Social Formation of Nascent Belief

The Postmodern notion of identity formation—that we are constantly shifting identity layers and not cleanly defined subjects—has been simmering in my brain for a while. Lately I’ve been trying on the shoes of Postmodernity, seeing if they are really too small for me. For a long time I’d thought that absolute relativity was a necessary component of Postmodernism but now I am wondering if we can have Postmodernity (or something very much like it) while maintaining a dogmatic allegiance to absolute truth. Can we concede that “meaning” is a social construct and cling to absolute truth without speaking from both sides of our mouths?

I sincerely hope so. Linguistic relativity is a given. Cultural relativity is nearly a given. I think a group can perform actions which are objectively evil despite said act’s location within a culturally subjective milieu. Put another way, my culture can tell me that something is perfectly acceptable and I can never challenge that assumption… but it can STILL be considered wrong objectively. The ultimate standard of morality is the perfect morality within God Himself and it is His decision whether or not to judge us by that morality. The fact of the matter is, however, that the absolute standard exists. I cannot get around it (nor do I wish to).

Does this exclude me from Postmodernity? I agree wholeheartedly with the picture of subject formation described above. I agree that holism is preferable to restrictive categories. I posit connectivity. I feel a kinship with Postmodern social theorists.

We are constantly changing and have multiple layers. We use code-switching and role play all the time. Our adaptability is a result of our protean identity. A static notion of self does not fit neuroscience, sociology, or neuropsychology.

I’d like to think that a similar operation is present within the Roman Catholic Church. The analogy—and remember that analogies always break down under increasingly magnified scrutiny—of the Church as a body might allow for some interesting applications of subject formation theory.

One of the biggest Protestant complaints about the RC Church is that we have “added on” trivial and encumbering (and some would add “heretical”) baggage to the core of Christian belief. I have been told (and so I believe) that the Catholic Church doesn’t believe that revelation is ongoing. New teaching, rather, arises from the deposit of faith (i.e., Scripture and Apostolic Teaching/Tradition). Thus no teaching of the church—at least no dogmatic assertions from the Magisterium at the Councils—ever violates the Catholic understanding of Scripture and Tradition. And here there is a disconnect between the Catholic and his Protestant cousin. For the Catholic, the reading of Scripture is informed by Tradition… a Tradition which has the same source as the bible—namely the expression of God’s commands through his Apostles.

The Protestant understanding of Scripture relies on the individual as the primary arbiter of meaning. A conscientious Protestant will, of course, become learned in the history and (if he has time and desire) the biblical languages themselves. He will seek to become an “informed” reader. The Catholic, on the other hand, feels that he has an entire library of informed readers to compare notes with (in the rare event that he bothers himself with such a comparison). His trust in the Church Fathers is of a different order than the (average) Protestant. Those children of Luther who begin to put more and more faith in Reception Theory (and thus turn to the ancient understanding of the gospel) often find themselves convinced of Apostolic Succession and, as a result, join one of the so-called Apostolic churches—the Catholic, the Orthodox, the Anglican, or one of the many splinter groups (Coptics, Chaldeans, etc.).

I think that the notion of the Roman Catholic Church as a layered identity might be a helpful model. We Catholics do not believe that we’ve changed the core identity of the Body of Christ. We believe that the particulars of our faith were explicit or implicit within the original teaching of the disciples and are either derived from or (at the very least) are not in opposition to the Holy Scriptures. We are not inventing new revelations, we are developing nascent aspects of our identity that had always been there but are now articulated because of the surrounding culture. The Natural Law ethic, for instance, is not explicitly in the bible (or at least not all aspects of it are explicit) but it eventually found expression because of the historic moment. Also, Humanae Vitae was not a revelation from God but was, rather, the layer which surfaced during the sexually licentious cultural politics of our recent past.

I am sure that this model breaks down at places and that many Catholics would not favor it, but it at least (hopefully) illuminates our perception that Catholicism has not become “bloated” over time but has, rather, born the fruit of the seeds that Christ and the Apostles planted. I had planned on writing about why I became Catholic, but have decided to leave that to better minds. My case is similar to that of Cardinal Newman or to that of any number of the Huguenots that St. Francis de Sales converted near Geneva (or, even, to many intellectual converts today). The historic weight of the Apostolic Succession argument was not one that I could, in good conscience, ignore and (despite my attempts) refute. I will say that I explored many Apostolic churches before choosing Rome but it does not matter, ultimately, why I personally chose Rome. What is more important to me is that the misconceptions about Catholic identity be put to bed. We may have some new buds, but we are the same vine.

