Ivana Noble 

In this lecture I am going to examine how postmodern philosophy can help us to understand and interpret those approaches to conversion which emphasize a break with the past and the establishing of a new totalizing image of reality. In other words, conversion will also be examined in its negative aspects, through examples, typical of our post-modern scene, of the radical rejection of nihilism and the subsequent volte-face that lead to extreme certainty.[1] Employing tools borrowed mainly from contemporary thinkers, especially Levinas and Derrida, concerned with the reconfiguring of the subject and its integrity, I will ask whether in the socio-cultural background which gave rise to these defective approaches to conversion remedies can also be found.

First, I will define how the main concepts, conversion and postmodernism, will be used. Then I propose to offer three examples of the negative aspects of conversion. The first illustrates the desire to return to firm foundations of faith, as if these were able to liberate the individual from other views and from doubt. The second depicts the desire to flee history, general as well as individual and move to a non-space, to a utopia, as if it were a new world to be inhabited. Finally, the third shows the desire for a new identity, which is offered at the cost of conforming to the controlling structures of speech and power. This section will be based on actual stories, complemented by insights of Ricoeur, Boff and Eagleton into the process of human growth and integration, as well as into different expressions of ideology. The following part places these three approaches to conversion under a more detailed critique, and while against the postmodern approaches it rehabilitates some form of continuity, it accords with their deconstruction of claims to the totality of a single experience, and to any form of identity which excludes what cannot be accommodated in a single glance. In conclusion I point out possible ways of expansion of the initial approaches to conversion.

When I speak of conversion, metanoia, the change of heart, I have in mind a very broad definition, which I take from Bernard Lonergan: ‘Conversion is a matter of moving from one set of roots to another.'[2] Lonergan's definition allows different interpretations. One would emphasize embracing what is seen as exterior to the former life and former identity, and what operates as its substitute. The other would emphasize that the shift is a shift of focus and thus see conversion as an expansion of the latent possibilities present in the pre-conversion life. Lonergan continues his definition, saying that conversion ‘occurs only inasmuch as a man [or woman] discovers what is inauthentic in himself [herself] and turns away from it, inasmuch as he [she] discovers what the fulness of human authenticity can be and embraces it with his whole being.'[3] Yet this extension, too, allows both interpretations. Lonergan, in principle, sees coversion as something positive, changing from worse to better.

In this lecture, however, negative expressions of conversion will also be examined, the possibility of changing one's roots from better to worse. I realise how difficult it is to judge in these matters what is better and what is worse, and also that we have to ask from whose point of view such a judgment is made. None of us is a neutral observer, and none of us has any higher ground from which to judge, any God's eye point of view.[4] Yet, my position is not underpinned by disbelief. God is not eliminated from the scene yet neither is God responsible for the negative expressions of conversion. I find it unsustainable to hold that God leads people from bigger to smaller freedom or from bigger solidarity with others to exclusivism. We as human beings do not have a higher epistemological ground at our disposal, but this does not rule out divine intervention, with some processes of conversion being initiated and inspired by God, even if I will argue that not all are.

When speaking of postmodernism, we have to be aware that this concept has become increasingly vague, which has not, however, prevented it from remaining fashionable. It includes ‘postmodernism' as a movement of thought, something I doubt actually exists in any consistent form, and ‘postmodernity' as a socio-cultural context of the second part of the 20th century and possibly the beginning of the 21^st century, marked by scepticism towards modern ideals of a mature world safeguarding freedom and human rights, and by disillusion, caused by the lack of fulfilment of such ideals.[5] In this lecture I will understand postmodernism as a reflection of this socio-cultural phenomenon, which, indeed, influences religion and theology, too. Within this reflection I will pay attention particularly to changes in the notion of subject, such as are found in Emanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, since these influence how I understand possible expansions in the interpretation of conversion.

2. Negative expressions of conversion

As I had neither time nor, more importantly the tools, with which to ground this part in sociological research (interesting though that would undoubtedly be[6]), I have chosen to ground my interpretation in stories about conversion. I have selected those which are highly problematic, although representative in present churches and society, and hope that they may be recognisable to others in their broad outline.

2.1 Return to firm foundations

Several times I have been a witness of a surprising change in people whom I knew, which led, through an initial stress on personal freedom and the recognition of a plurality of possible good lifestyles, to subsequent disillusion and the holding of "one superior and universal truth", of which these people became convinced and which they tried to live out. Let me give you an example:

Thomas,[7] whom I knew since the age of 17, was a punk musician. He converted to Christianity of a relatively liberal form, started to study at the Philosophical Faculty. However in his mid-twenties he underwent a much more radical change, or form of conversion such as I have previously defined it. He left the church in which he was baptised, and let himself be rebaptised in a small evangelical church, arguing, that only now did he see his conversion as real. He felt freed from relativism, and as he said, found a firm foundation for his belief. He and his new family fled from life in the city to a house in the countryside and tried to separate themselves from what they started to perceive as unclean: urban culture, education, even contact with Christians of different persuasion, whether outside or inside of the evangelical church. Thomas, whom I used to know as an intelligent and reflective person, now forbade himself to think about his faith and its practices, because he was afraid that thinking may take away his certainty. But as he was not able to block out his thinking potential completely, and at the same time wanted so much the new foundations to be firm, he interpreted thinking as temptation, and his inclination to thinking as a negative feature of his personality. So, while the foundations remained in their place, there were times he felt alienated from them, as if there were all the answers available in his religion, and so he was turning his back on the grace of God when doubts arose telling him that life was more complex than the answers. A hatred of self and of all that reminded him of his thinking capacity became, unfortunately, one of the features of his "converted life".

This desire for firm foundations was a reaction to what was absent in his life before, even after he became a Christian. But what sort of foundations were at play in his story? And how did they influence what he meant by conversion?

