Feeling Like a Christian: Emotion in the Early Church

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says that all will recognize Christians by their love toward one another (13:35), a distinctive emotion (agape) that sets them off from the world’s “hatred.” This saying is not just a theological claim, but points to a historical trend in the earliest Christian centuries: Christians understood themselves as emotionally distinct from the rest of their culture. From the communities of Paul on, Christians taught that to be a Christian meant to feel differently, no less than to believe differently. In contrast to other philosophies of the time, Christians put emotions at the heart of their spiritual life by reflecting on the value and role of emotions in the nature of the world, humanity, and the divine. This distinctive attitude toward emotion still influences Christian spirituality today.