Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation

115 Anchored in Love: The Center of the Apostle Paul's Theology (with Dr. Nijay Gupta)

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Scholars of the Apostle Paul have long debated the so-called center of Paul’s theology, focusing on themes like justification by faith, reconciliation, union with Christ, and the apocalyptic triumph of God in Christ. But what if love really is the heart of the gospel that he preached?

In this episode of the Attaching to God podcast, we welcome Nijay Gupta, the Julius R. Manti Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, to discuss his new book The Affections of Christ Jesus: Love at the Heart of Paul's Theology. 

Dr. Gupta elaborates on the crucial role of love in Paul's teachings and explores its connection to emotional theory and neuroscience. Gupta also touches upon his personal experiences with emotional well-being.

Be sure to check out his podcast, Slow Theology: Simple Faith for Chaotic Times

Dive deeper in our new book, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection, and learn about our trainings and other resources at embodiedfaith.life.

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Introduction to Pauline Theology

 

Geoff Holsclaw: Scholars of the Apostle Paul have long debated the so-called center of Pauline theology, focusing on things like justification of faith, reconciliation, union with Christ and the more recent, the apocalyptic triumph of God. But what if love? Really just is the center of the gospel that Paul preached.

Guest Introduction: Nijay Gupta

Geoff Holsclaw: That's what we're talking about today, that's This is the attached to God podcast produced by Embodied Faith, and we have Joining us again, Nijay Gupta. He is the Julius r Manti professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He co-hosts the Slow Theology Podcast and has written. Numerous books, some of them being Teller story as well as we had you on to talk about, uh, strange [00:01:00] Religion, uh, just a couple months ago.

Discussing the New Book: The Affections of Christ Jesus

Geoff Holsclaw: And today we're talking about your new book, the Affections of Christ Jesus Love at the heart of Paul's theology. Thanks so, so much for being on and with us today.

Nijay Gupta: Yeah, my pleasure. Excited to dig in.

Geoff Holsclaw: Well, I, I know, um, when I saw this book flash across probably my Facebook feed, as you mentioned it, like a cover release or something like that, I was like, oh, we have to have you on. Especially the Attaching to God podcast to talk about love and the New Testament, but especially Paul's theology. And, uh, this book is not disappointed.

I'm so excited. The copy is in the mail. It's gonna show up Monday or sooner, I don't know. And, uh. I was telling you before we got on, I'm telling all the listeners this is gonna be like a cornerstone kind of a piece of research that, uh, I think as I, and we and Sid and others kind of keep talking about attaching to God, that this kind of understanding is just gonna be so helpful.

So thank you so much for taking the time to write this [00:02:00] book.

Nijay Gupta: I love it.

Personal Anecdotes and Weather Talk

Geoff Holsclaw: Now because we are all people, we're embodied, we, you know, embodied faith, but you know, we're embodied. You got recently tell us where you live and what kind of storm you just got, uh, hit by. 'cause us in the Midwest, and if we have any listeners in Minnesota, they're gonna have no kind of sympathy.

But tell us what happened to you just last week.

Nijay Gupta: Well, it rains a lot here. I live in Portland, Oregon, and we get, we get a lot of drizzle and we had cooler temperatures in the low thirties. And so, uh, we actually had some snow. We had our first kind of serious snowfall and uh, we actually, they actually canceled my kids' school Thursday and Friday, and then Monday was a holiday, so I had. A lot of time with my kids. And the funny thing here is if it's, even if it's just an inch, the whole city of Portland will shut down everybody will work from home and the kids are at home and we won't drive them to friend's house. So, uh, we had a snowpocalypse. It actually wasn't that much precipitation, [00:03:00] it does.

I will say in my own defense, I'm from, you know, I've lived in Boston, I've lived in. Northern New York. I've lived in, I grew up in Cleveland area. Uh, I will say what we have here is number one, it's very hilly,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: you have to deal with that, whereas Ohio's pretty flat.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yes, the hills make a difference.

Nijay Gupta: it's running in that, you know, low thirties, it's gonna turn to ice and it's gonna go back and forth. Uh, it's gonna melt and turn to ice, and so you, you got kind of black ice sort of situation. But yeah, we, we expect to, nowadays we expect a few days, a few snow days for the kids.

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh yeah. Yeah. For those who are not raised and familiar with snowy regions, it's that like the. The 10 degree snowstorm is bad, but it's not so bad. It's the, it's the 34 that then drops to 32 or drops to 29, which turns all the rain into ice, which is, that's the really dangerous, uh, snowstorm. Well, we're here in, uh, you know, western Michigan, so we, we, we have little sympathy for you.

[00:04:00] I also have friends in our doctoral program who, uh. Who are from Texas and they get that one quarter inch of snow and then they're, they're racing out for, you know, water and, and Pop-Tarts. ' cause the, the world has ended. Alright, well enough of that. So you've written this book, uh, on the affections of, uh, lemme get the title right here.

The Affections of Christ Jesus and then how love is at the heart of, of Paul. But you also, and what we were talking about this beforehand, a couple months ago. 

Exploring Emotion Theory in Biblical Context

Geoff Holsclaw: You're like, I use a lot of emotion theory, uh, to kind of get at this, and I was like, even better. So as this podcast tried to bridges the neuroscience and spiritual information, could you talk a little bit about how you got into that?

Even as like a research question, why do we need brain science to help us do some Bible study? And what did that kind of turn up for you?

