​By Sam Paek

​I. Introduction
 
            Before the start of my freshman year, Hopkins sent its incoming students a book to read over the summer: Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happier, a guide to emotional enrichment and achieving lasting happiness in our everyday lives. Claiming to have stood the test of the scientific method, Happier aims to help readers balance their present lives with their future ambitions, the ultimate result being a happy, satisfied individual with a renewed sense of fulfillment.
            
More than anything, Happier is but another reminder of our culture’s preoccupation with emotional comfort and spiritual wellbeing. With a growing number of books, seminars, CDs, and websites dedicated to self-help, we are part of a therapeutic society that values—even idolizes—emotional health. The foundational beliefs of each resource may vary, but the end goal is the same: to provide emotional prosperity and heighten self-esteem while blocking out any negative emotions that may be a hindrance.
            
This does not come as a surprise. Everything we do, in one way or another, is emotional: we are happy when entertained by friends, sad when attending a funeral, angry at our parents, and tired during class. We often describe our lives in terms of how we feel, with the emotions we experience often dictating our perceptions of a particular moment or time. 

For these reasons it is natural that the importance of emotions is recognized in religious spheres as well. Speaking from within the Christian tradition, Theologian Gregory S. Clapper argues:
 
The ‘emotions’ are a crucial part of human existence; some would even say they are the defining aspect of human life. Because of this, theology—the Church’s reflections on God and humanity—must, in every generation, come to grips with affectivity.1
 
            As Clapper would be quick to reference, the Bible often displays, and even commands, emotions. Indeed, since the beginning of creation God has endowed us with emotions, intended to—as we are image bearers of God—reflect His goodness and perfection through humanity. The goal of this piece, then, is to present a Christian perspective on emotions and, through the Scriptures, paint a picture of how emotion interact with another aspect of the self: our intellect. I hope to show that reason and faith are not two separate faculties but are interdependent. It is in no way comprehensive, but it aims to show why emotions are important in our faith for three reasons: first, because the Bible speaks into emotions, it is imperative that we understand what biblical emotions look like; second, because emotions figure prominently in our everyday lives; and third, if Christ, who is the bridge between God and man, displayed emotions, then we must pay attention. Emotions, in one capacity or another, have a role to play in our Christian discipleship.
 
II. A (Working) Definition of Emotion
 
            The Bible does not provide us with a clear-cut definition of what emotion is, but it does provide us with enough information to discern the moral quality of certain emotions. This quality is principally found within their source. For starters, if emotions are unrelated to any cognitive processes and are mere deterministic physiological responses to different situations, then we need not worry about being responsible for how we feel--emotions become a matter of is and not ought. This perspective implies that we cannot control our emotions but are subject to them—we feel happy and sad simply because the chemicals in our brain are sending signals as such, randomly and out of our control. 

Triumphing over this mechanistic determinism, the Bible commands us to feel certain emotions. In Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus points out the greatest commandments in Scripture: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” The nature of these commands is worth further reflection. This duty implies that cognition—our ideas, beliefs, and judgments—items within our own agency—are the things that gives rise to different feelings. As this agency is a product of our individual intellect and will, then it follows that emotion should flow from proper thought. No longer are our emotions mere physiological impulses; they are indicative of what we know and value.2 The happiness we feel when seeing a newborn child is built from our knowledge of the opportunity tucked in the occasion; an act of injustice inspires anger in us because it is reasonable to desire a world in which evil is punished and goodness prevails. 

Theologian and New Testament scholar Matthew Elliott encapsulates this rational causality when he says:
 
Emotions are not primitive impulses, but cognitive judgments or construals that tell us about ourselves and our world. In this understanding, destructive emotions can be changed, beneficial emotions can be cultivated, and emotions are a crucial part of morality. Emotions also help us to work efficiently, assist our learning, correct faulty logic, and help us build relationships with others.3

​III. Jesus, Our Example

        As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate: He came down to earth fully human, yet still fully God. While He experienced the full spectrum of humanity, one aspect separated Him from the rest of the world: His sinless perfection. Because of this, we can look to Him as an example of someone who perfectly displayed the full range of human emotions, experiencing joy and even—as we will soon discover—more melancholy emotions such as anger and sorrow. As Christians, conforming to the image of Christ is our ultimate call, so His emotional life should be the standard by which we cultivate our own emotions.

Joy    
In Luke 10, we witness perhaps the most prominent example of a joyful Christ. Earlier Jesus had sent out seventy-two of his followers to preach the Gospel and restore the lost; upon their return, Jesus, filled with gratitude, turns his attention heavenward:
 
At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. (Luke 10:21).
 
We find Jesus in a state of complete ecstasy, overflowing with joy. What was the occasion? God had chosen to reveal Himself and the mysteries of salvation to those who were outcasts of society: the despised, the sinners, the children. Jesus rejoices because of God’s great redemptive plan for His creation, which he loves and values as His own.  
 
