2017 Studies in Religion and Human ExperienceOption 2 Religious Experience

AO1 - You must show knowledge and understanding of examples of forms of individual and communal religious experience and AO2 be able to evaluate how far religious belief and commitment is determined by one’s religious experiences or lack of them.

1. In order to write about individual and communal forms of religious experiences we need ideas about what might, in general terms, be regarded as a religious experience

The concept as a whole – e.g. Schleiermacher (1768-1834) – a feeling of absolute dependence in which things are put into eternal perspective.

Idea of a human being experiencing God in some sort of personal way

2. We also need to briefly classify how religious experiences are different to ordinary experiences e.g. Definition/description common to all religious experiences

David Hay (Alister Hardy Research Centre) – The essential Qualities of Religious Experience Stace features that help us to classify what is a religious experience

3. Scholars attempts to classify types of religious experiences

Swinburne – 5 distinct types of religious experience – individual and communal Caroline Franks Davis – 6 styles of religious experience – individual and communal Otto and the numinous – individual

Suggested reading material:Peter Cole: Religious ExperienceBrian Davies: An introduction to the Philosophy of ReligionWendy Dossett: Religious Experience

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Activity 1 Defining Religious Experiences

Read page 13 of the AS Philosophy of Religion Anne Jordan text book.

a) Write a brief general definition of Religious Experiences.

Rudolph Otto [1869-1937] in The Idea of the Holy [1917] – ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans’ [the tremendous mystery that fascinates] – an encounter with the numinous; a mystery that is both awesome and fascinating.

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Religious experience

Schleiermacher (1768-1834) – a feeling of absolute dependence in which things are put into eternal perspective.

b) David Hay’s research for the Alister Hardy Collection.Make brief notes on how Hay classifies ‘religious’ and ‘ordinary’ experiences (spider diagram or bullet points) Read page 7 -12 of Religious Experience Peter Cole

c) What are the problems with defining Religious Experiences? Cole page 11What is meant by religious?

What is meant by experience?

What is the Alister Hardy Research Centre

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d. Is there a common core (similar features) that will help us classify religious experiences?)

To know the ideas of Stace To identify the problems with Stace’s list

Read pages 9 and 10 of Peter Coles

Create a list a brief summary of his eight fold list

What are the main two problems with this list?

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Summary so far . . . There are many different ways of categorising religious experiences without actually defining what it actually is. Put simply, we may say that a religious experience is an encounter with the divine. It is a non-empirical occurrence that brings with it an awareness of something beyond us. However, the variety of religious experiences is such that it is difficult to find a common theme. Nevertheless, we may note that some of the main features of religious experiences can be set out as follows:

God is experienced as opposed to everyday physical objects. There is a spiritual change that clearly has a religious dimension.

Religious experiences are often subjective as opposed to objective.

Religious experiences are not universal i.e. not everybody experiences them as opposed to ordinary experiences e.g. a tree, the weather etc.

Human beings often use the same conceptual scheme when they describe an ordinary experience. Thus regardless of culture we all describe a tree in the same way. However, with religious experiences, though the feelings may be similar (e.g. awe and wonder, joy, peace etc.) the object is different e.g. Jesus, Allah, Krishna etc.)

Religious experiences can be understood as pragmatic in that they bring about life changing behaviour.

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Scholars attempts to classify religious experiences – individual and communal

According to Richard Swinburne (‘The Existence of God’, 1979) religious experiences can be categorised or classified according to public and private experiences. With public religious experiences an individual sees God or God’s action in a public object or scene. For instance, a religious person might look at the night sky and see the hand of God. Of course, it may be argued that such religious experiences are nothing to do with an objective divine reality. Thus, the non-believer might not experience God at all but just a beautiful sunset. In such cases, then, a great deal depends upon personal interpretation.

By their very nature private religious experiences are less easily verified than public experiences. Private experiences may take the form of dreams or visions of angels or saints, answered prayers etc. The chief difficulty with such experiences is of course their interpretation. The sceptic will always look for a psychological rather than a divine explanation.

A second example of a private religious experience is a mystical experience. A mystical experience is one in which a person experiences the ultimate reality, which brings with it a sense of unity with the divine, separateness from the divine and dependence on the divine. The recipient feels an intense and deep sense of ‘union’ with God, and at the same time a realization of God’s holiness. Mystical experiences are intensely personal and cannot be described in normal language. Nevertheless mystical experiences are very real to those who experience them.

A third and final example of a private religious experience can be seen in those individuals who believe that God is acting in his or her life. Looking back on past events, the individual may say, ‘God’s hand guided me’, although if pressed he or she would admit that there is no specific evidence for this.

Richard Swinburne has classified religious experiences into 5 types:

1. Public - Seeing Gods _______/ work in a public object or scene eg, ________

2. Seeing God in an _________, publicly observable event eg, ______________

3. A private experience describable in everyday ___________ eg, visions

4. A private experience that cannot be described eg, experiences of ___________

5. No specific experience, but a feeling of the constant _____________ of God

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Read Page 8- 9 of Peter Cole and the extract from Vardy ‘The Puzzle of God’

How do scholars define religious experiences? Either complete the table or make notes on the headings below.

SwinburnePublic

1 Individual experienceWhat?

Analysis?

2 Group experiencesWhat?

Analysis?

PrivateProblem?

3 Normal language e.g.

Analysis?

