Do Children Know God Without Being Taught Essay Example

Do Children Know God Without Being Taught Essay Do Children Know God Without Being Taught? The Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) writes of a vision in which a four-sided form, representing the wisdom of God, is connected by a channel to a fetus in the mother’s womb. Through this channel to the child a â€Å"fireball† is transmitted, which â€Å"pours itself through all the limbs of the person and gives the greenness of the heart and veins and all the organs to the entire body as a tree gives sap and greenness to all the branches from its root A fireball possesses the heart of this child. Because the soul, burning with the fire of deep understanding and not having the form of human members, discerns different things in its journey of understanding. The fireball†¦comforts the heart of the human being because it exists so to speak like the foundation of the body† (Fox, 55. ) Hildegard’s vision confronts us with the idea that God may be communicating with us well before we are born. This thought, as well as my own observations of children and my own experiences of God, have led me to ask, â€Å"Can we know God without being taught? † The prevalent theories of faith development, and the curricula for Christian education that have evolved from them, stand in opposition to the idea that we innately know God. As well, the history of Christian thought about children has promoted the idea that children are far from holy and in dire need of instruction. In this paper, after reviewing historical lines of thought regarding children’s spirituality, and the faith development theories of James Fowler and John Westerhoff, I present alternative ideas about faith that allow or support the theory that children know God without being taught. We will write a custom essay sample on Do Children Know God Without Being Taught specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Do Children Know God Without Being Taught specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Do Children Know God Without Being Taught specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer This idea is then examined in light of Scripture. Tradition: The Child in Christian Thought For centuries Christians have understood humanity to be marked by original sin. In the West this has been interpreted by Augustine (354-430) and Reformed theologians as a statement of our inherent sinfulness at birth; even the newborn participates in Adam’s sin. Infant baptism, for Augustine, is reclaiming the child for Christ (Guroian, 69ff. ) â€Å"By contrast, Chrysostom [347-407] maintains that newborn infants are innocents, wholly without sin† (Guroian, 70. He interprets original sin not as the passing on of sinfulness, but of mortality; sinfulness then is a result of mortality (Guroian, 67. ) Human nature â€Å"in its wholeness is mortally wounded by original sin† and its will is â€Å"weakened and prone to personal sin, but [infants] are still innocents† (Guroian, 69ff. ) For Chrysostom then, baptism of infants is not done to reclaim them, but to fortify them for a life of spiritual combat. Thus, baptism’s importance for Chrysostom is not solely tied to its remedial power, but to its incorporation of the infant into the church, the body of Christ. Infants are baptized into the church â€Å"because they benefit from the care and discipline of adults experienced in the spiritual struggle† (Guroian, 70. ) It is of course Augustine’s interpretation of original sin that has dominated Christian thought in the West. For Aquinas (1225-1274), infants bear the stain of original sin, but are not capable of actual sin. Aquinas allowed for the idea of the innocence of infants, since they do not yet have the capacity for reason; yet â€Å"for Thomas, children are bearers of actual – but not existential – innocence: afflicted with a fault that does not automatically consign them to hell, neither are they models of purity or virtue† (Traina, 131. ) They are, then, not spiritual models for adults to follow; â€Å"they are incomplete, lacking both wisdom and active virtue† (Traina, 128. ) John Calvin (1509-1564) not only upheld the doctrine of original sin as it came from Augustine, but â€Å"against the dominant patristic and medieval traditions, Calvin and some of his contemporaries, especially Luther and Melanchthon, understood original sin itself to consist of an inherited corruption of the entire human nature, especially of the will and of the understanding (Pitkin, 167. ) Calvin writes, â€Å"Even infants bear their condemnation with them from their mother’s womb; for, though they have not yet brought forth the fruits of their own iniquity, they have the seed enclosed within themselves. Indeed, their whole nature is a seed of sin; thus it cannot be but hateful and abominable to God† (quoted in Pitkin, 167. ) However, Calvin does lift up young children as examples of simplicity and humility that deserve emulation. â€Å"While he did not go so far as to idealize the faith of children†¦ he did consider the youngest infants capable of not merely manifesting but indeed proclaiming God’s glory† (Pitkin, 164. ) Despite their lack of understanding, Calvin holds up young children (up to about age seven) as â€Å"mature proclaimers of God’s goodness† (Pitkin, 166. This, of course, becomes possible only through the grace of God intervening to save them from their fallen nature. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) followed Aquinas in thinking that infants are not born sinful, but neutral; yet the result of human frailty is inevitable sin, occurring almost immediately after birth. Adam’s sin means that humans are born without the qualities that would help overcome the natural tendency to sin. This view of children led Edwards to strive mightily to instill in children a sense of their depravity and need for conversion. Since infants inherited the stain of original sin, they were as guilty as adults. ‘As innocent as children seem to be to us,’ he explained, ‘if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God’s sight, but are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Influenced by Augustine and especially John Calvin, Edwards insisted that even the youngest children were corrupt unless they had been ‘reborn’ in Christ† (Brekus, 303ff. For Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), childlike faith is something to be emulated if we are to enter the kingdom of God; in his novella â€Å"The Celebration of Christmas: A Conversation,† children are portrayed as having â€Å"a ‘pure revelation of the divine’ from which no conversion is necessary. † For adults who â€Å"have become alienated from the childlike, a conversion is necessary – a conversion to become as a little child† (DeVries, 339. In a homily on Mark 10:13-16 Schleiermacher describes the quality of childlike faith that is to be emulated: â€Å"The peculiar essence of the child is that he is altogether in the moment†¦The past disappears for him, and of the future he knows nothing – each moment exists only for itself, and this accounts for the blessedness of a soul content in innocence† (quoted in DeVries, 339. It is living with God in the present that is â€Å"the essence of the eternal life that Christ promises to those who believe in him†¦adults, then, must recover this childlike perception, as if by conversion† (DeVries, 339. ) Nevertheless, Schleiermacher understands children to be equally capable of sin. â€Å"If the capacity for religious experience is an innate capability of the child, fully formed Christian faith certainly is not† (DeVries, 346. ) Catechesis and parental modeling of the Christian life are crucial for the child’s upbringing in a life of faith. Reason: The Faith Development Theories of Fowler and Westerhoff This survey of selected notables in the Church leaves us with an idea of the natural tendency of children to sin, and of their need for instruction in the life of faith, though some authors allow for an understanding of children as limited models for adults. In studying the faith development theories of Fowler and Westerhoff, I found strong support of children’s need for instruction, and little allowance for the idea that children might have something to teach adults. Fowler’s theory of faith development is based on stages of cognitive development. As the human develops psychologically, faith may develop in stages that increase in complexity of intellect. Use of a spiral diagram to portray the stages conveys a progression from lesser to greater. The stages are hierarchical (one stage integrates and builds upon the previous stage), sequential (one stage follows another in a logically necessary way), and invariant (stages cannot be skipped over) (Ford-Grabowsky, 26. Fowler writes that â€Å"more developed structural stages of knowing are, in important ways, more comprehensive and adequate than the less developed ones; the more developed stages make possible a knowing that in some senses is ‘more true’ than that of less developed stages† (Fowler as quoted in Ford-Grabowsky, 38. ) In Fowler’s theory, adults at stage five or six have a greater understanding of God than children, adolescents, or young adults. I might ad d that his theory would also place mentally handicapped persons in the stages of lesser relationship with God. The faith development theory of Westerhoff is diagrammed as tree rings (in contrast to Fowler’s spiral. ) He leans away from the strictly hierarchical stages of faith, describing the circles of the tree ring as styles rather than stages. Yet these styles are also dependent upon cognitive development; the first style of faith accessible to us, Experienced Faith, â€Å"results from our interactions with other faithing selves† and is typical in the preschool and early childhood years (he does not specifically address infancy) (Westerhoff, 91. As we develop, we may keep adding tree rings (styles of faith) on top of each other: †¦A tree grows if the proper environment is provided, and if such an environment is lacking, the tree becomes arrested in its expansion until the proper environment exists. Each tree, however, does its own â€Å"growing† and has its own unique characteristics. Similarly, we expand from one style faith to another only if the proper environm ent, experiences, and interactions are present; and if they are not, then our expansion of faith is arrested. Of course no style of faith is natural to any particular age and everyone can expand into a new style providing the proper interactions with other faithing souls are present. (Westerhoff, 88. ) Westerhoff is careful to say that a tree with only one ring is a complete tree; added rings do not make for a more whole tree, but an expanded tree. Despite this claim, and the claim that the styles are not dependent upon age, Westerhoff’s choice of language does convey a hierarchy. The faith of those who do not reach the expanded styles is referred to as â€Å"arrested† faith, and the analogy of tree growth connotes immature versus mature faith. Westerhoff sees faith development as living into our faith