is an example!
A: Well, I don't know about that. That is the issue, can you define something without limiting it?
Q: Do I understand you rightly in saying that the emotions are mutable and passable and so they are
A: Yes, so the question is in what sense is the analogy able to be extended to God. We aren't able to extend what we experience into the infinite.
We have an element of the divine, that makes it possible for us to have a relationship with God. To be a human person means to be more than just finite. After we die, I will be the same person, but not the same body. Personhood is the link to the infinite, and the image of God is linked to that.
School of Theology - Sesh #3 - "The Puritans, Theological Anthropology and Emotions" with Keith Condie
Puritans
Yes, says Keith, it IS a meaningful term.
Defined by a particular mode of piety - theology as scientia affectiva practica.
Why are we talking about them?
A fairly similar theological pedigree to those in this room.
Yet, lived in a very different century than ours.
This, then, provides very helpful perspective for us as we're so enmeshed within our own culture.
Also, have a very good understanding of what makes people tick, and have very sophisticated pastoral technique. They granted a very prominent place to the emotions. For them, unless you engage the emotional part of the human brain people were not going to do what you wanted them to do.
Secondly, because they've had a significant ongoing influence. Ie, J. I. Packer, Banner of Truth reprinting their works, John Piper's debt to Jonathon Edwards, Tim Keller, etc...
Essentially, they were 'warm hearted, without being wacko'. *chuckles in the room*
Part 1: Puritan theological anthropology
Worth recognising their Augustinian and medieval heritage to begin with. Particularly they drew on Aristotelian faculty psychology + the Bible. Combined the science of the day with Biblical truth.
But, of course, we do that too. (ie, reading 'mind' and 'heart' as if the bible means by them the same things that we mean by them. It doesn't.)
Baxter on anthropology:
Three general faculties of the human soul:
Edwards: These are located in minds, not body. Recognises that holisticly our body and mind are connected and that they affect each other, yet the proper seat of affections is in the mind. Ie, our spirit. The spirit is capable of affections even when not connected to the body.
Part 3: The pastoral implications
Is the distinction between passions and affections helpful?
If they are all in the mind, then do they function as helpfully in being alarm bells for us? (not sure why this means they can't be that :s )
While the Spirit is at work to re-order our emotional lives, yet our emotional broken-ness, in the context of the gospel, has to be ok at a certain level. Not loving God enough is not a fatal error in our condition. (Wow. Very interesting for me personally.)
Preaching and other pastoral work
Can't tell someone just to stop sinning. They have a love of sin. Must win the heart to a higher love.
Emotional states and spiritual health
You have to take joy in God and love him with all your affections.
So does this lead to judging the quality of someone's spiritual life by the quality of their affections? Does this lead to a mis-judging of someone's emotional state too?
Also, does the experience of down-times in affections leave one a slave to emotions? (Well, Edwards would perhaps have a more nuanced view that would deal with this.)
If people simply hear 'do this, be this', then there will be problems pastorally.
Division between head and heart?
Edwards charts a helpful course between these two extremes. Affirms the unity of our functioning as human persons. Moves past some of the earlier Puritans.
Conclusion
In our world, feelings really matter. Puritans don't have all the answers, but perhaps they are right in drawing a distinction between passions and affections. Placing emotions within a moral framework. Perhaps wrong in anthropology, in locating things in particular parts of the body, which marginalises the role of the body. (?)
They remind us that our great need to know God. not acquaintance or notional knowledge, but to see God as he really is with the eyes of faith.
Their view of faith is deeply emotional, we ought to live as if the truth about God were really true.
Questions:
Q: What would they think of modern anti-depressants, etc ?
A: I think they would have acknowledged the place of medicine and science if it were helpful to deal with the bodily part of our functioning.
Q:
A: Edwards' final mark, however, the greatest one, was actiona dnwhether you were obeying God's will.
Q: Did I hear you endorsing the distinction between passions and affections? Because it can go either way in a lot of parts of Scripture. Is that distinction really a helpful one?
