A Walk with William James, Part 6: Ontological Emotion, Mysticism, and God as a Mere Boulder of Impression

To start, a confession. Although I love theology and all of the cerebral exercise associated with it, when it comes to faith I'm an irrationalist. A mystic.

This is not to say that I don't have good reasons for my faith. I feel I can articulate a variety of supports for my faith. But when push comes to shove and alternative formulations for my data are offered, I fall back on my subjective experience. James called this "ontological emotion." I like that phrase. Ontological emotion: The feeling that something exists. At root, I admit, that is all I have. I have this feeling that God exists. I can't explain it and can defend it only to a point.

William James is famous (and infamous) for taking mystical religious experiences seriously, as both a psychologist and as a philosopher. In this, he is, once again, remarkably unique in intellectual history. Further, this is one other place where we find convergence between James and the emerging church.

James, in his own life, experienced ontological emotions. In describing one significant event in 1898 he said that, concerning this experience, that he was unable to "find a single word for all that significance, and don't know what it was significant of, so there it remains, a mere boulder of impression."

A mere boulder of impression. Ontological emotion. God?

Peter Rollins in How (Not) to Speak of God, an articulation of the emerging church, again follows closely on James' heels. Specifically, Rollins contends that theology occurs in the aftermath of God: "While our religious traditions may not define God, they can be seen to arise in the aftermath of God, both as a means of provisionally understanding what has occurred in the life of the person or community that has been impacted, and as a response to God."

That is, theology does not describe God, it does not correspond with the divine. Theology (and the bible) is the chatter that follows after God has "left the building." In God's wake the witnesses begin to share stories and their excitement OF WHAT JUST HAPPENED. It's like God is this legendary rock star who pops into a Starbucks. The patrons fall silent.

Is that who I think it is?
No, well, maybe it is.
I think that is him.
It is him!
(Rock star departs and chatter breaks out.)
THAT WAS HIM!
What was he wearing? What did he say? What did he order? Was he nice? Standoffish? And on and on.

(BTW, this analogy came to me after having received an excited phone call from one of my friends who spotted and spoke to The Edge--of U2 fame--at a Starbucks in Malibu.)

The point is, this is the theological situation: Conversation in the aftermath of God. And this is, incidentally, how I read the bible.

Now compare Rollins' comment with these from James:

"What keeps religion going is something else than abstract definitions and systems of logically concatenated adjectives, and something different from faculties of theology and their professors. All these [abstract] things are after-effects, secondary accretions upon a mass of concrete religious experiences."

More: "These direct experiences of a wider spiritual life...form the primary mass of religious experience on which all hearsay religion rests, and which furnishes that notion of an ever-present God, out of which systematic theology thereupon proceeds to make capital in its own unreal pedantic way."

Lastly: "The mother sea and fountian-head of all religion lies in the mystical experiences of the individual, taking the word mystical in a very wide sense. All theologies, and all ecclesiasticisms are secondary growths superimposed."

What are these religious experiences? James states that some of them are "conversations with the unseen, voices and visions, responses to prayer, changes of heart, deliverances from fear, inflowings of help, assurances of support."

But if these experiences seem wishy-washy, too ethereal to be used as a strong foundation for a secure religious faith, James says you'd be wrong. Religious experience is the firmest bedrock we can stand upon: "Religion in this way is absolutely indestructible."

Theology is the rickety structure. Experience is the concrete and mortar.