NOTES ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

BY JOHN HOWLEY, M.A.

V

CONVERSION AND THE NEW BIRTH

MOST, if not all, of the conversions we have been studying presuppose in the converted the existence of religious faith as a psychic element. The system of missions or retreats based on the Spiritual Exercises takes the creeds of the Church as the starting-point, to be developed and applied by meditation to the reform of life. The revivalist usually limits his dogmatic presuppositions, yet, although he regards religious faith as fiducia and not as fides, he takes as his fulcrum an idea of Sin and Redemption, both credal elements. The Revivalist and the Jesuit may differ as to what must be believed, but both assume beliefs of some sort as necessary prolegomena to their different religious exercises. The conversions they effect are rather the development and practical application of existing speculative beliefs than the formation of a new system of faith. The Catholic whom the mission brings from sin to regularity of life and religious practice may possibly be much better instructed in the Catholic faith than he was before, but he has not acquired a new faith, he only knows more about it and practises it better. The revival convert may have gained religious fervour and perhaps some views, he may be led to study his Bible and become a member of some Church, but his essential dogmatic outlook remains much the same. The change in the religious field of consciousness in all these cases is rather a rearrangement of existing psychic elements and their reinforcement, than the formation of new constituents. Hence there is a very great difference between these ordinary cases of conversion, whatever be their violence

or eccentricity, and those where there is a passage from infidelity to Christianity or from Protestantism to Catholicity. Here the change involved is much more than a mere shaking of the psychic kaleidoscope, the new pattern has new elements in it.

De Fursac, in his account of the Evan Roberts' Revival,1 admits the conversion of certain atheists, but he seems to regard them as poseurs and notoriety-hunters. He is not at all disposed to admit the possibility of the conversion of a genuine agnostic, nor is it easy to see how he could admit it consistently with his system. Faith implies an adhesion to the unknowable, a stepping beyond the frontiers of conscious knowledge by the will, and that with a certitude exceeding knowledge in the firmness of its adhesion. 'For he that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him' (Hebrews xi. 6). A man must himself accept the first article of the Christian creed before he can acknowledge the possibility of a real conversion of a genuine agnostic, otherwise he must deny or explain it away as a subjective delusion or a conscious fraud. Either course is fairly easy and plausible, if you are allowed to beg the question and brush aside inconvenient testimony.

We propose to confine to confine our study of the psychic mechanism involved in an act of faith and its genesis to Catholic religious experience, as we find there the best marked psychologic types. It is fides not fiducia we are examining, and Protestant religious experience is too fluctuating in its dogmatic content to furnish suitable material. It would be difficult to include Oxford, Hereford, Cardiff, and Belfast in the same diocese. The reaction of the Protestant consciousness to dogma is varied, not merely by subjective conditions, which we are studying, but by credal variations, which are outside the field of our inquiry. By taking a uniform creed we can get rid of this source of variation and so, to some extent, simplify matters. We are studying faith as a fact of consciousness, its ultimate nature and origin belong to the sphere of theology, not psychology. We will merely take beliefs as psychic facts and examine how they affect and are affected by the various elements which, with them, make up the field of consciousness.

1 De Fursac, Un Movement Mystique Contemporain, Paris, p. 77.

Psychologically, belief is second-hand knowledge. There are many things which we hold to be true of which we have no direct experience giving immediate knowledge or inference from experience constituting scientific knowledge. We know them because someone else who knows has told us. We accept them as truths on trust. If we analysed the whole content of our knowledge we would find an act of faith at the bottom of the vast bulk of it. How much of what we know of geography have we ever personally verified; for us it will remain faith, from school-desk to grave. Between this natural and normal exercise of faith and religious faith, there is no difference as far as both are assents on another's authority. Even where the truth propounded seems improbable, if the authority is considered competent and reliable, assent follows. If A knows that B is a truthful and capable man of science, he will be willing to accept, on B's authority, any statement, however extraordinary, which B assures him he has personally verified. The only case where this natural faith would fail is when the truth enunciated by B seems to A to involve a contradiction with some known truth. But if B assures A that the contradiction is only apparent, not real, and due to A's lack of scientific training, A will still be able to believe, but with a difference. He cannot accommodate the new proposition to his existent field of consciousness, he can accept it in itself by forgetting, that is ignoring, what contradicts it. It becomes a mystery. Before he can heartily accept it, the rough edges must be removed, and he must be shown how to fit it in with the other elements of consciousness. He must be shown some larger synthesis which can comprise the discordant ideas, although his mind may be unable to understand how. The conflict between his personal idea and B's theorem will cease when B assures him that the seeming contradiction can be reconciled in a second truth which includes both and from which both proceed. Although A may not understand how this can be, yet if he has full confidence in B's knowledge he can reconcile his consciousness to the presence of what he would otherwise regard as a contradiction. We are supposing, of course, that A has some docility and is not set on maintaining his own opinions against competent authority. He will bear the seeming contradiction with facility in proportion to his docility, for he will refer its elements confidently to the higher synthesis,

