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Introduction
The concept of the senses in worship is key to much of Don Saliers's thought. Saliers, a
United Methodist theologian, draws our attention to the centrality of our senses to our experience
of worship, and through our experience of worship to its role in forming us in the Christian life.
The term sense in liturgical aesthetics can be used in two distinct ways. First of all, it
may refer to the physiological senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and others. This meaning
of sense is itself important to our participation in worship; indeed, without any of them
many of them as is possible is beneficial to worship. However, this type of sense is not the
This paper discusses the second meaning of the word sense: emotional senses. Also
known as religious affections, these senses involve concepts such as awe or wonder. I will
discuss several throughout the course of this paper, though I will by no means present a
comprehensive list.
explores a theme in what we might call liturgical psychology: the study of the impact that
liturgical rites have on the psychology of the human at worship. Perhaps the key area under
liturgical psychology is liturgical aesthetics. This latter subject is the study of how the outward
manifestation of a ritual impacts its reception by those participating in it. It is within this subject
1 There are other possible sub-disciplines of liturgical psychology. One could discuss the developmental
psychology of worship, where the role of the liturgy as catechesis is related to the spiritual development of a
Christian. One could also discuss behavioral psychology or liturgical idiosyncrasies, which examine the
particular gestures and acts of single worshipers which are not indicated by official rubrics or common practice,
but may have meaning for the one who performs the act. Alongside liturgical psychology one might also find a
liturgical sociology which deals with the impact of liturgy on groups and societies; liturgical archaeology, which
Abbott 2
This paper will investigate Saliers's thought through the course of his writings. It is
impractical to examine every writing of his in the space available. However, I will examine his
To provide a background, however, I will start with the notion of prayer in Karl Barth's
Church Dogmatics. This section will provide both a starting point and a contrast for Saliers's
work. The choice of Barth is indicated because of the influence he has had on Protestant theology
in the latter half of the twentieth century. Thus his work can be conveniently seen as the state of
I will then begin to address Saliers's own work. The first work I intend to look at is an
essay, Prayer and Emotion: Shaping and Expressing Christian Life, 2 dating to 1975. This essay
represents some of Saliers's early thoughts on the subject. I will then investigate four of Saliers's
books: The Soul in Paraphrase,3 Worship and Spirituality,4 Worship as Theology,5 and Worship
Come to Its Senses.6 These four books, in my opinion, form the core of Saliers's work.
Karl Barth
Karl Barth may be the single most influential twentieth century Protestant theologian.
One can see his thought as a kind of default position for much of contemporary Protestant
theology. This role does not mean that any given theologian necessarily agrees with Barth on all
issues where he or she does not explicitly disagree with him. Rather, Barth's work could be said
to represent the state of the question in Protestant theology for any substantial issue which he
deals with the material remains of past liturgical practice; and liturgical politics, which addresses the power
relations among those involved in worship.
2 Don Saliers, Prayer and Emotion: Shaping and Expressing Christian Life, Worship 49:8 (1975), 461-475
3 Don Saliers, The Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and the Religious Affections (Akron: OSL Publications, 2002);
originally published 1980.
4 Don Saliers, Worship and Spirituality, 2nd edition, (Akron: OSL Publications, 1996); originally published 1984.
5 Don Saliers, Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994).
6 Don Saliers, Worship Come to Its Senses (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996).
Abbott 3
addresses, unless and until there is a clear consensus otherwise. This statement requires
substantially more nuance than I can give it in this paper. Essentially, what I am saying is that
Barth can be taken as a proxy for the general consensus of Protestant theologians after his work
It is in this role that Barth is used in this paper. It would be impossible to determine
whether Barth's work on prayer and emotion was also Saliers's before the thought which led to
the latter's own writings. But Barth's section on prayer in the Church Dogmatics7 remains useful
as a depiction of the canvas upon which Saliers paints his own views.
Barth's discussion of prayer is not focused on the senses as such. Barth does discuss some
senses which in his view can be involved in prayer: need, 8 supplication,9 thankfulness, and
repentance.10 For Barth, however, these senses as motivation for prayer are less important than
than prayer as a way for the human to stand before God in freedom.11
However, after discussing prayer, Barth extends his discussion to worship. He subsumes
prayer to worship, which he defines as turning to God as such, quietness before His deity and its
majesty, contemplation of its height and profundity, the expression of full, humbly marvelling
Notice the several senses which Barth has incorporated within his definition of worship:
senses of quietness, contemplation, humility, marvel, joy, terror, surprise, and submissiveness.
