Dear Sir:
This statement is too general. First of all, spontaneity can spring from deep contemplation. Deep contemplation can lead to sudden ecstasy or outburst of praise or adoration. Second, worship as an appropriate response to God, the divine, or the sacred can be spontaneous when the ethical principles of one's faith has become second nature in one. Third, your statement assumes too much of a division between emotion and reason/rationality. They are always intermingled. When a lion jumps into my room and I immediately take flight, is it all emotion of fear? My brain might have calculated that the probability of my survival in the grip of the lion is very low and thus sent the necessary chemicals to activate my sudden flight. My apparent emotion of fear is based on some solid calculations. Scientists now tell us that our brains make decisions faster than we can consciously perceive them. Fourth, emotions such as compassion—as philosopher Martha Nussbaum has amply demonstrated in her book, Upheavals in Thought—are based on reason. She rejects your kind of hard and fast demarcation between emotion and reason. Though compassion is an emotion, Nussbaum argues that it is rational (based on reason), and not driven by irrational sentimentality. She rejects any understanding of emotion that opposes it to reason. The emotion of compassion has a cognitive (thought) structure. Fifth, emotion does not always obscure contemplation. Emotions can drive reason or contemplation. Martin Luther once said reason is whore, often prostituting itself to defend certain emotions. The great scientists of the world are driven by passion for their research. So are the philosophers and footballers for their own interests.
Now let me come to the second part of your statement, the nature of God. Sixth, is wonder as in your "wondrous essence" devoid of emotion? Seventh, what is the "essence of God." Who decides what it is? Now when I see my fellow human being suffering and I spontaneously rise to help her, am I not worshiping God or in tune with the essence of God? Didn't Jesus Christ in Matthew 25 translate true faith or religion into helping others. Is this also not contained in the book of James in the Bible? When does thinking, contemplation, Aristotelean contemplative existence become the "essence of God" we must all accept? Even Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) in working toward his notion of contemplative existence as human flourishing (eudaimonia) passed through a theory of virtue, which is a mean between excesses, two extremes. For instance, for him, courage is the mean of cowardice and rashness, two extreme emotions. Reason enables one, according to him, to come to the mean between the two.
Let us turn to the final part of your statement, "from which true reverence emanates." Eighth, is reverence different from worship; some may argue they are same? Ninth, what is the meaning of "true" here? Tenth, do you mean to say that true reverence for God cannot emanate from deeds (as Jesus argues in Matt. 25) or from deep love (which is an emotion. See also Mark 12:30-31)? Eleventh, do you mean that true reverence for the divine cannot emanate from the fear of hell or love of heaven? Religion has always played on these two emotions? Twelfth and finally, if religion (the holy, the numen) is deeply tied to emotions (as Rudolf Otto argues: mysterium tremendum et fascinans) should we be quick to define the "essence of contemplation" or believers' understanding of the essence of God as opposed to emotion. Religion is often a mixture of emotion and reason (as in other areas of human existence) and these two take believers to the essence of God, whatever that means. By the way, can we reasonably know the essence of God apart from how any one particular religion or spiritual practice defines it?
My brother Chidi Opara pardon me for my spontaneous reaction (which may or may be reasonable or rational) to your one sentence. Has my emotion here led me to contemplate on God or divine the Divine in this short response to you? I appreciate your ability to provoke reaction to your thoughts.
Thanks and blessings,
Nimi Wariboko
Boston University
From: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@gmail.com>
Reply-To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, January 6, 2018 at 4:37 PM
To: USA African Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@gOpoooglegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Spontaneity in the worship of God springs up from emotion, which obscures contemplation of the wondrous essence of God, from which true reverence emanates.
CAO.
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