Nijay Gupta: yeah. This, you know, this comes, I come at the subject from a number of angles. You know, one of them is just, I write Bible commentaries. And so, you know, you tend to hone in on kind of the more serious stuff [00:05:00] in the New Testament or in the Bible. And, and the way I was trained, the way most New Testament scholars are trained, as you kind of skip past. The fluffy stuff in Paul's letters, all of the, hi, how are yous? All of the greet so and so, and you're my beloved and all of that. And you just get into the meaty stuff in Romans two through four or five through eight, or, you know, uh, the doctrinal stuff in one Corinthians 15. And, you know, I, I think instinctually many of the, uh, especially Protestant, western, uh, types of scholarship. Um, we have kind of a instinct to screen out. things,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: and just zero in on cold, hard, doctrinal facts. Um, and, and, uh, so as I'm writing commentaries, I'm coming across all this love language in Ephesians, or in Galatians or in Romans or one Corinthians. [00:06:00] What I naturally do is I start looking up scholarship, who, who's talking about this?

I was shocked to find how little biblical scholarship that actually is. New Testament scholarship, Pauline Scholarship on the Language of love. And when I was pitching this book to Erdman my publisher, I said, no one's written a book like this in over a hundred years. To me,

Geoff Holsclaw: Wow. Really.

Nijay Gupta: insane this would be in every letter of Paul. the beginning of every letter, towards the end, in key sections, Galatians two, Romans five through eight. I mean, it's, it's pretty much everywhere. I mean, Ephesians itself could be called a homily on Paul. go to the other end of the equation, which is my own personal experience. About six, seven years ago, I went to the ER with what I thought was a heart attack.

I would've been in my early forties at that point, but I was talking to a doctor friend, I said, my heart's beating on my chest. I'm, I'm feeling faint. And, uh, he said, you know, to be on the safe side, go to the er, get checked out. I got checked out,

Geoff Holsclaw: [00:07:00] Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: heart attack. were no clear physiological reasons, they said that their diagnosis is I was having a severe anxiety attack.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: So they connected me with a biofeedback therapist and she basically said, um, you're not taking care of your emotional wellbeing. And at that time I was reading Jamie Smith's work on Are What You love, and some of the stuff that he's done on kind of bringing Augustine back into the theological conversation and his work on the problem of thinking, our thinking about ourselves as brains on a stick.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: I was living out that reality in not really thinking and taking care of my body, not taking care of my mind, not thinking about my emotional wellbeing, and just saying, Hey, I'm a good brainiac. I'm just gonna brainiac out this problem, whether it's theology or, um, my health. I wasn't an [00:08:00] integrated person.

I wasn't living as an integrated. Person. I wasn't thinking of the Christian as an integrated and that really got me, started to pay more attention to language in the Bible, and then I was writing a Philippians commentary and I noticed how much Paul talks about joy and how strange it is to command someone to experience joy.

I mean,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: was insensitive. If you were sitting

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: with somebody going through a cancer diagnosis or going through terminal illness and you just say, Hey, be happy.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: would, it would come across as insensitive, mean-spirited, irrelevant. And yet that's what the Old Testament does.

That's what the New Testament does. Be joyful love, do not fear. And I've actually given some lectures on this on Saturday coming up in a few days, I'm gonna actually quote one of my favorite TV sketches, comedy sketches from MAD tv. This is [00:09:00] 1997

Geoff Holsclaw: All right.

Nijay Gupta: Newhart sketch where he played a therapist, uh

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh,

Nijay Gupta: uh, offering to do five minute therapy sessions.

There was a woman there who had claustrophobia.

Geoff Holsclaw: this is my wife's favorite sketch. She always, we always talk. We do it back and forth. Okay. Sorry for all the listeners who don't know where this is going, but my wife and I will do this back and forth to each other just to be like silly. Okay. Go on.

Nijay Gupta: a therapist,

Geoff Holsclaw: Okay.

Nijay Gupta: we laugh about this. So Bob Newhart playing this, uh, five minute therapist and, and very serious, and this woman comes in, I'm ha I'm having all these nightmares about being, you know, trapped in a box, all this stuff. I can't be, you know, in any contained space. He's taking notes and he says, okay, I got two words for you. You know, this is my therapy. I got two words. She's like, okay. And she's confused, but writing it down. He just says, stop it. And she's like, excuse me. And he's like, stop it. And then he even spells it for [00:10:00] S-T-O-P-I-T. It's, it's hilarious. Um, look, listeners look up, uh, stop it.

The Stop It Mad TV sketch and you'll find it. I feel that way sometimes when I'm reading the Bible and it says, rejoice. Um, as if you could just, you know, you're having a bad day, Jeff, and I just say to you, it. Stop it. Rejoice. And what I, so that got me down really trying to understand our

Geoff Holsclaw: mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: because I think too many of us, either we fall into two ditches, one ditch is we ignore the emotional world altogether. We just power through it or we comfort eat through it, or we, yeah, we just ignore it. Um, United Methodist Church did a study, this is about 20 years ago, of just how unhealthy their ministers are. They noticed that, um, there's aging population, United Methodist ministers, they're in their, you know, many ministers are in their sixties, seventies, eighties. And it was actually [00:11:00] costing a lot of health insurance uh, to take care of these aging UMC ministers. And so there's a huge study and it just, it was just completely obvious how much pastors, and especially people in the caring industries, I. Give, give, give and they don't really take care of themselves, whether physically, emotionally, you know, mental wellness, all that stuff.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Appraisal Theory and Emotional Wellbeing

Nijay Gupta: so as I dug into emotion theory, um, I just kinda stumbled upon something called the appraisal theory, call it the appraisal theory. I have no idea what it's called, but the appraisal theory, which goes

Geoff Holsclaw: Either way. Right? Because you could say Augustine, you could say Augustine. Like, don't let anyone say that. There's only one way to say appraisal. Appraisal. Oregon. Oregon, you know, whatever. Oregon. I, well, I'm in the Midwest, so I get it all the time, but I'm like, that's not, that's wrong. It's wrong. Okay. I'm from California.