potential; it only seems logical to conclude that if four styles are potential, and someone stops at the first style, that person’s faith is less than that of someone who reached the potential of the fourth style. Westerhoff’s update to his chapter on styles of faith (chapter four) moves more forcefully in the direction of valuing all styles of faith equally. Here he discusses the student-teacher relationship as that of co-pilgrims on a shared journey. Each â€Å"is in need of† and â€Å"contributes to the life of† the other (Westerhoff, 103. ) Reason Revisited: Alternatives to Cognition-Based Faith Development Theories When I watched a professor draw Fowler’s six-staged spiral on the chalkboard and heard the explanation that each stage brought one to a fuller experience of God, I couldn’t help wondering: what if we have it backwards? What if, as infants, we start out closer to God than we will ever be in this life, nd as we physically and psychologically develop, we are prone to increasing distance from God? I thought of Jesus’ words, â€Å"Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven† (Matthew 18:3. ) Was Jesus proposing that adults, not children, are the ones with a lesser relationship with God? Sandy Eisenberg Sasso presents a Jewish theology of childh ood, beginning with an account of a rabbinic legend. While a child is still in the womb a light burns above its head. The foetus is able to see from one end of the world to the other. It learns the entire Torah. But as it enters into the air of the world, an angel comes and strikes it directly above the mouth and makes it forget the entire Torah (Sasso, 22. ) Throughout life the Torah is reclaimed through learning; yet there remains a sense of the inherent spiritual life of children. â€Å"Rather than teaching of ‘original sin’ Judaism proposes ‘original virtue’, the innate spiritual endowment of the child who perceives the unity of all† (Sasso, 23. ) This understanding leads to incorporation of children into the faith rituals of the Jewish community, so that their involvement is central to sacred ritual. For example, the Passover Seder begins with a child asking questions. The ceremony cannot proceed without the child’s participation. At the end, the children search for a hidden piece of bread; the Seder cannot conclude until they find it. Sasso explores other rabbinic interpretations of Scripture that uphold the claim that â€Å"adult appreciation of the sacred is not better, only different than the child’s†¦God speaks in many voices and each voice, including the child’s, is but a partial apprehension of the Divine. The more voices one comes to know the closer one comes to understand the One God who includes all voices† (Sasso, 24. ) A similar openness to children’s experiences of God allowed Sofia Cavalletti to observe young children and notice a telling depth of spiritual experience, revealing an understanding of God that one would have assumed to be beyond their cognitive ability or domain of experience. Her book reveals such experiences in children up to the age of six, which she observed during twenty-five years of work as a catechist in schools. Cavalletti observed and â€Å"attempted to document the existence of a mysterious bond between God and the child. This bond†¦subsists in early childhood even in cases of spiritual ‘malnutrition’ and appears to precede any religious instruction† (Cavalletti, 22. ) Cavalletti speaks of children as equal to adults in both receiving and proclaiming the Word of God. â€Å"†¦In the presence of the Word of God not only is there no longer neither Greek nor Jew, but, we believe, neither adult nor child. Before the Word of God all are hearers of a message that God addresses to His people through events and words. Such a message can be grasped only through a choral listening in which the child’s voice may have at times stronger and more profound tones than that of the adult† (Cavalletti, 23. ) As a Montessori teacher, Cavalletti is careful not to behave as if the teacher possesses knowledge and the students do not; rather, she â€Å"is open to listening, and†¦not forgetful that one may speak only in the measure that one listens† (Cavalletti, 49. ) Such openness to listening allows her to hear the experiences of very young children and recognize their understanding of God. Where Cavalletti departs most clearly from the theories discussed above is in stating that at times children are the spiritual leaders. What did she observe that led to such a bold statement? She observed that, despite what we are prone to believe, children know God without being taught. Some examples from her book are included here. The first comes from her predecessor Maria Montessori. Maria Montessori, in her book Spontaneous Activity in Education, records the account of Professor Ghidionescu at the International Congress of Pedagogy in Brussels in 1911. He reported the case of a child who had not received any religious education; one day the child suddenly burst into tears, saying: â€Å"Do not scold me, while I was looking at the moon I felt how often I had grieved you, and I understood that I had offended God. † In the same work, Montessori adds other examples that she herself witnessed or that were related to her personally. She cites the example of a seven-year-old boy, also deprived of any religious education, who had been told the theory of evolution according to the principles of Lamarck and Darwin. After the explanation the boy asked: â€Å"From whom did the first creature come? â€Å"The first,† answered his friend, â€Å"was