Defense of Religious Belief

William James, in justifying his lecture series to scientifically explain religious experience, and Bill W., in trying to suggest ways to attain spritual awakening, both engage in a defense of religious belief as practical, logical and beneficial. James, in the early chapters, draws upon first hand accounts in literature and previous research in order to show that the religious feelings reported are observable phenomenon capable of further examination. In the Big Book chapter We Agnostics, Bill makes use of his own and the other A.A. pioneers' experiences to show skeptical readers the very real effects spirituality can have in one's life. In pursuing these different, but compatible aims, the two authors use a few common lines of reasoning.

First, James and Bill W. both emphasize that the discussion will be solely about personal aspects of religious experience. James puts it this way: "The divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest." (Page 39) In this way, he 'defines religion down' to its most basic and general level*, narrowing the scope of his inquiry to observable reactions of those with such beliefs.* In this way too, he avoids metaphysical and theological issues* which are out of the purview of his psychological training, and which cannot be scientifically examined.

For his part, Bill W. emphasizes the feelings and intuitions spiritual people have, and which are accessible to his readers: "We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us. (Page 55) Theological and ecclesiastical debates are beside his point, and may remind readers of some of their previous objections to religious ideas.* In this way, too, Bill reassures those with spiritual beliefs that these will not be challenged by the A.A. program. * The emphasis on the personal aspect rather than on rites and rituals has given rise to the common A.A. expression that the fellowship is 'spiritual not religious.' The Big Book's narrow focus on personal experience without regard to religious doctrine widens the appeal of A.A.'s discussion of spirituality.

Secondly, both James and Bill W. describe the positive effects of religious belief, broadly defined. For both men, religious faith works, and is therefore valuable. James, a founding father of the philosophy of pragmatism* as well as American psychology, considers the results stemming from religious belief are far more important than metaphysical and theological speculation: "In the end it had to come to our empiricist criterion: By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots." (Page 21) [Quoting Mathew 7:20] Once again, the results are observable phenomenon capable of analysis and study, and he makes this point explicitly:

	It is the character of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, 
	or else their consistency with our other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, 
	which make them pass for true in our esteem.

	Opinions here [regarding natural sciences] are
	invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author’s
	neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions. Their value can
	only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments
	based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can
	ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we
	hold as true.

	Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral 
	helpfulness are the only available criteria.*

Bill W. echoes the pragmatic approach that James espoused, saying: "We agnostically inclined would not feel satisfied with a proposal which does not lend itself to reasonable approach and interpretation. Hence we are at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical to believe than not to believe." (Page 53) The collective experience of the A.A. pioneers, in first doubting and then coming to spiritual beliefs of their own understanding, is meant to be both evidence and inspiration for Big Book readers:

	We have learned that whatever the human frailties of
	various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose
	and direction to millions. People of faith have a logical
	idea of what life is all about. Actually, we used to
	have no reasonable conception whatever. We used to
	amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs
	and practices when we might have observed that
	many spiritually-minded persons of all races, colors,
	and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability,
	happiness and usefulness which we should have sought
	ourselves. 

	
	When we saw others solve their problems by a
	simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we
	had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas
	did not work. But the God idea did. *

Thirdly, both James and Bill W. counter the argument of skeptics that God's existence and spiritual principles cannot be proven and do not conform to rules of logic by responding that such considerations do not comprise the full range of human experience. James writes:

	Nevertheless, if we look on man’s whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that
	lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately
	follow, we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is
	relatively superficial... If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper
	level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. *

In a later chapter James gives an everyday example of a non-rational, yet meaningful moment of insight:

	The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of
	the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one...
	This sense of deeper significance is not confined to rational propositions. Single words,
	and conjunctions of words, effects of light on land and sea, odors and musical sounds,
	all bring it when the mind is tuned aright. * 

Bill describes his reaction after being told during Ebby's spiritual talk that he could choose his own conception of God. He began to drop his resistance to the 'God idea' based on supposed logic, and follow his own heart in spiritual matters: "It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last." (Page 12) In We agnostics he writes with passion about faith and reason:

	[H]ad we not worshipfully beheld the
	sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved
	something or somebody? How much did these feelings,
	these loves, these worships, have to do with pure
	reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were not
	these things the tissue out of which our lives were
	constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, determine
	the course of our existence ? It was impossible to
	say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship.
	In one form or another we had been living by faith
	and little else. 

	Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but
	pure reason, it wouldn't be life. But we believed in
	life--of course we did. We could not prove life in the
	sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest
	distance between two points, yet, there it was...
	Hence, we saw that reason isn't everything. Neither
	is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable,
	though it emanate from our best minds. What about
	people who proved that man could never fly? *

And

	[W]we found ourselves thinking, when enchanted by a 
	starlit night, "Who, then, make all this?" There was 
	a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and 
	soon lost. *

This enchantment, worshipful beholding or deepened sense of significance, which people may experience every day, is communion with 'whatever they may consider divine' (James) or 'God as we understood him' (Bill W.).

Finally, James and Bill W. both argue for the existence of an innate sense of the Divine, keeping in mind that both men leave the meaning of this to the individual. The full title of James' book is actually The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, implying the author's belief that a religious sense of some kind is an inherent human quality and can be examined. In an early chapter called The Reality Of The Unseen we find this passage:

	It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective
	presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more
	general than any of the special and particular ‘senses’ by which the current psychology
	supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.  

And later, immediately preceeding his discussion on the conversion experience, James quotes Tolstoy approvingly:

	
	If Man did not believe that he must live for something, he would not live at all. The idea of an 
	infinite God, of the divinity of the soul, of the union of men’s actions with God — these are ideas 
	elaborated in the infinite secret depths of human thought. *

Bill provides similar testimony for an innate human religious sense:

	Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down
	in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental
	idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by
	pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form
	or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than
	ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that
	power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself.

Having found the "Great Reality within us," Bill advises his readers:

	We can only clear the ground a bit. If our testimony
	helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to
	think honestly, encourages you to search diligently
	within yourself, then, if you wish, you can join us on
	the Broad Highway. * [Emphasis added]

This passage sums up the purpose of the Big Book chapter We Agnostics: to remove prejudice in spiritual matters and encourage open mindedness for, as the Spiritual Experience appendix states, "Willingness, honesty and open mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable." Having made this effort, Bill proceeds to discuss the Steps needed to help bring about the spiritual awakening needed to recover from alcoholism.

James, having established the validity of religion as a subject of study, continues his treatise on several facets of religious life, with fairly heavy emphasis on what he calls the conversion experience.

Stages Preceeding Conversion

William James' ideas concerning the stages preceeding conversion were highly influential on Bill W. and the Big Book, as was the conversion idea itself. These were not merely phases Bill and the pioneers happened to go through before getting over alcoholism; they came to be seen as necessary precursors to achieving a spiritual awakening, which brings about recovery. This is explicitly acknowledged in later A.A. literature:

	[Bill] saw that all the cases described by James had certain common denominators, 
	despite the diverse ways in which they manifested  themselves. These insghts 
	became important to Bill in his thinkng about the plight of the alcoholic and his need 
	for spiritual help. (He would later say that James, though long in his grave, had been 
	a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.) Of the three common denominators in the case 
	histories, the first was calamity; each person James described had met utter defeat 
	in some vital area of his life. All human resources had failed to solve his problems. 
	Each person had been utterly desperate... 

	The second common point was an admission of defeat. Each of the indivivduals 
	acknowledged his own defeat as utter and absolute...

	The third common denominator was an appeal to a Higher Power. This cry for help 
	could take many forms, and it might or might not be in religious terms. *

	The responses were equally varied. Some had thunderbolt experiences, as did St. 
	Paul on the road to Damascus; others had slow, gradual transformation experiences. 
	Whatever the type of the experience, however, it brought the sufferer into a new state 
	of consciousness, and so opened the way to release from the old problems. *

Varieties of Religious Experience and the Big Book both emphasize two major themes: The helpless plight of the afflicted, and the barrier to recovery presented by self-will.

Helplessness

William James devotes a chapter each to two types of troubled individuals who sometimes undergo conversion experiences and overcome their problems. The Sick Soul is a person suffering from an inner malaise, sense of sin or wrongness, and often a deep and pathological pessimism. The Divided Man is one with inconstant and inconsistent instincts, sometimes to a very troublesome degree. What James writes about the Divided applies equally to the Sick: "In the haunting and insistent ideas, in the irrational impulses, the morbid scruples, dreads, and inhibitions which beset the psychopathic temperament when it is thoroughly pronounced, we have exquisite examples of heterogeneous personality."* Both of these types of individuals are unable to overcome on their own the maladies that seem firmly established in their being: "In the extreme of melancholy the self that consciously is can do absolutely nothing. It is completely bankrupt and without resource, and no works it can accomplish will avail. Redemption from such subjective conditions must be a free gift or nothing... *