If all the listeners forget. Okay. Continue.

Nijay Gupta: Yeah, so, so this [00:12:00] developed in the 1950s, uh, forties and fifties, uh, with a theorist named Magda Arnold. prior to that time, the dominant theory about emotions called the basic emotion theory was emotions are just kind of knee jerk responses to stimuli. And so, you know, we're watching this TV show right now called The Gorge, which is awesome.

It's kind of like a thriller romance. It's amazing, but

Geoff Holsclaw: We just finished it. We just finished it. Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: and it's got a lot of jump scares. Like, like my son and I, my, my son and I, my wife watch it and we're like, the seat. 'cause we know something's coming. So when you have a jump scare, like, you know, you shutter, you know, it, it's, it is knee jerk

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: for many, many years people just treated emotions as okay. you know, I, I got a text with a free. Free coupon for truffle fries, you know, at Burgerville. [00:13:00] Um, oh, that's gonna make me happy because suddenly I got this, you know, this news and I'm happy. but then, oh, I didn't get that promotion at work and now I'm sad. And this idea that emotions are just these things that sort of happen to us.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: and, and, and. Psychologist, emotion theorist, they say, yeah, that does happen. Uh, because you know, certain things trigger us and, and we have these emotions. Magna Arnold, she noticed that, uh, you could have one event, uh, one situational event, and two people in that event have opposite emotions. Um, so the, the example I give in the book is, uh, I grew up in Ohio where have lots of thunderstorms I experienced them frequently growing up. And I love thunderstorms. I love to just sit and watch. I pull up a chair at my, my mom my mom's house. We have these huge windows and just sit and watch and I love it. It's, it's, it makes your heartbeat fast 'cause it's this, you know, really electric awesome phenomenon. But I'm not

Geoff Holsclaw: [00:14:00] Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: not scared. I'm gonna die. Whereas my kids grew up in Oregon. And so when we visit grandma and grandpa, and there's a thunderstorm, they're like genuinely scared. So same event, different responses to that

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: And what, what these appraisal theorists would say is, uh, and this is kinda language I use, we have micro emotions. And micro emotions are like, I got that coupon for fries. I'm feeling really good. That's a micro motion and we'll, we'll experience those and we can't really change or edit those much. They just sort of happen. Um, but we have what I call macro emotions, which is kind of how we feel like we're doing in our life. This kind of barometer. there's a theorist named Richard Lazarus. He calls it subjective wellbeing. So we have this radar. Or this barometer for kind of how we're doing in life? Are we reaching our goals?

You know, how would you rate your overall happiness, your [00:15:00] overall sense of contentment? And when it comes to that, we have our radar up for our situation and we will screen or analyze our situation instinctually. Decide instinctually whether the situation is congruent our goals and our, and that will increase our subjective wellbeing incongruent, and it'll decrease our subjective wellbeing. So for example, you're at a work meeting, there's a group of people in the room, you know, you're in a little conference room and the boss says, Hey, I got good news. One of you is getting a promotion. So two or three of you, you're like, okay, you know, it could be me. And they announced who gets the promotion, and it's Jeff and not nj.

So same event, but your radar's up and you find this congruent with your overall goals. So your subjective wellbeing goes way up.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: Oh man, I deserve that. Jeff comes in late. Jeff leaves early. Jeff eats two donuts on [00:16:00] payday. Jeff

Geoff Holsclaw: It's from California. Unreliable.

Nijay Gupta: He wears Birkenstocks too much like all that stuff.

Geoff Holsclaw: Too late.

Nijay Gupta: I, I, so then my, incongruent, so my subjective wellbeing goes, weigh down

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm. And like a third option would be the person who was not even thinking they were in the running for the promotion. And if they got the promotion, then their excitement level would skyrocket. Right? Yeah. 'cause it was unexpected. This.

Nijay Gupta: yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. They'll be elated. They'll have joy. And so when we, when we, what I think is so important about this is, um, how much our peace and contentment in life. Tracks with our appraisal of our situation. mean,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: if one of us got, uh, a diagnosis of a major illness, um, you know, that's gonna bring things obviously way down. [00:17:00] But then you have people in your life that are, that care for you. Maybe someone that's gone through cancer or gone through an illness that will come to you and they'll say, Hey, Nijay, I know this sounds terrible, but you know. You can identify with people going through difficult things in a really unique way now, and now you're starting to reappraise a situation saying,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: can have a ministry in this.

You know? Or they'll say, you don't wanna say God has a plan. You definitely don't want that to be the first thing you say, or you're gonna be an angel or whatever, some of these weird things that people say, but, but there is a place. At some point with a certain kind of relationship to say, um, God's got you in this, you know, and what you're doing is your situation's not changing, but you're reappraising the situation.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, so, oh, go on.

Nijay Gupta: like joy and love because, uh, this goes back to the moral philosophers, the ancient world, but even the way we think about it today, when we tell someone, be joyful, we're not saying manufacture fake joy.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: what we're [00:18:00] really saying is, um, reappraise your situation, um, in order to, to see how God is actually has your subjective wellbeing in mind.

Or when we say love, we're not saying manufacture feelings of love.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: we have, we guard these people we love, and what God is saying is open up your life to include other people, people you may not even expect, like strangers and enemies this circle that you guard. That you feel like secures your subjective wellbeing. And so the love language, actually has to do with the deepest level of our commitments.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: and, and what we think is success, what we think is wellbeing, what we think is thriving. Okay, now go.

