Religious Passion or Spiritual Fervour?

"Praise and worship" music evokes strong reactions, and I've heard most of them, ranging from fellow-seminarians railing against them as "not liturgical music" to parish music ministers saying we need them "to get young butts in the pews."  What unites the two ends is how "emotional" such praise and worship music can be, and I would like to address precisely this--the question of "emotionalism."

More than that, I would like to look at it theologically and, more precisely, on the basis of St Thomas Aquinas' teachings on the structure of the human soul.  Once we have gained some insight into Thomistic "Christian anthropology" we can evaluate not praise and worship music in se but the value of emotions in the believer.

The Parts of the Human Soul

St Thomas Aquinas taught that the human soul has three "parts":  A vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational part.  Sometimes he will say things like "the sensitive soul" meaning the sensitive part.  Each of these parts have different functions.

The "vegetative soul" is what causes all life to need nutrition, to grow, and to procreate.  We call these the three "powers" of the vegetative soul.  Humans are part of all living things because they have at least a vegetative soul.

The "sensitive soul" has four "powers":  self-movement, the "five external senses" (touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing), "four internal senses" (memory, imagination, common sense, and estimative sense), and the eleven emotions.  We'll come back to that shortly.  But, for the moment, we say that humans are also part of the animal kingdom (or "brutes" if you're a good mediaevalist!).

Finally, in the "rational soul" are the two powers of intellect and will (sometimes also called the "appetitive faculty").  This is what distinguishes humans from all living things--because we have a rational soul with an intellect which is interested in truth, and a will which is interested in goodness.  More to the point, it is in our "rational soul" or the "rational part of the soul" where our being in God's "image and likeness" is to be found (cf Gen 1:26).  It is in possession of a rational soul which makes is humans.  When the early Church was hammering out the doctrine of Christ's "true manhood," it was hinged not so much on Christ's enfleshment or bodiliness, but on the fact that the Incarnation meant He also had a rational soul.

While we're on the topic, though angels have intellect and will, it is in fact improper to speak of them having souls--angels do not have souls.  There is no such thing as an "angelic soul" (despite yours truly).  Yet St Thomas Aquinas speaks of them as "intellectual substances"--but that's for another blog entry.

Back to the sensitive part of the rational soul.  St Thomas Aquinas says that (1) there are eleven emotions (2) further subdivided into two parts, namely the irascible appetite and the concupiscible appetite.  "Irascibility" makes us shun dangers to life and limb; "concupiscence" makes us to chase after desirable things.  Therefore there are (3) five emotions in the concupiscible appetite and six emotions in the irascible appetite.  They are as follows--

Irascible Emotions:  hope, despair, courage, fear, and anger.

Concupiscible Emotions:  love, desire, joy, hatred, aversion, sadness.

Believe me when I say that I am giving only the roughest outline, because I wouldn't be so heartless to explain the full package of St Thomas' doctrine of the human soul without offering a glass or ten of Hennessy's gin.

The Hierarchy of the Parts of the Human Soul

The order in which I described the parts of the human soul--first vegetative, then sensitive, and finally rational--are from the lowest to the highest, with the rational soul's intellect and will as the noblest part of woman and man.  That's how God made us.

The vegetative part pretty much takes care of itself, but we do have a hand in it.  The vegetative part needs food and--whether we like it or not--causes our bodies to be hungry.  The sensitive soul may crave a juicy steak to feed our hunger.  But the rational soul intellectually figures out how to get a juicy steak--perhaps by purchasing and cooking it, or perhaps by going to, say, The Keg.  Our will then carries out the pursuit of juicy steak.  This brings us back to the sensitive soul since locomotion is involved:   Deftly using the knife and fork, we cut, put in our mouths, then eat.  In doing that we enjoy the juicy steak, as the concupiscible emotion of joy suggests.  As we eat, the vegetative soul's need for nutrition is satisfied.

Let's say I'm hungry, and I need a good intake of an assortment of vitamins.  Since I have an intellect, I know that eating my glasses won't do.  I also know that eating Doritos may be gratifying, but would not be very sustaining.  My rational soul decides and carries out how to satiate my hunger.