The travails of the Sick Soul and Divided Man will be familiar to any alcoholic Big Book reader who has experienced the Four Horsemen of Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration and Despair, or pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Alcoholics have much in common with James' Sick Soul and Divided Man, for "we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick."* Through personal stories, summaries of the A.A. pioneers' experience and conclusions derived from them, powerlessness over alcohol in the bodlily and mental sense is discussed at great length. The alcoholic reader is invited to see the plight of the doomed alcoholic as his own, and to grasp at the solution offered in later chapters. The other aspect of the First Step, unmanageability, is given comparatively little space, perhaps because the emotional and material effects of alcoholism are more obvious and harder to deny than its causes. Bill writes about Ebby's situation and his own, emphasizing helplessness and hinting at a source of power that brought a solution to his friend:

	Like myself, he [Ebby] had admitted
	complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised
	from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to
	a level of life better than the best he had ever known!

	Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had
	not. There had been no more power in him than there
	was in me at that minute; and this was none at all. *

Dr. Bob faced similar circumstances at the end of his own drinking career. At the time Bill called upon him in Akron, Bob was said to be "was nearing the nadir of alcoholic despair... He had a desperate desire to stop, but saw no way out, for he had earnestly tried many avenues of escape." * As a matter of note, this is the closest that the Big Book comes to using the now-comon phrase 'hitting bottom'. Speaking for the pioneers as a whole, the Big Book states that " Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly."*

Self-Will

William James writes that the man in crisis, being in a helpless state, cannot overcome his problems alone, and must rely on forces outside himself. Not only are his own efforts useless, they are a positive hindrance to any possible resolution:

	We have used the vague and abstract language of psychology. But since, in any terms,
	the crisis described is the throwing of our conscious selves upon the mercy of powers
	which, whatever they may be, are more ideal than we are actually, and make for our
	redemption, you see why self-surrender has been and always must be regarded as the
	vital turning-point of the religious life...  

		 *     *     *     *     *	 
	In other words, self-surrender becomes then indispensable. "The personal will,” says Dr. 
	Starbuck, “must be given up. In many cases relief persistently refuses to come until the 
	person ceases to resist, or to make an effort in the direction he desires to go.”...  

	[Dr.] Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the matter when he says that to exercise
	the personal will is still to live in the region where the imperfect self is the thing most
	emphasized. *

The Big Book goes further on this score than James: not only does an emphasis on self or human will hinder the spiritual awakening needed for recovery from alcoholism, it is in fact the very source of the problem. Bill speaks of his unbridled ambition as being part of his downfall: "Out of this alloy of drink and speculation, I commenced to forge the weapon that one day would turn in its flight like a boomerang and all but cut me to ribbons." Dr. Bob is more explicit when he declares that, "Unfortunately for me, I was the only child, which perhaps engendered the selfishness which played such an important part in bringing on my alcoholism." * Alcohol, we are told twice, is an effect*, not the cause of the spiritual malady. Not only do both of A.A.'s founders blame selfishness for their alcoholism, the Big Book blames self-will for all the alcoholic's problems:

	Selfishness--self-centeredness! That, we think, is the
	root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of
	fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step
	on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes
	they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but
	we invariably find that at some time in the past we
	have made decisions based on self which later placed
	us in a position to be hurt. 
	
	So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own
	making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic
	is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he
	usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics
	must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us! 
	God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of 
	entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us 
	had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we 
	could not live up to them even though we would have liked 
	to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by 
	wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help. *

Spiritual Awakening or Conversion

	To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain
	an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden,
	by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy,
	becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its
	firmer hold upon religious realities. This at least is what conversion signifies in general
	terms, whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to bring such
	a moral change about...  *

While the life changing experience can be gradual or sudden*, James focuses his attention almost solely on the sudden type of experience, as he finds it more illustrative for his purposes. * There are several detailed personal accounts of conversion experiences which James collected from various sources. He shares these to illuminate the emotional and psychological factors involved. Though all the stories involve religious ideas and motivations, James does not investigate them, treating the experiences as phenomenon to be explained scientifically. He uses rather clinical terms such as 'mental rearrangements', 'changes in equilibrium' and 'changes in habitual centers of energy' when referring to the results brought about by conversion experiences. While he remains officially neutral as to the divine or psychological causes of the conversions*, he outlines at some length the mental processes by which they may have developed. Interestingly, two of the seven men whose stories are included recovered from alcoholism as a result. James also makes a passing reference to other, entirely secular, conversion stories of recovered alcoholics that he did not include. (Page 200) A later passage shows that a conversion experience can directly impact recovery from alcoholism:

