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.