By psychologization of the self we mean the misapprehension that through reflection on the stream of consciousness, and on the experiences given in it, the nature of man or the substance of the self can become known. This second misapprehension is closely related to the first one [ see above, The Materialization of the External World-fjw]. When man no longer experiences himself as embedded substantially in the cosmos, when the unity of creation that embraces man is torn asunder into a perceived structure of the world and a perceiving self, problems peculiar to Cartesian and post-Cartesian metaphysical speculation arise. When the experience of substantial participation of man in the world is interrupted, doubts arise about whether the reality as it appears to the perceiving subject is indeed the reality of the external world, and if the reality of an external world is assumed, intricate problems of the relation between the external world and the self impose themselves. . . .

[Profound disturbances of the elementary experiences of participation in the cosmos] cause particularly deep ravages with regard to transcendental reality because the persuasive assurance lent to the reality of the realm of matter by means of the pragmatic tests of experiment and astronomical observation does not exist for transcendental reality. With regard to the radical transcendence of the world there is only genuine participation through the trembling experience of faith as substance and proof of things unseen (Hebrews 11:1). Moreover, the symbolism of the dogma has grown historically as the expression of nuances of active faith. When the light of faith is extinguished, the dogmatic symbols lose their luminosity of meaning and become a dead letter, a jungle of logical inconsistencies, and a collection of unverifiable propositions. When the symbols no longer glow with the inner light of faith, the time has come for their examination under the external light of reason.

The symbolization of transcendental reality does not stand up too well under the light of reason. But again: there is no complete annihilation but rather a gamut of compromises. Never was there a greater penumbra of thought than when men were enlightened, because reason itself, by whose light the mysteries of religion were to be examined, was a historically somewhat sputtering notion. The reason that emerges in the philosophy of Locke and of his Deistic followers and successors is not a well-defined function of the human mind but a gradually thinning, secularist derivation of the Christian logos. The antithesis of the light of faith that fills the religious symbols with meaning from within, and of the light of reason by which they are examined from without, must be understood historically as signifying two terms of a series of notions that paper over in spurious continuity the real distance between them. The rationalism of Lockean reason develops gradually out of the suprarationalism of the Christian logos. . . .