	
	Every one knows cases of this incomplete and ineffective desire for reform, —
	drunkards whom, with all their self-reproaches and resolves, one perceives to be quite
	unwilling seriously to contemplate never being drunk again! Really to give up anything
	on which we have relied, to give it up definitively, ‘for good and all’ and forever,
	signifies one of those radical alterations of character which came under our notice in the
	lectures on conversion. *

The Big Book, having been written not by a scientist but primarily by a man who had a sudden conversion experience or spiritual awakening, does not discuss the mental prcoesses by which it manifests itself. However, Bill leaves no doubt as to the source: "The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous." * Bill read Varieties of Religious Experience shortly after his experience*, and surely had a personal motivation in this area that William James did not. The A.A. pioneers, along with Dr. Silkworth, an early medical friend of the fellowship came to feel that an awakening was crucial to recovery from alcoholism.* There are two firsthand accounts of spiritual awakenings in the Big Book, Bill's and another at the end of We Agnostics. Both are sudden ones and they both result in recovery from alcoholism. Bill, like James, emphasizes the sudden type of experience with these stories and in some passages describing them. But where James sought to illustrate the phenomenon and inform his readers, Bill seeks to inspire his, many of whom need the same remedy he was granted.

Gradual Spiritual Awakening in the Big Book

The Big Book's Twelve Steps, which are suggested as a program of recovery, outline a gradual awakening that comes about 'as a result of these steps,' according to the Twelfth. James, in one of his few statements about gradual conversions, wrote, "In the volitional type the regenerative change is usually gradual, and consists in the building up, piece by piece, of a new set of moral and spiritual habits. But there are always critical points here at which the movement forward seems much more rapid." * As we shall soon see, several of the intermediate Steps contain predictions of emotional or spiritual growth, which correspond to these 'critical points'.

State of Assurance or Realm of the Spirit

	The characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity, should, I
	think, be called the state of assurance rather than the faith-state, can be easily
	enumerated... 

	The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one,
	the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should
	remain the same. 

	The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. The mysteries of
	life become lucid... 

	A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often
	appears to undergo. ‘An appearance of newness beautifies every object'...  * 

There are several passages in the early chapters of the Big Book that seemingly refer to sudden and overwhelming experiences. Most involve vast and wondrous changes, not incremental ones, that have come to the members of the fellowship. A great many of these changes fall under James' second characteristic, and still others under the third. For example, Bill said that he "was catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes." Speaking for the A.A. pioneers generally: "[W]e have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God's universe." (An asterisk in this passage refers the reader to the Spiritual Experience appendix.) Also, "Most of us feel we need look no further for Utopia. We have it with us right here and now." And, perhaps the strongest example:

	Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed.
	They flatly declare that since they have come
	to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take
	a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain
	simple things. There has been a revolutionary change
	in their way of living and thinking. In the face of
	collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure
	of their human resources, they found that a new
	power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed
	into them. * 

Among the Big Book Promises which outline the gradual awakening, we find many smaller, more specific descriptions of the changes one undergoes while taking the Steps: Recovery from alcoholism is a key element of the awakening, of course. This is also mentioned in the Fifth Step Promises*, where we find this tentative prediction: "The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly." This is later restated in no uncertain terms in the Tenth Step Promises, which declare that "[W]e have ceased fighting anything or anyone-- even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor... We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed." [Emphasis added] Thus, the initial goal of taking the Steps has been accomplished by the Tenth. As we have seen above*, recovery from alcoholism after conversion was a well known phenomenon to James.

There is also a 'God' component in the awakening, found at four points, beginning with the Step Three Promises*: "As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn." In the Step Five Promises*, we see a stronger attachment to 'God as we understood him': "We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience... We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe." The last of the twelve Ninth Step Promises* reads: "We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves." Finally, the Eleventh Step Promises* continue the theme of closeness to God, reading in part,"If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us. To some extent we have become God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense." The rest of this Step then goes on to discuss further developing this vital sense. These promises, or aspects of spiritual awakening, partially correspond to James' second charcteristic.

However, by far most of the individual changes in a gradual spiritual awakening found in the Big Book Promises correspond to the first of James' characteristics. That is, they are largely concerned with thoughts and emotions in everyday life and the people, situations, etc that we encounter in our daily affairs. Most aspects of awakening are secular or psychological in appearance, not mystical or metaphysical. Not only are they observable phenomenon, they are also concerned with other observable phenomenon and not with otherworldly ideas. For example, the Fourth Step Promises* are entirely psychological in nature, as they relate to seeing the harmful nature of resentments and becoming more tolerant of those we had disliked. The Ninth Step Promises*, the longest, best known and most wide-ranging set of promises, contains twelve changes to be expected. Eleven of these concern losing self-centeredness, fear, regret and the like while gaining hope, direction and happiness; only the last one is overtly spiritual, or God-centered.

