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Dialogue Education Religious Experience

R E L I G I O U S E X P E R I E N C EA philosophic perspective

Imagine you were walking along the banks of Loch Ness. Suddenly there was a tremendouscommotion in the water and a green head appeared with loops behind it. The weather wasgood and the head and its loops swam nearer shore. You could see it clearly as well as themarkings and the scales - you could see that it did not appear to be a model or man made. Youhad not been drinking nor had you been taking drugs. To you, the Loch Ness monster would be

real and no matter how much evidence there was against its existence, you might well believein its existence.

To those who do not believe in religion, claims to religious experience are as incredible asclaims to have seen the Loch Ness monster or to have seen UFOs - yet many people staketheir lives on such experiences. The first question to be asked is whether it is possible toargue from such experiences to the existence of God. On the face of it this seems plausible -we normally rely on our senses and empiricists hold that our senses provide us with thefoundation for all our claims to knowledge.

THE BASIC ARGUMENT FROM RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE1

------------------------------------------------

The basic argument runs as follows:

Throughout human history, in all cultures and societies, there have been many

reports of a great variety of religious experiences.

The competing explanations for these reports are not as probable as is the

supposition that some religious beliefs are true,

Therefore probably some religious beliefs are true.

1 Summarised from The evidential Value of Religious Experience R.W. Clark (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion), Vol 16, Pps189 - 202

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Winnie the Pooh is an empiricist he was convinced that the only way to test if there really washoney down to the bottom of the honey pot was to see for himself (and to eat all the honey inthe process). Sometimes, of course, even empiricists can misread the evidence. When walkinground the tree with Piglet and seeing all the footsteps, Pooh and Piglet became frightened,convinced that they were following a threatening creature, but they misread the evidence, theywere only following their own footprints.

Arguments for the existence of God are all (except for the ontological argument) a posteriorithey seek to move from experiences in the world to the existence of God. The ReligiousExperience argument is a classic a posterioriargument which seeks to establish from looking at

claimed experience of the Divine or the Other that God or some transcendent reality does,indeed, exist.


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There is a clear ambiguity as to what it means that religious experiences are true. If this

simply means that the person or people concerned had such experiences, then this does not

get us very far - the issue is whether the experiences are due to them being caused by areferent that is not located in the human psyche alone. All the above propositions are

debatable and these notes are intended to amplify the debate.

It can be claimed that religious belief is so different from normal experience not just

because of its object but because such experiences regulate the whole of a persons life that

it cannot be judged like normal experience - however this is part of the debate set out below.

There are two general positions regarding religious experience as evidence for the existence

of God.

THE HARD POSITION is advocated by, for instance, Terence Penelhum and this maintains

that there can be no natural theology based on experience. There could, it is held, only be

such a natural theology if it could be shown that no non-religious explanation of the

occurrence of a given type of religious experience could be had and this position holds that

such alternative accounts will always be available.

THE SOFT POSITION is advocated by John Hick and this maintains that someone who has apowerful sense of existing in the presence of God must, as a rational person, claim to knowthat God exists - such a person would be as entitled to make this claim as others are to claim

that the physical world and other people exist. Richard Swinburne (see below) can beclassified as holding this soft position.

WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?--------------------------------It is very easy to waffle on about religious experience without defining what it is! There aremany different types and Swinburne's analysis (set out in 'The Existence of God' (Oxford) orin The Puzzle of God) is good. The main difference he draws is between public and privatereligious experiences and he then divides these further. There is a substantial differencebetween, say, seeing the night sky as God's handiwork or seeing the sun come to a standstill

in the sky and a vague, interior feeling of the presence of 'The Holy'. One of his categories isa mystical experience which it is hard to describe in normal language - the following quotationfrom 'The Wind in the Willows' is an excellent description of such an experience:

'Breathless and transfixed, the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad pipingbroke in on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears onhis comrade's cheeks, and bowed his head and understood... "This is the place of mysong-dream, the place the music played to me," whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. "Here, inthis holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!" Then suddenly the Mole felt agreat Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted

his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror - indeed he felt wonderfully at peace andhappy - but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeking, he knew it could onlymean that some August Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look at his

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friend, and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there wasutter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew andgrew....

"Rat!" he found breath to whisper, shaking. "Are you afraid?"

"Afraid?" murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. "Afraid of HIM? O,never, never! And yet - and yet - O, Mole, I am afraid!"

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship. CarolineFranks Davies describes religious experience as:

'...something akin to a sensory experience'

'...an intellectual intuition which is analogous to our intuition of other human persons in so faras firstly, it is mediated by signs and secondly, it terminates in spiritual reality''...a roughly datable mental event which the subject is to some extent aware of''...experiences which the subjects themselves describe in religious terms or which areintrinsically religious'2

Martin Buber talks of an encounter with God as an 'I/Thou' encounter. Believers may claimthat their encounter with God is so real and so immediate that no justification is required.John Hick likens this to a man being asked to justify being in the presence of his wife andmaintains that no such justification is required. Nevertheless the possibility of beingmistaken is real as the evidence in favour of being in the presence of one's wife may be held

to be higher than the evidence for being in the presence of God.

