Attributes of God in Christianity

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Attributes of God in Christianity
Aseity Eternity Graciousness Holiness Immanence Immutability Impassibility Impeccability Incorporeality Love Mission Omnibenevolence Omnipotence Omnipresence Omniscience Oneness Providence Righteousness Simplicity Transcendence Trinity Veracity Wrath

The attributes of God are specific characteristics of God discussed in Christian theology. Christians are not monolithic in their understanding of God's attributes.

Classification

Many Reformed theologians distinguish between the communicable attributes (those that human beings can also have) and the incommunicable attributes (those that belong to God alone). Donald Macleod, however, argues that "All the suggested classifications are artificial and misleading, not least that which has been most favoured by Reformed theologians – the division into communicable and incommunicable attributes."

Many of these attributes only say what God is not – for example, saying he is immutable is saying that he does not change.

The attributes of God may be classified under two main categories:

1. His infinite powers.
2. His personality attributes, like holiness and love.

Millard Erickson calls these categories God's greatness and goodness respectively.

Sinclair Ferguson distinguishes "essential" divine attributes, which "have been expressed and experienced in its most intense and dynamic form among the three persons of the Trinity—when nothing else existed." In this way, the wrath of God is not an essential attribute because it had "no place in the inner communion among the three persons of the eternal Trinity." Ferguson notes that it is, however, a manifestation of God's eternal righteousness, which is an essential attribute.

Disputes

Various objections have been to certain attributes or combinations of attributes. The omnipotence paradox explores questions like, "Could God create a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it?" The problem of evil and the argument from poor design have been proposed to suggest that God cannot be omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient. Nevertheless, these criticisms have been robustly countered from the Scriptures by apologists from beginning from the early Church and throughout Church history. Some Christians overcome these objections by the notion of free will, in which God chooses not to control all that happens despite being able to because He considers freedom more important than an absence of suffering; by the notion that human experience is so limited that we are unable to fully perceive what a loving and fully powerful God "should" do at any one moment, and by the sheer fact that God, as transcendent creator of all logic and causality, is not bound by these restrictions Himself.

Another school of thought is that man is bound by his nature and his nature is always against God. In this understanding the sovereignty of God demands that a sinful humanity cannot do good apart from God, for to be reconciled to God would be an act of goodness outside of mans natural capabilities. In the act of faithfully believing the life, death and resurrection "for mans sin" by the shed blood of Jesus, the Son of God, till this is done goodness by God's standard is impossible. Generally instead of Free will a holder of this view will take on a more presuppositionalist approach while at the same time apply simple logic is to any attempt at question God's attributes/power/sovereignty. The presuppositionalist will proclaim the Gospel in the hopes God will grant the hearer a saving faith in Jesus despite this information and call to faith going completely against their natural inclinations. "Many are called, few are chosen" Matt 22:14, "all who where appointed to eternal life believed" Acts 13:48.

The Bible describes that every human inherently knows they need saving from their sin, from God's just judgment against them, but refuse because of their sin committed and sinful nature. God calls all to believe but will only save the elect by conforming their heart to faith in Jesus, though it goes against their anti-God nature. All who deny Jesus are given over to what they want, the elect "chosen" on the other hand are given a new heart to believe.

Enumeration

The Westminster Shorter Catechism's definition of God is an enumeration of his attributes: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." This answer has been criticised, however, as having "nothing specifically Christian about it." The Westminster Larger Catechism adds certain attributes to this description, such as "all-sufficient," "incomprehensible," "every where present" and "knowing all things".

Aseity

The aseity of God means "God is so independent that he does not need us." It is based on Acts 17:25, where it says that God "is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything" (NIV). This is often related to God's self-existence and his self-sufficiency.

Eternity

The eternity of God concerns his existence beyond time. Drawing on verses such as Psalm 90:2, Wayne Grudem states that, "God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time." The expression "Alpha and Omega" also used as title of God in Book of Revelation. God's eternity may be seen as an aspect of his infinity, discussed below.

Goodness

The goodness of God means that "God is the final standard of good, and all that God is and does is worthy of approval." Romans 11:22 in the King James Version says "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God". Many theologians consider the goodness of God as an overarching attribute - Louis Berkhof, for example, sees it as including kindness, love, grace, mercy and longsuffering. The idea that God is "all good" is called his omnibenevolence.

Critics of Christian conceptions of God as all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful cite the presence of evil in the world as evidence that it is impossible for all three attributes to be true; this contradiction is known as the problem of evil. The Evil God Challenge is a thought experiment that explores whether the hypothesis that God might be evil has symmetrical consequences to a good God, and whether it is more likely that God is good, evil, or non-existent.

Graciousness

The graciousness of God is a key tenet of Christianity. In Exodus 34:5-6, it is part of the Name of God, "Yahweh, Yahweh, the compassionate and gracious God". The descriptive of God in this text is, in Jewish tradition, called the "Thirteen Attributes of Mercy".

The word "gracious" is not used often in the New Testament to describe God, although the noun "grace" is used more than 100 times. 1 Peter 2:2-3 in the King James Version says "the Lord is gracious", but the New International Version has "the Lord is good".

Holiness

The holiness of God is that he is separate from sin and incorruptible. Noting the refrain of "Holy, holy, holy" in Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8, R. C. Sproul points out that "only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree... The Bible never says that God is love, love, love."

Immanence

The immanence of God refers to him being in the world. It is thus contrasted with his transcendence, but Christian theologians usually emphasise that the two attributes are not contradictory. To hold to transcendence but not immanence is deism, while to hold to immanence but not transcendence is pantheism. According to Wayne Grudem, "the God of the Bible is no abstract deity removed from, and uninterested in his creation". Grudem goes on to say that the whole Bible "is the story of God's involvement with his creation", but highlights verses such as Acts 17:28, "in him we live and move and have our being".

Immutability

Immutability means God cannot change. James 1:17 refers to the "Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" (NIV). Herman Bavinck notes that although the Bible talks about God changing a course of action, or becoming angry, these are the result of changes in the heart of God’s people (Numbers 14.) "Scripture testifies that in all these various relations and experiences, God remains ever the same." Millard Erickson calls this attribute God's constancy.

The immutability of God is being increasingly criticized by advocates of open theism, which argues that God is open to influence through the prayers, decisions, and actions of people. Prominent adherents of open theism include Clark Pinnock, John E. Sanders and Gregory Boyd.

