Religious Experience
- Created by: em ruth
- Created on: 10-10-17 14:43
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What is religious experience?
- non-empirical
- "mental event" of which you are aware of
- can be spontaneous, can be a mental event of which you are aware
- makes people more aware of God
- used to bring people closer to God
- unique
- personal
- helps people to live a better life
- Saul's conversion (acts 9) was a spontaneous religious experience
Training and meditation of the Sufi
- train themselves to enter a state of sleeping without sleep
- knowledge revealed to them from the Divine
- disconnect themselves from outward senses
- focus their energy on within
Visions
- when people believe they have seen or heard something supernatural
- intellectual- brings knowledge or understanding from God/ the divine- ie Jacob's ladder
- imaginary- strengthens faith and is seen in the mind's eye
- corporeal- the figure is externally present- ie St Bernadette's vision of the Virgin Mary
Numinosity
- the feeling of the "holy"- awe, fascination, religious awareness, the smallness of self
- Rudolph Otto- feel the presence of an awesome power but feel seperate from it
- Burning bush
Conversions
- regeneration and and assurance of the truth of the divine
- lead to greater understanding of faith
- lead to adoption of that religious faith
- often come as result of a numinous experience
- Volitional- a conscious conversion- slow development og new moral and spiritual habits
- Self-surrender- an unconscious conversion- a man's extemity is God's opportunity
- William James' conclusions on conversion
1.sudden conversion is very real to those whove experienced it
2. for methodists, salvation isn't truly recieved until a person has been through a crisis, like conversion
3.those having a sudden conversion feel it to be a miracle rather than a natural process
4. even when seen as a natural process, it's thought to have been inspired by the Divine
Mystical Experiences
- a direct and intimate experience of God
- divine- a being that is perfect, all powerful and not comparable to anything human
- factors that enable their recognition:
-knowledge of the ultimate reality is gained
-a sense of freedom from the limitations of being human is experienced
-people feel to be "at one" with the divine
-a sense of bliss/ serenity - described as being being the closest that a human can come to meeting the divine
Types of Mysticism
- Happold- Mysticism: A Study and Anthology (1963)
- the mysticism of love and union:
-the longing to escape to loneliness; craving a union with God and loss of self
-Augustine "our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee"
-we want to be individual but also want to get back to God - the mysticism of knowledge and understanding
-we feel as though we need to work out the "secret of the universe"
-we want to know the whole story, not just parts
-we look for answers through intuitive, experiential knowledge
Types of Mystical Experience
- soul mysticism
- the soul is hidden
-through mysticism we find the soul and find self-sullfillment
-relates Buddhist and Hindu philosphies - nature mysticism
-God is immanent
-observing beauty/vastness
-Psalm 19 v 1- "the heavens declare the glory of God" - God-mysticism
-the soul wants…
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