John Wisdom's famous GARDENER example illustrates this. Two people look at a neglectedgarden - one is convinced that there is a gardener because of the signs of order and beautythat are there. The other denies this and points to the weeds and the signs of disorder.They devise various tests but no sign of a gardener is found. The first person, however,sticks to his belief and maintains that there IS a gardener, but it is an incorporeal, invisiblegardener who cannot be seen. The two people do not differ about the facts of thegarden - their difference arises due to their different interpretations. The problem, ofcourse, is to know which of the two people is 'right' - if, indeed, there is any right answer.

A.E. Taylor maintains that the person with the artist's eye sees beauty everywhere andsimilarly the religious person sees everything in terms of the reality of God. Taylor iseffectively maintaining that it is the believer who sees things correctly - however no realevidence is given. The artist may have learnt to see beauty in every situation, no matter howapparently grim and hideous. Similarly the religious believer may have been taught toexperience the world as if it is infused by God.

St. PAUL ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD--------------------------------St. Pauls experience on the road to Damascus is probably the best known account of a

mystical/religious experience in Christianity, yet it is significant that the three accountsgiven in the Acts of the Apostles of this experience all differ quite markedly. [It is an

2 Caroline Franks Davies The Evidential Force of Religious Experience p. 31/23


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interesting exercise to take the three accounts below of religious experience and to ask intowhich of Swinburnes five categories they fall.]

ACTS 9: 3- 8:

As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?""Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied."Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not seeanyone.Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they ledhim by the hand into Damascus.

ACTS 22: 6 - 11."About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed aroundme.I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, `Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?'"`Who are you, Lord?' I asked. "Ì am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' hereplied.My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speakingto me."`What shall I do, Lord?' I asked. "`Get up,' the Lord said, ànd go into Damascus. Thereyou will be told all that you have been assigned to do.'My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light hadblinded me.

ACTS 26: 13 - 19About noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun,blazing around me and my companions.We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, `Saul, Saul, why doyou persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'"Then I asked, `Who are you, Lord?' "Ì am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' the Lordreplied.`Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant andas a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.

I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them toopen their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God,so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified byfaith in me.'"So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven..

The writer of Acts was clearly aware of these three accounts and it would have been simpleto harmonise them so that they did not contradict each other in fact he chose not to do soand this, in itself, may point towards the reliability of the stories. Certainly Paul believedthat something incredibly dramatic had happened to him and the writer of the Book of Acts

did not consider the precise details to be directly relevant. Again, however, the questionremains whether Pauls conviction that something dramatic had happened should beinterpreted as he interpreted it. The same question can be asked of the Prophet Mohammed

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who was convinced that Allah, through the Archangel, dictated the Holy Koran to him again, the strength of conviction is clear but non-believers may be sceptical as to whatactually occurred.

BRIDGING THE INTERNAL / EXTERNAL GAP-------------------------------------Swinburne has attempted to address the issue of how one moves from the claim of interiorcertainty about a religious experience to the claim that this experience is an independentreality. This is a key issue.

Swinburne puts forward two important principles which attempt to bridge the gap betweeninternal and external.

1) THE PRINCIPLE OF CREDULITY maintains that it is a principle of rationality that (in theabsence of special considerations) if it seems to a person that X is present, then probably Xis present. What one seems to perceive is probably so.

2) THE PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY maintains that, in the absence of specialconsiderations, it is reasonable to believe that the experiences of others are probably asthey report them.

Swinburne maintains that if we refuse to accept the first of these principles we land in asceptical bog. We should, therefore, allow religious experiences initial credibility unless

there is some evidence against them (if, for instance, we have been drinking or the light isbad or tricks are being played by the light). The aim of the Principle of credulity is to putthe onus on the sceptic to show why reports of religious experience should not be

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St. Teresa was convinced that her heart hadbeen pierced by Gods dart but how does onemove from saying:

INTERNAL - e.g. 'I was convinced that Godsdart pierced my heart with exquisite raptureand agony, and

EXTERNAL e.g. Gods dart pierced my heart

How does one move from the first of these to

the second? 'Being convinced' in the first case

implies that the person concerned trusts that

the experience is reliable but accepts the

possibility of being in error. The problem is

obvious - how does one move from theCONVICTION that a person has experienced

God to the claim that he or she actually DID

experience God?


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accepted. This is important - all that the principle seeks to establish is initial credibilityand that claims to religious experience should not be dismissed out of hand. The scepticshould, it is held, produce argument or evidence to show why claims to religious experienceshould not be accepted as valid - in the absence of such argument or evidence the claimsshould be taken at face value.

The Principle of Testimony simply relies on the inherent trustworthiness of other people - itasks us to believe reports of experiences unless we have some grounds for not doing so. If,for instance, a person is known to be unreliable, is on drugs, suffers from delusions orotherwise has a previous history which would cast doubt on his her or reliability, then wewould be right to be suspicious of what we are told. However if the person is apparently ofsound mind, of reasonable intelligence and generally reliable, then there is no reason, inprinciple, why we should not believe them.