Impassibility

The doctrine of the impassibility of God is a controversial one. It is usually defined as the inability of God to suffer, while recognising that Jesus, who is believed to be God, suffered in his human nature. The Westminster Confession of Faith says that God is "without body, parts, or passions". Although most Christians historically (Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin being examples) take this to mean that God is "without emotions whether of sorrow, pain or grief", some people interpret this as meaning that God is free from all attitudes "which reflect instability or lack of control." Robert Reymond says that "it should be understood to mean that God has no bodily passions such as hunger or the human drive for sexual fulfillment."

D. A. Carson argues that "although Aristotle may exercise more than a little scarcely recognized influence upon those who uphold impassibility, at its best impassibility is trying to avoid a picture of God who is changeable, given over to mood swings, dependent on his creatures." In this way, impassibility is connected to the immutability of God, which says that God does not change, and to the aseity of God, which says that God does not need anything. Carson affirms that God is able to suffer, but argues that if he does so "it is because he chooses to suffer".

DA Carson, however, does not represent the historic use of the doctrine which affirms that God does not have emotions given that he is immutable and is incapable of change.

Impeccability

The impeccability of God is closely related to his holiness. It means that God is unable to sin, which is a stronger statement than merely saying that God does not sin. Hebrews 6:18 says that "it is impossible for God to lie". Robert Morey argues that God does not have the "absolute freedom" found in Greek philosophy. Whereas "the Greeks assumed the gods were 'free' to become demons if they so chose," the God of the Bible "is 'free' to act only in conformity to His nature."

Incomprehensibility

The incomprehensibility of God means that he is not able to be fully known. Isaiah 40:28 says "his understanding no one can fathom". Louis Berkhof states that "the consensus of opinion" through most of church history has been that God is the "Incomprehensible One". Berkhof, however, argues that, "in so far as God reveals Himself in His attributes, we also have some knowledge of His Divine Being, though even so our knowledge is subject to human limitations."

Incorporeality

The incorporeality or spirituality of God refers to him being a Spirit. This is derived from Jesus' statement in John 4:24, "God is Spirit." Robert Reymond suggests that it is the fact of his spiritual essence that underlies the second commandment, which prohibits every attempt to fashion an image of him."

Infinity

The infinity of God includes both his eternity and his immensity. Isaiah 40:28 says that "Yahweh is the everlasting God," while Solomon acknowledges in 1 Kings 8:27 that "the heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you". Infinity permeates all other attributes of God: his goodness, love, power, etc. are all considered to be infinite.

The relationship between the infinity of God and mathematical infinity has often been discussed. Georg Cantor's work on infinity in mathematics was accused of undermining God's infinity, but Cantor argued that God's infinity is the Absolute Infinite, which transcends other forms of infinity.

Jealousy

Exodus 20:5-6, of the Decalogue says, "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments" (NIV). J. I. Packer sees God's jealousy as "zeal to protect a love relationship or to avenge it when broken," thus making it "an aspect of his covenant love for his own people."

Love

1 John 4:8;16 says "God is Love." D. A. Carson speaks of the "difficult doctrine of the love of God," since "when informed Christians talk about the love of God they mean something very different from what is meant in the surrounding culture." Carson distinguishes between the love the Father has for the Son, God's general love for his creation, God's "salvific stance towards his fallen world," his "particular, effectual, selecting love toward his elect," and love that is conditioned on obedience.

The love of God is particularly emphasised by adherents of the social Trinitarian school of theology. Kevin Bidwell argues that this school, which includes Jürgen Moltmann and Miroslav Volf, "deliberately advocates self-giving love and freedom at the expense of Lordship and a whole array of other divine attributes."

Mission

While the mission of God is not traditionally included in this list, David Bosch has argued that "mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God." Christopher J. H. Wright argues for a biblical basis for Mission that goes beyond the Great Commission, and suggests that "missionary texts" may sparkle like gems, but that "simply laying out such gems on a string is not yet what one could call a missiological hermeneutic of the whole Bible itself."

Mystery

Many theologians see mystery as God’s primary attribute because he only reveals certain knowledge to the human race. Karl Barth said “God is ultimate mystery.” Karl Rahner views “God” as “mystery” and theology as “the ‘science’ of mystery.” Nikolai Berdyaev deems “inexplicable Mystery” as God’s “most profound definition.” Ian Ramsey defines God as “permanent mystery,”

Omnipotence

The omnipotence of God refers to Him being "all powerful". This is often conveyed with the phrase "Almighty", as in the Old Testament title "God Almighty" (the conventional translation of the Hebrew title El Shaddai) and the title "God the Father Almighty" in the Apostles' Creed.

Jesus says in Matthew 19:26, "with God all things are possible". C. S. Lewis clarifies this concept: "His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to his power."

Omnipresence

The omnipresence of God refers to him being present everywhere. Berkhof distinguishes between God's immensity and his omnipresence, saying that the former "points to the fact that God transcends all space and is not subject to its limitations," emphasising his transcendence, while the latter denotes that God "fills every part of space with His entire Being," emphasising his immanence. In Psalm 139, David says, "If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there" (Psalm 139:8, NIV).

Omniscience

The omniscience of God refers to him being "all knowing". Berkhof regards the wisdom of God as a "particular aspect of his knowledge." Romans 16:27 speaks about the "only wise God".

An argument from free will proposes that omniscience and free will are incompatible, and that as a result either God does not exist or any concept of God that contains both of these elements is incorrect. An omniscient God has knowledge of the future, and thus what choices He will make. Because God's knowledge of the future is perfect, He cannot make a different choice, and therefore has no free will. Alternatively, a God with free will can make different choices based on knowledge of the future, and therefore God's knowledge of the future is imperfect or limited.

Oneness

The oneness, or unity of God refers to his being one and only. This means that Christianity is monotheistic, although the doctrine of the Trinity says that God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Athanasian Creed says "we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity."

The most notable biblical affirmation of the unity of God is found in Deuteronomy 6:4. The statement, known as the Shema Yisrael, after its first two words in Hebrew, says "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one." In the New Testament, Jesus upholds the oneness of God by quoting these words in Mark 12:29. The Apostle Paul also affirms the oneness of God in verses like Ephesians 4:6.

The oneness of God is also related to his simplicity.

Providence

While the providence of God usually refers to his activity in the world, it also implies his care for the universe, and is thus an attribute. Although the word is not used in the Bible to refer to God, the concept is found in verses such as Acts 17:25, which says that God "gives all men life and breath and everything else" (NIV).

A distinction is usually made between "general providence," which refers to God's continuous upholding the existence and natural order of the universe, and "special providence," which refers to God's extraordinary intervention in the life of people.