A standard definition of the foundations of faith is that given by Karl Rahner. He says:

‘We do not abandon this circle between faith and the grounds of faith when we ask: In a historical inquiry what can be established with sufficient certainty about those events which are not only objects of faith but also grounds of faith? Concretely, did Jesus know himself to be the absolute saviour, and can it be maintained with sufficient certainty before the tribunal of conscience and of truth that such a claim is known by historical inquiry?'[8]

Foundations as a "sufficient certainty" in faith involved, in the story of Thomas, eliminating what might provide space for doubts: culture, education, conversations with people of different opinions, his own thinking about faith. This showed fears that foundations may be vulnerable, and the firmer they are in comparison to Rahner's definition, the more vulnerable. Thomas's desire came closer to what postmodern philosophy identifies as foundationalism, namely a position which sees foundations in terms of pieces of final, absolute truth, and excludes any critical reflection. Foundationalism has different forms. The three main ones are: (i) a defective picture of reality which claims to rest on fixed foundations of knowledge, belief and judgment;[9] (ii) a defective system which harmonises different approaches into one meta-theory, while making a general idea identical to a specific real instance;[10] and (iii)a defective principle which divides positions into two categories: either they require or provide evidence with regard to (i) and (ii).[11]

The conversion to firm foundations, in the story of Thomas, operated as a shift from his critical knowledge and belief, from experience that his decisions were not free of an element of coincidence and fallibility, to what Paul Ricoeur calls the first na vet or the primitive na vet . This is the pre‑critical stage dominated by the immediacy of belief, where to live as a Christian seems to be easy, as the world is full of non‑problematic meaning, God is in everything, God speaks to us, acts in our lives and through our lives, we have a language to speak about it, to invite others to participate in this world of faith, immediacy and meaning as well.[12] Yet in Ricoeur this initial stage does not last. As we grow, we leave the paradise of childhood, where we knew where things were, and as we experience tensions and conflicts, doubts arise, and we have to reevaluate our image of reality and to distance ourselves from non‑problematic faith, immediacy and meaning. We find ourselves disoriented.This stage is called by Ricoeur a loss of naivety or a hermeneutics of suspicion, the time of critical thinking. In the case of Thomas, whose story I told, the shift went the other way round, from critical thinking to its loss. Conversion appeared as regress.

Ricoeur s line of development continues, and it is where his main interest lies: how to pass from the stage of adolescence to the third stage, which according to him, completes a hermeneutical circle: We must understand in order to believe, but we must believe in order to understand. [13] This stage is called a second na vet and aims to be a postcritical equivalent of the precritical hierophany. [14] This is the stage of regaining the immediacy of the first na vet , yet without abandoning critical thinking. Both previous stages are integrated and challenged, as one enters a reoriented space, but no longer in a non‑problematic way. It is a space where aporias are present, and yet do not distance us from the contact with reality, from belief, immediacy and the plentitude of meaning. Needless to say, Ricoeur is aware that not all of us reach this stage and if so, then not at all levels of our life. But let us compare it to the case of Thomas. His transition from the critical stage to the first na vet " used the critical potential to abolish it, and became reductive rather than restorative.[15] His case also leads on to the second theme, namely turning away from the pre-conversion life.

2.2 The ‘Total' break with the past

The story of Magdalene may give us material to analyse here. When I first met her, Magdalene was a painter in her mid twenties. She also worked in an office, but it was not where her soul was. Under the influence of her new friends she converted to Christianity and felt the need of a break with the past, of a "total" break, as she put it. She gave away all her books and CDs and the next stage was to burn her own paintings. Magdalene searched for an expression of Christianity, where the ideals she was reading about first in the Bible, and later in her new books about Christian mystics, were completely present. Anything less than that was unsatisfactory and represented the old life, which had to be abandoned. This desire did not leave her even after an experience in a charismatic group with a schizophrenic leader, which was for her personally destructive. The word "conversion" occurred in different stages of her life, most recently when she was nearly forty and met an Orthodox monk, who worked on converting her to Orthodoxy. Again she was willing to leave her established life and start from scratch, to leave not only her home and work, but also communication with friends, as she felt she had no longer any common ground with them, unless they also wanted to become Orthodox. But even there, she found it difficult to invest herself in building new friendships, as she was afraid of losing them again. She suffered from loneliness and depression. Her shifts deprived her of hope, and made her afraid of the future.

In Magdalene's case conversion seemed like an utopia,[16] which she struggled to live in time and place. It was accompanied by stages of disillusion, when her "break with the past" showed its incompleteness, and she felt that the whole process of letting go would have to be repeated. Was she an example of a deeply believing person, who really tried to act on her belief? Surely, Christian classics offer similar examples of conversion. E.g. St Francis's renouncing all his possessions,( in fact those of his father), considering them less than dust, and when a conflict arose, giving up even his own clothes.[17] And yet St Francis's life after this experience involves a process of integration and rootedness in the realities of his time and place, a rootedness which allowed him to subvert the ills in the actual church and society.[18] His "converted life" is a response to this situation rather than a flight from it as the initial experience might have suggested.[19] As Leonardo Boff emphasizes, for Francis, belief in God also involves an integration of the negative aspects of life. Boff says: ‘Behind the saint is hidden a person who has conquered the hells of human nature and the crush of sins, despair, and denial of God.'[20]. He depicts St Francis as an integrated person, and interprets his life as archetypical for a postmodern time. His dreams and desires were utopic, like the one of converting Saracens to Christ,[21] yet they were not separated from day to day life. St Francis lived by them, but also allowed them to be challenged, and as a result, became challenged himself.

If the process of integration does not happen, the danger is that one wants to live in a world or in a church, that does not exist, as perhaps the story of Magdalene suggests. Magdalene's search was serial rather than progressive. For her, conversion was not something which happened once for all, but she did not see it as a process, but as disjointed repeated attempts to leave behind her past life totally. People like Magdalene want to live in a world which their minds have produced, and are again and again frustrated when this world fails to correspond to the reality. For them a conversion towards the real may feel like a compromise, like a betrayal of their ideal, and therefore they prefer to see conversion as away from the real. This, however, may cause severe disturbances. If we compare this "conversion" to Lonergan's definition,[22] only the first type of conversion - towards the real - counts. This involves a certain subversion of the ideal, or more exactly, allowing utopia to be a utopia, an ideal to be an ideal, without, as Lechte would say, making a general idea identical to a specific real instance.[23]

The New Testament and Christian classics emphasize not only continuity, but also discontinuity with the past, when they speak about the new life in Christ.[24] This is especially so in Paul's image of being a new creation in Christ,[25] which reflects his own conversion experience,[26] but also a conviction that thanks to Christ's forgiveness, we can integrate the pre-conversion life as a reconciled one.[27] This integration of a reconciled life is then extended also to after the initial conversion experience,[28] where Paul recognizes the disproportion between utopia and reality in terms of what he wants to do and what he does.[29]

When we return to the attitude of conversion as the desire for a break with the past, the story of Magdalene can warn us not to interpret this break as "total" in terms of moving from reality to utopia, and treating utopia as a place. Her attitude led to frustration and disillusion, and disintegrated her life. However much the notion of conversion is used also for the shift from the real to the unreal, and in spite of the fact that this attitude is sometimes supported by the church communities and representatives,[30] it may have even more undesirable effects than the regress coming from the foundationalist defence of untouchable certainties.