Caroline Franks Davies in her book 'The Evidential Force of Religious Experience' builds on

Swinburne's approach. Effectively she and Swinburne work with a cumulative argument. Theymaintain that if all the arguments for and against the existence of God are considered, theyare fairly evenly balanced. Some of the arguments strengthen the likelihood that God existswhilst others (for instance those concentrating on the problem of evil and suffering) makethe existence of God less likely. If these are all taken together, then, it is held, it is neitherhighly probable nor highly improbable that God exists - the scales of probability are evenlybalanced. GIVEN THIS SITUATION, it is reasonable to rely on reports of religiousexperience to tip the scales in favour of belief that God exists.

It may be argued that neither Swinburne nor Davies give sufficient weight to counter

arguments against belief in God - for instance they give scant attention to the problem ofevil and whilst their arguments may be persuasive to an existing believer, to an unbiasedobserver they would have rather less force. The existence of evil does significantly reducethe probability that the God of Christian theism exists - although how one balances theprobability for and against Gods existence will inevitably be a largely subjective matterabout which opinions will differ.

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?----------------------It is not easy collecting evidence about religious experience. Many people do not want to

speak about their experiences and often such experiences are not easy to describe. Peoplefear ridicule - they fear being made fun of and mocked and they therefore keep quiet.

Two examples taken from experiences of close friends of mine whom I trust and know wellmight be examples of this:

A Catholic priest, on the night that he was priested, was aware of being attacked byan overwhelming force of evil that thrust him down onto his bed and kept him pinnedthere. He was terrified and could not move and was only aware of the tremendouspower of this evil force.

Another Catholic, going on pilgrimage, and praying the rosary with some cheap rosarybeads. He had been staying with a Jewish friend the night before and for some

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reason had shown him the rosary. At the end of the pilgrimage, every third bead hadturned to a gold colour and remained like that (he showed me the rosary some timelater). He had no explanation for it at all.

Neither of these people had spoken about their experiences and yet they were both people Iknew well, sane and reliable.

We live in a world in which the whole idea of religious experience is often greeted with greatscepticism. If, therefore, one is to proceed rationally one should examine whatever evidenceis available dispassionately and without bias. If one starts from the conviction that religiousexperiences cannot occur or, on the other hand, if one starts by being convinced thatreligious experiences are common, then it is unlikely that one's mind will be changed.

David Hay wrote an important book in 1986 called INNER SPACE. This brought togetherresearch work conducted by the OXFORD RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE RESEARCH UNIT atOxford. Essentially between about 30 and 45% of the population of Britain, irrespectiveof age, geographical position or even belief say that they have been aware of apresence or power beyond themselves. The book records that many of the peopleinterviewed had never previously spoken about their experiences because they thought thatothers would make fun of them or would not understand. The data was collected byreputable and independent polling organizations. These figures are impressive andnoteworthy and cannot be lightly dismissed. They do not prove the matter, but they must betaken into account by any open-minded enquirer as part of the overall equation. It should benoted, however, that the claims are fairly general and it is difficult to translate them intothe faith claims of any one, single religion.

In addition, many great saints have claimed to have been directly aware of the presence ofGod - people like St. Francis of Assisi; St. John of the Cross; Julian of Norwich; Ignatius ofLoyola; Teresa of Lisieux and many others have claimed to be directly aware of God'spresence. Of course they could have been deceived, they could have been deluded but onehas to take their testimony seriously particularly when their intelligence is evident fromtheir writings.

CHALLENGES AGAINST RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-----------------------------------------

Various challenges can be put forward against the whole idea that religious experience is avalid pointer to the existence of God. Caroline Franks Davies lists the following types ofchallenges:

1) Description related challenges-----------------------------------These dismiss claims to experience something when the description is self-contradictory orinconsistent. Such challenges can be defeated by showing that there is no real contradictionor inconsistency.

2) Subject related challenges--------------------------------These dismiss experiential claims because the person claiming the experience is unreliable

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or, for instance, has not had the proper training to correctly evaluate the experience.Davies maintains, however, that in the case of religious experiences a very simple personmay have as profound an experience as a more sophisticated one. Further, even muchreligious training or guidance by a spiritual master does not guarantee that a religiousexperience will result.

3) Object related challenges-------------------------------If, on the basis of background evidence, it is highly unlikely that the thing claimed to beexperienced was present, then the claim might be dismissed. The Loch Ness monster mightfall into this category - or pink elephants. The point about Swinburnes cumulative caseargument is to show that this is not the case with experiences of God.

Other more specific challenges include the following:

a) The vicious circle challenge- - - - - - - - - - - - - -Anthony Flew claims that the character of religious experiences "seem(s) to depend on theinterests, background and expectations of those who have them rather than on anythingseparate and autonomous...the expert natural historian of religious experience would bealtogether astonished to hear of the vision of Bernadette occurring not to a Roman Catholicat Lourdes, but to a Hindu at Bewares, or of Apollo manifest not in classical Delphi but inKyoto under the Shoguns."