A somewhat dull person might choose to eat junk food to sustain themselves (and I'm not talking about having "the noshes"), but an entirely stupid person might drink motor oil for sustenance.

In point of fact, stupidity and sin are correlated.  When Adam and Eve sinned, the ordering of their soul was then disrupted:  Whereas they were created with their rational faculties governing their sensitive faculties, an inversion took place such that the sensitive soul took over the rational soul.  In other words, sin caused the emotions to rule the soul despotically.

This is why St Peter wrote of "the corruption that is in the world because of passion..." (2 Pt 1:4) and tells us to "not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance" (1 Pt 1:14) and that these "passions of the soul...wage war against your soul" (1 Pt 2:11).  The old saying "Do not let your emotions cloud your judgment" is entirely Biblical and every bit as Christian.

The Cardinal Virtues and the Parts of the Human Soul

You remember--please God--the four "cardinal virtues," I'm sure:  prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.  What's neat is that each of these cardinal virtues correspond to each of the "faculties" in the parts of the soul we can control, the sensitive and rational part.

In the sensitive part of the soul, the virtue of temperance is how we control concupiscence, that is, our desires.  I may desire seven cups of coffee in the morning, but temperance tells me that six and a half are quite enough.  The virtue of fortitude is how we control irascibility, as it 'fortifies' or strengthens us against dangers that face us, helping us to either flee certain situations or to confront them head-on.

We control the will in the rational soul by the virtue of justice, that is, "to give that which is owed" to others or to myself.  (It does not mean "fairness"!  And you catechists and Catholic school teachers, stop telling your students that 'justice = fairness.)

But the question remains:  How do we know what is owed in justice?  How do we know that "enough is enough" in temperance?  Or that we should either fight or take flight in fortitude?

In a word, prudence, the remaining cardinal virtue, which governs the intellect.  St Thomas Aquinas goes so far as to call the virtue of prudence "the charioteer of the virtues," because prudence rules over justice, temperance, and fortitude; more to the point, since "virtue" is the "means between two extremes"--that is to say, right smack midway between a vice in excess or a vice in defect--we need to be able to figure out those midpoints, and Mrs Prudence is perfect for the job.

The Infused Virtues:  Where the Holy Spirit Comes In

As Holy-Spirit-filled believers, the same indwelling Holy Spirit works at the root of the soul's powers (concupiscence, irascibility, will, and intellect) in such a way that they infuse the virtues governing those powers to the point that they become supernatural.

When the Holy Spirit takes up residence in a Christian soul, he does this first by installing the theological virtues of faith in the intellect which turns our minds toward God, and by installing the theological virtue of charity in the will which causes us to cling to God.  These two, in turn, engender the theological virtue of hope, again in the will, which causes us to stretch out our whole selves to God so that we can enjoy him in the next life.

At the same time, the Seven Gifts begin to work.  Faith is buttressed by the gifts of Understanding and Knowledge, charity is buttressed by the gift of Wisdom, and hope is buttressed by the gift of Fear of the Lord.  We won't get into these definitions just yet.

This is how the Holy Spirit begins to re-order our souls.  By working at the root of the powers, Counsel buttresses prudence, bringing it to first place among the cardinal virtues, followed by Piety in the will, buttressing justice.  Then Fortitude buttresses fortitude (surprise) but temperance is buttressed by Fear, but only in a secondary way.

The Holy Spirit thus "repairs" the soul's deformity as a result of sin by (1) putting God in the first place by the theological virtues and their corresponding gifts of Understanding, Knowledge, Fear, and Wisdom and (2) restoring the rational part to first place by prudence infused by Counsel and justice infused by Piety and (2) subordinating the emotions to the rational part by infusing fortitude with Fortitude and infusing temperance, again, with Fear.

What's This Got to Do with Praise & Worship Music?

The emotions, as we've seen, are natural to the human soul.  Conversely, to be emotionless is unnatural.  What matters is that they must be governed by the rational soul.

