1.  The concept of RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, including visions, auditions (voices), numinous experiences, con-version experiences and corporate religious experience.

2.  The concept of MIRACLE, including criticisms made by Hume and Wiles, and the implications of the concept of miracle for the problem of evil.

3.  The concept of REVELATION THROUGH HOLY SCRIPTURE, including the concept of divine inspiration, and different approaches to the understanding of sacred writing.

 Introduction  

In this section we look at the idea of revelation. This is the idea that God reveals knowledge and his own existence through religious experience. We will consider what religious experience is and what forms it comes in. This will include a critical assessment of the different views of RE and of its possibility. Visions, voices and numinous experience are examples of religious experience which can be used.

There is then a consideration of distinct kinds of RE.

 What is Religious Experience? 

RE is experience of the divine. Richard Swinburne give five exclusive types of RE:

1. Experience through a public sensory object i.e. an experience of God via an object such as the sunset.
2. Experience of God via an unusual public sensory object, reportable in sensory language i.e. ‘I saw a vision of Mary through the face of her statue’.
3. Experience of God through private sensory objects, not reportable in sensory language i.e. ‘I had a feeling of Gods presence through the vision that appeared to me’.
4. Experience of God through private sensory object, reportable in sensory language i.e. ‘I saw Gods image in the sand as I walked along and realised it was Him’.
5. Experience not mediated by sensation i.e. I knew of Gods presence the moment I walked in’.

If we take these categories of experience then it raises questions as to what RE is that it can appear in so many different ways. In this next section we are to look at four ideas of the nature of RE;

1. RE as feeling

Friedrich Schleieremacher believed that RE was not cognitive (factual/physical in nature), it is in fact a feeling of something outside, or beyond the world on which we depend. It is self-authenticating (you just ‘know’ it is God), known through intuition, unmediated and indescribable. Thus it fits with RE 3 and 5, as something not knowable, or describable in sensory language.

Rudolf Otto believes with this basic idea, but says that some aspects of God can be grasped by reason, via analogous language. We can report Gods love, power and holiness as analogy, although the deep feelings of God cannot be described in literal language. For Otto this is a feeling of the numinous. The numinous is the world beyond our senses in which God exists. Because it is unknowable as such it can only be glimpsed or spoken of in non-literal language.

Martin Buber takes Otto’s idea of the numinous and says that it is possible to have a relationship with God despite God being in the numinous. Rather than the ‘I-It’ relationship I have with objects, I have to foster an ‘I-Thou’ relationship with God. He describes God as the eternal ‘Thou’. God appears through other people and nature, but only if we see these in an ‘I-Thou’ way.

William James says true religion is feeling of God. As such religious philosophy and theology are ‘outgrowths’ of this. The true experience is the feeling and the intellectual disciplines based on this will always be poor shadows of this real experience. We cannot have intellectual knowledge of the nouminous; it is by definition, beyond rational knowledge. All we can have are intuitions of God in the numinous.

Assessment- There are some obvious advantages and disadvantages to this view of RE. The prime advantage is that it puts RE beyond rational criticism. If RE is feeling then I cannot ‘know’ it to criticise. In this way no-one is in a position to doubt my experience. The disadvantage is that only I have this experience so I cannot convince others of the validity of my experience.

This position seems to fail by putting too much emphasis on feeling. It has been criticised because feeling cannot just happen on its own and make sense. A feeling only makes sense when recognised and recognition is a cognitive progress. Thus feeling is not prior to thought but needs thought. If this is the case then RE as feeling does not escape rational scrutiny.

It is also worth examining the background to this belief. The existence of God as unknowable does not make sense in Schleieremachers sense, as we do claim to have ‘knowledge’ of God. None of our statements about God would have cognitive power if they were not knowable. Therefore Otto’s claim that God can be known through analogy makes sense, however it does suggest the feeling is not unintelligible and can be considered rationally in some sense.

It appears that if RE is feeling then this does not pre-empt us from asking questions about it and expecting some sort of answer.

2. RE as perceptual experience.

William Alston suggests that RE is a form of ordinary perceptual experience. Alston here adopts John Locke’s theory of representative realism.