Even predominantly spiritual sets of Promises such as the Third* and Fifth Step Promises* contain aspects of awakening pertaining to everyday life. Only the Eleventh Step Promises*, the last and shortest set of Promisess in the Big Book, are entirely religious or spiritually oriented.

James describes the general effect of spiritual awakening in a way that encompasses all its possibile manifestations. One imagines that Bill W. approves:

	[W]hat is attained is often an altogether new level of spiritual vitality, 
	a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things have become possible, 
	and new energies and endurances are shown. The personality is changed, the 
	man is born anew...  * 

There are a number of passages in Varieties of Religious Experience with general spiritual insights. Some are collected here.

The influence of the Book of James on the Big Book and A.A.

	As Dr. Bob described it, they were "convinced that the answer to our problem was in the Good 
	Book. To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the Sermon 
	on the Mount, the 13th Chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James." The Book of James 
	was considered so important, in fact, that some early members even suggested "The James Club" 
	as a name for the Fellowship. *

In addition to the general inspiration the pioneers felt, A.A.'s Steps and devotion to service for others were born of two major ideas from the Book of James. The first probably came indirectly through Oxford Group teachings, and can be found in chapter 5, verse 16: "Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." (Being 'healed' through confession is consistent with the William James/A.A. idea of spiritual awakening, and is reflected in the Big Book's Fifth Step Promises.*) Bill, an Oxford Group member (as were Ebby and Dr. Bob), is quoted as saying:

	Agreeing with James in the New Testament, they [the Oxford Group] thought people ought to 
	confess their sins 'one to another.' Heavily emphasizing this wholesale sort of personal 
	housecleaning, they called the process 'sharing.' Not only were things to be confessed, 
	something was to be done about them. This usually took the form of what they called restitution,
	the restoration of good personal relationships by making amends for harms done. *  

Many Oxford principles, such as the Four Absolutes*, were not widely practiced in A.A. after it separated from the Group. But confession, which implies a personal inventory, and restitution were retained and included as part of the Big Book's recovery program. Thus we see that A.A.'s Steps Four, Five and Nine are derived in part from the Oxford Group's practices based on their interpretation of this passage in James. Undoubtedly, these practices were kept because their effectiveness, but their survival in the new fellowship may have been ensured by the early members' devotion to the Biblical Book of James.

The second idea that A.A. adopted from the Book of James is embodied in the well-known phrase from this passage:

	Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 
	Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works:
	shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee
	my faith by my works.  Thou believest that there is
	one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and
	tremble.  But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith
	without works is dead?  James 2:17 - 20  [Emphasis added] 

This phrase appears word for word three times in the Big Book. One instance is in the context of the amends envisioned by the Oxford Group and adopted by A.A.: "“Now we need more action, without which we find that “Faith without works is dead.’ Let’s look at Steps Eight and Nine.” The other two uses refer to the Twelfth Step. The first instance, both temporally and in its location in the Big Book, can be found in Ebby's message to Bill: “Particularly was it imperative that I work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said.” Finally, Bill writes at the end of chapter six after the discussion of Step Eleven, “But this is not all. There is action and more action. ‘Faith without works is dead.’ The next chapter is entirely devoted to Step Twelve.”*

Faith is vital and alive when it inspires certain acts which testify to its effect on us. Acting upon spiritual principles is assumed in A.A., for the Twelve Steps are called a 'program of action', and the Big Book chapter containing the bulk of this program is entitled Into Action. Not only does action keep faith alive, in A.A. it keeps alcoholics themselves alive, for we see these statements: "Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish." and "The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it." (The latter is another reference to Step Nine.)*

This idea was certainly not a theory to the Founders, it was part of their personal histories. A friend is quoted as saying that "The revelation in Dr. Bob's life came when he made his second discovery: that spirituality couldn't be absorbed by someone emulating a sponge, but that one might find it in healing and helping to free those afflicted and in bondage." The doctor himself said, "I think the kind of service that really counts is giving of yourself, and that almost invariably requires effort and time... And I think that's what Bill learned in New York and I didn't learn in Akron until we met."*

The newfound faith of both A.A. Founders actually did come alive when accompanied by such works.

The A.A. Legacy of William James and the Book of James

	The basic material for the chapter [How It Works, which discusses self-will and Steps 
	Three and Four] was the word-of-mouth program that Bill had been talking ever since 
	his own recovery. It was heavy with Oxford Group principles, and had in addition some 
	of the ideas Bill had gleaned from William James and from Dr. Silkworth...

