The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experienceing that the conceptual belief about Christ’s work, although so oftenefficacious and antecedent, is really accessory and non-essential,and that the “joyous conviction” can also come by far other channelsthan this conception. It is to the joyous conviction itself, theassurance that all is well with one, that he would give the name offaith par excellence. “When the sense of estrangement,” he writes,“fencing man about in a narrowly limited ego, breaks down, theindividual finds himself ‘at one with all creation.’ He lives in theuniversal life; he and man, he and nature, he and God, are one.That state of confidence, trust, union with all things, following uponthe achievement of moral unity, is the Faith-state. Various dogmaticbeliefs suddenly, on the advent of the faith-state, acquire a characterof certainty, assume a new reality, become an object of faith. As theground of assurance here is not rational, argumentation is irrelevant.But such conviction being a mere casual offshoot of the faith-state,it is a gross error to imagine that the chief practical value of thefaith-state is its power to stamp with the seal of reality certain particulartheological conceptions.133 On the contrary, its value liessolely in the fact that it is the psychic correlate of a biological growthreducing contending desires to one direction; a growth which expressesitself in new affective states and new reactions; in larger,nobler, more Christ-like activities. The ground of the specific assurancein religious dogmas is then an affective experience. The objectsof faith may even be preposterous; the affective stream will floatthem along, and invest them with unshakable certitude. The morestartling the affective experience, the less explicable it seems, thewhat remains for me to do?’ In another instant the light was shed throughmy mind by the Holy Ghost, and the joyous conviction was given me thatnothing more was to be done, save to fall on my knees, to accept thisSaviour and his love, to praise God forever.” Autobiography of HudsonTaylor. I translate back into English from the French translation of Challand(Geneva, no date), the original not being accessible.133 Tolstoy’s case was a good comment on those words. There was almostno theology in his conversion. His faith-state was the sense come backthat life was infinite in its moral significance.224