Barth leaves these senses relatively unexplored, as his emphasis throughout the Church
7 Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Creation (Church Dogmatics, Volume II, 4), translated A. T. Mackay et al.
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1961)
8 Ibid., 91.
9 Ibid., 93.
10 Ibid., 99.
11 Ibid., 91.
12 Ibid., 100.
Abbott 4
Dogmatics is on God, and man's relationship with God, rather than on human beings: on
The use of man in that last sentence is not an accident. I used it not merely because
Barth does not use inclusive language.13 But an examination of this list of senses suggests a male
bias in his understanding of worship. I divide Barth's senses into two main groups: those which
are neutral regarding the gender of the worshiper (neutral senses), and those which imply that the
The first group of neutral senses includes marvel, joy, and surprise. These three senses
have no historical association with either gender to my knowledge. To feel them while
worshiping God does not indicate any kind of gender relationship between the worshiper and
God. Contemplation seems to fit here as well, but it carries a little more baggage. If
contemplation is understood as remaining quiet in the face of a superior mystery, then it aligns
quite closely to quietness and thus belongs to the second group. If, however, the intellectual
activity of contemplation holding a mystery in mind, examining it for what can be understood
or accepted is emphasized, then contemplation does not fit with the second group. Rather it is a
sense which seems to pattern as a stereotypically male activity, being of the mind, yet classically
one which has been assigned as a chief activity of nuns within sexist structures, and therefore in
some sense stereotypically female. Rather than being neutral, contemplation thus understood is
ambigeneric.
appropriate for men, and only men. I prefer this term to male or masculine because these
terms would tend to imply that macho characteristics are normative for men, which I would
deny. These macho senses are actually stereotypically female: quietness, humility,
submissiveness, and terror. They are classified as macho senses not because men are expected to
exhibit them in everyday life, but because they imply that the worshiper is a macho man.
The key sense to understand this dynamic is terror. If we stand in terror before God, do
we not imply that we have a God with a quick temper, who tolerates no disrespect and resorts to
violence when challenged? Such a God represents the macho ideal. Indeed, in the case of macho
men encountering this macho God, a kind of macho hierarchy becomes apparent, whereby those
lower on the hierarchy are to act effeminately towards those higher on the hierarchy. Macho God
thus stands at the top of this hierarchy, followed by macho men, and then by women. 14 As such,
macho men who ordinarily exhibit more macho traits outside worship are supposed to exhibit
more effeminate traits when encountering the macho God. Women, who in the macho worldview
already exhibit these traits outside worship, need not be told to exhibit quietness, humility, or
submissiveness as senses of worship, since these senses would be considered to be their daily life
state.
As a result, identifying these senses in the definition of worship implies that worship is
for macho men and analyzed from a macho man's perspective. The neutral senses are naturally
unable to bring balance to the macho senses. As a result, Barth's definition of worship is
inherently problematic for all who are not macho men. 15 Thus the state of the question of the
14 What about non-macho men? Such are considered aberrations. Either they should conform to the macho men, or
they are effectively considered women by their own choice of supposedly effeminate behavior.
15 Are there macho women? No doubt there are some women who exhibit macho traits. In a sense, Barth's
definition of worship might not be troubling for them. However, it seems unlikely that macho men would
actually tolerate macho women to be so in worship, and therefore the role that they would play by virtue of being
macho ends up being the role they would play if they were not. (The main distinction here would not be in senses
Abbott 6
senses in worship before Saliers is one of serious infiltration by macho ideology dictating the
pattern of senses.
In his article Prayer and Emotion, Saliers begins a move beyond Barth's definition.
Saliers's essay is not a response to Barth (who is never cited). Rather, Saliers's strategy takes him
beyond Barth. Saliers's concern is with the human at worship, not with the God worshiped.
Furthermore, his concern in this article is not with defining anything. Thus he does not try to
give a list of the emotions16 involved in worship (though he does give a few examples).
