3A: The Nature of religious experience

Question 1

What is a religious experience?

Answer 1

• generally defined as some form of ‘encounter with God’
• several forms: e.g. visions, conversions, mysticism and prayer

Question 2

What is a vision?

Answer 2

• where a person sees or hears something they believe is supernatural in origin
• an happen when a person is awake or asleep

Question 3

What are the different types of visions?

Answer 3

• sensory visions
• dream based visions
• intellectual visions

Question 4

What are sensory visions?

Answer 4

• when a person is awake and involves a person seeing or hearing something that is beyond, what may be called a ‘normal experience’
• recipient hears/sees external objects, sounds or figures that bring the recipient a theological insight or knowledge
• e.g. Bernadette had several visions of an angel, at Lourdes, indicating the healing nature of the local spring waters.
• can be individual or group-based
  + individual: seen/heard by only one person, e.g. Bernadette
  + group: sensory vision is seen/heard by more than one person. e.g. in Luke 2 a group of shepherds had a vision when they saw an angel proclaiming the birth of Jesus

Question 5

What are dream based visions?

Answer 5

• occurs in dreams, rather than in the physical sensory world
• e.g. Matthew 1, Joseph has a dream-based vision confirming nature of Mary’s pregnancy
• another example, Matthew 1 where wise men were warned in a dream nit to tell King Herod about the whereabouts of Jesus

Question 6

What are intellectual visions?

Answer 6

• visions are often claimed by recipient(s) to have given them important theological insights/understandings
• e.g. Acts 10 where Peter had a dream-based vision of a large sheet descending from the heavens. This vision gave hum the understanding that Jesus’ message was for all people of the earth and not just the Jews.

Question 7

What is a conversion?

Answer 7

• process of change in the way a person may perceive the spiritual aspect of human existence

Question 8

What are individual and communal conversions?

Answer 8

• individual conversion: Acts 9, Saul (a Jewish persecutor of Christians) is on the road to Damascus when he hears the voice of Jesus. As a result he converted to Christianity
• communal conversion: Acts 2, it describes how the disciples and a crowd of people from many different nations are filled with the HS at Pentecost. They can suddenly understand each others’ languages

Question 9

What are the different types of conversions?

Answer 9

• atheist to faith: a conversion can be from no religious belief to faith, e.g. CS Lewis moved from an atheist to faith in 1931
• faith to faith: can also be from one faith to another. E.g. Saul converting from Judaism to Christianity on way to Damascus
• deepening of a faith: it is common a child will follow the religion they are brought up in by their parents. However as they get older they may convert to developing their ‘own’ deeper faith in the religion that they own for themselves
• intellectual conversion: may be converted to faith by the intellectual study of theology
• moral conversion: may be converted to faith due to a challenge to their moral life

Question 10

What are the characteristic features of a conversion?

Answer 10

• passive/active: passive - conversion experience comes upon the recipient unexpectedly without them seeking it. Active - a person actively seeks out a spiritual experience
• transforming: conversion experiences can completely transform a person’s life, e.g. Tommie Scott
• slow/fast: a fast experience is Saul’s conversion, however some can take many years
• involuntary: conversion may involve the recipient battling against it, until they finally ‘give in’ to the conversion

Question 11

What is mysticism?

Answer 11

• the feeling of complete union with God.
  -particularly powerful type of religious experience where a recipient can feel completely absorbed by the presence of God.

Question 12

Common fearures of mysticims:

Answer 12

• W.R Miller - 1995 book ‘Questions That Matter’
• transcendent: no concept of space or time when they are in the mystical experience
• unitive: unifying our spiritual soul with God
• noetic: conveys a deep religious truth to the recipient
• ineffable: mystical experience is not easily explained through language
• ecstatic: recipient is filled with joy and peace

Question 13

What are the three types of mystical experiences?

Answer 13

• ecstatic ME
• transcendent ME
• unitive ME

Question 14

What are ecstatic mystical experiences?

Answer 14

• recipients claim that the experience leaves them in a trance like state but at the same time with a feeling of powerful joy. Famous Theresa of Avila stated ME was “accompanied with exceeding joy and sweetness”
• closest a living human being can get to the joy of post-mortem soul feels when they enter into the presence of God, in the heavenly realm
• e.g. Toronto Blessing. Evangelical Christian religious service that actively encourages all members of the congregation to achieve an ecstatic mystical state

Question 15

What are transcedent mystical expereicnes?

Answer 15

• take the recipient beyond the physical world (realm) to a higher spiritual realm.
• transcendent realms are often described as ‘other worldly’ or ‘different dimensions’ that are beyond the physical empirical world.

Question 16

What are unitive mystical experiences?

Answer 16

• involve the uniting of the human spirit with that of God’s, in a sense to become one with God.
• David Lukoff: “extraordinary experience marked by feelings of being in unity, harmonious relationship to the divine…”

Question 17

What is prayer?

Answer 17

• the activity of speaking to God

Question 18

Prayer - Theresa of Avila:

Answer 18

• Theresa was severely ill and had a vision of a ‘wounded Christ’ which re-energised Theresa and inspired her to develop her prayer life, which she eventually wrote about in her book ‘the Interior Castle’
• Theresa considers the human soul to be like a castle that contains many rooms, which she called mansions. She believed that a true union with God can only be achieved by, metaphorically, working your way through the various mansions.
• stated that all mansions of prayer needed intense concentration and discipline
• suggested there were seven stages of prayer however first three are usually discounted as they don’t give the same level of union with God.

Question 19

What are Theresa’s four key stages of prayer?

Answer 19

• prayer of quiet
• prayer of simple union
• spiritual marriage
• mystical marriage

Question 20

What is prayer of quiet?

Answer 20

• found in the fourth metaphorical mansion
• Theresa describes this as a state where the human will, is complete captivated by God’s love through prayer, experience, peace and spiritual fulfilment/
• experience can be intense and some may faint

Question 21

What is prayer of simple union?

Answer 21

• found in the fifth mansion
• God places himself in the interior of the person’s soul
• experience is so powerful that the person can possible doubt that God has been in the experience

Question 22

What is spiritual marriage?

Answer 22

• found in the sixth mansion
• person may feel an over-powering sense of wanting to spend every possible moment alone with God.
• person will feel spiritual ecstasy and will experience painful longings when not. In essence the recipient will feel the powerful love for God.

Question 23

What is mystical marriage?

Answer 23

• found in seventh mansion
• highest possible state of prayer that is achievable by a mortal being.
• person is in complete union with God, to the extent where an intimate awareness of God is intuitively felt.