Neurosis of the Holy Spirit
February 28, 2007
It’s becoming a belief of mine that acceptance of the idea of a Holy Spirit is actually a dangerous notion. I used to just think it was indeterminate, somewhat meaningless, and silly in some of its expressions. However, more and more I think it’s not just silly, but detrimental. One major reason for this is the neurological sciences. I know someone who is dealing with some psychological issues and has suffered some potential brain damage. I’m currently trying to educate myself in this area, as well as psychology, so that I can better understand what’s going on and what to think and expect as I learn anew how to relate with this person. In counseling with their pastor, this person was told that their issue was mainly sin (another detrimental concept). I know the pastor personally and have no animosity towards him for such a statement, but it was nonetheless an ill-informed pronouncement with dangerous repercussions. The whole issue reminds me of the extreme cases of those who refuse medical treatment because they believe that their faith should/can heal them. I think that this sort of scenario is much more common though, because psychological disorders are not always fatal, nor even extreme, but oftentimes cause behavior that can be labelled as sin.
There seems to be two sides, at least, to the danger of just such a concept of the Holy Spirit. The first has to do with the supposed behavioral change believed to be possible through submission to the Spirit. The famous statement by the christian philosopher Paul, in his letter to the Galatian congregations, makes the assertion that the Holy Spirit has the capacity to effect behavioral change. What’s required to bring this change to actualization is an act of the will in submission, or as Paul wrote, to “walk in the Spirit (Gal 5.22-23).” As in the case of those who refuse medical treatment or blood transfusions, this mentality can lead to a person not seeking the appropriate psychological treatment. I don’t want to make this a nature versus nurture debate necessarily, but the fact that behavioral realities such as personality, preferences, etc. can be somewhat located in the mechanical operations (through electrical synaptic signals) of the cerebral cortex has got to give pause to such theories as sin and the Holy Spirit’s efficacy in behavioral change. The second danger that is closely related is that a person who does not experience the supposed behavioral changes from the Holy Spirit can be sent into a tailspin of emotional trauma that is absolutely unnecessary. An example would be of a woman who might be suffering from post partum depression before it was clinically diagnosed and popularised. Suppose that little Annie goes to her pastor and tells him that she is having these horrible thoughts and urges about her newborn and she doesn’t know what to do about it. The pastor holds back the urge to tell her that she’s being demonically oppressed and gives her conservative advice to read her Bible, pray to God for help, and think about noble and pure thoughts (Phil. 4.8) when the afflictions occur. Finally he tells her that she needs to submit to the Holy Spirit and not succumb to her “sinful nature.” When the thoughts and urges don’t cease, but actually increase, little Annie is logically brought to the added emotional strain of questioning her salvation, her possession of the Holy Spirit, and whether or not she is ultimately hell bound.
The reason for such emotional trauma is because the Holy Spirit is the one current supernatural phenomenon that most christians of virtually every stripe and creed believe offers empirical evidence of not only salvation but even of God himself. Just consider the Mormon’s internal testimony of the Spirit or William Lane Craig’s argument for it as the Super Defeater. I’ve alluded to this in other posts.
In all fairness, I know that one could suppose that the Holy Spirit effects behavioral change by having some control or influence over the synaptic signals or maybe even healing brain lesions that might be causing behavioral problems. Two questions to this line of thought occur. The first is the God of the Gaps critique. How much smaller and more distant do the gaps have to become before we stop allowing this God to be a causative explanation of anything? Second, when do brain surgery and drugs replace the behavioral efficacy of the Holy Spirit? Going back to little Annie, supposing she retained her faith and yet sought medical/psychological treatment, what difference would it make if the Spirit did exist if she could get help from the medical community? Better yet, what about all those unbelievers who receive medical treatment and are cured or helped? It would seem that they have received the same effectual change without the Spirit, and without all the emotional and psychological baggage that comes with such a belief. Once again the necessity of the Spirit seems to be negated by brain surgery and/or drugs.