2.3 New conformity - new identity

The next example presents the problems involved in understanding conversion as conformity to ready made structures of speech and power. The story is from the Pietist background, of Paul (25) and Jane (22), who shared their experience of conversion in a Protestant community, which tried to revive the spirit of Lutheran pietism, although they themselves were from the Hussite Church. They said that the vital moment for their conversion was when they repeated the formula: "Lord Jesus, I give my whole life to your hands, and let you become my personal Saviour. Amen." This was followed by a strong emotional reaction. They spoke about surrender and tears of joy, and also about a new certainty, that they were saved. They were very eager to spread this experience, and, thus, they introduced among the social and church circles in which they moved a new question: "If you died tonight, do you have the certainty that you would be saved?" If someone replied "I don't know" or did not quite get where their question came from, they treated that person as a candidate for conversion. According to their "new minds", such people needed to repeat the same formula and experience the same emotional surrender and joy as they did. Without this, Paul and Jane thought, they would not be converted, and thus would not be saved, but go to hell. After a time, both of them found this concept of belief too narrow. But they remained convinced that it was all there was in terms of Christian understanding of conversion and salvation. Their leaving this concept thus meant leaving Christianity completely and becoming immune to further encounters with it, as they thought they knew what it was all about.

Now, let me compare the attitude of conversion as a new conformity gaining a new identity to the variety of meanings Terry Eagleton ascribes to ideology. As we will see, he does not work with ideology purely in a negative sense, but highlights dangers present in an ideological discourse, as in J.B. Thompson's indirect definition: ‘To study ideology.... is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of dominion.'[31] Eagleton, then, distinguishes sixteen different ways of approaching ideology, which are currently in circulation,[32] of which the following are of particular importance for our understanding of conversion and its distorted expressions.

Eagleton starts with general characteristics, among these are ‘(b) a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class;' here, in the example of Paul and Jane, the body of ideas was represented by a belief that Jesus becomes one's personal Saviour, if one repeats the formula of profession. This consisted in giving one's whole life to him. Another belief was that one experienced this change emotionally as surrender and joy. And finally, if either the verbal profession or given emotional response were missing, it shed doubts on one's salvation. Problems arise when we combine this meaning with ‘(h) identity thinking',[33] when the body of ideas characteristic of a particular group is taken as a general norm for everybody. So in our example Paul and Jane became convinced of the adequacy of their ideas to the degree that these served as the criterion as to whether others were converted and thus saved or not. Everybody fell into either one or the other category, and any space beyond this distinction was denied. And finally, those who did not fit into the norm, or who questioned it, were excluded, or, in their religious language, damned. The initial sets of belief thus became ‘(o) the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure', and also ‘(l) action-oriented sets of beliefs', which here took the form of an eager mission activity, of gaining others for these beliefs as they were taken for the sole medium of salvation.[34] The next two points, however, will take us to Thompson's initial definition, combining accepted meaning and relations of dominion: ‘(c) ideas, which help to legitimate a dominant political power; (f) that which offers a position for a subject'.

The conformity Jane and Paul associated with the conversion did not involve joining the actual group of pietist Christians, or subscribing to their institution, but there were relations of power involved in terms of subscribing to the mental image of the right church of the saved. And people holding on to this image strengthened their influence by gaining new converts and thus new mission workers. Jane and Paul also struggled with a superiority complex, however much it was clothed in a Christian language of humility and service. The attitude that "we are saved and you are not" was a difficult one to hide.

3. Postmodern critique

Now let me place these three attitudes to conversion and their initial critique in the postmodern scene, and with the help of the tools offered by Levinas and Derrida, in particular, spell out why conversion as a return to firm foundations, as a ‘total' break with the past, or as a new conformity can bear negative fruit. To do that, I will have to enter into questions concerning problems of continuity-discontinuity, totality and its discontents, identity and alterity.

3.1 Discontinuity or continuity

The attitudes to conversion presented above emphasized discontinuity with the past. The new life which was gained was interpreted as turning back to the "old life", but as could be seen in Magdalene's story, there were problems with moving from reality to utopia, to the world which does not exist and never did. This led Magdalene first to frustration, then to depression, and had a disintegrating effect on her personality. She lost her roots several times, and found herself unable to invest herself in building up new relationships. How does her attitude reflect a postmodern situation of the death of metanarratives and the need to move away from the "fixed maxims"?[35]

Ricoeur's analysis of the progress from the non-critical immediacy (first na vete) to critical immediacy (second na veté) through the hermeneutics of suspicion did not consider the society - or church - where the hermeneutics of suspicion settled a starting point. He spoke of the ‘modern mind', for which the world of immediacy created obstacles, when it was presented as a realm where critical thinking was not allowed to enter. Thus the critical mind reduced the immediacy in order to gain space for itself. Ricoeur followed this process and saw himself as participating in the stage, where the ‘children of criticism ...seek to go beyond criticism by means of criticism, by a criticism, which is no longer reductive but restorative.'[36] For a postmodern mind a "loss of na vete" is not the mediating stage as we saw in Ricoeur, but a starting point. People like Thomas, Magdalene or Paul and Jane saw it as a broken space, to which, in comparison, the newly gained pre-critical immediacy was a step forward, towards meaning and truth, which the "previous life" dominated by critical thinking could not sustain.[37] It thus seems that the postmodern mind was not allowed to mature in the modern way, through the critical tools, but had to distance itself from them, hopefully, in order to get back to them and vivify them with the experience of the immediacy, with the discovery of an ideal.