A brief summary of Locke’s theory as above. Alston says that just as I know the ball exists, so I can know God exists.

Problems-

1. It could be said that experiences of God are not like ‘ball’ experiences. ‘Ball’ experiences are;

1. Common and unavoidable.
2. Vivid and rich.
3. Came via sense experience.

Alston would claim RE, whilst they may be uncommon, do come via sense experience and are vivid and rich. He would claim that many ordinary experiences are rare, but we do not discount them.

2. God is reported as being omnipotent, omniscient etc. These qualities would not be readily perceived by the senses.

Alston would say that whilst omniscience etc are not in the content of sense data, they can be worked out from sense data. He makes this point clearer by making a distinction between ‘phenomenal’ and ‘objective’ qualities. Phenomenal qualities are those things which appear to me now, i.e. I look at the door from this angle and it appears trapezoid, the door knob oval. Objective qualities are how I know things to be, i.e. I know the door to be rectangular and the knob to be round. The explanation here being that when I perceive God it is in a phenomenal way and I cannot perceive his omniscience, but I can know objectively of his omniscience from a variety of experience.

3. RE as interpretation based on belief.

Wayne Proudfoot has a problem with RE as perception (as Alston has described it). Proudfoot says the problem is that when I see the sun or other object and have a RE, the perceptual experience is of the sun, the RE comes from something other than this.

Instead of Alston view Proudfoot says that we perceive experiences via our senses in a normal way, i.e. the sun appears as the sun, however, we can interpret that or any other image as religious. This interpretation is based on our pre-existing belief systems. It could be asked then how we can tell what is a real religious experience if the sun simply appears as the sun in both cases? Proudfoots answer is that the objects appearance is irrelevant; it is the beliefs of the perceiver which are important.

This is a psychological theory where the person’s beliefs and personal history are of prime importance in saying what is a RE and not what the external cause of the RE is.

4. Mysticism.

This theory is dealt with more fully in a later section. It claims that RE is something mysterious and not open to full human understanding or description.

 Can Religious Experience Justify Religious Belief? 

This question is a broad one. It not only asks whether we can deduce there is a God from RE, but also if belief in this God is justified? We can approach this question from the three possible natures of RE we have just considered;

1. RE as feeling would not seem to justify a cognitive claim. I cannot conclude that something exists purely because I feel it does. A person requiring proof of Gods existence is unlikely to be satisfied if I just ‘feel’ He does! It is of less concern if I do not wish to prove Gods existence to anyone but myself. If I am happy to say,’ I believe in God because I felt his presence’, then this is less controversial than if I wish to prove Gods existence to others.
2. RE as perceptual experience would not prove controversial with specific types of RE. If I could say that I had seen God in the same way I see this writing then there may be questions of my reliability as a witness, but philosophically the verifying of this claim would be straightforward i.e. ‘You could have seen God, as I did if you had been there’. However, as Proudfoot pointed out, most RE is not of this nature. If I perceive God via the sun, then this is not as straightforward as seeing the sun! I would have great trouble proving this to others.
3. RE as interpretation based on belief seems to combine the best and worst of the previous theories. I cannot claim to know God in a cognitive sense despite perception being a feature of this theory, neither can I claim RE is a personal experience of God, as some of it seems based on perception. For this theory,’ I have had a RE’, only makes sense within the belief system in which I operate and not otherwise. As such ‘proof’ or ‘justification’ seems limited.

Principle of credulity.

The philosopher Richard Swinburne attempts to answer this question with his principle of credulity. This says that if a situation appears to be a certain way then we should accept it is this way until we have concrete evidence on which to doubt it.

On this principle RE is taken as being perceptual experience, I perceive the experience, am able to report it. Because of its rare nature and lack of repetition I cannot go back and verify it happened. Therefore, we should accept the experience unless we have reason to doubt it.

This raises several problems;

• Under what conditions would a sceptic not doubt an experience? They would always think there was reason to doubt the RE because they do not believe there are RE.
• If RE is to be given the same credibility as my claim that I saw the cat on the mat, then it remains to be shown that RE is the same as normal sense perception. Certainly on Proudfoot and Otto’s interpretation this is not accepted.

 Is there a Common Core to Religious Experience? 

