.

REVISION: A2 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

What follows should act as reminders. For full revision you need to do more than rely on these notes. Use your course
notes, essays and text books. You need to be able to use your knowledge and understanding of religious arguments for God
from religious religious from William James, the aims and main conclusions drawn by William James in The Varieties
of Religious Experience, the folloing types of religious experiences 'visions and voices', 'numinous', 'conversion', and
'corporate', (Toronto Blessing) experiences and the concept of revelation through sacred writings.
Past Questions: 2003: Discuss the view that it is pointless to analyse religious experiences.
2004: Discuss the view that religious experiences must be true because there is a common core to all of them.
2005. God is most clearly revealed to humanity through scripture. Discuss.
2007. The best way to God is through religious experience. Discuss.
2008. Sacred writngs fail to reveal God. Discuss.
1. Broad Types and Importantce of Religious Experience:
There are many different types of religious experience. Direct experiences include things like: visions and voices. Mediated
experiences occur through events or objects or persons or texts or feature in the natural world that mediate something of the
divine or ultimate reality or communicate some message about the meaning and purpose of life to an individual. During
such experiences the meaning of life suddenly become very clear. The experience is so overwhelming that the person who
has the experience changes their whole way of life. Here are some examples of the types of religious experiences people
have:
Visions or voices Answer to prayer Seeing a pattern to events
Person to person encounter with
God
The sacred presence in nature A feeling that everything is Okay
Overpowering sense of mystery The presence of a dead relative Seeing old things in new ways
Conversion experiences A sense of duty to God Communal rapture
A sense of freedom and great joy A feeling that everything is one Awareness of the reality of God
Religious experiences have been described in a number of different ways. Some people describe them as experiences of
self-transcendence. This means that the person experiences something far greater than themselves which points them to the
meaning of their lives. Some people describe them as an experience of union with something larger than themselves
which brings them an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being. Other people have described religious experience as
a feeling of absolute and complete dependence and helplessness before the infinite mystery encountered during our
finite lives. Yet other people have described religious experience as the experience of a tremendous and fascinating
mysteryan awe-inspiring encounter with holiness. In each case the object of such experiences is traditionally referred
to as 'God'.
Reasons why Religious Experience is Important to Religion
(i). Religious thought that takes no account of the experiences of God that religious people claim to have would be cut-off
from the reality in which religious people find themselves. (ii). If no one ever had a religious experience we would have to
wonder why anyone continued to talk about religion at all. (iii). That many people do experience ultimate reality in personal
and benevolent terms helps to confirm the belief that God is both personal and benevolent. (iv). A religious experience, once
had, may help people to see the rest of their life in the terms of that experience. Periods in their life marked by suffering,
loneliness or despair are more easily endured because their religious experience ensures that these dark elements of life are
not seen as ultimate.(v). Religious experience may confirm for many people the blessed assurance that their religion
encourages them to expect. Religious experiences may help some people to the conclusion that they can expect more from
spiritual reality after death.
In his book Philosophy of Religion, Peter Cole list three common criticisms which Swinburne has probably answered. (i)
There is no God so there can be no experiences of God. But as Swinburne points out there is not enough evidence to make
this claim. (ii). There is a lack of uniformity of experience different people in different religions experience different things.
Again, the evidence for this is ambiguous. There do seem to be common parterns of religious expeeince between people and
across cultures. (iii). Not everyone has these experiences but we have seen that you cannot argue from blindness to the
conclusion that there is nothing there to see.
2. William James and Religious Experience
In his book, The Variety of Religious Experience, William James described religion as "the feelings, acts. and
experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to
whatever they may consider the divine." Three important points follow from this definition of religion. First, it focuses
on the individuals own private experience. Second, it gives priority to such experiences over all the other phenomena that
are religious. Accordingly, religious doctrines and practices are secondary human creations that have been built upon the
living experiences of human beings. The real life of religion is in these experiences not in the many unbelievable doctrines
and cultural practices which surround them. The idea of religion as ascent to a fixed set of beliefs and ways of doing things
made no appeal to James. Theories and philosophies that might lead some to affirm Gods existence mean little without a
direct living encounter with the divine. Third, the definition leaves each individual free to decide what he or she takes to be

the divine unseen power. Indeed, according to James, religious experiences come in so many diverse droplets that we should
not assume a single source. James much prefers us to conceive of the unseen world as a realm of plural possibilities a view
very close to polytheismJames knew that religious experiences could not provide a deductive proof of Gods existence and it
was not his aim in Varieties of Religious Experience to show that they could. However, neither did he think that religious
experiences could be dismissed as irrelevant to the question of God. For the person who has them, they are convincing
evidence of the existence of a supernatural reality beyond the phenomena of normal everyday experiences. Thus while
religious experiences cannot be used to prove the reality of God they do offer support for the belief that God is real.