formed by chance†; at these words the child laughed aloud and, calling his mother, he said excitedly: â€Å"Just listen; what nonsense! Life was formed by chance! That is impossible. † When he was asked how life was formed the child responded with conviction: â€Å"It is G od† (Cavalletti, 31. ) At age seven, logical deductions such as the one above are developmentally within the child’s scope (Cavalletti, 31. ) Examples from younger children who have not reached this stage of cognitive development are thus even more surprising. This [example] involves a three-year-old girl who grew up without the slightest religious influence. The child did not go to nursery school; no one at home, not even her grandmother, who was herself an atheist, had ever spoken of God; the child had never gone to church. One day she questioned her father about the origin of the world: â€Å"Where does the world come from? † Her father replied, in a manner consistent with his ideas, with a discourse that was materialistic in nature; then he added: â€Å"However, there are those who say that all this comes from a very powerful being, and they call him God. At this point the little girl began to run like a whirlwind around the room in a burst of joy, and exclaimed, â€Å"I knew what you told me wasn’t true; it is Him, it is Him! † (Cavalletti, 31ff. ) Examples such as this, where the child seems to know God in a way different from logical understanding, prompt Cavalletti to ask, â€Å"Does there exist in the child a mysterious reality of union with God? † (Cavalletti, 32. ) Further examples point to the child’s knowing God in a way that is not merely cognitive. One day [Linda, before the age of 6] noticed a butterfly in flight and she felt drawn to it; she followed it and suddenly â€Å"everything seemed to open up around me. † It appeared that she was able to see everything more clearly, and she â€Å"felt filled with joy and warmth throughout my whole body† in a way she had never experienced before. The sensation was so strong that the little girl burst into tears of joy, ran to her mother, and said, â€Å"Mommy, I know God. † Only much later, in thinking over that event, did Linda associate it with love; at the time it was something â€Å"very new and different, for which I had no reference points. It was something that the child did not perceive with her mind; what she had said afterward to her mother â€Å"was not an explanation, it was an exclamation† (Cavalletti, 35ff. ) Monica [age 6]†¦began to work again with the altar models, her back turned to the class. All of a sudden she stopped, turned around and said: â€Å"How happy I am today that I went to church! Mommy never takes me to church, she never has time. At last today there is someone who saves me and I feel free. † These are words that, either by formulation or content, seem to surpass a child’s capacity†¦(ibid. , 36. ) As well, the words of Francesco (five years old) do not seem to correspond to a child’s level: Francesco must have understood that his mother was not a believer, and he asked her: â€Å"Whom do you love more, me or God? † The mother naturally replied that she loved him more and the child responded: â€Å"I think this is your big mistake† (ibid. , 36. ) The following account is of a little girl who, while visiting a priest, saw the faces of Jesus and Mary for the first time in her life, represented in icons. This account, and others, demonstrate a child’s knowledge of God coupled with a desire to know more. having rushed into my room and seen the icons, the little girl began asking me questions;†¦with eyes wide open she fastened her gaze on the faces of Jesus and the Mother of God, which she was seeing for the first time in her life. Although with effort, I explained to the child†¦the meaning of what had struck her in a way she could understand. B ut my worries proved to be superfluous. â€Å"You know,† she said to me, â€Å"I knew He existed and I have always talked with Him before going to sleep; I knew He was everywhere and that He sees me when I get into mischief, only sometimes I was afraid of Him. How can I speak with Him? † Moved by the child’s words, I taught her the sign of the cross, and I experienced an extraordinary feeling watching those small hands making the sign of the cross†¦ â€Å"And now can I kiss Him,† she continued to my great surprise, but not on His face or cheek, not the way I kiss Mommy? Because He is greater than my mother, He is better than my mother. He sees everything and He doesn’t scold me. He is better than everyone, and He loves me. Give me the icon please, I want to see it always. I’ll put it beside my bed, and the icon of His mother too. Give it to me as a gift! † When her mother arrived the child said: â€Å"Mommy, quick, come here. Kiss Him. He loves you too. At last I’ve seen His face, but I’ve known Him for a long time. † Before her mother’s embarrassed silence the child continued: â€Å"Mommy, why don’t you say anything? Mommy, tell me about Him; I need to hear about Him. † But the icon was taken away from little Irina. Her mother described the child’s reaction: â€Å"She cries, she asks to hang it above her bed, saying, ‘I want to see Him, I need to talk to Him’† (Cavalletti, 38ff. ) Cavalletti observed in children a remarkable desire to know more about God, to spend surprising amounts of time in prayer, to interact seriously with catechetical materials such as miniature altars or figures from parables, to spend more than the allotted time with the catechist, and to attend church even when it was not the family’s custom. †¦We would