Geoff Holsclaw: All right, well, just to summary, 'cause I wanna, so I want to, what we'll do is now dive into the kind of the love stuff in Paul and Jesus. Uh, and then I wanna circle back to those kind of conversations. So, [00:19:00] uh, in one sense, uh, and to kind of add some other pieces, you know, I came across the Arisal theory, uh, through Dan Siegel.

I. And the interpersonal neurobiology kind of approach. Um, and, and then I, I went on a deep dive through all this stuff a couple years ago. And so someone who was a, a giant in the field, uh, Joseph Lado, he, he was like a fear researcher and he, he made a big switch in the middle of his career. Just to follow the point that you made there, which is, and he said, we should stop talking about emotions like as this huge category.

What we need to do is talk about survival circuits, which are kind of those semi-automatic reactions of fear, of anger, of sadness, that are very like causally related to circumstances. Like if you're child stepping out into traffic, you're just like, bam. And you grab 'em and your heart like it's just a survival response.

And he says, we need to differentiate that as fear and. He's like, we should stop calling that fear. But like the brooding fear or the fu like a real kind of long term like thing. So Hughes, just [00:20:00] the micro macro that's very similar. So I just love that and it does help us get to an understanding of the commands of joy and, and the commands against like anxiety that Paul gives like in effusions and things like that.

Right, right. Which in. And, and the trouble is, is on one side of the church that doesn't take emotion seriously. They're like, yeah, see, you stop worrying and you need to have joy. It's all cognitive. It's all willpower, right? Well, that's not right. And there's another side that's like, you should never tell someone to be joyful, and you should never tell someone not to be anxious.

That's a chemical imbalance and they can't help it. Right? And there, there, there needs to be like some way behind it. I, I feel like this arisal theory is, is really important, but let's really quick. Shift then to love. Uh, you do a brilliant job talking about like love in the Old Testament, love in the Greek kind of language.

Uh, but sorry, we're just gonna skip all that. Let's talk about love in Jesus, uh, and how, um, uh, the uniqueness of like the dual love command. Uh, so could you kind of just fill that out and then [00:21:00] that, then we'll kind of jump into Paul.

Love in the Old Testament and Jesus' Teachings

Nijay Gupta: we can't talk about Jesus' commands without talking about Deuteronomy. So really briefly, you know, it's, it's interesting.

Geoff Holsclaw: fine. We'll talk Old Testament.

Nijay Gupta: to. Um, you know, it's interesting if you sat down with, uh, I. Your typical Western Protestant and you say, what's the Old Testament about? they might, uh,

Geoff Holsclaw: smiting random people. Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: it's about the law, um, or it's about works or it's about, um, you know, fill in the blank. what I say in the book, what I say to my students often is. If you actually sit down with a rabbi, uh, today, or if you sit down with, uh, a Jewish person like Paul or, or Jesus, uh, back in the first century, they would actually open up to probably either, uh, the Book of Exodus and read the Lord as gracious and merciful, bating and steadfast love and so forth. Or they would read from Deuteronomy six, [00:22:00] the Lord God, Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God, and all of that. so. The heart of Jewish, uh, religion, the heart of the covenant not a bunch of weird laws. It's actually love. I mean, we know what Jews prayed in the first century.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: they prayed the Shama, which is Deuteronomy six.

Love the Lord your God. I. They prayed the Psalms, uh, as well, which is why Jesus, Paul and the Apostles were so familiar, uh, with the Psalms and quote them so much. And so this is going to be on Jesus' mind. And you know, love is one of those things, like people say is hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: I was having a conversation with someone recently and, and he said, Nijay, I'm not a touchy-feely person. I'm not like mushy, emotional person. So does that mean I'm left out of these love commands? 'cause I just don't have the same kind of, let's have a bro hug, you know, feel it out sort of thing. And, and what, [00:23:00] what I said to him, and what I learned from emotion theory is everybody loves, everybody

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: it's just we express it differently. Um, every single person loves because. Following these theories and following Augusta, we could talk about Augustine later. Well, let me just mention this from Augustine, uh, because it'll help us understand Jesus. I think it'll help us understand Christianity. He says, is Augustine. He says, when we ask whether someone is a good man, we're not asking what he believes or hopes, but what he loves. That quote all by itself unlocked the Bible to me in a way that I just never understood before. Um, what that means is we are designed. I was gonna use the word attach. You're the attachment guy.

Geoff Holsclaw: Let's do it.

Nijay Gupta: we were designed to wrap our souls around things and people,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: using emotion theory and Augustine, I like to say, imagine your soul has tentacles

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: and it's in our nature to [00:24:00] wrap our tentacles around ideas. Things, events, memories, people. So naturally that's gonna be your family, naturally, that's gonna be your friends. Uh, it might be your vocation, whatever it is. We, we, we wrap ourselves around these things. And so, um, and, and that's gonna affect our, uh, ideas, that's gonna affect our habits, our virtues. you know what's interesting is if you're a pastor, you could preach great sermons. But if you haven't gotten to what people have wrapped their tentacles around, you're not actually gonna change the lives and behaviors of the people in your congregation. You could have your doctrine perfectly right in your sermon, but if you haven't addressed what those tentacles are wrapped around, um, then you're not, you're not gonna actually gonna affect change, certainly not lasting change in your church.