James argued that religious experiences are widespread and part of human nature.
James believed that religious experiences are cognitive. They provide genuine knowledge about a MORE beyond everyday
experience. The experience of a MORE on the fringe of normal experience does not support any particular religious faith
because, according to James, religious doctrines and practices are secondary human creations that have been built upon the
general human experience of the MORE. He defined 'experience' extremely widely. For James, relations like 'and' and
'between' are also experiences. This means that everything is experience. On the fringe of this wider understanding of
experience we encounter the MORE of religious experiences. James called his view 'piecemeal supernaturalism' because
knowledge of the MORE comes in so many droplets of experience. James also believed that the truth of religious experience
shows itself in the positive way people who have had them live their lives. He characterises the religious life as, "the belief
that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."
Throughout The Varieties of Religious Experience, James includes a vast amount of testimony of peoples religious
experiences from these James identified four common features. They are:
1. ineffable - by this James means that words are unable to describe the content of the experience. The content seems to
escape the ability of people to describe the things which they experience.
2. noetic - by this James means that they are genuine states of knowledge bringing new insights to the person having the
experience. They are not just empty emotions.
3. transient - by this James means that they are nearly always short-lived.
4. passive - by this James means that people cannot control when they come and, when they do come, the person who has
them is usually overwhelmed by the experience.
James's own belief concerning the 'MORE' is that it is "an altogether other dimension of existence" to which we belong
"in a more intimate sense" than we belong to the visible world and "through which saving experience comes"
Nevertheless, the only test of the truth of the MORE is the pragmatic test: the type of adjustment in life that the belief
enables us to secure. The fruits of the experience rather than its roots.
James claims that the aim of the book is to defend ! experience against philosophy as being the real backbone
of the worlds religious life ! and second, to make the hearer or reader believe ! the life of it [religious
experience] as a whole is mankinds most important function. For James, The importance of religious experiences
belong to the fruits in the lives of the individuals it transforms. James outlines these fruits in the second half of the book and
attempts to extract from these private experiences some general characteristics (noted above) upon which all might agree. It
is possible to identify 10 conclusions in James book: First, religious experiences are widespread and part of human nature.
Second, language fails to do justice to raw, first hand, experience. Third, something profound is brought to awareness in
these experiences. They are about something real in the unseen realm. Fourth, religious experiences are the bedrock of all
religions. The creeds and doctrines which differ across cultures are merely secondary encrustations on the fundamental
commonality of religious experience itself. Fifth, religious experience have the power to transform lives. Sixth, a
consciousness of the extra-marginal can be developed as a region in which mental work can go on subliminally and from
which invasive experiences may come. Seventh, we all have a succession of pulsating fields of experience and on the fringe
of this wider understanding of experience we encounter the MORE. James called his view 'piecemeal supernaturalism'
because knowledge of the MORE comes in so many droplets of experience. Eightth, The subliminal features of
consciousness may act as a doorway to a larger reality where higher spiritual agencies reside. Nineth, Looking at a wide
variety of religious experiences James identified in them four common features. They are: ineffable, noetic, transient and
passive (see above). Tenth, despite the utterly authoritative nature of religious experiences for those who have them they
have no authority for others except in terms of their fruits.
Criticism of James
A major point of criticism of James relates to his attempt to balance an empirical account of religious experience, identifying
its real fruits, general features and centrality to the religious life on the one hand with his speculative overbelief about the
more or the something on the farther side of these experiences on the other hand. According to Richard Rorty, when
James follows through on the latter he effectively denies his own pragmatism. The fact that James pulls back from his own
overbelief in the postscript indicates that he may have seen this himself. Wayne Proudfoot can only make sense of James
more if it is understood in naturalistic terms. Proudfoot writes, A historical naturalism would require him to give up
his conviction, or his hope that there are forces in the universe, apart from what human beings have put there
that are continuous with the higher parts of the self.
4. Richard Swinburne on Religious Experiences
In his book The Existence of God Swinburne argues the design and cosmological arguments weighed against the problem of
evil, for example, leads, on balance, to a small probability that there is a God. Religious experiences are then used by
Swinburne to confirm this probability. Swinburne addresses the question whether the thing that is experienced (or appears to

be experienced) is the very thing that causes the experience. Swinburne says that in the case of God we should think it is,
unless we have strong reasons to think some other natural cause is involved. According to Swinburne we should take our
own experiences to be of exactly what they appear to be and it is up to the sceptic to disprove this. In most things, he argues,
we trust our experiences. Swinburne calls this the principle of credulity. Swinburne points out that you do not trust your
normal experience of a table because you have checked that other people have the same experience; you simply employ the
principle of credulity. You trust your own normal experiences and should do the same for your religious experiences.
