A response to "emotion as an integrative topic: an analysis of faithful feelings" James R. Beck some thoughts on integration.

Elliott, Matthew

INTRODUCTION AND CHOICE OF TOPIC

I must admit that in starting the study of emotion in the New Testament, I did not think about integration. Not did I plan for the study to lead me down roads in so many different disciplines--psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, sociology, philosophy and church history to name the major avenues. My only goal, starting out, was to find out what the New Testament had to say about how we should feel as Christians. It seemed to me that even in the midst of extensive linguistic and theological analysis of words such as love, joy, sorrow, and anger we (biblical scholars) were still missing something.

I began to study under a world-class New Testament scholar. After more than a year of preparatory study I was passed on to a junior colleague with the thought that most everything that was needed had been said about the emotions in the New Testament. There was no condescension or negativity from him in this whatsoever; he is not that kind of man. He just did not know how to advise me on how to do more on this specific topic. The fact is, I had not yet begun my interdisciplinary study and did not have strong thoughts that actually went beyond what had been already been written. All I had was a strong hunch. His contention was actually true when speaking of strictly theological studies. Completing my PhD, this same professor was one of my examiners and was extremely generous--without his good words I am confident Faithful Feelings would never have been published.

All this is to say that the interdisciplinary study of emotions made all the difference.

My study would not have been possible without the work of so many in each of these other disciplines. The roads I roamed were well-traveled; the problem was that many of us (biblical scholars) had not traveled widely enough to connect our paths to yours.

So first, a word of thanks for all your good work on how we as humans, created in God's image, function. I look forward to a lifetime of working together to learn how the latest research and observations in the field of psychology can help us understand the Bible. Further, I am confident that having a humble and teachable spirit combined with comprehensive research will yield exciting results for all of us.

When I first read Dr. Beck's analysis I was both honored and a bit perplexed--to be totally honest. Honored, because he affirmed what was written so gracefully and perplexed at the fact that, having been asked to write an article interacting with Dr. Beck's comments, I did not have many criticisms to answer.

I began to think on the implication of Dr. Beck's affirmation and analysis of the task of integration for my response. Feeling sure that there will be plenty of arguments and counter-arguments to contend with in the future, I decided to take a breath of fresh air and ask myself the question, "If Faithful Feelings is a good result in integrating theology and psychology, how did I get to it?"

The following are the major principles I used in research and in the writing of the book. I am not saying that these are normative or essential for successful integration. My aim is much simpler. I wish to share some thoughts and reflections on the process that I followed in hopes that it might be helpful to both me and others in future attempts at integration.

READ WIDELY TO CREATE CONTEXT

I had read widely enough in New Testament studies during the first year of my journey toward a PhD on the subject of emotion to know "most everything that was needed had been said about the emotions in the New Testament." I had not read enough beyond the world of New Testament studies to know that much of what was presumed about emotion in our discipline was misguided. For example, the idea that love, the feeling, cannot be commanded is based on a faulty understanding of the fundamental nature of emotional love, not on the text of the New Testament.

I spent the better part of the next year of research reading everything I could find about emotion from psychology, philosophy and the social sciences. Getting out of the world of my own discipline was the key in coming to a new understanding. What 1 am saying is, when preparing for a major study on a topic that merits it, we theologians better get beyond New Testament Abstracts and ATLA. Even more than that, we may find it very helpful to start by doing some research in other disciplines, so that instead of looking at something new wearing the glasses of our own discipline, we can look at our own discipline with the new insight we have gleaned from reading sources we are not familiar with. That can make all the difference.

One example of this in my work was the research of Antonio Damasio and the biblical concept of the "heart." Damasio strongly argues for the integration of reason and emotion through his research in neuroscience (Damasio, 1994). As we take this insight back to biblical research, we realize how well this tics into the use of "heart" in the biblical text as an integrated term to speak of the whole person.

QUESTION EVERYTHING

I believe that a key part of good integration is a strong sense that we cannot take anything we "know" from our own discipline at face value. We must take off the glasses of a theologian, being trained in theological assumptions and traditions. We cannot assume that what we think we "know" is the truth. This is part of the process of being able to truly integrate. Without the discipline of questioning the method of analyzing emotional vocabulary in the New Testament that has been practiced by a generation of biblical scholars, there would have been little for me to write.

One example of this might be the idea of a Hebrew dualism/contrast present in love--hate terminology. There is a prevalent understanding that when Jesus talks about hating your mother, father and family it is in the context of this Hebrew dualism (Luke 14:26). The argument is that Jesus' point is not the actual hatred of family but rather a contrast, a dualism that is prevalent in Hebrew thinking. In this view it is loving less or a non-emotional opposition that Jesus has in mind. (1) I really tried to track down the origins of this dualism in my research: I asked my professors, I looked for articles, I tracked down bibliography entries in commentaries and never found the root of why people say this. I was never able to identify the why of NT scholars saying this dualism exists in this passage. The dualism is usually stated as fact and the commentary moves on.

I came to a different conclusion about the passage. Jesus' statement was not to be taken as non-emotional opposition or contrast because of a postulated Hebrew dualism. Causing shock and almost a sense of horror was Jesus' very point in saying it in this way. Jesus wanted us to get the depth of the radical point he was making so he used a shock-statement to take us to new understanding. He was not saying to hate family of course, but he was using the shock-statement to challenge our understanding and make us rethink what it meant to be his disciple. The use of "hate" was strongly emotional, and eliciting a strong emotional reaction in the hearer was the very reason Jesus used the word.

We cannot take assumptions and traditions from our own discipline as truth if we are to be successful integrators. As we see new data and read widely, we must be willing to come back to our own discipline's assumptions and make ourselves prove their validity again. If we cannot, we must look for a new solution that fits the new truths that we are learning.