Davies rejects this challenge on the grounds that it applies largely to visions. Also, she

claims that the person in one tradition will tend to use the language and ideas of thetradition to explain their experiences. However there is an important assumption beingmade here - namely that one can strip away the description and arrive at a common core ofmeaning or a 'raw, pre-conceptual experience'. This seems highly debatable - experiencesand the concepts in which they are expressed are tied together closely and, in any case,how could one claim that an experience of Mary at Lourdes or of Vishnu or Kali wereexperiences of the same thing unless one has criteria (which can only be given in language)to validate the claim to 'sameness'? In the absence of such criteria, the claim that allreligious experiences are really of the same reality seems closer to an assertion than anargued position. There is, in effect, no evidence for the claim without public criteria to

support it - and this is generally absent precisely because of the non-specific nature ofreligious experience.

b) The conflicting Claims challenge- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -If religious experience does provide evidence for the truth of religion, then for whichreligion does it provide evidence? Most religions make claims that conflict with each other.The Christian claims that Jesus is the Son of God and God is triune; the Muslim claims Godis unitary, that Jesus was simply a prophet who did not die on the cross and thatMohammed is the supreme prophet to whom the Koran was dictated. Jews reject Jesus'

divinity and also Mohammed's role. Mainstream Buddhism does not maintain belief in a Godin any direct way similar to the monotheistic religions. There is a frequent claim made byWestern liberals that all religions are really the same, but the basis for the claim is

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often scanty. If religious experience justifies one religion, then why should it notjustify all and it may be held to be more probable that it is the individual's PRIORBELIEFS that shape whatever interior experience they claim to have. Stace even goesso far as to claim that many reported experiences are 'shaped' and determined bypressure from Church authorities - for instance Meister Eckhard might well have been apantheist were it not for pressure from the Church.

This is a powerful challenge as if there is a 'common transcendental core' giving rise tomystical and other religious experiences, it is likely to be so vague and general that it willhave little in common with the claims about ultimate reality made by any one religion.

c) The psychological challenge- - - - - - - - - - - - - -This maintains that many purported religious experiences can be reduced to psychologicalstates and that when an individual claims to have had a religious experience, in fact she isexperiencing her ego or super-ego and there is no external referent. However it must berecognised that although a psychologist may claim that many religious experiences can beexplained in psychological terms, this does not:

mean that ALL religious experiences can be thus explained, there may be an unexplainedresidue which could still point to an external referent, and

even if the psychological explanation is accepted, the believer can still maintain that Godworks THROUGH psychology.

However (ii) raises the problem that if one has to rely on ones prior beliefs beforeaccepting religious experiences as valid, this means that such experiences do not justifybelief, rather they may operate within belief - they have no epistemological role.

d) The anti-realist challenge- - - - - - - - - - - - - -The non-realist or anti-realist (cf Peter Vardy's 'The Puzzle of God', Harper Collins) willreject the idea that the word 'God' refers to any being or spirit beyond the 'form of life'which the believer inhabits. Similarly religious experience will be seen as somethingINTERNAL to a particular belief system. The believer will be taught to experience the

world religiously from an early age and will come to associate particular smells andatmospheres as having something to do with 'The Divine'. Experiences are labelledreligious, therefore, as a result of individuals being educated into a framework of beliefs.The night sky will be described by the non-believer as simply being 'beautiful' whilst thebeliever will see it as 'the hand of God'. This comes back to Wisdom's gardener, althoughthe anti-realist will deny that any realist claim is being made - instead all we have is a clashof perceptual frameworks. It is the anti-realist understanding of religious experience andits consequences that is the main issue I wish to explore in this paper and I wish to do soby looking at the work of William James and Nicholas Lash.

WILLIAM JAMES AND NICHOLAS LASH----------------------------------William James

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----------------Caroline Franks Davies effectively relies on the claim that individuals can experience thedivine directly - that it is possible for the individual, in some way or another, to be awareof the divine reality that transcends everything in the created order. The exact content ofthis divine is by no means clear and certainly such claimed experiences would not supportthe detailed theological claims made by many of the major world religions. However theimportant claim is that there IS a divine which can be experienced directly. Christian andIslamic mystics have traditionally made similar claims and at the beginning of our owncentury the fundamental importance of such experiences was given expression by WilliamJames.