, those who do not share a particular experience which others might claim to have, should usually take what these people say
at face value unless they are presented with clear reasons not to believe them. If someone says they are experiencing a warm
feeling inside we usually trust that they are. So, if someone says they had an experience of God last night we should usually
trust what they say. Swinburne calls this the principle of testimony. Most recorded religious experiences do not
give us cause to doubt the testimony being offered and unless someone can prove that there is no God (which
the cannot) we have no reason to mistrust peoples testimony about their religious experiences.
Criticisms of Swinburne and other attempts to use religious experience to prove God
(i)Experience cannot be used to prove the existence of God if belief in God already has to be assumed in order for us to
know that it is God whom we are experiencing. . For critics of this view like Wayne Proudfoot, concepts come first and
these shape what we think we experience. (ii). Despite Swinburne claims about the principle of credulity we might still
feel justified in arguing that there is a big difference between saying I have experienced God and I think I have
experienced God. Peter Vardy would not apply the principle of credulity to his his own experiences of UFOs. Nor would
he expect people to do this with God without investigation. (iii). God is so far beyond human understanding that there could
be no knowledge of God that occurs to the human mind through religious experiences. Rather God is revealed once and for
all time in the life death and destiny of Jesus Christ antipiated and witnessed to in the Bible.
5. Numinous Experiences
The term 'numinous' was coined by Rudolf Otto to describe what he considered to be the most distinctive type of religious
experience. No use language can adequately convey the numinous experience. It has to be evoked; it cannot be described.
One reason for this is that its source is transcendent. The numinous is an immediate experience of God. The numinous
experience is experience of the Holy. A (percept)ions of holiness. While the content of these experiences cannot be
described it can be apprehend by 'feeling'. This is pre-conceptual feeling Otto highlights two features of this feeling. The
first is creature-feeling. By this he means our sense of our utter contingency and total dependence on things outside of
ourselves that gives us an awareness of the nothingness of our existence in itself. The second is the percept of the Holy itself
which Otto summaries with the Latin phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans: This phrase designates the mysterious and
awesome fascination that the experience of the numinous inspires. The Holy is experienced as a tremendous, awe inspiring
mystery that completely fascinates us when we experience it.
Mysterium (mystery): For Otto, one mark of the numinous experience is that it is the experience of something 'Wholly
Other' which utterly transcends our ability to grasp it in rational thought.
Tremendum (tremendous): A second mark of the numinous experience is awe and dread engendered by the
overpowering majesty and dynamic energy encountered in the experience. This is sometimes expressed in the Bible in
terms of the wrath, anger, jealousy, power and love of God.
Fascinans (fascination): A third mark of the numinous experience is the longing it engenders. The experience of the
numinous, once had, is captivating. Its attractions evoke rapture and love for the Holy.
For Otto, the Holy is an a priori category of the human spirit. It is a precondition of our being the spiritual people we are. It
becomes schematised by our conceptual and cultural language into our different religious understandings of experience but
the numinous experience itself is universal to all human beings.
Secular Access to the Numinous?
In recent years some philosophers have suggested that some of our secular experiences can be signs that point in the
direction of a mysterious reality that transcends our normal everyday lives. One such is the sociologist, Peter Berger (1929-
). In his book A Rumour of Angels he identifies a number of such experiences that hint at a trans-empirical reality.
6. Visions and Voices
Sometimes the numinous is experience in the form of a vision such as the theophany reported in the Bible by the prophet
Isaiah:
I saw the Lord. He was sitting on his throne, high and exalted, and his robe filled the whole Temple. Round
him flaming creatures were standing, each of which had six wings. Each creature covered its face with two
wings, and its body with two, and used the other two for flying. They were calling out to each other: Holy,
holy, holy! The Lord God Almighty is holy! His glory fills the world. The sound of their voices made the
foundation of the Temple shake, and the and the Temple itself was filled with smoke.
In face of such a vision Isaiah could only see himself as week. limited and sinful being and yet one of the creatures flew
down and touched his lips with burning coals and he felt himself forgiven. The Bible is full of stories about people who
have had visions and heard voices. Think of the nativity narrative. The Angel Gabriel appears to the shepherds, to Mary and
to Joseph in the form of a dream, God is constantly speaking to Moses and Abraham, and, famously, Jacob sees in a dream a
ladder ascending to heaven. Visions and voices are central to nearly every religion. They have occurred consistently
throughout the Christian tradition from Jesus himself with his vision of the Devil during his 40 days in the wilderness
through Mother Julian of Norwich (1342-1420), and to the children of Fatima and Medjugorje.

