Psalm Superscriptions: Part III. The Paradox of Healing: From the “stoa” of ancient Greece through Athanasius and Calvin into the world of modern neuroscience

The Death of Seneca by Manuel Dominguez Sanchez, 1871. Museo del Prado

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Review

In the last writing, we referenced an extraordinary statement from Calvin’s Commentary on the Psalms, which is worth quoting again:

"I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately,

'An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul';

For there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.

Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities—in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated" (p. 19-20).

In this way, the Superscriptions are a doorway into the whole corpus of the Psalms, offering us

“an important key which unlocks a world of understanding in the Psalter and of the days of its composition.”

And with this door unlocked, we found that, while other books of the Bible contain God’s words “to us,” the Psalms contain the prophets' words “to God.”

With their words, the human heart is laid open before the Divine.

And through the Psalmist’s own struggle with doubt, anger and fear, we are "drawn” by these deep emotions “to the examination” of ourselves, where we allow our "lurking places" to be discovered and our hearts to be brought into the light.

The Psalms, borne out of the hardships and trials of life’s experiences (ex-peirázō), not only reveal our own sicknesses and infirmities, but lead our heart beyond them—or, more accurately, through them!—to the cure.

Yet the question before us in this final section is very simply,

“But How?”

Feeling our emotions as a critical first step towards healing: “Affect labeling” and the RVLPC

In embracing the entire spectrum of human emotions that exists within the complex architecture of the human heart, the Psalms enable us to first admit that we actually have emotions.

We are human beings; not human doings; not religious robots; not evangelical automatons.

Our brains do not function as religious processors that input the information of Scripture into our cerebral hard drives, that then work like a computer algorithm to output a course of action.

That is because there is simply no way to bypass the essential human element of feeling and emotion; for, as the world of neuroscience is now demonstrating, our ability to actually feel our emotions is critical to the healing process.

“Affect labeling,” which is simply naming what we feel, acts on a neurobiological level to increase activity in the Right Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex (RVLPC), which is the area of the brain that controls.

And this process, fascinatingly enough, becomes the means by which we regulate ourselves in the midst of life’s slings and arrows…yet, as it were, without even knowing it:

“Putting feelings into words, or ‘affect labeling,’ can attenuate our emotional experiences.

However, unlike explicit emotion regulation techniques, affect labeling may not even feel like a regulatory process as it occurs.

Nevertheless, research investigating affect labeling has found it produces a pattern of effects like those seen during explicit emotion regulation, suggesting affect labeling is a form of implicit emotion regulation” [Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling as Implicit Emotion Regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116-124].

In other words, naming what we’re actually experiencing becomes the very means of regulating how we experience it.

But isn’t that counterintuitive??

Teachings from the Roman stoa

This is definitely interesting since we may think of this in precisely the opposite way. Namely, when we’re faced with hardship, chaos or loss, we should become like the Greek founder of stoicism, Zeno of Citium. Having himself lost everything as a Phoenician merchant in a wreck off the coast of Greece, Zeno learned to regulate his swirling emotions through newfound philosophical and psychoanalytic powers.

Taking these insights to the porches ('stoa') of the arcade, his teachings later took on the name, Stoicism.

Do not fear what you can lose.

Do not desire what you do not have.

Do not stress over things outside of your control.

Seek virtue, not pleasure.

Use reason rather than possessions.

Yes, excellent.

But what were its fruits?

Which takes us into the history of Rome…

The History of the "Golden Age" of Stoicism: From Caligula to Seneca and Nero

And we should note here that the era of Jesus and Paul was simultaneously the "Golden Age" of Stoicism where its philosophy became the unofficial religion of the Roman elite (From Seneca [4 BC – 65 AD] through Epictetus [50 – 135 AD] to Marcus Aurelius [121 – 180 AD], etc).

But we should also note here that Seneca…was himself the tutor and advisor to the Roman emperor Nero (r. 54-68 AD).

And how did that go?

Well, Nero, his pupil, ordered him to commit suicide in 65 AD (which was the inspiration for the image at the beginning of the article).

And what about Marcus Aurelius, Plato’s Philosopher King (Republic Book V.473d)? How was the Empire managed in his reign, as Christianity was literally exploding at the seams?

Without going into great historical detail, we can simply remember that it was under Marcus Aurelius that Justin Martyr was put to death through decapitation (c. 165 AD). Under Marcus Aurelius were the horrific persecutions at Lyons and Vienne (177 AD).

But this is all explicit. It is all studied and learned.

The pathway above, however, is implicit. It something which happens in real time. It is something which occurs when we are simply being honest.

No self-projection; no mental gymnastics; no philosophical brilliance; just honest.

In the same article, the authors write,

“Successful emotion regulation might be thought of as an escape from something that elicits an emotional response in us, eliminating our feelings by avoiding or changing the way we think about the eliciting stimulus.

We probably would not think that focusing on our feelings without trying to change them could achieve the same effect.

Emerging evidence depicts a surprising kind of emotion regulation: putting feelings into words…can itself be a form of implicit emotion regulation.”

One more neuroscientific insight

Even further, this process of naming our feelings acts to inhibit the outflow from the Amygdala (our emotional center) in a way that puts a neural brake on our flight-or-flight response (Koreki et. al. Epilepsia, 2020).

