You can never carve an oak from a pop­lar – so the wise say­ing has it. Pro­verbs over­sim­pli­fy, and often they seem more like catchy slo­gans than ripened wis­dom, and yet it is true that a pro­verb is a short sen­tence pre­ceded by long, long exper­i­ence and obser­va­tion. Well, will an oak come of the pop­lar?

For man's trans­form­a­tion, the open­ing of his con­scious­ness, his lib­er­a­tion and the form­ing of the new man, we might rightly look to spir­itu­al pro­cesses, and spe­cific­ally to one clas­sic spir­itu­al path: the prac­tice of reli­gion. The ulti­mate call­ing of every reli­gion would be to lead man out of the worldly maze, back to his ori­gin­al home, to the world of divine full­ness, love and har­mony. And yet let us not be sur­prised if we do not find the mys­tic­al exper­i­ence of God in a fac­ulty of theo­logy.

In a reli­gious con­text, change at the ele­ment­ary level means con­ver­sion. To be sure, it calls for ser­i­ous inquiry if we wish to know the essen­tial con­tent of con­ver­sion.

The Greek ori­gin­al of con­ver­sion is the term metanoia (in Latin, con­versio), which means a turn­ing round, a com­plete change of dir­ec­tion. Accord­ing to Cath­ol­ic dog­mat­ics, con­ver­sion is more than repent­ance; it is rather a moral trans­form­a­tion rest­ing on reli­gious found­a­tions, a change in the outer and inner way of life. Its neg­at­ive, renoun­cing ele­ment is leav­ing a sin­ful way of life behind; its pos­it­ive ele­ment is faith and rebirth. Accord­ing to the Cath­ol­ic Church, con­ver­sion comes about through the sac­ra­ment of pen­ance; accord­ing to Luther­an doc­trine, through repent­ance and faith; while accord­ing to Reformed teach­ing, it comes about through the death of the old man and the resur­rec­tion of the new. This last comes close to sug­gest­ing a tak­ing on of flesh again, the doc­trine of re-incarn­a­tion, which Chris­ti­an theo­lo­gies nev­er­the­less reject expressis ver­bis, although bod­ily resur­rec­tion, for instance, is hard to under­stand as any­thing other than tak­ing on flesh again, that is, being re-incarn­ated.

Again and again, many people force con­ver­sion, clam­our for it, expect it, and abuse the holi­ness of the word. In a con­ver­sa­tion with a lady who taught the Chris­ti­an faith, she too brought up the notion of con­ver­sion, and when I asked her in turn what it meant to her, she gave a start­lingly simple, yet very deep and sub­stan­tial answer, namely that con­ver­sion is ‘when faith comes alive’. I do not think she meant to give a thor­oughly ripened, much-pondered theo­lo­gic­al defin­i­tion, and yet she said some­thing before which we must bow our heads, for these few terse words are per­haps the most suc­cinct state­ment of the mys­tic­al exper­i­ence of God, yet they embrace the essence of the exper­i­ence. A deep­er under­stand­ing of this defin­i­tion, which welled up unbid­den in answer to the ques­tion, requires and deserves ser­i­ous explan­a­tion, expos­i­tion and dis­course.

To make the fool­ish clev­er – this is the work of teach­ing.

To make the clev­er wise – this is the work of life.

To make the wise a believ­er – this is the work of reli­gion.

To make the believ­er an ardent devotee – this is the work of the mys­tery.

By con­ver­sion the experts mean the abandon­ing of a faulty way of life and the turn­ing from mat­ter towards God, the reawaken­ing of a luke­warm reli­gious life, but also the gift of divine grace, great ardour and rap­ture, the res­ult of which is divine love. With this we have already rowed out onto the waters of mys­ti­cism. The essence of con­ver­sion, then, is a qual­it­at­ive leap, in which the way of life, the spir­it and con­scious­ness work at a high­er level, and this finds expres­sion in prac­tice.

The crown of con­ver­sion is faith become act­ive.