William James (1842 - 1910) book Varieties of Religious Experience is a classic text inmysticism - it was written early this century and maintains that religious experience isprimary. James rejects philosophy and sees religion as being founded on something otherthan reason. Thus he says:

What seriousness can possibly remain in debating philosophic propositions that will nevermake an appreciable difference to us in action?... What is the deduction of (Gods)metaphysical attributes but a shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary adjectives,aloof from morals, aloof from human needs.... verbality has stepped into the place ofvision... What keeps religion going is something other than abstract definitions and systemsof concatenated adjectives, and something different from faculties of theology and theirprofessors.3

This leads James to his classic definition of religion as:

..the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as theyapprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.4

Effectively James is maintaining that religious experience is primary and is the root ofreligion. He regards creeds and statements regarding propositional beliefs as secondaryaccretions laid on top of the experiences which form the essence of true religion. Jamessets out four marks of mystical states of consciousness which he takes to demarcatemystical states from other states (and it is such experiences on which he concentrates).James considers that the first two of these entitle any state to be called mystical and the

last two qualities are less clearly marked but are usually present:

1. ineffability (mysticism like love needs to be directly experienced in order to beunderstood. No adequate report on its content can be given in words - it must beimmediately experienced and no real sense of its content can be communicated.Mystical states are more akin to feelings than intellectual states);

2. noetic quality (mystics speak of revelations and illuminations which are held toprovide knowledge and transcend rational categories. They are states of insightinto depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations,

3 William James Varieties of Religious Experience p. 349 - 3524 William James Varieties of Religious Experience p. 34

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revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remainand, as a rule, they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time);

3. transiency (mystical experiences last for a short time (Except in rare instances,half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which theyfade into the light of common day). They cannot even be accurately rememberedbut they can be recognized again when they re-occur;and

4. passivity (the experience is beyond the individual's control and cannot be obtainedby effort; it is a gift (The mystic feels as though his own will is in abeyance, andindeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power).

James uses these criteria to illustrate some well known examples. As he says:

The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense ofthe significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. "Ive heard thatsaid all my life", we exclaim, "but I never realized its full meaning until now". "When afellow-monk" says Luther, "one day repeated the words of the Creed I believe in theforgiveness of sins, I saw the Scripture in an entirely new light; and straightway I felt asif I were born anew."...... A more profound step forward on the mystical ladder is found inan extremely frequent phenomenon, that sudden feeling, namely, which sometimes sweepsover us, of having been here before as if at some indefinite past time, in just this place,with just these people, we were already saying just these things.......... Somewhat deeperplunges into the mystical consciousness are met in yet other dreamy states..... (forinstance).... "When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling

that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of beingsurrounded with truths which I cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe sometimes...Have you not felt that your real soul was imperceptible to our mental vision, except in afew hallowed moments. (Charles Kingsley) Certain aspects of nature seem to have apeculiar power of awakening such mystical moods... most of the striking cases which I havecollected have occurred out of doors

James claims that mystical consciousness is: ..on the whole pantheistic and optimistic, orat least the opposite of pessimistic. It is anti-naturalistic, and harmonizes best with twice-borness and so called other-worldly states of mind. James then asks whether these

experiences should be regarded as authoritative. His answer to this is in three parts:

1. Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be,absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.

2. No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those whostand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.

3. They break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalisticconsciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They show

it to be only one kind of consciousness....

James understanding of the 'divine' is broad:

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'.........we must interpret the term divine very broadly.......the divine shall mean for us onlysuch a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely.'

However, James' understanding of how or when religious experience may occur is morenarrow:

'........the individual transacts .... by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, withits priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place.The relation goes direct from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between man and hismaker.'

James, like most writers on spirituality, believes the validity of 'religious experience' mustbe judged by the fruits unique to this type of experience:

'....that element or quality in them which we can meet nowhere else'

which he summarizes as:

'......Saintliness.... spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; thereis a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions....'and this, like primary experience, is common to saintly figures in world religions where thefour 'fruits' of primary religious experience may be found:

1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's little interests; and a

conviction .........of the existence of an Ideal Power.2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing

self-surrender to its control.3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down.4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious

affections......Asceticism.....Strength of the soul......Purity.....Charity'.....Religiousrapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying statesof mind...'

Primary religious experience impels a response to 'God'. Attitudes to life and how one lives

change, with a consequent intensity and richness hitherto unknown:

'... religion at its highest flights can be....infinitely passionate... a state of mind, known toreligious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own hasbeen displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods andwaterspouts of God. ........Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject'srange of life..... a new sphere of power.......added dimension of emotion......new reach offreedom.......This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find nowherebut in religion.

The validity of religious experience can only be judged by its fruits. The person having theexperience is compelled to self-surrender, and paradoxically the passivity required results

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in vital new life. Many false claims are made by people regarding religious experiences whentheir lives do not reflect it; words are not enough, it has to be felt:

'Whoever not only says, but feels, 'God's will be done,' is mailed against everyweakness; ....martyrs, missionaries, and religious reformers (are) there to prove thetranquil-mindedness, under naturally agitating or distressing circumstances, which self-surrender brings.'

In genuine religious experiences, James claims, 'God' imparts a new perspective wherethings that may trouble others now have no power:

'....the disappearance of all fear from one's life, the quite indescribable and inexplicablefeeling of an inner security, which one can only experience, but which, once it has beenexperienced, one can never forget.'

This can set such people apart as others may not understand:

'...it is religion's secret, and to understand it you must yourself have been a religious manof the extremer type.'

