"Signs For a People Who Reason ": Religious Experience and Natural Theology (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Turn to Experience in Theology. Lecture 11. Conclusion: a search for patterns
The previous two chapters have sought to listen to the voices of theologians down through the centuries as they comment, either explicitly or implicitly, on the relationship between theology and experience. The sequence has been diachronic, but the purpose has not been so much to serve the demands of historical research-for indeed, the preceding chapters have contributed little in the way of new historical data or innovative historical insights-as to draw upon the historical research of others in the service of what Bernard Lonergan has called the 'dialectical' function within theology. 1 Various techniques have been advanced for carrying out the dialectical function. For instance, the typological or 'model' method employed by Ian Ramsey (1915-1972), Ewert Cousins (1927-2009, and Avery Dulles, among others, seeks to abstract from the particular circumstances of time and place to focus on the structural features of different systems. 2 The method of types is moreover extremely valuable for singling out the decisive issues and implications of pure positions. 3 Nevertheless, it is not the intention of this chapter to identify 'types' or 'models' of the relationship between theology and experience, for as the data show, the number of permutations of positions would produce far too many models to be of any service. Any systematic attempt to provide a complete and exhaustive taxonomy of all actual and possible positions would create more confusion than clarity. The present chapter will not offer such a taxonomy, but will limit itself to pointing out certain structural questions that permit a unified grasp of the whole field of data. Although the array of answers to the questions is manifold, the basic questions are few, and by grasping these basic questions, one can hold the whole complex field of data in a relatively simple view.
Natural Theology and Religious Belief
In The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology. Edited by Jonathan Fuqua, John Greco, and Tyler McNabb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022
It is no exaggeration to say that there has been an explosion of activity in the field of philosophical enquiry that is known as natural theology. Having been smothered in the early part of the twentieth century due to the dominance of the anti-metaphysical doctrine of logical positivism, natural theology began to make a comeback in the late 1950s as logical positivism collapsed and analytic philosophers took a newfound interest in metaphysical topics such as possibility and necessity, causation, time, the mind-body problem, and God. This chapter begins by considering how we might characterise natural theology as a field of enquiry. It then proceeds to survey the landscape of contemporary natural theology, which has spawned a large and at times highly technical body of literature. Finally, consideration is given to two epistemological issues confronting the theist who wishes to appeal to natural theology, which could be termed the problem of the gap(s) and the problem of accessibility.
Theology and Experience (General Introduction)
This thesis examines Fr. William A. Van Roo's contribution to the wide field of theological reflection on the relationship between theological method and the religious experience of the theologian as believer. While the 'turn to experience' became a hallmark of theology after 1952, and much was written on the topic, no solid consensus emerged. The thesis concludes that Van Roo's contribution, which passes through his reflection on symbols and symbolizing, offers a synthesis of the important elements of the question, around which a consensus could be built.
Forum Philosophicum, 2011
It is thought that Schleiermacher used religious experience as a new kind of argument to safeguard Christian faith when he was faced with the failure of traditional arguments for the existence of God. This paper argues that such a view does not do justice to the newness of his approach in constructing a propaedeutic to Christian theology. It is further argued that, irrespective of whether one agrees with what Schleiermacher was trying to do, if religious experience is to become a contemporary preambula fidei to Christian theology, the focus should be on communicating a positive experience rather than on arguing for God's existence. It has become commonplace in contemporary theology to assume that experience "is the only valid way to get in touch with religious reality" 1 and that religious experience is the "living heart" 2 or the "inner spiritual life" 3 that provides vitality to the external structures of religion such as creeds and codes. Friedrich Schleiermacher is credited with this achievement. However, there is little evidence to show that the larger goals that prompted him towards this "experience-revolution" is even understood, much less pursued. It is well known that his turn to religious experience was prompted by the desire to give a new starting point to Christian theology, a new kind of propaedeutic, in place of the natural
Modest Reflections on the Term ‘Religious Experience’
Open Theology, 2017
The paper urges a reconsideration of the term “religious experience,” as it is presently used in textbooks in the Philosophy of Religion (to which it first refers). The term needs to include not only what might be termed “extraordinary” religious experience (as used in those texts), but the “ordinary” experience of most who practice a religion, and it needs to assess such experience not so much as a “proof” of God (or a “Transcendent Reality”), but rather as a credible witness to what it affirms. The central portion of the paper then investigates how “experience” was used and understood-as a conscious term of analysis-by Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. It then argues that this understanding of “experience” can be applied successfully to refer to “religious experience,” whether “ordinary” or “extraordinary”: it argues that such an understanding would fit well any phenomenological description of what most people mean by their “religious experience.” It concludes that there is work to b...