Post Script: Apostolic Succession implies that there can be no other church than the ONE church and this has kept the spirit of schism out (at least compared to the constant fracturing within the Protestant household). More than just the fear of losing connection to that Apostolic lifeline, however, is the cultural force of our so-called extraneous traditions. One reason we've remained relatively impervious to cultural change (the strict line we draw on contraception as a prime example, here) is precisely because our social markers (e.g., rituals) have given us our own culture. Protestants have a culture as well, but they seem less obstinate when it comes to "getting with the times" (e.g., the lack of significant outcry over Open Theism or this Emergent Church nonsense). One secondary (but nonetheless compelling) reason for my conversion was my approval of the Catholic Church's insistence on an Apostolic culture rather than a "relevant" one.

The Mind, The Body, The Faith

I lack authority (or desire) to speak for all Catholics and, like many of my Protestant friends, the intense piety-driven Catholic is much more the exception than the rule. Why is this? The answer, I think, is related to the questions provided in my last installment’s commentary. What does an informed holism mean for material devotion? Or, as Steve puts it, what does

“a faith that exists outside the ‘heart and mind of the subjective self’ look like REALLY, because […] we [might not be] capable of achieving a faith of the body that doesn't originate in the mind [?]” Can we make “a distinction between parts of our consciousness that are almost inherently unquantifiable [?]”

Material devotion, as I see it, encompasses both body and mind. Here we should pause and recognize that “the brain” is not entirely synonymous with “the mind.” As has recently been pointed out to me, there is an infinite ontological gap between a thought and the electro-chemical brain state. While this is fodder for more classically-trained philosophers, suffice it to say that even the most secular beard-stroker acknowledges the “problem of the mind.” But while the two are separate beasts, no one denies that the brain and the mind are intricately bound. In fact, the brain state is seen as a direct mapping of the thought in a point-to-point correspondence.

Thus the brain, as bundle of neurons which map the thought-world, blurs the border between the mind/soul and the physiological. Steve is quite right to say that the “distinction between parts of our consciousness […] are almost inherently unquantifiable.” I do not wish to imply that faith does not have subjective component or that the internal state is unimportant. Indeed it is just that internal state which legitimizes our material actions. Without *personally* ascribing significance to the material action, it becomes hollow ritual and is not religiously or socially efficacious… or, to qualify the latter, it is socially efficacious but not in the best sense.

The problem with most Catholics is that the once-meaningful rituals have been emptied of significance to the extent that most of those catechized within the past few decades have only the loosest understanding of the faith. Catholicism has become merely a cultural marker-- an inherited state. We go through our motions and they bring us a sense of communal identity in much the same way that the unique gatherings and group-specific motions of a yoga group, a bowling league, or any other micro-culture might. All, or at least most, of the significance has been ascribed to the action and not to the purpose of that action. In other words, many Catholics have the material but fall short of the devotion.

What I wished to stress in my last post is that we have to be aware of the body’s influence on the mind… and thus the strict dualism of the past is now untenable.

By over stressing the internal state we fail to train our body—which can be seen as a neglect of the brain/mind.

By over stressing the external state we fail to influence the mind—apart from the (in this case) accidental conditioning of the mind that comes through the environmental stimuli.

The first case seems to be a primarily Protestant problem and the latter a primarily Catholic one. This is likely because the first group stresses a more individual-steered faith (which inherently tends to privilege the mind) and the latter group stresses obedience to authority (which inherently tends to privilege the body rituals and is not as concerned with individual “ownership” of faith). Neither state, of course, is ideal.

To return again to Steve, he asks if an informed holistic view of faith is “impossible apart from a faith tradition that stresses physical sacraments.” Strictly speaking I am not terribly concerned with a Protestant articulation of material devotion, believing as I do in the beauty and the validity of the Catholic sacramental metaphysic. It is however, interesting to think about.

The Protestant can, without incurring the wrath of his betters, admit that the body influences the brain/mind. The Protestant can likewise safely claim that the body and its actions constitute a necessary part of devotion-- back in my Protestant days, we stressed how works and grace are not mutually exclusive and that a faith without works is dead. The argument could likely be stretched to include not only the social gospel, Good Samaritan aspect but also the intrinsic psychological benefits of altruism. The imagined Protestant retort would be that private instances of material devotion are inferior to those which help others (paralleling, perhaps, the New Testament’s insistence on the use of charisms within the fellowship for the good of the whole rather than privately for personal edification). So the answer to Steve is a qualified yes—material devotion is possible outside of a sacramental view but only if it is validated through social utility.

In closing I will go on a bit of a tangent and remind us all that many of the Catholic sacraments are socially-minded and so it is not the Blessed Sacraments themselves that I am here discussing but the extension of the sacramental mindset into the realm of personal spiritual development.

