The Deeper Source of Religion: Passional Reason in William James’s Writings
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Introduction: Encountering Truth
Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?”[1] This is no simple question. Given the gravity of the moment in which it was asked, and to whom it was directed, Pilate’s question strikes at the very heart of humanity’s encounter with God. Some answer that truth is an outcome, the product of a logical process of considering a given situation’s evidence. Some say that truth is an encounter, whereby a person’s passional nature is the means by which circumstances are experienced and volitional conclusions are drawn. Is it possible that between the two—between reason and passion—truth is to be found as a result of utilizing both one’s passions and reason? The following research considers this possibility through an expository examination of the works of American philosopher William James (1842-1910), specifically considering aspects of his The Will to Believe, and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.[2] Three questions provide the framework for this investigation: 1) What is passional reason?; 2) What are examples of passional reason in the writings of William James?; and 3) What is the significance of James’s passional reason for religious epistemology? Research findings will suggest that James’s emphasis on the role of the passional nature provides a view of religious beliefs as both reasonably and passionally derived.
What is Passional Reason?
To lay the groundwork for the discussion of James’s thought regarding the role of the passional aspects of human nature in forming religious beliefs it is helpful to begin with a definition of passional reason. Drawing upon the work of Wainwright, passional reason may be defined as the culmination of human reason’s investigation of proofs, history, and other logically arguable facts regarding religious truth claims, and the affective component of the human heart regarding such rational concerns that accepts them and recognizes their role in developing religious belief.[3] Wainwright explains,
This view was once a Christian commonplace; reason is capable of knowing God on the basis of evidence—but only when one’s cognitive faculties are rightly disposed. It should be distinguished from two other views that have dominated modern thought. The first claims that God can be known by ‘objective reason,’ that is, by an understanding that systematically excludes passion, desire, and emotion from the process of reasoning. The other insists that God can be known only ‘subjectively,’ or by the heart. . . . [Passional reason] steers between these two extremes. It places a high value on proofs, arguments, and inferences yet also believes a properly disposed heart is needed to see their force.[4]
In this explanation, Wainwright brings together both objective and subjective components to form a center ground for faith formation, the ground of passional reason.
This concept of passional reason draws upon various aspects of the Christian tradition, including Calvin (with his Augustinian influence) and Aquinas. Calvin emphasizes the necessity of the Holy Spirit in confirming the authority of Scripture, and Aquinas teaches that even though “there is good evidence for the divine origin of Christian teaching . . . [it is not] sufficient to compel assent without the inward movement of a will grounded in a ‘supernatural principle.’”[5] Thus both Calvin and Aquinas, while making their arguments for Christianity utilizing proofs and evidences of various types, clearly highlight the role of affective, non-discursively derived conclusions relative to the formation of religious belief. This is passional reason, where reason (i.e., the mind) and the passions (i.e., the heart) synergize to cultivate religious beliefs.
What are Examples of Passional Reason in the Writings of William James?
Moving on from this definition of passional reason, the investigation turns to the thought of William James, seeking to find how passional reason contributes to his understanding of the formation of religious beliefs. As a preface to the following quotes and the ensuing discussion, it is worth noting that interpretations of James vary from, on the one hand, those who think James does not accept religious beliefs as anything more than individual predilections that serve some ultimately personal need and have no connection, necessarily or actually, to any metaphysical reality; and, on the other hand, those who argue that James did, while recognizing the individual usefulness of religious beliefs, also affirm that such beliefs were metaphysically real and not only could but should be believed.[6] Whichever view one takes of James’s ultimate intention does not necessarily detract from the discussion below, insofar as the issue under consideration is how James understood the role of passional reason in cultivating religious beliefs, not the ultimate veracity of such beliefs.
Four quotes from James are now considered. The first two are from The Will to Believe, an address to the Philosophical Clubs at Yale and Brown Universities in 1896. The last two are from The Varieties of Religious Belief: A Study in Human Nature, a work borne of James’s delivery of the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh beginning in 1900. The presentation of these four quotes is an attempt to demonstrate what may be described as a “Jamesian Justification for Passional Reason,” which, though far from exhaustive regarding his thought on the topic, do, as the comments given after each quote will attempt to show, reveal the centrality of passional reason in James’s work.