And that was kind of the missing piece for me. So when, when the Shama says, love the Lord [00:25:00] your God. It's not like bring God a box of chocolates. not like trying to push out tears. Uh, when you're in front of, you know, at worship. It's really saying, what have I wrapped?

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: What if I wrap my soul around? We use the word heart. I was actually trying to think, Jeff, how is it that we, uh, in the western world actually came to use the word heart as the seed of emotion?

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: know biologically has really nothing to do with it. I think it's probably because our heart races and we feel it we're experiencing fear or deep love or whatever.

Geoff Holsclaw: you don't think it has anything to do with the, like the Psalms or something like that?

Nijay Gupta: Well, what's funny is, I was talking to somebody

Geoff Holsclaw: Created me a clean heart.

Nijay Gupta: is the, the Hebrew and Greek language of heart, um, are almost interchangeable with mind,

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: then tracks more with science, than our mind is actually [00:26:00] creating a lot of these things rather than that. But you, you know, this, I have a, a, a stomach illness and I've come to learn that. Your stomach is called your second brain

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: sympathetic and para sympathetic systems. And so the stomach actually qualifies better as your seed of emotions than your heart.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: just biologically, what's.

Geoff Holsclaw: Well, I was kind of to, to jump in. I was kind of being facetious though. Like partly it is the scripture language. Uh, I think it is that phenomenological experience. 

Understanding the Vagus Nerve and Polyvagal Theory

Geoff Holsclaw: And now, um, so you mentioned the, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. So the vagus nerve, which kind of connects all that together.

Uh, so polyvagal theory, it. It basically will say things like the nerves that are connected to your face, especially your eyes, are also connected to the nerves that regulate your heart rate and your breathing rate. Uh, and, and your eyes and your face is how you communicate with people. Uh, and so there is that sense in which, like, my heart was [00:27:00] racing when you fall in love with someone, or my heart fell when I got bad news or I saw someone's face, you know, and I knew that someone was dead.

Right? And, and there is like this. The sense in which that vagus nerve is regulating your heart rate. Uh, and, and they do all sorts of studies about how quickly your heart rate, like, so there's a whole thing. But there basically is, is this is where I always feel like, well, ancient people kind of. They were phenomenologists, they were like observing the bot.

They didn't get it all right as far as like how it all fits together. Right. But that, that, those experiences, they were like, pretty right on. And then now this is why I'm so into the, the neurosciences. Like it's showing a lot of the stuff to be true. So yes, our heart, our heart is the seat of emotions.

'cause it's also the interpersonal center, um, through the vagus nerve. Okay. 

Ancient Perspectives on Emotions

Geoff Holsclaw: That was a big longest aside.

Nijay Gupta: Even in Greek, in the ancient Greek, um, the sea of emotion, the Jewish concept of it, which came into the Greek speaking world, uh, was actually the bowels, the stomach, uh, or the intestine. So when Jesus has compassion over Israel, over [00:28:00] Jerusalem, it says literally he shook his bowels. actually, the

Geoff Holsclaw: Hmm,

Nijay Gupta: of my book, the Affections of Christ Jesus, comes from Philippians chapter one, Paul says to the Philippians, he's in prison. He says, along for you with the affections or the bowels. Of Christ Jesus. Um, okay, we wanna get back to Jesus. Why

Geoff Holsclaw: do it.

Nijay Gupta: commanding love of God and love of neighbor? I'm gonna get into, I'm gonna get a little preachy here, Jeff.

Geoff Holsclaw: Let's do it.

The Parable of the Safe and the Sprinkler

Nijay Gupta: give a sermon, uh, I give a sermon sometimes on this called the parable of the Safe and the Sprinkler. Uh, so imagine that your soul, uh, your, your whole self is, uh. a big house, is a big metaphorical house. And at the center of that house, there's a safe, a small safe that can only hold one thing, which is the thing that is most precious to you.

So you think about those tentacles. So it's that thing where the biggest, most powerful tentacles are gonna be wrapped around that. And for, for Christians, for for the people of [00:29:00] God, uh, we're expected to protect, uh, father, son of spirit God, in that safe.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: ask me the other day, why? Why does Jesus say. Whoever doesn't hate his mother and father is not worthy of me. Why would we hate our mother and father when the 10 Commandments says we're supposed to honor and love our mother and father? that's because when Jesus is saying hate them, he's saying, never ever put them anywhere near that safe.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: to put our friends, our job, our wealth, our status, our looks, uh, our hopes and dreams into that safe. It can only be God. But also imagine in this theoretical metaphorical house, there's a sprinkler system and it's very powerful and it shoots out water not only to water your lawn, but also, you know, of it waters, other people's lawns.

Naturally is it shoots outward. And so, uh, one of my students also brought up, [00:30:00] um, why does Jesus say love the world? He loved the world. John, chapter three. But then first John says, don't love the world.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm. Right.

Nijay Gupta: to love the world or am I supposed to not love the world? we have to understand context. Love God, and don't love the world means God goes in the safe, but love is, but loving the world is for the sprinkler system. So we're called to protect a smaller safe and to

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: sprinkler. So when. Jesus says, the two great commandments are love God, love neighbor. 

Augustine's Theory of Ordered Love

Nijay Gupta: this is where I go back to Augustine.

It's really about Augustine's theory of ordered love.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: Too many theologians said, okay, emotions get in the way of good theology. They get in the way of the good Christian life we shouldn't act out of emotion. Um, we should act in cold, neutral ways. 

The Role of Emotions in Theology

Nijay Gupta: There's an important theoretical book, I [00:31:00] think from the eighties called More Than Cool Reason, which is talking about how we use metaphors the

Geoff Holsclaw: Okay.