Visions of Mother Julian of Norwich: Julian was an English mystic. She lived as an anchorite. Anchorites are religious
people who live in a small house in meditation often having a servant to care for their general living needs. An anchorite
would be available to the community. They would come to the anchorite for spiritual advice. It is not certain whether
Julian had her visions while she was an anchorite or whether she became one as a result of her visions. They occurred to
her at a time of great stress when she was ill and, it was thought, close to death. A crucifix was placed in her hands and
held by her over her eyes. It was at this point, and over a period of days, that her visions occurred. Her visions were of
three types. (i) Blood flowing from the crucifix which no one else saw, (ii) inner visions of Mary and Christ on the cross
who were not physically present and (iii) words formed in her mind by Christ.
In her later reflections on her visions she used female imagery and referred to Jesus as God our mother. Here, her vision
has proved a fruitful source for the development of one form of feminist theology. Her reflections on her visions have
also proved useful for those who wish to assert the universal salvation of human kind. For Julian also the traditional
Christians view of our total sinfulness must be tempered by the fact of God's love for us. God's love means that God can
never be truly angry with us. God's way is the way of forgiveness. Because of this we can be assured, to use Julian's
words, "All shall be well."
In these and a number of other ways her visions and reflections on them have proved to be a productive resource for
imaginative Christian reconstruction. Visions can thus be a means of faith renewal.
The Children of Fatima: The year was 1917. The Pope had called on Catholics everywhere to pray to Mary for her to
intercede to stop the fighting in the First World War. In Fatima, Portugal, three young girls aged 10, 9 and 7 saw a
flashing light and the figure of a woman holding a rosary. She told the children to return on the 13th of every month (the
day May 13th). No one believed the children, they were arrested and interrogated but stuck to their story. On 13th
October 50,000 people turned up. Many claimed to see odd things in the sky. In 1930 the visions were declared 'worthy
of belief'. Today Fatima is a centre of Christian pilgrimage and devotion to God.
In many cases the scene of a vision becomes a site of pilgrimage and religious devotion. Occasionally. as with Lourdes and
the visions of St. Bernadette, the site also becomes associated with miracles of healing. Here too they can act to validate
new religious doctrines. Mary is said to have said to Bernadette, 'I am the Immaculate Conception' this was a phrase to
describe Mary that had only recently before the vision been made into a doctrine by the Catholic Church.
How are we to asses whether someone really has such an experience?
The principle of credulity: This test also applies to reports of miracles. It simply says that unless there are very good
reason to doubt we should general accept people's testimony about their visions. This is what we do in everyday
experiences. We mostly take what people say to us for granted. Reasons to doubt people's claims to have had visions
or other kinds of religious experiences might be if they had taken drugs a few hours before or if they were emotionally
troubled or unwell. Although, even then, there could be good reason to accept the claims if they pass the other tests.
The doctrinal test: To be accepted by an authorising body such as the Catholic Church a religious vision needs to fit
what is already believed or not wildly variant from it. For example, had Mary appeared to Bernadette and said 'Jesus
was not my son' her vision would never be accepted. It would not pass the doctrinal test.
The religious test: This is a modern version of the doctrinal test although it does have a long tradition of use. It asks
whether the focus of the vision or experience was on the things actually seen or on the religious reality beyond the
apparition. The true meaning of the vision. On this the Christian mystic, St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), wrote:
Anyone bound to the letter, location, form or figure apprehensible in the vision cannot avoid serious
error and will later become confused for having been lead according to the senses and not made
room for the spirit stripped of the letter. (Quoted in William Johnson Arise My Love p. 98)
The vision itself should not be taken literally, what counts is the reality it stands for. For John Hick too it is not so
much that the vision, whether it be of the Buddha, or Mary or Krishna that counts because these are cultural
categories. Rather, what matters is whether these visions are centred on the Real at the heart of all religions. That is,
reality centred not self-centred. Thus, visions of the Virgin Mary are, perhaps best understood as a distinctively
Christian cultural experiences of a transcendent religious reality.
The pragmatic test: This was the test employed by William James but it is also thought by John Hick to be
important. What difference does the experience make to the life of the person who has had it? Is their life completely
turned round? Are they more caring people? Are they freed of all anxiety? After having had a mystical experience at
the age of 17 the philosopher John Dewey said he no longer needed religion because he was certain that everything
was well with the world and this showed itself in his overall attitude to life. If the experience produces an obvious
overall life-changing attitude in the subject of the experience then it can be said to have passed the pragmatic test. In
his book, The Fifth Dimension, John Hick writes:
A genuine contact with the Holy, the Divine, the Realwhether or not structured by religious
conceptsis life-transforming in the ways that we see clearly in the mahatmas or saints. (p. 107)
The central criterion can only be the long-term transformative effect on the experience ! leading to a
stronger centring in God, the Holy, the Real, and a greater love and compassion or their fellows. ! If
those who report mystical experiences are selfish, greedy, dishonest, we cannot believe that their
experiences were due to the impact upon them of the ultimately Real. (p. 163)
It should be noted that while it is true that many lunatics have claimed to have had visions that have lead them to do
unspeakably horrific things research has shown that sanity seems to be the norm for most people who have reported having
had visions or other kinds of religious experiences.