PUT YOURSELF UNDER AUTHORITY

I hope that we can understand this principle in light of what I have already said. Although submitting to the authority of the Word of God must be in the back of our minds throughout the process I have described, we are all open to the danger of making the "authority" of the Bible, in reality, only our own interpretation of the Bible. This danger is why I believe we must start with the steps above before we strongly evaluate how the things we are learning relate to the Word of God. There is truth in the statements that I heard so often during my undergraduate studies at Wheaton College: "All truth is God's truth." And we are aiming for 'An integration of faith and learning."

However, there is great danger here as well. The danger as scholars is that we will look at the Bible through the lenses of our expertise rather than looking at our disciplines through the lenses of what we know to be true about God. In our pluralistic world, we need to consider very carefully what glasses we are wearing. There is a subtle but very important difference. We dare not allow ourselves to use the phrase "All truth is God's truth" to twist or minimize a particular part of the Bible we do not believe supports or encourages "truth" found in our own disciplines--including theology.

We can not lose Augustine's idea that theology is the "queen of the sciences." No matter what discipline we spend most of our hours studying, the Bible must remain the greatest truth and we must treat it as such. In what is referred to as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, tradition, reason, experience; we must, as Wesley did, keep Scripture central in integration.

Let's take one example of this in my own study. Consider briefly the popular teaching that before you can love your neighbor you must learn to love yourself. All the evidence that I see in the Scripture assumes that people naturally love themselves. Human beings do not have a problem with self-love. We are often taught that you must learn a healthy self-love to effectively love others, whereas what 1 see in Scripture is that we all already have a healthy built-in self-love.

I am not saying that people do not hate things about themselves, nor am I denying that many people struggle with having a good self-image or with self-destructive behaviors. Although I have ideas about how the Bible's assumption that we love ourselves naturally, integrates with people's self-destructive behaviors and unhealthy beliefs about themselves, at this time none of these ideas have been well researched, nor do I have the clinical understanding to present them.

Presently all I know is that 1 understand the text of the New Testament to teach that people naturally love themselves. For me, whatever I believe about self-image and self-destructive behaviors must be part of this overarching context until such time as I am convinced that the Scriptures say something different.

DRAW CONCLUSIONS

When we have read widely beyond our own discipline on the subject, when we have strongly questioned the existing conclusions and consensus and when we have some strong sense of the parameters set out by God in the Bible, I believe we are ready to integrate. The stage is set to examine the results of research and bring some conclusions to the table for discussion. The hard work, it seems to me, is in the preparation. If the preparation is extensive and open-minded, the integration will come naturally and the results will be very rewarding and helpful.

FIND ALLIES

Once we have formed our basic conclusions and assuming we have questioned the status quo strongly, I believe there is one more step we need to take. We have a rich heritage in the church and, for many of us, with mentors and colleagues. The final step of integration is to question ourselves and our conclusions by having others ask us hard questions and by looking for those through church history who support or discourage our findings.

This took several forms in the integrative process for me. For one on one interaction, for example, I was fortunate to have Dr. Robert Roberts as a faculty member at my alma mater, Wheaton College. Knowing he was one of the foremost experts in philosophy and the subject of emotion and also a believer in Christ, I took the opportunity to submit my writing on the theory of emotion for evaluation. We then spent an hour together talking about the subject. I very specifically questioned him as to whether the understanding I had reached was in fact legitimate and if the arguments presented were strong.

A second area of confirmation came from church history. I was at a point where I was questioning so much that was written about emotion in New Testament studies that I was becoming very nervous about the validity of my own conclusions. It was almost a crisis of faith. I had to have some confirmation if I were to keep on the same path. It was at this time that in God's providence I dug into the book Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards. Line by line, page by page, he confirmed where I was going and why it was so important to get there. Here was someone who some consider America's greatest religious philosopher and he had come to many of the same conclusions I was reaching. I was soon to find others through church history that, to one degree or another, saw emotion in a similar perspective, most notably Aquinas and John Wesley.

A final note on this subject is that we must not just question ourselves and look for allies, we must look for spiritual allies. People must be found who live out what they believe, whom we respect not only academically but as true Christ followers. This is especially true for the integration of psychology and theology because both disciplines are concerned with taking care of and encouraging God's people. We need to look for people who are knowledgeable and spiritual to whom we can honestly express our thoughts and questions and then strongly submit ourselves and our work to their judgment. I do not use submit as an absolute term, but rather as a genuine willingness to rethink, retool or even retract, if need be, our conclusion. We must live in the reality of being part of the body of Christ, even in our scholarly research.

That is the roadmap I followed for integration. I thank Dr. Beck and The Journal of Psychology and Theology for the opportunity to interact on this topic and the impeture they provided for me to organize and put down on paper the method that I followed for Faithful Feelings. I hope that these informal thoughts will be helpful as you interact with the Bible and psychology. And, I look forward to hearing your reactions to Faithful Feelings and pray that the groundwork laid there may be useful to pastors and counselors as they care for and minister to the hurts and needs of God's people.

REFERENCES

Damasio, Atonio (1994). Descartes' Error: Emotion Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Avon Books, 1994.

AUTHOR

ELLIOTT, MATTHEW. Address: mae@oasisint.net. Title: President, Oasis International. Degree: Ph.D., University of Aberdeen.

Please address correspondence to Matthew Elliott, Ph.D., at mae@oasisint.net.

(1) See for example I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 592; Robert C. Tannehill, Luke, (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 235; Otto Michel, "mise, w." In TDNT. Vol. 4. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 690-691; Arthur Carr, "The Meaning of 'Hatred' in the New Testament." The Expositor 12 (1905): 153-60; John Nolland, Luke 9:21-18:34 (WBC. Dallas: Word Books, 1993). 762-66.