Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.1998, Qupperneq 50

Duncan B Forrester
the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve
and obey them.’12 There are, to use the language of Augustine, ordered and dis-
ordered passions. The difference has to do with the goals at which passions are
directed. Passions which are just discharge of emotion and nothing more do not
deserve commendation, although Aristotle was right to suggest that catharsis, the
discharge or purging of emotions of anger, range and so on without damage to
others can have is place. Augustine recognises no less than any Stoic that emo-
tions directed at self-aggrandisment or the fulfilment of purely selfish purposes
are harmful and evil. Emotion that is incurvatus in se is sinful and destructive.
Ordered passions seek a goal outside oneself, and find their ultimate fulfilment
only in God. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, and pass into
the serenity of etemity. Goals matter, and ordered emotions are directed towards
their full satisfaction in God.
God draws us through our passions, rather than our reason, to himself, the
ultimate, all-fulfilling goal; it is not simply a matter of our own choices and
motivation, as St Augustine comments in the sermon form which I have already
quoted:
‘No one can come to me unless the Father draws him’. You must not imagine
you are being drawn against your will, for the mind can also be drawn by love...
It is not enough to be drawn of your own free will, because you can be drawn by
delight as well... If, then, the things that lovers see as the delights and pleasures
of earth can draw them, because it is true that ‘everyone is drawn by his delight’,
then does not Christ draw when he is revealed to us by the Father? What does the
mind desire more eagerly than truth? For what does it have an insatiable appetite,
why is it anxious that its taste for judging the truth should be as healthy as possi-
ble, unless it is that it may eat and drink wisdom, righteousness, truth and eternal
life?13
In the Christian life, and especially through the pastoral care that is exercised
in the church, the passions are not constrained or denied but gently directed to
their true goal, to their ultimate fulfilment and completion. This is the true
therapy of the passions.
Dwelling in Truth
Passion, feeling, emotion are at the heart of theological endeavour. In words
form John’s gospel which should be the motto of any department of Practical
12 D. Hume, A Treatise upon Human Nature. Bk 2, part 3.
13 Augustine, Homilies on St john’s Gospel, 26,4-6.