In fact, the greatest act of love in history—the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—was made possible because Jesus found joy in God’s plan for salvation: the joy of being exalted in heaven and on earth in the assembly of His redeemed people. 
 
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God. (Hebrews 12:2).

In the life of Jesus, there is a stark contrast in what drives his emotional experiences: He rejoices in what He knows is good and right, yet expresses anger and sorrow at the state of the current world. 

Anger
In Ephesians 4:26, Paul writes, “In your anger do not sin.” There are a few noteworthy points to consider here, the most important being that not all anger seems to be sinful; that is, the anger that Christians experience does not have to be rooted in pride or selfishness, which in and of themselves are sins. 
Unlike Happier or new age spirituality, Christianity acknowledges that anger is in fact a prominent emotion in our everyday lives. Since the Christian walk involves pursuing godliness, there must be a kind of anger that stems not from our selfish desires, but from our regenerated, Spirit-led nature. If anger is a part of our spiritual walk, then it follows that there are some things that should make us righteously angry. 

But what is righteous anger, and what does it look like? The Bible is clear that righteous anger is being angry at the things that anger God. Because God is fundamentally holy and righteous, the anger He feels then must be righteous by nature. More often than not, God is angered by things that pervert what he intended for good; that is, the twisting of things that He originally created to be right. The Gospel of Mark provides a vivid picture of such a moment in chapter 11:
 
On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there…And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:15-17).4
 
Jesus was angered because Israel had forsaken their worship to God, choosing to valuing money over Him. He reacted because Israel’s actions did not align with the commands God had given to honor His temple and to uphold it as a house of prayer. In short, Jesus felt anger for the right reasons; his emotional reactions are clearly caused by a cognitive understanding of what ought to be in contrast to what actually was.

Grief
            Anger is not the only way Jesus responded to a broken world. In Mark 3:1-6, Jesus—in response to those that were accusing Him of wrongdoing by healing on the Sabbath—was angered by the sinfulness of those around Him, yet was grieved because of their stubbornness of heart. We see that in Jesus, His anger was deeply intermingled with His sorrow; they stemmed from the same source: that what was made good had been perverted by evil. One of the most prominent examples of this comes from Matthew 23, when Jesus grieves over Jerusalem:
 
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37)
 
Jesus grieved over the rebelliousness of Israel. They were His people, whom He loved dearly, yet they did not actually know God. He longed for Israel to be reconciled to Him, to show her mercy, yet also knew the reality of sin and the toll that it had taken. 

However, we see that Jesus’ sorrow was something deeply personal as well. In Matthew 14:13, Jesus, when he heard the news about John the Baptist’s execution, went to a desolate place alone to grieve. Similarly, in John 11:35, Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus, such that the onlookers declared, “See how he loved him!” Jesus’ grief is clearly linked to his cognition; his emotions reflected the truths he loved and valued.  
 
            It is a great resource to know that Jesus is not emotionally distant, but shares in the deep emotional complexities of our daily lives. We celebrate, we are angry, we grieve, and Jesus empathizes with us every step of the way. Yet Jesus also demonstrates that how one feels should not be an instinctive reaction, but a result of a cognitive assessment of the Truth. His emotions reflect what is good and what ought to be good but isn’t, and acts as an example for us in our own emotional lives. 
 
IV. A Transforming of Our Minds
            
As already alluded to, a Christian worldview demands that we take captive our emotions to the will of God. The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians: “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).” In other words, we must be able to obey commands to feel or change certain emotions by our own will. Thus, as an indication of that will, having the right emotions is crucial in Christianity because our willful emotional life is to be built on a foundation of truth, and this can often be difficult. 
 
So how can we begin to change our emotions? In Romans 12:1-2, the Apostle Paul reveals that only by renewing our minds can we begin to transform: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” He also exhorts the believers in his epistle to the Philippians: “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things (Philippians 4:8).”

This then begs the question, how can this renewal happen? First and foremost, renewal is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit. Our efforts can only follow his enabling; it is God who changes hearts, not man. On a more practical level, we can turn to 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” This is how we can begin to renew our minds—by fixing our focus on the glory of God.

For us to do this, we must expose ourselves to the Truth. That is, we must strive to understand and remind ourselves of the Gospel, to meditate on Scripture, and to pray without ceasing, always keeping in mind the Word of God. In fact, Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that they cannot see the the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Perhaps this is because to see the Truth for what it really is will renew the mind and begin a transformative work in our lives. 
            
You see, by means of Paul’s letters and other sources in scripture, the Bible does not provide a division between thinking and feeling, as so many imagine. They do not operate on separate faculties, but are seemingly connected, overlapping in many areas and constantly influencing each other. As Brian Borgman argues, right thinking should produce right feeling, and right feeling produce right actions.5 
            
As we have also seen in the life of Jesus, knowledge of the truth is the proper basis to elicit emotions, not a whimsical desire to be comfortable or happier. In fact, we have seen that this knowledge sometimes lands an individual in an entirely proper place of sorrow and discontent with the current status of the world. 
            
