These empiricists-among them, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and their more theological successors, such as Bernard Meland and Bernard Loomer-have contended that the depths of empirical awareness lie well beneath the shallow reports of sensationalist empiricism or the superficial abstractions of rationalism. However, with another part of themselves, these same empiricists have tried to describe the very depths they had declared to be beyond description.3 They have proposed new sensationalist tests, as in one form of pragmatism, or have essayed new abstractions, whether philosophical or theological. But finally, like Saint Thomas, they drew back from their own clarifications.