Basic HTML Version
471
take on an abnormal aspect, especially during revivals, and then becomes a pathological
phenomenon. As far as the time of conversion is concerned, it is pointed out that conversion
does not occur with the same frequency at all periods of life, but belongs almost exclusively to
the years between 10 and 25, and is extremely rare after 30. This means that it is peculiarly
characteristic of the period of adolescence. Environment, education, and religious training, all
affect the nature and the frequency of its occurrence.
2. EVALUATION OF THESE STUDIES.
The value of these psychological studies of conversion
need not be denied. It would be folly to brush them aside as of little or no significance, or to
ignore them just because they do not take due account of the supernatural in conversion. They
shed a welcome light on some of the laws that apply in the psychical life of man, on some of the
phenomena that accompany the spiritual crisis in the conscious life of man, and on the various
types of conversion and the factors that determine these. They deepen our insight into the
different types of conversion, which have always been recognized in Reformed theology,
confirm our conviction respecting the three elements that are found in conversion, and are
quite in agreement with the theological conviction that conversion is rooted in the
subconscious life; though they do not explicitly affirm, and in some cases even deny that it finds
its explanation in a divine work of the Holy Spirit below the threshold of consciousness, — the
work of regeneration. At the same time we should not overrate these studies. Some of them,
as, for instance, the work of James is decidedly one-sided, since it is based entirely on the study
of extraordinary conversions, which he found most interesting. Moreover, they have not
escaped the danger of carrying the idea of the operation of psychical law in conversion too far,
and of overlooking the divine and supernatural side of the important process of conversion.
James deals with it all as a moral change and defines it in a general way as “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.”[Op. cit., p. 189.] Others reduce it to a purely natural phenomenon, and
even explain it materialistically, as controlled by physical laws. They do not, and even from the
nature of the case cannot, go down to the root of the matter, do not and cannot penetrate to
the hidden depths from which conversion springs. There is an obvious tendency to challenge
the old, orthodox idea of conversion, regarding it as unscientific to teach that the religious
nature of man is miraculously implanted. They do not accept the light of the Word of God, and
therefore have no standard by which to judge the deeper things of life. Snowden says: “As
some psychologists have tried to work out a psychology of the soul without any soul, so some
of them have endeavored to construct a psychology of religion without religion. Under their
treatment of it religion has evaporated into a mere subjective feeling or delusion without any
objective reality, and such a psychology of religion is baseless and worthless both as psychology
and as religion.”[The Psychology of Religion, p. 20.]