Throughout the Bible we find commands to love, to rejoice, to not be anxious, to not fear—but can emotions really be commanded? Pastor John Piper answers in the affirmative when he writes, “The reason affections can be commanded is not that they are in our ultimate control but because, given the nature of reality, some affections ought to exist toward God and man and some ought not. To know that a certain affection ought to exist is a sufficient condition for being the object of a reasonable command to experience that affection.”6 Standing on the bridge between proper Christian theology and a transformation of the emotions, we call to mind a quote from American minister and evangelist John Wesley, who questioned, “Hast thou found happiness in God? Is he the desire of thine eyes, the joy of thy heart? If not, thou hast other gods before him.”7
 
V. Final Thoughts
            
The Bible clearly views emotions as an integral part of who we were made to be as a people for God—as a people created in His image. Matthew Elliott even argues, “Christian emotions should be the most intense, the most vibrant, and the most pervasive things we feel as they are based on the most important things in life: our relationship to God and his great love for us; our eternal future; and the work of Christ.”8 Our emotions are intended show the reality and truth of our faith hidden within us, and their stagnation or transformation is indicative of our own maturity as believers. Emotions play a central role in the Christian life and are therefore critical to understand for a fuller grasp of the Christian faith. After all, love is its greatest commandment, and joy is perhaps just as frequently commanded, hope called upon, and fear reprimanded.
            
Our emotions provide a connection with God that we otherwise may not have. When a grieved mother cries out to Him, we witness His mercy and His gentle compassion. When we lift our hands in adoration and worship, He responds with gladness and love. When we begin to believe and live out His Word, the fruits of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—become manifest in our lives, a beautiful melting pot of emotions intended to help us live according to God’s will.9 Philosopher and theologian Robert C. Roberts puts it aptly when he says:
 
The emotions have a pre-eminent place in the Christian virtues-system because they are the most immediate way in which the gospel at the foundation of the Christian life makes its mark on the human soul and draws into fellowship with God…the Christian emotions determine the distinctive character of the whole range of Christian virtues.10
 
My prayer is that you too will experience and know the love of Jesus Christ, and that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
 


1 Gregory S. Clapper, John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on Experience and Emotion and Their Role in the Christian Life and Theology (London: Scarecrow, 1989): 1. 
2 Brian S. Borgman, Feelings and Faith: Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2009): 26.
3 Matthew A. Elliott, Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotions in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 2006): 54.
4 A similar event is recorded in John 2:13-23.
5 Borgman, Feelings and Faith, 169
6 Piper, ‘Hope as the Motivation for Love: 1 Peter 3:9–12,’ p. 216.
7 Quoted in Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 255.
8 Ibid., 264.
9 Galatians 5:22-23.
10 Robert C. Roberts, “Willpower and the Virtues,” The Philosophical Review 93, no. 2 (1984): 61. 

