GOD'S PRESENCE IN MAN'S EXPERIENCE

The personal experience of God by the individual -- the ""encounter"" or the ""religious experience"" so often spoken of today -- is the central theme of this work. The author analyzes the role and significance of such phenomena from the speculative and pastoral points of view, and cites several informative instances. Yet, the book loses much of its impact when it becomes clear that the author, by a sort of Anselmic inversion of logic, is confusing cause and effect. If God is experienced, he seems to say, then God exists; and if God is encountered, then it is necessarily an authentic and infallibly elevating experience. There is little account taken of the ancient objection that it is not the truth of faith, but the strength of it, that produces such encounters and experiences. The book, in other words, is a helpful guide for those who accept the spiritual authenticity of these phenomena; but it will seem naively premature to those who believe that too little is known about the human psyche for any final conclusions to be drawn about events that may be either spiritual or psychic in nature.