2.6.2 Strengths of religious experience (supporting principles)

Question 1

Describe Richard Swinburne’s five-part classification

Answer 1

Swinburne classifies five types of religious experience:

1. experience of God mediated through a common ‘public’ sensory object, like a sunset or an ocean
2. experiences of God mediated through an uncommon public sensory object; by this, Swinburne means the kind of experience had by Moses at the burning bush
3. experience of God mediated through a private object that can be described empirically; for example, in Acts 10:10-16, Peter sees a vision