Righteousness

The righteousness of God may refer to his holiness, to his justice, or to his saving activity. A notable occurrence of the word is in Romans 1:17 - "for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed" (NIV). Martin Luther grew up believing that this referred to an attribute of God - namely, his distributive justice. Luther's change of mind and subsequent interpretation of the phrase as referring to the righteousness which God imputes to the believer was a major factor in the Protestant Reformation. More recently, however, scholars such as N. T. Wright have argued that the verse refers to an attribute of God after all - this time, his covenant faithfulness.

Simplicity

The simplicity of God means he is not partly this and partly that, but that whatever he is, he is so entirely. It is thus related to the unity of God. Grudem notes that this is a less common use of the word "simple" - that is, "not composed of parts". Grudem distinguishes between God's "unity of singularity" (in that God is one God) and his "unity of simplicity".

Sovereignty

The sovereignty of God is related to his omnipotence, providence, and kingship, yet it also encompasses his freedom, and is in keeping with his goodness, righteousness, holiness, and impeccability. It refers to God being in complete control as he directs all things — no person, organization, government or any other force can stop God from executing his purpose. This attribute has been particularly emphasized in Calvinism. The Calvinist writer A. W. Pink appeals to Isaiah 46:10 ("My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please") and argues, "Subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent; God does as He pleases, only as He pleases always as He pleases." Other Christian writers contend that the sovereign God desires to be influenced by prayer and that he "can and will change His mind when His people pray."

Transcendence

God's transcendence means that he is outside space and time, and therefore eternal and unable to be changed by forces within the universe. It is thus closely related to God's immutability, and is contrasted with his immanence. A significant verse which balances God's transcendence and his immanence is Isaiah 57:15:

For this is what the high and exalted One says — he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite."

The Shield of the Trinity diagram symbolising aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Trinity

Trinitarian traditions of Christianity propose the Trinity of God - three persons in one: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Support for the doctrine of the Trinity comes from several verses on the Bible and the New Testament's trinitarian formulae, such as the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Also, 1 John 5:7 (of the KJV) reads "...there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one", but this Comma Johanneum is almost universally rejected as a Latin corruption.

Nontrinitarian Christians do not hold that this is an attribute of God. Some believe that Jesus was only a prophet or perfected human, or that there is only one person of God with three aspects, or that there are two persons, or that they are three separate gods, or in various other doctrines.

Veracity

The veracity of God means his truth-telling. Titus 1:2 refers to "God, who does not lie." Among evangelicals, God's veracity is often regarded as the basis of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Greg Bahnsen says,

Only with an inerrant autograph can we avoid attributing error to the God of truth. An error in the original would be attributable to God Himself, because He, in the pages of Scripture, takes responsibility for the very words of the biblical authors. Errors in copies, however, are the sole responsibility of the scribes involved, in which case God’s veracity is not impugned.

Wrath

Moses praises the wrath of God in Exodus 15:7. Later in Deuteronomy 9, after the incident of The Golden Calf, Moses describes how: "I feared the furious anger of the LORD, which turned him against you, would drive him to destroy you. But again he listened to me." (9:19). In Psalm 69:24, the psalmist begs God to "consume" his enemies "with your burning anger".

In the New Testament, Jesus says in John 3:36, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."

Wayne Grudem suggests that "if God loves all that is right and good, and all that conforms to his moral character, then it should not be surprising that he would hate everything that is opposed to his moral character."

Richard Maurice Bucke

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Maurice_Bucke 

Richard Maurice Bucke.

Richard Maurice Bucke (18 March 1837 – 19 February 1902), often called Maurice Bucke, was a prominent Canadian psychiatrist in the late 19th century.

An adventurer during his youth, Bucke later studied medicine. Eventually, as a psychiatrist, he headed the provincial Asylum for the Insane in London, Ontario. Bucke was a friend of several noted men of letters in Canada, the United States, and England.

Besides publishing professional articles, Bucke wrote three non-fiction books: Man's Moral Nature, Walt Whitman, and Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, which is his best-known work.

Early life

Richard Maurice Bucke was born in 1837 in Methwold, England, the son of Rev. Horatio Walpole Bucke (a parish curate) and his wife Clarissa Andrews. The parents and their children emigrated to Canada when he was a year old, settling near London, Ontario.

Horatio W. Bucke had given up the profession of religious minister, and trusted his family's income to their Ontario farm. A sibling in a large family, Richard Maurice Bucke was a typical farm boy of that era. He was an athletic boy who enjoyed a good ball game. When he left home at the age of 16, he traveled to Columbus, Ohio and then to California. Along the way, Bucke worked at various odd jobs. He was part of a travelling party who had to fight for their lives when they were attacked by Shoshone Indians, on whose territory they were trespassing.

In the winter of 1857–58, he was nearly frozen to death in the mountains of California, where he was the sole survivor of a silver-mining party. He had to walk out over the mountains and suffered extreme frostbite. As a result, a foot and several of his toes were amputated. He then returned to Canada via the Isthmus of Panama, probably in 1858.

Medicine and Psychiatry

Bucke enrolled in McGill University's medical school in Montreal, where he delivered a distinguished thesis in 1862. Although he practiced general medicine briefly as a ship's surgeon (in order to pay for his sea travel), he later specialized in psychiatry. He did his internship in London (1862–63) at University College Hospital. During that time he visited France.

He was for several years an enthusiast for Auguste Comte's positivist philosophy. Huston Smith said of Comte's philosophy: "Auguste Comte had laid down the line: religion belonged to the childhood of the human race.... All genuine knowledge is contained within the boundaries of science." Comte's belief that religion, if by that is meant spirituality, had been outmoded by science contrasts with Bucke's later belief concerning the nature of reality.

Bucke returned to Canada in 1864 and married Jessie Gurd in 1865; they had eight children. In January 1876, Bucke became the superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane in Hamilton, Ontario. In 1877, he was appointed head of the provincial Asylum for the Insane in London, Ontario, a post he held for nearly the remainder of his life. In his work with asylum inmates, he was a reformer who encouraged organized sports and what is now called occupational therapy. Some of his surgical treatments proved deeply controversial. After adopting the Victorian-era theory that mental illness in women was often due to defective reproductive organs, Bucke began performing surgical removals of these organs from female patients. He continued this practice until his death, despite receiving increasing amounts of criticism from the medical health care community.

Cosmic consciousness experience

In 1872, after an evening of stimulating conversation with his friend Walt Whitman in the countryside, Richard M Bucke was traveling back to London in a buggy. He relates:

---

I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped around as it were by a flame-coloured cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next, I knew that the light was within me.

Directly afterward came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into my brain streamed one momentary lightning—flash of the Divine Splendor which has ever since lightened my life; upon my heart fell one drop of Divine Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an aftertaste of heaven.