​In today’s society, the concepts of faith and reason are often perceived as contradictory. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.” This view is especially prominent on the college campus. Upon leaving home (and often the strict supervision of religious parents), an abundance of Christian students either enter a state of spiritual ambiguity or fall away from their faith. Why? Many may claim they have come to realize faith is simply irrational. Faith is doubt-ridden and intangible, and belief in a God that cannot be immediately substantiated by propositional evidence appears preposterous. Reason, grounded in logic, renders faith an ephemeral illusion, like a frail butterfly rapidly blown away by a strong gust of wind, leaving one to wonder whether it was truly there in the first place. Thus, in the minds of many students reason quickly usurps faith, indicating a mutual exclusivity between the two. However, is this dichotomy truly well-founded? Are faith and reason genuinely irreconcilable? 
    Let us begin by defining faith and reason. Generally, reason can be defined as the principles for a methodological inquiry, under a presumption of some kind of analytical demonstrability. Thus, by demonstrating an assertion, one verifies it as authoritative or true. Faith, on the other hand, is a mindset of trust or agreement, involving a stance toward some claim that is not presently confirmable by propositional observation. Religious faith in particular indicates belief in the transcendent—which, for most of the present discussion, refers to the Christian God. Biblically, faith is defined as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” It is noteworthy that in both definitions of faith mentioned, there involves a certain element that extends beyond human perception.
    This transcendent nature of faith often perturbs us; we do not like admitting belief in anything that lacks factual corroboration. We desire evidence, and wish to judge the validity of claims based on the sufficiency of that evidence. There exists a strong notion that if we cannot gather demonstrative proof of a deity, then we should not believe in one. This evidentialist pattern of thought is best summed up in the words of nineteenth-century British mathematician and philosopher W.K. Clifford: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” Many Christians may refute Clifford’s assertion by claiming there is ample indication of God’s existence to justify faith. However, both of these contentions are operating on a common premise—they both assume that evidence is necessary to justify a rational faith. Analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga questions this presupposition by asking, “Why should we think a theist must have evidence, or reason to think there is evidence, if he is not to be irrational? Why not suppose, instead, that he is entirely within his epistemic rights in believing in God’s existence even if he has no argument or evidence at all?” His question proposes that contrary to the evidentialists’ understanding, evidence is not a fundamental element for rational belief. Philosophy professor Ronald H. Nash clarifies Plantinga’s proposition by pointing out the two major problems of evidentialism. For one thing, “There are countless things that we believe (and believe properly, justifiably, and rationally) without proof or evidence.” One example given by Nash involves our belief in the continuation of the world even after our deaths despite the fact that our perception ceases. If we chose to believe only claims substantiated by propositional evidence, we would lose a great many beliefs that are inherently undoubtable by a sound mind. Secondly, to state every claim needs to be evidentially proven is self-contradictory, for that itself is an allegation that is without propositional evidence. This predicament reveals that “Either evidentialism is false, or it fails the evidentialist’s own test of rationality.” There certainly is information to support belief in the existence of God, but this belief does not need that information for justification. Thus, a rational belief may not fundamentally require any propositional evidence at all.
We can now see that faith may not require the kind of demonstrative proof that many believe it does. Faith could be perfectly valid and rational without propositional evidence. But is faith valid without reason? To what extent does faith require reason?     
It is apparent that faith completely devoid of reason may lead to superstition and prejudice. This idea is promulgated in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter Fides et Ratio: “It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition.” A faith uncorroborated by reason could lead us to stubbornly clench on to our beliefs rather than embrace our faith with an open mind. Such a faith takes on an appearance very similar to that of superstitious fear. Importantly, this prejudiced mindset is opposed by Biblical teachings, which command us to supplement our “faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” We should yield to knowledge, for it is meant to strengthen our faith. It is also important to note that we are called to be steadfast, but not obstinate. The difference lies in the fact that steadfastness, despite not wavering under mere circumstantial changes, still maintains an open temperament while obstinacy remains thoroughly unyielding, ignoring instead of addressing all cogent objections that are brought before it. Ironically, in contrast to the previously mentioned obstinacy, faith without reason could also become precariously volatile. Such a faith could rely too strongly on emotion and experience, both which vary widely amongst individuals. A faith so strongly rooted in sentiment coupled with a lack of reason could become erratic, directly correlating with the emotional state of the individual. Consequently, faith becomes a matter analogous to personal opinion, and “[runs] the risk of no longer being a universal proposition.” Reason is necessary in faith in order to procure knowledge, and to avoid the risks of superstition, prejudice, obstinacy, and volatility.
    On the other hand, and particularly in the Christian tradition, faith is more essential to reason than reason is to faith. At first, reason often seems capable of standing on its own. Reason appears to keep everything in pristine order—it is logical, intelligible, and gives us a sense of control. However, one must remember that reason is confined to, as stated earlier, methodological inquiry and algorithmic demonstrability; it deals solely with the mechanical and numerical. These are all very useful for approaching and handling the particulars of material observation, but there lacks an absolute standard for forming moral judgment. Thus, reason without faith leads to moral relativism. When operating under guidelines derived from faith, reason can be used to determine “good” from “evil”, and “right” from “wrong.” However, without faith, everything is reduced to relative terms. There is no simple “right” or “wrong,” and thus all our reasonable judgments lack a real standard. The significance of maintaining an absolute standard lies in the fact that there are no degrees of relative reasoning; there is only the wholly relative. In the case of the wholly relative, we have no true right to be indignant towards anything at all—not even the most obvious atrocities or moral wrongs. It is faith that provides the perspective from which reason should be applied—it is the anchor that keeps reason from drifting outside universal principle into the realms of individual perception. 
    In these ways, one is able to see why faith and reason are essential to each other. However, albeit both indispensable, faith ultimately occupies a higher place than reason in Christianity. This can be interpreted from Scripture: “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” It can be seen in this verse that Christians are called to supplement faith with reason, in order to elucidate our faith to the secular world. Nevertheless, it is essential to take note that faith is the main entity, while reason acts as the supplement. Faith is guarded by reason. While both are requisite, reason is also merely a guard. Generally, a guarded entity is always, to some degree, more significant than the guard. Faith is above reason in that there is an aspect of faith much beyond reason, so that “faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” Accordingly, reason can also be the way by which one discovers faith. An individual, upon discovering the guard, realizes that there must be something beyond being guarded. For if the guarded did not exist, then the guard ceases to have a purpose, and becomes meaningless. In the words of seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal, “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that.”
    Faith is the way it is because it has a transrational characteristic; without it, faith simply becomes a disinterested rational belief. Such indifferent confidence leaves no room for one of the most important aspects of faith—hope. Without hope, genuine faith can no longer exist, “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?” Nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard calls this belief in the transrational a “qualitative leap.” Kierkegaard has said, “If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast the objective uncertainty, see to it that in the objective uncertainty I am ‘out on 70,000 fathoms of water’ and still have faith.” It is hope and uncertainty that keep the flames of faith alive, and away from fading into the ashes apathetic belief. Nonetheless, the incomprehensibility of faith is far from rendering it irrational or unreasonable. Transrational is not equivalent to irrational—“believing against understanding” is not believing nonsense. According to Kierkegaard, the Christian believer “cannot believe nonsense against the understanding, which one might fear, because the understanding will penetratingly perceive that it is nonsense and hinder him in believing it.” Rather, a Christian “uses the understanding so much that through it he becomes aware of the incomprehensible.” 
    Perhaps a way to illustrate the relationship between faith and reason is to use the metaphor of a painting a picture. Reason involves the mechanics: blending the paints into the correct colors and using the proper painting techniques. Faith, on the other hand, is artist’s intent to create an image. Without the proper techniques and hues, the painter’s creation is unintelligible to everyone but himself. However, as the painting still carries intrinsic value for the painter, he will vehemently exclaim that his painting portrays a meaningful image. It is obvious he is trying to convey something, but no one quite understands what. His faith is very much personal, but cannot be understood by others. No matter how staunchly he defends it, it does not have any value for the rest of the world, save for a potential select few that think in a way extremely similar to the artist himself. On the other hand, if the painter paints without the purpose of creating an image, the precision of his brushstrokes and the perfect hues he blends on his palette will only descend into oblivion upon his canvas. His painting, albeit maybe beautiful, amounts to nothing—it is utterly absurd and devoid of true meaning to all its viewers, including the painter himself, even if it is visually stunning.
    In the end, is it truly reason that renders faith disposable on so many college campuses? Up until quite recently, it was assumed that the conflict in the minds of students was truly between faith and reason. But how many students have truly fallen away from their faith because they found themselves being torn away by a logical, compelling and elucidating philosophical argument? If students were to be honest, with others and with themselves, perhaps they would see that disagreement often does not lie between faith and reason, but rather faith and sight. It is the senses, rather than the reasons, that becomes the grounds for disbelief, grounds that would not stand for a second under the scrutiny of genuine reason. The Bible declares that Christians “live by faith, not by sight.” Notice the antithesis is not between faith and reason, but faith and sight. In the end, perhaps we are simply afraid of what it means to live a life coram deo. It is as C.S. Lewis says: 

