Religious experience Flashcards
what is a religious experience?
A subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework.
Types of visions
Corporeal
Imaginative
Intellectual
What are corporeal visions?
-empirical
-involving sense experience, particularly vision and hearing
-the eyes sees a supernatural vision that is really present and the experiencer can interact with what is seen and heard
Examples of corporeal visions
Bernadette Subirious at Lourdes. 2 weeks of visions, most focused on the need for prayer and penance.
Visions told her to “drink of the water of the spring”, as an act of penance. The water was no longer muddy but clear the next day.
What are imaginative visions?
-seen by the eye of the kind rather than by direct sight
-usually in dreams
-beyond the control of the experiencer
Examples of imaginative visions
Pharaoh’s dream in Genesis 41 - Phaoraoh had dreams symbolising what God was about to do (e.g 7 years of good harvest followed by 7 years of famine - gave Pharaoh time to store grain for the famine.)
What are intellectual visions?
-have no image
-what is experienced is ‘seen as it really is’
-the light of an intellectual vision is through illumination of the soul
Example of intellectual vision
Teresa of Auila - claimed to see Jesus as he really was, not as an image but as a presence.
“I saw nothing with the eyes of the body, nothinf with the eyes of the soul”.
What is Otto’s idea of numinous experience?
-Experiences of awe and wonder in the prescence of an almighty and transcendent God
-Our feelings about the numinous are ‘sui generis’ (of their own kind).
-Numinous feelings are unique feelings that recognise the holy and respond to it. They are non-rational as we cannot reason our way to understanding them.
-“Mysterium Tremendum er Fascinas” - focuses on God as transcendent; God is so far removed from humanity that we must approach him with numinous awe and fascination.
Rudolf Otto’s ‘Idea of the Holy’
-God’s essence is holy
-God is numinous and transcendent
-It shows it is fundamental to religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with nature.
“There is no religion in which it does not live as the innermost core and without it no religion would be worthy of the name” - Otto
“An experience of the wholly other” - Otto
3 main qualities of the Divine according to Otto
-Mysterious (God is incomprehensible, can never be fully captured).
-God is of ultimate importance
-God has a quality that is both attractive and dangerous; God can’t be controlled.
-The individual feels a certain sense of privelages during a religious experience
Who’s ideas was Otto developing
-Schleiermacher
-The essence of religion is in personal experience.
-Religious experience is ‘self-authenticating’, it requires no other testing to see. if it’s genuine.
What were Walter Stace’s ideas
-Genuine mystical experience is a non-sensuous and non-intellectual union with the divine.
-Visions + voices are not mystical experiences.
-2 types of mystical experience: introvertive + extrovertive
What are Stace’s 2 types of mystical experience?
Extrovertive = objects in the world are transfigured so that the non-sensuous unity shines through them.
Introvertive = achieves the total suppression of sense-experience in which awareness of the world is completely obliterated. Ordinary consciousness is replaced by mystical consciousness.
What are William James’ 7 parts of mystical experience?
1-Religious experience came from a factually existing God.
2-God is not the being described by Christian-Judeao teaching.
3-Religious life involves 3 beliefs: there is a higher/spiritual universe, the end of humanity is union with it, and prayer is purposeful because it makes people feel better.
4-Religious experience has psychological benefits as it gives life meaning.
5-Mystical experiences must be ineffable, noetic, passive and transcient.
6-Some religious experiences are more significant than others.
7-The purpose of religious experience is so God meets the individual on the basis of their personal concerns.
