Singing and the affections

The implicit question I left hanging at the end of last week’s Payneful Truth has been taken up and asked by a number of people in the few days since.

We can all agree that we don’t want theologically dodgy emotional manipulation in our singing. But what is the place of emotions in singing?

The best form of the question came in an email from Jack:

You say: “Singing for us is a form of speech—to one another and to God. It’s a more emotionally-charged form of speech, but it’s one facet of the word-based personal relationship we have with God and with one another.” Sure. But what then do we make of the ‘more emotionally-charged’ nature of singing? Clearly song is more than just speech (not wanting to detract from its intrinsic wordy-ness). I'd be keen to hear how you would give an account of the purpose of that emotional charge if ‘atmosphere’ is the wrong category.

What is that ‘extra’, then, that singing or music adds? What’s the ‘charge’ in its ‘emotional charge’?

The position that I’m arguing against sees singing as a way of creating an atmosphere or getting people into the right spiritual mood; of arousing certain feelings within them that open them up to experience God and his truth in a new way.

But do I have Jonathan Edwards against me?

In a famous paragraph (that I heard quoted again at the Reach Australia conference just last week), the great New England Puritan said this:

And the duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections. (Religious Affections, I.II.9)

Is Edwards arguing in favour of what I’m opposing? Is he saying that God has given us singing to get us in the mood, as it were; to excite our affections and warm us up to a certain kind of Christian feeling that we don’t get just from the Word?

Well, no—not if I understand him correctly (which is no easy thing). In fact, I think Edwards’s argument may help us to answer our question about the emotional nature of singing.

A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections was written in the context of the New England awakening, and the many dramatic and visible manifestations of emotion (or, as he would say, ‘affections’) that were evident at that time. Edwards wished to argue:

* that these religious affections could be quite appropriate and genuine—and that, indeed, true religion very much consisted in the affections;

* on the other hand, that the existence of ‘religious affections’, even high and intense ones, was no indication at all of true Christianity;

* and that true religious affections had various distinguishing characteristics by which they could be recognized.

The well-known quote (above) comes from the introductory section in which Edwards notes that a Christianity without the affections is hard to imagine or support. Why, he asks, did God give us singing if our affections have nothing to do it?

However, it’s not only singing. Edwards also lists prayer, the sacraments, and preaching as God-given spiritual activities that involve the whole person; that affect our hearts and move us to grasp hold of God in love and faith. If Christianity was purely a matter of intellectual understanding, and not of the affections (Edwards argues) why not just give everyone a commentary to read on Sundays, rather than preaching a sermon to them? The sermon does more than just convey information:

God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion to their remembrance, and setting them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already. (I.II.9)

So it’s by no means just singing or music that God has given for this purpose, says Edwards. Much of what we do involves ‘the whole person’ (as we would say). It engages not just the intellect but the ‘affections’.

It is at this point that we have to understand what Edwards means by the ‘affections’. He doesn’t mean just ‘feelings’ or ‘emotions’ (as we would use those words). He defines the affections as ‘the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul’ (I.I.2).

This needs some unpacking. An ‘affection’, Edwards says, occurs when my soul is inclined towards or attracted to something in a way that I feel (or am ‘sensible’ of). When I love or delight in or am ‘affectionate’ towards something, I’m not just agreeing intellectually that it is good or beautiful or right or morally excellent. My whole self or soul is attracted to it, leans towards it, and wants to choose and embrace it (or on the other hand shy away from it in hatred, revolt or disdain). When we say we ‘love BBQ pork ribs’, it’s more than an intellectual assessment of their taste or nutritional benefits. Our delight in them is a felt inclination towards their delectability that makes us immediately order them when we see them on the menu (as my wife always does).

It’s on this basis that Edwards then proceeds to list all the things that are no sign whatsoever that a ‘religious affection’ is genuine or not. It doesn’t matter, he says, whether ‘affections’ are very great or high, or whether they have great effects on the body, or whether they cause people to be excited or enthusiastic to talk about God. It doesn’t matter whether they come upon us in an extraordinary way, or whether they make us feel comforted or joyful, or even whether they motivate us to greater involvement at church. We might add—it also doesn’t matter whether people have their eyes closed or not, or whether they sway or not, or whether they have their hands raised or not (warming them before the invisible heater).

All of these may accompany a genuine inclination of the will of the soul towards the great things of God—or they may not. People may experience these sensations or affections or inclinations for all kinds of reasons, good and bad, genuine and counterfeit. They are ‘no sign’, says Edwards, that a particular affection is a true spiritual affection, or not.

The genuineness of a religious affection, Edwards argues, lies in its object—in the thing that our soul inclines towards or loves. Genuine religious affections arise when God illumines our understanding to grasp how good and great and gracious and holy he is, and when he warms and moves our will to incline towards or delight in what we have understood.

In other words, for Edwards, the expressing and exciting of the affections (by singing or preaching or prayer or the sacraments) can never be separated from the Word or the understanding. In fact, it’s only as God’s Spirit supernaturally moves us to grasp the truth about God through his Word that true Christian affections can arise.

What does all of this mean for our singing in church, and for understanding the ‘emotional charge’ of singing?

I think it means at least five things:

* The felt movement of our will towards God—the love or devotion or gratitude or joy we have in him—is an indispensable aspect of Christian experience. These ‘affections’ are expressed in and incited by preaching and prayer and s