Conversion experience, as I depicted it in the previous part, may provide such a shift, and positively it can open up space for a meaning and truth, without which it is difficult to live. But if conversion is to involve discovering ‘what is inauthentic in [oneself] and turn[ing] away from it, inasmuch as [one] discovers what the fulness of human authenticity can be and embrac[ing] it with [one's] whole being,'[38] surely, the initial shift has to become part of a process of discontinuity with the past and appropriation of the past in the new situations. Lonergan acknowledges different aspects of conversion: religious, moral, and intellectual.[39] All of these develop, as they gradually reach the roots of our humanity, where one is edified by the encounter with the living God.[40]

And here, referring to the notion of progress and transcendent aid, it can be argued that we return to the frameworks of modern mind. Perhaps, though, without integrating these modern remains, the appropriation of the postmodern critique remains shallow. Without some notion of progress and some openness to the transcendent, conversion does not overcome its adolescent stage. But I recognise that remaining in this adolescent stage can hardly be criticised from within the plurality of the postmodern scene.

3.2 Totality and its discontents

Fragmentation of meaning and truth, as we postmodern people experience it, in a way invites an extreme reaction. The examples of conversion I gave showed this reaction as a desire to move to something "totally different." Having discovered pre-critical immediacy, a non-problematic meaning and truth, the need was felt to protect it, as we saw with Thomas and Magdalene. One way of protecting this meaning and truth was to totalize the new experience, and to treat the "new life" it opened as something irreducible,[41] that is, something which never fully mingles with the dynamics of their lives, where human existence inevitably brings the need to change in response to time and place.. A desire for total otherness, or rather for totalizing the experience of otherness, however, could not be sustained. Levinas points out that the "otherness" becomes the formal characteristic, or the content of the experience, which enters into the way of existing, and is ‘thus reabsorbed into the unity of the system, destroying the radical alterity of the other.'[42] When applied to our theme, the radical separation between the "pre-conversion life" and the "post-conversion life" becomes the source of frustration, when the conversion experience and the "new life" are reabsorbed into the rest of one's life. People like Magdalene in my story may feel that as the "absolute distance" that used to separate the old life from the new one is being filled in, their ideal is being corrupted. They want to live in an "otherworldly" world or church, and understand conversion as succesive means to get them to this "non-place".

Unless this chain is broken, the relationship between "I and a world"[43] remains defective. Conversion needs to progress to the subversion of the "I" by the real, something which Boff praised in St Francis. [44] For Levinas the relationship between "I and a world" is defective when, instead of the "I" being altered by the world, the "I" makes a home in the world, and although "I" remains ‘dependent on a reality that is other', the "I" sees itself as being free in the following terms: ‘In a sense everything is in the site, in the last analysis everything is at my disposal, even the stars, ... Everything is here, everything belongs to me'.[45] Thus, the ‘dwelling' in the world ‘is the very mode of maintaining oneself',[46] and from this angle, from this site (le lieu) "I" comprehend the world. Reality is the reality of selfishness, of egocentrism. The alterity of the world is reduced, and with this reduction the "I" also eliminates challenge, which would be seen as alienation form oneself, as apostasy.[47]

Although Levinas speaks here of "being in a world", in "a site", "a place" (le lieu), where "I" reduces alterity for one's own profit, whilst the conversion experience involving a "total" break with the past seems to go the opposite direction, (since it reduces "being in a world" and emphasizes the alterity), there are in fact striking similarities. Magdalene from the story also wanted to find "a place", from which all other places could be ordered. In escaping an ego-centred world, she embraced the transcendent transposition of the same. Her desire for ‘dwelling' in the utopic world was a "mode of maintaining herself",[48] as well as a point of comprehension of the world. Not a utilitarian comprehension, but a negativist one, perpetuating the "total" gap between the ideal and the real.

Levinas's question, how to ‘enter into a relationship with an other without immediately divesting it of its alterity?'[49] may thus also be relevant in this case, although it needs paraphrasing: How to enter into a relationship with the real, without immediately divesting it of its reality? Levinas's hope is in entering a conversation, where the "I" ‘leaves itself',[50] and allows the otherness of people (of God, of the world) not to be nullified (or "murdered"),[51] but to stand as an appeal to oneself. [52] It is the face of the Other, that calls the "I" to responsibility and establishes the identity of the subject: "I" ‘consists in being able to respond to this essential destitution of the Other, finding resources for myself.'[53] To continue with my paraphrase and an application of Levinas's argument to the defective notion of conversion, entering the relationship with the real presupposes deconstitution of the conversion experience as a new totality, and allowing resources to be found where they are, in the real, rather than "where they should be", in the ideal. Yet the initiation of this process is difficult, or maybe, at a theoretical level, even impossible. Still, what a theory cannot do, a life-giving encounter often can. ‘The face of the Other', as Levinas says, makes possible the leaving of the "I" and its transformation - in our case - towards the real.[54]

3.3 Identity and alterity

Levinas's critique of the ego-centred reduction of the world already introduced the theme of identity and alterity. Now, let me complement it with Derrida's deconstruction of the logic of identity, and apply it to the totalizing attitude of conversion, illustrated in the story of Paul and Jane.

The logic of identity is derived from Aristotle, and consists of three laws: (i) the law of identity: whatever is, is; (ii) the law of contradiction: nothing can both be and not be; and (iii) the law of exclusion: everything must either be or not be.[55] This logic of identity, according to Derrida, lies at the heart of Western metaphysics and its main fault is that it approaches life as a theory, where everything can be fitted into prescribed categories. Derrida claims that the logic of identity is an exclusivist system disregarding differences and depriving life of creative power. It treats reality as static, homogeneous, logically coherent and essentially simple. The whole dualist metaphysical vocabulary is, according to Derrida, a result of the process of excluding the different. Concepts like sensible‑intelligible, ideal‑real, internal‑external, fiction‑truth, nature‑culture, speech‑writing, activity‑passivity, etc. propose that there is a fixed "objective" structure of reality, which does not change. This, has to be deconstructed, [56] in order to gain space for the creative unboundedness of reality, where the different is no longer excluded or imprisoned in fixed rules.

Derrida's analysis of the logic of identity and its consequences can shed some light on the conformity Jane and Paul associated with their conversion. Their fixed categories of who is converted and thus saved, could be seen in terms of the law of identity: "saved" is whoever fulfills the requirements of Romans 10:9: ‘because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved'. (They believed this was at the heart of their church group requirements of the verbal surrender to the Lord, and of the following response of the heart). Then, the law of contradiction can be traced in their conviction that no one can both not fulfill the requirements and be saved. This is where their mission zeal took its strength - to gain as many people as possible to the side of those who fulfill the requirements was seen as essential. And finally, the law of exclusion was behind the belief that those who refuse to believe and profess will go to hell.