Stray Sheep 
Agnosis, I have been a child and adolescent psychiatrist now for 13 years, and a Protestant for 25 as an adult. This post is of interest to me, and there is certainly a lot of thought I’ve put into this over the years. I think one model that has helped me is the idea that man has a triune nature, see http://www.thebible.net/modules.php?name=Read&itemid=238&cat=8 . There is a lot of really bad advice given by people who hold to their ideas and do not approach the person as a whole. For example, a doctor might only use a somatic (drug, surgery) technique, yet ignore the emotional and spiritual aspects of a person. A fundamentalist pastor might see every problem as sin, where there is a mental illness. No one is perfectly suited to understand, ever; the three aspects of the triune nature are constantly interacting; the ability to assess, even if pretty well done, like by a team of skilled professionals from different disciplines, is always short of perfect. That can make it difficult to differentiate a spiritual effect from that of other factors. The benefits of an increased dose of spiritual activity have been shown, however, see http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/19/2/103?ijkey=728c6ec238f7fde1af5034788bd47252f48c53d0 .
The way I also see things is that the Holy Spirit is described as having two main activities for people: conviction of sin for the non-believer and increase in holiness for the believer. Both seem to be the same in practice, recognition/repentence from unhelpful activity (sin) and turning toward God’s purpose. All this seems general to religions: (a) to identify the human problematic, b) to identify an ultimate transformative experience (UTE) which resolves the problematic, and c) to mediate between the two. So, to the extent God can/does intervene in our world versus permit freedom of action on the part of people, the Holy Spirit may act as an influence upon non-believers, those of diverse religions, and Christian believers. Therefore, it may be difficult in individual cases to perceive His activity.
Let me give you an example from the area of substance dependence. There are genetic risk factors inherited for this. There are social influences on the propensity to use, and at different stages of the life span. There are individual and family circumstances that act as protective or negative influences on risk. There are spiritual aspects that influence decision to use or not. Upon entering treatment, the Alcholics Anonymous or N/A approach, which had its origin as a strongly Theistic, if not Christian, model, is still the best scientific basis for recovery. Something the skeptics often ignore, our best technology (application of science) for substance dependence treatment is spiritual in nature. But, some medicines have been developed that can help. Psychotherapy can help with individual and family based issues. Many people have conversion experiences that completely change their substance dependence from a lifestyle to a witness for victory. Most of the time, it takes a combination of approaches that address all three aspects: body, mind, and spirit. So is substance dependence a disease of the body, the mind, or the spirit? Yes, all three. Is the treatment medical, psychological, or spiritual? yes, all three.
I would then challenge you to consider that cancer, depression, AIDS, pneumonia, Alzheimers, all have the same answer. But sometimes, we have better treatments of one of the three components than the others. Did you know there are studies of cancer victims in which the group randomized to weekly group psychotherapy but otherwise treated with the same chemotherapy lived twice as long? Even the diseases we see as physical have emotional and spiritual aspects.
Ed, thank you for the links. I’ve heard of this triadic treatment model, but haven’t seen any reference material yet. I’ll look into it, especially as I am in the periphery of just such a situation. I’m curious about one thing though, is there a measurable distinction between what is termed “spiritual” and what is psychological? As an example, person S and person P are both drug addicts. Person S receives spiritual counseling and decides to become a christian and devote herself to god. Miraculously she breaks her addiction and never looks back. Person P realizes the impact her behavior is having on her family and friends and decides to quit, she and her family are atheists. At the same time her sensibilities are amiable, she is drawn to an AIDs cause in Africa and decides to devote her life to helping with the cause/organization. Is there any way to say that the causes in person S were spiritual and not simply the effect of a strong psychological choice for change? I may be misunderstanding the issue, but I’m really curious.
The efforts of psychologists to come up with treatments for substance dependents have been vast ever since the field emerged in the 19th century. Freud tried, others have come up with treatment models, but none has been found to be as effective alone as the spiritual based Alcoholics Anonymous model. Now, I’m not saying that AA alone is best, just that the effect size of that intervention is the strongest. In my clinical work with chemical dependency units, the staff who lead the groups have observed to me that people who are atheistic can use the AA model, with modifications to the Higher Power concept. However, they have told me they are less than impressed with the results.
One thing that is interesting about the concept that religion is a psychological phenomenon only: psychological treatments don’t work unless they are based in some kind of reality. It makes no sense to say that someone is delusional to believe the CIA is harvesting their brain cells by invisible beams and that someone is not delusional to believe that God is helping their brain cells by invisible spiritual phenomenon. Yet, the latter has empiric support, whereas the former is clearly pathological. Many high functioning, extremely intelligent, emotionally well balanced people have been religious. In other words, there is no evidence that religious belief is harmful to the body and mind, per se. Of course, there is never going to be any absolute proof of the existence of spiritual phenomena, but the information we possess gives strong rational warrant to such a belief.