This question is one which wants to know if RE has anything in common. This would seem important to the question, what is a RE? but also to the question of how we can recognise a genuine experience from a fake?

Mysticism

This is a general term which refers to a tradition occurring in all religions which believes RE to be ‘the spiritual recognition of something beyond human understanding’. Mysticism is often associated with the view that RE cannot be put into human language because it is beyond the range of experience we are familiar with. It is a direct and non-inferential experience.

William James claims that mystic RE have 4 qualities;

1. Ineffability- is awareness that one is having an RE, but at the same time realising there is an indescribable quality to it. It is sometimes referred to as a loss of ego, or a sense of peace and sacredness.
2. Noetic quality- is the awareness of truths coming from the experience not understandable by the intellect, but rather by the intuition.
3. Transciency- says the religious experience passes after a time, but it leaves a feeling and insight which lasts far longer.
4. Passivity- this suggests that when having an experience one loses control of oneself and is under the influence of something greater.

The philosopher Walter T Stace adds to this list and comes up with seven criteria; Unitary consciousness (at one with God), experiences non-spatio-temporal, sense of objectivity, sense of blessedness, feeling of the Holy, paradoxicality, innefability.

Problems- Steven Katz points out that no experience can be direct and unmediated. If we are to be aware or recognise anything then it must be mediated by our concepts and beliefs- intuition is conditional on these things.

Stace would counter that it was in the very nature of God that he can induce exceptional experiences beyond our normal understanding.

In the following sections we will be considering RE as it occurs in different contexts and through different media. These sections are intended to build on and make more specific the general ways of interpreting RE so far.

 Religious Experience & Revelation through Holy Scriptures 

Revelation is defined as ‘knowledge given by a supernatural agency’. The knowledge is taken to be;

• From God
• Authoritative.
• Superior to reason.
• Direct and immediate.
• Not limited by human understanding.

An example of this via Holy scriptures would be when Moses received the 10 commandments, or Muhammad the Quran. Revelation is taken as being a passive experience which a person just receives, or it can be something the person struggles for a piece at a time.

There are several issues to think about;

1. If revelation is a source of knowledge is it open to rational criticism once articulated, or does it remain in some way mysterious and a matter of faith?
2. What are the limits of human reason and how does this affect what is revealed to us?
3. For Aquinas, natural law was when natural reason and revealed law reinforced one another. The natural law rested on evidence, the revealed law on God, but also on, who it was revealed to, how consistent that belief was with other teachings, the effect of the revelation and whether there are any non-supernatural explanations for it.

Mystics report supernatural revelation through visions and voices. St John of the cross (16C) did warn that these could be from the devil as easily as God. He held that God does not relate to us in normal ways and that in revelation we are like people in darkness holding a candle- we only see what our understanding can illuminate and never get the full picture. In scriptural terms this means that any scripture will reveal what the person was able to understand, but will never be the whole truth.

Progressive revelation is the claim that God reveals himself to us over time. Any message is sent to us in a specific way appropriate to our social context. When this is written down it can change the message or ‘freeze’ it in the social context it was given in. This means that whilst the message may remain valid its expression can go out of date. This explanation takes account of the fact that religions change, Holy books can lose their meaning and cultures can have different beliefs.

Propositional view of revelation and faith is that revelation is ‘a body of truth expressed in statements or propositions’. This is in general the Roman Catholic view that the Bible is the receptacle for truth and it imparts divine truths which are authentic because of their source. The Bible is not human or fallible. Its propositions can be assessed by natural theology, but it is as revealed theology that we must accept it. There is an act of faith to be made by a person when they simply accept the Bible as true.

This view of Holy scriptures takes a voluntarist view of faith. This means that we must choose voluntarily to take a leap of faith. William James had an argument similar to Pascals wager, which said that the fact of Gods existence was so important that non-belief makes no sense (for we have lost all if we do not believe and God exists and nothing if God does not exist). Thus to believe is more important than what propositions tell us.

F R Tennant says that faith reaches beyond the probable to the possible. Thus faith is needed in the Holy scripture to reach beyond what its propositions are to the truths it really holds.

This view of Holy scripture is more likely to reach a conservative interpretation of the Bible. The truth of the Bible, however mystical, is there to be read and understood, it is a matter of our faith and understanding how well we do this.