Among other things, I did not come to believe: I saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of everyone in the long run is absolutely certain.

I learned more within the few seconds that illumination lasted than in all my previous years of study and I learned much that no study could ever have taught.

               Paraphrased in the first person from the book "Cosmic Consciousness" by Richard M Bucke.  

---

He later described the characteristics and effects of the faculty of experiencing this type of consciousness as:

• its sudden appearance
• a subjective experience of light ("inner light")
• moral elevation
• intellectual illumination
• a sense of immortality
• loss of a fear of death
• loss of a sense of sin

Bucke's personal experience of the inner state had yet another attribute, mentioned separately by the author: the vivid sense of the universe as a living presence, rather than as basically lifeless, inert matter.

The supreme occurrence of that night was his real and sole initiation to the new and higher order of ideas. But it was only an initiation. He saw the light but had no more idea whence it came and what it meant than had the first creature that saw the light of the sun.

Bucke did not immediately record the details and interpretation of his experience. This was not done until years later, and only after he had researched much of the world's literature on mysticism and enlightenment and had corresponded with many others about this subject.

Cosmic Consciousness

Bucke's magnum opus was his book Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind. The book is a compilation of various theories rather than strictly a simple record of his original mystical experience.

Bucke borrowed the term "cosmic consciousness" from Edward Carpenter, who had traveled and studied religion in the East. Bucke's friend, Carpenter, had derived the term "cosmic consciousness" from the Eastern term "universal consciousness." In his description of his personal experience, Bucke combined his recollection with thoughts of another of his friends, Caleb Pink ("C.P.")—and others—and recorded his experience in a poetic style.

Cosmic Consciousness was a book which he researched and wrote over a period of many years. It was published in 1901 and has been reprinted several times since then. In it, Bucke describes his own experience, the experiences of contemporaries (most notably Walt Whitman), and the experiences of historical figures, including Jesus, Saint Paul, Muhammad, Plotinus, Dante, Francis Bacon, William Blake, Buddha, and Ramakrishna.

Bucke developed a theory that posited three stages in the development of consciousness:

• the simple consciousness of animals
• the self-consciousness of the mass of humanity (encompassing reason, imagination, and foresight)
• cosmic consciousness — an emerging faculty which is the next stage of human development

Within self-consciousness, there exist gradations among individuals in their degrees of intellectual development and talent. (Bucke considered that no doubt there would be gradations within the level of cosmic consciousness, as well.)

Among the effects of humanity's natural evolutionary progression, Bucke believed he detected a long historical trend in which religious conceptions and theologies had become less and less frightening.

In Cosmic Consciousness, beginning with Part II, Bucke explains how animals developed the senses of hearing and seeing. Further development culminated in the ability to experience and enjoy music. Bucke states that, initially, only a small number of humans were able to see colors and experience music. But eventually these new abilities spread throughout the human race until only a very small number of people were unable to experience colors and music.

In Part III, Bucke hypothesizes that the next stage of human development, which he calls "cosmic consciousness," is slowly beginning to appear and will eventually spread throughout all of humanity.

Bucke’s vision of the world was profoundly optimistic. He wrote in Part I (“First Words”) “that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain.”

Involvement with poetry and literature

Bucke was deeply involved in the poetry scene in America and had friends among the literati, especially those who were poets. In 1869, he read Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, an American poet, and was deeply impressed by it. In Cosmic Consciousness, he notes that his cosmic consciousness experience occurred following a night reading Whitman and Romantic poets. Later, he met Whitman in 1877 in Camden, New Jersey, and the two developed a lasting friendship.

Bucke later testified that he was "lifted to and set upon a higher plane of existence" because of his friendship with Whitman. He published a biography of Whitman in 1883 and was one of Whitman's literary executors.

In 1882, Bucke was elected to the English Literature Section of the Royal Society of Canada.

Death

On February 19, 1902, Bucke slipped on a patch of ice in front of his home and struck his head. He died a few hours later without regaining consciousness.

He was deeply mourned by a large circle of friends, who loved him for his sturdy honesty, his warm heart, his intellectual force, but most of all for his noble qualities as a man.

Legacy

Bucke's concept of cosmic consciousness took on a life of its own (though not always well understood) and influenced the thought and writings of many other people. His work is directly referenced by the mystics Franklin Merrell-Wolff and Ouspensky, and it was essential to Aldous Huxley's concept of the perennial philosophy and Evelyn Underhill's concept of mysticism. In India, Aurobindo uses the term cosmic consciousness extensively in his work  and Ramana Maharshi was asked about Bucke's concept. Erich Fromm says, in Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism, 'What Bucke describes as cosmic consciousness is, in my opinion, precisely the experience which is called satori in Zen Buddhism' and that "Bucke's book is perhaps the book most germane to the topic of this article."

Along with William James's classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience (which cites Bucke), Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness has become part of the foundation of transpersonal psychology.

Bucke was part of a movement that sought to improve the care and treatment of mentally ill persons.

He was one of the founders of the Medical School of the University of Western Ontario. His papers are held at Western University's Archives and Research Collections Centre. The finding aid can be found here https://www.lib.uwo.ca/files/archives/archives_finding_aids/Dr._R.M._Bucke_Finding_Aid1.pdf

He was portrayed by Colm Feore in the 1990 Canadian film Beautiful Dreamers.

Publications

• Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. 2009. ISBN 9780486471907.
• Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind,1905 Innes edition, facsimile, 37 MB PDF file.
• Diary of R. Maurice Bucke, M.D., C.M, 1863.
• Man's Moral Nature: An Essay, 1879 Internet Archive
• Richard Maurice Bucke, Medical Mystic: Letters of Dr. Bucke to Walt Whitman and His Friends, Artem Lozynsky (editor), 1977, Wayne State University Press, ISBN 0814315763.
• The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke 1997, compiled by Cyril Greenland & John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Colombo & Company.
• Walt Whitman (original 1883 edition). OCLC 859421735
• Walt Whitman's Canada 1992, compiled by Cyril Greenland & John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Hounslow Press.

 

Cosmic Consciousness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Consciousness 

 

Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind

The title page
Author	Richard Maurice Bucke
Language	English
Subject	Consciousness
Published	1901
Media type	Print

Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind is a 1901 book by the psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke, in which the author explores the concept of cosmic consciousness, which he defines as "a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the ordinary man".

