Religious Experience Flashcards
(4 cards)
Rudolph Otto
Religious experience is numinous
- Makes us aware of “creature consciousness”, that we were made by God and distinct from him
- Not the result of reason but intuition
- Is “mysterium tremendem et fascians”
Mysterium- Ineffable, not understandable experience
Tremendem: awe-inspiring, important
Fascians: attractive
God could not be known through sensory experience or logical argument
Ordinary language cannot do justice to religious experience, because it is an experience beyond normal sense-experience
Religious language is a ‘schema’ - an attempt to find clusters of words which approach the idea of expressing an inexpressible idea
God is ‘wholly other’ - completely different and distinct to humans
Humans are not able to know God unless he chooses to reveal himself
The numinous is where God reveals himself and his revelation is felt on an emotional level
Schleiermacher
He agreed that religious experiences are primarily emotional and that every person has a consciousness of the divine.
He contended that the experiences are not numinous but are at their core a feeling of absolute dependence upon the divine.
They are an awareness of a dependence on a ‘source of power that is distinct from the world’ that is at the heart of religion.
Theology arises afterwards as people reflect on their experiences
Religion is a ‘sense and taste of the infinite’
Christianity is the highest religion as Jesus was the only example of someone who was completely ‘God-conscious’
Examples of Religious Experience
Paul’s conversion to Saul . He hears the voice of Jesus: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Then the declaration that the speaker is “The rise Christ”.
After this vision, Paul converted to Christianity
Spent the rest of his life spreading the Christian message
The conversion of the name Saul to Paul is significant to show his conversion to Christianity
Examples of Religious Experience [2]
Visions
A vision experience can happen when a person is awake or in a dream
St Teresa of Avila having ‘inner visions’ of Christ i.e. intellectual visions which are seen with the mind as opposed to the eyes. She described how she could not discern the ‘form’ of the vision but she was aware Jesus was there
The Prophet Muhammad receiving the Qur’an from the Angel Jibrail was a vision experience
Imaginative visions are those who occur in dreams such as when Joseph, while engaged to Mary, had a dream telling him not to be afraid of marrying Mary, even though she was pregnant and he was not the father
