The divided self (and how to heal it)
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
James 1:5-8
As the book of Proverbs says, wisdom - knowing how to live well in God's world - is the most precious thing anyone can have. It is the best thing a king can ask for (1 Kings 3:9-10), and God always stands ready to hear a prayer for wisdom, as James teaches us here.
But for James, the prayer asking for wisdom must come from a position of faith. That is not because "faith" is some magic password to persuade God to answer our prayer. No, faith is crucial because it is the right response to the word of God which explains our world to us, and indeed when implanted in us, saves us to be in right relationship with that God (James 1:21). The wisdom which knows how to live well in God's world cannot possibly exist without the most basic understanding of the world - that it is the work of the Creator God; and without the most basic of relationships - redeemed life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. As Graeme Goldsworthy writes:
Godly wisdom in Israel is based on life's experiences, which ideally are steered by the redemptive revelation of God... The flowering of wisdom under Solomon constitutes further evidence that he was seen as climaxing the whole epoch of Israel's history from Abraham onwards. When the pattern of salvation is complete, wisdom flourishes.
Graeme Goldsworthy, Christ-Centred Biblical Theology, 129-130.
Or as Solomon himself put it, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). As a corollary to that, as James says, trying to live wisely without faith is to render yourself unstable, and double-minded. At least part of that instability is the double-mindedness of claiming to follow God while also worshipping idols (c.f. 1 Kings 18:21).
But James also seems to be claiming that a life of unbelief is inherently unstable. Where godly wisdom is lacking, disorder is the result (3:16). And this disorder is expressed in two basic directions - in pride (1:10, 2:1-3, 3:14, 4:10, 4:13-16, 5:6) and in lustful desire (1:14, 1:21, 4:1-3, 5:5). As John summarises it:
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
1 John 2:15-16
This, indeed, is the problem right from the beginning. Eve was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit by two considerations - that is would make her like God (3:5) and that it was greatly desirable to her (3:6). Pride, and desire. Why should these be the two poles of our instability?
Greatness and wretchedness
Over to Blaise Pascal! In his Penseés he discusses the paradox of mankind's greatness and wretchedness. On the one hand, we are genuinely great - made in the image of God, we are able to do marvellous things, endowed with sentience and authority far above the other creatures in our world. On the other, we are wretched sinners - in rebellion against God, we are capable of the most monstrous evil, and constantly acting against our own best interests. Everything else in creation is stable and contented with its lot; human beings are self-defeating and wracked with existential angst. How do we cope with this duality?
Pascal outlines two approaches, expanded by Peter Kreeft in his Christianity for Modern Pagans. First, we can lean in to greatness - we stress how marvellous we are and emphasise our dominion over the rest of the creation. Kreeft calls this "angelism" (52-53), and sees it in Gnosticism, Pantheism, New Age humanism, and the scientific-industrial revolution. We simply ignore our earth-boundness and downplay our sinfulness and reach for the stars with confidence and hubris. We see this in things like the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar, where (spoiler alert) mankind is saved from destruction by its own evolution to godlike power (and also time-travel, and a magic bookcase. It's not a particular coherent movie). In other words - we give in to pride.
On the other hand, we can lean in to our wretchedness - we can deny that we are anything but mammals, and assuage our guilt about giving into our desires. Kreeft calls this "animalism", and sees it in Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism, and the sexual revolution. We ignore that we are made in the image of God, and give in to our desires.
Of course the truth is that we do both, and the two are inextricably linked. I am proud enough to think I can give into my desires without repercussions or recriminations; and so led by my desires that I presume I can arrogantly do whatever I want to whomever I like in order to fulfil them.
Our 21st Century culture in the West (notwithstanding its Christian roots) has therefore committed a double blasphemy:
"[Christianity says...] We are metaphysically very good because we are created in the image of the absolutely good God. But we are morally very bad because we have despised our Creator. Modern paganism says we are not metaphysically very good at all, because we are merely trousered apes; and not morally very bad at all because there is no divine law to judge us as very bad."
Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, 62.
This is where the Kantian divide comes in so helpful. This is the thinking that says that we inhabit two disparate realms simultaneously - one, the phenomenal realm, in which our bodies move: the place of actions, facts, and material realities; the other, the noumenal realm, in which our spirits move: the place of thoughts, opinions, and spiritual realities. As Nancy Pearcey has compellingly shown in Love Thy Body, this leads to utter misery in all sorts of areas, notably in our thinking on gender, sexuality, and the sanctity of life.
But it does neatly allow us to separate the two strands of our selves and live as if we were two separate kind of being - the bodily, brutish, beastly animal self and the disembodied, disconnected, divine angelic self. A sort-of hypostatic heresy - we unite in ourselves the divine and the animal by keeping the two halves separate. C. S. Lewis, in his Voyage to Venus, gives us the sense of why we might want to do this by describing the eldila, creatures who are obviously both material and immaterial:
The distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and when it had done so, one realised how great a comfort it had been - how it had eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which this universe imposes on us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind never to think of both in the same context. What price we may have paid for this comfort in the way of false security and accepted confusion of thought is another matter.
C. S. Lewis, Voyage to Venus
Easing the burden
So is there a legitimate way to ease the "burden of intolerable strangeness"? Pascal says yes. It is to understand what we are by nature; and to accept what we are by grace. In other words, it is to hear the story, the true story, of the Bible; to hear an explanation of ourselves from the one being who actually knows us. Pascal imagines God addressing mankind and telling them their story:
"I created man holy, innocent, perfect, I filled him with light and understanding, I showed him my glory and my wondrous works... But he could not bear such great glory without falling into presumption. He wanted to make himself his own centre and do without my help. He withdrew from my rule, setting himself up as my equal in his desire to find happiness in himself, and I abandoned him to himself... today man has become like the beasts, and is so far apart from me that a barely glimmering idea of his author alone remains of his all dead or flickering knowledge."
Blaise Pascal, quoted in Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, 66-67.
This is the source of our divided self. When Adam & Eve in their pride tried to be "like God", they became like the animals; as recapitulated in the story of Nebuchadnezzar, the man who in his arrogance was condemned to live according to his base desires like the beasts (see Daniel 4 and its famous representation in William Blake's print at the top of the page). Sin divides us, corrupts the image of God in us, makes us reach either for divinity in our pride or descended to bestiality in our desires. So where is the solution, the healing of the divided self? Answer - in the gospel:
If you are united to God, it is by grace, and not by nature.
If you are humbled, it is by penitence, not by nature.
Blaise Pascal, quoted in Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, 68.
Jesus Christ perfectly embodied mankind as he was meant to be: the complete, perfect human who did not give into sinful desire or to pride, and therefore is "crowned with glory and honour" (Hebrews 2:9). And in him we are brought back to where we were - and better:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
2 Peter 1:3-4
Entirely through God's initiative (quelling our pride) he has given us the right to share in God's holiness and goodness (mortifying our lust). In Christ, we can actually be "like God" in the way were supposed to be - not usurping his throne but bearing his image. And so those who trust in Christ can praise God, in the words of John Newton:
"I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be [in another world]; yet I am not what I once was, and by the grace of God I am what I am."
John Newton, quoted in Fuller, Be True to Yourself, 183.