like to speak about the impassioned attraction the child has shown when faced with the religious fact, so much so that he will forget or disregard the things supposedly more pleasing to children†¦Francesco was two years and two months old. As a Christmas present he received the first tricycle of his life; almost at the same time his mother spoke to him of the meaning of Christmas and gave him a manger scene. Francesco took it happily; completely forgetting his tricycle, he wandered around the house carrying the various pieces of the set, showing them again and again to his grandmother so that she would retell the story of Christmas (ibid. , 37. ) A woman who had not raised her son in the church recounted another example of a child’s strong desire to repeat a spiritual experience. She and her husband†¦took a trip to Italy with their five-year-old son; later she reminisced with her husband: â€Å"Weren’t you struck by the way Pieterke, who was only five years old, followed the services in the churches we visited in Italy? Think of the ceremonies of the cathedral in Siena and in the Roman basilicas: they were never too long for him and he did not want to leave. For such a restless boy the opposite woul d have been natural and understandable! He thought the celebrations were magnificent. I don’t think I have ever told you what he asked me as soon as we returned to Uccle from our trip to Italy: ‘Mother,’ he said to me one day, ‘why don’t we ever go to church as we did in Italy? ’† (Cavalletti, 38. ) Cavalletti recounts several occurrences of unexpected behavior in children, who will trade their normal behavior or typical sources of enjoyment for the time set aside for catechesis. Enrico (six years old), Paolo (seven years old), and Massimo (six years old) were meeting for the first time with an inexperienced catechist; Paolo did not really want to come because that was his only free day and he would have preferred to stay at home and play peacefully; for the catechist’s part, she was totally inexperienced and without any equipment that could have helped the children – she had only the Bible. The catechist opened to the first page of the Bible, read it, and helped the children to enter into the text. Two hours passed by quickly, and when Paolo’s mother came to take him home his eyes filled with tears; he did not want to leave. Massimo was willing to give up the music lessons he loved because he wanted to come to catechesis â€Å"every day,† because â€Å"this is more important† (ibid. , 40. ) At another catechetical center, the children figured out how to move the hands of the clock ahead so they could go to catechesis earlier (ibid. , 40. ) Children at other centers revealed their enjoyment of catechesis in the comments they made to their parents who came to pick them up: â€Å"Why have you come so soon? Almost two and a half hours had passed. ] I was doing so well,† protested Lucia (ibid. , 40. ) Laura (six years old) said: â€Å"I’d like to sleep here, even on the floor† (ibid. , 40. ) In many of the examples here, the children’s responses are often physical as well as verbal. Cavalletti and others note a â€Å"particular joyâ €  in the children they have observed â€Å"when praying, and†¦when the child is involved in religious activities his ‘whole being vibrates, becomes tranquil, and rejoices† (Cavalletti, 40. ) Remember the little girl above (pp. -9) who ran around the room joyfully when she heard about God as the creator, and the active youngsters who somehow remain calm through the hours of instruction or church services. â€Å"The response the children give to the religious experience is such that it seems to involve them deeply, in total gratification: ‘My body is happy,’ said Stefania after praying a long while with her young friends† (Cavalletti, 42. ) Cavalletti comments that the child’s understanding of God is a kind of knowledge different from academic knowledge. The facility and spontaneity of the child’s religious expression and prayer†¦lead us to believe that these arise from the depths of the child’s being, as if they were natural to him† (ibid. , 42) (my italics. ) She poses that this knowledge is in direct response to the basic need of the child to be loved and to love (a basic need for all ages, I assume – but the child is more transparent about this need. ) Cavalletti discusses this here in the children’s characteristic response to the parable of the Good Shepherd: †¦The parable is so deeply rooted in the child that it appears to be natural to him. It returns constantly in the children’s discussions, reflections, and prayer. The child does not know the parable in an academic way, but vitally; it is not knowledge imposed on the child from without; rather, it is through the parable that the child’s silent request finds response and gratification: the request to be loved and so to be able to love. The child never forgets the parable because the affective integration, which psychologists call ‘affective ratification,’ is complete; the image of the Shepherd is by now a part of the child’s very person (ibid. 74. ) I find intriguing Cavalletti’s observation that children’s religious expressions (here, their response to the parable of the Good Shepherd) appear to be â€Å"natural. † In her discussion of the introduction of Pentecost to the children, she writes, â€Å"With regard to the Holy Spirit, it is striking to see the facility with which the children enter into relationship with Him. The Holy Spirit’s work appears obvious to them, and they know how to recognize it