The sacramental metaphysic tells me that I’m not only reaping the “natural” benefits of material devotion (the habituation of pious living, the social-chemical conditioning into receptivity, the curbing of appetites through consistent denial of sinful lusts), I am also reaping the supernatural benefits. Grace, we believe, is transferred through the physical (e.g., in the Eucharist) and supernatural support is given in recognition of our physical faith (e.g., in the Rosary prayers and other manifestations of personal devotion/adoration/meditation). Even these material devotions, however, lose efficacy if they are just rote recitation (though this is not the case with the actual sacraments whose efficacy is rooted in Christ Himself and not in the officiating priest). Do co-opt a phrase from mass culture, "you don’t have to be sacramental to believe in holism, but it sure helps."

The (Spi)ritual

It seems that many Christian theists today are closet dualists. Protestants, in particular, often ignore or downplay the role of the material self when it comes to worship and devotion. Sola Fide and Sola Gratia, the Reformation's cures for the so-called "works-obsessed" Catholic argument have, whether consciously or unconsciously, enforced the old dualist split between the material self and the soul.

If salvation is the product of "faith alone"--that is to say a faith primarily located in the heart and mind of the subjective self--then emphasize is of course placed on the interior life. We do not know the hearts of our fellow believers, the Protestant claims, and so we cannot gauge their level of devotion. Discipline is an entirely internal struggle--even the seemingly physical act of fasting is in reality a symbolic representation of an interior desire. Much like the the memorial understanding of Holy Communion or the Protestant's non-sacramental take on baptism, the ritual acts of personal spiritual discipline are merely outward manifestations of the interior desire. Primacy in all of these examples is given to the subjective interior and the material aspects become secondary.

For the mystic, however, the material self is much more privileged. The traditional Catholic concept of sacraments is one of material devotion--the acts and ceremonies are not signs and symbols but are actual channels of divine grace. The Protestant eats the bread and sips the cup to commemorate the Savior's great gift. The Catholic approaches the table knowing that the transubstantiated host is the real presence of God. By partaking of the Eucharist, the Catholic is ingesting a measure of grace.

Mystics take the sacramental view and apply its anti-dualist argument to other aspects of life. Spiritual discipline becomes a type of physical training. It was not for nothing that St. Paul talked of beating his flesh into submission. The mystic sees that even the mundane can carry internal spiritual repercussions.

As an omnologist, I am inclined to apply the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to this discussion. Language, the two sociolinguists maintain, informs culture and culture informs language. This dialogic model is very useful. Our culture is embedded in our linguistic registry and, to a lesser degree, in our grammar itself. Our language, in turn, shapes our culture through our verbalizing of values and mores. Similarly, there is a dialogic aspect of the soul and the body. St. Paul discusses the flesh, the body, and the soul. The body is a neutral ground while the flesh is sinful. He seems to have not been a textbook dualist. He was aware that the body is malleable and can be shaped to the soul's benefit or its detriment.

We know from neuroscience and the increasingly biological turn of psychology that the chemical aspects of our brain greatly influence (or, according to some, dictate) our emotional responses. In other words, there exists a chemical bridge between the physiological brain and the socio-spiritual mind. Depression, anxiety, joy, and pain can be caused by imbalances or neuro defect. We must factor this into our understanding of the soul.

It was popular, about a decade ago, for Christian teenagers to be taught that their souls resided in a fallen "earth suit" and that their physiologies were not their true selves. The rational mind cannot except such pat dualism. We know it is more nuanced than that. We know that regular exercise will release endorphins that will make us happier. We know that getting the right amount of vitamin D form direct sunlight can stave off depression. We are told that certain foods (e.g., Omega 3 and Omega 9 fatty acids) can do wonderful things for cholesterol levels AND our brain functions. Our material selves are a very real part of who we are. Our characters are dependent on their biological nature.

It is not too much of a stretch, then, to see how an informed holism will greatly alter our perception of spiritual discipline. Many, alongside Dan Brown, openly mock the "ignorance" of men who mortify their flesh for spiritual ends. I am not prescribing flagellation or the wearing of a cilice, but we know that acts of mortification release endorphins. Some claim that the endorphins elevate the consciousness so that the individual is receptive to the spiritual. Before we dismiss the spiritual as a mere drug-trip (or dismiss mortification as "cheating"), however, we would do well to remember that the excited state brought on in the contemporary Christian worship setting does exactly the same thing. Different, perhaps, in degree but not at all different in kind.