To know is to understand. James acknowledges that his definitions of religious experienceand the divine are broad:

'.........we are dealing with a field of experience where there is not a single conception thatcan be sharply drawn.......Things are more or less divine, states of mind are more or less

religious, reactions are more or less total, but the boundaries are always misty, and it iseverywhere a question of amount and degree.......

James is ambiguous about the nature of the God which is experienced, but the crucial pointof his book is that those who have the experiences, experience the divine as somethingother than their psyche. Whether it IS something other, is not a point that James seeksto prove or establish.

Nicolas Lash--------------

Professor Nicholas Lash, in Easter in Ordinary (SCM 1988) produces a fierce attack onWilliam James whole approach and, by implication, on the idea that religious experiencecan serve as a grounding for faith. He rejects James whole approach, root and branch -particularly James emphasis on the individual and the ability of the individual to apprehendthe divine directly.

Lash mocks James position as seeing religion depending on a minority of pattern setters, asmall minority who have religious experiences and who others are meant to follow (giventhe work of the Oxford Religious Experience Research Unit there seem to be many morepeople who have such experiences than Lash allows). Lash rejects the idea of God as cause

of the world - there is no event or occurrence in the world for which the best explanationwould be God did it.5

5 Nicholas Lash Easter in Ordinary p. 224/513


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It is noteworthy how very similar this is to Gareth Moore OPs rejection of the idea of Godas a cause in his book Thinking about God - for Moore, God is not a thing, God isNOTHING, there is nothing that is God. This seems very similar to Lashs position. FurtherLash says: being in relation with God makes no particular difference.6

The reason for this soon becomes clear in Lashs rejection of Karl Rahner. Lash quotesRahner as saying the following:

Creation strictly, as such, contains no absolute mysteries 7

Rahners point is to contrast the solvable mysteries of the world with the Holy Mysterythat is God. Rahners thought, Lash maintains (and he quotes George Vass) is in line withthe:

Dualistic Cartesianism still lurking at the back of the Christian Mind8

Lash refers to God as holy mysteryin place of Rahners Holy Mystery - the absence of thecapital letters is significant as for Lash God is not an other, rather God is only to be foundin relations in the world. I believe that Lashs position can be interpreted as beingeffectively anti-realist although not many others agree with me!

Lash claims that:

... in action and discourse patterned by the frame of reference provided by the creed,

we learn to find God in all life, all freedom, all creativity and vitality, and in each particularbeauty, each unexpected attainment of relationship and community... To speak of spirit asGod is to ascribe all creativity and conversion, all fresh life and freedom, to divinity.9

Peter Vardys claim is that we have here an apparently clear alignment of Lash with otherswho effectively see religious experience as having to do with a way in which we learn tolook at the world. ..patterned by the frame of reference provided by the creedshows thelanguage game within which one learns to find God - in other words in adopting aframework which includes God, we learn within that framework to ascribe relationships andcommunity to God. It is important to note that Peter Vardy does NOT claim that Lash is

or is not an anti-realist - only that his account of religious experience is compatible with ananti-realist account.

There is a modern movement in theology and spirituality which has become so fashionablethat it excludes almost all alternatives and that is to see God in all things. Now it is onething to say that God is the cause of all things, or to say that God can be found through allthings (including suffering) but another to say that God is IN all things. This latter claimmakes me want to ask What, including child abuse or rape? and if God is, indeed, in allthings the answer to these questions must be yes. Whilst God may be found throughsuffering, this is not the same as saying that God is IN suffering. The claim that God is to

6 Nicholas Lash Easter in Ordinary p. 2507 Nicholas Lash Easter in Ordinary p. 2578 Nicholas Lash Easter in Ordinary p. 257 quoting George Vass Understanding Karl Rahner 2. 489 Nicholas Lash Easter in ordinary p. 267

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be found in the everyday world is not a new one - St. Francis of Assisi and many othershave pointed this out, but this is not Lashs claim.

If Lashs claim was that William James had unduly restricted the possibility of humanknowledge of God to direct, personal encounter and that, as well as this, God can beexperienced in and through creation, then the point would be well taken. After all St.Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola and many others have endorsed the view that Godcan be experienced in creation as well as directly through mystical experiences. Howeverthis is not Lashs claim - by restricting the possibility of God being experienced tomediated experience, he effectively degrades God to the level of an aspect of the world,one which may be affirmed within the frame of reference of belief but has no referenceoutside this. This may be valid, but James case, as well as that of Francis of Assisi andother great mystics, is that it is not.

William P. Alston

--------------Alston distinguishes between experiences of God which, he says, can more generally bedescribed as supposed experiences of God where supposed does not cast doubt on theauthenticity of the experience but draws attention to the fact that many such claimedexperiences may be interpretative. Instead Alston concentrates on direct experiences ofGod which excludes, for instance, being aware of God through the beauties of nature, thewords of the Bible or a sermon. He does this because he considers that these experiencesare most likely to be plausibly regarded as presentations of God to the individual (St.Teresa says that God presents Himself to the soul by a knowledge brighter than the sun.).