At the same time, while not necessarily always sinful, it is still disordered for the emotions to govern our rationality.  We see this all the time with the "mob mentality" rampant on social media, where thinking is thrown to the wind and "emoting" rules the day.  In fact, this mob-mentality whipping up into frenzy to the point of 'overriding' rationality is at the heart of paganism.  We recall the story of Elijah's contest with the pagan cultists of Ba'al:  "And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them.  And as midday passed they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation" (1 Kgs 18:28-29).  In other words, the Ba'alist religionists used their sinful passions at the expense of their rationality.

Contrast this with the earlier story of David, whose music soothed King Saul:

Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.  ...And David came to Saul and entered his service.  ...And whenever the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him (cf 1 Sam 16:14f).

Somehow, David's musicmaking soothed Saul.  But not only David's musicmaking, but also the prophets' after Saul was first anointed king over the congregation of Israel:

...as you come to the city, you will meet a band of prophets coming down from the high place with the harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre before them, prophesying.  Then the Spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon you, and you shall prophesy with them and be turned into another man... (1 Sam 10:5-6).

This is not simply because Saul got worked up by the music.  If we look at the Psalms for David, for example, we see an abundance of feeling, but only because they are in response to the wonderful works of God (joy, exultation), or in response to sin (sorrow, contrition).  Thus, the feelings were in response to facts.  Certain facts evoked feeling, such as the beauty of the Jerusalem Temple (Ps 84 [83]), gratitude for God's wonderworking (Ps 103 [102]), or the sorrow of having sinned (Ps 143 [142]).

We cannot reverse course on this one-way street:  How we feel cannot create facts.  Some people feel assuaged by reading astrological horoscopes, but that does not change the fact that the stars do not govern human destiny.  I used to feel my way through my high school algebra tests, but I almost never got my mathematical facts right thereby!

Joyful worship and sorrowful repentance, in music, must arise out of those facts which are dogmatic.  By sin, we have forfeited eternal life, and so we sorrow.  By Christ's work of the Cross, He won for us pardon, and so we rejoice.  "Religious passion" cannot invent dogmatic facts, but dogmatic facts can engender "spiritual fervour."

Granted "praise and worship music" are known for their catchy tunes, but we have to ask:  Do these catchy tunes accent and highlight Biblical truths, or are they gratuitous?  That would depend almost entirely on the person at worship.

To be perfectly frank, I find that Christians who have not been "baptised in the Holy Spirit" look utterly ridiculous when they sing "praise and worship music"--even if the acoustics are perfect.  Equally, such music only makes sense if it's sung by Spirit-baptized Christians, even if their voices are discordant.  Why?--because in being baptised by the Holy Spirit, the intellect is illuminated, brightly illuminated by those Biblical truths which bring us elation for all the wonderful works of God and even bring us "bright sadness" (to borrow from Fr Alexander Schememann) for having been derelict in our discipleship.

In closing, I remind you of the words of St Paul the Apostle who said 

Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord.  ...Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Phil 3:1, 4:4);

Rejoice always! (1 Thess 5:16).

I am genuinely baffled by those extremely "religious" and "devout" people who seem to think they display their virtue and holiness by long faces and sombre expressions.  In fact, St Teresa of Avila, one of the great masters of the spiritual life, had choice words about such serious, religious people.  (Why else do you think she's often depicted with a tambourine?)

And, finally, I invite you to listen and watch this YouTube clip by Matt Boswell.  His wonderful composition, Come, Behold the Wondrous Mystery contains a précis of Christ's redeeming work--His Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.  As you watch and listen, look at the joy and elation on the faces of the young people:  They rejoice not on account of the mere aesthetics of the music, but because of the Biblical truths being sung, Biblical truths that changed their lives and set them towards eternity.

If we're left unfeeling on account of Biblical, dogmatic facts, maybe the Holy Spirit hasn't been let in entirely. 

This blog post is dedicated to my dear friends of
"Shophar Praise and Worship Unending."