Ed,
Well said. However, this discussion seems to be exemplary of some of the problems I find in philosophical discussions about God. When we speak generically about “spiritual” healing or counseling, there’s nothing inherently Christian about it. But because we are a Christian nation, the specifics of spirituality become defined in terms of Christianity. But if we go in the other direction, starting with specific beliefs of Christianity such as the Holy Spirit, I think we have more dangerous results than if we admit generic spiritual aspects of psychological and behavioral healing. This is also partially why I’m a theistic agnostic and not purely an atheist, I admit some form of transcendent reality and interconnectedness. What I’d be curious to know is whether the same “spiritual” counselling would be effective in a Hindu or Buddhist region. Would or does AA/NA work in a polytheistic environment? Is it a Western tool effective for the Western psyche because the Western mind is monotheistic?
As for atheistis and AA/NA, don’t the less than impressive results signal something about the psyche for which this tool works? I’m not sure it proves anything about the reality of spiritual healing in a universally objective way. I think it’s a great method, I have family members who have gone through it, but I have sneaking suspicion that it works because they’re Western monotheists, Christians.
I could not find any comparative studies of AA results in different religious traditions. However, AA has groups in India, Japan, Thailand, and other places where western religions are minority. Here is a link to the Buddhist idea about addiction: http://www.homeoint.org/morrell/buddhism/addict.htm . One of the tough things in evaluating among claims of transcendency by various traditions is that (in my opinion) we have two forces at work: 1) the Holy Spirit is at work in both believers and non-believers to convict the world of sin/ make us aware of spirituality/transcendence; 2) the universal human problematic sin/self is at work in both believers and non-believers, which leaves both suspect with regard to individual and group decisions and distortion of faith traditions. I’ve not yet met a person or group that showed perfect transcendent enlightenment. I doubt I would be fit to recognize it, let alone join in! Even now, I am aware that I only partly know Christ, that I’ve barely scratched the surface of knowing God. So, what I looked to was the “goodness of fit” between the tranforming experience in the religious tradition, and the human problematic as I saw it. Also, I think it is reasonable to expect that the transcendent God would be successful in convincing many people (why look to followers of a small isolated religion?) and would likely use some miracles since most people get confused by intellectual arguments like in philosophy.
Ed,
Once again, thank you for the link. I must admit, I’m a bit confused by your last comment. While you articulate pretty traditional theological language, you seem to be more open to spirituality in general. To some degree I greatly respect that, even if I disagree with your traditional comments. With regards to the AA stuff, do you think that effectiveness of a spiritual dimension to counseling is testimony of anything specific, other than transcendent reality? I’m not sure how materialist I may become, but as of now I can’t deny something more profound than just the physical. I’m curious about your take on all this. Am I correct in thinking that you once walked away from faith a while ago?
I think my perspective derives from being raised by agnostic/atheist parents, so I’ve got a skeptical, “Doubting Thomas” kind of personality. In early adult life, I was confronted by a strong conviction that my materialist/naturalist philosophy did not hold up. So, I did a search through the writings of most of the major world religions, finding some good stuff/bad stuff. It seemed that Christianity was the most convincing, and so I’ve gone along that road. Since, I’ve encountered a number of Christian people who have been absolute idiots, who have really shaken my faith. I always need to re-explore the foundations of my faith when such situtations occur. It is like the community of my faith, me being a social being, is very shaky, but the vertical aspect is more secure. I certainly am not a fundamentalist, but neither can I buy some of the innovative modern interpretations that fly in the face of 2000 years of tradition. I could be on my way toward Catholicism, though many aspects of its creed seem weird. But, the scientific data from the Lourdes Medical Bureau is a very impressive recent discovery on my part, that stands as a major confirmation of the Christian God’s working of the miraculous. (I think I posted the links on your Lent thread. At philaletheia, there is a rather heated discussion of this information on the naturalism, intermission thread). On the other hand, the reports of the near death experiences are strongly in favor of a very broad aspect of spirituality in our world. And, the AA data, for what it is worth, seems pretty non-sectarian, which speaks toward a more general spirituality. So, I guess my “doubting Thomas” personality may keep on staying curious, which I see as a good thing, and I really respect that in you, as well. You seem more curious about the metaphysical and philosophical than me, I like solid data to crunch on, like AA and Lourdes and similar.