What is more, Alston concentrates on non-sensory experiences as, since God is purelyspiritual, a non-sensory experience has a greater chance of presenting God as God is than asensory experience. Alston acknowledges that some claim that human beings can onlyexperience through their five senses, but considers that this represents a lack ofimagination. As he says:

Why should we suppose that the possibilities of experiential givenness, for human beingsor otherwise, are exhausted by the powers ofourfive senses?

Animals, he claims, have senses wider than ours so why cant we envisage presentations

that do not stem from the activity of any physical sense organs, as is apparently the casewith mystical perception?

Alston advocates what he terms a perceptual model of mystical experience in whichsomething presents itself to us. In a way it is a very simple form of perceptual awarenessin which anything - a house, a book or a person - presents itself to us. Alstons causaltheory of perception claims that religious experience is caused by the presence of God andsubsequent members of the religious community pick up the referent from those who wentbefore. As he says:

In the Judeo-Christian tradition we take ourselves to be worshipping, and otherwisereferring to, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, i.e. the being who appeared to suchworthies of our tradition, revealed Himself to them, made covenants with them, and so on.

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If it should turn out that it was actually Satan, rather than the creator of the heavensand the earth, with whom they were in effective contact, would we not have to admit thatour religion, including the referential practices involved, is built on sand, or worse (muck,slime), and that we are a Satan-worshipping community, for all our bandying about ofdescriptions that fit the only true God?10

Critics of Alston reject this view they hold that religious belief does not rise and fallwith evidence in the way that Alston thinks it does. For instance Richard Gale says:

I feel sorry for Alstons type of believers11 this is because Gale considers that currentreligious believers beliefs would always be vulnerable to new evidence and therefore theyare constantly vulnerable to being shown to be false. Against Gale, Kierkegaard maintainsthat this is exactly the position that religious believers are in they are suspended over70000 fathoms, staking their lives on an if that may be false. This is why, forKierkegaard, faith is such a scary business.

Alston acknowledges freely that we may see it differently depending on our perceptualschemes and prior assumptions, but effectively he is claiming that there is something tosee, something that presents itself to us. The perceptual model relies on a theory ofappearing in which:

... perceiving X simply consists in Xs appearing to one, or being presented to one, as so-and-so. Thats all there is to it.....

To perceive X is simply for X to appear to one in a certain way. Alston says there are three

conditions that must be met if X is to appear:

1. X must exist

2. X must make an important causal contribution to the experience of X, and

3. That perceiving X must give rise to beliefs about X.

Clearly, given these conditions, Alston recognizes that to show that perceptual experiencesare genuine would first mean showing that God exists (see (1) above). What he aims to show

is the following:

1. Mystical experience is the right sort of perception to constitute a genuineperception of God if the other requirements are met, and

2. There is no bar in principle to these other requirements being satisfied ifGod does exist.

Crucially he says: This adds up to a defense of the thesis that it is quite possible thathumans do sometimes perceive God if God is there to be perceived. In other words, the

10 William Alston Referring to God, Philosophy of Religion Issue 24 (1988) p. 12111 Richard Gale On the Nature and Existence of God Cambridge p. 301

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thesis defended is that IF God exists, then mystical experience is quite properly thoughtof as mystical perception.

Alston takes this claim to be self-evident and feels that it cannot be denied unless one isto claim that all those who report such experiences of God are confused about them.Alston accepts that peoples reports are not infallible, but still considers that they shouldbe taken seriously. If S considers that he/she is having an experience, then he or she is inthe best position to judge this to be the case. Alston maintains that the only reason forrejecting the claims to experiences is that some people are skeptical about the claim thatGod exists - however Alston does NOT seek to show why such scepticism may not be wellfounded.

Alston does address the problem that those who have experiences of God experience Godas speaking, comforting, forgiving and also as good, powerful, loving, compassionate, etc..How can these attributes be known? Alstons claim is that when we see a more ordinary

object like a person we may say she looks like Susie or the music sounds like Bach - weproceed by making comparisons. Similarly in the case of experiences of God we makecomparisons of how things seem to us.

Alston acknowledges that believers make use of their prior frameworks but, then, heclaims we do this with normal experience. If, he says, he sees his house from 50,000 ft, hecertainly sees his house and he may learn something new but it would basically be as heexpected his house to look. Similarly when experiencing God, God is experienced asbelievers expect God to be experienced - there is no difference between ordinaryexperiences and religious ones.

Alstons claim, when analyzed, is very modest. All he really is establishing is that if onebelieves in God already then it is reasonable that mystical experiences should be taken asgenuine. This, however, misses out the real issue that is the major part of the debate -which is WHY one should take experiences of God as any more veridical than experiencesof the Loch Ness Monster or of UFOs.

