Numinous experience
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- Created by: Abitracey
- Created on: 17-02-13 15:39
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- Numinous experience
- Other understandings of religious experience
- Friedrich Schleiermacher agreed with Otto that religious experiences are primarily emotional.
- For Schleiermacher the experiences are not numinous but are at their core a feeling of absolute dependence upon the divine.
- It is this awareness of absolute dependence upon 'a source power that is distinct from the world' that is at the heart of religion.
- Theology arises afterwards as people reflect on their experineces.
- Martin Buber viewed religious experience as being analogous to intimate personal relationships that he called I-thou relationships.
- This differs from the I-it relationship that we have with objects or when we treat people as objects.
- The I-thou relationship is a mutual interaction. We may experience such I-thou relationships when we encounter nature, in deep friendships and most importantly, by experience God.
- Otto and the numinous experience
- All religious experience is numinous in nature.
- It is described by Otto as being 'mysterium; tremendum'
- Mysterium becuase of the mystery of the experience, it is felt but cannot be described.
- Tremendum becuase of the awe-inspiring terror, almost a sense of dread in the presence of an overwhelming being.
- These experiences provide a refernce point. From then on, believers interpret the world through the experience and the beliefs attached to it.
- The numinous experinece is key to understanding the spirituality of many religions.
- Otto recognised that God could not be known via sensory experinece or logical arument.
- We are not able to know God unless he revals himself to us.
- Is all religious experience numinous?
- Otto seems to imply that the numinous experience is a 'onceand for all' experience, which implies that there can be no further religious experience.
- To suggest that all religious experience is numinous is too simplistic. Other types of experience are well documented.
- What is 'numinous' religious experience?
- Experiences of awe and wonder in the prescence of an almighty and transcendent God.
- An awareness of human nothingness when faced with a holy and powerful being.
- Other understandings of religious experience
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