Of course, there are unjustified steps even from the point of view of Aristotelian logic. To start with, only by failing to distinguish between analytic and synthetic judgements is it possible to give content to what being saved "is" and to what not being saved "is".[57] But instead of trying to correct the illogical steps and bringing the interpretation of conversion in question to accord with the more perfect system of Aristotelian logic, I will stick with Derrida's critique and apply his tools for improvement.

For this purpose I will look at Derrida's notion of diff rance.[58] This neologism attempts to combine the two meanings of the French verb diff rer ‑ to "differ" and to "defer". Derrida s diff rance points to the finitude of reason and the permanent impossibility of absolute knowledge .[59] This impossibility then, breaks the law of identity. In our case, it raises questions of how we can ultimately know what it means to be saved, or even what it means to be converted. This recognition does not have to exclude the validity of one's experience. It reminds us, however, that an experience always also has its unconceptualisable dimension. We can know something, but not the ultimate truth, we can experience the real, but not capture it into a definition without excluding some elements of it. Derrida's critique asks: What if the excluded was of vital importance?[60] We can say that Jane and Paul's definition of what conversion experience was excluded some elements of their own experience in order to fit what remained into the scheme accepted by the pietist community. But what if what remained did not have the potential of a healthy development without what was excluded?

Derrida's deconstruction of the scheme can become a reconstruction of the event, a return to what was missed out initially. Or, perhaps, an attitude of return, which desires integration and is always aware of its incompleteness.[61] Caputo puts it as follows:

‘We never get a chance to write from on high, we never win the transcendental high ground. We write from below, slowly and painfully forging unities of meaning from the flow of signifiers... unities about which we keep our fingers crossed that they will get us through the day. We are always inside and outside truth, unable to stop the rush of truth, yet unable, too, to hold truth in place and stop its rushing off.'[62]

Derrida's emphasis on not reducing language to the identity of its concepts is attractive, because it opens up space for alterity, for what is left outside. But it is not without problems, for if the fixed objective structure of reality and a non-problematically conceptualisable truths are gone, communication becomes more difficult. To live with incompleteness, and to struggle through its different stages, may be seen as a journey of conversion,[63] but also as a permanent temptation to short cuts, to conceptualize the inconceptualisable, to limit the infinite. And the Derridian critique as such makes it difficult to claim grounds for the former being "objectively" better than the later.

4. Conclusion

Conversion, as ‘moving from one set of roots to another,'[64] does not necessarily lead to a balance between discovering what is inauthentic in oneself and turning away from it, and embracing the fulness of human authenticity, as Lonergan would have it,[65] nor is it only an ‘amazing about-face that leads them back ...to the very domain...of the word of God', as Domenach hoped.[66] One can argue that the examples I have shown do not represent conversion in its proper meaning. But I suppose it was the "proper meaning" of conversion, I wanted to challenge. The people in my stories were convinced of their conversion being a proper one, at least as long as the "new life" these conversions initiated lasted, and yet it had profoundly negative effects on their personalities. In this lecture I have tried to analyse why that was.

First, in the story of Thomas, I looked at conversion as a return to firm foundations, and contrasted it with Ricoeur's process of maturing in relationship with God. For Thomas the need for some foundations took a foundationalist form and for the sake of certainty he eliminated what might have provided space for doubts: culture, education, conversations with people of different opinions, and his own critical reflection. Ricoeur's process of transition from the first to the second na vet was, at least in its original form, not applicable to Thomas. Thomas started with the "hermeneutics of suspicion", with critical thought, and thre was nothing in the world that would have made him give up what he gained only when he left the realm of critical thought, firm meaning and truth. This cost him his own integrity, as he had to forbid himself to work creatively with the newly gained faith, and to allow it to develop. Here we can ask whether development can be initiated other than through critical thought?

Lonergan's distinction between religious, moral, and intellectual aspects of conversion[67] may be of help here. Perhaps, even if the intellectual aspect of conversion is blocked, the remaining two may play a subversive role for the foundationalist treatment of the newly gained pre-critical immediacy. As all of the aspects of conversion need developing, and they are interrelated, the development of one may support the development of the rest, without forcing a critical reflection at the moment when people like Thomas are incapable of seeing it as good. To use a revised version of Ricoeur's scheme, perhaps distancing oneself from the critical tools, from the "hermeneutics of suspicion", and letting the "first na vet " dominate, can with time and help also lead to the third integrative stage of getting back to critical thinking and vivifying it by the experience of the immediacy, of meaning and truth, which would be kept, but grasped critically. And this revised version may also keep the aim defined by Ricoeur, namely of becoming ‘a postcritical equivalent of the precritical hierophany. [68] However, as I pointed out in the part on postmodern critique, this possibility stands and falls with transcendent aid, or in more theological language, with the active grace of God, and some notion of progress that this initiates.

Second, the example of Magdalene introduced conversion as the desire for a ‘total' break with the past. Magdalene searched for a change of roots such as would enable her to "inhabit" utopia. Which, I suppose, is as easy as squaring a circle. Her fleeing from her past and repeatedly breaking her ties with people and places she left behind ultimately had disintegrating effects,. precisely, I think, because her "I" reduced reality to the degree that she eliminated the possibility of God's acting in the world. For her, God was "present" in the ideal, not in the real. To be with God, was to leave the "real" behind. But she did not even raise questions, as to whether her "ideal" God was not a product of her mind. Magdalene wanted to root herself in this ideal, which might have remained "unconverted" - ego-centred. While she saw her "mode of maintaining herself",[69] to use Levinas's language, in keeping the ideal up, the paradox was that her struggle created a "mode of depriving herself" of the sources necessary for a healthy relationship with God and with people. How could conversion to the real be helped here? As in the previous case, it is perhaps more of a pastoral question than a theoretical one.

