Religious Experience – The key features according the ‘philosophy

of religion’

By the end of this lesson you will have:

• Revised what you know so far on mysticism and near death experiences

• Been introduced to the ideas of Otto and Buber

• Thought about where Otto and Buber could come into your essays

Odd one out

• 1) St Teresa/John of the cross/Aquinas

• 2) William James/Mysticism/Prayer

• 3) Ineffability/passivity/Catholic Church

• 4) Life after life/Raymond Moody/Hell

• 5) Schleiermacher/mysticism/conversion

• 6) Quasi-Sensory/Interpretive/introvert

Quick-fire Questions

• 1) Which famous celebrity had a mystical experience?

• 2) Name 3 scholars who discuss the features of mystical experience

• 3) What are 3 common features of a near death religious experience?

• 4) Which two stages did Paul Tillich describe his mystical experience in?

• 5) What are some general features of a religious experience?

Rudolph Otto

• The Idea of the Holy • Looks at religious experience from the angle of

the philosophy of religion• Says that religious experience is about the

encounter with something other• Something totally unknowable• With this encounter will come a whole range of

feelings• Creeping flesh, the fear of ghosts, the sense of

something uncanny, weird or errie

Rudolph Otto

• The OBJECT of the religious experience is Mysterium tremendum et fascinans

• This is also known as the numinous

• This is based on the word numen meaning ‘awe inspiring holiness’

• For many religious people this ‘numinous’ would be God

Rudolph Otto

• Because Otto agrees that religious experiences are ineffable, he appreciates that it is very difficult to explain how a feeling is holy and numinous

• Otto comes up with a religious language to try and convey the implications of a religious experience

• He calls this schematisation

• However, the ‘holy’ itself is an a priori category and can’t be described using other terms

• Therefore, the philosophy of religion, which only ever deals with words, is limited to schematisation

Task

• Draw a picture which represents Otto’s idea of schematisation

Soren Kierkegaard

• Concluding Unscientific Postscript

• Claims that religious experiences are a matter of personal commitment and value

• Experience, for Kierkegaard, is a matter of making a choice

• For someone to have a religious experience they must be in one of two situations:

• Convinced in faith of the truth of Christianity

• Not a beliver, but interested in Christianity

Soren Kierkegaard

• He believed that it is all about the way in which an experience is believed

• The experience corresponds with the person’s relationship with the religious truth

• He embraced the paradoxical nature of some claims of religious experience such as ‘God talking from a burning bush’

• Of course a religious experience would have to be absurd to create faith. If it was anything normal it wouldn't be faith or religious

Soren Kierkegaard

• The key feature for Kierkegaard is that a religious experience must of course involve a relationship between the ‘object’ experienced and the ‘subject’ experiencing

• The minute we try and look at the object without the subject, it ceases to bea religious experience

Soren Kierkegaard

• He reminds us that intuition and risk play an important part in religious experience

• These are the starting point for a serious commitment

• This then encourages rational thought about your religious experience

TASK

• Look at Kierkegaards’s ideas to do with religious experience.

• Can you draw any parallels between someone having a religious experience and falling in love with someone?

Martin Buber

• I and Thou

• Claims that we have two different kinds of relationships

• I-it and I-thou

• I-it relationships = impersonal, detached, functional, scientific

• I-Thou = personal, emotive

• A religious experience is therefore I-Thou

• Buber described God as an ‘Eternal Thou’

TASK

• Write two lists; one of I-it relationships that you have and one of I-thou relationships

Paul Tillich

• Systematic Theology

• Religion experience has two essential components:

• 1: Being itself

• 2: Ultimate concern

Paul Tillich

• In religion, you experience ‘being itself’

• That is why it is difficult to describe what you are experiencing

• A religious experience has to tell you something about the whole of life

• It needs to be about the ‘being itself’ rather than a particular being.

Paul Tillich

• A religious experience will also become the ultimate concern

• A religious experience has to be an ultimate concern rather than a superficial concern

• A religious experience will often challenge the very basis of our lives

TASK

• Which of the following experiences would Tillich think is religious?

• Having a friend for a few years who makes you feel good

• Going to Church because you like the music

• Living each day as a genuine devout Christian

• Having an encounter with someone that you love

• Having an encounter with the ‘being’ itself