Is this a good psychological analysis of salvation?

Aussie Pete · Nov 26, 2020

Hmmm! said:
There's nothing I can say to that because that's not what James said.

fhansen said:
Yes, there's a problem when someone attempts to subsume supernatural experience under or within the concepts that reason and psychology can arrive at on their own. But it's normal for us to desire understanding-the more the better-and he's basing his ideas on reported experiences at least. It's also not a bad thing when faith and reason meet and agree, or when reason can support faith to the extent that its able. Or when an objective secular writer at least acknowledges the real and practical value of these experiences in one way or another. IMO.

The OP asked how James' writing related to the Christian experience. Basically, it does not. The "higher power" is not something within man. For the Christian, it is God and external to us.

Hmm · Nov 27, 2020

Aussie Pete said:
The OP asked how James' writing related to the Christian experience. Basically, it does not. The "higher power" is not something within man. .

The "higher power" is a term that's also used in AA in order not to exclude non Christians. I imagine lots of Christians go to AA and find it helpful because they are able to see their faith reflected in the broader AA definition.

Aussie Pete · Nov 27, 2020

Hmmm! said:
The "higher power" is a term that's also used in AA in order not to exclude non Christians. I imagine lots of Christians go to AA and find it helpful because they are able to see their faith reflected in the broader AA definition.

Most Christians I know reject the notion that God is just a power. Thank God I did not need to go to AA as He set me free anyway. Nothing against AA. It's the best that people can do apart from God. And it does not resolve the inner need that drives people to drink in the first place. I suggest this video of Jeff Allen's testimony.

Hmm · Nov 27, 2020

You don't seem to want to understand the point James was making and you keep misrepresenting him so I'll leave it there.

TheGoodLight · Nov 27, 2020

I appreciate that James's analysis doesn't enter Nietzschean darkness (phew, am I glad to be done with Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Antichrist...). That guy would have taken the first premise to some rather stark conclusions.

aiki · Nov 27, 2020

fhansen said:
And the running is never quite over, because the old me and his desires don't just miraculously disappear altogether. And yet he helps me in one way because the struggle against sin and the flesh is a good one, where we can grow in righteousness/holiness as we face and meet the tests and challenges, etc.

I've found that the declaration of Scripture is true and that the more I remain before God in surrender and total dependence, the less running to Him and struggle with sin there is. And in such a circumstance my desires are altered by His indwelling Spirit and the struggle with sin subsides into an experience of what God says is true of me as His born-again child.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB)
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

Galatians 2:20 (NASB)
20 "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Romans 6:1-2 (NASB)
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

Romans 6:5-7 (NASB)
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

What an amazing thing it is to know that a life of cycling through sin, confession, sin, confession isn't the normal Christian life. What an even more amazing thing to experience the freedom from sin God says is mine in Christ! He doesn't just corral my desires, fencing them in, but alters them, giving me new Christ-centered desires instead, just as He promised. (Philippians 2:13)

Noxot · Nov 27, 2020

Hmmm! said:
In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James largely speaks as a psychologist and he looks at published accounts of people's feelings and behavior in response to religious experiences and at data he had gathered himself. In his conclusion, he identifies commonalities shared by these personal experiences and different religious traditions and says that salvation consists of two parts:

"1. An uneasiness; and

2. Its solution.

1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.

2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

In those more developed minds which alone we are studying, the wrongness takes a moral character, and the salvation takes a mystical tinge. I think we shall keep well within the limits of what is common to all such minds if we formulate the essence of their religious experience in terms like these:—

The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.

They allow for the divided self and the struggle; they involve the change of personal centre and the surrender of the lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority of the helping power and yet account for our sense of union with it; and they fully justify our feelings of security and joy."

I wonder what you think of this and how well or poorly this matches your own personal experience or Christian tradition (I hesitate to use the word "denomination"!)?

The book btw is available for free at Project Gutenberg.