Instead, Saliers is more concerned with how these emotions relate to worship and to each
other. For the former, Saliers notes that true prayer does not come from forcing one to feel the
way that the prayer indicates. Rather, if one's deeper emotional attitudes are lived out in life, and
one's life is in accord with what one prays, then one's prayer is true. 17 The language of Christian
prayer is emotional language, and Saliers gives several examples taken from the Psalms. 18
Furthermore, Saliers distinguishes from the deeper emotions, associated with our very existence,
from surface level emotions. The former gratitude, heartbreak, despair, hope, and others are
those associated with prayer. The latter, as surface-level phenomena, are ultimately only the
emotions and prayer, Saliers leaves the list of senses open. Thus the difficulty which Barth ran
so much as in liturgical roles.) It is only outside worship that the distinction between macho women and non-
macho women would be viable.
16 Saliers uses the term emotion here to refer to what later will be affection and still later sense.
17 Saliers, Prayer and Emotion, 465.
18 Ibid. 466.
19 Ibid., 468.
Abbott 7
anthropology, rather, is an anthropology of the heart, concerned with how the emotions shape
lives, but not one that makes a judgment on which senses are obligatory for everyone.
Saliers's book The Soul in Paraphrase picks up on the earlier article's relations between
the emotions (now also called affections) and prayer. The first four chapters each discuss this
theme.
The first chapter sees Saliers take as his point of departure Jonathan Edwards's work
Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. The key insight that Saliers picks up from Edwards is
one we have seen already in the article just discussed: emotions are dispositional in nature. They
shape a person's will, providing the motivation for that person's acts. These emotions endure, not
Saliers then uses this conception of emotion as the basis for an anthropology of emotion
which challenges the Western idea of reason contrasting with emotion. 21 Emotions are often seen
as passions, out of control base forces we must control. Again picking up an insight from
Edwards, as well as one by Richard R. Niebuhr, Saliers distinguishes between passions such as
these and affections, which give us a center and can act as described above.22
In the third chapter Saliers argues that prayer in all its forms, particularly in its
communal forms, both shapes and expresses persons in fundamental emotions.23 This thesis
becomes the basis for Saliers's exploration of some particular religious affections in chapter four.
These religious affections are gratitude, repentance, joy, suffering, and love of God and neighbor.
acknowledgement of our dependence on God and our having received gifts freely given by God.
But because most of the gifts we receive from our fellow humans come with strings, it is difficult
to comprehend fully what it means that God gives unconditionally. 24 Gratitude cannot be merely
a mood, however. Saliers points out that expressing gratitude requires the engagement of our
Saliers next discusses repentance, which he links with fear of God. Saliers understands
the difficulties which are involved in the concept of fear of God. He handles these difficulties by
defining fear of God not as something which causes us to cower in a corner or obey whims to
avoid punishment. Rather, he defines fear of God as respect and reverence due to the Lord of all
things as ruler and sovereign.26 It should be linked not to Barth's sense of terror but to his sense
of humility. Our humility brings to mind our failings: Terror and cowering, crushing guilt are
ruled out as appropriate affections in this kind of holy fear. Respect, humility, and grief over
one's sins are ruled into the grammar of this affection. 27 Thus fear of God lays the seeds for
repentance, not to avoid punishment, but because of awareness that we need to repent.
In the next section of this chapter Saliers discusses both joy and suffering. Saliers points
out that Christian joy, following St. Paul, is constant, regardless of circumstances. 28 But for that
very reason it cannot be merely a surface passion.29 This joy ultimately overcomes suffering by
24 Ibid., 44-45. Saliers is operating here with a conception of language about God which I find most congenial.
When we say that God gives us a gift, we understand that based on what we mean when we say that a person
gives us a gift. Thus language about God acquires its meaning from similar language about human beings. This
dynamic is the source of the many difficulties regarding Father language for God recognized by numerous
thinkers. Ultimately the direction should ideally be reversed: we should give as God gives; we should be fathers
(and mothers) as God is a father (and a mother). The direction which Saliers takes is the semantic direction, by
which we understand what we mean by language about God; the reverse direction might be thought of as the
ethical or normative direction, by which we model our behavior on God's behavior.
25 Ibid., 45.
26 Ibid., 48-49
27 Ibid., 51
28 Ibid., 53.
29 Ibid., 54.
Abbott 9
pulling us away from the trials of our lives to an appreciation of Christ's eschatological victory.30
The final affection Saliers describes is love of God and neighbor. For him, this dual love
is the end of prayer. The other affections allow us to love, and through this love our actions are
shaped.31
It may be disturbing to see fear of God make a reappearance among Saliers's affections.