“Reason may win truths; without Faith she will retain them just so long as Satan pleases. There is nothing we cannot be made to believe or disbelieve. If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of Faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason, but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth.” 

1. Swindal, James. "Faith and Reason." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.
2. Hebrews 11:1, NIV
3. Clifford, William K. Readings in the Philosophy of Religion. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974. 246. Print.
4. Plantinga, Alvin, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. 30. Print.
5. Nash, Ronald H. Faith and Reason. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988. 73. Print.
6. Ibid.
7.  John, Paul. Faith and Reason: Encyclical Letter Fides Et Ratio of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul Ii on the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Sherbrooke [Québec]: Médiaspaul, 1998. Print.
8.  2 Peter 1:5-7, NIV
9. John, Paul. Faith and Reason: Encyclical Letter Fides Et Ratio of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul Ii on the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Sherbrooke [Québec]: Médiaspaul, 1998. Print.
10. Westacott, Emrys. "Moral Relativism." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.
11. 1 Peter 3:15, NIV
12. 2 Corinthians 2:5, NIV
13. Pascal, Blaise. Penseés. London: Penguin Group, 1995. 56. Print.
14. Romans 8:24, NIV
15. Kierkegaard, Søren. A Kierkegaard Anthology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946. 384. Print.
16. Kierkegaard, Søren. A Kierkegaard Anthology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946. 204. Print.
17. Amesbury, Richard, "Fideism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
18. Popkin, Richard H. "Fideism, Quietism, and Unbelief: Skepticism For and Against Religion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." Faith, Reason, and Skepticism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. 568. Print.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. 2 Corinthians 5:7, NIV

By Karl Johnson

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, a fictionally flat Earth is made round out of divine punishment: 

"...those that sailed far came only to new lands, and found them like to the old lands… And those that sailed farthest set but a girdle around the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning; and they said: ‘All roads are now bent.’" [1]

Among other consequences this punishment stripped away the wonderful mystery at the edge world. No longer could Earth’s inhabitants live in as much awe, pondering a possible reality below their own, a land perhaps more beautiful than they could ever imagine.    

It is hauntingly obvious that life on our real Earth is under a similar curse as the original world described in The Silmarillion – our life is flat; death makes it so. We inhabit a single axis of time, unable to peek behind our birth or after our last breath. In the ancient words of King Solomon, “Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" [2] Assenting to this claim is the most honest thing a human can do. Death is linear. [3]

But death must be more than an arbitrary end to the human experience.  For if there is no value at the end of the road, then it may not matter what path we travel to reach it. It is hard to make sense of life’s value in the short run unless death is explained in the long run. If the nature of death is not important then life itself could be a mere temporary accident of the cosmos, a mistaken flash in otherwise darkness with no satisfactory closure. Death must be ontologically significant.

