scholars

Question 1

FC Happold

Answer 1

FC Happold
o Three aspects of mystical experience
1) Soul mysticism: finding the soul
2) Nature mysticism: belief that God is everywhere
3) God-mysticism- souls desire to return to their immortal and infinite ground, which is God
o ‘The word mysterium implies the idea of something wholly other than man; tremendum the ideas of awfulness, overpowering’s, and urgency’

Question 2

william james

Answer 2

William James
o Religious experiences- mystical: as having ‘noetic’, ‘ineffable’ ,’passive’ and ‘transient’ qualities.
o Religious experience is central to religious belief
o The experience of the individual was real and this is important- ‘self authenticating’ for the person who has experienced God
o ‘No logical proof that God exists’- open to the possibility of God’s existence
o Religion leads to ‘consistency, stability’
o Purpose of religion is not God but ‘more life, a larger, richer more satisfying life’
o About mystical experience: ‘ some memory of their content always remains, and a profound senses of their importance’
o ‘They modify inner life’

Question 3

Rudolf Otto

Answer 3

RE remind us of the ‘wholly other’ nature of God- the numinous who transcends all ordinary experience

Question 4

keith ward

Answer 4

revelations as ‘divine self disclosures- believes that they give individuals non-propositional knowledge of gods nature

Question 5

ninian smart

Answer 5

Ninian Smart
o Identifies the experiential dimension of religion as the one at the heart of religious faith and therefore at the heart of religious practice and behaviour.

Question 6

Martin Buber

Answer 6

encounter with god as ‘i.thou’ encounter- personal

Believers may claim that their encounter with God is so real and immediate that no justification is needed’

Question 7

Jon wisdom

Answer 7

o Parable of the gardener: there are two people looking at a neglected garden. One is convinced that there must be a gardener and the other is not. The two do not differ about the facts of the garden; instead it is upon their interpretation. The problem of course is to know which of the two is ‘right’. – Is there a God? Non-propositional knowledge’

Question 8

Richard Swinburne

Answer 8

groups 5 main types of religious experience :
public: healings and sunsets

private: mystical
conversion
experiencing God over time

Question 9

Caroline franks davis

Answer 9

Caroline Franks Davis
o Dismisses the search for an easy definition of religious experience, as ‘fruitless’.
o She identifies visions as ‘quasi-sensory’
o Describes religious experiences as ‘something akin to sensory experiences’
o ‘An intellectual intuition which is analogous to our intuition of other human persons in so far as firstly, it is mediated by signs and secondly, it terminates in spiritual reality’
o Mystical- ‘a roughly datable mental event which the subject is to some extent aware of
o Conversions have a ‘regenerative’ quality
1. Interpretive experiences
2. Quasi-sensory experiences
3. Revelatory experiences
4. Regenerative experiences
5. Numinous experiences
6. Mystical experiences

Question 10

Lord Fenner Brockway

Answer 10

o Soul mysticism: ‘I stood looking over the green ocean towards the red sunset. A great calm came over me. I became lost in the beauty of the scene. My spirit reached out and became one with the spirit of the sea and sky..’