7. Conversion Experiences
Conversion is an obvious pragmatic consequence that having a religious experience might produce. Often conversion
experiences come as visions as when St. Paul encountered a blinding light on the road to Damascus and heard the voice of

God say to him, 'Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?' Or again when the Emperor Constantine saw a vision of the cross in
the sky accompanied by hearing the words, 'By this conquer' before he fought and won the battle of the Milvian Bridge
following which, he became Roman Emperor (the first to favour Christianity).
Without these conversion experiences Christian history would have been very different. Another important conversion was
that of St. Augustine. His was more of a slow development than a sudden blinding flash the final stage of which was
achieved after reading Romans 13:13-14. Christopher Kirwan, Augustine's biographer, writes of this conversion:
! he [Augustine] heard a child's voice from a house nearby chanting, 'Pick it up and read, pick it up and
read.' He ! took a copy of St Paul, opened it and read silently where his eyes fell.
The verse he read spoke to him so much that he was converted. For Augustine, God had revealed to him the truth of the
Gospel in those words and brought him to Christianity.
According to William James, who re-counts a number of conversion experiences in Varieties of Religious Experience, they
represent an unconscious connection with the MORE by which an individual's life is completely turned round.
One problem with conversions is why God would want to see the conversion of person 'A' from religion 'X' to religion 'Y'
and person 'B' from religion 'Y' to religion 'X'. These experiences seem to by concerned with the life of the individual rather
than the religious community as a whole.
8. Corporate Religious Experiences
Corporate religious experience are shared. They occur within a group and often show the emotional features of group
dynamics. At the basic level every collective act of worship, from school assembly to the Mass (Eucharist), should convey
to the participants some form of religious experience. However, corporate religious experience is often associated with the
emotional reactions of a congregation. Sometimes these might be due to a particularly evocative preachers or to phenomena
associated with the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues or the Toronto Blessing. This is an occurrence of holy laughter.
In it the congregation express the presence of the Holy Spirit though laughter. In 1994 Pastor Randy Clark gave a sermon at
Toronto Airport Vineyard Church, after it the congregation bust into hysterical laughter and dance. This has been regarded
as a corporate religious experience of the Holy Spirit. Which then swept across the world. (Is this a genuine experience of
the Holy Spirit or one of Dawkins' cultural viruses (memes)?
9. Can Religious Experiences be Trusted as Reports of God's Self-revelation?
As a proofs of God's existence many philosophers of religion suggest that we cannot trust, as James did, the testimony of
people who have had religious experience . There are a number of reasons for this:(i). Most religious experiences are not
publicly verifiable. Being private it is not possible to verify that it is God who the person is experiencing. Religious
experiences differ from more publicly verifiable experiences. (ii). There are other possible interpretations of religious
experiences. Perhaps they are drug induced or have a natural neuro-physical cause (as Dawkins argues). Freud and Marx
offer alternative, natural explanations of religious experience.
Freud's Criticism of the Argument from Religious Experience
For Freud, the whole process of arguing for God's existence is flawed. God does not exist. Freud claimed that once
people realised that religious experiences had a purely natural explanation (the result of turmoil in the unconscious mind of
the child curable by psychoanalysis) religion would begin to lose its hold over people. Like a mirage, religion would
simply disappear. God is merely an enlarged projection of an image of the human father. A person having a religious
experience is having a psychological experience. If they interpret their experience in terms of God they reflecting their
own childish desires for the security and authority of their own father. Freud describes religion as "the universal
obsessional neurosis of humanity." It is a mental illness in need of a cure. Belief in God is an illusory wish generated
by a sick mind troubled by the tempestuous conflicts within the unconscious. Religion is evidence of a failure to grow into
mature adulthood. Like a neurosis, belief in God marks a failure to confront reality. The origins of religion can be found
in the way individuals and humanity collectively deals with the Oedipus complex. By uncovering personal moments of
trauma Freud believed that psychoanalysis could show people that they no longer need to engage in the practices that gave
life to religion. Those practices reveal deep seated psychic needs that are the consequence of childhood traumas and are
therefore symptoms of psychic illness. Once these traumas have been revealed the illness can be cured. And, henceforth,
religious experiences will cease.