This significance is felt most by the individual. Imagine you were to walk through a portrait gallery. To stop and scan a single painting is to witness the whole of what an artist allowed you to know of the person in that painting—a small slice of a complex life, entirely bounded by the painting’s frame. These frames are important. Some simply wood while others detailed gold lace, and yet they all ensure that the paintings do indeed stop. Without them you would find yourself in a blurry mosaic, not a gallery. As such, a portrait’s frame distinguishes and elevates it as an individual work of art. Stepping outside the gallery and onto a busy sidewalk is hardly different. These pieces of art, fully animated, still embody the life of an individual, now framed not by wood or gold trim but a shared mortality. Like the frame of a self-portrait, death constitutes the boundary of our personal story. The rigidity of this boundary inspires us, the artist, to daily sketch our lives into focus—to utilize our creative power and to prioritize our limited space. Death puts your life in focus. Death is a frame.  

The very fact of this frame is humbling. In a culture that increasingly lives in shades of grey, the blackness of death is completely undermining. More certain than any religious dogma, the fact of death implies that you will ultimately kneel to something, God existent or not. Death is absolute.

Yet just as our knees hit the ground in submission, our humility yields inspiration: The absoluteness of death means there is at least one universal Truth that can be accessed and utilized by all. Death is the philosophical corner stone on which all major world views can and must begin construction. Said otherwise, death is the obvious, outlying fact in a cloud of complex, uncertain, and poorly understood life—the one numerical constant compelling even the layman to make sense of life’s dusty, variable-laden chalkboard. Death is our guide. 

As the locus of all that suffers in this life, this guide is admittedly difficult to follow. To walk alongside death is to hold hands with that which is responsible for permanently striping away loved ones and the young; it is the thing wars are quantified by and all our medications seek to prevent. Fortunately for us, this sobering characterization makes death’s guidance all the more meaningful. Just as great mentors will only educate students who willingly subject themselves to rigorous training, death will only guide those with passion and discipline to walk next to it. The utility of death may only reveal itself to those who patiently reflect on it case by case. Death is a puzzle.

It is undeniable that humanity’s most consistent analysis of this puzzle is what we presently call religious thought. Peter Kreeft, in Love is Stronger than Death, introduces his work by observing the following:

"The old myths are wiser than the new demythologized books. They grow from our race’s subconscious and embody its intuitive wisdom. It is a remarkable fact that all the myths throughout the world see death not as natural but as unnatural, as an accident, a fall, a mistake, a catastrophe that could have been averted but wasn’t. The myth of paradise lot is universal, appearing in many forms: Adam eats the forbidden fruit; Pandora opens a box; a bird drops the magic berry of immortality; Primal Woman throws a stone at the sky an chases the gods away. Only then does death appear." [4]

In essence, Kreeft rightly observes that for millennia the default for all humans was to imagine something behind the veil, a story being written beyond our mortality. The 20th century secular philosopher Martin Heidegger acknowledged this feeling when he described death as “a strange and alien thing” [5] and that our “being towards death is essentially anxiety…in anxiety one feels unhomelike.” [6] Unlike all other animals, a human’s most meaningful thoughts are not those of survival and perpetuation of species, but relationships, discovery, and stories that withstands the test of time—subjects of the transcendent variety. From the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to The Book of Mormon, the history of religion is essentially the history of man aligning with this transcendence, and in so doing, subverting death. The vast majority of analysis and tradition has consistently arrived at the same theme: Death is not the end of the story.

Unfortunately, current pop-naturalism has called humanity’s transcendence into question, abhorred it even. The riddle of death has been solved and the map has been filled, so they claim. Life was distilled of fantastical impurities, tested, and found wanting. As the early-20th century British philosopher Bertrand Russel declared, “When I die I shall rot and nothing of my ego shall survive.” [7] You see, with no more empirical or metaphysical evidence of a second life than our ancients had, Russel and company have determined that life ends finally in the biochemical dust from whence we came—a treacherous bend to complete the circle of life, punishing humanity in the likes of Silmarillion gods. But this rigid naturalism is an unwarranted extrapolation. Russel would once claim that theology is merely a “dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance” [8] when in fact it is his claims about death itself – death, the great country from whose bourn no traveler returns – that lies beyond the intellect of man. Death is opaque.