Non-propositional view of revelation is the view taken by many Protestant churches. They understand that the Bible is not truth about God, but is Gods attempt to come closer to man. The Bible has been revealed to men, because of mans limited understanding he has to struggle to see the truths. Man comes to his own personal understanding of God and this is what is reported. God remains hidden from us and beyond our understanding. We become conscious of him through our efforts to understand his revelation.

This view of the Bible is more likely to reach a liberal view of the Bible, which is that much of it can be dismissed as the author’s personal attempts to understand and express their understanding of God. Whilst it does contain useful insights and ways to understand God it is still down to mans efforts to know God personally.

 Religious Experience as Conversion Experience 

Conversion means to change a thing. In a religious sense it usually means to convert someone who has no faith to faith. Thus a conversion experience is an RE which causes this change.

Prof. E D Starbuck describes the conditions felt before conversions as being those of incompleteness, imperfection, brooding, introspection, anxiety and distress. The result of the conversion is of relief, happiness and a sense of objectivity being restored. These conversions often happen around adolescents when these negative feelings are strongest. Whilst it is true that conversion is a psychological experience it remains to be shown if it is a good one or if it is cause by genuine experience?

William James holds that there are some people who could never have conversion experiences. These are people who are overly cynical, not inclined to existential thought or would never be able to make spiritual considerations paramount.

Amongst people who are able to convert there are two basic types of psychological experience in conversion;

1. A conscious and voluntary acceptance of change.
2. An involuntary, often unaware acceptance of change.

The first of these often happens over time with the person suddenly becoming aware of the change in them. The second type there has to be a case where experience cannot bring about total change and the person must give in to this change.

There tend to be two motivations present in the minds of those converted;

• The feeling that their life at present is ‘wrong’.
• That they wish to make positive changes.

The most striking experience is often of the sudden type where a person changes beliefs quickly. A Biblical example of this is of Saul on the road to Damascus being converted from a Christian hater to a Christian. It seems that these conversions involve an acceptance of change, either voluntarily or involuntarily, which prepares the ground for a conversion experience. Once converted a person can become more of an advocate for their beliefs than those who have always had faith.

In gradual conversions it is far less likely that the person will revert and lose their faith later. This may be because sudden conversions do not answer the intellectual problems which later arise with believers. Thus gradual conversions seem to be a religious and intellectual conversion.

In many ways the issues above are those exclusive to conversion experiences. We should not forget that they are in the general category of RE. That is, the cause of the conversion could be taken as being of the types 1-4 mentioned at the start of this topic. Remember that you can include this in exams, particularly if questions are asked about the validity of conversions as types of RE- yes conversions are psychological, but their cause remains open to debate.

 Religious Experience as a Corporate Experience 

This is a problem the syllabus requires to be covered, but it is a subclass of general RE and as such the main issues are covered earlier in this topic. You need to be aware however, that corporate experiences, where more than one person witnesses an experience raise issues around verification. In some sense it makes an experience more likely if many people share it. It does raise questions of whether there can be mass hallucinations etc. In general however the same questions and answers given to RE in general apply to RE as corporate.

 Miracles 

Miracles are susceptible to two definitions;

1. A highly unusual event. I.e. my winning the lottery.
2. An event which goes against the laws of nature. i.e. my winning the lottery without buying a ticket.

For most people God is seen as the author of miracles and their existence is taken to be proof of Gods existence.

The Bible is a rich source of miracles which fall into three categories;

• Nature miracles- calming the storm etc.
• Healing miracles- raising Lazarus.
• Food miracles- feeding 5000.

The miracles recorded today tend to be less frequent but include healing miracles at Lourdes and Hindu ‘vehicles’ drinking milk at Mandirs across the world. Whilst these miracles seem inexplicable they are miracles in the strongest sense, described in 2).

Richard Swinburne says that a miracle should be more than just a transgression of a law of nature; it should also be a sign of Gods nature and plan. This seems quite a stern requirement for something to be miraculous- certainly hard to prove.

R F Holland says that events in category 1) can count as miracles. If I pray for my friend not to die of cancer when all medical evidence says he will and my friend recovers, then this could be treated as miraculous.