But as noted above, this fear of God is about humility, not terror. Terror is the key link in
establishing Barth's macho-normative conception of worship. Without terror, other elements are
open to a reinterpretation away from macho norms. Humility thus can still be rescued. In
Saliers's book humility results from the comparison of one's self to God, not to other people. In
the end it must be admitted that Saliers does not address the concerns of those for whom humility
In Worship and Spirituality Saliers shifts focus from the affections themselves to the role
of symbols in liturgical life. His analysis of various aspects of symbols and how they work do
not concern us here. Rather, he makes one critical point which is relevant to the discussion of
religious affections:
For now, suffice it to say that these hidden languages [of symbols] enable us to
experience an emotional intensity that transforms what we speak and what we do
with the signs. So the quality of love, care, and hospitality at eucharist or in a foot
washing, for example, creates powerful silences and spaces for discernment. The
loving gesture speaks, but faithful and attentive participation in these languages
30 Ibid., 55.
31 Ibid., 57.
32 I can see two possible ways. First is via the doctrine of the imago Dei, which would serve as a reminder that
although we are not God, we are not entirely nothing. We are not God, but we have some of God's worth. A
second is via the full form of the command to love one's neighbor: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
While for many this means not less than one's self, for others it will be a reminder not to love one's neighbor
more than one's self. Humility is thus required towards God, but not necessarily towards others. Indeed, if the
issue is seeing others as superior, then the command to love neighbor requires a certain amount of pride.
Abbott 10
First, note that the idea of commitment to the realities symbolized recurs from his
previous work. In The Soul in Paraphrase this concept was understood as the dispositional
nature of emotions forming the basis of our acts. Here they form the basis for faithful and
attentive participation in liturgical symbolic action. Thus a flow is established, from the deep-
But there is also a counterflow. The enactment of the symbols plays out in liturgical
participation. This participation itself shapes our affections. The whole forms a feedback loop.
Bad symbolic actions leads to limited or bad participation, which then malforms our religious
affections. Our malformed affections then leads to limited or bad participation, which
perpetuates, or even worsens, bad symbolic actions (a vicious circle). The opposite is true as
well: good symbolic actions lead to good participation and then good religious affections, which
flow out in good participation and then to good symbolic action (a virtuous circle).
This dynamic is core to the concerns of liturgical aesthetics. More than making liturgy
pretty, proper liturgical aesthetics34 allows for the virtuous circle variant of the above dynamic.
Indeed, one with properly formed religious affections will call for proper liturgical aesthetics if
Notice that missing from this discussion is any mention of validity, licitness, or even
efficacy. The concerns of the vicious and virtuous circles are not with whether a sacramental (or
other) reality is theologically understood to be present, or whether a given form is permitted for a
33 Saliers, Worship and Spirituality, 32.
34 It is beyond the scope of this paper to say what is and is not proper liturgical aesthetics. For our purposes, we
can define them in a circular fashion: proper liturgical aesthetics are those which form proper religious
affections. Ultimately experience may be the only guide, and what constitutes proper liturgical aesthetics in a
certain liturgical tradition or context may not in another.
Abbott 11
given action.35 These classic concerns of liturgical theology are certainly important and have
their place in discussions. But they are about how God relates to worship. Liturgical aesthetics is
about how we humans relate to worship. In the end, it is concerned not so much with whether
grace is present but with how easy it is for worshipers to grasp that grace and incorporate it in
their lives. The goal of any grace given in a liturgical act is the reform of the religious affections
of those who receive that grace. Saliers here gives us the human side of this dynamic.
In Worship and Theology Saliers moves from affections relating to liturgical performance
and aesthetics to relating religious affections to the Christian life and Christian ethics. 36 While in
previous works of his this relationship has been mentioned, in Worship and Theology the
emphasis is shifted: instead of affections being discussed as grounding actions, actions are
discussed as being grounded in affections. Essentially, actions are promoted to the subject of the
Saliers discusses the affective basis of Christian ethics in chapter 11 of this book. As seen
in Worship and Spirituality he shows that the liturgy shapes the affections. But now these
affections shaped by the liturgy themselves become our actions: The Christian life in the world
can be characterized as a set of affections and virtues.38 Thus the ethics that arises from religious
affections is a kind of virtue ethics. And Saliers notes a limit of such a type of ethics: they do
35 Also missing is any concept of ex opere operato. I suspect that ex opere operantis is lurking here beneath the
surface, though the link is beyond the scope of this paper.