Nijay Gupta: old idea.

This is George Lakoff. Uh, the old idea was we should, scientifically, we should always speak in very objective, neutral ways. Don't use metaphors. Metaphors are fluffy garbage. And so cut out the metaphors, the icing, and get down,

Geoff Holsclaw: Yikes.

Nijay Gupta: to the good stuff, get down, get down to the nutritious stuff. And this is really popular in the early enlightenment era. And then so, so if we're looking at the Bible that way, let's get rid of all the metaphors, all the emotions, all the mushy stuff. And Lake off argued that

Geoff Holsclaw: So like most of the Old Testament and much of the New Testament, this is, this is, but this is seriously though, this is why certain churches will just preach Paul's letters. 'cause they're like, well that's, that's the, you know,

Nijay Gupta: letters, they're gonna get

Geoff Holsclaw: ah, yes. It's so true.

Nijay Gupta: much emotion stuff.

And so he wrote a

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: Than Cool Reason to Say The metaphors aren't the, the metaphors aren't there just as fluff. Actually, we think in metaphors, we, we live in

Geoff Holsclaw: [00:32:00] Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: and I think the same applies to emotions. It's not fluff. not a distraction. Augusta would say. Desire is not the enemy. Desire is actually the goal. It's actually the origin, the means and the goal. It's just we have to order them correctly. If we are oriented towards God correctly by loving God, first and foremost, like the safe, the safe illustration, then we're gonna output our emotions and output love. In the ways we are always meant to.

It's kind of like a kink in a, in a sprinkler line.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: correctly unless that flow is there. And so when Jesus says, love the Lord your God, he's not saying Give God a big hug. definitely emote to God, but it's, it starts with understanding what we're wrapping our lives around. We're putting in that safe uh, orienting our lives towards God and then that will help us correctly orient our lives towards neighbors, strangers, and

Attachment Theory and Emotions

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, [00:33:00] so like to put this in attachment language, uh. Because I, you know, I love Jamie Smith's book, the, the shorter one that you Are What you love. But the more of this like attachment and the neuroscience, I was like, and I love Augustine, right? So I did part of my dissertation on Augustine too. Thank you for being a biblical scholar that positively appraises it.

Augustine not, not, not all do, but the more I've been reading this stuff, the more I'm like, I'm not quite sure you are. What you love actually captures it. I think it's like more of what you said about the tentacles. It's you are what you're attached to or you become what you're attached to. And then even deeper, it's kind of like, uh, you are who you're watching, right?

So little children learn how to appraise or they learn. Proper or appropriate emotions. How? By watching how their attachment figures respond to a situation. Right? And so if the, you know, the first time they encounter a mobile fluffy creature, say at a friend's house, [00:34:00] um, they're not either immediately afraid or joyful.

What do they do? They look at their parent. To find out is this a dangerous creature or is it a safe creature? And if the face of the attachment figure is calm or inviting or joyful, then that now their emotions of that child is shaped to such to be like, I can be curious. I can discover this wor, I can continue in discovery mode.

But if for whatever reason your attachment figure hates cats, if you haven't figured out that's what we're talking about, uh. Then the child will internalize that fear or that disgust and will, uh, move away. Right? So our emotions are, and you talk about that in the early part, that are, this appraisal, uh, is kind of, it's a combination of past experiences, but also cultural influences about what is good or bad or what is acceptable or what is a, a scary or what is not scary, right?

And that primarily comes through your attachment figure, right? And so, uh. Our emotions should be attached to God so that then we can love the world. And I think that's the whole point. [00:35:00] The more that only God is in that safe, the bigger your sprinkler system is probably gonna end up being alright.

Nijay Gupta: defend Augusta a little bit. I, I think that is what Augusta is saying.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yes, for sure.

Nijay Gupta: So, so his famous saying is, our hearts are, are restless until the rest in God. That's kind of where you're going with this in terms of attachment, your language. Attachment, I think is similar to how his language of. Rest. So let me just talk really

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: his illustration that he gives. So he said he gives three important Latin words, so whoever's listening, you're getting some Latin today.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yes.

Nijay Gupta: uses, um. He uses gravitas, which is weight, weight or gravity. Uh, he uses, uh, requies, which is rest. And then he uses Caritas, which is love.

And he says every object or substance has a natural weight to it, meaning if I pick up a rock and I drop it, he doesn't, I guess it's not, doesn't know the theory of gravity. So he just thinks the rock wants to go to a resting place. So it will push and push and push until it gets there. But then why [00:36:00] does fire go up?

He didn't understand why does a rock go down? But fire goes up. And he doesn't understand why it goes up, but his thinking is, it also has a resting place,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: in the opposite direction. And he says, humans have a resting place, a requies, and they have gravitas to move towards that. And the resting place is caritas, which is love. And I, I think that is exactly what you're saying about attachment is, um, notion of rest, I think aligns with your, what, what you're saying about.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: Yeah.

Paul's Teachings on Love and Faith

Geoff Holsclaw: Well let's go to Paul then. I'll, uh. What, what do you wanna focus on? I'll throw it out to you. There's so many things that I have, like multiple questions, but kind of what do you feel like you'd want, you know, people who maybe regularly read Paul's letters or feel like that, you know, uh, this important

Nijay Gupta: what do I really want outta this book is of. The opposite of a disappointment that I

Geoff Holsclaw: I.