A: Not sure. Because even Puritans would say that not all passions are bad. Passions enable us to do stuff. The problem is that they want to get out of hand. I take Andrew's point that they want to give some moral content to feeling states. Perhaps those two words are not the way to do that.
Comment: This helps, because when I ask 'why' they don't know. When I ask about the emotional reasoning, then things start to tumble out.
Yes, says Keith, it IS a meaningful term.
Defined by a particular mode of piety - theology as scientia affectiva practica.
Why are we talking about them?
A fairly similar theological pedigree to those in this room.
Yet, lived in a very different century than ours.
This, then, provides very helpful perspective for us as we're so enmeshed within our own culture.
Also, have a very good understanding of what makes people tick, and have very sophisticated pastoral technique. They granted a very prominent place to the emotions. For them, unless you engage the emotional part of the human brain people were not going to do what you wanted them to do.
Secondly, because they've had a significant ongoing influence. Ie, J. I. Packer, Banner of Truth reprinting their works, John Piper's debt to Jonathon Edwards, Tim Keller, etc...
Essentially, they were 'warm hearted, without being wacko'. *chuckles in the room*
Part 1: Puritan theological anthropology
Worth recognising their Augustinian and medieval heritage to begin with. Particularly they drew on Aristotelian faculty psychology + the Bible. Combined the science of the day with Biblical truth.
But, of course, we do that too. (ie, reading 'mind' and 'heart' as if the bible means by them the same things that we mean by them. It doesn't.)
Baxter on anthropology:
Three general faculties of the human soul:
- Mental or Rational soul - only in humans
- Sensitive soul - also in animals
- Vegetative or Igneous soul - also in plants and animals
The three distinctive faculties of the rational soul:
- vital active power - it does things. It achieves purposes. Firstly, it kicks the will and intellect into action. Secondly, it does what the intellect and will tell it to do.
- intellect (understanding)
- will
The passions are located in category two, the sensitive soul. The part shared by animals. A lower part of the human being. Thus, the puritans are wary of it and aware of its capacity to distort things away from what God would have.
Though Fenner disagreed, and located them in the rational part of the being. Edwards also locates the affections in the 'vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul'.
The corruption of the soul's workings due to sin
Baxter took the task of humanity as not to behave like an animal. Milton took the same view in Paradise Lost. 'When our passions take over, that is the loss of human freedom, according to the Puritans.' God's work of sanctification is to allow a right government of the body. Keep all this dangerous bodily and emotional stuff in check.
The soul's relationship to the body
The Puritans had a very literal mapping of each element to a particular area of the body. There could be a literal 'blockage' between your head and your heart!
Also, related to the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. The Puritans said that these bodily humors affect your soul. You have to care for your body, lest these bodily humors affect your soul.
Kutz note to self: how heavily does my anthropology (the one i've simply 'inherited' and could be completely rejected in 100 years) affect my application of theology? Good ways? Bad ways?
Part 2: The Puritans and 'emotions'
A breadth of terminology
The Puritans would, as per Augustine, hold that there was a moral content to emotions, but mainly in terms of what they were in response to and how they were directed, again as per Augustine.
Affections central to authentic spiritual life
"The affections are the Soul's horses, that draw her as it were in a coach to the thing that she affects: a man is moved by his affections." William Fenner, A Treatise of the Affections, sig. B2.
Also, Baxter, Sibbs, Edwards.
Puritans figure that you always do what you want. Our affections show us what we are in terms of our religious life.
A breadth of terminology
The Puritans would, as per Augustine, hold that there was a moral content to emotions, but mainly in terms of what they were in response to and how they were directed, again as per Augustine.
Affections central to authentic spiritual life
"The affections are the Soul's horses, that draw her as it were in a coach to the thing that she affects: a man is moved by his affections." William Fenner, A Treatise of the Affections, sig. B2.
Also, Baxter, Sibbs, Edwards.
Puritans figure that you always do what you want. Our affections show us what we are in terms of our religious life.
Edwards: These are located in minds, not body. Recognises that holisticly our body and mind are connected and that they affect each other, yet the proper seat of affections is in the mind. Ie, our spirit. The spirit is capable of affections even when not connected to the body.
