In Man is Not Alone, Abraham Joshua Heschel avoids the sterile functionalism he sees in anthropological or psychological accounts of religion by reasoning from direct experience. However, in so doing, he becomes quite presumptuous about the content of human experience. William James' treatment of the subject is certainly narrower in scope, but at least James engages with first-hand narratives and accounts from other people. R. Heschel, writing in a self-assured tone of pastoral explication, doesn't -- at least not in these pages. His writing is sometimes quite compelling, but sometimes grating in its tone and generalizing certitude.

I resonated most with R. Heschel's understanding of the imperative nature of religion. "Religion...begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us". He identifies the power and presence of the Ineffable, but most importantly sees in the Ineffable the beginning of an obligation. I was also struck by his insistence that our sense of the Ineffable is an "authentic insight". Meaningfulness is not the product of our own cognition: "to assume that reality is chaotic, bare of significance, as long as man does not approach it with the magic touch of his mind" is a position "too sophisticated to be reasonable". While nothing R. Heschel says here will persuade an arch-existentialist who disagrees with this assertion, I find in it a deeply insightful and important bedrock for any theological discussion. Developing this notion of compulsion, R. Heschel describes piety in terms of being attuned to what is asked of us; to the meaningfulness of life and to the weight of our responsibilities. As in C. S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory, this notion of seriousness of spiritual intent is extremely compelling to me.

R. Heschel's description of Jewish religion in terms of covenant as an instrument of reciprocal concern & need, and in terms of a constant and historical yearning -- for a more complete closeness to God and for a better world -- is also valuable. I also like his image of humanity as "the knot in which heaven and earth are interlaced" -- an argument that our nature as both spiritual and material beings leads us to fill this necessary role as a point of ontological contact between realms (I would object to the anthropocentrism here, but am nonetheless compelled by the cosmology). His other forays into moral theology strike me somewhat dubiously. He writes that dogmas are merely allusive, but seems to hold dogmatic positions about unity being the root of all healthy ethical thought (a claim he makes to disparage polytheism), and about magic/"primitive spirituality" being a foe to true religion for its orientation around human ends. Again, he is not obviously drawing from sources other than his own understandings of human life and human nature, and at these and other points he makes wide leaps in assuming that certain feelings are more "authentic" or credible than others, that certain thought processes and patterns are universal, and/or that an honest encounter with the spiritual world will invariably lead towards moral-theological conclusions mirroring his own. This was somewhat tiresome and grating. Interestingly, I don't think I would have been as put-off if he had simply phrased these universals as originating from a doctrinal stance (which may be worth interrogating). As it was, by positioning himself as departing from a experiential universals, but not seeming to be very willing to believe or engage with alternate experiential accounts, R. Heschel ended up testing my patience somewhat.