Forms of consciousness

In Cosmic Consciousness, Bucke stated that he discerned three forms, or degrees, of consciousness:

• Simple consciousness, possessed by both animals and mankind
• Self-consciousness, possessed by mankind, encompassing thought, reason, and imagination
• Cosmic consciousness, which is "a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the ordinary man" 

According to Bucke,

This consciousness shows the cosmos to consist not of dead matter governed by unconscious, rigid, and unintending law; it shows it on the contrary as entirely immaterial, entirely spiritual and entirely alive; it shows that death is an absurdity, that everyone and everything has eternal life; it shows that the universe is God and that God is the universe, and that no evil ever did or ever will enter into it; a great deal of this is, of course, from the point of view of self consciousness, absurd; it is nevertheless undoubtedly true.

Moores said that Bucke's cosmic consciousness is an interconnected way of seeing things "which is more of an intuitive knowing than it is a factual understanding". Moores pointed out that, for scholars of the purist camp, the experience of cosmic consciousness is incomplete without the element of love, "which is the foundation of mystical consciousness".

Mysticism, then, is the perception of the universe and all of its seemingly disparate entities existing in a unified whole bound together by love.

Juan A. Herrero Brasas said that Bucke's cosmic consciousness refers to the evolution of the intellect, and not to "the ineffable revelation of hidden truths". According to Brasas, it was William James who equated Bucke's cosmic consciousness with mystical experience or mystical consciousness. Gary Lachman notes that today Bucke's experience would most likely be "explained" by the so-called "God spot", or more generally as a case of temporal lobe epilepsy, but he is skeptical of these and other "organic" explanations.

Bucke identified only male examples of cosmic consciousness. He believed that women were not likely to have it. (However, there are some women amongst the "additional cases" listed in the second half of the book.)

He regarded Walt Whitman as "the climax of religious evolution and the harbinger of humanity's future".

Similar concepts

William James

According to Michael Robertson, Cosmic Consciousness and William James's book The Varieties of Religious Experience have much in common:

Both Bucke and James argue that all religions, no matter how seemingly different, have a common core; both believe that it is possible to identify this core by stripping away institutional accretions of dogma and ritual and focusing on individual experience; and both identify mystical illumination as the foundation of all religious experience.

James popularized the concept of religious experience, which he explored in The Varieties of Religious Experience. He saw mysticism as a distinctive experience which supplies knowledge of the transcendental. He considered the "personal religion" to be "more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism", and states:

In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which bring it about that the mystical classics have, as been said, neither birthday nor native land.

Regarding cosmic consciousness, William James, in his essay The Confidences of a "Psychical Researcher", wrote:

What again, are the relations between the cosmic consciousness and matter? ... So that our ordinary human experience, on its material as well as on its mental side, would appear to be only an extract from the larger psycho-physical world?

Collective consciousness

James understood "cosmic consciousness" to be a collective consciousness, a "larger reservoir of consciousness", which manifests itself in the minds of men and remains intact after the dissolution of the individual. It may "retain traces of the life history of its individual emanation".

Friedrich Schleiermacher

A classification similar to that proposed by Bucke was used by the influential theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), viz.:

• Animal, brutish self-awareness
• Sensual consciousness
• Higher self-consciousness

In Schleiermacher's theology, higher consciousness "is the part of the human being that is capable of transcending animal instincts". It is the "point of contact with God" and the essence of being human.

When higher consciousness is present, people are not alienated from God by their instincts. The relation between higher and lower consciousness is akin to St. Paul's "struggle of the spirit to overcome the flesh". Higher consciousness establishes a distinction between the natural and the spiritual sides of human beings.

The concept of religious experience was used by Schleiermacher and by Albert Ritschl to defend religion against scientific and secular criticism and to defend the belief that moral and religious experiences justify religious beliefs.

Other writers

Cosmic consciousness bears similarity to Hegel's Geist:

All this seems to force upon us an interpretation of Hegel that would understand his term "min" as some kind of cosmic consciousness; not, of course, a traditional conception of God as a being separate from the universe, but rather as something more akin to those eastern philosophies that insist that All is One.

Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the noösphere also bears similarity to Bucke's ideas.

According to Paul Marshall, a philosopher of religion, cosmic consciousness bears resemblances to some traditional pantheist beliefs.

According to Ervin László, cosmic consciousness corresponds to Jean Gebser's integral consciousness and to Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan's turquoise state of cosmic spirituality.

Ken Wilber, integral philosopher and mystic, identifies four state/stages of cosmic consciousness (mystical experience) above both Gebser's integral level and Beck and Cowan's turquoise level.

Influence

Some modern psychologists and theologians have made reference to Bucke’s work. They include Erich Fromm, Robert S. de Ropp, and Abraham Maslow.

Others who have used the concept of cosmic consciousness, as introduced by Bucke in 1901, include Albert Einstein, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Alan Watts.

The Varieties of Religious Experience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

Author	William James
Original title	The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902
Country	United States
Language	English
Subjects	Philosophy of religion Psychology of religion
Publisher	Longmans, Green & Co.
Publication date	1902
Media type	Print
Pages	534
LC Class	BR110.J3 1902a
Followed by	Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between 1901 and 1902. The lectures concerned the psychological study of individual private religious experiences and mysticism, and used a range of examples to identify commonalities in religious experiences across traditions.

Soon after its publication, Varieties entered the Western canon of psychology and philosophy and has remained in print for over a century.

James later developed his philosophy of pragmatism. There are many overlapping ideas in Varieties and his 1907 book Pragmatism.

Contents

The book has 14 chapters covering 20 lectures and a postscript.

Lecture I. Religion and Neurology.

In this first lecture, James outlines the scope of his investigation. Neither a theologian nor a historian of religion, James states that he is a psychologist and therefore his lectures will concern the psychology of religious feelings, rather than the institutions of religion. This further limits his enquiry to religious phenomena that have been articulated and recorded by individuals, limiting his study to either modern writers or sources from history which have become classic texts. James then distinguishes between questions concerning something's origin and its value, insisting that his purpose is to understand the origin of religious experiences and not to pass judgement on their value. This means that if James finds some material or natural cause of religious experience in his study, this should not lead anyone to conclude that this undermines their religious or spiritual value.

Lecture II. Circumscription of the Topic.

In his circumscription of the topic, James outlines how he will define religion for the sake of the lectures. Religious institutions are found wanting in this regard since they are not primary but rather depend on the private religious feeling of individuals, especially those of the founders of such institutions. James thus defines the essence of religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine". He then distinguishes religion from moral or philosophical systems such as Stoicism which also teach a particular way or living, arguing that religion is distinguished by the presence of a sentiment which gladly assents to it. Religion is thus that which combines a moral system with a particular positive sentiment.

Lecture III. The Reality of the Unseen.

