Conversion: Christian and Non-Christian

A Comparative and Psychological Study

Alfred Clair Underwood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429602627
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

First published in 1925, this book is a pioneer attempt to deal with conversion from the comparative as well as the psychological point of view. The work falls into two main parts. Part one is a study of the conversion experience from the New Testament and the non-Christian point of view. Part two examines conversion from the psychological standpoint.

PART I.—HISTORICAL

CHAPTER II

CONVERSION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND LATER JUDAISM

THE story of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel at the Brook Jabbok (Gen. xxxii. 24–30) is treated by Driver as a kind of conversion crisis in the life of the Patriarch. He writes:

“The struggle at Penuel marks the triumph of the higher over the lower elements in his character. It is the critical moment of his life … memories of the past return upon him; his conscience smites him, and he is ‘greatly afraid.’ But God is his real antagonist, not Esau; it is God Whom his sins have offended and Who here comes to contest His right. These thoughts and fears are, as it were, materialized in his dream. … The moment marks a spiritual change in Jacob’s character. His carnal weapons are lamed and useless—they fail him in his contest with God. As the result of his struggle his natural self is left behind; he rises from it an altered man … and his new name symbolized his new nature.”¹

If it be objected that Jacob cannot be regarded as an historical person, but only as the imaginary ancestor of a tribe, it is sufficient to reply that, even if the story is unreliable as history, it is still valuable as evidence for the existence of conversion in Old Testament times. It affords the clearest possible proof that the fact of conversion was known to the Jahwistic writer (J).

It is not unnatural to suppose that the historical kernel of the story of the call of Samuel (I Sam. iii.) is to be found in the conversion crisis of an adolescent. His early training bore its appropriate fruit in the decision deliberately made at that time to dedicate himself to the service of Yahweh.

The experiences of some of the prophets, when they received their call to the prophetic ministry, seem to be akin to, if not identical with, the experience of conversion. Particularly does this appear to be the case with Isaiah, who received his call in the vision recorded in chap. vi. Standing one day in the temple, he passed into an ecstasy in which he had a vision of Yahweh exalted in majesty. The account is no doubt coloured by the prophet’s later experiences, but it is difficult to rid oneself of the impression that Isaiah has here recorded his conversion experience. His conviction of sin, his repentance, and his sense of divine forgiveness are all the marks of a true conversion, a spiritual change. There came to him at this time, as to Paul in later days, a sense of his vocation. It was the supreme moment of his life, and he records no other such experience in the course of a lifetime of prophetic work. “Temple and seraphim are nothing more than the necessary pictorial clothing of the supreme truth that in this vision his soul met the Infinite and Eternal face to face.”¹ The prophet’s conversion has all the appearance of being sudden, but it need not necessarily have been so. “We may somewhat safely assume that the vision of Yahweh, bringing with it the sudden apprehension on the prophet’s part of Yahweh’s purpose concerning him, was the culmination of a larger experience; not, we may well believe, for the first time on that day he felt his own unworthiness or contrasted the moral uncleanness of his people with the ethical holiness of God.”²

It is permissible to interpret the calls of Amos, Jeremiah and Ezekiel in the light of what has been said in reference to Isaiah. The two last-named received their call to the prophetic ministry in a vision, and it is worth pointing out that Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel mark down precisely the moment of their call. This surely points back to a definite historical experience which brought their lives into truer harmony with the divine will, for to this experience they trace their subsequent course of action. After it their lives are based on a truer and broader basis. The individual idiosyncrasies of each affect, of course, both the form and the content of this crucial experience. “A straightforward, direct and simple nature, like that of Amos, feels himself taken from following the flock (Amos vii. 15), quickly rises up and sets forth to carry out Yahweh’s command. In Isaiah’s case a voluntary and free human resolution goes along with the divine calling; Jeremiah is overmastered only by force (i. 6). … Ezekiel, after his call, feels as if he had been smitten to the ground by a mighty blow, and in the agitation of his spirit he sits silent and astonied for seven days (iii. 14 ff).”¹

A small point in connection with the call of Jeremiah is worth notice. Jer. i. 6 seems to indicate that the prophet was at that time but a youth, though the words, “I cannot speak, for I am a child,” may only give expression to Jeremiah’s characteristic humility. But if we are at liberty to infer from them that Jeremiah was an adolescent at the time, our contention that the prophetic call was frequently the accompaniment of a conversion crisis receives further support.

This discussion may also prepare us to see in Moses’s experience at Horeb a conversion crisis (Exod. iii. 2ff.). Exiled from the throbbing life of Egypt, the solitudes of the wilderness spake to him, and after his experience of the burning bush his call to a life-long vocation is unmistakable and clear.

It is, of course, possible to argue that thus to construe the calls of the Old Testament prophets is to read into their narratives more than their words allow. “A call is not the same thing as a conversion. The one is a summons to a new work, the other to a new ideal; the one is merely a change of activity, the other a change of heart. Doubtless the two often go together, but they are separable both in thought and experience.”² What happened in the case of these prophets was that after a period of intense and baffled interest in some moral and spiritual problem, the moment of illumination came suddenly, and the prophet was provided with his message.

