I have frequently, and quite hostilely, attacked the idiocies of relying on emotion as a revealer of truth. Whether the truth a person pursues is moral, theological, scientific, or philosophical in a broader sense, emotion cannot determine or discover any truths--except truths about our inner experiences. While I will continue to emphasize this as long as people need to hear it (until they become thoroughly rationalistic), I do not want any readers to mistakenly come to the conclusion that I despise emotion itself or that I have an erroneous theology of emotion, which would be a non sequitur. Thus, I have a strong desire to explain the Christian rationalist position on emotion.
An emotion is a particular mental state marked by a specific sentiment. In this post, I am using the words emotion and feeling interchangeably. Obvious examples of emotions would include anger, fear, joy, sadness, but emotions with potentially more complex and nuanced natures exist: nostalgia, ennui, romantic attraction, sexual attraction, and so on. People can learn from experience just how wide the range and just how deep the impact of emotions can be, though the level of this emotionality can differ dramatically from person to person, just as other personality traits do.
Emotionality, like rationality, sexuality, and other aspects of human nature, is inherently good (Genesis 1:31) when not misused. People can misuse emotions or allow them to seduce them into untrue beliefs, but just as the sinful behaviors of people who claim to be Christians have nothing to do with whether or not Christianity is true, misuse of emotions does not mean that emotions are sinful. This does not follow. Nothing is evil because it can be abused. Logic, friendship, sexuality, money, physical strength, and ambition can be sinfully misused, but they are not evil. In Biblical narratives, Jesus shows outward signs of inward experiences of feelings like sadness (John 11:35). Jesus never belittled human emotional experiences, and neither did Yahweh. God never condemned our emotions; he did not create us sinful and then blame us for the nature he imbued us with. Anyone who says that emotions are sinful according to Biblical Christianity is a liar (Deuteronomy 4:2).
If all humans were to lose their capacity for emotion, they would become, in a sense, beings of blank consciousnesses. They would have lost the experience of things like love and attachment as they previously understood them. Emotions are deeply important to many aspects of human motivation and life. Without them, some people would likely not judge life to be worth living according to their subjective desires. Apart from emotion, humanity could behave in a very different manner! Christians should never demonize emotions, just like they shouldn't demonize other aspects of human nature that God created.
I cherish the feelings of satisfaction, fulfillment, and joy that I derive from my friendships. I love the feeling of excitement I can experience when immersing myself in a video game. I have known deep existential fears. Rationality does not necessarily purge one of feelings, but it can reorient them and stop them from usurping reason's place as revealer of truth. Emotions can tell us nothing about reality except that we experience emotions. Epistemologically, emotions are almost entirely useless. At best they only inform us of certain aspects of our internal mental experiences. My emotionality does not affect my worldview at all--the only thing I believe in because of emotion is that I have emotions. This is not an impossible state to reach, as some irrational minds might suppose.
I despise emotionalism, for I harbor deep hatred for any obstacle that impedes my knowledge of reality. I loathe the way that many people seem to hold to beliefs on grounds of emotional persuasion more than logical proof. This is, Biblically (1 Thessalonians 5:21, Proverbs 19:2) and rationally, inexcusable. But the fallacies, deceptions, and sins of emotionalism do not affect the theological goodness of emotion. God intentionally created humans with the capacity for a variety of deep emotions, and this is good. No rationalist Christian could legitimately come to any other conclusion.
It is logic that proves that this is the correct position on emotion according to Scripture. It is logic that proves that the epistemic uselessness of feelings does not mean they have no metaphysical or theological significance whatsoever. I hope that people become purely rational in their philosophical methodology and conclusions, but I also want them to experience full inner life as God intended. When it comes to epistemology, logic and emotion are bitter enemies, with logic the indomitable victor, but when it comes to other aspects of living human life, emotion is nothing to hate, fear, or treat as insignificant. May all Christians become rationalists, but may they not use fallacies that lead to false conclusions about emotion!
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