36 Ethics rather than moral theology is the term Saliers uses. In my experience ethics or Christian ethics is
preferred among Protestants, moral theology among Catholics. Any subtle difference between these two terms
is not relevant to our topic.
37 This promotion is akin to turning a sentence from active voice to passive voice. The meaning of the sentence
remains the same, but the emphasis shifts from the agent (original subject) to the patient (original object).
38 Saliers, Worship as Theology, 174.
Abbott 12
not offer a solution to every ethical dilemma.39 But the point of virtue or character ethics, I
believe, is that instead of providing solutions, it forms a person to be able to find solutions
Saliers notes another limit to a virtue ethics based on religious affections: self-deception
due to human fallibility.40 As such, the affections are not infallible guides to Christian action.
This limit is of substance. Saliers moves his discussion almost immediately to the need for prayer
to be connected to involvement in the world. However, I want to remain here at this point, as it is
an important one. The self-deception resulting from human fallibility means that one cannot be
absolutely certain about one's formation. It requires a lifetime of forming one's affections
properly to sort out whether one truly is acting according to proper religious affections.
Saliers essentially recognizes such with his discussion of authentic love. Only as time
refines the love between two people love which is itself an affection, and a relationship, though
not a shallow feeling can the love be sorted out from infatuation. We grow in love through our
lifetime.41 But without this lifetime of experience bonding two people together self-deception can
All of this discussion of liturgy shaping affections for ethical living can give rise to the
idea that the purpose of liturgy is ethical formation. Saliers cautions us against this idea. Liturgy
does form us ethically, and therefore we must take care to ensure that it forms us properly.
However, to reduce liturgy to ethical formation loses its essential character as praise and
39 Ibid., 175.
40 Ibid., 177.
41 Ibid., 178.
42 Ibid., 188.
Abbott 13
concerns which leave the Church struggling to adapt to the culture when it subsequently
changes.43 As a result, the proper formation of our religious affections, carried out through time,
Saliers's appreciation of the religious affections in this section of Worship and Theology is
thus focused on their role in shaping a Christian's ethical living, but refuses to reduce them to a
purely instrumental role. Rather, it is only through being what they are in themselves that the can
With his book Worship Come to Its Senses Saliers returns to a description of the religious
affections themselves, now going under the name of senses. In this book he focuses on four
senses: awe, delight, truthfulness, and hope. These four are chosen because Saliers sees them as
The first of these senses is the sense of awe. Saliers specifies this as awe in the presence
of God. He discusses how we often associate awe in worship with the highest liturgical
forms: Eastern Orthodoxy, Tridentine Catholicism, or Anglo-Catholicism. But awe need not be
In the search to recover awe in our liturgies, Saliers suggests that we look beyond
worship to recover a sense of awe in our lives. The first example he gives of awe in life is awe in
nature. He recalls staring at the Milky Way in the sky as a child after having learned about
galaxies in school. He suggests that this sense of awe is most natural in children, but can come to
43 Ibid., 189.
44 Saliers, Worship Come to Its Senses, 14.
45 Ibid., 20.
Abbott 14
anyone willing to be open to awe arising from nature.46 It is this sense of awe that gives
Eucharistic Prayer C of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church its striking
keynotes.
After discussing what we might describe as awe of creation, Saliers moves on to what he
calls awe of destruction. Death and destruction, especially on a large scale, can evoke the same
awe as the majestic scale of the universe. 47 In both cases the power involved overwhelms us; we
stand amazed before forces of a scale beyond what we feel capable of.
Under the category of awe of destruction Saliers also notes the awe we feel when
someone dies. The transition from living to dead brings us to face a liminal state beyond which
we cannot go.48
Saliers then goes on to suggest that we need to bring these senses of awe to our worship.