So the circle forced upon us is crooked. The naturalist’s death is not a comfortable fit. Their punishment has not absolved our anxiety toward the event, it has simply taken a more pathetic form—we simply ignore it. Unlike our ancients, many in modernity do not patiently walk alongside death to come to any meaningful conclusion. Death is like a peculiar knock at the door – it can be investigated or passively ignored. Previous generations attended to death’s knock, whereas we collectively turn up our music to drown it out. We think about death at best in third-person; rather than appreciating death as a mysterious but impudent fact, we pornographize it by inserting it as just another event in some shallow plotline. In his seminal work The Denial of Death, the anthropologist Ernest Becker built an entire thesis on our curious behavior. He writes: “Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing…The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” [9] Unless life is immediately put in jeopardy through events such as terminal illness and war, we cannot and do not think clearly about death, and sometimes not even then. We confront death like an awkward teenager confronts growing up, mostly ignoring it but then every so often clumsily stumbling into its inevitability. Becker’s observation is demonstrated by our daily routine: death is strange. 

Here we arrive at an intersection. Death has emerged as a number of things: a frame, a guide, a teacher, a mysterious unalterable fact. What follows seeks to reconcile these observations. Importantly, like any assessment formed in part on intuition, even if a universal one, what follows is more a personal exploration and less a formal philosophy. Viewed otherwise, because life is so variable and death so constant, what follows is a thought experiment. Death is a laboratory.

For the Judeo-Christian tradition, this experiment begins in the Garden of Eden. In the book of Genesis we are told that humans were created in the image of God and given stewardship over Earth. After God made them by breathing life into the dust of the Earth, He gave this commandment: “'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.” [10] By this tree—identified later as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—we could be led to the practical knowledge of Evil as a fact. But this tree was only one of two significant trees in the garden—the other being the freely accessible Tree of Life. As many know, man ultimately disobeyed God’s command. He did not accept Life. God justly responded by declaring,” Because you have…eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”… In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” [11] Man’s disobedience allowed sin to enter the world, and with this sin came death, just as God had warned. Importantly, the death that eating from this tree brings is not merely a punishment, it is a metaphysical necessity. If the tree of Life is a sign of the proper order of Creator and creation, then it is also a sign of the meaning of existence for man. Man can only exist in and through God’s love and God’s law. In violating the command of God, man actually cuts himself off from the Source of his existence. Death is Sin.

One of the chief biblical conceptions of sin is that of a lie—a distancing from what is true. Most often this is characterized as a personal distancing from God as the necessary source of all Truth, but it also means much more. Most pertinent to the present discussion, sin also means a distancing from who we are supposed to be, our true selves. Because we were created to be image bearers of the everlasting God, we once shared in God’s everlasting nature.  Our partaking in the lie of sin severed this part of our identity, and as the apostle Paul wrote, death entered the world through sin. [12] We were created to rule and keep the earth, but as a result of sin, the very earth from which we were made began to rule over us. Death is a lie.

This explanation of sin and death elevates death to the ontological status it deserves. Death is a reminder of our separation from God and of how far we have fallen from the identity we were supposed to have. In this punishment, one fictionalized by Tolkein, our lives truly became bent away from everlasting Truth and into futile ground. As such, the fact of death is far worse than we could ever imagine, even worse than the arbitrary annihilation of our person. Not only was it was never supposed to be, the alternative was complete fellowship with God, a thing unrivaled by anything in the universe. Unfortunately, and as already alluded to, the dreadful significance of death has been philosophically diluted, killed even. The corruption that began in the Garden of Eden continues to repeat itself. In true faustian fashion, most today would rather believe with certainty that there is no Good and Evil after death than to pursue everlasting Life, even if all that knowing only lead back to death and in so the futility of that same knowledge. You see, death always exists in two layers. There is death of the body, which is a fact, and death of the soul, which is at best unknown. Once again, the crime of the naturalists is that they have extended their data too far and thus diluted the meaning of death. Death is Evil.

Somewhat paradoxically, shackled by the Christian conception of sin allows an insight into our messy relationship with death. In short, death is strange because it was never meant to be. Our discomfort with it, our inability to approach the door, is less a rebellion from it as  fact and more a bend toward the actualization of a memory tucked deep within our identity—one that understood life to exist apart from death. Perhaps it is this memory that allows so many of us to live like death does not exist. G.K Chesterton in his robust intellectual history of humanity, The Everlasting Man, concisely centers this lifestyle. As he contrasts early man with all other creatures in nature he concludes that “art is the signature of man”. [13] His point is this: we were created to create, not to be destroyed. The Earth was the gift of Eden. It was given to us so that we might make it flourish. We were to fill the Earth with music and portraits and novels and gardens and cities and Beethoven’s 7th and spicy ramen and evening baseball games and unnecessary garnishes and sweet smelling cider and mathematical formulas and synthetic chemicals and good red wine. We were to bring more order to chaos, in the image of our Creator. The Earth was always meant to be our garden, not our grave. We were created for abundant living, not meaningless annihilation. For this reason death always finds man in some very real and significant sense incomplete, his potentialities unrealized, the full resources of his personality hardly tapped. We were not made to contemplate our own mortality. This essay should never have been written. The practical difference, then, between the secular person and the Christian is that the former knows why death is strange and can therefore look it in the eye, whereas the latter does not understand death and is thus – quite understandably – too afraid to answer the door. Death is a broken memory.