Nijay Gupta: in a lot of big books on the Apostle Paul. So you [00:37:00] think about James Dg Dunn and t Wright, Douglas Mo, all these big names, and they write these massive thousand page books on Paul. And what they do is they talk through kind of an order, salut, an order of salvation, calling justification, glorification regeneration, all this stuff. there's no place for love. What you end up doing is you say, oh, I should talk about love. And they end up tucking it away in a little tiny section in the back of the book that nobody ever gets to called Ethics. And to me, that is, you put that there and you've got the whole thing wrong. You gotta all completely wrong. You've missed the whole thing. Um, it actually belongs at the very beginning. When people talk about justification, like you mentioned the beginning of this podcast, justification or, um, uh, apocalyptic triumph of God, these atonement questions, they're actually means questions. They don't

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: origin and they don't actually get to the point. [00:38:00] They're interesting in terms of understanding mechanics, but actually the point is love. So the gospel originates out of God's love. Now, this shapes how we view God. Um, Paul

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: about I'm crucified with Christ. Galatians two 20. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I live by faith, I live the flesh by the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The origin of the

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: the love of God. Uh, empowered by the love of the spirit demonstrated in the love of Christ. And, one of my favorite scholars, Michael Gorman, he has a quote that I quote in this book, Paul is nothing if not overwhelmed by the love of God. The

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: is love. Uh, the

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: the gospel is love the response of the gospel. It's supposed to be our love towards God rightly ordered, like Augustine said, [00:39:00] rightly ordered and redeemed, and then that's meant to turn us towards fellow believers in love. But then people stop there and I'm convinced the a, the absolute hardest teaching in the Bible is when Jesus says, love your enemies and Jesus, or sorry,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: about this in various ways as well. 

The Centrality of Love in Christianity

Nijay Gupta: Jeff, ultimately, what I want people to think about as they read my book is what is the goal of the Christian life?

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: I might use the language of maturity. I might use the language of, um, you know, being filled up, you know, in the spirit or walking in the spirit. I mean, there's all kinds of we can use from the Bible, but now I think, gosh, we've missed it. I've missed it. not all about love now, it's not oi gushy love. Uh, famously Richard Hayes, new Testament scholar now bless a memory. He,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: a book called Moral Vision, the New Testament in the 1990s, and he actually argued in that [00:40:00] book that love is not the center of the moral vision because he says it's a cover for all manner of vad, self-indulgence. And he

Geoff Holsclaw: I remember that. Yep.

Nijay Gupta: in popular discourse. I think that he threw out the baby with the bath water. He said,

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: rid of this OIE gushy love stuff. And it's about the cross. It's about eschatology, it's about new creation. And what I argue is all of those things are means, and they're all great, but the origin, the setting, the purpose is love.

And if we don't get that, focus on that. We've missed it. I'm gonna give you one more thing. You can come back at me. Philippians two, four and 5, 2, 3, and four. says, do nothing outta selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourself. Verse four, look not at your own interest, but the interests of others. His verb here in Greek capo, it's a verb of looking, but it's a really, it's really a verb of fixation. [00:41:00] What are you

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: What are you obsessing over? What is your attention on? And he says, our sinful in inclination, our carnal, our fleshly inclination is to say, I'm worried about my stuff only. Now, of course,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: love your neighbor as yourself, which implies you love yourself, which implies you take care of yourself.

He's not in wisdom teaching. You often give extremes, and you're not saying everything you wanna say. What he's saying is Nijay other, other people out there. Our sinful human tendency is to obsess over loving ourself. Loving ourself in a

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: excluding way. But he says actually the gospel should transform us in such a way that we are freed up. Fixate first on God, then he says, but to others as well, and not say, not my problem, but say my problem. problem is my problem because I'm a Christian. Your problem [00:42:00] is my problem because God made my problems, his problems.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, well just to kind of sum up some of those things I heard with the things that, that I've been really interested in is like that. The, the purity of heart, which if we want to go back to, you know. Psalms as well as, uh, the Beatitudes, uh, but then also training for love. This is why I've been really interested in the, um, the kind of monks, um, and aesthetics.

Uh, because their goal for asceticism or ais is, is training for them. It was training for love, uh, and sometimes we get a. They get a bad rap for being antibody and things, but like their goal was to train themselves so that they could fully receive the God who was love and then fully offer that to a world.

Uh, and that, and then the shorthand of that would be something like, purity of heart is like, I gotta purify my affections, my emotions, my, I have to put the right things in the safe, you know? And, and for me that's just like this attachment language. Um, [00:43:00] could you answer just one? One last thing. 'cause I think this is really important, and when I read the question in one of the sections, I was like, oh, that, that's important is you said why people will ask.

Uh, why does it seem like Paul's talking a lot about faith and less about love, and yet you're arguing that the center is love? Uh, and and Jesus acts that way too. He's like, um, he talks a lot about faith, uh, and repentance and things like that. And a little bit about love. And the love certainly seems central.

But how does faith and love then fit together? I think that'd be a great way to finish up.

Nijay Gupta: Yeah. Um, you know, thi this is interesting kind of academic curiosity because if all Jews,

Geoff Holsclaw: no. This is very practical.

Nijay Gupta: But if all

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: prayed the Shema every day, they're talking about love all the time. we know that from the rabbis. We know that from lots of, uh, Jewish texts from the ancient world. So why is Paul talking so much about faith not as much about loving God?

He does in a couple of places, but it's not, it's not the thing that's always on his lips. [00:44:00] And, uh, I think that he just formulated a, a really sophisticated. Understanding of pestis, which we often translate as faith, but I think maybe we mistranslate it and, and maybe it's, and I have a book called Paul Language of Faith, so I put a lot of thought into this, but, uh, I think it might be better translated like loyalty. Um,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: some people say allegiance, but allegiance can sound very militaristic. And I think he doesn't always mean it in that way. I think he means it in a, you know, faithful and true kind of friend sort of way. But actually, I've been thinking about this after I wrote the book, and I hate that when you come up with new ideas after you wrote the book, Jews and early Christians latched onto the Greek word agape, which was previously underutilized.

