The Christianity of J. W. Dunne

J. W. Dunne in 1909

Among those interested in the work of J. W. Dunne (1875-1949), aeronautical engineer and philosopher of time, there seems to be a great deal of confusion regarding Dunne's religious beliefs or lack thereof. I have seen him described as a devout Catholic, as a devout Anglican, and as an atheist.

In point of fact, Dunne was (briefly) an atheist and at another time (also briefly) a devout Christian of unspecified denomination, but it appears that he spent most of his adult life, and ended that life, as a firm believer in God but not in Christianity. Most of the available information regarding Dunne's religious beliefs is to be found in the posthumously published Intrusions?, the most autobiographical of his works, from which I excerpt a few relevant passages below. I quote only those passages that have to do with Christianity as such, as the material dealing with God (in whom Dunne indubitably believed) is too voluminous to be summarized here. As the author sometimes uses periods of ellipsis in the original, I have enclosed my own ellipses in square brackets.

In Chapter IV of Intrusions?, Dunne recounts his first -- somewhat abortive -- conversion to Christianity.

At the age of seventeen I was a pupil on a South African farm, and I was, for several reasons, in an extremely disgruntled condition. To begin with, I had just lost all belief in the existence of God. This was from the usual cause. A foolish cleric had given me false reason for that belief. It had seemed to me sound; and, in accepting it eagerly, I had realized that my previous grounds had been utterly insufficient. Later on, I discovered the fallacy in the man's argument -- and found myself with nothing left. 

In the second place: I was extremely keen on singing, and had just discovered that a callous choir-master had ruined my voice (I had been the school soloist) by making me continue to sing alto long after that voice had begun to crack. I had waited for two years before trying my new, man's register; but, when I did so, I heard to my dismay a horrible reedy thing with a range of barely twelve notes. How I cursed that master, and how I longed to curse the God in whom I no longer believed. 

Finally: I had supposed that I could write. I had sent a short story to a Capetown periodical. After two months had elapsed without an answer, I had written again. Now, a fortnight had gone by without any reply. So that enterprise had failed. I was only seventeen, and these three major disappointments, one on top of the other, had shaken me to my rather shallow depths. 

At that moment I made a rather curious discovery. Normally, I was a fairly decent young fellow. But I had strange bouts of savagery in which I was no better than what we should call to-day, a young Nazi. I did things at which I was aghast in my more normal moments. Thinking this over, I came to the conclusion that I was in some strange way two diametrically different persons occupying the same body. [. . .] My angry disappointment about God bid fair to turn the scale. Goodness was nonsense: there was neither good nor evil: my so-called 'evil' personality was by far the freer of the two, and there were no limits to what it might achieve. Reason said: give it rein.

At this point, Dunne happened to find and read The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which had been published some 7 years previously and about which he had previously known nothing, and it made him realize the folly of his thinking regarding his 'evil' self. He continues his narrative.

But (I thought) what a marvellous coincidence! At the very moment when I had decided to give my Hyde the mastery, I pick up the grimmest story ever written -- the story of a man who did that very thing. Coincidence be damned! The chances seemed millions to one against it! There was a God! and He had intervened in the promptest and the most effective way possible. 

Then I did an extraordinarily silly thing. I offered God a bargain. (I was very young, of course; but I had no business to make such a bumptious bloomer.) I promised that, if the despaired-of letter would arrive by the next post, I would believe 'the whole thing', by which words I meant 'Pauline Christianity'. And next morning that letter arrived! My story was accepted! And . . . I found, a little later, that I could not believe what I had promised to believe. 

[. . .] 

Now, I want you to understand why I had offered that absurd bargain. I wanted very much to believe the Christian story. Had my desire been in the other direction nothing would have made me let the decision rest on a chance which so easily might have gone against me. But I was tired to death of the whole business of religious doubt and speculation. And it seemed to me that, if God was so ready to intervene, He might be ready to intervene a little further -- in which case I should be saved the bother of having to make up my mind. And if the letter did not arrive, no harm would have been done. I was not, in that event, bound to disbelief. I saw an opportunity of saving myself trouble -- of throwing the onus of a difficult decision to God -- and that with the proviso, 'Heads! I win. Tails! We'll try another way.' 

[. . .] So I remained stuck in the curious pit I had digged for myself. I wanted to credit Christianity. Reason refused permission. But I must do so, because I had promised that to the God in whom I did believe! For ten uneasy years I had to shilly-shally in this fashion; and, during that period there developed within me what grew to be a veritable horror of the notion of urging upon anyone any belief which could not be securely based upon cold, unsupplemented reason. There was a great deal more than ordinary scientific reluctance in this. There was an absolute loathing of the idea: a temperamental terror that I might through carelessness do some such thing. Later on, that proved to be an attitude of mind almost essential for the work I had in hand. So, if it had been intended that I should tackle that task, those ten years were not so much punitive as educational. Hence I might have been even prompted to make my foolish promise.

Dunne picks up the story again in Chapter VIII.

You will remember that at the end of the Jekyll-Hyde episode, I dug for myself a trap in which I remained caught for 'ten uneasy years'. [. . .] I have pointed out that the ten years of shilly-shallying which followed were of high educational value [. . .]

Returning to my own, private difficulty: What happened was that I surrendered -- from sheer mental exhaustion. The word 'promise' seemed to me to be the key to the whole problem. I might have done wrong in promising; I might have promised on insufficient ground; but a promise I had given -- and given to God. Honour demanded its fulfilment. If reason rebelled, reason might hope for clearer light later; but meanwhile it must remain silent. So I became a Christian: as humble, unquestioning a Christian as any Catholic might desire. 