4 Not normal language e.g.

Analysis?

Example from wind in the willows

5 No specific experience

Analysis?Caroline Franks Six fold division/ classification – which are individual and which are communal?

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Davis Interpretative experiences

Quasi-sensory experiences

Revelatory experiences

Regenerative

Numinous experiences

Mystical experiences

Internal/External Explanation

Problems

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Summary of scholars attempts to classify religious experiences

Starter taskA. Match the definition or description with the scholar

Swinburne

Stace

Caroline Franks Davis

B. Fill in the definitions or descriptions that are missing from the list below

Scholar’s ideas

1. Public experience – God’s action observed e.g.sunset

2. Interpretative experience

3. Unifying vision

4. Timelessness and spacelessness

5. Private experience – describable in everyday language

6. Loss of sense of self

7. Mystical experience

8. Quasi – sensory experience

9. Blessedness

10. Private experience – not describable in everyday language

11. Logic is defied

12. Revelatory experience

13. Numinous experience

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Rudolph Otto and the numinous

In The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, (1923) Rudolph Otto identifies and explores the non-rational mystery behind religion and the religious experience ("non-rational" should not be confused with "irrational"); he called this mystery, which is the basic element in all religions, the numinous. He uses the related word "numen" to refer to deity or God.Forced, necessarily, to use familiar words, like "dread" and "majesty," Otto insists that he is using them in a special sense; to emphasize this fact, he sometimes uses Latin or Greek words for key concepts. This fact is crucial to understanding Otto. Our feeling of the numinous and responses to the numinous are not ordinary ones intensified; they are: unique (I use this word in its original meaning of "one of a kind, the only one") or sui generis (meaning "in a class by itself"). For example, fear does not become dread in response to the numinous; rather, we cease to feel ordinary fear and move into an entirely different feeling, a dread that is aroused by intimations of the numinous or the actual experience of the numinous.

The Numinous

The numinous grips or stirs the mind powerfully and produces the following responses: Numinous dread. Otto calls the feeling of numinous dread, aka awe or awe-fullness, the mysterium tremendum. C.S. Lewis's illustration makes clear the nature of numinous dread and its difference from ordinary fear:

'Suppose you were told that there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told "There is a ghost in the next room," and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is "uncanny" rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a might spirit in the room" and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking–described as awe, and the object which excites it is the Numinous.' C.S. Lewis, 'The Problem of Pain' 1940.

The mysterium tremendum implies three qualities of the numinous:

a) its absolute unapproachabilityb) its powerc) its urgency or energy, a force which is most easily perceived in the "wrath of God."

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It has been suggested that Gothic fiction originated primarily as a quest for the mysterium tremendum. Stupor. Because the mysterium tremendum is wholly Other, i.e., is unlike anything that we have encountered or ever will encounter, it arouses in us a mental state of stupor, a "blank wonder, an astonishment that strikes us dumb, amazement absolute."

The shudder. In this state, the soul, "held speechless, trembles inwardly to the farthest fibre of its being[;] ... it implies that the mysterious is beginning to loom before the mind, to touch the feelings."

Creature-consciousness and the simultaneous experiencing of the self as nothing. Creature-consciousness is the awareness of ourselves as having being or of existing. The nothingness is not a sense of guilt for a transgression, but the sense of being profane, which is the opposite state to the holy or holiness, which is an absolute quality belonging just to God.

Sense of unworthiness and need for "covering." Accompanying the disvaluation of self is the feeling of being unworthy to be in the presence of "the holy one" (we fear that our presence might even defile him). Being profane, we need a "covering," in Otto's term, or a consecration or grace, "that renders the approacher 'numinous,' frees him from his 'profane' being," so that he is no longer unfit to relate to the numen.

Human beings as a species have the a priori capacity of mind to perceive or experience the numinous. This is not to say that the ability to perceive the holy, let alone the perception itself is innate; it merely means that every individual has the potential to perceive or experience the numinous. The numinous state of mind or the feeling of the numinous must be evoked in us or brought into consciousness; it cannot be taught. But not everyone has the same degree of receptivity to the holy. The revelations of those who are specially receptive, like the prophets, stimulate the numinous capacity of the less receptive. Otto, who believes in the superiority of Christianity, awards the highest stage of revelation to the Son or Christ, who embodies holiness.

Isaiah 6 King James Version (KJV)6 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. 2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. 3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. 4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. 6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. 8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

Based on http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/gothic/numinous.html; additional material by Sharon Crisp

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Activities – write definitions of the following words

Numinous– the feeling of “holiness” being in presence of an awesome power, which includes terror, fascination, religious awareness and “out of the ordinary.”

Mysterium:

Tremendum:

Fascinans:

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Application of Otto’s theory: The numinous activity:

1 “...unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand in to his side, I will not believe it.”

..Jesus came and stood among them.

He said to Thomas:

“put your finger here...stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said to him, “my Lord and my God.” John 20: 24-28

2 “At this Moses hid his face as he was afraid to look at God” Exodus 3: 6

1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father,[a] the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you[b] will worship God on this mountain.”

13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.[c] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

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15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD,[d] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.

16 “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’

18 “The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.

21 “And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. 22 Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.”

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Explain the above well known religious experiences of the apostle Thomas, Isiah or Moses, by applying the three elements of Otto’s theory of the numinous to the examples:

Examples Numinous

Mysterium

Tremendum

Fascinans

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