There is certainly a psychological aspect of it because we are souls. It matches my experience of it and I experience a stronger form of it than what I would guess most people do. from what little I know of William James he was a psychologist that favoured religion though psychology in general comes with a threat of reducing religious experience to the mere psychological. there are some verses in the New Testament which somewhat support his hypothesis.

fhansen · Nov 27, 2020

aiki said:
I've found that the declaration of Scripture is true and that the more I remain before God in surrender and total dependence, the less running to Him and struggle with sin there is. And in such a circumstance my desires are altered by His indwelling Spirit and the struggle with sin subsides into an experience of what God says is true of me as His born-again child.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB)
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

Galatians 2:20 (NASB)
20 "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Romans 6:1-2 (NASB)
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

Romans 6:5-7 (NASB)
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

What an amazing thing it is to know that a life of cycling through sin, confession, sin, confession isn't the normal Christian life. What an even more amazing thing to experience the freedom from sin God says is mine in Christ! He doesn't just corral my desires, fencing them in, but alters them, giving me new Christ-centered desires instead, just as He promised. (Philippians 2:13)

Alright, that's good then. It sounds as if you've at least arrived at some point of perfection that we should all aspire to, as Scripture also affirms. And I think it's best attained to the extent that we can know and say that we fully love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.

Hmm · Nov 27, 2020

Noxot said:
from what little I know of William James he was a psychologist that favoured religion though psychology in general comes with a threat of reducing religious experience to the mere psychological.

I think the chief difficulty is how do you know if a sensation, impulse or perception has come from your subconscious mind or from God? Both sources are external to your conscious mind and I'm not sure how you can tell the difference.

Maria Billingsley · Nov 27, 2020

Hmmm! said:
In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James largely speaks as a psychologist and he looks at published accounts of people's feelings and behavior in response to religious experiences and at data he had gathered himself. In his conclusion, he identifies commonalities shared by these personal experiences and different religious traditions and says that salvation consists of two parts:

"1. An uneasiness; and

2. Its solution.

1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.

2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

In those more developed minds which alone we are studying, the wrongness takes a moral character, and the salvation takes a mystical tinge. I think we shall keep well within the limits of what is common to all such minds if we formulate the essence of their religious experience in terms like these:—

The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.

They allow for the divided self and the struggle; they involve the change of personal centre and the surrender of the lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority of the helping power and yet account for our sense of union with it; and they fully justify our feelings of security and joy."

I wonder what you think of this and how well or poorly this matches your own personal experience or Christian tradition (I hesitate to use the word "denomination"!)?

The book btw is available for free at Project Gutenberg.

I would have to say that the uneasiness appears after one is saved. The Holy Spirit guilds us in all truth resulting in the exposure to unrighteous. Those who are not of The Body of Christ feel at ease with unrighteousness because the Spirit is not in them. In other words, they know nothing of sin.
The solution is for all as a gift if one desires. Be blessed,

fhansen · Nov 27, 2020

The way I experienced conversion to the living God began with pain. The pain of living in a world where truth often has little real value, where people do awful things to each other, anywhere from gossip to lying about others (bearing false witness) in order to obtain some gain large or small to murder or to some gross atrocity of one kind or another. Just the everyday relationships between people and the misery or general lack of full out joy-and love- in humanity pointed to something being wrong, to an innocence lost, to things not being as they "should be" in this life. And not only in others but in myself as well. And that's when, while seeking for answers to cure this pain, I found God's Word to offer truths and answers that I could find no where else. And that began a journey that I'm still on today.

Hmm · Nov 27, 2020

Maria Billingsley said:
I would have to say that the uneasiness appears after one is saved. The Holy Spirit guilds us in all truth resulting in the exposure to unrighteous. Those who are not of The Body of Christ feel at ease with unrighteousness because the Spirit is not in them. In other words, they know nothing of sin.
The solution is for all as a gift if one desires. Be blessed,

I think the relevant part of the quote in the OP to what you're saying is this:

"when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck."

In Christian terms, this is when we identify ourselves with the new creation we have become once we have received the Holy Spirit and our former self no longer holds our identity. I think the unease James is speaking of is a sense that we're not the person we should be because we are lacking a relationship with God. This is a moral evaluation because, somehow, we know that we need God to be able to fulfill our true potential as loving persons. That was my experience anyway. Perhaps this awareness of this God-shaped hole in us comes from the Holy Spirt even though it's prior to consciously receiving the Spirit?

Noxot · Nov 27, 2020

Hmmm! said:
I think the chief difficulty is how do you know if a sensation, impulse or perception has come from your subconscious mind or from God? Both sources are external to your conscious mind and I'm not sure how you can tell the difference.