	Bill's first three steps were culled from his reading of [William] James, the teachings of 
	Sam Shoemaker [Minister and Oxford Group member, Ebby lived in his mission], and those 
	of the Oxford Group. *

Having recognized his helplessness and the problem of self-will, the alcoholic can begain taking certain measures toward attaining a spiritual experience. As we have just seen, some of these Steps have come about through the influence of the Biblical Book of James. A.A.'s idea of action is interwoven with this book. The Biblical James helped inspire the three Steps which absolutely require the participation of other human beings, and which involve outward action: Five, Nine and Twelve. Step Five (along with the personal inventory it implies) and Step Nine are the chief means of overcoming self and realizing the awakening needed for recovery from alcoholism. Then, having entered the Realm of the Spirit (attained awakening) after cleaning up the past in Step Nine*, the Twelfth Step suggests an ongoing effort in reaching out to others in need in the spirit of service and giving.

Thus the cycle of recovery is created and maintained through contemplation partially inspired by Wiliam James, and action indirectly motivated by the Book of James.

Appendix: Spiritual Principles in James

	The memory of an insult may make us angrier than the insult did
	when we received it. We are frequently more ashamed of our blunders afterwards than
	we were at the moment of making them...  Page 53

	Evil is a disease; and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which
	only adds to the original complaint. Page 125

	General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, considers that the first vital step in saving 
	outcasts consists in making them feel that some decent human being cares enough for them to take 
	an interest in the question whether they are to rise or sink. Page 200, Footnote 

	Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and
	value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds
	exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize
	and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; if not, we ought to
	make short work with it, no matter what supernatural being may have infused it. Page 232 

	But just as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things
	material, so it is logically conceivable that if there be higher spiritual agencies that can
	directly touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so might be our possession
	of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of the
	waking life might close a door which in the dreamy Subliminal might remain ajar or open. Page 237 

	Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of
	war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. This is what makes it so invaluable an
	ally of every other passion. Page 259 

	Next,experience shows that there are times in every one’s life when one can be better
	counseled by others than by one’s self. Inability to decide is one of the commonest
	symptoms of fatigued nerves; friends who see our troubles more broadly, often see
	them more wisely than we do; so it is frequently an act of excellent virtue to consult
	and obey a doctor, a partner, or a wife. Page 305 

	But in this course of lectures ecclesiastical institutions hardly concern us at all. The
	religious experience which we are studying is that which lives itself out within the
	private breast. Page 328 

	“The spiritual life,” he writes, “justifies itself to those who live it; but what can we say to those
	who do not understand? This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose experiences are proved
	real to their possessor, because they remain with him when brought closest into contact with the
	objective realities of life. Dreams cannot stand this test. We wake from them to find that they are
	but dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. These highest experiences
	that I have had of God’s presence have been rare and brief — flashes of consciousness which have
	compelled me to exclaim with surprise — God is here! — or conditions of exaltation and insight
	less intense, and only gradually passing away.  Page 388, quoting from Autobiography of J. Trevor 

	The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the
	life and order of the universe. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there occurs an
	intellectual enlightenment which alone would place the individual on a new plane of existence —
	would make him almost a member of a new species. To this is added a state of moral exaltation, an
	indescribable feeling of elevation, elation, and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral sense,
	which is fully as striking, and more important than is the enhanced intellectual power. With these
	come what may be called a sense of immortality, a consciousness of eternal life, not a conviction
	that he shall have this, but the consciousness that he has it already.” Page 389-390, Dr. R. M. Bucke 

	For him who confesses, shams are over and realities have begun; he has exteriorized his rottenness 
	If he has not actually got rid of it, he at least no longer smears it over with a hypocritical show 
	of virtue — he lives at least upon a basis of veracity. Page 452 

	It may well prove that the sphere of influence in prayer is
	subjective exclusively, and that what is immediately changed is only the mind of the
	praying person. But however our opinion of prayer’s effects may come to be limited by
	criticism, religion, in the vital sense in which these lectures study it, must stand or fall
	by the persuasion that effects of some sort genuinely do occur. Through prayer, religion
	insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about... Page 455-456 

	When we see all things in God, and refer all things to him, we read in common matters
	superior expressions of meaning. The deadness with which custom invests the familiar
	vanishes, and existence as a whole appears transfigured. Page 465 

	It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings 
	of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but 
	a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no
	result. Page 481 

	The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent
	consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything
	higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though
	it may be but a most helpless germ... He becomes conscious that this higher part is
	conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in
	the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a
	fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in
	the wreck. Page 498-499 

	Meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met
	by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a
	larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that
	the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger
	will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it
	need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self,
	of which the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the universe
	might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness,
	with no absolute unity realized in it at all. Page 515 

	
	Pass It On, Page 124-125

*

	Dr. Bob was a man in search of God, and it was in this area that he, like Bill Wilson,
	was probably among the least conservative of men. This is not remarkable when we consider 
	that New England... still fosered many of the "new thought" and "mind cure" religions
	mentioned by William Janes in "The Varieties of Religious Experience." (The book, though
	not popular among Akron A.A.'s, was a favorite of Dr. Bob's.)
		Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, Page 306 

* Varieties of Religious Experience, Modern Library, ISBN 394-60463-6

*

	Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Page 71 

*

	Pass It On, Page 124

*

	
	WERE one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most
	general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is
	an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting
	ourselves thereto.  P 53 
		VRE, Page 53 



*	
	Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings,
	acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend
	themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.  P 31
		Vareities of Religious Experience, Page 31



*	
	In one sense at least the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than
	either theology or ecclesiasticism. 
		VRE, Page 31 



	When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean
	your own conception of God. This applies, too, to
	other spiritual expressions which you find in this book.
	Do not let any prejudice you may have against
	spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself
	what they mean to you.  
		Big Book, Page 47  

*

	If what we have learned and felt and seen
	means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever
	our race, creed, or color are the children of a living
	Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon
	simple and understandable terms as soon as we are
	willing and honest enough to try. Those having religious
	affiliations will find here nothing disturbing to
	their beliefs or ceremonies. There is no friction among
	us over such matters.

	We think it no concern of ours what religious bodies
	our members identify themselves with as individuals.
	This should be an entirely personal affair which each
	one decides for himself in the light of past associations,
	or his present choice. Page 28 

	We represent no particular faith or denomination. We are dealing only
	with general principles common to most denominations. 
		Big Book, Page 93-94 


*	
	Charles Sanders Pierce, another major figure in Pragmatism, sums it up this way: "Consider the practical 
	effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your 
	conception of the object."  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism) 

	

*	

	VRE, Pages 17 and 19, repsectively. 



*	
	Big Book, Pages 49 and 52, respectively. 




*	
	VRE, Page 72 



*	
	VRE, Page 373-374




*	
	Big Book, Page 54-55



*	
	Big Book, Page 46



*	
	VRE, Pages 58 and 181, respectively.




*	
	Big Book, Page 55 (Both quotes)




*	
	"But to find religion is only one out of many ways of reaching unity; and the process of
	remedying inner incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological
	process, which may take place with any sort of mental material, and need not
	necessarily assume the religious form. In judging of the religious types of regeneration
	which we are about to study, it is important to recognize that they are only one species
	of a genus that contains other types as well." 
		VRE, Page 172


*	
	Pass It On, Page 124-125 



*	
	VRE, Page 167



*	
	VRE, Page 239



*	
	Big Book, Page 64



*	
	Big Book, Page 11



*	
	Big Book, Page 155



*	
	Big Book, Page 44-45



*	
	VRE, pages 206-207, 204 and 206, respectively.



*	
	Big Book, Pages 64 and 103



*	
	Big Book, Pages 2 and 172, respectively.



*	
	Big Book, Page 62

 

*	
	VRE, Page 180



*	
	"The older medicine used to speak of two ways, lysis and crisis, one gradual, the other
	abrupt, in which one might recover from a bodily disease. In the spiritual realm there
	are also two ways, one gradual, the other sudden, in which inner unification may
	occur... "
		VRE, 186 



*	
	"Now if you ask of psychology just how the excitement shifts in a man’s mental system,
	and why aims that were peripheral become at a certain moment central, psychology has
	to reply that although she can give a general description of what happens, she is unable
	in a given case to account accurately for all the single forces at work. Neither an outside
	observer nor the Subject who undergoes the process can explain fully how particular
	experiences are able to change one’s centre of energy so decisively, or why they so often
	have to bide their hour to do so."
		VRE, Page  193



*	
	
	VRE, Page 314 




*	
	"Of the volitional [gradual] type of conversion it would be easy to give examples, but they 
	are as a rule less interesting than those of the self-surrender [sudden] type, in which the 
	subconscious effects are more abundant and often startling. I will therefore hurry to the 
	latter, the more so because the difference between the two types is after all not radical."
		VRE, Page 203-204



*	
	
	"If, abstracting altogether from the question of their value for the future spiritual life of
	the individual, we take them on their psychological side exclusively, so many
	peculiarities in them remind us of what we find outside of conversion that we are
	tempted ... to suspect that what makes the difference between a sudden and a gradual convert 
	is not necessarily the presence of divine miracle in the care of one and of something less 
	divine in that of the other, but rather a simple psychological peculiarity...