Quote One: “Our passional nature must, and lawfully may, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds.”[7] Notice in this quote that James attributes to the passional nature the role of final decider in certain matters of belief, such that the evidence as reasonably considered may bring someone to the precipice of belief, but only the passional nature can and may let them take the step into belief. In taking this approach to passion and reason, James, according to Fuller’s estimation, “deftly pull[s] the philosophical rug out from under those committed to a modernist faith in the ability of the scientific method to usher humanity into the domain of universal truths and intellectual certainties. . . . His understanding of religious belief steer[s] a defensible middle course between naive credulity and agnostic skepticism.”[8] The conclusion that may be drawn from this first quote by James is that not only the intellect, but the whole person, is required in order to make choices regarding what to believe.
Quote Two: “I have said, and now repeat it, that not only as a matter of fact do we find our passional nature influencing us in our opinions, but that there are some options between opinions in which this influence must be regarded both as an inevitable and as a lawful determinant of our choice.”[9] While similar to the fist quote by James, the key distinction in this second quote is James’s conclusion that is it not only permissible to allow passional reason to guide in forming one’s beliefs, but that the use of passional reason may be “inevitable;” more than a choice, passional reason is a requirement in certain instances. Wainwright remarks that, for James, “all conceptualizations, including scientific ones, are simply abstractions from the richness of concrete experience. The ‘personal point of view’ is thus essential.”[10] James, as this second quote demonstrates, recognizes passional reason as a universally constitutive element in belief; it is much more than a subjective option for a few.
Quote Three: “I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue.”[11] In this quote, James identifies the passional nature (i.e., “feeling”) as primary, whereas more rational considerations are secondary. His use of an analogy from language reveals that James views the passional as the vital language for religious experience, and the rational as its expression in the language of the intellect. As Croce explains, in this way James “distinguishes religion lived at first hand, which would include direct personal encounter with spiritual forces, from religion at second hand, based on traditions derived from those first hand experiences.”[12] Thus in this third quote from James there is a sense in which he views passional reason as paradigmatic for properly evaluating all religious conclusions; passional reason becomes a lens through which religious truth formulations are derived and evaluated.
Quote Four: “In all sad sincerity I think we must conclude that the attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutely hopeless.”[13] The context in which James makes this statement is his discussion of the various proofs for God’s existence presented by Aquinas and others; it is important to note, therefore, that he is not dismissing the value of proofs, per se, but acknowledging that they are not, in themselves, sufficient to the task. Just as a person made in the image of God is both reasonable and passional, so arguments for the existence of God must be more than reasonable; the passional element is indispensable. Is it possible, as Wainwright surmises, that James’s point of critique is not that proofs for the existence of God do not establish certainty, but that the passional element should be considered, along with the intellectual element, as part of a broader definition of proofs?[14] This fourth quote by James certainly leaves open the possibility that this is so; passion and intellect combine in James to make the case that passional reason is the best arbiter for religious belief.
As this brief expository analysis demonstrates, James certainly gives a fundamental, if not primary, role to the passional elements of human nature in the formation of religious belief. However, whether or not James’s conclusions about passional reason are epistemically helpful is another matter. Although far short of a full critique of James’s religious epistemology, the next section considers one positive and one negative aspect of his thought.
What is the Significance of James’s Passional Reason for Religious Epistemology?
Briefly considered, there are two aspects of James’s passional reason of significance to religious epistemology; one is positive, and one is negative. Positively, James attempts to engage the total person in the matter of faith formation, rather than focusing exclusively on the rational and evidentiary aspects, or on the subjective and experiential aspects. In biblical parlance, there is a sense in which James encourages the formation of religious belief utilizing one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength; with the whole being.[15] In an era of radical materialism and scientism, which bring with them a diminution of any philosophical metaphysic, James’s perspective can provide a helpful corrective and balance.
However, given James’s radical empiricism and its attendant emphasis of the nature of belief as dependent on currently observable facts (be they experiential or otherwise), and his commitment to human experience as the final test of truth, James implicitly opposes the primacy of theological dogma and its necessary authority in matters of faith and practice.[16] While James may allow a place for dogma in forming religious beliefs, there is no absolute sense in which dogma provides the objective standard by which all religious matters are to be evaluated. Yes, passional reason impacts faith formation, but unless there is a final standard of truth as divinely revealed through Scripture and Tradition, then the creature, rather than the Creator, becomes the determiner of reality.