Of course, the anti-realist will simply claim that all Alston is doing is to show that claims toreligious experiences are acceptable within the form of life of religious believers. Hisposition is, they might claim, fully consistent with a coherence theory of truth and there is

no basis to assert there is any referent to the word God beyond the language gameinvolved. Alston, however, is a realist and he precisely DOES want to assert such areferent he wants to assert the objectivity of religious experience within the Christianlanguage game. He points out:

1. The language game, along with the form of life which it involves, has proved itselfviable over time,

2. No assertion within this language game contradicts anything that is warrantedlyassertible within other language games we play,

3. Religious experiences, as a group, cohere together in a way in which senseexperiences, as a group cohere together. As he says: The behavior of God, as

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revealed in the Christian language-game, is in line, roughly speaking, with what onecould reasonably expect from the categoreal features of God, as depicted withinhis language game.12

In a later paper, Alston claims:

Given standard theistic conceptions and beliefs, it is reasonable to expect that prolongedcommunion, perceptual and otherwise, with God would lead to an increasing sanctity ofcharacter and a more Christlike mode of life.13

Alston is not claiming anything new here, the same point, that the agreement of so manyChristian mystics down the years is good evidence of the veracity of their claims, was madeby C.D. Broad:

When there is a nucleus of agreement between the experiences of men in differentplaces, times, and traditions, and when they all tend to put the same kind of interpretationon the cognitive content of these experiences, it is reasonable to ascribe this agreementto their all being in contact with a certain objective aspect of reality unless there be somepositive reason to think otherwise. I think it would be inconsistent to treat theexperiences of religious mystics on different principles. So far as they agree they shouldbe provisionally accepted as veridical unless there be some positive ground for thinkingthat they are not.14

However as Richard Gale points out, supporters of religious experience hold that mostreligious and mystical experiences support their claims whereas the absence of such

experiences does not serve to disconfirm what is claimed to be experienced. The chiefproblem, however, may be one of reference Alston is holding that within the languagegame of religious belief it is reasonable to hold that religious experiences are referentialwhereas he accepts that this would not be reasonable outside the religious language game.The problem comes back, however, to the issue of why one should accept a particularlanguage game at all. All that Alston may have demonstrated is that if one is a religiousbeliever one may have grounds, from within the language game of faith, to claim thatreligious experiences refer. However this does NOT serve to confirm why anyone shouldaccept or reject the language game in the first place and this, surely, is what theargument from religious experience is intended to achieve.

Dr. PETER VARDYHeythrop CollegeUniversity of LondonPeterVardy@Compuserve.com-----------------------------------

Extract from Religious Belief and Philosophical Thought: Readings in the Philosophy of

Religion.

12 William Alston The Christian Language Game p. 15913 William Alston The Perception of God Philosophic Topics, 16 (1988) p. 5014 C.D. Broad Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research (Harcourt, New York, 1953) p. 197

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Alston, William P. (Editor) (1963).New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Excerpt: If, one winter morning, I discover some footprints in the snow leading up to mykitchen window, I can, by reasoning from effect to cause, come to realize that during thenight someone came and peered into the house. But if during the night I had happened tolook out my bedroom window at the time the intruder was approaching, I could havediscovered his presence in a direct fashion, without the necessity of such inferences. Thevarious arguments for the existence of God which were presented in the previous sectionpurported to reveal God to us in the former, indirect sort of way. But there have beenmany religious men who have believed that they were able to discover that God exists in amore direct fashion, by experiencing His presence in as direct a way as that in which oneexperiences the presence of trees, buildings, and other human beings. (page 117).

Our central question is: Are experiences of this sort, always or sometimes, really direct

apprehensions of an objectively existing personal deity, or are they purely subjectivestates of feeling which have no reference to anything beyond the subject? It is clear thatif I havedirectly experienced a personal deity (as opposed to merely having supposed thatI have done so) then I have the strongest possible basis for believing that such a beingexists; just as I have the strongest possible basis for believing that yaks exist if I reallyhave seen one. (page 118)

Theorists have taken principles which have been more or less established in other contextsand have tried to apply them to mystical experience. Eventually these applications will haveto receive a more direct test. Of course, it is difficult to lure mystics into the

psychological laboratory, or even to get comprehensive case histories of nonpsychicindividuals who have mystical experiences. But in any event a discussion of the adequacy ofsuch explanations, as psychological explanations, lies outside the purview of this volume.The crucial philosophical question is: If some such explanations are adequate, what bearingdoes that have on the status of the mystic's claim to have directly experienced God?

James's discussion is relevant at this point. It is noteworthy that although Jamessuggests, and it is only a suggestion without any attempt to work out details, that mysticalexperiences can be explained as "invasions from the subconscious region," he does not takethis as ruling out the possibility that through his unconscious mind the individual is incontact with some supernatural reality. . . . The mystic might argue that attempts toexplain the occurrence of mystical experience are quite irrelevant to the validity of hisclaim to have directly experienced God, on the grounds that his claim was not that onewould have to postulatea supernatural personal being in order to explainhis experience. Onthe contrary, he is not interested in explanation at all, and the fact that he has beendirectly aware of God obviates any need to bring God in as a term in an explanation. Clearlyhe has a point. When I claim to see a maple tree just outside my window, I am certainly notsaying that I believe that a maple tree will have to be postulated or hypothesized in orderto explain the fact that I am now having the visual experience I am having.

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