Religious Experience – The key features according the ‘philosophy of religion’ By the end of this lesson you will have: • Revised what you know so far on mysticism and near death experiences • Been introduced to the ideas of Otto and Buber • Thought about where Otto and Buber could come into your essays
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1.2 key features of experience according to the philosophy of religion
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Religious Experience – The key features according the ‘philosophy
of religion’
By the end of this lesson you will have:
• Revised what you know so far on mysticism and near death experiences
• Been introduced to the ideas of Otto and Buber
• Thought about where Otto and Buber could come into your essays
Odd one out
• 1) St Teresa/John of the cross/Aquinas
• 2) William James/Mysticism/Prayer
• 3) Ineffability/passivity/Catholic Church
• 4) Life after life/Raymond Moody/Hell
• 5) Schleiermacher/mysticism/conversion
• 6) Quasi-Sensory/Interpretive/introvert
Quick-fire Questions
• 1) Which famous celebrity had a mystical experience?
• 2) Name 3 scholars who discuss the features of mystical experience
• 3) What are 3 common features of a near death religious experience?
• 4) Which two stages did Paul Tillich describe his mystical experience in?
• 5) What are some general features of a religious experience?
Rudolph Otto
• The Idea of the Holy • Looks at religious experience from the angle of
the philosophy of religion• Says that religious experience is about the
encounter with something other• Something totally unknowable• With this encounter will come a whole range of
feelings• Creeping flesh, the fear of ghosts, the sense of
something uncanny, weird or errie
Rudolph Otto
• The OBJECT of the religious experience is Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
• This is also known as the numinous
• This is based on the word numen meaning ‘awe inspiring holiness’
• For many religious people this ‘numinous’ would be God
Rudolph Otto
• Because Otto agrees that religious experiences are ineffable, he appreciates that it is very difficult to explain how a feeling is holy and numinous
• Otto comes up with a religious language to try and convey the implications of a religious experience
• He calls this schematisation
• However, the ‘holy’ itself is an a priori category and can’t be described using other terms
• Therefore, the philosophy of religion, which only ever deals with words, is limited to schematisation
Task
• Draw a picture which represents Otto’s idea of schematisation
Soren Kierkegaard
• Concluding Unscientific Postscript
• Claims that religious experiences are a matter of personal commitment and value
• Experience, for Kierkegaard, is a matter of making a choice
• For someone to have a religious experience they must be in one of two situations:
• Convinced in faith of the truth of Christianity
• Not a beliver, but interested in Christianity
Soren Kierkegaard
• He believed that it is all about the way in which an experience is believed
• The experience corresponds with the person’s relationship with the religious truth
• He embraced the paradoxical nature of some claims of religious experience such as ‘God talking from a burning bush’
• Of course a religious experience would have to be absurd to create faith. If it was anything normal it wouldn't be faith or religious
Soren Kierkegaard
• The key feature for Kierkegaard is that a religious experience must of course involve a relationship between the ‘object’ experienced and the ‘subject’ experiencing
• The minute we try and look at the object without the subject, it ceases to bea religious experience
Soren Kierkegaard
• He reminds us that intuition and risk play an important part in religious experience
• These are the starting point for a serious commitment
• This then encourages rational thought about your religious experience
TASK
• Look at Kierkegaards’s ideas to do with religious experience.
• Can you draw any parallels between someone having a religious experience and falling in love with someone?
Martin Buber
• I and Thou
• Claims that we have two different kinds of relationships