I guess that comes with experience of knowing good from evil. It's important that we do the practices that Jesus said like clean the inside of the cup. The more childlike we are the closer we are to our father. Dependence on God is a must, God is the chief way that we shall not perish. Only God can know God, we have to get out of his way. If we say we see we have to become blind to let God make us see. And the scriptures are a great help to us because God inspired them for our help.

It seems important to make the unconscious as conscious as you can. The better we can judge ourselves in the light of God... But Christ the judge would have to be in us in order to judge us. It's impossible that he will leave us orphans and widows. He said he would send another helper.

Maria Billingsley · Nov 27, 2020

Hmmm! said:
I think the relevant part of the quote in the OP to what you're saying is this:

"when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck."

In Christian terms, this is when we identify ourselves with the new creation we have become once we have received the Holy Spirit and our former self no longer holds our identity. I think the unease James is speaking of is a sense that we're not the person we should be because we are lacking a relationship with God. This is a moral evaluation because, somehow, we know that we need God to be able to fulfill our true potential as loving persons. That was my experience anyway. Perhaps this awareness of this God-shaped hole in us comes from the Holy Spirt even though it's prior to consciously receiving the Spirit?

We are made in His image so it would be reasonable to assume that His goodness is in all His creation in varying degrees.
Be blessed.

aiki · Nov 27, 2020

fhansen said:
Alright, that's good then. It sounds as if you've at least arrived at some point of perfection that we should all aspire to, as Scripture also affirms.

God works to perfect all of His children. But I have not yet attained perfection. Like the apostle Paul, I press on (Philippians 3:12-14), knowing that sin is to be the exception, not the rule, in my life (or the life of any child of God).

What I have experienced - and experience more fully as time passes - is that the things the Bible says are true about me as a born-again child of God really are true. They aren't just true in theory. I really am "dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ" and, as I, by faith, count this true, I find my life being conformed to it more and more. One clever fellow put it this way:

"Faith is believing a thing is so,
When it appears it is not so,
In order for it to be so,
Because it is so."

Romans 6:11-14 (NASB)
11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Noxot · Nov 27, 2020

Aussie Pete said:
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ." Colossians 2:8

Here's another quote. The Earth is full of God's glory.

chad kincham said:
It’s called the blind leading the the blind, and both fall into the ditch, per Jesus.

Jesus told us that we must become blind if we wish to be healed to be able to see. of course blind leading the blind is always what you are not and what other people opposed to you is. That is the typical Christian response, as if they are immune to blindness.

aiki said:
sin-bound, God-hating creature I am without Christ. Instead, I can find a new nature in him, liberated from the power of the World, the Flesh and the devil,

yeah and yet if someone can't even recognize goodness when it's right in front of them than it makes me question if they can tell God from the devil in the first place.

fhansen said:
Dealing with fallen me along with fallen others is a big part of what finally helps drive me to God, or to accept His calling.

our fallen nature sucks but anything good is worthy of God because it is given by God. But Christians often lack in their metaphysics. The all-important me Club claims they are something, that they are great and that nothing that appears to be opposed to them is anything worthy of God. they Obscure this by saying it is all God's doing and not theirs as if they have no subjectivity as if they are not a person capable of stumbling over the word.

God sends no angels to anyone but them. God does not judge the inner person of the heart, only the outward appearance. So goes the unconscious confessions of many.

Aussie Pete said:
No thanks. When God warns me about being taken captive by something, I'm inclined to take it seriously.

We should always follow God as much as possible. If God gives something to someone else and they appear to be a foreigner I'm not going to hate him for it or say he has no value or worth. instead i will rejoice when I see that God has gifted someone with something and that they in turn gift others. but you would have to have enough wisdom to understand that God never condemned all of philosophy or all of psychology.

Noxot · Nov 27, 2020

Hmmm! said:
Perhaps this awareness of this God-shaped hole in us comes from the Holy Spirt even though it's prior to consciously receiving the Spirit?

Jesus said the holy spirit will be with us and he will be in us. It seems to be an important distinction. but having a god-shaped hole is already proof that we love God. It's good that there's something to be filled.