And, oddly enough, with that surrender came peace. It was not merely quietude after storm: it was a deep satisfaction: a sudden flooding up of the belief which I had never really lost. I wanted nothing better. And I was enabled, at last, to address my prayers to that Jesus of Nazareth I had never ceased to love. 

Now this occurred just after the conclusion of the Boer War; and it so happened that, perhaps two months later, I found myself riding through the rolling grass-lands of the Orange River Colony in the light of the intensely bright African full-moon.

I at first thought that this was the same surrender narrated in Chapter IV, in which Dunne, "tired to death of the whole business of religious doubt and speculation," gave up and let chance decide his religious beliefs for him. However, the Second Boer War concluded in May 1902, when Dunne was almost 27 years old, so this was apparently a second surrender, coming at the end of the "ten years of shilly-shallying." It appears that Dunne was only a proper Christian for approximately two months.

The story continues, with Dunne riding through the moonlit grasslands.

Perhaps you can imagine something of the unearthly beauty of that scene [. . .]. I rode enraptured, with loosened rein, looking now at the unutterable loveliness of the earth and now into the depths of that miracle sky. Then admiration changed into adoration; for Heaven and Earth seemed to be filling with the 'glory', and it was more glorious than I could have believed possible. I began a half-wordless paean of thanks, addressing this to that Christ whom, I realized -- and never before so fully as now -- was indeed One with God. The last vestige of doubt had gone. I was soaring up, unchecked, towards the zenith of that prayer when suddenly . . . 

It was like a blow in the face. The whole marvellous scene -- sky and rolling down -- had gone empty. There was nothing there to answer me. I was addressing a blank. 

The shock was quite real. It was so utterly unexpected, and it had happened so instantaneously. I stared at that uncaring exhibition of Nature, and tried again. But it was hopeless -- and the words faded away. The void remained. Jesus of Nazareth had died nearly two thousand years ago. He was not present in this lovely 'now'. 

For perhaps half a minute I rode on in perturbed silence; and then, more than a little doubtfully, I tried offering my prayer to God. I had got no further than, 'Oh God! Thank you for' . . . when instantly -- as instantaneously as it had emptied -- the scene had filled to overflowing, and I had the most tremendous awareness of a Great Being, who was not only listening to me, but pleased with my delight in all this beauty, and sending out response. 

I realized then that God Himself had released me from my ridiculous, unfulfillable promise to Him. And, as I rode on in deep gratitude, I felt myself enveloped within and without by that friendliness of God which is so much greater than any emotion like 'love'. [. . .] Obviously, I had been going from bad to worse; for to make truth subordinate to a vow is to fall very low indeed. And it is clear that I had got myself into such a state that I would have accepted release from none save Him to whom I had vowed.

Intrusions? includes accounts of three vivid dreams in which he appeared to receive messages from an angel. There was a fourth such dream, which he related to his wife and son, but he died before he could put it into writing. An account of this last visitation, written by Dunne's son, is included as an appendix to Intrusions? Dunne is referred to here in the third person.

In the third appearance he described the scenery as having grown dark and stormy so that he could barely see the 'Angel'. In the fourth and final appearance it was pitch black with a raging tempest. All that he could see of the 'Angel' was a white something which he took to be his robe and which he caught hold of, for (here I quote his own words) 'I knew that it was the last time I should see him.' 

This Appearance was very brief and I think it took him by surprise. He said that he thought rapidly for some question to ask the 'Angel'. The question which had always worried him came out -- 'Christianity, is it true?' and the 'Angel' replied: 'God lets it be true for those who want it to be true.' 

He said that he had no interpretation of the 'Angel's' reply to his final question.

⁂

To summarize, then:

1. I have not been able to find out in which denomination of Christianity Dunne was raised. His father was Irish, and his mother was English, making both Catholicism and Anglicanism reasonable possibilities. In describing his brief period of orthodox belief, Dunne says "I became a Christian: as humble, unquestioning a Christian as any Catholic might desire." To me this description of himself as being as unquestioning as a Catholic would be unusual for someone who actually was a Catholic, so I lean toward the assumption that he was an Anglican.

2. He was very briefly an atheist around the age of 17. In giving the background to the experience that convinced him there was a God, he writes, "I had just lost all belief in the existence of God" -- implying that his conversion came close on the heels of his loss of faith, and that his atheist period was likely a matter of months rather than years.

3. At the age of 17, he had his Jekyll and Hyde experience, which convinced him of the reality of God. There is no indication that he ever again doubted God's existence. At this time he also made a promise to God that he would believe "Pauline Christianity" (i.e., Christianity as presented by the Apostle Paul in the Bible; no mention of any denomination) but found that he was not in fact able to believe it.

4. There followed "ten years of shilly-shallying," during which Dunne disbelieved in Christianity but felt guilty about that disbelief because of the promise he had made at 17. No mention is made of church affiliation or activity during this period, but one assumes he would have participated in public worship at least sporadically out of a sense of duty. Looking back on this period later, he said that at some level he "had never really lost" his Christian beliefs and "had never ceased to love" Jesus.

5. Around the age of 27, he finally found that he was able to believe by an act of will, and he "became a Christian" (implying that he had not been a Christian, not even a doubt-ridden one, before).

6. Some two months later, he had a spiritual experience of which the import seemed to be that Jesus was dead but that God was real, and he understood that God had released him from his promise to believe in Christianity. From then on he was a firm theist but not a Christian. All his books were written well after this experience, when he was no longer a Christian.

7. However, it appears that he was never entirely sure that Christianity might not be true after all. Given the opportunity, near the end of his life, of putting a question to an angel, the question he chose was, "Christianity, is it true?" -- characterized by his son as "the question which had always worried him." The angel's reply was ambiguous and confusing, and it appears not to have precipitated anything like a deathbed conversion.