Without them our liturgies will remain somehow disconnected from us, regardless of what
shapes or styles we might use in them. The sense of awe comes from the various non-verbal
aspects of worship.49
Saliers gives five points at which the sense of awe in everyday life may transfer to
worship. The first of these for him is the natural world, as suggested above. This connection may
be embodied when worship takes place surrounded by the natural environment. 50 The second
point comes from science, in particular cosmology and particle physics. In these disciplines we
constantly face the limits our knowledge, which can bring amazement at the created universe. 51
The third point is in the face of death, when the connection between funeral and baptism is
46 Ibid., 21-22.
47 Ibid., 22.
48 Ibid., 23.
49 Ibid., 23-24.
50 Ibid., 27.
51 Ibid., 27.
Abbott 15
brought to the fore.52 The fourth point is the third one's opposite: new birth. The wonder of a
newly born infant can inspire awe at God's grace. 53 Saliers's final point of contact between the
awe of life and worship takes place at blessings. He particularly describes services of healing,
but this principle could be extended to include other blessings at important life moments:
The next sense which Saliers discusses is the sense of delight. This sense of delight may
seem strange, for those who associate delight with pleasure and pleasure with sin. But Saliers
intends no such sequence. Rather, delight is something else: Delight in the things of God is
Saliers associates delight with affections he has discussed in earlier works. First he
associates delight with gratitude, noting that Paul's command to rejoice always invokes
gratitude to God for God's delight in us, responding thereby with our delight. 56 He also associates
delight with joy. These two senses he associates particularly with certain festivals, but also notes
The third sense Saliers discusses in Worship Come to Its Senses is the sense of truth. Like
delight, this sense may seem strange. In this case, it may seem strange because we are not used to
thinking of truth as a sense, but as a property some given proposition might have. Truth is
52 Ibid., 27-28.
53 Ibid., 28.
54 Ibid., 28-29.
55 Ibid., 47.
56 Ibid., 40-41.
57 Ibid., 43.
Abbott 16
Yet for Saliers, truth in worship is connected deeply with emotional states. In his view,
truth gets obscured through a steady diet of praise and thanksgiving. 58 The antidote to this
problem is the recovery of lamentation, confession, and testimony.59 What these three have in
common is a commitment to face the truth about our broken world. Instead of using praise and
thanksgiving as a way to retreat from reality, these force us to take up the world as we find it and
The final sense Saliers discusses is the sense of hope. Saliers contrasts hope with
optimism, noting that Christian hope relies on the coming of divine grace while optimism
believes that through our own efforts we will make life better.60 He claims that hope depends
upon memory, and that even laments, so easily seen as words of despair, imply the hope that
Saliers states that hope is demanding, and that as a result many churches prefer not to
face it. Hope is demanding, he says, because it requires us to move beyond our own
preoccupations to look at the needs of the world. Hope demands that our worship not merely
focus on our own communal life, but that it open ourselves to the needs of the entire world.62
On the other hand, the church also faces a temptation to associate hope with a realm
beyond our own, in contradiction to scripture and tradition. Christian hope is not merely hope for
pie in the sky when I die but also includes hope for a better world here on Earth: both are
necessary.63
58 Ibid., 50.
59 Ibid., 56.
60 Ibid., 67.
61 Ibid., 68-69.
62 Ibid., 71.
63 Ibid., 72.
Abbott 17
These four senses form quite a different assemblage from what we have seen earlier.
Gone entirely are the macho-normative aspects of Barth. One might note that many of the neutral
aspects of Barth's definition of worship have survived. Marvel has become awe, as has
contemplation. Joy has been incorporated into delight. Even surprise might be seen underneath
awe, delight, and hope. But the neglect of the other aspects allows Saliers to escape from
presuming a certain type of human at worship as normal, thereby relegating others to the
margins. Saliers's anthropology here is very much present, but allows for far greater variation
Conclusion
This paper has explored the question of religious emotions, affections, and senses through
the career of Don Saliers. It started with an examination of Karl Barth's conception of prayer,
looking for an initial position against which to measure Saliers's thought. It noted that Barth's
definition of worship incorporated several emotions, but that these added up to a presumption of
a macho God before which normally macho men must turn their behavior around to act more
effeminate.
It noted that Saliers at first avoided making an authoritative list of affections. This
strategy avoided the flaws of Barth's approach and left open the list of religious affections. Thus
his essay Prayer and Emotion represents the theoretically largest collection of senses; any
number of affections could be added to the list without affecting this essay's argument.