A lot of the debate about what counts as a miracle seems based on the problems proving they occur. To Swinburne it would seem to gain credibility for the concept of miracles if they can pass the sternest of tests. On the other hand many believers would see that coincidences can point to Gods action in the world, but Gods part is hard to prove.

David Hume was a sceptic as to the occurrence of miracles. He started with the assumption that a miracle would only be proven if it were more unlikely that it had not occurred than if it had occurred. In other words it would need to be shown that it was necessary a miracle had happened if it were to be accepted as such. This makes it almost impossible to ever prove a miracle.

Hume offers a number of arguments against miracles;

1. Hume says that no miracle has been observed by people reliable, intelligent or honest enough that they have not been deluded, mistaken or lying about their occurrence.
2. Hume notes that people enjoy miracles and the attention they bring and the credibility they give. He therefore concludes that people are inclined to count things as miracles when in fact they are not.
3. Hume claims that belief in miracles arises amongst ‘ignorant and barbarous nations’. It being said that these people are more gullible and lack intelligence, so are more likely to be deluded.
4. Hume points out the problem of plurality. This notes that every religion claims to have miracles which prove its beliefs and God(s). These claims must cancel each other out as there could not be three, or more, monotheistic Gods!

Hume’s criticisms are not valid in all cases. Hume’s first criticism seems to be an unproven assertion. He gives no criteria for what would count as a reliable, intelligent or honest witness and instead seems to assume that, by definition anyone who witnesses a miracle is none of these things. This assumption seems unwarranted.

Secondly, Hume notes that people enjoy miracles and are thus inclined to believe them. This may be true; however it says nothing about whether it makes the likelihood of miracles more or less. To say that people enjoy miracles does not seem enough to prove them false.

Thirdly, it seems an unproven assertion, not to mention a plain insult to call everyone who believes in miracles ignorant. Again no credit is given to those who are intelligent and civilised and still believe in miracles.

Fourthly, some people believe that there is only one God and that the Gods of different religions are just different forms of the one God. Equally, it is not clear that one religion claiming that their God is the only one God would be cancelled out by the others. Maybe they are right!!

The Dominican friar Maurice Wiles gives a further argument for thinking miracles would not occur. He says that if an all perfect, all-powerful God needed to step in to change his creation then this would suggest his creation was not perfect in the first place. Thus miracles seem to suggest that God is imperfect in some sense so needs to keep interfering in his creation in order to correct errors.

In some ways this argument is similar to the problem of evil. Namely that a perfect God could have created a perfect world. However, in the problem of evil, evil exists as an imperfection in the world, in this problem the question is why a perfect God would allow an imperfect world. In Wiles the question is the same, but the intervention of God in miracles as an odd thing to do in a perfect world, rather than the lack of intervention of God in preventing evil is paramount.

The classic theodicies of Augustine and Iraeneus do offer some solution to this. Iraeneus claims that we are sent to suffer and develop on earth in order to be admitted to heaven in the afterlife. Thus evil is a form of self development. In the same way whilst evil allows for development God would perform miracles to give us encouragement, and a sign of his love and grace.

In Augustine’s theodicy the existence of evil is seen as a lack of God (goodness) and not a positive representation of evil. Thus evil is an absence of God. Miracles could be seen, not as Gods inability to create a perfect world, but an attempt to persuade believers back to God and therefore away from evil.

What does this tell us about Wiles criticism? It suggests that Wiles criticism is unfair. If the solutions to the problem of evil explain the existence of evil, then the existence of miracles as God using persuasion to convince man to come back to Him seems to make sense. This accounts for free will which man achieved when thrown out of the Garden of Eden, in that tit is mans choice to do wrong (evil) and it is mans choice to follow God (be persuaded by miracles).

 Non-religious Explanations of Religious Experience 

It is worth noting that most explanations of RE accept that there is a God to have experience of. There is the question amongst non-believers about what causes RE if there is not a God. This ranges from psychologists like Freud and Jung, to sociologists like Durkheim and Weber to physiologists and geneticists who try to explain them as a function of the brain. It would be worth revising some of this AS material as a contrast to some religious views of RE.