Bodily Belief, Emotional Exercise, and Spiritual Song
Over the Christmas holidays – a period that television networks predictably mark with reruns of classic films and serials – I had the pleasure of rewatching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Despite knowing the script virtually back-to-front, I noticed a pattern in the closing sequence that had previously escaped my attention. On the surface Indiana Jones must navigate a threefold series of deadly boobytraps in order to retrieve a mystical artefact. But below the surface the entire sequence is a reenactment of the fundamental aspects, and order, of traditional Christian liturgy: Firstly, Jones faces the “breath of God”, which “only a penitent man” may pass through unharmed. Secondly, Jones must follow in the “word of God”, which requires the application of his understanding to properly spell “Jehovah” and then put his feet on the correctly lettered steeping-stones. Thirdly, Jones must perform a literal “leap of faith”, where he offers himself to a seemingly empty chasm only to find a hitherto invisible bridge firmly beneath his feet. All this, of course, precedes Jones properly discerning and drinking from the restorative and life-giving Cup of Christ – the Holy Grail. To make the significance of this pattern explicit, there is (corporeal) confession, then the reception and application of God’s Word, then a form of offertory (a self-surrender to God’s mercy, as opposed to trusting in one’s own righteousness or reason), and finally participation in the Eucharistic Cup of Christ – Holy Communion.
It would be entirely possible to elaborate further on how even minute details in these scenes convey genuine and profound theological and liturgical Christian truth (surprising as that may be!). However, I want to draw attention to merely one such detail. The first obstacle Jones faces (“the breath of God”) is revealed to be a mechanised circular blade that periodically swings out of a side wall just below head-height.
Whilst “only a penitent man may pass”, it is of course readily apparent that merely thinking penitent thoughts isn’t going to help the intrepid archaeologist avoid decapitation. Only at the very last moment does Jones realise what characterises the penitent man approaching a Holy God. He kneels.
In the twelfth chapter of The Emotional Power of Music (2013), philosopher Jenefer Robinson summarises three theoretical models of how various emotional responses are elicited in human beings.[1] The first is the cognitive appraisal model, wherein a human subject evaluates an object or event, thereby triggering the inner emotional state congruent with that evaluation. This model is favoured by “most theorists of emotion” across a wide range of disciplines.[2] The second is the action tendency model, wherein an object or event demands a particular action from a human subject, thereby triggering the inner emotional state that will best prepare the body to perform said action. This model is principally associated with the psychologist Nico Frijda, who is building on James Gibson’s idea that objects afford certain interactions.[3] The third is a somatic induction model (the James-Lange theory), wherein emotional states are identical with their bodily expression in the human subject, such that the state of the body induces the emotion. Objects and events thus affect the emotions because they affect the body, not the other way around. The father of this model is the American pragmatist philosopher William James.[4]
Let us momentarily revisit Indiana Jones in order to illustrate each of these in turn. In the first model, The Last Crusade ends early: Jones recognises that God is holy, whilst he is unholy, and thus (appropriately) feels guilty, regretful, and penitent. So, all the while ruminating on his many sins, Jones walks bolt upright towards the sharp, spinning blade… In the second model, the film may or may not end early: Jones recognises that the situation demands some action of him and so, by putting himself into a penitential state, he prepares his body for the right kind of action. Of course, that action might be weeping just as much as it might be kneeling – who knows! The alternative, unhappy ending still threatens. In the third model, however, the film will be exactly as it is. Jones realises penitence – he makes penitence real – for to be penitent is to kneel. And, controversial as it may sound, vice versa.
Of course, the three models outlined above, and their application, are an oversimplification of what actually goes on (even for a fictional character). Furthermore, these models are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive.[5] Indeed, Robinson herself contends that each has its own part to play in an overarching process of emotion.[6] Nonetheless, there is a significant body of empirical evidence supporting the somatic induction model (as I have termed it) of William James. Many of these experiments are collated in Jim Laird’s Feelings: The Perception of Self (2007), but a 1988 study by Fritz Strack, Leonard L. Martin, and Sabine Stepper is sufficiently illustrative. For this investigation, subjects were asked to rate how funny a cartoon was whilst performing a task that either inhibited or facilitated the facial muscles involved in a smile. Whereas the inhibiting task did not induce the muscle contractions that constitute an emotional expression, the facilitating task allowed a smile to occur and required subjects to contract the muscles necessary to generate a smiling facial expression. The results of both studies suggest that the affective reaction toward an emotional stimulus was intensified when the facial expression was facilitated and softened (cf. Darwin, 1872) when this expression was inhibited by an irrelevant task.[7]
In other words, those who were made to activate their smiling muscles found the cartoon funnier than the control group, whilst those who were physically inhibited from smiling found it less funny than the control group.