Part 3: The pastoral implications
Is the distinction between passions and affections helpful?
If they are all in the mind, then do they function as helpfully in being alarm bells for us? (not sure why this means they can't be that :s )
While the Spirit is at work to re-order our emotional lives, yet our emotional broken-ness, in the context of the gospel, has to be ok at a certain level. Not loving God enough is not a fatal error in our condition. (Wow. Very interesting for me personally.)
Preaching and other pastoral work
Can't tell someone just to stop sinning. They have a love of sin. Must win the heart to a higher love.
Emotional states and spiritual health
You have to take joy in God and love him with all your affections.
So does this lead to judging the quality of someone's spiritual life by the quality of their affections? Does this lead to a mis-judging of someone's emotional state too?
Also, does the experience of down-times in affections leave one a slave to emotions? (Well, Edwards would perhaps have a more nuanced view that would deal with this.)
If people simply hear 'do this, be this', then there will be problems pastorally.
Division between head and heart?
Edwards charts a helpful course between these two extremes. Affirms the unity of our functioning as human persons. Moves past some of the earlier Puritans.
Conclusion
In our world, feelings really matter. Puritans don't have all the answers, but perhaps they are right in drawing a distinction between passions and affections. Placing emotions within a moral framework. Perhaps wrong in anthropology, in locating things in particular parts of the body, which marginalises the role of the body. (?)
They remind us that our great need to know God. not acquaintance or notional knowledge, but to see God as he really is with the eyes of faith.
Their view of faith is deeply emotional, we ought to live as if the truth about God were really true.
Questions:
Q: What would they think of modern anti-depressants, etc ?
A: I think they would have acknowledged the place of medicine and science if it were helpful to deal with the bodily part of our functioning.
Q:
A: Edwards' final mark, however, the greatest one, was actiona dnwhether you were obeying God's will.
Q: Did I hear you endorsing the distinction between passions and affections? Because it can go either way in a lot of parts of Scripture. Is that distinction really a helpful one?
A: Not sure. Because even Puritans would say that not all passions are bad. Passions enable us to do stuff. The problem is that they want to get out of hand. I take Andrew's point that they want to give some moral content to feeling states. Perhaps those two words are not the way to do that.
Comment: This helps, because when I ask 'why' they don't know. When I ask about the emotional reasoning, then things start to tumble out.
School of Theology - Sesh #2 - "What is at stake: a cultural overview of the emotions" with Andrew Cameron
How to get our bearings?
An experience of completely involuntary protection of his baby daughter when he saw a dog coming towards her out of the corner of his eye. No thought, just emotion. What was that? A thought? No. Emotion, yes. Good? Christian?
Recent History
Women who've had their eyebrows botoxed apparently feel less empathy, according to a study. :P
James 4:1-x as an example of emotions as involving cognition, the higher-level emotions articulated there.
You can have a commitment to a cognitive view of emotions and still see them as feelings.
Mistaken syllogism of many preachers:
A feeling can't be commanded.
But love is commanded.
Therefore love is not a feeling. (And I won't tell people to change their emotions or strive after certain emotions.)
So if you only give a fact, and then expect it to trickle down to emotions but don't push to help that happen, Elliott says that there's a problem there.
'Emotion', passion or affection
Does Elliott's strategem fall into the problem of his own critique of the 'trickle-down' approach in that it requires a level of thinking that would be beyond many?
Augustine vs the Stoics
For Augustine, our deepest longing is related to our telos. And our emotions are connected to what we love as a result. It is through the work of the Spirit that we are re-aligned to our proper telos.
Whether emotion is good or bad depends on how it is directed. It is used well when it aligns us toward our proper telos, and is harmful when it moves us away from our proper telos.
Hits the Stoics hard when they say that the emotions are all bad, even human compassion.
Emotions area good gift of creation, but they can be demonised depending on the love or telos that they are directed towards.
So, was Andrew's feeling to the dog good?
