Affections

We are accustomed to speak of mind, emotion, and will.

I've noticed, though, that the soul, in Christian terms, is said to have the power of mind and will. Where is emotion, I wondered? 

Emotion is spoken of in three ways: affections, inclination, and conscience.

Yet conscience and inclination are associated with, respectively, the mind, and the will. Affections seems to be associated with *both* the mind and the will.

 

Meaning there doesn't seem to be that middle realm, between the mind and the will, where emotion exists.

 

In a form of ancient psychology I am familiar with (Fourth Way, Ouspensky) what is called the Emotional Center is actually said to not really even exist. I.e. that we only know negative emotional behavior from that 'center' that is really fueled by hijacked sexual energy and supported by different types of negative imagination and passionate undue focus on a person or people creating an indulging in resentment that manifests violently or as self-pity or depression. 

 

I agree with the above. 

 

I now wanted to know what affections are. That more religious term used by Puritan theologians.

 

Foundationally affections seem to be what we most - or truly - value. 

A guru once said to his students, we talk of awakening and increasing consciousness and so forth, but we have to ask ourselves if really what we most want is a red sports car. 

In his own way he was talking about affections.

So affections are basically what we truly value. Let's say: the things of God, or the things of this world. To just keep it simple.

Then there is another aspect to affections that make them seem like what we think of as emotion. It is that our affections can be stoked like a fire if we meditate upon the objects of our affections. (Or obsess upon them, I suppose.)

In churches where an encounter with Jesus is foremost they'll perform praise music that works everybody up which is a stoking of the affections to where the people are crying and wanting to hug somebody. 

That's not how the Puritans did it. They would say to meditate upon biblical subject matter to stoke up holy affections. 

I say the above because I just wanted to clear up why we associate affections with common emotional states and behavior. I.e. there *is* that aspect to affections. Stoking them as one would stoke a fire. I.e. affections, though connected with the mind and the will, are not merely thoughts or inclinations but are things that can have some energy of passion in them.

So with a clear definition of affections we can think about them clearly and as Christians start to get a sense of what it is we really value at the end of the day.