Therefore, whilst admittedly a leap far beyond the data (although in the same direction), it seems likely that, for a human being in a wholly neutral state, smiling would induce genuine happiness and frowning would induce genuine sadness. Granted, such an a priori neutral state is purely hypothetical; human beings are creatures in perpetual motion, emotion, and commotion. Some of this movement is voluntary, some involuntary. Consequently, the somatic induction of happiness could be overridden by either a more powerful, contrary (psycho)somatic disposition or the will of the subject who intends to merely feign happiness.[8] Crucially, however, somatic induction of emotion is not ineffectual or insincere because (A) someone fails to activate both an (inner) emotion and its appropriate (outer) bodily expression, but rather because (B) someone or something actively intervenes to divide a natural whole into two artificial parts. It seems to me that the converse statement – namely, that insincere emotional expression is a result of (A) not (B) – is not just untrue but an untruth all too favourable towards Christianity’s perennial philosophical foe: gnostic mind-body dualism. Our default ought to be that an emotion and its expression are one and the same. Indeed, even the very notion stated in (A) of an emotion’s “appropriate bodily expression” presupposes this unity.
Let us reintroduce the penitent man (viz. a man who kneelingly-repents/repentantly-kneels) but, considering him merely a species, move outwards to his wider genus, the spiritual man. In Romans 12:1 St Paul writes:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. [emphasis added] (NRSV)
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. [emphasis added] (KJV)
The two different translations given above illustrate the fact that the Greek word, λογικήν (logikēn), unique to this passage in the New Testament, has a potentially wide semantic range and can be variously rendered as “spiritual”, “reasonable”, or some other English conceptual cognate. Whatever the precise case linguistically, however, it is plain from Paul’s exhortation that engaging our bodies in Christian worship is wholly logical, spiritual, and godly. By implication, to disengage them is the very opposite –– illogical, unspiritual, and ungodly. In the Christian framework, therefore, spirit and body are two interdependent, mutually-indwelling substances. To use another Greek term, they undergo and perform περιχώρησις (perichoresis). Mind is neither over nor under matter but the spirit totally envelops, and is enveloped by, flesh. Furthermore, it should be immediately obvious that this perspective is crucial to a fully-Christian understanding of how the Holy Spirit of the triune God indwells the individual Christian believer.
In Ephesians 5:18-20, Paul exhorts believers to be filled with the Holy Spirit, that person of the Holy Trinity who motivates all Christians to live worthy of their calling and to do good works –– not motivating from a distance, but rather from within the whole Christian person. In order to illustrate what willing cooperation with, and subjection to, the Spirit’s promptings looks like, Paul uses the analogy of drunkenness (Eph. 5:18). Just as being drunk is not the process of repeated drinking, nor even having a given quantity of alcohol in one’s system as such, but is to allow, and have allowed, one’s reason, desires, and reflexes to become totally subject to the chemical stimulants in the alcoholic beverage; so too being filled with the Spirit is not a repetition of reception, nor a “spiritual top-up”, but is to subject one’s thoughts, appetites, and actions to His direction. And the practical means by which this happens, says Paul, is “as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves” (Eph. 5:19, NRSV).
Consider this in detail for a moment: Each member of a congregation empties his or her lungs and (so long as s/he doesn’t try to wilfully intervene and resist!) they fill with air entirely by themselves; the breath enters of its own accord. Filled with this breath each member then breathes out, but each has now filled this breath with musical pitches; the breath that entered has become fruitful within (although this requires a voluntary cooperation with it). This musically-laden breath then fills the air and enters the bodies of the rest of the congregation, helping them to sing in unison or harmony with it; thus every individual’s fruitful breath causes kindred fruit to be produced in others. This aspect of congregational singing is not a mere symbol or metaphor for some “more real” cultivation of fruitfulness in the corporate life of faith, such as the imitation of godly character in another believer or the giving of pastoral advice or correction to a wayward Christian. Rather it is just as real and just as important as those things because – very much like how God uses the sacraments to communicate grace – in congregational singing God uses material, embodied activity to align a whole Christian person with the immaterial activity of His Spirit and integrate these persons into His Church.
Notably, such a view is entirely consonant with much of the theological writing on music from the early modern era – a time when dualism had not yet ascended to the height of its power. As one 17th-century Lutheran theologian, Johannes Saubert, writes:
It is the Spirit of God that tunes up so the song can be continued, that is, that it goes through the heart… Hence it is not us who sing or speak spiritually in this way, but it is the Spirit of our heavenly Father that lives in us.[9]
A profound mystery thus takes place when the chests of a church congregation swell for the opening line of a hymn and subsequently exhale its melody:
The Spirit breatheth where He will; and thou hearest His voice, but thou knowest not whence He cometh, and whither He goeth… (Jn 3:8, Douay-Rheims Version)
Furthermore, this view of congregational singing is also consonant with a significant body of modern scientific research into “interpersonal musical entrainment”, which shows that engaging in synchronised musical activity increases broader cooperation and trust between participants.[10] Clearly corporate song is the God-ordained way that we “may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [emphasis added]” (Rom. 15:6, KJV).