We'd have to know something of the telos of me, the dog and the baby. The stoic would say that you shouldn't have had the feeling, you lost your apatheia, your cool. The evolutionary biologist would have said that it's neither here nor their, you're engineered to pass on your genetics and the reality of what you felt, just is. No meaning.
Augustine would ask how that emotion was directed. The wrong thing would have been to feel nothing, and to let the dog hurt the baby.
Question time:
Q: Would you distinguish between instinct (the dog incident) and emotion?
A: We've got two roads, that serve us in different ways, a low and high road. Looking over from a distance, or diving in.
Q: How would we tweak Elliott's project?
A:
Q: Back to the two-tiered thing (instinct/emotion), are you suggesting that we can address both roads? The higher centres and the more basic emotions too?
A: A bit hard to know how to address the more basic ones, because of their nature, happening at such an instantaneous level. But we should talk about them, discuss them. Give us space to debrief.
Re-Q: Do you try to stir up some of those basic emotions within preaching itself? (Eg. Get a person angry when preaching about the right anger of God, etc.)
A: Yes, a good thing. There's been concern about doing it and whipping people up to a mob, but probably not a real danger of that in our context.
Then some more I missed, got a phone call...
An experience of completely involuntary protection of his baby daughter when he saw a dog coming towards her out of the corner of his eye. No thought, just emotion. What was that? A thought? No. Emotion, yes. Good? Christian?
"We should beware of the misleading assumption that there is a single, orderly, naturla class of phenomena that is simply designated by different labels in different languages at different times. The language of 'passion' and 'emotion' has a history in which various feelings, desires, sentimaents, moods, attitudes and more explosive responses enter and from which they exit, depending not on arbitrary philosophical stipulation but on an extensive network of social, moral, cultural and psychological factors. R. C. Solomon.Evans and Griffiths:
- more innate: basic emotions (Evans); autonomic bodily reflexes (Griffiths)
- somewhat innate: higher cognitive emotions (Evans); strongly expressed personal concerns (Griffiths)
- less innate: culturally specific emotions (Evans); social performances (Griffiths)
Recent History
Now, all sciences seek to study emotions in their various connections.
But, previously, there was a Cartesian view that emotions were animal spirits running through your body.
Moved to a Freudian view of a hydraulic model of emotions as a strong force pushing up against a valve, reflected in words like repression, contain, etc... This model has some problems.
But then, James-Lange:
sdfaEmotions arrive from their physiological reactions. The mind responds to the body's reactions and interprets it as emotion.
Women who've had their eyebrows botoxed apparently feel less empathy, according to a study. :P
Behaviourism came next - F. Skinner "The 'emotions' are excellent examples of the fictional causes to which we commonly attribute behaviour."
'Evaluative judgements', but no less than a feeling - the cognitive view
We might resist emotions as simply cognitive, as just thoughts, yet thinking and feeling work together and each emotion is an evaluative judgement of the reality which we face. A cognitive theory.
Something about emotions are 'thinkable'. "I will kill that dog if it comes near my baby." Emotions have their own logic. Scripture seems to at some level assume this cognitive approach.
Matthew Elliott: "Rightly understood, our emotions are connected to what we focus on, what we know, what we value, and what we believe. What we think and how we feel work together to point us to the truth".
James 4:1-x as an example of emotions as involving cognition, the higher-level emotions articulated there.
You can have a commitment to a cognitive view of emotions and still see them as feelings.
Mistaken syllogism of many preachers:
A feeling can't be commanded.
But love is commanded.
Therefore love is not a feeling. (And I won't tell people to change their emotions or strive after certain emotions.)
So if you only give a fact, and then expect it to trickle down to emotions but don't push to help that happen, Elliott says that there's a problem there.
'Emotion', passion or affection
- a moral (and social) contextualisation of the passions and affections;
Passion - thought of as that which drives anti-social bahaviours
Affections - thought of as that which drives us toward others
Yet, we've moved toward 'amoral' emotions. Emotions aren't bad or good, they just are. We feel that that makes no sense. More the younger generation, while some of the older generation probably still hold to some of the hydraulic view.
Cameron is sympathetic to the passion and affection view, but the Bible has a more nuanced view again of how these things work. Virtues and vices are helpful categories with which to divide up our human experience.