James begins his third lecture by noting that all states of mind involve some kind of object but that religious experiences involve an object which cannot be sensibly perceived. This ability to be aware of insensible objects in the mind, such as being aware of a presence in the room, is an ability particular to human beings. These experiences are sometimes connected with religion but not always, and James insists that they are not at all unusual. For those who have had such experiences, they are irrefutable and no rational argument will dissuade someone of their reality, even if the subject cannot explain or answer for the experience themselves.

James criticizes the rationalistic and scientific approaches, which would question these experiences, as being rarely convincing in the sphere of religion: rational arguments about religion are compelling for someone only if they already believe the conclusion. This is just a fact of human psychology for James, not a value judgement: humans are more persuaded irrationally and emotionally than they are by reasons. James concludes his lecture by noting the different kinds of responses such experiences can elicit (joy and sorrow), the variation of which will occupy his following lectures.

Lectures IV and V. The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness.

In these lectures, James outlines what he calls healthy-minded religion. Healthy-minded religion is one branch of James's two-fold typology of religion (the other being sick souled religion, discussed in the following chapters). This kind of religion is characterised by contentment; it is a life untroubled by the existence of evil and confident in its own salvation. For the healthy-minded individual, one's happiness and contentment is regarded as evidence for the truth of their religion. James follows Francis William Newman in calling this kind of religion 'once-born', referring to the lack of religious conversion or second birth experience. James presents a number of examples of healthy-minded religion throughout these two lectures and offers the mind-cure movement as an exemplar of healthy-minded religion. The philosophy of healthy-minded religion is not one of struggle but of surrender and letting go; this is the route to physical and spiritual health. James finishes his fifth lecture with a note about positivist scientists who simply regard religion as an evolutionary survival mechanism. While not explicitly endorsing mind-cure, James argues that its growth should warn against the most positivistic and sectarian scientists who see nothing of value in religion.

Lectures VI And VII. The Sick Soul.

Lectures VI and VII complete James's typology of religion by considering sick souled religion. James makes the contrast between the two religious approaches by considering their different responses to the problem of evil: whereas the healthy-minded believer is untroubled by the existence of evil and simply chooses to have no dealings with it, this option is not available to the sick souled believer, for whom the world's evils cannot be ignored. For the religion of the sick soul, evil is an unavoidable and even essential part of human existence and this makes straightforward religious acceptance of the world difficult. James describes an experience of the world utterly stripped of all its emotional valence, transforming all experience into melancholy. To illustrate this, James quotes from Leo Tolstoy's short work My Confession, which describes Tolstoy's experience of utter meaninglessness, and John Bunyan's autobiographical account of melancholy, which was bound up with Bunyan's perception of his original sin. James's third example is an unnamed source (which is in fact autobiographical) who describes overwhelming panic and fear who felt utter dread at his own existence. Throughout the discussion of these examples, James indicates that all three recovered from their melancholy but that discussion of this will be postponed until later lectures. James concludes the lecture by considering the possible disagreement that could arise between healthy-minded and sick souled religious believers; James argues that, while healthy-minded religions can be completely satisfying for some people, they are ill-equipped to deal with suffering. Therefore, the best religions are, in James's view, those such as Buddhism and Christianity which can accommodate evil and suffering by teaching a path of deliverance.

Lecture VIII. The Divided Self, and the Process of Its Unification.

James begins this lecture by rehearsing the arguments of the previous lectures on healthy-mindedness and sick soul. He notes that, while a healthy-minded individual can achieve happiness through a surplus of positive experience over negative, this is not available to the sick soul. The sick soul is so burdened by the despair and transience of natural life that it takes a spiritual transformation to overcome this melancholy. James argues that the experience of a sick soul is psychologically rooted in an individual having a disordered constitution, presented in the lecture as the presence of two conflicting selves in a person. Normal personal development consists in the unifying of these two selves but this is not always successful and the period of unification is characterised by unhappiness. James notes that for those with a more religious disposition, this disunity will be experienced as religious melancholy or conviction of sin, and suggests Saint Augustine and Henry Alline as examples of religiously divided souls who eventually achieved inner unity through religious conversion. James notes that religious conversion can occur either gradually or suddenly, before returning to the examples of Tolstoy and Bunyan, who both exemplify the gradual approach. The root of the sickness of these two souls can be found, James argues, in their inner disunity and thus was overcome by a process of unification — or religious conversion. Despite the unification of their souls, neither Tolstoy nor Bunyan have become healthy-minded: James argues that the previous experiences of both preclude this categorisation; rather, they are twice-born.

Lecture IX. Conversion.

After discussing the unification of the disordered soul, James moves on to discuss the specifically religious instances of this phenomenon, the phenomenon of conversion. Two lectures are devoted to this subject which, in the published volume, are presented as two separate chapters. To introduce the idea of conversion, James begins by quoting at length the testimony of an individual named Stephen H. Bradley, who experienced a dramatic conversion experience at the age of fourteen after attending a Methodist revival meeting. James then proceeds to discuss the ways in which an individual's character can develop according to the specifics of their life and argues that such changes occur as a result of changing "emotional excitement" in one's life, whereby things which once excited an individual's emotions no longer do so, or vice versa. Therefore, for James, to be converted means that religious ideas move from a peripheral place in one's consciousness to center stage and that these religious ideas begin to take a central role in the convert's energy and motivation. As to why this change takes place, James notes that psychology cannot provide a clear answer but suggests the symbolism of mechanical equilibrium could help to provide an answer. Following E. D. Starbuck, James makes a distinction between volitional conversion, wherein a convert consciously chooses to convert, and self-surrender conversion, which involves a convert letting go and allowing themselves to be converted. Volitional conversions are more gradual than self-surrender conversions, the latter of which are more likely to involve dramatic conversion experiences and, James argues, are the more interesting objects of study. Since all religion involves reliance on a power higher than oneself, James finds that a degree of self-surrender is a necessary part of all religious conversion — and that theology and psychology agree on this point.

Lecture X. Conversion—Concluded.

