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Religious Experience
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Philosophy of ReligionTheme 3: Religious Experience
A. The nature of religious experience with particular reference to:
Introduction:
Religious experience: A person understanding him/herself to directly encounter or be aware of
God or some other ultimate reality.
o It is self-authenticating: the person having the experience is the one who recognises it
as religious.
o The experience is in some way “sensory”; that is, the person
genuinely experiences “God”.
o It could not be classified as anything other than a religious experience, the experience
was religious in nature.
Main classifications: visions, conversions, mysticism, prayer.
Main argument:
o Experience of X indicates the reality of X
o Experience of God indicates the reality of God
o Possible to experience God
o Therefore, God exists
Swinburne's 5 categories for R.E:
o Ordinary object seen in a new way – e.g. a sunset, sunrise, nature
o Unusual object which a person believes to be religious – e.g. after Jesus died, people
saw a man who looked like Jesus, and believed it was Jesus
o Private sensation that can be described in ordinary language – e.g. Joseph being told
Mary was going to have a baby
o Private sensation that cannot be described (Mystical Experience)
o Private experience with NO sensation, however there is a feeling that God is around.
Conversion of Cornelius (Acts 10)/Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 3).
Natural and revealed theology:
Natural: The process of deriving knowledge of God from the use of natural human
reason. Any appeal to general evidence, the world, and our understanding in theology is natural
theology.
(God’s power found in a sunset).
Revealed: The process of deriving knowledge of God from contact with God himself.
This could take the form of a vision of God, or discerning God through His words in Holy Scripture.
(God spoke to Abraham).
Visions - sensory; intellectual; dreams.
Visions: something seen other than by ordinary sight, i.e. a supernatural or prophetic sight.
Especially one that conveys a revelation or message of some form.
Augustine stated that there were three types of vision which corresponded to the three
heavens mentioned by St Paul in Corinthians:
A. Sensory: rests on the human senses such as the eyes and is the most basic of visions.
o E.g. Moses and the Burning Bush.
i. Saw bush on fire but it wasn't burning.
ii. Moved closer and heard voice telling him to remove shoes as he was on Holy
Ground.
iii. God told him to lead the suffering people out of Egypt.
o E.g. Bernadette of Lourdes - claimed to have been instructed by an apparition of the
Virgin Mary to dig a hole and a healing spring would appear.
B. Dreams or "spiritual visions": seeing shapes that look like bodies but which do not have corporeal
substance (i.e. made up of actual physical material).
C. Intellectual visions: highest tier of vision, involves perceiving realities such as God, the angels or grace,
which possess neither bodily shape nor physical substance.
o E.g. the "heaven" that St Paul had accessed through his visions.
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