and this confident reference will lessen their mutual psychic pressure and friction.

Being thus enabled to keep both members of the seeming contradiction in his field of consciousness, A is enabled to make practical use of them, and thus the new truth received from B can be readily utilized. If A could not tolerate it by reference to the higher synthesis, he would be driven by the force of his pre-existent ideas to exclude it from consciousness, or did he desire to utilize it, it would be against the grain. You cannot live a contradiction. Again, if by any chance A should lose confidence in B's knowledge, veracity, or goodwill, the whole new structure would collapse, for the grounds on which he accepted the discordant idea would disappear, the will to believe would cease. But while the will to believe remained, was A's conduct in any way unreasonable? Would it have been reasonable for him to match his wits against his teacher and say, 'Because I cannot reconcile what you tell me with what I know already, it must be false?'

If, for the human teacher in this natural act of faith, we substitute a Divine Teacher, teaching men directly, the reasonableness of belief is not only assured but perfected, for where can doubt come in as to knowledge, veracity, and good-will on the side of the teacher? Yet, even here, the assent remains a voluntary act on the side of the person taught, for the truth propounded by the teacher need not be evident in itself, or as a conclusion from certain knowledge. The doctrine cannot command assent intrinsically, it can only exact assent by the moral force of authority. But who can But who can doubt that such knowledge would exceed in certainty any mere human science?

Where such Divine teaching comes to man, not directly but through human agency, we can surely give, with every reasonableness, the same complete assent, if we are but sure that the human agency is duly recognised, commissioned, and commanded to teach in the Name and by the authority of the Divine Master. Where the Master's veracity is unquestionable and His power unquestioned, such a commission, once authenticated, is a guarantee that whatsoever is taught by those He sent to teach all nations' is His teaching. He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me. And he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me' (Luke x. 16).

'He that receiveth you, receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me' (Matthew x. 40).

Once we recognize and acknowledge within ourselves that the Catholic Church is the duly commissioned human agency through which the Divine Teacher instructs us, we can reasonably give as cordial an assent to its teaching as we would give to the Word of God Himself speaking directly to our consciousness. An ambassador may fail to deliver an earthly monarch's message with accuracy, and we may reasonably doubt at times the King's meaning, but the 'Creator of all things visible and invisible' is Lord of the very roots of being, and His Minister Plenipotentiary cannot fail to say what it is the Master's Will that he should say, no more and no less.

We are not here concerned to discuss how the Catholic verifies the credentials of the Church, that belongs to the domain of apologetics, not of psychology. We assume that these credentials are verifiable and verified, as the case may be. Our task will be to examine the various resultant assents with their corollaries as part of the given of consciousness and see how they interact with the rest of the field, how they come into being as psychic elements or pass out of consciousness, how religious faith comes and goes.

Our field of consciousness has, as we have seen, a certain visual unity. All our thoughts, images, volitions, passions, sensations tend to group themselves round some one centre of interest in each particular state of consciousness that we examine. That centre of interest forms the focus of our spontaneous attention, should it shift there is a change more or less marked in the whole field. The devout parishioner who is carefully following the Mass in his missal, brings into his field of mental view the various liturgical ideas which cluster round the Mass, the prayers and ceremonies, the chant and music it may also be. His field, in the main, is a liturgical complex, with all its multiplex doctrinal and devotional associations. The precise focus of his attention will shift as the action progresses, and so will the general field, but its general character will remain the same, and it will take its colour and tone from the centre of interest, the liturgy. Now, let some vivid distraction intrude, some vexatious reminiscences which start a train of worldly thoughts. If the original centre of attention holds firm, if the interest in the liturgy is