In a very real sense, Saliers's later work did nothing to change this situation. Worship
Come to Its Senses postulated four particular senses as foundational for worship, but did not rule
out others in secondary roles. Worship and Theology and Worship and Spirituality were
Abbott 18
concerned with the relationship of the senses to Christian ethics and liturgical symbols and
aesthetics, respectively. The Soul in Paraphrase has its own list of affections. But it also contains
the most explicit statement that the religious affections cannot be reduced to a (possibly infinite)
list: In the final analysis, neither God nor the one who prays can be analyzed into a discrete
series of attributes.64
It turns out that the key word in that statement is discrete. A discrete list may be be
infinite, but if it is, it is countably infinite. Essentially, anything that is countable can be paired
off with integers, themselves a discrete list. But real numbers are continuous, and Georg Cantor
showed that any pairing of real numbers with integers will miss some real numbers, no matter
how long the list is made.65 If the one who prays cannot be analyzed into a discrete series of
attributes, it follows that the series of attributes is not discrete but continuous. It would therefore
be impossible to form any complete list of these attributes, because any such list could be
Among these attributes are the religious affections. It does not necessarily follow from
the fact that the attributes of the one who prays is continuous and therefore uncountably infinite
that the religious affections are as well. The integers, after all, are a subset of the real numbers,
and they are, by definition, countable. It does not even follow that the number of religious
affections is infinite.
But, in the end, that is the more likely case. If the religious affections are uncountably
infinite, how could this be? The most logical case would be for a parallel to the real numbers:
shades of difference could always be split, with a new one discovered in between any two.
64 Saliers, The Soul in Paraphrase, 58.
65 For a discussion of Cantor's proof, see Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
(New York: Basic, 1999), 421-424.
66 A similar argument could be made to show that the attributes of God similarly could never be listed.
Abbott 19
But if this situation is the case, then the differences would rapidly become more subtle
than one could notice. And even if the affections are only countably infinite, they encounter a
problem which the numbers do not. With mathematical notation, it is possible in theory to
represent any number one might need. But there is no equivalent for religious affections; we
must use words, and no actually usable human language can have an infinite vocabulary. Thus
even if the actual number of religious affections is infinite, the effective number will be finite.
The catch is that, whether continuous or discreet, as long as any gaps between the religious
affections are small, it is possible that the affections may be divided among words differently
from language to language or person to person, or even from work to work from a single person.
This fact helps explain the differences between the affections of The Soul in Paraphrase
and Worship Come to Its Senses. Sixteen years separate their publishing, and both their concerns
and contexts will differ as a result. As we saw, some of the affections of the earlier work came
under certain of the senses of the later. Technically, this is an inconsistency; but it is an
explainable one. Furthermore, it need not be the result of development or change in Saliers's
thought (though these possibilities cannot be ruled out), but only of shifts of emphasis.
This discussion of the countability of the affections raises a question: are there any
affections which Saliers has missed? What other senses develop within us, being trained through
This paper lacked the space to pursue Saliers's thought beyond 1996. Further research
could extend the discussion beyond Worship Come to Its Senses to engage Saliers's later writings.
In addition, further work could be done to contextualize Saliers's thought. This paper examined
Barth. But more work could be done to examine the relevant section of Paul Tillich's Systematic
Abbott 20
Theology. Further Protestant thinkers who might be brought into the dialogue include Reinhold
and H. Richard Niebuhr. Also valuable, should a general survey be intended, would be Catholic
An additional question which one might consider is how Saliers's thought has been
developed by his students. In what directions have people taken his thought and ideas? Saliers
has indicated the relationships between religious affections and ethics, symbols, and liturgical
aesthetics. But are there further aspects of the Christian life which the affections shape?
Abbott 21
Bibliography
Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Creation (Church Dogmatics, Volume II, 4), translated A. T. Mackay
et al. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1961)
Hofstadter, Douglas R. Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic, 1999.
Saliers, Don. Beauty and Terror. Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 66:2 (Fall 2002),
181-191.
----. The Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and the Religious Affections. Akron: OSL Publications,
2002.
----. Worship and Spirituality. 2nd edition. Akron: OSL Publications, 1996.
----. Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994.
----. Worship Come to Its Senses. Nashville: Abingdon, 1996.