Karl Marx's Criticism of the Argument from Religious Experience
Marx argued that religion only exists because people are unhappy. The cause of this unhappinessMarx called it state of
alienationis the fact that the working classMarx called them the proletariatdid not own all the profits of their
labour. Instead this was siphoned-off by factory owners and the new middle classesMarx called them the bourgeoisie.
In their unhappiness the proletariat turned to religion for comfort while the bourgeoisie turned to religion because it kept
the status Quo. Religious experiences were simply manifestations of this unhappy human state of existence. The cure for
this unhappiness is not to maintain this false comfort of religion but to reward the proletariat with the true worth of their
labour. If they had this they would cease to be unhappy, they would no longer need religion and religion would die out of
its own accord. Religion then, for Marx, can be explained as an epiphenomenon of harsh economic conditions. For Marx,
the whole process of arguing for God's existence is flawed. God does not exist. Once people realised that religious
experiences had a purely natural explanation (the result of a particular repressive socio-political arrangement of economic
exchange) and once these repressive socio-political arrangement had been changed by altering the means of economic
exchange, religion would begin to loose its hold over people. It would no longer have a use and would simply disappear.
(iii) Sometimes knowledge of a wider context may encourage us to mistrust sense experiences. My senses could be
deceiving me. I may honestly believe that I have had an experience of God but I could, nevertheless, be mistaken. (iv) The
relationship between religious experiences and normal everyday experience is unclear (see sheet on the debate between

Alston and Hick) (v). Our background prejudices may influence the way we interpret religious experiences. (see the view
of Proudfoot).(vi). We cannot show that religious experiences are trustworthy unless we already presuppose the existence of
God. Therefore they cannot be used as proofs of God's existence.
Alston and Hick. Both think that religious experiences are cognitive. Alston argues that they are not significantly different
from normal everyday experience in that they both involve a perceiver, a perceived object and the phenomena of experience.
The only difference is that with religious experiences the object (God) has to be taken on trust since God is not an empirical
object. However, this trust is no more than the trust we show in relation to normal experience. When we sit at a table we
have the phenomenal appearance of the table in our minds and we do not doubt that this phenomenal experience is of a real
table. In the same way we need to doubt that our experience of God is an experience of divine reality. Hick rejects this.
Hick points out that (i). normal sense perceptions are common, religious experiences are not (ii) The former convey a great
deal of information, the latter convey very little information. (iii) the perceived phenomena in religious experiences are not
normally sensory. Instead they are qualitative. The perceived phenomena in religious experiences are presented as qualities
such as 'power', 'love', 'mystery', 'purpose', 'authority', 'goodness', 'courage' or 'unity'. These qualities are not sensory at all.
They cannot be seen, touched, smelt, heard, or tasted. (iv) Normal perceptual experiences are forced religious experiences
seem optional. (v). Normal perceptual experiences are universal religious experiences are particular to certain individuals.
(vi). Normal perceptual experiences are public and publicly verifiable religious experiences tend to be private and we have to
rely on the testimony of the person who has it. Thus, while Hick still thinks religious experiences are cognitive he believes
that they very different from normal experiences. They have to be in order to leave room for faith and freedom. For Richard
Dawkins religious experiences have a purely natural explanation. He notes that the human brain creates mental patterns a
bit like the simulations of computer virtual software. These patterns construct our perception of the world around us but our
perceptions can also be tricked by the mental patterns that the brain creates as when we think a dream is reality or when we
use imagination. Problems can also emerge when the pattern creating part of the brain is damaged. It is the brains mental
patterning that Dawkins believes is responsible for creating the illusions that are sometimes interpreted as religious
experiences. He writes, "Remember that all our heads contain powerful and ultra-realistic simulation software. Our
simulation software could knock up a ghost or a dragon or a saintly virgin in no time flat." According to Wayne
Proudfoot religious experiences are shaped and even created by the culturally constructed conceptual language people use to
interpret their experience. He argues that percepts (bits of experience) are blank until we fill them in with concepts which
pre-exist them. James, Otto and Buber are wrong when they claim that we can have pure religious experiences. We cannot
know that our experiences are religious until we place them within our prior, culturally conditioned, conceptual frameworks.
These shape how we interpret blank experiences. We must first have a language about God, concepts of God, doctrines
about God which define for us what a religious experience of God is before we can know that any experience is in fact an a
religious experience. This is the same with all experience. An experience of a red flag, for example, means nothing until we
have concepts for understanding its meaning and it could mean many different things depending upon how a culture codes
this percept. For Proudfoot, a concept like 'numinous', employed by Otto, is an example of a term that creates a sense of
mystery and presents it as analysis of something presented to perception (p. 222). The concept creates the reality. Without
the concept there is no numinous reality to experience. He writes, "Religious experience ! must ! be identified under
a description that is available to and can plausibly be ascribed to the subject of that experience. [Consequently]
! [t]he distinguishing mark of a religious experience is not the subject matter but the kind of explanation the
subject believes is appropriate."