The second lecture on conversion continues the discussion of sudden and dramatic conversion, which involves a radical transformation from the old life to the new, supported with a number of examples. Sudden conversion experiences can be noted, James argues, for the sense of passivity felt by the convert during the process, a sense which Christian theology interprets as the action of the spirit of God in which a wholly new nature is given to the convert. James then compares different Christian traditions on the notion of instantaneous conversion: more traditional Protestants as well as Catholics do not value instantaneous conversions, whereas other groups — such as Moravian Protestants and Methodists — invest high value in such experiences. To explain the human capacity for dramatic conversion experiences, James refers to the notion in nineteenth-century psychology of consciousness as a field. The field of consciousness is analogous to a magnetic field, with the conscious subject at the center, the borders of which are hazy and indeterminate. Events which occur at the margins of the field of consciousness, or subconsciously, can in James's view explain various kinds of mystical and religious experiences. Taken psychologically, the individuals who experience instantaneous conversion can be described as having unusually large margins in their fields of consciousness. Anticipating an objection from religious listeners, James then refers to his earlier comment concerning the distinction between a phenomenon's value and its origin: the value of a religious experience is established not by tracing the source of its origin but in evaluating its fruits. On examining the fruits of conversion, James finds that, while there is nothing which positively distinguishes converted people from their non-converted counterparts as a whole, for the individual converts, such experiences precipitate a renewed spiritual and moral life. James finishes this lecture by noting key characteristics of sudden conversion experiences: a sense of assurance in submission to a higher power, the perception of truths not previously known, and a change in how the perceived world appears to the individual. James finally makes a brief note on the issue of backsliding, arguing that conversion experiences present a kind of "high water mark", which cannot be diminished by backsliding.

Lectures XI, XII, And XIII. Saintliness.

Having concluded the preceding lecture arguing that the value of a conversion experience can be judged according to the fruits it produces in an individual's life, James proceeds to evaluate these fruits in his lectures on saintliness. James analyses a person's character as derived from the interaction between the internal forces of impulse and inhibition; while these are often in conflict, inhibitions can be overcome when emotions reach a certain level of high intensity. The religious disposition is interpreted in this way: religious emotions form the center of an individual's emotional energy and thus have the power to overwhelm one's inhibitions. This is why conversion can result in individual character change, and James offers various examples of individuals cured of vices such as drunkenness and sexual immorality following their conversion.

A saintly character is one where "spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy." James states that saintliness includes: "1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little interests; and a conviction … of the existence of an Ideal Power. 2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control. 3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down. 4. A shifting of the emotional Centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards 'yes, yes' and away from 'no,' where the claims of the non-ego are concerned."

This religious character can be broken down into asceticism (pleasure in sacrifice), strength of soul (a "blissful equanimity" free from anxieties), purity (a withdrawal from the material world), and charity (tenderness to those most would naturally disdain). The rest of the lectures are devoted to numerous examples of these four kinds of saintliness, exemplified by numerous religious figures across various traditions. This includes an extended discussion of various ascetic practices, ranging from a resistance to excess comfort through to more extreme forms of self-mortification, such as that practiced by Henry Suso. James then discusses the monastic virtues of obedience, chastity and poverty, and finishes the lecture by noting that the value of saintly virtues can only truly be understood by those who have experienced them.

Lectures XIV And XV. The Value of Saintliness.

In these lectures, James considers the question of how to measure the value of saintliness without addressing the question of the existence of God (which is prohibited by James's empirical method). This can be done, James insists, by considering the fruits (or benefits) derived from saintliness. James then restates his decision to focus on the private, inner experience of religion; he quotes a personal experience of George Fox, noting that such experiences will initially be treated as heterodoxy and heresy but, with enough of a following, can become a new orthodoxy. Responding to the question of extravagance, James notes that saintly virtues are liable to corruption by excess which is often the result of a deficient intellect being overcome by the strength of the saintly virtue. Saintly devotion can become fanaticism or, in gentler characters, feebleness derived from over-absorption, to the neglect of all practical interests. Excessive purity can become scrupulosity and can result in withdrawal from society. Finally, James finds the virtues of tenderness and charity ill-equipped for a world in which other people act dishonestly. Despite these tendencies to excess, James finds that the saintly virtues can often operate prophetically, demonstrating the capacity human beings have for good. Even asceticism, which James acknowledges can often appear to be an excess with no redeeming virtue, can work in a similar way. The excesses of the ascetic can be an appropriate response to the world's evils and remind the more healthy-minded individuals of the world's imperfection. After briefly rejecting a Nietzschean critique of saintliness, James concludes that, while saints may often appear ill-adapted to society, they may be well-adapted to the future heavenly world. Hence, the value of saintliness cannot be answered without a return to questions of theology.

Lectures XVI And XVII. Mysticism.

James begins his lectures on mysticism by reiterating his claim that mystical experiences are central to religion. He then outlines four features which mark an experience as mystical. The first two are sufficient to establish that an experience is mystical:

Ineffability — "no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. […] its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. […] mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists."

Noetic quality —"Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time."

The second two are very often found in mystical experiences:

Transiency —"Mystical states cannot be sustained for long."

Passivity —"the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power."

During a discussion about mystical experiences precipitated by the consumption of alcohol or psychoactive drugs, James comments that he regards ordinary waking sober consciousness as just one kind of consciousness among many and he goes on to argue that the kind of consciousness brought about by the consumption of psychoactive drugs is the same as that which has been cultivated by the mystical traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. Having surveyed examples of mystical experience, James proceeds to consider their veracity. In mysticism's favour is James's observation that mystical experiences across diverse traditions tend to point towards the same kind of truth, that is, the existence of a greater, incomprehensible reality, beyond human experience. The knowledge imparted by mystical experience is, on the whole, "optimistic" and "pantheistic". Regarding the authoritativeness of mystical experiences, James makes three points: first, mystical experiences are authoritative for the individuals who experience them; second, they have no authority over someone who has not had the experience; third, despite this, mystical experiences do indicate that the rationalistic consciousness does not have sole authority over matters of truth.

Lecture XVIII. Philosophy.

James's lecture on philosophy returns to the question of whether religious experiences can justify belief in God, having found in the previous lecture that mysticism can only validate religion for those who have mystical experiences. James then argues that feelings are fundamental to religion: philosophy and theology would never have started had there not been felt experiences to prompt reflection. His intention is to challenge intellectualized religion, the view of rationalist theologians such as John Henry Newman that religion can (and must) be rationally demonstrated, independent of any private feeling. Following a discussion of Charles Peirce's pragmatist philosophy, James argues that neither the traditional metaphysical nor moral characteristics of God proposed by theology can be supported by religious experience and thus they must be disposed of. James's conclusion with regards to philosophy is that it is ultimately incapable of demonstrating by purely rational processes the truth of religion. Transformed into a "Science of Religions", however, philosophy can be useful in critiquing various extant religious beliefs by comparing religions across cultures and demonstrating where these religions are contradicted by the natural sciences.

Lecture XIX. Other Characteristics.