	I do not see why Methodists need object to such a view... If the fruits for life of the state 
	of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of 
	natural psychology; if not, we ought to make short work with it, no matter what supernatural 
	being may have infused it.
		VRE, Page 232 



*	
	Page 25, There Is A Solution




* 	
	"This [cycle of drinking and remorse] is repeated over and over, and 
	unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is 
	very little hope of his recovery. 

	"On the other hand--and strange as this may seem to those
	who do not understand--once a psychic change has occurred,
	the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so
	many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly
	finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol,
	the only effort necessary being that required to follow
	a few simple rules."  
		Big Book, Page xxvii, The Doctor's Opinion
 

And:
	
	"If, when you honestly want to, you find you
	cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have
	little control over the amount you take, you are probably
	alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering
	from an illness which only a spiritual experience
	will conquer." Big Book, Page 44 




*	
	VRE, Page 202




*	
	"We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. 
	To us, the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive 
	or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men." 
		Page 46


	
	"This thought brings us to Step Ten , which suggests we continue to take per-
	sonal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We 
	vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have 
	entered the world of the Spirit." 
		Page 84


	"Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and 
	to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you 
	find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and 
	you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny." 
		Page 164





*	
	Big Book Promises


	
Third Step Promises:
	
	When we sincerely took such a position ["God was 
	going to be our Director."], all sorts of
	remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer.
	Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if
	we kept close to Him and performed His work well.
	Established on such a footing we became less and less
	interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs.
	More and more we became interested in seeing what
	we could contribute to life. As we felt new power
	flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered
	we could face life successfully, as we became conscious
	of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, 
	tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn. (Page 63)



	
Fourth Step Promises:
	
	If we have been thorough about our personal inventory,
	we have written down a lot. We have listed
	and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to
	comprehend their futility and their fatality. We have
	commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We
	have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will
	toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on
	them as sick people. We have listed the people we
	have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten
	out the past if we can. (Page 70)



	
Fifth Step Promises:
	
	We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every
	twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once
	we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are
	delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can
	be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from
	us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We
	may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin
	to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that
	the drink problem has disappeared will often come
	strongly. We feel we are on the Broad Highway,
	walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe. 



		
Ninth Step Promises:

	If we are painstaking about this phase of our
 	development, we will be amazed before we are half
	way through. We are going to know a new freedom
 	and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor
	wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the
	word serenity and we will know peace. No matter
	how far down the scale we have gone, we will see
	how our experience can benefit others . That feeling
	of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will
	lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our
	fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude
	and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people
	and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively
	know how to handle situations which used to
	baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing
	for us what we could not do for ourselves. (Page 83-84)





	
Tenth Step Promises:

	And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone--
	even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned.
	We will seldom be interested in liquor. If
	tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We
	react sanely and normally, and we will find that this
	has happened automatically. We will see that our new
	attitude tow ard liquor has been given us w ithout any
	thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is
	the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are
	we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had
	been placed in a position of neutrality--safe and
	protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the
	problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.
	We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our
	experience. That is how we react so long as we keep
	in fit spiritual condition. (Page 84-85)




	
Eleventh Step Promises:
	Much has already been said about receiving
	strength, inspiration, and direction from Him who
	has all knowledge and power. If we have carefully
	followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow
	of His Spirit into us. To some extent we have become
	God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital
	sixth sense. But we must go further and that means
	more action. (Page 85)



*	
	VRE, Page 241-242 




*	
	Big Book, Pages 8, 25, 16 and 50, respectively.



*	
	VRE, Page 236



*	
	Pass It On, Page 147



*	
	Pass It On, Page 128



*	
	The Four Absolutes practiced by the Oxford Group were: Absolute Honesty,  
	Absolute Unselfishness, Absolute  Love and Absolute  Purity.
	



*	
	Big Book, Pages 76, 14 and 88, respectively.



*	
	Big Book, Pages 16 and 83, respectively.

	


*	
	Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Page 307 (Both quotes)



*	
	Pass It On, Page 196-197, 199



*	Immediately after the Ninth Step Promises, and before the directions for Step Ten, we see the following passage:
	
		This thought brings us to STEP TEN, which suggests
		we continue to take personal inventory and continue
		to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We
		vigorously commenced this way of living as we
		cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of
		the Spirit. [Empasis added]
	Big Book, Page 84




	

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