A very real aspect of worship is its socio-psycho-chemical effect. Whether you prepare your heart for worship through a meditative state, through a rousing praise chorus, or by applying the whip, you are manipulating your body into a receptive spiritual state and thus you are proving the holistic/mystic argument. I do not see the chemical response to worship as a demystification of religion. On the contrary, I see the social and chemical utility of these rituals as evidence of the functionality of devotion. We worship in ways that make sense to our social and biological selves.

A major aspect of contemporary Christian worship is what Nieztche (in a very different setting) referred to as the Dionysian. In The Birth of Tragedy he describes the Greeks as dissolving their "principium individuationis" into the intoxicating frenzy of the communal. Whether or not the Greeks were actually Dionysian is not really the point--Nietzche is using the concept primarily to make an assessment of Modernity. It may well be the case that today's church has incorporated the drums and primal rhythms of the "Dionysian" because it is expressly a Modern church, but I think it is more accurate to say that the "Dionysian" has always played a part in corporate religious worship. It is not wrong of the church to "pull peoples' heart strings" through music. The book of Psalms is quite clear on the validity of music to channel the heart into worship. We Christians need to embrace this concept--though we would do well to alter its name from the pagan root.

The division between science and religion causes people to see the release of endorphins or the psycho-social aspects of the "Dionysian" as explanations for the so-called "religious social phenomenon." It is not the presence of the divine, they say, but merely the snapping of synapses, the excitation of the amygdala, and what sociologists call "groupthink" that causes people to feel a connection to deeper mysteries. In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud responds to a man who tried to explain the "oceanic feeling" that brings people to religion in terms of social phenomena. Freud's response was that he himself had never had such an epiphanic moment of perception. But Freud notwithstanding, humans in the main do feel this oceanic response. This is why we have so many religions. They can't all be True, but they can all be socially meaningful to the particular groups. They are, after all, the narrative framing of socio-biological aspects of life.

We cannot demonstrate the primacy of one faith using experiential testimony. For every Christian who claims a healing we will find a Muslim who claims an exorcism or a Hindu who claims prophecy. I am not by any stretch a universalist. In fact I am likely one of the most narrow-minded of Catholic exclusionists you'll come across. My point is not that experiential testimony is de facto invalid. I believe the power of the mind and even the power of the supernatural can bring about these miraculous events but that does not mean that their source is necessarily The Father. This is one of the reasons, albeit one of the minor reasons, that I left the Reformation fold and have come to Rome. Much of my faith had been based on what I felt or what others told me they'd felt or seen. Why should I privilege their testimony or my own when there are so many "true believers" out there whose faiths are different and (often) at odds with my own?

The Protestant obsession with subjective experience will not allow him to prove his faith in a way that can trump another's faith. If, however, one has a teleological view of history, the case can be made for the legitimacy of Christianity. In other words, the historic facts of the matter can show the probability of the religion's accuracy. This process is hindered, however, by the average Protestant's unwillingness to ascribe ultimate meaning to the external (e.g., to "tradition") and relying instead on the experiential knowledge inside him. But if the faith IS true then it can be proved through historic evidence. We do a disservice when we make the bible purely symbolic and apply our revisionist lens to it. The problem with liberal Christianity (on both sides of Luther) is that too many believers feel that belief ultimately comes down to subjective faith and that no appeal to objective reality (i.e. the historic evidence) will make much of a difference. The reason I am a Christian at all is not because I "feel it in my heart" so much as the preponderance of evidence compels me to believe. I am a Christian for the same reason I am a sociologist, a determinist, or a cultural materialist--I have justified, warranted belief in the concrete reality of things that is not contingent on how I feel about it.

Lest we stray too far from the topic at hand, let us return to mysticism. Fasting, for instance, is not an act of symbolism whereby we demonstrate to God that we hunger more for spiritual food than for physical nourishment. No! Fasting is the conditioning of the body into a receptive state through the avoidance of food. We change our physical constitution and thus we raise our perception out of the mundane and find ourselves in moments of spiritual clarity. We fast as Christians for the same reason we fast under a physician's instructions--to prepare ourselves and to return to a sense of spiritual and biological balance. The early church prayed multiple times a day (including in the middle of the night) not only to seek God but to train themselves into vigilance and to make the habit of the ritual shape their larger consciousness. Does Sola Fide have room for the social power of habit-formation? Perhaps, but it is not stressed in the same way that the Catholics stress it in their concept of physical faith, i.e. "works Christianity." One of my reasons for choosing Rome is that the belief system accounts for the physical self in a better, nuanced way. My Protestant background taught me to see the body as either a hindrance or an enemy but never as an instrument of worship... no, that pride of place was reserved solely for the spirit trapped in the earth suit.

The mystic trains his body.
The mystic trains his soul.
Between the two he sees no clear division.