spontaneously†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (ibid. , 117. This seems to invite my question, Are children responding to something that is already part of who they are – and are adults merely giving them the words to name what they already know in a way other than cognitively? Cavalletti poses that the child responds to the parable of the Good Shepherd because it answers a very basic need (the need for love); I ask, could the child be responding not only out of need, but out of recognition? Let us imagine that the Jewish legend retold by Sasso were true; could the child’s â€Å"natural† response to the parable be more of a remembrance than an assimilation of something new? That would certainly account for its seeming natural to the child. The writer of the foreword to Cavalletti’s book poses an interesting idea: I have become sure that there is a primary question in [the children’s] hearts and minds: â€Å"Who are you, Lord? † I do not believe this question arises from confusion or uncertainty. Rather, I believe it is a question like that of the people who gathered around Jesus when he walked on this earth, those people who felt his touch and heard his voice and saw his face, a question that is really saying, â€Å"I’ve seen you; I’ve heard you; I know you, but there is more of you to know. I need and want to know more† (Rebekah Rojcewicz in Cavalletti, 17. ) The acknowledgement that one might know God other than in a purely cognitive way certainly invites us to consider children’s spiritual experiences seriously, even if we do not go so far as to imagine that they are remembering God instead of learning about God. It invites both children and adults to claim spiritual experiences that are affective or intuitive as well as cognitive. Edward Hoffman, in a book entitled Visions of Innocence: Spiritual and Inspirational Experiences of Childhood, briefly recounts the history of various religions’ treatment of child spirituality. He writes, â€Å"Historically, the world’s great religions have always recognized our childhood capacity for closeness to the divine,† and mentions Biblical passages, Jewish tradition, and Native American tradition, among others (Hoffman, 3ff. ) His book documents experiences that people had as children, which were pivotal experiences for their understanding of life, God, and the world. The adults report experiences they had even sixty years ago, that are still vivid in their memory, despite insistence by parents, friends, etc. that they discount their experiences. The book is filled with experiences that are far from merely cognitive, many occurring in very young children. Similar findings are mentioned in a book by David Hay and Rebecca Nye. In an account of scholarly attempts to document child spirituality, Hay writes of the â€Å"shortage of competent research† and the difficulty of â€Å"the intellectual bias of much of the modern psychology of education†: During the 1960s one of the most influential students of religious education in the English-speaking world was the psychologist Ronald Goldman†¦. Goldman was a follower of the cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget, and his personal assumptions led him to ignore the possibility that spirituality might feature in the lives of children. In the second chapter of his most important book, Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence Goldman took the view that â€Å"the mystics, who claim to have direct sensations of the divine, are exceptions, but as they are extremely rare cases, rarer in adolescence and practically unknown in childhood,† he would ignore them. The mistake he made was to assume that spiritual awareness is always something extraordinary, equated with mystical ecstasy, instead of holding open the possibility that it might be a very ordinary aspect of young children’s everyday experience†¦. Goldman’s opinions continue to have influence, despite sustained critiques of his position by a number of scholars (Hay, 41. ) Hay continues: During the 1970s and 1980s, evidence of the reality of spiritual awareness in early childhood began to flow from the work of Edward Robinson, the successor of Alister Hardy as director of the Religious Experience Research Unit in Oxford. Robinson noticed that a sizable proportion of the 5,000 or so accounts of religious experience which had been sent in to the Unit were reminiscences of events occurring in childhood, sometimes in very early years. As a result of pondering on these stories, published an account of them in his book The Original Vision. This was a pioneering attempt to question the educational validity of the Piagetian model as applied by Goldman to the area of religious understanding. What first impressed Robinson was the way that these childhood experiences had remained vivid in the memories of his correspondents for the whole of their lives. People repeatedly spoke of them as having the greatest personal significance when they were contemplating their personal identity and the meaning of their lives. No doubt there had been a considerable development in the interpretation and perhaps embellishment of these experiences as the individuals thought about them over the years. Yet Robinson found it hard to ignore the power of the initial impact of the event which had generated this wealth of reflection. Could it be that Goldman and his followers were giving a great deal of attention to the language and thought forms of religion, whilst ignoring the direct awareness out of which it grows? (Hay, 43ff. ) Hay summarizes an article by Lorelei F