Levinas emphasized the power of encounter with the other, a conversation, where the "I" ‘leaves itself',[70] and allows the otherness to speak He stressed the moral dimension of conversion, where the other claims his or her right over myself, his or her right not to be reduced to nothing.[71] The face of the Other calls the "I" to responsibility and establishes the identity of the subject, according to Levinas, and with him we can stress that this is the real face, ‘the stranger, the widow, and the orphan,' real people whom I meet, ‘ to whom I am obligated.' [72] The complexity of the encounter, then, can help in the deconstitution of the "I" and the "ideal" as a totality, and this movement of deconstitution, of integrating the negative, may also become a way to integrity.

And finally, the third example of Paul and Jane showed conversion as conforming to ready made rules, which, in turn, sealed the identity of the saved. Paul and Jane also tried to fit life into fixed categories, even to judge according to them. But unlike Thomas and Magdalene, in the end they gave up. They stopped fitting life into the scheme, but they did not break the scheme. The scheme remained and deprived them of any further possibilities of a Christian life, of deepening and developing their conversion. Also, they changed their place to a non-religious one, but carry with themselves the tendency towards the totalitarian identity, which may be more difficult to deconstruct outside the place where it started and failed. Perhaps the religious aspect of conversion has to rest for a while, but is not an intellectual conversion needed here? Does not the mind need to be liberated first?

Eagleton's explorations of ideology and Derrida's critique of the logic of identity accord in their desire to prevent reality being accomodated within a single glance. People like Paul and Jane may benefit here from the step of deconstructing an exclusivist system by means of rehabilitating differences and aporias one has encountered, and by tracing back the generalisations and the exclusions one has made in order to build the system up. This may be beneficial in two ways: some aspects of the experience Paul and Jane had, which were initially excluded, may help their understanding of conversion and allow its critical reappropriation; it may prevent them in building yet another grand scheme, something like: (i) conversion is what we experienced in the pietist group and to which we can no longer subscribe; (ii) one cannot both refuse this scheme of conversion and hope for something from conversion; (iii) therefore we have to exclude ourselves from the people who have some hope in conversion, i.e. leave the group, the church, and Christianity behind.[73]

To conclude, conversion, as ‘moving from one set of roots to another,'[74] grows out of dissatisfaction, and the more extreme the dissatisfaction, the more extreme the reaction may be.[75] This has to be taken into account in the process of integration of the conversion experience, so that the ‘converted life' does not hold on to a ‘pre-converted' structure which makes it difficult, if not to discover what is inauthentic in oneself and turn away from it, then in discovering what the fulness of human authenticity can be and embracing it with one's whole being.'[76]

Ivana Noble

Salisbury, August 2002

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[1] Compare to J.M. Domenach's account of Girard's ‘voyage to the end of the sciences of man which, having reached the edge of the abyss of nihilism, do an amazing about-face that leads them back in a blazing journey to the very domain they believed they had left for ever: that of the word of God.' ('Voyage to the End of the Sciences of man', in Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard. Ed. P. Dumouchel, Athlone Press, London, 1987: 159) I do not want to close down the possibility Domenach opens up here, but rather to add that the return may not be so glorious, and it may not be to the richness of the word of God, but to a totalizing ideology, which reestablishes safety from doubt and from not-knowing.

[2]Lonergan, B., Method in Theology. Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1972: 271.

[3]Lonergan, 1972: 271.

[4]See Hilary Putnam's criticisms of claims to extra-human points of view and their credibility, in Reason, Truth and History. CUP, Cambridge, 1992: 49-52.

[5] T.W. Tilley shows that the peculiar prefix "post" marks our age in different ways: 'Manifestos appear with disheartening regularity, announcing that our era is postmodern, postchristian, postreligious, postcolonial, postindustrial, postideological, postmoral, postanalytic, postliterate, postnarrative, postauthorial, postpersonal, poststructuralist, postliberal, etc.' (Postmodern Theologies: The Challenge of Religious Diversity. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY., 1995:vi)

[6]Here I mean a similar project to such sociologically based studies of the phenomena of religious experience, as are presented in David Hay's book Religious Experience Today: Studying the Facts. Mowbray, London, 1990; or a collection of ordered accounts of religious experiences based on a vast field work, such as led to the book Seeing the Invisible: Modern Religious and Other Transcendent Experiences. Eds. M. Maxwell and V. Tschudin, Arkana, London 1990; both of which grew out of work done by the Alister Hardy Research Centre at Manchester College in Oxford.

[7]The names and details have been changed, so that individuals cannot be identified.

[8] Rahner, K., Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1993: 244-245.

[9]See Cahoone, L.E., From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA., 1996: 3.

[10]See Lechte's interpretation of Lyotard, in Lechte, J., Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers. Routledge, London, New York, 1994:250.

[11]See Phillips, D.Z., Faith after Foundationalism. Routledge, London, 1988: xiii.

[12]See Ricoeur, P., Symbolism of Evil. Beacon Press, Boston, 1967: 350.

[13]Ricoeur, 1967: 351.

[14]Ricoeur, 1967: 352.

[15]Ricoeur says that the ‘children of criticism ...seek to go beyond criticism by means of criticism, by a criticism, which is no longer reductive but restorative. (1967: 350)

[16]The concept of utopia (coming from ouk-topos - no place) plays a central role in our understanding of the Kingdom of God. The New Testament keeps together the eschatological tension, the Kingdom is here among you, and yet it is not here, you have to pray and work for its coming. It is coming to our existence in time and space, and yet it cannot be fully realised, no matter how people may try to do so.

[17]Thomas of Celana in the ‘First Life and Admirable Actions of St Francis of Assisi' gives an account of this, concluding: "Francis went as far as fighting with the devil naked; giving up all in the world, he thought exclusively of God's justice. From this time he tried to consider himself as nothing, and as a poor man to walk peacefully in this world, and live separated from gazing at God only by the wall of body." (Františkánské prameny [Fanciscan Sources.] Křesťanská akademie, Řím, 1982: 1 Cel I/vi.15)

[18] Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) finds himself in a Christianised Europe, with a fixed centralised Roman system kept together by orthodox doctrine and the rules of canon law, but, as Thomas of Celano says, many of her children have 'nothing from the Christian spirit - either in their life-style or in their character, and so live Christianity only according to the name.' (1982, FS, 1Cel: I/i.1)

[19] This can be shown by a story told by Roger of Wendover. It goes like this: When Francis went to Pope Innocent III for the approval of his Rule, the pope was horrified by his appearance and despised him, saying: ‘Go, brother and search for pigs to whom you are more similar than to people. Then wallow with them in mud, turn to them as a preacher and give to them the rule that you prepared.' ‘Francis left with a downcast head immediately. It took him a long time to find pigs. And when he fell in with a herd of pigs, he wallowed with them in mud till he was muddy from his head to his feet. So disordered he returned to the consistory, saying to the pope: "Lord, I did as you commanded me, now I ask you to accept my application."' Roger then shows Francis's demonstrating the absurdity of the case and by following the instructions, turning the case on its head. And as the story says, Francis's attitude made the pope repentant, he acknowledged his application and as a privilege of the Roman Church allowed him and his followers to preach. Fanciscan Sources, 1982: 962-3.

