Affections and Emotions

00:00:00.000 | [music]

00:00:04.720 | Alright, Pastor John, here's a question about emotions and affections.

00:00:08.160 | Are affections more than emotions? Are emotions part of affections?

00:00:13.760 | Are affections totally different than emotions, or are affections the source of

00:00:17.520 | emotions? How would you explain all this?

00:00:19.920 | Asking that question makes it sound like the question is, "What's the difference

00:00:26.640 | between the liver and the kidneys?" Now, what I mean is, there are two objects

00:00:32.480 | out there. One is the liver, one is the kidneys.

00:00:35.840 | Everybody knows the liver if they see it. Everybody knows the kidney if they see it.

00:00:39.920 | And what the question means is, "Tell me the difference between them."

00:00:43.680 | Different function, whatever. That is not what's going on in this question.

00:00:47.920 | There aren't two... There isn't a liver out there called affections and a kidney

00:00:53.280 | out there called emotions. And let's just talk about the differences.

00:00:56.560 | This questioner doesn't know what they are. The question really is, "What should I

00:01:04.720 | mean? What should I refer to when I use the word emotion? What should I refer to

00:01:11.040 | when I use the word affections?" At least that's the way I'm hearing it,

00:01:13.600 | because I don't know what they have in mind when they say emotion and what they

00:01:17.680 | have in mind when they say affections. So I think the best way for me to answer it

00:01:21.920 | is to say, "How do I," and say, "Jonathan Edwards, use the terms?"

00:01:29.040 | And then they can decide if they want to use them that way, because that's what

00:01:32.000 | words are. Words are meant to be assigned to realities, and we assign them

00:01:36.640 | sometimes arbitrarily, and sometimes the community assigns them for us.

00:01:40.880 | But in this case, I think there isn't any clear community that is in English

00:01:47.440 | agreement on precisely what the affections and the emotions refer to.

00:01:51.360 | So according to Edwards, the human soul has two faculties, reason and will.

00:02:00.800 | Not a third one, like feelings or emotions. Reason and will. What those two

00:02:06.160 | faculties do is they perceive and think, that's the first one, and they incline.

00:02:15.200 | They want or don't want. They lean in or lean away. And if you asked them,

00:02:20.640 | "Well, where are the affections in this?" as Edward uses the term, and his

00:02:25.280 | answer is, "The affections are the lively inclinings of the will."

00:02:32.080 | In other words, if the will, like a magnet, really snaps to something,

00:02:37.840 | those are affections. Or if it really recoils from something with hatred,

00:02:42.160 | those are the affections. So affections are not a third faculty of the human

00:02:48.320 | soul. They are the lively actings of the second faculty of the will.

00:02:56.240 | And he distinguishes it from what he calls bodily motions or animal spirits,

00:03:04.640 | like trembling, sweating, twitching, fainting, fluttering of the eyelids,

00:03:13.200 | short breath, you know, that sort of thing. He says those are not

00:03:17.040 | affections. Those are bodily reactions to affections, but they have no

00:03:25.600 | spiritual nature to them at all. Now once you have set it up this way,

00:03:33.600 | Edwards almost never uses the word emotion. I did a word search

00:03:38.000 | looking for it. I could only find one, and that one was used almost synonymously

00:03:45.520 | with the bodily motions. E-motion, the stirring, the shaking of the body.

00:03:52.480 | So the word emotion was not there for Edwards, which means I suspect that in

00:03:57.120 | our common modern language, there would be a large overlap between what

00:04:05.040 | he meant by affections and what we mean by emotions. Gratitude, love,

00:04:11.200 | hatred, desire, and so on. But here's the key question.

00:04:20.240 | Are there natural affections, and are there spiritual affections?

00:04:24.800 | Edwards would say everybody has affections, but they're of no spiritual

00:04:29.200 | worth unless they are spiritual affections, and spiritual affections

00:04:34.080 | are the kind of inclinations toward God and his word and his ways and his

00:04:42.480 | works when we've been born again to love God, delight in God, and praise God.

00:04:49.840 | So the affections of the world are strong, but they're not spiritual. They're

00:04:55.040 | not born of the Holy Spirit. They're not awakened by the new birth, and they're

00:04:58.800 | not affections for God as God, for God as beautiful and holy and satisfying.

00:05:06.800 | And so Edwards and I would say those are the affections we're after,

00:05:12.640 | and I love to quote Edwards. This is one of my favorite quotes as a preacher.

00:05:16.320 | He says, "I think myself in the way of my duty

00:05:20.640 | to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are

00:05:28.160 | affected with nothing but truth and with the affections that are not

00:05:32.640 | disagreeable to the nature of what they're affected with."

00:05:36.400 | So I conclude, Tony, by saying, yes, let's pursue those affections

00:05:43.360 | with all our might, because God is most glorified in us when we're most

00:05:48.160 | affected or satisfied in him. And desiring God exists online to

00:05:54.240 | spread that grand truth. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this

00:05:57.360 | podcast. Please email your questions to us at

00:05:59.360 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org you'll find

00:06:03.360 | thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:06:06.640 | Thanks for listening.

00:06:10.400 | you

00:06:12.480 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Affections and Emotions

Chapters