Religious Experience Summary

Types of Experiences:

• Corporate: Undergone by a group of people (ex: holy laughter or Glossolalia - speaking in tongues)

Questions: what is God hoping to achieve through both these concepts (see examples above). What do people gain from them?

- Referenced: (Act 2:1-13)

• Individual - personal and lone from others
• Conversion experience:those without faith then become thiests

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Definitions:

• Direct: Events where God reveals her/himself directly to the person having the experience. 

- Is not chosen or willed by the person

- One experiences/observes God in some way

- [The events] Are indescribable

• Indirect: Experiences, thoughts or feelings about God that are prompted by events in daily life

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

Swinburne's Classification:

• Public Experiences

- Ordinary: Where a person interprets a natural event as having religious significance

- Extraordinary: Those that appear to violate normal understanding of the workings of nature

• Private

- Describable in ordinary language: Such as dreams which people are able to describe to others

- Non-describable: Refers to direct experiences of God in which God/the divine is revealed. These go beyond the human powers of description

- Non-specific: Could include things like looking at the world from a religious perspective

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Distinguished types of experience:

• Corporeal: Knowlege is communicated through a form/image like a physical person
• Imaginitive: visions that occur in dreams
• Intellectual: an experience rather than just an observation

* Voice Experiences:

~ Could be argued visions and voices are central to the foundation of Christianity

3 Stages:

• The disembodied voice (showing a presence of God)
• Revelation (the message is noetic - something which gives knowledge, such as a revelation from God)
• The voice is authoratative

Biblical Examples:

• Jesus' Baptism (Mark 1:1-9)

Jesus is baptised by John of Jordan in Galilee

• Paul's Conversion (Acts 9:4-8, 22:6-10, 26)

Jesus speaks to Saul and was lead to Damascus (he could not see), where he is told again to go to Damascus. Saul then converts to Paul.

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Personal Religious Experience:

Rudolph Otto

'The Book of the Holy'

Numinous - an encounter with God that transcends the everday

The meeting with God in nature is like a seduction 'msyterium tremendum et fascinans' = a mystery tremendous and fascinating. Fascinating is related to the attraction/drawing in of one.

Idea is consistent with James' ineffability - lack of language available to describe the event. 

St. Teresa of Avila

Series of visions of Jesus

Must be a change for the good to believe they had truly encountered God. 

Corporate Religious Experience:

- undergone by a group of…