[20] Boff, L., Saint Francis: A Model of Human Liberation. Crossroad, new York, 1982:131.

[21]This story is testified even in non-Franciscan sources (See: James of Vitra's 'Letter about gaining Damietta, from 1220' (FS:936), 'Ernoul's Chronicle' (FS:941-943), 'Gaining of the Holy Land written by Bernard the Cashier' (FS:943-944), 'History of Heracles' (FS:944). Francis decided to bring the Gospel to the Saracens who up till then had experienced the Christ of the Crusades. In 1219 he accompanied their army to Egypt. There he wanted to exemplify a different mission from the one organised with violence. At Damietta Francis took another brother and went across the battlefield without weapons to the side of the Saracens and reached the Sultan. Even though they managed to talk to the Sultan about Christ, their mission, to Francis' disappointment, did not bring about the Sultan's conversion from Islam. But the chronicles agree that it caused the Sultan to act differently: he acted against the law as presented by his counsellors; he listened to Francis and provided him with a safe return. When Christians were victorious at Damietta in 1219, they committed brutal murder, but still, later, when they fell into the captivity of the Sultan, he treated them with generosity and saved their lives. See also FS, 1982, 1Cel:I/xx.57; 2Cel:II/iv.30, LMa:9.

[22]See Lonergan, 1972: 271.

[23]See Lechte, 1994:250.

[24]In the New Testament we find both emphases, on the need to give space to the new life (Mt 9:16; 26:28; Mk 2:21; 16:17; L 5:36; 22:20; J 13:34; 1 Cor 5:7; 11:25; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Eph 4:24; etc.) , as well as on embracing both the new and the old (Mt 1:22; 5:17;13:52; L 5:39); but we also have to be aware that the new life has an eschatological dimension (Mt 26:28; Mk 14:25; 2 Cor 5:17; 2 Pt 3:13; Rev 3:12; 21:1-5).

[25] ‘So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new!' (2 Cor 5:17)

[26]See Acts 8:1; 9:1-31.

[27] ‘All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.' (2 Cor 5: 18-19)

[28]‘My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Chist the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins; and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.' (1J 2: 1-2) Disputes about the possibility of forgivness of mortal sins, i.e. murder, apostasy and adultery, after baptism, devided church for the next four centuries.

[29]See Rom 7:15ff.

[30]In the case of Magdalene this was the support from the Orthodox monk and his community.

[31]Thompson, J.B., Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Polity Press, Cambridge; Blackwell, Oxford, 1984: 4. In Eagleton, T., Ideology: An Introduction. Verso, London, New York, 1994:5.

[32] The whole list is: ‘(a) the process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life; (b) a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class; (c) ideas, which help to legitimate a dominant political power; (d) false ideas, which help to legitimate a dominant political power; (e) systematically distorted communication; (f) that which offers a position for a subject; (g) forms of thought motivated by social interests; (h) identity thinking; (i) socially necessary illusion; (j) the conjuncture of discourse and power; (k) the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world; (l) action-oriented sets of beliefs; (m) the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality; (n) semiotic closure; (o) the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure; (p) the process whereby social life is converted to a natural reality.' (Eagleton, 1994: 1-2)

[33]The logic of identity becomes a target of Derrida's deconstruction, as we will see later in the paper, and also of Adorno's ideology critique. See Adorno, T., Horkheimer, M., The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Herder and Herder, New York, 1972.

[34]This exclusivist view of salvation dominated a significant part of Christian history. The General Council of Florence (1442), e.g. explicated Clement of Alexandria's claim: ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus [Outside the church no salvation]' as follows: ‘Neminemque, quantascumque eleemosynas fecerit, etsi pro Christi nomine sanguinem effuderit, posse salvari, nisi in catholicae Ecclesiae gremio et unitate permanserit. [And no one can be saved, no matter how much alms one has given, even if shedding one's blood for the name of Christ, unless one remains in the bossom of the Catholic Church.]' (DS 1351; see also PL 65, 704A) And the Canons on Baptism of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), though not exclusivist in terms of membership of a single church, nevertheless also say: "Si quius dixerit, baptismum liberum esse, hoc est non necessarium ad salutem: anathema sit. [If anyone says that baptism is optional, that it is not necessary for salvation: let him be anathema.]" ( Canon 5, in DS 1618)

[35]Compare to Lyotards's analysis of the postmodern situation, where he concentrates on the metanarratives of the society being born out of Enlightenment values, and says that the fixed maxims such metanarratives advocate are used to achieve that which ‘ legitimates the system-power.' And thus they have to be deconstructed. (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. MUP, Manchester, 1994: 61)

[36]Ricoeur, 1967: 350.

[37]Caputo summarizes this condition as follows: ‘We never get a chance to write from on high, we never win the transcendental high ground. We write from bellow, slowly and painfully forging unities of meaning from the flows of signifiers ... unities about which we keep our fingers crossed that they will get us through the day. We are always inside and outside truth, unable to stop the rush of truth, yet unable too, to hold truth in place and stop its rushing off.' (Caputo, J.D., ‘On Being Inside/Outside Truth', in Modernity and Its Discontents. Eds. J.L. Marsh, J.D. Caputo, M. Westphal, Fordham UP, New York, 1992:52)

[38]Lonergan, 1972: 271.

[39] Cf. Lonergan, 1972: 270.

[40] See J. Soskice's argument for the possibility of occurence of religious experience, in Metaphor and Religious Language. Clarendon, Oxford, 1985:138.