10. The Concept of Revelation Through Sacred Writings
Traditonally philosophers have drawn a distinction between propositional and non-propositional revelation. Within the
propositional model of revelation, referring to the Bible as the 'word of God' means, to quote Billy Graham, "the Bible is
the book written by God through thirty secretaries." Here, 'Word of God' comes to mean the words spoken by God. Every
word is verbally inspired as if God directly dictated all of scripture. As a result it is unlikely to be thought as containing
any error. In contrast, a non-propositional understanding of revelation takes the phrase 'Word of God' to refer to a
complex of human experiences of the self-manifestation of God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Indeed, in
the New Testament it is Jesus who is referred to as the 'Word of God'. The Bible is merely a fallible human witness to God's
incarnation in Jesus Christ. In both ways of understanding Biblical revelation the disclosive element plays the lead role. A
propositional view of revelation means that every word in the Bible should be taken literally. It also means that the Bible
should be understood as its own interpretation. Sacred writings contain propositional revelation in which God directly
discloses knowledge of Divine reality to all people universally. According to the non-propositional view of Biblical
revelation, the Bible is not a record of God's words but rather, a record of human words struggling to understand God's self-
manifestation in the events of human history, and personal or corporate religious experience. The experience focus lesson on
the words and more on the general spiritual background that allows a believer to understand and interpret the words in sacred
writings.
Scripture is authoritative in many religions because it contains revelations thought to be from God now preserved in
propositions which can be widely shared and transmitted to a future generation. Scripture contains the gift of divine
revelation and is given the highest respect because it has itself become the revelation. Once written down, however, the
revelation, reduced to propositions, can also be assessed and interpreted. The process and philosophy of interpretation
is hermeneutics. Biblical hermeneutics has a long history. Various methods for interpreting scripture have been developed.
Literal Method. Here the meaning of the text is taken at face value and interpreted literally. The command to love your
neighbour and to stone to death people who commit adultery should be taken literally.

Allegorical Method. Here the reader is taken below the surface meaning of the text to a deeper hidden meaning not
literally expressed in the text itself. Unacceptable passages about slavery, for example could be interpreted an referring
allegorically to our general slavery to sin and the devil.
Tropology, anagogy, and typology are other such methods (see original sheet: although you do not need to know these)
Ecclesiastical Method. The Bible is the book of the Church. Its meaning is whatever the Church says it is.
Historical Critical Method. Here the historical production of the Bible is taken into account. When it was written, who
wrote it and whether it depicts real history are issues considered by this approach. This approach was used by D. F.
Strauss and William Dilthey.
Literary Critical Method. Here analysis of language and literary style is used to tease out the composite sources which
make up scripture. Much of Biblical language is mythical. According to Rudolph Bultmann myths convey the
meaning of existence and so Biblical language has to be translated into the language about the nature of existence to be
understood today. He calls this demythologising.
Questions about the authority of the Bible, its inspiration and what it means to say that the Bible is the word of God can be
usefully considered in relations to two broad heading of naturalistic and supernaturalistic interpretations of scripture.
For naturalistic interpretations the Bible is a human product and is to be interpreted in that way. It can be read as a source
of inspiring words written by people with the gift to inspire others. Here, inspiration is a purely human quality. The Bible is
no more nor less inspiring than any other human work of art. Supernaturalistic interpretations, on the other hand, claim
that God is in some way involved in the inspirations of scripture. There are three general ways of classify different views on
the nature of the supernaturalistic inspiration of scripture.
1. Fundamentalists: The Bible the direct revelation for God; word for word. The scriptures are themselves part of God's
revelation. God inspired the writing of the Bible in such a way that it is free from error. Benjamin B. Warfield held this
view. This means that the world was created in six days and Adam and Eve were the first people. If the Bile contradicts
science, it is science which is wrong. The word of God refers to the actual words in scripture which God has dictated to
the human writers.
2. Conservatives. They accept that inspiration means 'God breathed' and this is how the Bible describes itself in 2
Timothy 3:16. The Spirit of God infuses scripture with life-giving power that controls the content of what the human
writers wrote. However, something of the writers own personality and opinion can also be found in the text and so it
cannot be free from error. Often the writers opinion is shaped by the knowledge they had. We human knowledge
develops we have to re-interpret scripture. Thus, while they believe the Bible is largely historically accurate and
contains direct divinely inspired passages they do not see a need to contradict the findings of modern science. The point
of the creation story is that God is behind creation whether this is done by the Big Bang or in six days. Here the word of
God is put in the words of the writers of the Bible and so needs to be interpreted. This view is held by Alister
McGrath.