Or, to put in another way, our Amygdala which continually scans our environment for threats is like a smoke detector. When it "smells smoke" (detecting danger, stress, or a painful memory), it sounds the alarm in a way that triggers our fight-or-flight response, pumping adrenaline and cortisol throughout our body. Over the long term, as an entire other body of scientific literature has now clearly demonstrated, this neurophysiologic state of chronic stress has absolutely devastating effects on literally every organ system in our body [Though we do not have time to delve into this here, we will, no doubt, return to this phenomenon in future writings].

People, however, who can accurately perceive and “feel” their emotional state (interoception) have higher rates of recovery from chronic pain syndromes than those who are "alexithymic" and unable to identify their emotions. That is to say, by recognizing and admitting the emotional reality of what we are experiencing in all its frustration, misery and even horror, we can break out of the suffering loops of our pain pathways.

But to go, now, entirely beyond the confines of neuroscience altogether, it is a phenomenon that happens when we are internalizing the Gospel.

Or more simply, in the words of one pastor,

“If you can’t feel it then God can’t heal it.”

Which is to say, if we can’t actually admit that we’re angry or hurt or depressed or in a state of despair or spiritually cold or hard-hearted, we won’t look to the Lord for a new revelation of His healing mercies.

What we need, to quote the same pastor again, is

“not more information, but revelation.”

And what revelation does God gives us in the experience of suffering?

A question that takes us back to the book of Job, a masterpiece of wisdom literature that takes us from a simplistic understanding of suffering to a profound, lived encounter with the Divine.

The pathway of Job: Admit. Embrace. Lament.

And this actually makes a good deal sense of the literary structure of Job. As an inclusio, it begins and ends with Hebrew prose (Ch 1-2 & Ch 42) where the historical events of Job’s life are detailed for the reader—first the devastating, unspeakable losses then the glorious restoration.

Yet—and this is critical—the 40 chapters in between these two book ends are composed, not of dogmatic prose about the nature of suffering, but rather chapter after chapter of poetry.

Initially there is the starkness and blackness and brutal intensity of Job’s initial losses. No preparation. When tragedy strikes, he first primes his mind within the frame of the perfect providence of God:

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

And when his body is next struck from the “sole of his foot to the crown of his head” with an unspeakably painful disease, he again responds by placing himself entirely within the frame of God’s sovereign will, asking,

“Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10).

Then, only after admitting the reality of his devastating losses; only after processing his own horrific bodily suffering does the real body of the book begin. That is to say, this work of Hebrew wisdom literature does not immediately close after Job’s heroic declarations of faith in the opening two chapters.

It goes on…and on…and on…

For 40 more chapters, in fact.

Yet, in the horror and the pain and the loss, we find with Job that JHWH

“uncovers deep things out of darkness,
And brings the shadow of death to light” (Job 12:22).

And in the middle we find a great hymn to Wisdom.

God does not answer Job’s "why" with prose logic; He answers with poetic imagery of the cosmos (Pleiades, Leviathan, etc., etc.).

A person; not a computer

The Scriptures do not bypass, but sanctify, human emotion.

And the Psalms that arise out of the depths of pain and terror, betrayal and despair, become the “oil and wine” which the Lord pours into our wounds.

For in admitting our emotions, it does not mean that we will then become immediately swallowed up in a tidal wave of feelings. Rather, it enables us to confront them in our conscious-level mind so that they will no longer continue operating unchecked in the darkness of our sub-conscious.

For

“The unfolding of Your words gives light” (Ps 119:130).

And moving from David to the Apostle Paul,

“We have also a more sure word of prophecy (prophētikós lógos);

whereunto you do well in fully devoting yourself to it (proséchō),

as unto a light that shines in a dark place,

until the day dawn,

and the Morning Star arise in your hearts” (I Pet 1:19).

And still more,

“For God, who said,

'Let light shine out of darkness,'

has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in

the face of Jesus Christ" (Cor 4:6).

It is by this revelation that the

“lurking places discovered,

and the heart is brought into the light,

where it is purged from that most baneful infection, hypocrisy.”

And by internalizing

“these inspired compositions that men will be most effectually

awakened to a sense of their maladies,

and, at the same time, instructed in seeking remedies for their cure” (Calvin’s Preface, p. 20).

Where these “inspired compositions” lead us: A paradox of healing

Our eyes being enlightened and our understanding being awakened to the reality both of our heart’s disease and its remedy, the Psalms then lead us into the pathway of healing.

Yet not one that would, at first sight, readily appeal to us; for in Calvin’s words, they will

“principally teach and train us to bear the cross.”

For it is only at the Cross, where we can come to experience a profound paradox:

The Cross, a place of excruciating suffering;

The Cross, a place of violence;

The Cross, a place of death;

will become for us

The one place where the infinite suffering from man’s sin meets the perfect, suffering heart of God’s infinite Love;

The one place where the endless violence of man’s rebellion is finally overcome by the purity of God’s inexhaustible Grace;

The one place where, in short, death is finally

“swallowed up in victory” (I Cor 15:54).

A paradox of suffering

We will there experience a twin paradox to that of healing. When we follow the footsteps of our Lord up to the Cross; when we give

“ourselves entirely to God, leaving Him to govern us, and to dispose of our life

according to His will,”

then even

“the afflictions which are the bitterest and most severe to our nature,”

will begin to become so transformed by His Grace that they will

“become sweet to us.”

For, over it all, we will come to find that they too

“proceed from Him” (Ibid, p. 21).

And so, from the dramatic events of the life and sufferings of David, the Psalms showed us the full spectrum of man’s disease; yet did so in a way that ushered us into the very presence of the Anointed King of Israel bring, whose suffering heals His people and Whose death and burial brings our life and eternal renewal.

Amen!

So may it be!