Self-Conscious Emotions, Religion and Theology

Abstract

Emotions are heterogeneous. So, in assessing their religious and theological significance, it is important to make distinctions between different kinds of emotion. One important distinction is between basic emotions that are universal and cognitively simple, and other more self-conscious emotions that depend on greater cognitive elaboration about both self and the social world. It is arguable that self-conscious emotions play a particularly important role in religious life, and that understanding their role in prayer and spirituality can make an important contribution to the psychology of prayer. Theologically, self-conscious emotions are an important element in human distinctiveness. The story of the ‘Fall’ in Genesis 3 can be read, in part, as a myth about a ‘fall upwards’ into self-conscious emotions. Self-conscious emotions such as guilt and shame also provide a vantage point for approaching soteriology, and relating different theories of atonement to particular self-conscious emotions can help us to understand their human significance.