Religious Experience Flashcards
What’s a religious experience?
Any experience of the sacred in a religious context, including visions, mystical and conversion experiences.
What are 3 things which religious experiences usually have in common?
They are universal, important and diverse.
What was Schleiermacher’s background?
He was brought up in a Moravian community, a protestant group that stressed the importance of faith and an individual relationship with God. Religious faith was not about setting up strict doctrines of worship, this lead him to conclude that humans are intrinsically religious beings, so every experience they have is a religious experience.
What did Schleiermacher believe the role of religion was?
To foster awareness and develop a consciousness of the divine.
How did Schleiermacher believe religious experiences should be tested?
They shouldn’t be, in the part of his book called the Defense he said that religious experiences are self authentising. Here he is critsising the Roman Catholic approach of its reliance on reason.
What did Schleiermacher believe about the importance of religious experiences?
They are more important than doctrine as religion is the process of being totally reliant on Gods will. This feeling supersedes any statement made by the Church.
How is subjectivism a critism of Schleiermacher?
As he removes the need for reason and empiricism he puts too much emphasis on subjectivism which may effect dialogue between his argument and the “outside world.” It would also be dangerous to the possibility of allowing any alleged religious experience as valid even one that had been caused by drugs or hallucinations.
What does numinous mean?
Otto’s term for an individuals encounter with the holy or God.
What does mysterium tremedum et fascinas mean?
For Otto, this was the effect that a religeous experience had on an individual.
What was the purpose of Otto’s book, the idea of the holy?
To analyse the difference between a religious experience and a experience.
What does irreducible mean?
Something that cannot be reduced or simplified.
What type of theory was Otto’s?
A priori
How did Otto define a religious experience?
There was an irreducible experience of religion which he called the numinous. This he described as mysterium tremedum et fascinas and is non rational. The experience of the mysterium is what he the complete dependence on what calls the wholly other, God. It is entirely over powering, unapproachable and awe inspiring. It is also attracts the person like a magnet, its shown in concepts like love, mercy and goodness.
What does Otto say is the best way to understand the numinous?
While the foundation of religion is the numinous, it also needs a logical framework for people to understand the experience. He studied several religions and concluded that Christianity provided the best way for understanding the numinous.
What does mysticism mean?
Where a person feels that he/she is gaining spiritual truth beyond normal understanding as he /she is growing ever closer to God.
What are the two types of religious experiences?
Mystical and conversion
How does mysticism differ from Otto?
Otto’s notion revolves around an awareness of an absolute power which is wholly other. Mysticism instead doesn’t describe the power they experience as wholly other, many mystics believe to be united with this power. Other mystics still agree that this power feels close and intimate. It also differs as mystics describe the power having numerous other characteristics which Otto’s does not.
What book did William James write?
The varieties of religious experience.
What does William James call the doctrines and teachings of the Church?
The second religion, he holds it in lesser importance than religious experiences.
What four characteristics did William James say a religious experience had to have to make it genuine?
- Ineffability. 2. Noetic Quality. 3. Transiency. 4. Passivity. These can only be experienced by the person and still need to be verified by others.
What did William James mean by ineffability?
They are usually intensely private events that cannot be accurately described to anyone else. St Teresa of Avila stated as such.
What did William James mean by noetic quality?
They provide incites into unknowable truths, they are not recognised by the intellect. It gives direct knowledge of God.
What did William James mean by transiency?
There is a discrepancy from the amount of time taken in real life then by the mystics experience.
What did William James mean by passivity?
They are often characterized by the loss of control from the subject and the feeling of being overwhelmed by another greater power. The mystics did not start the experience but was taken over by a power.