Elliott's proposal
Much to recommend Elliott's work.
Cameron wants to say that we can have some, indirect, affect on how we feel about things.
Not so sure about this four-fold thing. Likes the fact that he says we are able to affect some indirect level of control. This is his four-fold toolbox.
- focus
- know
- value
- believe
Why do I think it's shaky? Because it looks past a deeper theological truth, that we can be helpless, and completely beyond the ability to pull ourselves out of certain emotions. (Psalm 88) (Romans 5:5) By the Spirit a new capacity to love and to change is brought upon us.
Does Elliott's strategem fall into the problem of his own critique of the 'trickle-down' approach in that it requires a level of thinking that would be beyond many?
Augustine vs the Stoics
For Augustine, our deepest longing is related to our telos. And our emotions are connected to what we love as a result. It is through the work of the Spirit that we are re-aligned to our proper telos.
Whether emotion is good or bad depends on how it is directed. It is used well when it aligns us toward our proper telos, and is harmful when it moves us away from our proper telos.
Hits the Stoics hard when they say that the emotions are all bad, even human compassion.
Emotions area good gift of creation, but they can be demonised depending on the love or telos that they are directed towards.
So, was Andrew's feeling to the dog good?
We'd have to know something of the telos of me, the dog and the baby. The stoic would say that you shouldn't have had the feeling, you lost your apatheia, your cool. The evolutionary biologist would have said that it's neither here nor their, you're engineered to pass on your genetics and the reality of what you felt, just is. No meaning.
Augustine would ask how that emotion was directed. The wrong thing would have been to feel nothing, and to let the dog hurt the baby.
Question time:
Q: Would you distinguish between instinct (the dog incident) and emotion?
A: We've got two roads, that serve us in different ways, a low and high road. Looking over from a distance, or diving in.
Q: How would we tweak Elliott's project?
A:
Q: Back to the two-tiered thing (instinct/emotion), are you suggesting that we can address both roads? The higher centres and the more basic emotions too?
A: A bit hard to know how to address the more basic ones, because of their nature, happening at such an instantaneous level. But we should talk about them, discuss them. Give us space to debrief.
Re-Q: Do you try to stir up some of those basic emotions within preaching itself? (Eg. Get a person angry when preaching about the right anger of God, etc.)
A: Yes, a good thing. There's been concern about doing it and whipping people up to a mob, but probably not a real danger of that in our context.
Then some more I missed, got a phone call...
School of Theology - Sesh #1 - Sermon on Phil 1 by Richard Gibson
The talk is based on Philippians 1:8
Yearn - an intense desire with the implication of need. The word Peter uses to describe a baby's craving for its mother's milk.
Phi 1:8 is an expression that, despite being secure in being loved, Richard says he doesn't hear people say to him too often. Very expressive.
"with the viscera of Christ Jesus" - the heart, the entrails, the bowels (not as good on a birthday card). Paul's emotions are shaped by Christ Jesus. The phrase is instrumental, describing by what means Paul yearns for them.
Not just for the Philippians
I want to be conformed to the image of His Son. The tender-hearted mercies of the father and the compassion of the Son came up with the incarnation, not sure EI could do so. The deep longing, in the gut, the entrails, of God spilled out in the gospel of the cross of Christ.
For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.After the EI (Emotional Intelligence) boom, should we crave emotional intelligence? Is there something that we've missed.
Yearn - an intense desire with the implication of need. The word Peter uses to describe a baby's craving for its mother's milk.
Phi 1:8 is an expression that, despite being secure in being loved, Richard says he doesn't hear people say to him too often. Very expressive.
"with the viscera of Christ Jesus" - the heart, the entrails, the bowels (not as good on a birthday card). Paul's emotions are shaped by Christ Jesus. The phrase is instrumental, describing by what means Paul yearns for them.
Not just for the Philippians
- 1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:10 - Such great joy and feeling for those who had stuck with him through thick and thin
- 2 Corinthians 1:23-2:11 - Such is his feeling of grief over those with whom his relationship is difficult and whose faith is troubled.