The force of these contentions may be admitted without reserve. The real point at issue is whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion that in the above-mentioned cases the call to the prophetic vocation was the accompaniment of a definite spiritual change, and not merely a sudden flash of religious insight. That we must accept the first of these alternatives in the case of Isaiah seems hardly open to doubt. In Isa. vi. we have the record of a “spiritual process which the prophet actually passed through before the opening of his ministry.”¹ The documentary evidence is not so decisive in the cases of the other prophets, but it is permissible to read it in the light of the undoubted fact that a sense of vocation is frequently one of the results of the psychological ferment caused by the conversion crisis. Who, after reading Jeremiah’s wonderful disclosures of the soul’s deepest secrets, can doubt that he was a “twice-born” soul?

That the fact of conversion was well known to the Old Testament writers is further evidenced by the manner in which some of the higher minds in Israel sought the conversion of the heathen. Not all the Old Testament writers adopt the exclusive attitude towards the heathen which characterizes some of the prophets and Ezra-Nehemiah. Their conversion is contemplated in the “Servant” Songs of Isa. xl.-lv., while the allegory contained in the Book of Jonah is a clarion call to the Jews to abandon their policy of exclusiveness and rise to that true universalism which seeks the spiritual conversion of those who sit in darkness. How firmly the author of Jonah believed in the possibility of the conversion of the heathen is seen by the manner in which he makes the whole allegory turn on the reality of the spiritual change undergone by the Ninevites (iii. 5–10).

The prophets desired nothing so much as to produce a change in the moral conduct of their hearers. Apparently they expected sudden conversions to take place under their preaching, and aimed at securing them pretty much in the manner of the evangelical preacher of to-day. And it would be a surprising thing if their expectations were not fulfilled. But when we pass to the later stages in the development of religion in Israel this expectation disappears with the passing of the prophet and the growing influence of the priest and scribe. In the changed atmosphere sudden and explosive conversions would be replaced by conversions of the cultural type. Much care was devoted to the training of the young, and the discipline to which they were subjected was more definitely religious than intellectual (Prov. i. 7). The prevailing belief was that, if the young were trained in the law, their spiritual development was thereby secured. No violent break with the past was to be expected, for early religious training might be relied upon to bear its appropriate fruit.

In so far, then, as the Scribal element became dominant, Judaism became, as Mr. Montefiore says, a religion of the “healthy-minded” and of the “once-born.” “For the most part it taught a gradual progress in goodness and knowledge and the love of God.”¹ Rabbinic theology, as Mr. Abrahams points out, did not look for a permanent change of character by a single act of repentance. “The renewal of man’s nature by repentance, unlike the rebirth by conversion, is continuous and constant. It is a regular process, not a catastrophe.”² But that rebirth by conversion was not unknown even in a Judaistic milieu is shown by the following case:

“Famous is the tale of R. Eliezer b. Durdaiya (second century), who was so addicted to the sin of unchastity that it was said of him that there was no harlot in the world whom he had not visited. It was recorded of him that, on the occasion of his last sin, the harlot herself said to him that his repentance would never be received.

“Then he went forth, and sat between the hills, and said, ‘Ye mountains and hills, seek mercy for me.’ But they said, ‘Before we seek mercy for you, we must seek it for ourselves…’ Then he said, ‘Heaven and earth, ask mercy for me.’ But they said, ‘Before we ask mercy for you, we must ask it for ourselves…’ Then he said, ‘Sun and moon, ask mercy for me.’ But they said, ‘Before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves…’ Then he said, ‘Planets and stars, ask mercy for me.’ But they said, ‘Before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves. …’ Then he said, ‘The matter depends wholly upon me.’ He sank his head between his knees and cried aloud and wept so long till his soul went forth from him. Then a heavenly voice was heard to say, ‘R. Eliezer b. Durdaiya has been appointed to the life of the world to come.’ But R. Jehudah I., the Patriarch (Rabbi) (second century), wept and said, ‘There are those who acquire the world to come in years upon years; there are those who acquire it in an hour.’”¹

NOTES

¹ H.D.B. ii. 533; see also ii. 529 f.

¹ Robertson Smith, The Prophet’s of Israel, 218

² G. B. Gray, I.C.C., Isa. i. 101.

¹ Volz in the Enc. Bib., col. 3868.

² Canon Streeter in Foundations, 97.

¹ G. A. Smith, The Book of Isaiah, i. 58.

¹ Judaism and St. Paul, 48 and 50.

² Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, 42 f. For the Rabbinic insistence on repeated repentance see Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology. Vide index, s.v. “Repentance.”

¹ Montefiore, in The Beginnings of Christianity, part i., vol. i., 71 f.

CHAPTER III

CONVERSION IN CLASSIC CHRISTIANITY

ALL four Evangelists trace the beginnings of Christianity to the religious movement set on foot by the preaching of John the Baptist and continued in the preaching and ministry of Jesus. It is to be regretted that their accounts of the Baptist’s ministry are so slight, but it did not fall within their purpose to recount the life of the Forerunner. It is, however, certain that conversions took place as a result of his ministry. The words put into the mouth of the angel who appeared to Zacharias, “And many of the children of Israel shall he turn unto the Lord their God” (Luke i. 16), certainly embody a genuine hist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I HISTORICAL
• PART II PSYCHOLOGICAL
• PART III
• INDEX AND GLOSSARY