Hmm · Nov 27, 2020

Noxot said:
Jesus said the holy spirit will be with us and he will be in us. It seems to be an important distinction. but having a god-shaped hole is already proof that we love God. It's good that there's something to be filled.

I think that's true. We are created as His children and in His image so it's not surprising that we have an innate need for Him, just as children so for their human parents/main carers, and that we want to love and be loved like He does.

Bruce Leiter · Nov 27, 2020

Hmmm! said:
In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James largely speaks as a psychologist and he looks at published accounts of people's feelings and behavior in response to religious experiences and at data he had gathered himself. In his conclusion, he identifies commonalities shared by these personal experiences and different religious traditions and says that salvation consists of two parts:

"1. An uneasiness; and

2. Its solution.

1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.

2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

In those more developed minds which alone we are studying, the wrongness takes a moral character, and the salvation takes a mystical tinge. I think we shall keep well within the limits of what is common to all such minds if we formulate the essence of their religious experience in terms like these:—

The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives, the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.

They allow for the divided self and the struggle; they involve the change of personal centre and the surrender of the lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority of the helping power and yet account for our sense of union with it; and they fully justify our feelings of security and joy."

I wonder what you think of this and how well or poorly this matches your own personal experience or Christian tradition (I hesitate to use the word "denomination"!)?

The book btw is available for free at Project Gutenberg.

The difference in approaching the pramatic philosophy of William James is whether you take his assumptions about religious experiences and impose them on the Bible and Christian experience or you take the Bible's teachings about the Christian life and then look at William James' writings through the Scriptures as your "contact lenses."

In other words, the Bible as God's Word describes the Christian life as being in direct connection with Jesus Christ (Paul's "in Christ," his favorite phrase). That assumption should be the lens through which we examine William James, whose writings may have some value to fit the Bible's descriptions.

However, his basic pragmatist view is at odds with the Bible's view that God is the source of all of our life, including our experiences.

On the other hand, Satan and our sinful natures are also factors in our experiences. We need God's gift of discernment to sort them all out. Prayer is the key to unlock God's gifts.

Hmm · Nov 27, 2020

Bruce Leiter said:
The difference in approaching the pramatic philosophy of William James is whether you take his assumptions about religious experiences and impose them on the Bible and Christian experience or you take the Bible's teachings about the Christian life and then look at William James' writings through the Scriptures as your "contact lenses."

In other words, the Bible as God's Word describes the Christian life as being in direct connection with Jesus Christ (Paul's "in Christ," his favorite phrase). That assumption should be the lens through which we examine William James, whose writings may have some value to fit the Bible's descriptions.

However, his basic pragmatist view is at odds with the Bible's view that God is the source of all of our life, including our experiences.

On the other hand, Satan and our sinful natures are also factors in our experiences. We need God's gift of discernment to sort them all out. Prayer is the key to unlock God's gifts.

I think that's a fair representation of the Varieties book but it has been seriously misrepresented in some of the posts above so I'd like to try to correct that if I can.

James believes religious faith is real though only insofar as it rests on personal experience. He defines religion broadly as the experiences we have where we see ourselves related to whatever we regard as divine. He's not a Christian (and doesn't claim to be) this definition makes clear: it doesn't require faith in Christ and nor does it mandate a church community.

James talks about “healthy-mindedness” (joy/positivity) and the “sick soul” (pessimism/negativity) as the two extremes of religious consciousness. In between these extremes are “the divided self” and the well-adjusted believer.

He lists three beliefs that personal experience finds in religions in general:
1. the world is part of and derives its significance from a greater spiritual reality
2. our purpose is fulfilled by achieving harmonious union with this reality
3. prayer helps us achieve communion with this reality and oriduxes real change in us.

And to end, says that religions usually give us two psychological qualities:
1. a joy for living
2. a sense of security, peace and love

Given that thought and feeling both determine conduct, he thinks that different religions are similar in feeling and conduct but more different in doctrine but that this is less essential. In general he says that religious doctrines attempt to identify a fundamental uneasiness about our natural state and try to provide a solution that saves us from this.

That's a summary of his observations and conclusions as a psychologist and a philosopher following a study he conducted. All the accusations above calling him anti-Christian etc are very silly.

Is this a good psychological analysis of salvation?

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