3. Liberals. They say that the Bible had a a totally human origin. However, the human writers of the Bible display a deep
insight into the will and purpose of God. The words of the Bible relate to its overall message. The word of God refers
to this message. To be faithful to this message about the power, love, forgiveness, work and judgement of God and the
human response to it often means changing the original words of scripture. The inspired revelation is not in the words
but in the message which exists behind the words. This is still supernaturalistic because it believes that God's message
is being revealed in the Bible. However, the words of the Bible are the natural creation of human beings. John Hick's
view. The human produced words point beyond themselves to the transcendent reality of God and God's message.
Both conservative and liberal views can lead to forms of selectivism in which selected parts of the Bible are used to interpret
the rest of the Bible. This view is held by Schubert Ogden. We can take as divinely inspired those parts of the Bible that
talk of God as 'love' and use this to interpret or even reject those parts of the Bible where love is clearly not the dominant
theme.
Other views on the Bible as the word of God include those of Karl Barth for whom the Bible becomes the inspired
Word of God as it is proclaimed and used by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to Jesus Christ. The word of God is Jesus
Christ. The Bible is a witness of God's word and revelation in Christ but is not itself that revelation.
The phrase the 'word of God', then, can refer to a number of different things.
1. It can be used in a general sense to refer to the Bible as a whole. Every word is God's word and so it must be infallible.
This view is held by fundamentalist Christians but given modern Biblical scholarship is a difficult position to maintain.
2. It can be used to refer to the particular words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. However, the Gospel writers did not note
down Jesus' words as he spoke them and so are not a perfect guide. The 'Jesus Seminar' is a modern attempt by Biblical
scholars to ascertain what words attributed to Jesus were actually spoken by him. In the Lord's Prayer, for example, the only
words they are certain were Jesus' are 'Our Father'. The rest could have been made up by the Gospel writers.
3. The writers of the Bible were human. They were fallible. But they did get across God's general message. In this sense,
the Bible can be said to be the Word of God but the particular stories it uses to convey this message have to be
demythologised and re-expressed in modern form if the message is to get out. This view was held by Bultmann (1884-1976)
4. The Word of God is not the Bible at all. According to John's Gospel, Jesus is God's Word. According to this view the
Bible is a fallible human witness to the Word of God that is Jesus Christ.
5. The Word of God is the Biblical message about Jesus preached in church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Two Example of a Modern approach to the Bible: 1. Feminist Readings. Phyllis Trible is a feminist Biblical scholar.
She is convinced that the Bible is not the word of God in a literal and infallible sense. If it were we would have to conclude
that God was sexist. In a short article she summarises three basic approaches that feminists have taken to the Bible.
1. The first might be called oppositional. Feminist point the inherent sexism in the Bible. Women are defined as the
property of men (Exod. 20:17; Deut 5:21). She had no right of divorce (Deut 24:1-4). A man was not expected to be a
virgin on marriage the women was and she could be stoned to death if after marriage it was proved she was not a virgin
(Deut 22: 13-21). She was excluded from the priesthood (Lev 15) and her monetary value was less than a mans (Lev 27:1-
7). In the Bible woman is inferior, subordinate and abused. Feminists like Daphne Hampson argue that all this makes the
Bible hopelessly misogynist. It is worthy of dismissal and should be denounced. 2. The second approach might be called
constructivist. This approach takes the few positive attitudes to women in the Bible and uses them to challenge the
patriarchy of the whole. For example, the Bible is clear in Genesis that the image of God is man and women together. In
Psalm 22 God is described as a midwife and of course Jesus had women followers, he allowed women to initiate
conversation with him and women were the first witnesses of the resurrection. (Which, incidentally is one reason for
thinking it might be true). This approach also looks at the use made by the by writers of Hebrew word. Eve is described as
Adam's helpmate. The Hebrew word used is 'ezer' which when used in other Biblical passages connotes a position of
superiority. 3. The third approach makes us listen to horrific Bible stories. Trible calls these 'Text of Terror' for women. By
retelling them with a twist she make us think about sexism in its worst forms. She does this to challenge sexism today and to
bear witness to the sufferings of women in the past. Jephthah's daughter (Judg 11) and the Concubine (Judg 19) Are two
examples of such stories. (2) Readings from Liberation Theology: This political theology argues that listening to the
language of the Bible should always be a challenge to the injustices of contemporary society. The call of the Gospel to our
own age is the call for justice for the weak and the poor. Much of the difficulty we find in understanding the Bible's writers
results from an over intellectualisation. The Bible is not primarily to be read by the university professor but by the people of
faith who seek justice in the real and often harsh conditions of life. It is the work of changing these social and economic
conditions which provides the key to understanding the revolutionary meaning of Bible. The Bible is the book of the poor
and weak who no longer want to be poor and weak.