- 2 Corinthians 11:28-29 - Not just to those with whom he's shared the extremes of emotion, good and bad, but he has a similar emotional burden for all the churches.
- Romans 9:1-5 - similarly, for his national brothers, Israel.
Paul expresses this publicly as a model for his hearers
Philippians 2:1-2 - Paul appeals to us to be transformed by the reality of the affections of Christ. Should thus Philippians 2 be thought of as a hymn to Jesus' splagkna? Humility, sure, but would Jesus
So, do we need EI? (many say the Sydney diocese does!)
Seems a bit like a fad. Can't deal with things like anguish and other similar emotions.
But I know I want to be like Paul. The affections of Christ brought to him the afflictions of Christ. Paul was content to have death working in him, and life working in those he worked for.
Want to be more like Paul in the way he genuinely loved and longed for people, burdened to pray for them. I want his tender heart. To genuinely love deeply and so also genuinely serve.
I want to be conformed to the image of His Son. The tender-hearted mercies of the father and the compassion of the Son came up with the incarnation, not sure EI could do so. The deep longing, in the gut, the entrails, of God spilled out in the gospel of the cross of Christ.
The garden of gethsemane shows that you can't have Christ's affections, without Christ's afflictions.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Warning: Theology ahead!
On Wednesday and Thursday I'll be heading down to the annual Moore College School of Theology. The topic this year is "True Feelings: emotions in Christian life and ministry". Should be good.
I'll be live-blogging most sessions, I imagine, and posting an 'index' to all my posts at the end for your easy reference.
Wednesday is:
I'll be live-blogging most sessions, I imagine, and posting an 'index' to all my posts at the end for your easy reference.
Wednesday is:
- A sermon on the affections of Christ - Richard Gibson
- What is at stake: a cultural overview of the emotions - Andrew Cameron
- The Puritans, Theological Anthropology and Emotions - Keith Condie
- Am I a man? The passions of God - Gerald Bray (really looking forward to this one)
- Whose tears? Jesus and his emotional life - Richard Gibson
- "He rejoiced in the Spirit" The Spirit's Perfecting work on the emotions - David Hohne
- Theological Anthropology and the emotions - Michael Jensen
Thursday is:
- From sad and mad to glad: The Pilgrim's Passions - Rhys Bezzant
- Together, with Feeling: corporate worship and the emotions - David Peterson
- Preaching, the Gospel and emotions - Peter Bolt
- Music, singing and the emotions - Rob Smith
Phew! That's going to be intense. Definitely going to need a trip to The Local Taphouse in there.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
A non-frequent privilege
Being witness to people being humble and repenting is a beautiful privilege.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
The problem with envy and jealousy...
... is that they take a dissatisfaction with God and the circumstances that he's placed you in and project them onto a (often innocent) third party.
They turn love to hate. (Genesis 4, 1 Sam 18:6-9)
They distract disciples from following. (John 21:18-22)
They turn love to hate. (Genesis 4, 1 Sam 18:6-9)
They distract disciples from following. (John 21:18-22)
Cain's problem wasn't Abel, Saul's problem wasn't David and Peter's problem wasn't John. Their problem was with God, and simply focussed on someone else.
Nasty, nasty stuff that, by the above definition, crouches at the door just when you're most down.
Summary of the 3-part gospel cure:
Nasty, nasty stuff that, by the above definition, crouches at the door just when you're most down.
Summary of the 3-part gospel cure:
- When we're dissatisfied or in trouble, the gospel says come to God directly to lodge your complaint. Let God have it (in both senses), don't take it out on someone else.
- The gospel teaches us that God owes us nothing, but has given us grace upon grace upon grace. He doesn't owe us, he owns us.
- The gospel is the message of a pearl more valuable than anything you've ever known. A person you'd sell everything you own in order to know. In a heartbeat and with a smile on your face.
If you know Jesus, you've got the pearl. Why be jealous of someone holding a bag of rubbish? (Philippians 3:7-8)
Friday, September 02, 2011
But Lord!
18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) 21 When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You, follow me.”
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