Conclusion
William James’s articulation of the role of passional reason in forming religious belief provides a seminal contribution to discussions of faith, in general, and religious epistemology, in particular. The preceding research considered this contribution of James by initially defining passional reason, then identifying and expounding examples of passional reason in James’s writings, and finally by critically evaluating the positive and negative aspects of James’s approach. Research suggests that, with correctives regarding the role of dogma in faith formation, James’s conclusions about the interplay of the rational and passional offer helpful insights for the interdependent areas of philosophy and religion.
Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica. New York: Benziger, 1947.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957.
Corbett, Robert. “The Will to Believe: An Outline.” St. Louis: Webster University, 1980.
Accessed 1 December 2016. http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/philosophy/misc/james.html.
Croce, Paul. “Spilt Mysticism: William James’s Democratization of Religion.” William James
Studies 9, (July 2012): 3-26.
Elwell, Walter A., Ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001.
Fuller, Robert C. "'The Will to Believe': A Centennial Reflection." Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 64, no. 3 (September 1996): 633-650.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. South
Australia: eBooks@Adelaide, 2009. Accessed 25 November 2016. https://csrs.nd.edu/assets/59930/williams_1902.pdf.
------. The Will to Believe. Accessed 2 December 2016.
http://norm.unet.brandeis.edu/~teuber/James_The_Will_to_Believe.pdf.
Smith, John E. Purpose and Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism. New Haven: Yale University
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Wainwright, William J. Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional
Reason. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.
[1] John 18:38. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982).
[2] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (South Australia: eBooks@Adelaide, 2009); and The Will to Believe, http://norm.unet.brandeis.edu/~teuber/James_The_Will_to_Believe.pdf.
[3] William J. Wainwright, Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 3-4.
[4] Ibid., 3. Italics in original.
[5] Ibid., 4. Wainwright’s reference to Calvin is from John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), vol. I, book I, chap. 7, sec. 4; the reference to Aquinas is from Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger, 1947), vol. 2, part II-II, quest. 6, art. I.
[6] An example of the former evaluation of James is John E. Smith, Purpose and Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). An example of the latter evaluation of James is Wainwright, Reason and the Heart, 84-107.
[7] James, The Will to Believe, sect. IV.
[8] Robert C. Fuller, “’The Will to Believe’: A Centennial Reflection,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 3 (September 1996): 634.
[9] James, The Will to Believe, sect. VIII.
[10] Wainwright, Reason and the Heart, 93.
[11] James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 327.
[12] Paul Croce, “Spilt Mysticism: William James’s Democratization of Religion,” William James Studies 9, (July 2012), 4.
[13] James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 344.
[14] See Wainwright, Reason and the Heart, 1-6.
[15] See Luke 10:27.
[16] R. J. VanderMolen, “Pragmatism,” in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed., Walter A. Elwell, ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 945-946.
T. J. Gentry is the Executive Editor of MoralApologetics.com, the Senior Minister at First Christian Church of West Frankfort, IL, and the Co-founder of Good Reasons Apologetics. T. J. has been in Christian ministry since 1984, having served as an itinerant evangelist, youth minister, church planter, pastoral counselor, and Army chaplain. He is the author of numerous books and peer-reviewed articles, including Pulpit Apologist: The Vital Link between Preaching and Apologetics (Wipf and Stock, 2020), You Shall Be My Witnesses: Reflections on Sharing the Gospel (Illative House, 2018), and two forthcoming works published by Moral Apologetics Press: Leaving Calvinism, Finding Grace, and A Moral Way: Aquinas and the Good God. T. J. is a Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor, holding board-certification as a Pastoral Counselor and a Chaplain. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University (BA in Political Science), Luther Rice College and Seminary (MA in Apologetics), Holy Apostles College and Seminary (MA in Philosophy), Liberty University (MAR in Church Ministries, MDiv in Chaplaincy, ThM in Theology), Carolina University (DMin in Pastoral Counseling, PhD in Leadership, PhD in Biblical Studies), and the United States Army Chaplain School (Basic and Advanced Courses). He is currently completing his PhD in Theology at North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa (2021), his PhD in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University (2022), and his PhD in Philosophy of Religion at Southern Evangelical Seminary (2024). T. J. married Amy in 1995, and they are blessed with three daughters and two sons. T. J.’s writing and other projects may be viewed at TJGentry.com.