Here, finally, is the intersection previously alluded to. It lies just outside the Garden—just east of Eden. As we longingly look back toward our faint but persistent memories of paradise, death should be humbly accepted as a consequence of sin, breathing into it the strange yet ontological importance the fact deserves. Yet paradise exists just beyond the horizon. As we inhabit our rounded life the instantaneity and spontaneity of death are constant reminders that there may exist a wholly other reality dwelling right next to us—the silhouette of the Garden exists in sufficient detail. Death is a gate.

It is the proximity of this gate, and thus our closeness to the Garden, which yields further optimism from this experiment. You see, with the entrance of sin into the world all creation fell, becoming much less honest than intended. This lie permeated nature, temporarily bending it out of shape: authority was used for corruption and not grace, human beings became seen as means to an end and not ends themselves, the procreative power of sex was replaced with the raw pursuit of pleasure, and objective morality became splintered into subjected relativism. In fact it is this dishonesty that lends most honest philosophers, secular or not, to admit that eternal life on this present earth would not be enjoyable. I think this conclusion is correct. Death as a gate leading to a different reality, possibly one more honest and beautiful, is an enchanting and hopeful thing. To see how, imagine how the earliest man viewed the stars. Looking above, without fully understanding whether these twinkling lights were gods, more planets, or something completely foreign, these men could at least understand them to be a boundary—a sign that the universe extending from Earth did not fade into nothingness. Stars are not Earth, they are a separate thing entirely, a thing worth one’s imagination. The stars allowed these wonderers to ponder what could be out there beyond their strange and rocky home. This is how it is with all the great boundaries of knowledge: the space beyond the edge of space-time, the depths of our deepest of oceans, the complexity of consciousness, the moment before the Big Bang, and the seconds after death. Sometimes no news is good news. Especially in a tragic situation, as the ancients always acknowledged life to be, ignorance allows room for something better. As Heidegger would also write, “A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presenting.” [14] Perhaps it is partially for this reason that Jesus claimed the Kingdom of Heaven was for the likes of children, for they are the part of humanity that will always live by awe and wonder. Death implies mystery.

But there is even greater and final optimism in the Christian conception of death that extends beyond mystery for the individual. It is subtle, but this extension is grand and powerfully redemptive in scope. In T.S. Elliot’s play The Cocktail Party, the main character Celia says, “I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me—because, if there isn’t, then there’s something wrong…with the world itself—and that’s much more frightening!” [15] What Elliot arrives at by means of Celia is this: the present conception of sin’s origin, the message that all the brokenness in the world—including death—stems from humanity’s fault, is actually a very hopeful one. For if death is not on our shoulders then the immediate brokenness in our world may be eternal.  Death, as the essence of all that is fractured in our world, as our fault means that we are the problem, not the universe, and thankfully not God. Reality is not perfect, but its imperfection lies within the desires of man, not in the truth of reality itself. There still could be unbroken Life somewhere out there. Our punishment may not be final. The tree we forsook could be patiently waiting for the harvest. Death is hope. 

This result is curiously fitting. Circulating through the bowls of Christianity is always hope springing from messy situations, goodness from paradox. The last will be first. [16] Enemies are loved. [17] Mourners are comforted. [18] Sinners are made righteous. [19] Heaven descends to Earth. [20] God became man. [21]

Death exhales Life. [22]
 
 
 

References

1. J.R.R. Tolkein, The Silmarillion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1977), p. 281.
2. Ecclesiastes 3:21, NIV
3. This linearity is to say nothing about whether the more cyclic conception of life often found in eastern religions is true or false. Because we cannot be sure, at least a priori, death is just a likely to be linear as cyclical. 
4. Kreeft, Peter. Love is Stronger than Death. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1979. 3. Print.
5. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. By Ralph Manheim (New York: Doubleday, Anchor, 1961), p.133.
6. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 310
7. Russel, Bertrand. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russel. N.p.: The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd, n.d. 348.
8. Russel, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster, inc., 1945. 11. Print.
9. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: f Macmillan Publishing Co, n.d. 304.Genesis 3:3, NIV
10. Genesis 3:3, NIV
11. Genesis 3:17, NIV
12. Romans 5:12, NIV
13. Chesterton, G.K. The Everlasting Man. N.p.: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, n.d. 18.
14. Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971. Print.
15. T.S. Elliot, The Cocktail Party, act 2 (London: Farber & Farber Ltd., 1974), p. 130
16. Mathew 20:26, NIV
17. Mathew 5:44, NIV
18. Mathew 5:4, NIV
19. Romans 5:19, NIV
20. Revelation 21:2, NIV
21. John 1:14, NIV
22. Romans 6:4, NIV