[41]Levinas speaks of the irreducibility to an "inward play". On the desire for the absolutely other he says: ‘This absolute exteriority of the metaphysical term, the irreducibility of movement to an inward play, to simple presence of self to self, is, if demonstrated, claimed by the word transcendent. The metaphysical movement is transcendent, and transcendence like desire and inadequation (sic) is necessarily a transcendence. The transcendence with which the metaphysician designates it is distinctive in that the distance it expresses, unlike all distances, enters into the way of existing of the exterior being. Its formal characteristic, to be other, makes up its content. Thus the metaphysician and the other can not be totalized.' (Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1987:35)

[42]Levinas, 1987: 35-36.

[43]Levinas adds: ‘The world, foreign and hostile, should , in good logic, alter the I.' (1987: 37)

[44]See Boff, 1982:131.

[45]Levinas, 1987: 37.

[46]Levinas, 1987: 37.

[47]‘But faced with this alterity the I is the same, merges with itself, is incapable of apostasy with regard to this surprising "self."'( Levinas, 1987: 36)

[48]Levinas, 1987: 37.

[49]Levinas, 1987: 38.

[50]‘It is in order that alterity be produced in being that a "thought" is needed and that an I is needed. The irreversibility of the relation can be produced only if the relation is effected by one of the terms as the very movement of transcendence, as the traversing of this distance, .... [but] the distance between me and the Other, the radical separation asserted in transcendence, which prevents the reconstitution of totality, cannot renounce egoism of its existence ...The void that breaks the totality can be maintained against an inevitably totalizing and synoptic thought only if thought finds itself faced with an other refractory to categories. Rather than constituting a total with this other as with an object, ... It is not I who resists the system, as Kierkegaard thought; it is the other.' (Levinas, 1987: 39-40)

[51] Levinas starts here with ethics and derives its crucial role from the command "thou shall not kill" (Ex 20:13) as a means of dealing with the problem of otherness.

[52]‘Man as Other comes to us from the outside, a separated - or holy - face. His exteriority, that is, his appeal to me, is his truth.' (Levinas, 1987:291)

[53]Levinas continues in saying that the Other is always the particular Other and not an abstraction, and as such he/she is transcendent: ‘The Other who dominates me in his transcendence is thus the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, to whom I am obligated.' (1987: 215); see also Levinas, E., Outside the Subject. Althone Press, London, 1993: 158.

[54]Levinas's position has been often criticized for the lack of symmetry in the relationship, for the absence of reciprocity, which makes the relationship non-effective. See e.g. Gillian Rose's critique in Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays. Blackwell, Oxford, 1993:8-9.

[55] Cf. Russell, B., The Problems of Philosophy. OUP, Oxford, 1973: 40

[56] 'The "rationality" ‑ but perhaps that word should be abandoned... inaugurates the deconstruction, not the demolition but the de‑sedimentation, the de‑ construction, of all the significations that have their source in that of logos. Particularly the signification of truth.' (Derrida, J., Of Grammatology. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, London, 1976:10)

[57]Analytic judgments are those, which follow from an explicit definition of the subject, e.g. that black colour is black, when no other information is added, not even in the way that something implicit is made explicit. Synthetic judgments, on the contrary, add further information to the initial statement. Thus, when it is said that being saved is fulfilling the requirements of Rom 10:9 in a particular interpretation, we have already made a sequence of synthetic judgments, and this can be said also for the negative definition. On the base of analytical judgment it is impossible to say that not being saved is to be damned or to go to hell. For this extra information has to be added, and therefore synthetic judgments made. One could further argue for the adequacy of synthetic judgments, but at least this short demonstration shows the difficulty of criticizing the system when it is applied inadequately. SEE ALSO Aristotle, Metaphysics.....

[58] Concerning the "diff rance", Derrida goes back to Saussure's structuralist theory, where 'language in its most general form could be understood as a system of differences, "without positive terms"'.Saussurian analysis brings Derrida to the recognition of an 'unconceptualisable [sic] dimension' in language. Lechte concludes: ‘Difference without positive terms implies that this dimension in language must always remain unperceived, for strictly speaking, it is unconceptualisable. With Derrida, difference becomes the proto‑type of what remains outside the scope of Western metaphysical thought... Difference is not an identity [we can add, not even a negative identity]; nor is it the difference between two identities. Difference is difference deferred.' (Lechte, J., Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers. Routledge, London, New York, 1994: 107)

[59] Cf. Westphal, M.,Marsh, J.M., Caputo, J.D., Modernity and Its Discontents. Fordham University Press, New York, 1992: xiii.

[60]For Derrida, it was the concentration on logos that led to logocentrism, the "impurity" of writing, to the preoccupation with the "proper", the "distinguished", the "literal", the "exclusively clean", which contrasts with the always changing living speech. (Cf. Spivak, G.C., 'Translator's Preface' to Derrida's Of Grammatology, 1976: lxxxiii‑lxxxiv)

[61] John D. Caputo explains Derrida s diff rance in terms of meaning as an effect produced by the spacing between signifiers , and points out that the system of such meanings is not a system, does not close over, but remains in a permanently open‑ended condition . Diff rance makes it possible both to say something and impossible to nail it down definitively, decidedly. (Caputo, J.D., On Being Inside/Outside Truth . in Modernity and Its Discontents. Eds. J.L. Marsh, J.D. Caputo, M. Westphal, Fordham University Press, New York, 1992: 51.52)

[62]Caputo: 52.

[63]See e.g. Gregory of Nyssa's notion of the constant striving and straining of humankind on the never‑ending journey towards God, where even the new life in God is not the end of the journey, but a new phase in which the striving of the heart for God continues unabated, and his relation of this journey to us being created in the image of God, in Gregory's treatise De hominis opificio XI.3-4.

[64]Lonergan, 1972: 271.

[65]Lonergan, 1972: 271.

[66]Domenach, 1987: 159.

[67] Cf. Lonergan, 1972: 270.

[68]Ricoeur, 1967: 352.

[69]Levinas, 1987: 37.

[70]Levinas, 1987: 39-40.

[71]Levinas, 1987:291.

[72]Levinas, 1987: 215; 1993: 158.

[73]Perhaps in some cases tracing the logical mistakes which were made initially may help, but one has to be careful that the discovered logic does not become the new absolute system.

[74]Lonergan, 1972: 271.

[75]It would be an interesting theme for another study to ask whether the extreme forms of conversion are more common e.g. in postcommunist countries, where the dissatisfaction with the system is deeper.

[76]Lonergan, 1972: 271.