It was kind of collecting dust on a shelf before Jews used it in the second century BC for the SubT Greek translation of the Old Testament. And then in the Greek speaking world, Jews picked it up and used it as their, one of their, what I call mascot words. They're going, rah, rah, rah, for this word. [00:45:00] But to a wider audience of Gentiles, it might not be as familiar.

So actually my latest thoughts, Jeff, on this, you're getting, I've never said this out loud before. My latest

Geoff Holsclaw: All right.

Nijay Gupta: that for Paul to be preaching to Gentiles Agape with a term that is a mascot term for Jews, but would be broadly unfamiliar. Gentiles. He's still gonna use the word, he loves the word agape, but it's gonna make more sense to Gentiles if he uses the word loyalty or allegiance, which was a more common word for a social

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: of. Devo, devotion, love

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: would overlap. Think Venn diagrams, they would overlap in meaning devotion. So I think

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: his terminology. A little tip for preachers out there, change up your language. So I think Paul did that too. I mean, think about when he first met Christ on that road to Damascus.

He gets blinded by this light. Why are you persecuting me? He doesn't know the Lord Jesus the way that Peter did when Peter calls him as, as [00:46:00] one human to another, uh, in incarnate

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Nijay Gupta: another. he doesn't call him and say, come follow me. You know, he, he blinds all and says, you know. Go sit blind for three days and figure out what you had, what you did wrong.

You're in timeout for three days. So he knows him not as Didos teacher, but he knows him as kiosk Lord. I think that has something to do with it. so he's, he's trying, I think, to tether these words, faith and love together.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. And I love that, that desire for like kind of new language, I think there is a sense in which, you know, the language of love and especially for those who are Christians, like, yeah, yeah, I know God loves me. Uh. But for us, even the, this podcast called Attaching to God is, is kind of just that wave, like using a different term, uh, certainly with a truckload of, of science, uh, to get at, well, what is love really doing beyond kind of a sentimental emotion.

And I think attachment gets at that. I think the word agape, certainly, uh, faith and [00:47:00] fidelity has said in the Old Testament, covenant love, covenant faithfulness, enduring love, uh, that you see in the Old Testament. All these are kind of. You know, all kind of in the mix. Well, thank you so much for spending some time, uh, here.

Upcoming Projects and Final Thoughts

Geoff Holsclaw: Where can people find you and, you know, what else are you kind of working on these days?

Nijay Gupta: Uh, thanks. Uh, I have a substack called Engaging Scripture, and that's a newsletter. Uh, read a couple times a week and you'll get some fun stuff about the Bible, biblical studies. some of my work, uh, that I'll put out there ahead of time. Uh, I have a

Geoff Holsclaw: It is a great resource. I'll just kind of plug it because it'll, sometimes it'll be book reviews. Sometimes it'll be your own thoughts and insights. Sometimes it'll just, yeah, it's great.

Nijay Gupta: a lot of resource stuff. Um, and then I have a podcast called the Slow Theology Podcast with AJ SW boda AJ's a theologian, Pentecostal theologian at Bushnell University. I'm the Bible guy. And we just come together and we talk through the hard stuff of Christianity. Um, we don't [00:48:00] skimp on the hard stuff and then we just say, okay, let's try to walk slowly together towards Jesus in the mess of real life. And so we want to be. Champions for the gospel. Uh, we wanna be good news people in an often bad news world, we don't want it to be, um, you know, uh, what I call folk apologetics, where we just sorta give people an easy bandaid for their, for their bleeding wounds. we want

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Nijay Gupta: serious, um, and, and, and, and thoughtful stuff. and then what I'm working on is, uh, I, I don't think I've announced this officially yet, so you'll be the first one.

Geoff Holsclaw: we're getting all the good stuff. I like it. Let's break some news. Let's do it.

Nijay Gupta: uh, wrote a book called Slow Theology eight Practices for Resilience in a Turbulent World. And, um, we just got the release date, it's actually coming out this September, uh, September, 2025. We thought it'd come out in 2026, [00:49:00] but, um.

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh, nice. Nice.

Nijay Gupta: was able to get out early, so I'm super excited. We try to put together the best, uh, piece of advice we've given or tools and resources for helping people find stability in Christ in a turbulent world. and uh, I'm just excited about that. 'cause especially pastors, leaders, um, just need whatever. Resources and practices they can get

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh yeah, for sure.

Nijay Gupta: their, their flock, their people navigate a very tumultuous world.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, for sure. Well, and to continue breaking, breaking news, you just told me right before we, we jumped on, I invited EJ to speak at our next year's or this year's, uh, summit the second, uh, attach it to God Summit. So he's gonna be there. And that's also in September, or no, it's in October. October 14th through 16th.

But, uh, I'm really excited, so thank you for doing that. So, uh, listeners, you'll be getting more, uh, of this great scholarship, uh, as we move forward. [00:50:00] Well, thanks again for being with us. I really appreciate it.

Nijay Gupta: pleasure. We could talk for hours, but I'm glad we got the

Geoff Holsclaw: I think we could, I think we could maybe just like every six months I'll just have you on. We'll, just like, uh, once I get my heart, my hard copy, uh, my paper back, you know, I'll thump through a little bit more and I'm sure we'll get some more questions on there.

Well, thank you so much.

Nijay Gupta: pleasure.