In this penultimate lecture, James considers some other characteristics of religion left over from the preceding lectures. The first in that the aesthetic sentiments involved in religion can make religions appear more attractive to people: the richness of complex systems of dogmatic theology can be equated to the majesty of religious architecture. After briefly commenting that sacrifice and confession are rarely practiced in contemporary religion, James discusses at greater length the phenomenon of prayer which, he argues, is the means by which religious people communicate with God. Acknowledging challenges to the authenticity of petitionary prayer, James argues that prayers are often answered through some inner resourcing of the individual (such as strength to endure a trial). Thus, prayer does effect real change - whether than change is objective or subjective is of no consequence to James. In the final part of the lecture, James draws parallels between what is often regarded as spiritual inspiration and the manifestations of psychopathological symptoms; he rejects the notion that religious experiences can be explained away as psychopathology and rather insists that both religious experiences and psychopathology indicate the existence of a reality beyond what is normally experienced by sober, awake, rational consciousness.

Lecture XX. Conclusions.

In the final chapter James identifies a two-part "common nucleus" of all religions: (1) an uneasiness ("a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand") and (2) a solution ("a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers").

Postscript

James finds that "the only thing that [religious experience] unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace." He explains that the higher power "should be both other and larger than our conscious selves."

Themes

Religious experiences

In the Varieties, James explicitly excludes from his study both theology and religious institutions, choosing to limit his study to direct and immediate religious experiences, which he regarded as the more interesting object of study. Churches, theologies, and institutions are important as vehicles for passing on insights gained by religious experience but, in James's view, they live second-hand off the original experience of the founder. A key distinction in James's treatment of religion is between that of healthy-minded religion and religion of the sick soul; the former is a religion of life's goodness, while the latter cannot overcome the radical sense of evil in the world. Although James presents this as a value-neutral distinction between different kinds of religious attitude, he in fact regarded the sick souled religious experience as preferable, and his anonymous source of melancholy experience in lectures VI and VII is in fact autobiographical. James considered healthy mindedness to be America's main contribution to religion, which he saw running from the transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science. At the extreme, the "healthy minded" see sickness and evil as an illusion. James considered belief in the "mind cure" to be reasonable when compared to medicine as practiced at the beginning of the twentieth century.

James devotes two lectures to mysticism and in the lectures outlines four markers of mystical experience. These are:

• Ineffable: the experience is incapable of being described and must be directly experienced to be understood.
• Noetic: the experience is understood to be a state of knowledge through which divine truths can be learned.
• Transient: the experience is of limited duration.
• Passivity: the subject of the experience is passive, unable to control the arrival and departure of the experience.

He believed that religious experiences can have "morbid origins" in brain pathology and can be irrational but nevertheless are largely positive. Unlike the bad ideas that people have under the influence of a high fever, after a religious experience the ideas and insights usually remain and are often valued for the rest of the person's life.

James had relatively little interest in the legitimacy or illegitimacy of religious experiences. Further, despite James' examples being almost exclusively drawn from Christianity, he did not mean to limit his ideas to any single religion. Religious experiences are something that people sometimes have under certain conditions. In James' description, these conditions are likely to be psychological or pharmaceutical rather than cultural.

Pragmatism

Although James did not fully articulate his pragmatic philosophy until the publication of Pragmatism in 1907, the approach to religious belief in the Varieties is influenced by pragmatic philosophy. In his Philosophy and Conclusions lectures, James concludes that religion is overall beneficial to humankind, although acknowledges that this does not establish its truth. While James intended to approach the topic of religious experience from this pragmatist angle, Richard Rorty argues that he ultimately deviated from this methodology in the Varieties. In his lectures on saintliness, the intention is to discover whether the saintly virtues are beneficial for human life: if they are then, according to pragmatism, that supports their claim to truth. However, James ends up concluding that the value of the saintly virtues is dependent on their origin: given that the saintly virtues are only beneficial if there is an afterlife for which they can prepare us, their value depends on whether they are divinely ordained or the result of human psychology. This is no longer a question of value but of empirical fact. Hence, Rorty argues that James ends up abandoning his own pragmatist philosophy due to his ultimate reliance of empirical evidence.

James considers the possibility of "over-beliefs", beliefs which are not strictly justified by reason but which might understandably be held by educated people nonetheless. Philosophy can contribute to shaping these over-beliefs — for example, he finds wanting traditional arguments for the existence of God, including the cosmological, design, and moral arguments, along with the argument from popular consensus. James admits to having his own over-belief, which he does not intend to prove, that there is a greater reality not normally accessible by our normal ways of relating to the world which religious experiences can connect us to.

Reception

The August 1902 New York Times review of the first edition ends with the following:

Everywhere there is a frolic welcome to the eccentricities and extravagances of the religious life. Many will question whether its more sober exhibitions would not have been more fruitful of results, but the interest and fascination of the treatment are beyond dispute, and so, too, is the sympathy to which nothing human is indifferent.

A July 1963 Time magazine review of an expanded edition published that year ends with quotes about the book from Peirce and Santayana:

In making little allowance for the fact that people can also be converted to vicious creeds, he acquired admirers he would have deplored. Mussolini, for instance, hailed James as a preceptor who had showed him that "an action should be judged by its result rather than by its doctrinary basis." James ... had no intention of giving comfort to latter-day totalitarians. He was simply impatient with his fellow academicians and their endless hairsplitting over matters that had no relation to life. A vibrant, generous person, he hoped to show that religious emotions, even those of the deranged, were crucial to human life. The great virtue of The Varieties, noted pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce, is its "penetration into the hearts of people." Its great weakness, retorted George Santayana, is its "tendency to disintegrate the idea of truth, to recommend belief without reason and to encourage superstition."

In 1986, Nicholas Lash criticised James's Varieties, challenging James's separation of the personal and institutional. Lash argues that religious geniuses such as St. Paul or Jesus, with whom James was particularly interested, did not have their religious experiences in isolation but within and influenced by a social and historical context. Ultimately, Lash argues that this comes from James's failure to overcome Cartesian dualism in his thought: while James believed he had succeeded in surpassing Descartes, he was still tied to a notion of an internal ego, distinct from the body or outside world, which undergoes experiences.

Cultural references

The famous 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley has a passage where Mustapha Mond shows this and other books about religion to John, after the latter has been caught for causing disorder between Delta humans in a hospital.

The book is referenced twice in the 1939 “The Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the basic text for members in Alcoholics Anonymous.

In 2012 the Russian-American composer Gene Pritsker released his chamber opera William James's Varieties of Religious Experience.

The 2015 The Man in the High Castle TV series season 2, episode 2, includes this as a book banned by the Japanese, who occupy the former western United States after World War II. One of the characters studies the book as he tries to understand his brief transport to what, for him, is the alternate reality of the United States having won World War II.