It is thought that Schleiermacher used religious experience as a new kind of argument to safeguard Christian faith when he was faced with the failure of traditional arguments for the existence of God. This paper argues that such a view does not do justice to the newness of his approach in constructing a propaedeutic to Christian theology. It is further argued that, irrespective of whether one agrees with what Schleiermacher was trying to do, if religious experience is to become a contemporary preambula fi dei to Christian theology, the focus should be on communicating a positive experience rather than on arguing for God’s existence.
The Myth of Religious Experience
Religious Studies, 2004
I argue that people do not and cannot have religious experiences that are perceptual experiences with theological content and that provide some justification for the belief in God. I discuss William Alston's resourceful defence of this idea. My strategy is to say that religious perception would either have to be by means of one of the ordinary five senses or else by means of some special sixth religious sense. In either case insoluble epistemological problems arise. The problem is with perceiving God as God, which we need to do if reasons to believe in God are to be generated. To do so, we would have to perceive the instantiation of His essential properties -being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. But perceiving the instantiation of these properties of God, even by some special sixth religious sense, is impossible. Hence, God cannot be perceived either by the ordinary five senses or by a sixth religious sense. Religious perceptual experiences are a myth.
This apologetics project has become-over the past several weeks-a rather onerous and formidable undertaking. It culminated into a sort of Master's Thesis I was never obliged to write (my M.Sc at Columbia University was based on a practitioner model). This piece explores various topics expatiated historically within the philosophy of Natural Theology. Foremost, two deliberations should be considered 1) whole books have been written on the arguments delineated in this piece, and as such, the subject matters may be highly technical both philosophically and scientifically; and 2) one should not judge the soundness of these arguments based on a reading of this piece, as it will grant only a cursory apprehension of the much profounder subjects situated beneath. Readers wishing for a greater understanding should refer to the more academically rigorous sources that I've duly cited.
Why Religious Experience is considered Personal and Dubitable - and what if it were not.
Is Religion Natural?, 2012
In my paper I will link the Western characterization of religious experience as personal and dubitable to the model of scientific knowledge which begins with Descartes, in which a self-sufficient rational subject is thought to be able to study mute nature and in which intuitive or imaginative access to life shared between interdependent creatures is delegitimized as knowledge. Spinoza, working from some of Descartes’ presumptions, labeled religious experience as being able to provide only ‘moral certainty’, instead of the mathematical certainty which should be aimed at in philosophy and science. Neither logic, nor experimental proof, can ascertain what people claim to know about the religious. Anthropologically speaking, religious experience stems from/is received in the imagination, not from the senses or from reason. This doesn’t matter, says Spinoza, since this scientifically dubitable kind of knowledge is perfectly able to help people to orient their lives toward the good, and to gain peace of mind. William James, influenced by Spinoza, develops the same line of thought: religious experience is personal and rests on the powers of imagination, but although its content can never be proven, it is profitable for the human psyche and for leading the good life. As positive as this might sound, the fact that religious experience is considered personal and dubitable is not unproblematic, since religious experience also seems to say something about reality, and not only about morality and well-being. The standing view is not, however, unquestionable, but typical for modern western culture, and seems not to have been in fashion in other times and cultures. The phenomenon that occurs when natural forces ‘tell’ things by means of unexpected behavior (miracles), has never been interpreted, in modern Western thought, in its own right, as presenting direct messages which are perfectly clear to their receivers, and which are not private or personal either, but easily accessible to groups of people who stand in mutual contact. I will propose an alternative epistemology which might do justice to this kind of experience, and will conclude by asking what would be the consequences of adopting such an epistemology. I will call this alternative a ‘pragmatic-interactive epistemology’, since it bases the possibility of knowledge not on a self-sufficient rational subject, but on the interactions between human individuals amongst each other, as well as between human beings and other beings, whilst they are dynamically involved in furthering (in more or less successful ways) life as it is shared, and at the same time individually enjoyed. Consequences are that a) religious experience can be considered to provide knowledge, and should be criticized as such – although the principles for criticism will be in conformity to the alternative epistemological model, and not with the classical modern western model; and that b) because the range of possible cognitive ways to relate to the world is significantly widened – culturally and individually widely different ways of life may be considered within the varieties of the ‘normal’, instead of discriminating against them in quasi-colonial and patriarchal modern Western ways of thinking.
2019
In the field of Science of Religion and associated fields of the Human Sciences revisions about the limits of reality have begun, in response both to intercultural encounters as well as to a rising awareness of research on the complexity of reality in the natural sciences. These have elicited proposals that the perspectives of the "religious" and the "para-normal" should be distinguished. This resonates with traditions of empirical and theoretical research often marginalized by the prevailing Positivist ideology and by Cognitivism. It also resonates with suppressed cultural traditions. A cautious movement towards a wider and differentiated assessment of reality and of phenomena, to be approached in these two perspectives, can however be observed in scholarship of religion, and even in the fold of Cognitivist Psychology. This presentation, held at the conference of the German Association for Science of Religion / DVRW in Potsdam in 2018 explores the field and argues for the validity and heuristic power of this distinction.