These words of St Paul return us once again to the necessary integration of spirit (“one mind”) and body (“one mouth”), which I have argued undergirds not only spiritual song but also human emotions. Therefore, it should be readily apparent that spiritual singing is also emotional exercise. Fullness of joy in God is not merely expressed by singing but actually is singing. Furthermore, singing (like kneeling) is one of the ways that we embody belief. Bernard of Clairvaux – explaining why the consummation of a human’s love of God can only be attained at the final resurrection – says,
souls are bound to bodies, if not by a vital connection of sense, still by natural affection; so that without their bodies they cannot attain to their perfect consummation, nor would they if they could. And although there is no defect in the soul itself before the restoration of its body, since it has already attained to the highest state of which it is by itself capable, yet the spirit would not yearn for reunion with the flesh if without the flesh it could be consummated.[11]
Without the body the whole person cannot wholly love God. As Article IV of the Thirty-Nine Articles clearly states, “flesh” and “bones” pertain to “the perfection of man’s nature” [emphasis added].[12]
In a world where it is generally accepted that “how I feel” dictates “how I behave”, what I have been arguing will seem incredibly alien. And yet my contention is this only goes to show just how dualistic our society has become – not to mention the Church in the west![13] Indeed, much of Protestantism in particular can be characterised as “neo-Gnostic angelism”, where heaven (not a new earth) is the ultimate goal, and the soul (not the whole resurrected human being) is the sole object of God’s salvation.[14]
Against such a bleak backdrop it becomes all the more pressing that Christians reengage their bodies in worship and not be fearful of somatically-inducing those emotions appropriate to each part of a church service – even, and especially, if they don’t feel them arising involuntarily. As C.S. Lewis put it, “[v]ery often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already”.[15]
So, if you are singing Duffield’s “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” or the Gettys’ “O Church Arise”, stand. Or if you are invited to “make your humble confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees”, kneel. How could one do otherwise when Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection proclaim loud and clear: Christianity is a bodily belief.
About the Author
Peter Elliott is a PhD candidate in Music at the University of Cambridge and a Research Associate in Christian Humanities at the Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Christian University. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and King’s College London and has articles published in Early Music, Metal Music Studies, and North American Anglican. He also has a critical edition of early 18th-century music, for an unusual instrument called the chittarone francese, published in 2021 with The Lute Society Music Editions.
Notes
[1] Jenefer Robinson, “Three theories of emotion – three routes for musical arousal”, in Tom Cochrane, Bernardino Fantini & Klaus R. Scherer (eds), The Emotional Power of Music: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Musical Arousal, Expression, and Social Control (Oxford: OUP, 2013), 155-168.
[2] Robinson, “Three theories of emotion”, 156.
[3] Ibid., 158.
[4] Ibid., 161-2.
[5] Ibid., 164-5.
[6] Ibid..
[7] Fritz Strack, Leonard L. Martin & Sabine Stepper, “Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of facial expression: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, (1988), 775.
[8] The way in which somatic induction of emotion is limited here is similar to the way in which voluntary induction of faith (“acceptance”) is limited in William Alston’s “Belief, Acceptance, and Religious Faith” (1996). See also Leonard Jonathan Cohen’s An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (1992); William James’ “The Will to Believe” (1896); John Henry Newman’s Grammar of Assent (1870); and Pascal’s Wager (1670).
[9] “der Geist Gottes ists / welcher anstimmt / damit das Gesang seinen fortgang habe / das ist / das es durch das Hertz gehe / Act. 2. Darumb wir sinds nicht / die wir also Geistlich singen oder reden / sondern der Geist unsers himlischen Vatters ists / der in uns wohnet.” Johannes Saubert, Seelenmusik, wie dieselbe am Sontag Cantate … gehört worden, (Nuremberg: Halbmayer, 1624), 10.
[10] Martin Clayton et al., “Interpersonal Entrainment in Music Performance: Theory, Method, and Model”, Music Perception, vol. 38 no. 2 (2020), 149.
[11] Bernard of Clairvaux, Chapter XI, On Loving God.
[12] Article IV, "Of the Resurrection of Christ", Articles of Religion (1562).
[13] See my poem “Excarnation’s Incantation” (2021).
[14] I am grateful to Dr Jon Thompson, based at The Faraday Insitute for Science and Religion, Cambridge, for introducing me to the term “neo-Gnostic angelism”, which comes from Reinhard Hütter, Bound for Beatitude: A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics (2019).
[15] C.S. Lewis, book IV, chapter 7, “Let’s Pretend”, Mere Christianity (1952).